In any case, the following is a letter that I’ve just recently sent off to the author of that article at the CBC — Canada’s answer to Pravda; hold my beer.

****

CBC News,

Natalie Stechyson, Senior Writer & Editor

March 29, 2026

Ms. Stechyson,

My name is Jim Wiggins, a retired electronics technologist in BC, and I have just read with interest your fairly comprehensive article of March 27 — “Breaking down the IOC policy on banning transgender women”:

CBC: Breaking down the IOC policy banning transgender women from female Olympic events; How does the genetic testing work? How does the IOC define a female?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ioc-ban-transgender-athletes-9.7144281

You certainly cover quite a bit of ground, provide some useful background information, and raise some important questions, maybe the most important of which is your, “How does the IOC define a female?”

Although at the outset I would say that much of that background information is rather biased, and riddled with untenable assumptions, articles of faith, and serious misunderstandings of the biology of sex. Basically, and not to put too fine a point on it, your “transgender female athletes” is wrong right out of the chute since those athletes are, as a brute fact, only males, guys in drag, cross-dressing men. They’re testicle-havers, not ovary-havers which is what it takes to qualify as a female — and to be able to compete in women’s Olympic sports events.

However, to get into the nitty-gritties of the problem, maybe a more important question is, “exactly what are biological females”, particularly as “biological females” is the IOC’s primary criteria yet it begs or begets the question of precisely what does biology itself say is required to qualify as male and female. And, not to keep you in suspense, here’s the Coles Notes answer: testicles and ovaries, respectively, at least to a first approximation. But, in addition to that, their “definition” — of sorts — conflicts with the more fundamental biological definitions, and obscures the “essences” of male and female — i.e., those testicles and ovaries — all of which may have some unforeseen and quite problematic consequences and ramifications far outside of just the IOC.

About which more later as that biology is really the crux of the matter. However, what is just as important, if not more so, is that I and many others — see below — object to your — and, in other articles, the CBC’s — frequent use of the phrase “transgender women”. And in particular because that term is clearly being used to refer to people who are, as mentioned, simply, at best, male transvestites, guys in drag, effeminate men — testicle-havers, the lot of them.

And that is true regardless of how those transwomen “self-identify” —a rather incoherent if not risible concept in itself. That some transwoman claims to “identify as a female” — as an ovary-haver — does not at all change the brute fact that he remains a male, a testicle-haver. You and the whole CBC may wish to take a remedial lesson in basic semantics, in the definition for “identify as” from the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary:

identify as: phrasal verb; identify as something; ​to recognize or decide that you belong to a particular category

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/identify-as

You don’t get to say that you “identity as”, say, a teenager unless you’re actually 13 to 19. At least if you want to be taken as sane. SAME thing with male (testicle haver) and female (ovary haver).

But as another analogous case to emphasize the point, if you were overseeing a kid’s softball team — say, ages 13 to 15 — and someone who was, say, actually and clearly 35 years old came along and said that they “identify as” a 14-year old and then demanded to play on that team then would you allow them to do so? Or would you call the cops and have them incarcerated in institutions for the criminally insane? SAME thing with transloonie nutcases who claim to “identity as” members of a sex category other than their birth sex and who demand the rights, benefits, and opportunities of that other sex.

Though it is a serious puzzle as to how that phrase — “I identify as X” — came to carry so much weight, almost as if it acts as some sort of a magic wand, at least in some people’s “minds”. At best, it is only so much pretentious twaddle — who the hell says they “identify as” an accountant or as a plumber? — and it only emphasizes how gullible and scientifically illiterate so many people are.

So “transgender women” are not anything of the sort, are not any sort of an “adult human female (sex)”, are not ovary-havers. Something that the IOC, the UK Girl Guides, and the UK Supreme Court in the For-Women-Scotland case have all emphasized and agreed upon. The latter being something that even the CBC presumably recognized in their coverage last year:

CBC, Thomson Reuters Apr 16, 2025:

· British Supreme Court unanimously rules legal definition of a ‘woman’ excludes trans women’s identities ....

· Five justices say language in Equality Act refers to person’s assigned sex at birth ....

· The United Kingdom’s top court on Wednesday upheld an appeal by the campaign group For Women Scotland on whether transgender women are legally women under equality legislation;

· “The terms ‘women’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex ...” said Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the Supreme Court.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/uk-supreme-court-equality-act-ruling-1.7511411

So, the law of the land — right from the top, from the UK’s Supreme Court — stipulates that transwomen — a more accurate term than “transgender women” — are NOT women, are not adult human females (sex), are not ovary-havers BECAUSE they’re men, because they’re adult human males, because they’re testicle-havers.

Which is in notable contradistinction to what has been peddled by our erstwhile fearless leader, Justin Trudeau, who once promulgated — from no less than the effen Prime Minister’s Office — the barking (mad) article of faith and Party plank that “trans women are women (!!11!!)”, a classic bit of “2+2=5” to top Orwell’s own — and on International Women’s Day, no less:

PMO: The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on International Women’s Day. …. With a disturbing recent rise in anti-transgender hate here in Canada, we reiterate today that trans women are women and we will always stand up to hate whenever and wherever it occurs.

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2023/03/08/statement-prime-minister-international-womens-day

If I were a woman, and any kind of feminist — a combination which probably encompasses at least some 40% of the voting public — and knew of that claim, that bit of demented ideological claptrap, then it would be a frosty day in hell when I ever voted again for the Liberal Party. How can the Liberals defend and promote women’s rights when much of the Party — all the way to the damn top — clearly hasn’t an effen clue as to bedrock difference between men and women? A difference which presumably has a great deal of bearing on the nature and scope of those rights.

If the CBC was doing its job instead of being mouth-pieces for Liberal “principles” — particularly of the “2+2=5” variety — then it should be asking when the Liberals will be repudiating that antiscientific BS, when will they be putting themselves on the same page as the UK Supreme Court and the IOC since, as Trudeau’s proclamation now stands, the PMO bafflegab is clearly at odds with both of them.

But — harkening back to the fundamental question of how biology defines male and female, of what it takes as the “essence” of those categories, particularly as it emphasizes the incoherence, risibility, and rank insanity of transwomen “self-identifying as females” — those terms — i.e., male and female — are what are called “terms of art”, i.e., “a word or phrase that has a precise, specialized meaning within a particular field or profession”. And the definitions that biologists have chosen for those terms are “designed” — on the basis of some long-standing and quite venerable principles of philosophy and science — to get at, or get closer to, the “essences” of “male” and “female”. And the way that they have done that is to determine which traits are common to every last “male” and “female” on the planet — i.e., those taking part in sexual reproduction, and for the last billion years or so — which are then the criteria — the necessary and sufficient conditions as they say in philosophy-speak — for sex category membership.

And those two traits are, as mentioned, the production of “large reproductive cells” [oogenesis, and of ova in females] and the production of “small reproductive cells” [spermatogenesis, and of sperm in males]. Which is the way that reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries have defined those terms — and probably for at least the last 100 years since gametes, the reproductive cells — sperm and ova — weren’t even detected until the late 1800s. For a salient and frequently cited source, see:

“Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes” by Jussi Lehtonen, & Geoff A. Parker; Oxford Academic Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (Volume 20, Issue 12, December 2014):

“Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.

Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20221214064356/https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990?login=false

THAT is IT; that is ALL that “female” and “male” MEAN to any biologist worth their salt — few and far-between these days, too many having gone “woke”. But somewhat apropos of which, I took a quick look at a source you had linked to, InterAct, which said, “No single physical characteristic can determine a person’s sex.” Which is, not to put too fine a point on that either, unmitigated horse crap — pigheaded scientific illiteracy at best, a betrayal of some classic motivated reasoning, part of a desperate effort to turn the sexes into participation trophies, into “immutable (though quite nebulous) identities”. The sexes — the words “male” and “female” — are, by definition, simply labels denoting the presence of some transitory reproductive abilities and processes — i.e., spermatogenesis in males, and oogenesis in females.

