I’m not that familiar with her work. But my understanding is that when disciplines like gender studies were being formed they completely ignored biology and nature.in fact there were no biologists in the gender studies departments. And she was one of the first people to suggest that we must study gender with a basis in biology.

This is what she may be referencing in the passage you quoted.

Gender studies did indeed start out this way, dismissive of notions of "biological sex," until the case of David Reimer threw a bucket of cold water on those second-wave feminist theories. David was the victim of a botched circumcision as an infant. His doctors decided to turn an outie into an innie, constructed a vagina, and told his parents to raise him as a woman. He was given "vitamin" pills (actually estrogen) and forcibly socialized as female, but it didn't take. He identified as male throughout his life, transitioned as an adult, eventually discovered the truth his parents were hiding and finally killed himself.

This was an early factor in third-wave feminism accepting gender identity, which is why almost all millenial and gen-Z feminists accept trans and intersex people and why TERFs tend to be older (or deceased, good riddance Janice Raymond.)

I've found that the left tends to distrust science that may contradict its ideology, and the right tends to distrust experiences too alien from their own. In Reimer's case, the science had a human tragedy at the center of it which bridged the gap and led to change.

Wouldn't the Reimer story support a naive version of biological sex moreso than an acceptance of gender identity?

It supports believing people about what their gender identity is instead of imposing it on them.

The rate of attempted suicide in transgender people is over 40% if they are not socially supported. That rate drops to general population levels in trans people who have familial and community support when transitioning.

There is almost no scientific evidence for the idea that complete support will prevent adverse outcomes for this group.

Long-term the evidence is the opposite. Claiming that the difference between long and short-term outcomes is explained by the difference between support levels is not science. It is guessing.

"One hypothesis, the social stress model—which posits that stigma, prejudice, and discrimination are the primary causes of higher rates of poor mental health outcomes for these subpopulations—is frequently cited as a way to explain this disparity. While non-heterosexual and transgender individu- als are often subject to social stressors and discrimination, science has not shown that these factors alone account for the entirety, or even a major- ity, of the health disparity between non-heterosexual and transgender subpopulations and the general population. There is a need for extensive research in this area to test the social stress hypothesis and other poten- tial explanations for the health disparities, and to help identify ways of addressing the health concerns present in these subpopulations." https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20160819_TNA50Sexualit...

Link? The 41% figure is usually the Williams survey[0] in 2014, which doesn't exactly say that.

[0] http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFS...

Interesting stats, do you have a citation on the suicide rates?

Celebrating the death of a feminist woman because you disagreed with her politically is probably the best way to get people to trust you, produce helpful discourse and not fall in line with whoever makes their argument most aggressively

> and forcibly socialized as female, but it didn't take.

Reimer's socialization was a lot more traumatic than being told he was female. The wikipedia article only touches the surface of the disturbing abuse he was subjected to.

> This was an early factor in third-wave feminism accepting gender identity, which is why almost all millenial and gen-Z feminists accept trans and intersex people and why TERFs tend to be older

I don't see why this story would lead anyone to accept gender identity.

I also think there are many millenials and gen-Z's who would be classified as "TERFs", and in fact would view the term as derogatory.

It's a term that people have started scrawling on women's shelters [1]. I am unconvinced it is a purely "descriptive" thing...

[1] https://www.facebook.com/252414605231327/posts/7186233552771...

*Edited to be less snarky

> or deceased, good riddance Janice Raymond

Did Janice Raymond pass away? Did you mean Mary Daly?

Ahem... Do you know about Anne Fasto-Sterling or Donna Haraway? They are both highly credentialed biologists and pivotal figures in the development of women's/gender studies.

I doubt there's much desire around here to argue the merits of gender studies in good faith. However, those proclaiming that gender scholarship doesn't get biology, I suggest you pick up Evelyn Fox Keller's excellent book Making Sense of Life (HUP, 2002) and allow yourselves to be surprised.

(Yes, Keller is a physicist, not a biologist. Those trying to belittle or dismiss what women's studies has accomplished will probably use that to disqualify her contribution...)

I will give it a read.

Fausto-Sterling seems to be loose with data. In The Five Sexes she cites Money as the source for upwards of 4% of the population being intersexual.

Money denied the claim here (last page) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239657377_The_Five_...

