Still At Stage One

The Kübler-Ross Model describes five separate stages that people often transition through, upon hearing some really difficult news. Before eventually ending up at the final stage of ‘acceptance’, the model begins with the first stage of ‘denial’. For example, consider a person who becomes aware that they have been promoting some extremely stupid and idiotic ideas that have caused real harms to very many vulnerable people, including children. An initial reaction to such an incredibly difficult situation, can be to simply deny reality and block out the facts.

The writer Barry Purcell has not only been a very vocal promoter of transgender ideology, but has also gleefully jumped at the opportunity to act as a ‘witch-burner’ of those who deviate from these ideas. Anyone who suggests that women represent a real biological category of people who are entitled to certain rights, can expect such ‘heresy’ against transgender ideology to draw harsh opprobrium from Barry Purcell.

I know Barry Purcell a little. When someone I know is promoting very harmful ideas, I don’t think it is unreasonable to point this out. Recently, he quote-tweeted this long word salad arguing that humans can change their biological sex, along with his supporting commentary illustrated below.

The idea that men are able to change into women can be extremely harmful. Of course, if any adult male wishes to live their life while seeking to acquire stereotypically female characteristics, they can already do so. However, some of the associated demands have sought to compromise the rights of others, and advocates for gender ideology like Barry Purcell also insist that Self ID is the only requirement for such a transition to be recognised. This has helped open the door to male rapists in female prisons, male abusers in female shelters, male athletes in female sports, etc. etc.

The argument promoted in the quote-tweet is that “sex is a spectrum” and that humans can move along this spectrum from one side of it to the other. I responded with the very obvious reality that biological sex in humans is in fact an immutable binary.

The gametic definition of sex has been established in the scientific literature for more than a century. A male has anatomy that is organised to produce small motile gametes, while a female has anatomy that is organised to produce larger and more nutrient-rich gametes. This short article lists dozens of citations for the gametic definition of sex going back to 1888, where the explanatory power of anisogamy is also described. Across all mammals there are very different behaviours associated with males and females, which arise from their different resource investments in the possibility of reproductive success from their gametes. The cost to a female associated with producing viable offspring from each of her gametes, is very different from the cost to a male associated with reproductive success from his gametes. Female mammals then tend to be more selective in their choice of mates, whereas males are more aggressive and promiscuous. Humans are not immune from the behavioural implications of anisogamy. More than 90% of violent sexual crimes are committed by males. This raises very obvious safety issues for women and girls, which society has responded to in part by creating rights to female-only spaces. In additional to the biological issues of sexual dimorphism, there are other differences between the sexes with respect to privacy and dignity, which also require female-only spaces to be respected.

Consequently, the sex binary in humans is a biological fact that has some very real policy implications in situations where women and girls are vulnerable. The gametic definition of sex is highly explanatory not only with respect to evolutionary biology, but also with respect to the commensurate public policy implications. As is his style though, Barry Purcell responded to the gametic definition of sex that drives these outcomes by using a subtweet. He followed up his initial denial of the sex binary by again repeating his ideas about zeroes and infinities. I had pointed out that there are zero humans who have produced a third gamete; or produced an interim gamete; or produced both gametes and made themselves pregnant; or initially produced one gamete and then later changed their sex so that they subsequently produced the other gamete. Having read this, Barry Purcell then repeated his argument that because “there are no zeroes in nature”, then anyone discussing the sex binary is promoting an ideology rather than discussing science.

An initial reaction to this argument is that it is a banal pseudo-profundity that collapses upon even the most cursory examination. There are mountains of scientific evidence supporting the theory that each molecule of water consists only of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. We can only wonder how many uranium atoms Barry Purcell believes to be present in each molecule of water, given that he believes there are no zeroes in nature, and that proposing “any theory depending upon zeroes” is “not doing science”. It seems that any time Barry Purcell sees ‘H₂O’ written down, he immediately assumes that the author is a mere ideologue who has illegitimately suggested that a water molecule contains precisely zero uranium atoms.

Aside from being facile and dumb, this kind of pseudo-profundity can also clearly be seen to have nothing whatever to do with the sex binary. Whether or not it is true to say that “there are no zeroes in nature”, has nothing at all to do with whether humans can change their sex. I tried to point this out in my response to the subtweet.

Of course, if Barry Purcell had any coherent defence of his position then it would immediately have been provided. After all, he spends rather a lot of his time lecturing the “transphobes” and “know-nothing fuckwits” who think that human sex is binary and immutable, about his “reality-based analysis” that suggests otherwise. However, when he saw the replies to his tweets he did not have a coherent defence to offer. Still seemingly at the first stage of the Kübler-Ross Model though, he couldn’t just leave those replies under his tweets either. As such, he deleted his original tweets then reposted exactly the same content, this time with the replies turned off. Now the replies no longer exist and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has apparently been vindicated.

Remaining in denial about the rather obvious and numerous counterpoints to your argument, becomes more problematic when the the ideology being promoted is causing real harm. For this reason, I also asked Barry Purcell about the following quote from the material he promoted:

“A trans woman who has transitioned hasn’t just ‘changed her clothes’; she has fundamentally changed her biological make-up. Calling her a man is not only transphobic; it is factually inaccurate … Authenticity is about more than just what’s on a birth certificate; it’s about the lived, physical reality of the person standing in front of you in the round.”

Here were are told that a trans woman (that is, a man who identifies as a woman) is authentically a woman and must be treated as such. We are told that it is bigoted and wrong to recognise that such a person is male. On this basis, once Stephen Wood identified as Karen White it was correct to treat this person as female in all respects. Stephen Wood was a multiple rapist who experienced ‘rapid onset post conviction gender dysphoria’. After identifying as Karen White, this inmate was moved to a female prison were additional women became victims of sexual assault as a result. Those who accept the gametic definition of sex, and indeed those who have even the tiniest modicum of common sense, may not have been surprised by this outcome. Based on the ideology he was promoting though, I also asked Barry Purcell if it was a good idea to ignore the sex recorded on Stephen Wood’s birth certificate as lacking “authenticity”?

Perhaps some day Barry Purcell will reach the final stage of the Kübler-Ross Model, and accept that he has been promoting a very stupid ideology that has caused many very real harms. However, today is not that day. Today, Barry Purcell has instead simply removed questions about Stephen Wood from under his gender ideology tweets, so that he need not even contemplate whether or not Karen White is an “authentic” woman. The actual women locked in a cell with this inmate did not have the same luxury.

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