So by those biological definitions — which are foundational to all of biology; part of its warp and weft — one can say that if an organism produces — present tense — large gametes [ova] then it is a female, and if it produces — present tense — small gametes [sperm] then it is a male. And if it is producing neither type then — technically speaking at least, and as an inexorable logical consequence of those definitions — that organism is neither a female nor a male; it is sexless. For a clear example of that in the biological literature, see this article in the Wiley Online Library [WOL] by a trio of reputable German biologists:

WOL: “For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET. [my emphasis; i.e., no sex MEANS sexless].”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202200173?af=R

So, easy peasy. Absolutely no difficulty at all for any biologist worth their salt to determine the sex of ANY organism, of any of millions of species including the human one: check under their hoods; which of two types of gametes [ova or sperm] is it currently producing? Which of two biological processes — oogenesis or spermatogenesis — is it manifesting?

Standard operating procedure [SOP] there throughout much if not all of biology. If you have any science or biology under your belt — and it seems you have at least a smattering of it — then you may wish to take a gander at a paper by a philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, on the question of, “What are biological sexes?” — something that the IOC may wish to give some thought to as well:

https://philpapers.org/rec/GRIWAB-2

But those definitions are in fact pretty much exactly what has been “promulgated” by President Trump in his Executive Order on “Restoring Biological Truth to Government” — something urgently need in both the US and Canada, Justin Trudeau’s aforementioned “proclamation” being a case in point:

(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell [ova].

(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell [sperm]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

Diddly-squat in either set of definitions — at least that I can see ... — about any SRY gene because the “essences” of “male” and “female” have absolutely NOTHING to do with any genes, but only with the type of reproductive cell that is actually — or maybe previously or potentially — produced. In which case Caster Semenya is, in point of brute fact, a male:

UK Times: Semenya has differences of sexual development (DSD), which means that [he] has internal testes and produces testosterone at typically male levels.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/caster-semenya-lifts-lid-on-14-years-of-testosterone-controversy-wq3tlfb0t

Archive link: https://archive.ph/Qx27y

Male = testicles; Female = ovaries. Caster has the former so he is a male. Case closed — with prejudice. And with the rescinding of any prizes he may have won as a woman. That’s the law, and pretty damn close to one of God’s:

Genesis 1:27 : “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Although Jehovah, or his various scribes, neglected to mention exactly what were the essential criteria to qualify as such — of maybe some relevance in procreation which was another of “His” directives or Executive Orders, so to speak — and whether their states were transitory or “immutable” ....

In any case, to close this rather long epistle — whenever one goes to change something one often finds it connected to everything else in the universe — I think you and many other journalists there at the CBC should stop using phrases like “transgender women athletes” and “female transgender athletes” to refer to people who are, in point of fact, no more than guys in drag, male transvestites, effeminate men: i.e., testicle-havers. It is misleading at best and obscures — probably intentionally — the question of why we should be allowing males (testicle-havers) to compete in sports leagues reasonably reserved for the sole use of females (ovary-havers). Maybe the reason — a very good one — that such transwomen are banned from the Olympics is — mirabile dictu! — because they’re NOT females? Wot a concept ...

But kind of a complex issue that gets into some aspects of biology and philosophy that most people don’t have any clue about, and ones that they generally don’t need to have much of a handle on. Until people — like transgender activists, a rather thuggish if not psychotic bunch — try to ride roughshod over them and their important uses. But I don’t think you and many other CBC journalists are helping matters much by ignoring those aspects or trying to sweep those details, and the devils riding their coat-tails, under the carpet. For some further elaborations on many of the issues I’ve only touched on here, you might have some interest in a couple of my Substack posts, the most recent one of which took the BBC to task for the same muddled thinking and quite unscientific claptrap — being charitable — that characterizes most if not all CBC articles on the topic:

Open Letter: Re BBC’s “transgender women”

By BBC author Michael Sheils McNamee

https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/open-letter-re-bbcs-transgender-women

You may also have some interest in another open letter that I had sent to the “CBC Help Center” about the Tumbler Ridge tragedy. And salient features of that story were descriptions by various newspapers, including the CBC, that the perpetrator — Jesse Strang/Van-Rootselaar — was apparently trying to “transition to female” — a medical and biological impossibility and probably a proximate cause why he went off the deep end. A salient quote or two from that open letter:

“Dear” CBC News:

I very much object to the wrong pronouns being used for Jesse Rootselaar, a male. For instance, in this OTHER CBC news story he is referred to as “she” some 6 times and as “her” 4 or 5 times. …. CBC: Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth and began transitioning to female about six years ago, and identified publicly as female. ....

https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-cbc-re-tumbler-ridge

To say that the CBC was scientifically illiterate for giving any credence or currency to the demented idea that Jesse was actually able to “transition to female”; for accepting that the phrase, “identified publicly as female”, was anything more that prima facie evidence of rank insanity on Jesse’s part and on that of most other transwomen; has to qualify as an understatement of the year.

Kinda think there’s a serious house-cleaning required there at the CBC, if not a defunding of it; some remedial courses in basic biology at least. Y’all may wish to give some thought to the reasons why many are calling for that course of action. I intend to kick this issue up a notch with your Ombudsman. Canada is being rather badly served by the CBC.

Sincerely,

Jim Wiggins [AKA Steersman]

Transgender girls told to leave Girlguiding groups by September; by Michael Sheils McNamee

The organisation that oversees girl guide groups in the UK has said transgender girls must leave the organisation by September.

It follows an announcement in December by Girlguiding that it would no longer allow biological boys who identify as girls to join.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rn250ddjo

But what was particularly galling, what precipitated my message to him, was his and the BBC’s use of “transgender girls” — a rather common phrase used by many so-called newspapers of record — to refer to what are, in point of brute fact, no more than juvenile male transvestites. Part and parcel of which is McNamee’s acknowledgment that they are simply males who happen to “identify as girls”. But what is particularly crazy — batshit crazy — about that phrase is that so many — including those Girl Guides and, in the world of sport, the IOC — seem to take that as prima facie evidence, as a set of marching orders, that those male transvestites have somehow become actual girls, actual juvenile females [ovary-havers] and should be treated as such.

Clear evidence of the gullibility of so many people — being charitable. That phrase — “I identify as X” — seems to be taken as some sort of magic wand that immediately bestows all the rights and benefits that may attend membership in the category X — and damned be those who have the temerity to say otherwise, who point out that those using such phrases are no more than Emperors and Empresses who are as naked as jaybirds, and who should probably be incarcerated in institutions for the criminally insane without any further ado:

Most people, one might charitably surmise, would respond, for example, to someone’s “I identify as the King of England and expect to be treated as such” with, at best, an amused, “you’re pulling my leg”. But if that supposed King further demanded that, say, some car dealership delivering a Jaguar to their home — free, gratis, send the bill to Buckingham Palace — then I expect the dealership would be calling the cops to take that “King” away to the funny farm. Yet a bunch of transwomen insisting on an equivalent — “I identify as a female and expect to be granted all the rights and benefits that accrue to someone of that sex” — is met with so many falling all over themselves to describe those transwomen as “stunning and brave” — “living authentically as a woman” as Kamala (“she’s for they/them”) Harris said about transwoman Dylan Mulvaney — and in a great rush to provide them those rights and benefits. Something is seriously rotten in Denmark — the BBC and others of their ilk providing manifest evidence of that — and there should be hell itself to pay for it.

In any case, without further ado, and for the sake of posterity — and for any who might want to rattle the cages of the BBC and McNamee — my message to the author about that bit of “2+2=5”:

******

Mr. Michael McNamee:

My name is Jim Wiggins, and I’m out in the colonies, across the pond, in the hinterlands of Canada — i.e., anything more than 50 miles north of the US-Canada border.

But I’d been reading a recent BBC news story — “Transgender girls told to leave Girlguiding groups by September” — which had apparently been written by you:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rn250ddjo

Certainly some good news on the transgender front, although I think those “girls” should have been given the bum’s rush and thrown out of Girl Guides on their ears with hardly a moment’s notice. And not least for perpetrating or being parties to a fraud, for a classic bit of “2+2=5”: “Who you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

But the article gives your name top billing, although it spells your last name as “McNamee” — with a capital “M” — so I’m not entirely sure that you were the author of it. If not then I’d appreciate knowing who to contact about it, but assuming you are then I’d like to raise an objection or two about the title and some of the text therein.

While I gather that titles are not written by the authors of the articles themselves, it seems that you have also used the phrase “transgender girls” in the body of it. While I’m happy to see that you, one assumes, clarified the issue with your “biological boys who identify as girls”, the fact of the matter is that “transgender girls” is a misleading misnomer at best, a bait-and-switch fraud, if not a case of egregious bias or scientific illiteracy, being charitable.