Later she revised to 1.7% in this paper with some fairly loose definitions of what constitutes "frequency of deviation from the idea female or male" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.sci-hub.tw/pubmed/11534012

If you dig into the 1.7% figure, 87% of it comes from late onset CAH. Problematic, as Late onset CAH is very similar to PCOS, which affects 5-10% of the population and was excluded. Both fit her definition of deviation from the sexual idea (hirtuisim, infertility) https://i.imgur.com/BYi5dem.png

Sure, but that's a weird publication of hers to take issue with. For context (from Wikipedia):

> In a paper entitled "The Five Sexes", in which, according to her, "I had intended to be provocative, but I had also written with tongue firmly in cheek." Fausto-Sterling laid out a thought experiment considering an alternative model of gender containing five sexes: male, female, merm, ferm, and herm. This thought experiment was interpreted by some as a serious proposal or even a theory; advocates for intersex people stated that this theory was wrong, confusing and unhelpful to the interests of intersex people. In a later paper ("The Five Sexes, Revisited"), she has acknowledged these objections.

I am addressing a specific claim she made in her paper, quote in full.

"Not surprisingly, it is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality, much less the frequency of each of the three additional sexes: it is not the sort of information one volunteers on a job application. The psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ defects, suggests intersexuals may constitute as many as 4 percent of births. As I point out to my students at Brown University, in a student body of about 6,000 that fraction, if correct, implies there may be as many as 240 intersexuals on campus - surely enough to form a minority caucus of some kind."

This section of the essay is not tongue in cheek. She clearly states she's teaching this idea.

This was John Money's response

"To the best of my knowledge there is no publication attributable to me in which I suggest, as Ms. Fausto-Sterling puts it, intersexuals may constitute as many as 4 percent of births. Moreover, it is epidemiologically reckless to conjecture that on the campus of Brown University there are 240 students with a birth defect of the sex organs that would justify their being diagnosed as intersexuals, that is, hermaphrodites"

The paper "The Five Sexes, Revisited" which you can find at [1], is at best an essay on gender and recent changes in gender-based legislation, at worst badly written political activism, but most certainly not in the slightest a scientific investigation into the biology of reproduction. The latter is what those who criticise modern conceptions of gender have in mind.

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/21a4/4d10b40354a974c8d1d3a9...

I referenced the original 1993 essay "The Five Sexes"

You have referenced the 2000 essay, "The Five Sexes, Revisited"

No on claimed it was a scientific investigation, I quoted the full text of the issue I was discussing in a previous comment.

I replied to "jboynyc" uncritical remarks about "The Five Sexes, Revisited", as if "The Five Sexes, Revisited" mitigated the weaknesses of Fausto-Sterling's work.

Ah apologies, yes her revisiting of the original paper does not address many of the issues raised.

In what sense is Donna Haraway a "highly credentialed biologist"?

Haraway has a PhD in Biology from Yale.

According to Wikipedia [1] her PhD was about "use of metaphor in shaping experiments in experimental biology". This is not what I'd call biology proper. You can have a look at it: it was later published as a book "Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields" which is available online [2]. I'm not sure how [2] makes her a "highly credentialed biologist" (in the same sense that "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" doesn't make Kuhn a highly credentialed physicist).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway

[2] https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabr...

Yet somehow she got a PhD in biology from Yale with it, we should probably read it before judging it as "a biology paper" or "not a biology paper".

Feel free to list some highly credentialed social scientists you respect, and we can look up their PhD thesis titles.

Bottom line is she's highly credentialed with a PhD from Yale, taught at John Hopkins, and is now a "distinguished professor emerita" at UCSC.

   we should probably read it 

I spent about 20 minutes reading parts of it. I'd classify it as "history of science" (a perfectly valid subject).

   Bottom line is she's highly

No. She is in no way "highly credentialised in biology". She has taught at universities but "Women's Studies and the History of Science", and "History of Consciousness [...] and Feminist Studies". (From [1])

The content of her Yale PhD is not in biology, in the way this term is usually understood (DNA, proteins, signalling chains, PCR, bench work, taxonomy of animals, ... i.e. studying the physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution of living organisms).

Since the scientific credibility of subjects like "Feminist Studies" is controversial (unlike biology) claiming high credentials where there are none, makes me think of HN guidelines [7]: when discussing highly controversial subjects like, discussions about scientific credentials, should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less.

   list some highly credentialed 
   social scientists you respect,

I don't see why this is relevant for Haraway, not every great scientist has a great dissertation or written their dissertation in the field they later became famous for. The "bottom line" is that Haraway has no substantial credentials in biology, and certainly she has not done research in biology in the sense the term is usually understood. Anyway, to take up your challenge, I'm fairly familiar with the following highly credentialed social scientists: Karl Marx (PhD in philosophy on ancient Greek philosophy, I have been unable to locate it, if you have a link to the text, I'd be grateful), Max Weber (PhD in law about commercial law in Italy [2, 3]), Talcott Parsons (PhD is [4]), Émile Durkheim (PhD is on the division of labour [5]) and Niklas Luhmann (PhD about automation in administrations [6]). How is all this relevant regarding Donna Haraway?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway

[2] http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/research/weber1.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zur_Geschichte_der_Handelsgese...