As you suggest, those “girls” are not anything of the effen sort; they’re no more than feminine boys, guys in drag, juvenile male transvestites. If that fact was front and center — instead of being papered over with euphemisms and ideological claptrap — then I rather expect that most people would quite reasonably wonder what the hell are “they” doing in putting boys [i.e., juvenile males, testicle-havers] in with girls [juvenile females, ovary-havers] who might reasonably expect to have a right to spaces segregated by sex — particularly since “freedom of association” IS a thing, you know? And in dozens of western countries, probably including the US, Britain, and Ireland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

But further, it is absolutely barking mad of those “girls” — juvenile males at best — to be “identifying as girls [females]”. As Helen Joyce — Irish author, and erstwhile columnist at The Economist who you may have run across in your travels — once put it:

[woman:] An adult human who identifies as female; Anonymous Twitter account

Marks for cunning, I suppose. Using “female” instead of “woman” is clearly an attempt to avoid circularity. The problem is that “female” is not something you can identify as. It’s a word with an objective definition that holds right across all of biology, and hardly any of the things it refers to are capable of identifying as anything. It means: “of or denoting the sex class that produces large gametes,” ....

https://web.archive.org/web/20200714210100/https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/

Though Joyce — Herself — is kind of barking up the wrong tree since it is not the class that produces large gametes — something of a category error to so argue — but only the members of it do so since that property is what qualifies females for membership in the “female” category.

But those transgirls or transwomen — compound words like “crayfish” which ain’t — who are “identifying as females” are just as insane, as literally out of their effen minds, as some people of 35 or 45 who might be “identifying as teenagers”. People seriously claiming thereby to be members of the “teenager” category, and to be demanding to be treated as such, would clearly be providing prima facie evidence to justify their incarceration in institutions for the criminally insane. Yet the former are feted as “stunning and brave”? Something is seriously rotten in Denmark, and there should be hell itself to pay for it.

The point there, and in Joyce’s article at Quillette, is that one can’t reasonably claim to “identify as” a member of a category — which is what the sexes ARE — unless one can “pay the membership dues”. Which for “teenager” is actually being 13 to 19, while the “membership dues” for female is — as Joyce, Herself, emphasizes — “produces large gametes [ova, female reproductive cells]”. Which no transgirl or transwoman is EVER going to do — ergo, not and never a female. Q.E.D. No tickee, no washee.

So one might reasonably argue that the BBC, and the author of that article, is in fact breaking the law of the land in referring to those juvenile feminine males as “girls”. And particularly so since you, presumably, pointed out that it’s a law promulgated by the UK Supreme Court last April that, as they themselves presumably specified, “sex [means] biological sex in equality law”. Y’all are clearly discriminating against females by lumping effeminate males — i.e., testicle havers — in with them. Tsk, tsk; maybe a hot-shot lawyer can sue the lot of you for a [or another] billion dollars or so; libel and slander at least.

Though to be fair to the BBC and the author of that article, many other “mainstream media” sources — even if most are in the “yellow-press” category; no more than peddlers of ideological claptrap and Potemkin villages — are “guilty” of the same “crime”. For examples, I had, while writing on my own Substack, “taken to task” a trio of “journalists” at the New York Times for their own use of phrases like “transgender girls” and “transgender female athletes” to refer to those same juvenile effeminate males, to those guys in drag — i.e., testicle havers, producers of small gametes [sperm, male reproductive cells]:

Open Letters; Ideological Capture; New York Times and Slate

https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/open-letters-ideological-capture

So, to close, I’d appreciate knowing whether you’re the author of that article and, if so, whether the BBC might consider “seeing the errors of their ways” and making a retraction or a correction.

In passing, I expect I’ll post the foregoing as another open letter on my Substack, although I expect I’ll hang fire for a bit, not least to determine who the author is of that BBC article.

In any case, thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Jim Wiggins [AKA Steersman]

So — yesterday evening as I was following the many articles on the Tumbler Ridge tragedy — including several from Canada’s Pravda West, i.e., the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — I thought of sending off a “sternly worded” letter — below — objecting to their coverage of it. And, lo and behold, they do at least provide an avenue for we mere mortals to register some complaints of their coverage and policies — see their “CBC Help Centre, Submit a request” page:

https://cbchelp.cbc.ca/hc/en-ca/requests/new

The crux of the matter, of their woke-ish coverage of that tragedy, is their frequent reference to the perpetrator — Jesse Van Rootselaar, a male at birth and still a male when he offed himself — as “she” and “her”, and their peddling of the demented idea, the batshit-crazy and quite unscientific idea that he was “transitioning to female”.

Some reasons there to justify defunding the CBC as they’re clearly more driven by various types of ideological claptrap than in accurately reporting on the state of the union. In any case, without further ado, my letter to them. Others are welcome to give them a blast as well, with or without any reference to what I’ve said below:

*****

“Dear” CBC News:

I very much object to the wrong pronouns being used for Jesse Rootselaar, a male. For instance, in this OTHER CBC news story he is referred to as “she” some 6 times and as “her” 4 or 5 times. See:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/shooter-tumbler-ridge-what-we-know-teenage-suspect-9.7085858

In addition to which, in the above “Content URL” link (and below), transwoman (i.e., male, current or previous) Marni Panas (Wiki link below) is referred to as “she” some 7 times:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tumbler-ridge-shooting-trans-community-false-claims-9.7085078

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marni_Panas

More “problematic” in the latter CBC story is this bit:

CBC: Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth and began transitioning to female about six years ago, and identified publicly as female.

I wonder how CBC would have handled a claim that Jesse “began transitioning to a penguin” and “identified publicly as Jesus Christ and Napoleon – combined”, both of which are just as crazy as “transitioning to female” and “publicly identified as female”.

Pretty much each and every one of us is born with either ovaries — and are CALLED females — or with testicles — and are CALLED males. Absolutely none of us can replace one set of reproductive organs with the other type so none of us can “change sex” — a medical and biological impossibility. That the CBC would give any sort of credence or “legs” to claims to the contrary really doesn’t say much, at least much that’s flattering, about its grasp of basic biology.

But many other so called reputable news sources were peddling or endorsing the same quite unscientific claptrap. Though you might note that the UK’s The Telegraph was a notable and commendable exception to the rule:

Revealed: 6ft trans school shooter wanted to be ‘petite’ Social media posts uncovered by The Telegraph reveal mental health issues of teenager who killed eight

Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old from the remote town of Tumbler Ridge who was born a male, wrote online about his 6ft frame and his desire to be a “petite” woman. ….

He shot dead his mother, Jennifer Strang, and his 11-year-old stepbrother on Tuesday afternoon before walking to his former school 10 minutes away and opening fire on pupils and staff, killing eight before taking his own life.

Paywalled: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/02/12/school-shooter-canada-transgender-jesse-van-rootselaar/

Archive link: https://archive.ph/gfHhQ

The CBC might want to consider doing a story on how it is that our educational system — and our vaunted media ecosystem — is contributing to the deterioration of our nation’s youth because too many have acquired the quite demented idea that they can “transition to another sex”. A good start might be a couple of other CBC stories on SOGI – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity – which endorses the primacy of the quite risible concept of “self-identification” over brute facts like which reproductive organs we’re born with:

CBC: People have been protesting for and against it. So what exactly is SOGI?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/what-is-sogi-1.6975304

CBC: School board trustees opposed to SOGI have little power to change it; ‘School boards do not have the power to resist,’ says UBC professor

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/school-board-trustees-opposed-to-sogi-have-little-power-to-change-it-1.4852805

Of particular note in the last story was a protester holding up a sign that said, “Stop Teaching Boys That They Can Be Girls”. Which is basically what that SOGI program is doing – i.e., teaching males that they can be females, even “petite” ones, with Jesse Rootselaar and too many others like him as the inevitable result.

In addition to which, our erstwhile fearless leader, Justin Trudeau, once promulgated from the Prime Minister’s Office — on International Women’s Day no less — the transactivist mantra that “trans women are women”:

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2023/03/08/statement-prime-minister-international-womens-day

Both of those policies and views are of a piece with the profoundly unscientific and quite demented idea that people can change sex. The educators who have peddled SOGI, along with Justin Trudeau and the whole damn Liberal Party, are the ones responsible, directly or indirectly, for the many transgender kids, and adults, who go off the rails into murdering other kids and adults.

Should be hell itself to pay for that. If the CBC isn’t part of the solution then it is part of the problem — and the latter certainly seems to be the current state of affairs there.

Sincerely,

Jim Wiggins

[AKA, Steersman]

En passant — a French term from the game of chess — do note my “avatar”, the icon connected to my name and oeuvre, a bit more French, over in a column on the left-hand side near the bottom corner, a dude with a classic sailing ship steering wheel of yore — 1700s? — immediately in front of him. Consequently, and if anyone is keeping score, Mike is the blocker and I’m the blockee. Kind of like Flip — “Geraldine, the devil made me do it …” — Wilson’s “murderer” and “murderee”, so to speak …

In either case, the following is, in its outline, more or less what I posted to his Substack. But since I’d neglected, wasn’t fast enough on the draw, to make a copy immediately after posting it, he more or less immediately deleted it, and well before it barely had time to see the light of day!! — at least in his rather benighted neck of the woods. However, I remember most of the thread of my comment which runs through this post of mine, although I’ve embellished and emphasized a few points which seem part and parcel of that thread. So, as Ed Sullivan put it many moons ago, “we have a really big shoe tonight”, one hopefully on the Right foot, so to speak:

**************************************************************

Mike Brock (of ) “ … because what I am about to tell you is the complete truth. …

Yeah, yeah, sure thing there Mike. Rather decidedly rich coming from someone who apparently “thinks” — along with most of the whole goddamn fucking Democrat Party (which should probably at least be outlawed going forward …), including but certainly not limited to “congresswoman🙄” and transwoman “Sarah” [Tim?] McBride in particular, and who have likewise drunk the transgender Kool-Aid — that “trans women are women”. “Who you gonna believe? Me or or your lying fucking eyes?” 🙄

Hard to imagine a bigger Big Lie than that one, a more odious case of Orwell’s “2+2=5”. Which is kind of kind of ironic, if not egregiously hypocritical, given that you [Mike] are championing “2+2=4” in your bio (above). Consistency is clearly not your [Mike’s] forté — to trot out a bit more of my French which has gotten a bit rusty of late, although I’m certainly warming up to use a lot more of it ...

But you may have something of a point with your, “The United States is experiencing the greatest political emergency since the Civil War.” Indeed, “Civil War, Part Deux”. Although I might point out that this time around the Feds seem to be making common cause with an entirely different set of States, about half of them in fact, some 20 or 21 at last count.

But, for example, the Feds and Tennessee — home to the 1920s rather infamous “Scope’s Monkey Trial” — seem to be singing from the same hymn book — as in the Skrmetti/Tennessee case which was apparently heard before the US Supreme Court, no less. If y’all aren’t going to follow the fucking — excuse my French … — “US Supreme Court” lead on that score and related ones, despite them periodically being wrong (Dred Scott for example), then one might reasonably suggest you’re talking Revolution — “You say you want a Revolution; well, you know; We all wanna change the world …” 🙄

But in that case, the Feds and Tennessee have, more or less together, put something of a wooden stake through the heart of the “medical practice”, being charitable — to a fault, of force-feeding puberty blockers and “gender-affirming surgeries” [AKA, sterilization and castration] to dysphoric and autistic children.

And that “medical practice” was more or less the substance and/or sticking point in that case from Tennessee, and is something of a medical scandal and crime of the century, to put it mildly. A whole bunch of “doctors” [Mengeles, the fucking lot of them] — and their fellow travelers, useless/useful idiots, and political (mostly Democrat and Canadian Liberal) opportunists aiding and abetting them — should lose their licenses to practice, if not be strung up by their nuts, if they still have them attached, and be left to twist in the wind. Figuratively speaking, of course ...

“The times, they are a’ changin’ ..” as Bob Dylan once put it many moons ago. Although, speaking of “times”, the New York [Ancient …] Times itself has yet read that memo, much less the rest of the writing on the fucking — excuse my French — wall. And despite the efforts of many, including myself and Kara Dansky at , to read them the fucking — excuse my French … — Riot Act:

Substack, Human Use of Human Beings; Steersman:

Open Letters; Ideological Capture

New York Times and Slate

https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/open-letters-ideological-capture

And, take it away!, Kara!:

The TERF Report

Open letter to the New York Times Editorial Board

January 8, 2026…

Read more

3 months ago · 160 likes · 42 comments · Kara Dansky

The following is an open letter sent to NY Times columnist Ross Douthat, and (indirectly) ACLU lawyer and transman following Ross’ interview of Chase on December 4th, 2025 (1). Copies to NY Times columnists Amy Harmon, and Joseph Goldstein. However, while the Times is to be commended for Ross’ more or less unbiased coverage of those “rights”, and Ross for his pointed and critical questions directed at Chase, for his willingness to get into “deeper philosophical waters”, the facts of the matter are that neither Ross nor Chase have much understanding of the basic biology of sex and gender without which they and their readers are simply getting drowned. Hence the need for some remedial courses in both.

****

To: Interesting Times, Attn Ross Douthat

cc: Amy Harmon, Joseph Goldstein at New York Times

Re: The Shifting Politics of Transgender Rights

Mr. Douthat,

I read with interest and appreciation your recent interview of ACLU lawyer and transman Chase Strangio, and think you both, along with the Times itself, are to be commended for shedding some useful light on a thorny social problem with far reaching consequences. While Chase would apparently like to minimize them with her “telling a story to the American people that 1 percent of the population is a threat”, many authoritative sources see the substantial “Dangers of Self-ID”, and argue that transgenderism is a “civilization threatening/ending movement”. For examples, see “‘Nullius in Verba’ - Identity Ideology vs. the Scientific Disposition” (2), the recent UK Supreme Court ruling “that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, a ‘woman’ is a biological female, meaning a transgender woman is legally considered a man” [Google’s Gemini; 3], and “When Does Sex Matter?” (4), the last link being an interview of , mathematician, erstwhile journalist at The Economist, and author of “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality”.

But while I also appreciate your efforts to get into “deeper philosophical waters”, to ask pointed questions about “the distinction between gender identity and biological sex”, to challenge Chase’s often rather tenuous or self-serving arguments, it seems you both are lacking an adequate understanding of the related biological and philosophical principles involved in the definitions for both “sex” and “gender”. Which leads you to let slide some of her claims that simply don’t hold any water at all. For a particularly egregious example, she said (1):

Chase: And then hormone therapy — whether it’s a 16 or a 17-year-old, who is then receiving hormone therapy to undergo either a typical male or typical female hormonal puberty.

That Chase, and other transmen, may have had some “hormone therapy” — some shots of testosterone — does not at all mean that they have undergone “a typical male puberty” since, by definition, to do so means (5) “the process of physical changes through which a child’s body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction”. Which for males means the transition from having non-functional testicles to ones that are able to produce sperm, that can take part in sexual reproduction. That Chase’s “hormone therapy” has produced some changes in her “secondary sexual traits” — notably a moustache — does not at all mean that it has replaced her ovaries with testicles, much less with fully-functional ones that can qualify her as a father — and despite her claims to the contrary.

But that dichotomy between “primary and secondary sexual traits” is largely the answer to your question about “the distinction between gender identity and biological sex”. Although a more complete answer requires a more precise definition for both “sex” and “gender”. And a fairly accurate and quite succinct, though not perfect, summation of those definitions and the underlying difference between them is afforded by a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle (review & link in 6) by a pair of transwomen, Joan Roughgarden — an evolutionary biologist of some repute, and Jamie Veale — apparently a professor at the University of Waikato in New Zealand:

Roughgarden & Veale (R&V): Zoologists, botanists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists generally define sex in this way: males make small gametes (sperm), females make large gametes (eggs) and hermaphrodites, such as most plants and many marine animals, make both. ….

Beyond gamete size, everything else — including secondary sex characteristics, body size, shape, color, behavior and social roles — is gender.