[4] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1820700?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Division_of_Labour_in_Soci...

[6] https://www.amazon.de/Recht-Automation-%C3%B6ffentlichen-Ver...

[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Link me Haraway's PhD thesis please, I can't find it on scihub.

Original assertion was "highly credentialed biologists", which is different than "highly credentialed in biology", and I would agree with your objection to the later statement, her credentials lie mostly outside biology.

She's highly credentialed by the nature of her PhD from Yale, teaching at Hopkins & UCSC. She's a biologist by training, achieving her PhD in the field.

I asked for a list of social scientists so I could pick one and attack their PhD's or credentials under the same premise you criticized Haraway's, to demonstrate the absurdity of that line of thinking.

Marx's PhD was in philosophy, thesis something about greek philosophy being superior to religion. Spent most of his life as a journalist, so he's not credentialed in the social/political science field he's most notable for.

^^^ makes me sound foolish

Marx's PhD thesis https://archive.org/details/Marx_Karl_-_Doctoral_Thesis_-_Th...

Thanks for the link to Marx PhD. As far as I understand [1] is (a book version of) Haraway's doctoral dissertation.

   "highly credentialed biologists", 
   which is different than 
   "highly credentialed in biology"

By that sophistic logic, I'm a "highly credentialed chess player" simply because as a child I played a few games of chess and now have lots of credentials in a STEM field. By the same logic I would also be a

- highly credentialed soccer player

- highly credentialed surfer

- highly credentialed linguist

and many more variants. All of the above would be misleading because clearly statements like "X is a highly credentialed Y" are usually assumed to mean that X's credentials are in subject Y. Since a persistent and widely known criticism of Gender Studies and the concept of gender is the severed link with biology in general, and the biology of fertility in particular, is remarkable, and it is difficult to believe it is done in good faith.

[1] https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabr...

It's not sophisticated logic, it's plain reading of the grammatical structure of the phrase. An adverb and adjective modifying a noun.

Haraway did not play a few games of chess as a child, she studied 7+ years to get a PhD.

I'm with you that gender studies has an evidence/science problem in general, baselessly attacking a researchers credentials does not prove that point.

>What does this really mean? Does it mean anything?

Yes, a lot of things. And it's pretty trivial in its meaning really (also in its expression). In other words, it's not like some academic obscurantism. She clearly says something clear itself.

At first I thought your disagreement stemmed from unfamiliarity with European philosophy, and wanting everything to be spelt out in the dry style of anglosaxon philosophy.

But since you're OK with Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, I can't possibly fathom where your disagreement with the above is.

If you can read Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, you can surely parse Paglia (at least the above except). As for the vitriol she expresses against them, well they too have expressed vitriol against each other, at some point or another. It's par for the course, as these philosophers don't pretend to express some kind of scientific understanding (which converges), but ways to look at the world (which can diverge).

As for what she says, I'll try putting it more crudely below:

1) "In the beginning was nature".

Civilization and humans start from being parts of nature (e.g. we start as regular animals).

2) "The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem".

Our religion (and other ideas, philosophy, morals, etc) evolve from our initial animal status and in connection to nature (e.g. consider how early gods where embodiments of natural forces, but also how natural constraints, from death to drought, to emotions, to reproductive urges, etc where things we responded with religion, song, myth, etc.

What's "natural" to us (and conversely, unnatural/obscene/etc) is our most common moral question.

3) "We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man".

Sex and gender are tied to our natural (animal) origins (male/female organs, reproductive instinct, different physiology, etc). Sex is natural to us -- but it's still a complex issue (e.g. morally, legally, culturally). To feel comfortable and open towards sex, we should finally feel comfortable with our animal nature.

Finally, she asserts that since sex is part of nature, it is the natural part in us (e.g. not our artifice or construction, but something we inherited from our animal nature, and which connects us to it).

You could easily find similar excerpts in all three of Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida.