Gender in nature is also extraordinarily varied and fluid across plants and animals, including humans. Beyond gamete size, no general binary describes how living things look, act or relate to others. Across species, gender difference ranges from penguins with near identical male and female genders to the extreme dimorphism of lions. Human gender diversity is in the middle, showing some gender difference that varies within and across cultures. [My emphasis]

R&V may be aiming for a “bridge too far” in lumping “secondary sex characteristics” into the category “gender” — a point argued by US biologist Jerry Coyne (6) — particularly since “conventional wisdom”, at least among major sects of feminism, has it that “gender” refers to and denotes only those “behaviours, social roles” and personalities:

Wikipedia (7): The modern academic sense of the word, in the context of social roles of men and women, dates at least back to 1945, and was popularized and developed by the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards …. In gender studies, the term gender refers to proposed social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities [i.e., the 2 types of gender]. In this context, gender explicitly excludes reference to biological differences, to focus on cultural differences.

But regardless of some difference in the extent and scope of the two definitions — physiological, behavioural, psychological in R&V’s formulation versus just the behavioural and psychological traits in the feminist formulation — there is, as R&V emphasize, the common trait and phenomenon of sexual dimorphism which is largely the bread and butter of biology itself:

Wikipedia (8): Sexual dimorphism is the condition where different sexes of the same species exhibit different morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. …. Differences may include secondary sex characteristics, size, weight, color, markings, or behavioral or cognitive traits. [my emphasis]

Generally speaking and as R&V emphasize, “sex” — “male” and “female” — denote only the ability to produce either “small gametes (sperm)” or the ability to produce “large gametes (eggs)”, respectively. But those two abilities — technically speaking, spermatogenesis and oogenesis — are apparently the only two properties that are common to every last male and female on the planet, and among literally millions of species and, probably, trillions of anisogamous organisms, including the human ones. Which is why biology has stipulated that those are the properties that define the categories “male” and “female”, why those properties must be present to qualify any organism as male or female.

But the take-home lesson there, the brute fact that bears heavily on the dichotomy between “sex” and “gender”, is that we are all born with pretty much the same complement of body parts: 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, 1 heart, 1 spleen, and 1 brain. But the kicker is that some half of us are born with ovaries — the reproductive organ that produces ova — and are thereby CALLED females, and the other half are born with testicles — the reproductive organ that produces sperm — and are thereby CALLED males. Two profoundly different, though complementary, reproductive organs — no sexual reproduction without one of each in the ring.

While that sex half of the sex-gender dichotomy is characterized by a single pair of defining criteria — the production of ova or sperm — the gender half, as R&V suggest, is characterized by a wide range of “secondary sex characteristics, body size, shape, color, behavior and social roles” that are deemed either feminine or masculine depending on whether they’re more common to or typical of females or males, respectively.

But the bottom line in the foregoing, in that dichotomy is that “sex” and “gender” are two entirely different kettles of fish: “sex” — i.e., “male” and “female” — denotes only a pair of “essential” properties — to a first approximation, testicles or ovaries, respectively — whereas “gender” denotes a whole spectrum, dozens if not hundreds, of “accidental” properties, ones that any given male or female, of any species, may “happen to have but that it could lack” (9).

Although a stumbling block in the case of “gender”, one that many people trip over, is that the two genders — masculine and feminine — are what are called “collective nouns” (8): “a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole”. Think “visible colour” as such a collective noun, as one analogous to “gender”, and think “reddish half of the visible spectrum” as analogous to, say, “feminine gender”, and, finally, think “bluish half of the visible spectrum” as analogous to “masculine gender”. So the “masculine” and “feminine” genders constitute a binary, but each gender is a spectrum, a range of “colours”. Which is then why we might say that we probably all have some traits typical of our sexes, and some that are typical of the other sex — all of us are “gender non-conforming” to a greater or lesser extent.

But, in light of those profound differences between sex and gender, that brings us around to one of the most problematic aspects of Chase’s argument: while she more or less concedes those differences — “I would say there’s a distinction [between gender identity and biological sex] — she still insists that, for example, juvenile males with a “female (more accurately, feminine) gender identity” must be allowed to compete in sports designated for the sole use of juvenile females. For example, she said, “… I think that complete exclusion from athletic opportunities that align with gender identity — even practices, even intramurals, even club teams — violates the promise of equality under Title IX and the equal protection clause.” I certainly don’t recollect seeing any criteria for competing in women’s sports that stipulated “must exhibit feminine gender identity” — wearing a dress, perchance? — that would include male transvestites and transwomen.

But, apparently, all that Chase is arguing is that, for example, there is no right, facility, opportunity, or treatment more or less explicitly designated for the sole use of females (AKA, ovary-havers) — whether it’s sports, change-rooms, toilets, prisons, dress-style, or social media applications (10) — that some male — with or without a feminine gender identity — can’t claim access to as well. Because said male is claiming he’s being discriminated against as a male, or because he “identifies as a female” — females now can’t even claim sole use of the “female” designation on their passports without various males trying to “usurp” that “right”.

But the problem there is that one can’t really, reasonably, say that one “identifies as a female” unless one actually has some ovaries. As Helen Joyce once put it (11):

HJ: Using “female” instead of “woman” is clearly an attempt to avoid circularity. The problem is that “female” is not something you can identify as. It’s a word with an objective definition that holds right across all of biology, and hardly any of the things it refers to are capable of identifying as anything. It means: “of or denoting the sex class that produces large gametes,” ….

Though Joyce is somewhat wide of the mark there since it’s not the class that produces large gametes, but only the members of it that do so. Not really any sort of a collective effort, only a bunch of individual ones. But someone 45 years old might just as “reasonably” “identify as a teenager” and demand to play in juvenile sports leagues. Though the whole conversation about, and usage of the phrase “identify as X” is rather pretentious at best — who ever heard of someone saying they “identify as” a plumber, an electrician, or a seamstress?

But there are many other real-world though equally rather risible, and often fatal, consequences in losing sight of that difference, that distinction. For instance, another recent NY Times article (12) on transwoman Jennifer Capasso titled, “The Transgender Cancer Patient and What [He] Heard on Tape” described how the hospital in question scheduled a pregnancy test for Capasso because his hospital record had, apparently, been changed to indicate “female” for his sex. The hospital should be charging him — and double or triple — for the aggravation, confusion, and cost of that procedure. Another case in the same vein is “Nurse mistakes pregnant transgender man as obese. Then, the man births a stillborn baby” (13). The problem is that the whole concept of “self-identification” is simply untenable, and unworkable, as much as the transgendered are so desperate, or so deluded, as to think, and claim, that they have changed sex.

But, more generally, I kinda think that the American legal system, in particular, is painting itself into a very tight corner with its more or less commendable principle of “equal rights to all” because it conflicts with the necessity to “recognize a distinction; differentiate” (14) between male and female”, the standard definition for “discriminate”. Something that the UK Supreme Court ruling (3) more or less recognized. As Helen Joyce put it (15):

HJ: The Supreme Court has spoken, it’s the country’s apex court and, unless and until a new law is passed, its word is quite literally law. If you put up a sign saying “men only” or “women only” — you commit sex discrimination, in other words — you can only do so under the “single sex exceptions” in the Equality Act, and it’s now clear that those refer to biological sex.

Not sure how much of a “protected class” that “female” has in US law if transwomen — AKA male transvestites if they still have their testicles attached, and sexless eunuchs if they don’t — can encroach, if not ride roughshod over whatever rights that females might reasonably have as a class.

Sincerely,

Jim Wiggins, AKA Steersman @ https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome

******

Links:

• 1) NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/opinion/transgender-rights-strangio-douthat.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E8.K7wR.7bLEAx4FwEtQ&smid=url-share

• 2) Substack: https://thetransatlantic.substack.com/p/self-id-or-nullius-in-verba-between

• 3) BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t

• 4) Law & Liberty: https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/

• 5) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty

• 6) Why Evolution Is True: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/11/20/joan-roughgarden-and-jaimie-veale-on-sex-and-gender/

• 7) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

• 8) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun

• 9) Substack: https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/accidental-and-essential-properties

• 10) The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/06/meaning-of-woman-goes-beyond-dictionary-definition-court-hears-as-giggle-for-girls-appeal-concludes-ntwnfb

• 11) Quillette: https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/; Archive link: https://archive.ph/1TQWm

• 12) NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/nyregion/transgender-patient-records-during-cancer-surgery.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8k8.uVv-.DJ8TL4bdoums&smid=url-share

• 13) USA Today: https://archive.ph/2020.08.02-051009/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/05/16/pregnant-transgender-man-births-stillborn-baby-hospital-missed-labor-signs/3692201002/

• 14) Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discriminate

• 15) The Critic: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-victory/

• 16) La Scapigliata: https://lascapigliata.com/2018/03/27/how-conflation-of-sex-and-gender-became-a-tool-of-transgender-ideology/

But while that Quillette interview covers a lot of ground, and is currently paywalled — though I currently have 5 free gift subscriptions to give away if anyone is interested — there’s a brief exchange between Mia & Jon that provides a useful insight and avenue into the problem:

MH: These kids are not identifying as having gender dysphoria. They’re not identifying as having some obscure mental illness. They’re identifying as trans, a category of person that we have elevated and we celebrate and we applaud.

JK: It’s like a new form of human existence that transcends the laws of biology. It’s like an exalted form of being.

MH: Absolutely and it’s very fashionable. It’s a fad. I know that sounds offensive to some people, but it is. The belief that trans is natural and healthy is dangerous because that means when the trans-identified person shows up for support, medical, mental health or whatever, they are viewed as being this new type of human being. And if it’s natural and healthy, why would you try and do psychotherapy to help the person not to be trans?

And that “exalted form of being” seems close to the crux of the matter, and echoes or reprises some observations by Sahar Sadjadi at McGill University, Montreal:

Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. Statements about a child “born with the brain of the opposite gender [sex]” were articulated as self-evident facts by many clinicians, as well as by the media and some advocates. As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender [sex] transition. As another example, I encountered the word soul in an article published by a team from a pediatric gender clinic at Harvard, who are pioneers of new developments in the field:

Male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) are terms recently replaced by many in the transgender community by affirmed female or trans-woman, and affirmed male or trans-man. This shift in terminology reflects the increasingly common belief that a transgender individual’s gender does not change, as his or her brain (or soul) has always been his or her affirmed gender. (Edwards-Leeper and Spack 2012, 322)

This use of soul as interchangeable with the brain in the clinical literature is remarkable.

Kind of a mouthful, though it should be noted that in Sahar’s article “sex” and “gender” are being used more or less synonymously, an incongruity or contradiction that has bedeviled the whole phenomenon and “debate” thereon. Although “bedlam” may be more accurate. But there’s a great deal of apparent justification for that usage as it apparently goes back at least some 300 to 600 years according to the “gold standard”, the Oxford English Dictionary. For examples, although a close analysis of the syntax, there and in other cases not shown, might show some of the differentiation typical of the more enlightened branches of feminism:

3.a.1474 – gen. Males or females viewed as a group; = sex n.1 1. Also: the property or fact of belonging to one of these groups.

1474: His heyres of the masculine gender of his body lawfully begoten.

1500: Has thou oght writen there Of the femynyn gendere?

1632: Here’s a woman: The soule of Hercules has got into her. She has a spirit, is more masculine, Then [than] the first gender [female?].

1656: Strength ... was a vertue attributed to the masculine gender.

1818: The women adore you, and call you defender, And friend to the rights of the feminine gender.

1868: A very modest lady acquaintance of ours can bake bread, shoot a gun, ride a horse... Yet she is not an exception to the radical capacity of her gender.

However, along comes various “waves” of feminism, one of which in the mid-1900s comes up with the rather brilliant — and scientifically and philosophically justified — idea of differentiating between “sex” and “gender”. In furtherance of which they endorsed the quite circumscribed definition for “biological sex” — ovaries and testicles as the defining traits, at least to a first approximation — and then, somewhat obscurely, redefined “gender” to denote various traits that were “socially constructed” or less tied directly to those distinct reproductive functions:

Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the “socialized obverse of sex”. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]: 1.1 Biological determinism:

Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). ….

2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality:

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices.”

So with, at best, the conflation of the traits that define the female and male sexes as biological categories — i.e., “produces large gametes [females]” and “produces small gametes [males]” — with those that define the feminine and masculine genders — i.e., the personality and behavioural traits typical of but not unique to females and males, respectively — it is then not surprising that many autistic and dysphoric children, and even many adults, are going to take their “affinities” with traits not typical of their own sex as evidence that they “must” have some “essence” of that other sex, and that they were “born in the wrong body”. And the rest is, as they say, history — and a surpassing medical scandal and crime of the century, those responsible for which clearly having “bravely” followed in the footsteps of “Dr.” Mengele.

But as an example of the conflation between sex and gender, between essential and accidental properties as they say in philosophy-speak, consider this Forbes magazine article (archived) (original here) by transwoman Dawn Ennis. A salient quote or two therefrom:

Now comes actual scientific evidence that these parents of trans children are, in fact, heroes, because they did something essential to every child’s health and wellness: they accepted them and loved them for who they are.

You’ll find that evidence in a scholarly research article, but also in a tweet quoting that paper, that provides a very clear answer to those vocal critics and opponents of gender transition: a child’s authentic gender does not depend on what the birth certificate says, what’s between their legs, or even how their parents raise them.

Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found gender identity — the concept of knowing whether one’s self is male, female or non-binary — is as strong in trans kids as it is among those identifying as cis.

Yet if one takes a close too at that research — tweeted and endorsed by a fairly reputable social scientist, David Schmitt — it is clearly referring ONLY to various gendered traits — specifically to choices about “toys or clothing or activities” typical of males and females, to those “accidental traits”, to ones that are NOT any part of or connected, at the hip, to the defining traits for the sexes, i.e., ovaries for females and testicles for males. It is NOT the choice of feminine or masculine [gendered] “toys or clothing or activities” that makes anyone female or male, respectively, but simply the presence of ovaries or testicles, respectively. Period. Case closed — with prejudice.

So Dawn, and many other “transgender ideologues” — their names are legion and rather infamous, is clearly taking the possession of those “accidental” gendered traits as prima facie evidence of those “gender non-conforming” kids being of the other sex, of having some mystical “essence” of male or female, of qualifying as some new “exalted form of being” — which clearly conflicts with their actually being either female or male determined by their gonads [ovaries or testicles, respectively].

But of particular note in the original Forbes article is this photo of 5 young “girls”, 3 transgirls and 2 of the actual female variety (nominal since they’re prepubescent):

Note in particular the “group of male to female trans kids” in the photograph caption. Likewise the “difficult journey ahead for them — transitioning from male to female while STILL children” — should be hell to pay for just that. “pre-teens” on “puberty blockers"? Of some relevance is Sadjadi’s somewhat sardonic article, apparently a book review, “The Endocrinologist’s Office—Puberty Suppression: Saving Children from a Natural Disaster?” No doubt that puberty is something of a bitch at the best of times, probably more so for girls, but, rather clearly, an essential part of developing into more or less sane and useful members of society.

But absolutely NO human will EVER “transition” from male to female or vice versa — a medical and biological impossibility as it would, at least, require the replacement of testicles with ovaries or vice versa. IF it were really possible to do those “sex changes” — an “idea” rather too common among the great unwashed (here, here, & here for starters) — THEN “doctors” performing such “surgeries” — AKA mutilations and butcheries — might have a leg to stand on. But it isn’t and they don’t, and they should, at least, lose their licenses to practice medicine if not be strung up by their nuts — if they still have them — and be left to twist in the wind, figuratively speaking of course …

But there’s one further point that may bear some emphasis, i.e., the question of exactly what is the “essence” of “male” and “female”. Which has been something of a moving target — and bone of contention with various postmodernist “scientists” — since the “reproductive cells” of mainstream biology had only been discovered in the late 1800s. But while there may well be still some further evidence to come down the pike such that those “transgirls [male transvestites]” may well eventually qualify as “females” — rather unlikely given that that “reproductive cells” definition works for literally millions of other species and trillions of members in them — the fact of the matter is that those “reproductive cells” seem to be the best bet for adjudicating access to legal rights, services, and opportunities that might reasonably be construed as the sole “property” of one sex or the other.

But that is, as they say, a tale for another day, but one which gets into some legal “niceties”. Although a reasonable synopsis, starting point, or segue for which might be the rather cogent and quite illuminating analogy from the late great US Justice Anton Scalia:

AS: The word ‘gender’ has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics … distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.

https://ifunny.co/picture/doctor-sir-patient-excuse-me-doctor-it-s-ma-am-X4bmSpp69?s=cl

The following is a publication of three letters I recently sent off to a trio of authors at the New York Times, and to one at Slate. The reason for the letters was that I had very much objected to what has to be either sloppy, careless and imprecise terminology; and/or “ideological capture” by transactivists; and/or scientific illiteracy if not pigheaded ignorance.