FWIW, I find Paglia's passage you quoted much more intelligible than Lacan or Derrida's notoriously impenetrable prose, and find it surprising and actually disingenuous that you'd accuse her of "bombast and pseudo-academic jargon" when that's a charge that can very much be laid at the feet of the postmodernists. I mean, there are literally books about it, such as Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostors (or Fashionable Nonsense in the US).

I haven't read Intellectual Impostors, but suspect it is more about people like Paglia who find elaborate ways of saying nothing (or is it everything?), than about Foucault or Derrida. Indeed the authors said this themselves as someone linked lower down:

Des penseurs célèbres tels qu'Althusser, Barthes, Derrida et Foucault sont essentiellement absents de notre livre. [1]

Barthes is another quite obtuse but really wonderful writer (IMO) - who crucially has something to say. Paglia I suspect of having nothing to say I'm afraid.

Lacan I haven't read anything significant, but he does have a reputation for being obtuse and a bit of a fraud yes, so maybe the charge by her against him is accurate, though frankly Paglia should not be calling anyone else difficult or bombastic given her style. Note the person grouping these three very disparate thinkers is Paglia.

I didn't cherry-pick that quote, it's just the first para of her book. I honestly am not sure what she means by that first page of Sexual Personae (for example she doesn't define nature), and one paragraph is not enough to do her awful writing justice because it bludgeons the reader with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing, as if to bully them into submission; she flits about from pithy assertion to clever sounding reference, giving other authors an adjective and not much more, then moving on to her next thought, without any sort of research or backup for her bald gnomic assertions. Indeed her confident nonsense about the authors quoted above sums up for me her depth very well.

[1] https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmo...

Actually, the quote sounds like a profoundly wise thing to say. Anyone who has ever noticed in him/herself that sexual fantasies are not necessarily very political correct should know this. E.g., rape fantasies as either the perpetrator or the victim occur in large percentages of the population.

I agree it sounds wise (something she works very hard at), but is it wise?

On reading the rest of the book, I concluded no. You make up your own mind, but I would not dismiss those other writers because of a criticism from Paglia.

Again, the assumption that fantasies are purely natural creatures of the "id" and not products of your particular culture is assuming the conclusion.

(Mind you, I'm not sure where the cutting edge of research in this is; it's a very difficult field and it's been a long time since I read Nancy Friday)

I have to admit that I fail to see any connection between that quote and the thing you wrote about sexual fantasies. Also, that thing about sexual fantasies... is it not obvious? Does anyone need to read a book to discover it? I might be missing something and I want to be corrected if that is the case but so far it seems like one of those cases when famous authors write something so vague or even empty that people project their own discoveries into it and get affirmative pleasure from that.

Seems like Paglia is stating the blindingly obvious, because so many in her field were rejecting it?

> What does this really mean? Does it mean anything?

She means that human consciousness is born from our actions towards nature since before we were conscious and that we cannot detach morality from that. Furthermore, we can't hope to define sex and gender, before understanding the roots of morality since they are defined by our primeval nature, not by society rules born out of conscious thought.

Morality is a human construct. Nature has no morality, only survival matters - by any means. That's why such cruelty (from human moral viewpoint) is found in Nature.

>Nature has no morality

But perhaps it does? Animals kill other animals only to survive (to kill them in order to eat them or to defend themselves from being killed/eaten)

Humans may be the only species who hurt other humans just for the fun of it - now _that_ is cruelty.

Humans and cats, actually.

And others too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_m_3ZQN8Q

That quote you chose is as straightforward as it gets.

It seems fairly self-explanatory. Sex didn't evolve independently of the rest of humanity and evolution occurs at the level of the organism as well as at the level of the social group (religion, culture, hierarchies, etc). You can't break sex away from the rest of evolution and assume it has no impact on the rest of what and who we are or that what and who we are had no direct impact on the evolution of sex differences. It's not obscure or vague, it's obvious.

Now it may not be USEFUL to make that observation, but it certainly contradicts the manner in which many activist social scientists construe notions of sex and gender with unfalsifiable claims.

Interesting is neither true, nor good.

Many great minds are in some way flawed, the thing that makes them great thinkers able to come up with revolutionary ideas probably makes them more susceptible to crackpottery.

Examples: Linus Pauling, Peter Duesberg, William Herschel, Isaac Newton, Fred Hoyle, Lynn Margulis

Kary Mullis invented PCR, won a Nobel prize for it, then became an HIV/AIDS denier.

Wolfgang Pauli deeply believed in the occult and Isaac Newton in alchemy and biblical interpretations.