The crux of the problem is the too common use of phrases like “transgender girls” and “transgender female athletes” in the two Times articles, and the view, in the Slate article, that humans can “transition from one sex to another”. While it is somewhat moot as to what is the “essence” of “male” and “female”, as to how to define those categories — particularly since too many so-called biologists and philosophers have been muddying the waters — the standard convention of mainstream biology is that, to a first approximation, it is necessary to have either testicles or ovaries to qualify for membership in those categories. In which case those “transgender girls” and “transgender female athletes” are, in fact, simply boys and males. And, by those same definitions, it is flatly impossible, at least with current technology, for any one of us to change sex.

As — the mother of a dysphoric teenage daughter who’s now self-prescribing testosterone; clearly someone with some serious skin in the game — once succinctly put it:

Definitions - that's what it's all about. We cannot understand each other if we are not properly defining our terms. It's almost worse than speaking different languages because, instead of shaking our heads and failing to understand, people are hearing words, misunderstanding them, and drawing incorrect conclusions about what is being said.

Amen to that. Those four “authors” aren’t informing the public; they’re simply peddling the latest variations on Orwell’s “2+2=5”. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder — writing on her blog Back Reaction — summarized the problem neatly, a concept that is just as applicable to man’s laws as it is to “God’s”:

The maybe most important lesson physicists have learned over the past centuries is that if a theory has internal inconsistencies, it is wrong. By internal inconsistencies, I mean that the theory’s axioms lead to statements that contradict each other.

Hard to imagine a more egregious and toxic manifestation of “internal inconsistencies” than the transactivist mantra that “trans women are women”, than even suggesting that “transgender girls” are actually girls, are actually juvenile females. That phrase is essentially saying that feminine juvenile males are actually females: “from contradiction anything follows”.

In any case, herewith the three letters I sent off, the most recent first, bracketed additions for dates and details. Though it should be noted there’s some duplication in those three letters — some “boilerplate” — that I’ve left in for the sake of completeness:

• First letter re: John Roberts’ Anti-Trans Opinion Is a Garbled Mess. It’s Easy to See Why.

• Slate article, June 18, 2025;

• https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/skrmetti-john-roberts-anti-trans-supreme-court.html

• Archive link: https://archive.ph/IQZcB

Dear Mr. Stern,

[July 4, 2025]

My name is Jim Wiggins, a subscriber to 's Substack (as user "Steersman"), and a retired electronics technologist writing from the hinterlands of Canada (anything more than 50 miles north of the border ...) The reason for my email is to comment on that Slate article of yours, on your [published] email exchanges with Jesse, and to clarify a number of points that you're apparently not aware of.

But the proximate reason is your periodic use, in your last email to Jesse, of "transition from one sex to another" as in the following:

Stern:

• transitioning away from the sex they were assigned at birth to a different sex;

• desire to transition from one sex to another

• help a minor transition from one sex to another

• limit a minor’s ability to transition from one sex to another

• allow them to transition to a different sex

A phrasing that Jesse quotes Judge Sutton likewise using:

• to transition from one sex to another);

• Testosterone transitions a minor from female to male;

• Estrogen transitions a minor from male to female

But the problem in both cases is that — at least by the standard biological definitions "promulgated" by any number of reputable biological journals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, as well as by President Trump's Executive Order on "restoring biological truth to government" — absolutely NO human will EVER change sex; it's a medical impossibility. To a first approximation, those biological definitions say that to have a sex is to have gonads of either of two types — testicles or ovaries — and there is simply no way, on gawd's green earth, that anyone with testicles is ever going to replace them with ovaries, or vice versa.

ALL that the use of cross-sex hormones does is to cause people of one sex to develop or exhibit some of the superficial, secondary sexual traits typical of the other sex. For example, males developing the breasts typical of females. However, breasts are NOT the defining trait for "female", are not the "necessary and sufficient condition" to qualify as a member of that category; only ovaries are.

Big part of that problem — encompassed by the Skrmetti case and by the forthcoming ones in the US Supreme Court about transgender athletes — is the confusion — some of it intentional — over "sex" and "gender", over what each of those terms refer to and denote, and over how those terms are to be defined, both in law and in biology. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in this oldish Telegraph article which neatly summarizes the problem, even if it's rather light on the specifics of those definitions — devils in the details and all that:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/06/third-of-britons-dont-know-trans-women-born-male/
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/kg6QU

Telegraph title, opening paragraph, and something of a useful conclusion:

• A third of Britons don’t know that transgender women were born male; Survey reveals ‘high levels of misunderstanding and confusion’ around terms commonly used to refer to trans people

• More than a third of UK residents do not know that transgender women are biologically male, according to a poll, calling into question public understanding of the debate over gender. ....

• [Maya Forstater:] “Terms like ‘trans woman’ and ‘transgender woman’ are confusing – intentionally so.”

So that "confusion" is ubiquitous — sadly, even among the judiciary — which causes no end of problems, and tends to preclude equitable solutions to what is clearly a significant social problem. As a starting point towards the resolution of that problem both you, and SCOTUS, might consider this rather illuminating analogy from the late great US Justice Anton Scalia:

• The word "gender" has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine to male.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf

Moot also is exactly how we should define both sex and gender, particularly in law, although, as mentioned, President Trump's EO on "restoring biological truth to government" provides a more or less accurate summation of the standard biological definitions for the sexes. However, "gender" is something of a dog's breakfast, although Scalia's "cultural or attitudinal characteristics" typical of males (i.e., masculine gender) and of females (i.e., feminine gender) seems close to a consensus view of the phenomenon — which is, basically and to a first approximation, various sexually dimorphic personality traits, behaviours, roles, and expressions. For a fairly succinct summation of that consensus, consider this editorial from the British Medical Journal:

• Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. These categories describe different attributes that must be considered depending on the purpose they are intended for. The World Health Organization states, “Gender is used to describe the characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to those that are biologically determined.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735

Though many people quite reasonably argue that "gender" isn't entirely "socially constructed" — many "sexually dimorphic traits" are determined or heavily influenced by the two, and only two types of reproductive organs — testicles and ovaries — that most of us are born with.

But a complex topic, generally muddied by incoherent and inconsistent definitions. As Voltaire once put it, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” You may wish to read my own kick at that kitty, at trying to put "gender" on something of a more scientific footing:

• A Multi-Dimensional Gender Spectrum;
  Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

• https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/a-multi-dimensional-gender-spectrum

Happy 4th of July.

Sincerely,

En passant, while I haven’t taken a close look at Stern’s Slate article, one might reasonably argue that the “reason” he thinks Justice Roberts’ judgement is a “garbled mess” is because he’s starting off from the untenable premise that it’s actually possible for humans to change sex. Given that that is medically impossible, one might also argue that the more or less explicit claim in the Skrmetti case by various “doctors” to the contrary constitutes a medical scandal of the first water, and well justifies Roberts’ agreement with the Tennessee solicitor general.

• Second letter re: Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Cases Involving Transgender Athletes

• New York Times, July 3, 2025

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/supreme-court-transgender-athletes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Tk8.rCzV.TkHagYzVrGUQ&smid=url-share

Dear Ms. VanSickle, & Ms. Macur,

[July 4, 2025]

My name is Jim Wiggins, a NY Times subscriber (for the last dozen years or so), and a retired electronics technologist writing from the hinterlands of Canada (anything more than 10 miles north of the border ...) The reason for my email is to comment on that article of yours, and to clarify a number of points that you're apparently not aware of.

But the proximate reason is your periodic use of "transgender girl" as in the following:

• NY Times: "The state has allowed transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports for more than a decade."

But the problem there — the bias, intentional or not — is that those "transgender girls" aren't anything of the sort. They are, at best, simply feminine or effeminate boys, i.e., males. The crux of the matter then is whether such boys (i.e., males) should be allowed to play in sports leagues previously designated for the sole use of girls (i.e., females).

And part of that problem, that bias (intentional or not), is that most people don't realize that there's a profound difference between "sex" and "gender", nor have much of a clue what each of those categories encompasses or how they're defined. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in this oldish Telegraph article which neatly summarizes the problem, even if it's rather light on the specifics of those definitions — devils in the details:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/06/third-of-britons-dont-know-trans-women-born-male/

Archive Link: https://archive.ph/kg6QU

Telegraph title, opening paragraph, and something of a useful conclusion:

• A third of Britons don’t know that transgender women were born male

• Survey reveals ‘high levels of misunderstanding and confusion’ around terms commonly used to refer to trans people

• More than a third of UK residents do not know that transgender women are biologically male, according to a poll, calling into question public understanding of the debate over gender. ....

• [Maya Forstater:] “Terms like ‘trans woman’ and ‘transgender woman’ are confusing – intentionally so.”

Relative to that conclusion, "trans girl" is likewise "confusing", and often intentionally so. As a starting point towards more unbiased and accurate reporting, the New York Times may wish to deprecate terms like "trans girl" and "trans woman" in favour of more scientifically accurate terms like "transgirl" and "transwoman" since the compound word carries no implicit argument that said individuals are actual girls (i.e., juvenile females) or actual women (i.e., adult human females).

Moot of course how that dichotomy will play out in the cases you have described, but the Times, and the US Supreme Court both might want to consider this rather illuminating analogy from the late great US Justice Anton Scalia:

• The word "gender" has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine to male.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf

Moot also is exactly how we should define both sex and gender, particularly in law, although President Trump's EO on "restoring biological truth to government" provides a more or less accurate summation of the standard biological definitions for the sexes. However, "gender" is something of a dog's breakfast, although Scalia's "cultural or attitudinal characteristics" typical of males (masculine gender) and of females (feminine gender) seems close to a consensus view of the phenomenon -- which is, basically and to a first approximation, various sexually dimorphic personality traits, behaviours, roles, and expressions.

As you both point out, there's something of a rather toxic "culture war over transgender rights" that has some far-reaching consequences. Hopefully the foregoing will contribute to more accurate reporting of the issues, facts, and science in play.

Happy 4th of July.

Sincerely,

• Third letter re: Democrats’ Wary Response to Transgender Ruling Shows the Party’s Retreat

• New York Times article, June 18, 2025

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/us/politics/democrats-supreme-court-transgender-ruling.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Qk8.Pv30.G1kUSzIPvDtC&smid=url-share

Mr. Browning,

[June 21, 2025]

My name is Jim Wiggins, I'm currently a subscriber to the NY Times, and I read with interest your latest article on that "Transgender Ruling":

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/us/politics/democrats-supreme-court-transgender-ruling.html

Interesting observations, though this bit kind of chaps my hide, particularly since it's largely an oxymoron, anti-scientific claptrap, or an outright lie:

• "... nearly 80 percent of Americans — including 67 percent of Democrats — believed that transgender female athletes ..."

"transgender female athletes" are, in fact, males. Rather depressing is the degree of scientific illiteracy, if not outright cluelessness, particularly so in "the newspaper of record", in that phrase. You may wish to consider exactly what are the biological definitions that are more or less the de facto standards, and which have largely been replicated by President Trump's EO order "restoring biological truth in government. From the Glossary of an article in the well regarded Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:

• "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.

• Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."

https://web.archive.org/web/20221214064356/https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990?login=false

To a first approximation, to be a female is to have ovaries, and to be a male is to have testicles; those are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" to qualify as members of those categories. Those "transgender female athletes" haven't replaced their testicles with ovaries, and by those definitions, they're still males. All they have is some feminine traits or a desire to be treated as if they were actual females, as if they had changed sex. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride ...

Regards,

Hello Hippiesq — thanks muchly for getting back to me. I kinda thought you probably had other irons in the fire, though I was a bit apprehensive that I might have offended you or been too harsh. 🙂

And thanks for raising the idea of a "bright line", although I think it makes "no sense" to you — and to many others — because you and they are focused, more or less reasonably, on the direct consequences of transgenderism. However, the wider problem is how transgenderism is corrupting biology in which case the only way of dealing with that is with that "bright line" of yours. I can appreciate that you & they want the "non-functional" definitions for the sexes, but they conflict profoundly and in many ways with the standard biological ones. In which case, promoting the non-functional versions contributes to that corruption.

Apropos of which, you might check out a post by and my conversation with "Ms. M" on herSubstack, particularly on the "Scientific" American [SA] article she linked to:

Two Plus Two

📘 2+2=4 Vol. 11: Anti-women, anti-men, anti-children, anti-human

One of the things that trouble me most about the current zeitgeist is the sentiment of deep-seated antipathy towards absolutely everything and everyone that differs from oneself. Politics, with the media in tow, have cunningly managed to pit everybody against each other and this kind of antagonism has become about muc…

Read more

2 years ago · 8 likes · 3 comments · Ms. M

The SA article — by a couple of so-called "biologists" — makes something of a reasonable point that what we mean by "male" and "female" is a matter of definitions, but they too are apparently but desperately committed to definitions that somehow include transwomen in the female category. There is SOME scientific merit in their arguments — which is why that bright line is so important in unhorsing them — but their closing argument proves them to be peddling what is no more than Lysenkoism — i.e., "the deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, or socially desirable":

SA: "So, if 'sex' is the answer, what is the question? This is not so clear, and we have no warrant to make authoritative declarations on this issue from a scientific standpoint that is uninformed by ethical, moral or social considerations."

Since when are "ethical, moral, or social considerations" — feelings, in fact — going to be allowed to trump brute "scientific facts and theories"? We might just as well “teach the controversy”, teach creationism as a viable alternative to Darwinian evolution. They, along with Zach Elliott as I’ve mentioned in the original post, are engaging in egregious Lysenkoism:

How is that different from what you are promoting even if you're doing so with the best of intentions? Roads to hell and all that.

Though I do appreciate your concerns with the practical matters of adjudicating claims to access sports leagues, toilets, and the like. But the problem is in connecting definitions for "man" and "woman" to the terms "male" and "female". You either accept that IF you insist on using "male" and "female" as parts of those definitions THEN some third of us are sexless, OR you have to come up with definitions for "man" and "woman" that aren't joined at the hips with "male" and "female".

In the latter case and as I've argued before, one might define "man" and "woman" as "adult humans with gonads [testicles & ovaries] of past, present, or future functionality". Kinda think that part of the problem there is that many people, not just you, seem to think that definitions qualify as gospel truth, and are not just connections between words and facts, connections which can change depending on context. But getting agreement on those definitions, and getting them into the law books is likely to be far less difficult than getting biologists to repudiate their definitions which are based on solid facts and sound principles.

In other news, though somewhat related to this and to our previous conversations, you might have some interest in a recent post at. Currently paywalled, but Davis lets through a phrase that you, and I, can probably sympathize with:

LSD (ironic? ...): "Boys and girls can look and act all different kinds of ways."

BROADview by Lisa Selin Davis

This Is What Gender Education Should Be

“Boys and girls can look and act all different kinds of ways…

Read more

2 years ago · 45 likes · 9 comments · Lisa Selin Davis

A great many people seem unclear on the difference between "looking and acting in different kinds of ways" — AKA, gender — and BEING "male" or "female" — AKA, being members of the sex categories. But losing sight of what it means to be male and female in the first place — which, not to give you (much 🙂) of a hard time, I think you're contributing to — is what leads to the conflation of sex (reproductive abilities) and gender (traits that typically correlate with our sexes) which is part and parcel of the whole transgender clusterfuck (excuse my French).

Many people, mostly those on the right including people like Matt Walsh, really do seem to think that all of those traits are part and parcel of what it means to be male and female, that those traits are intrinsic to "male" and "female". That, for example, if a "man" isn't out raping and pillaging then he's not a "Real Man (™)". So to speak ...

But that outlook causes no end of problems as we have both, more or less, recognized. As a case in point, you might have some interest in — may even wish to weigh-in on — a conversation I was having with "Rex Landy" (a woman despite the name) over at, and her rather "unhinged" responses to me:

https://rexlandy.substack.com/p/where-are-we-9b3/comment/42602522

https://rexlandy.substack.com/p/where-are-we-9b3/comment/42514118

She seems to "think" that me arguing that, for example, there are feminine men means that I'm trying to claim that transwomen are women. Some rather "murky" thought processes there that are also part and parcel of that transgender clusterfuck.

That "bright line" seems the only way of separating wheat and chaff, the only way off the horns of a very serious social dilemma.

So, there I was — over on Dr. Kari Janz’s estimable Substack(angels with dirty faces, indeed) — gazing into the abyss of Nietzsche’s essays on “Self and Self-Fashioning” in the context of the somewhat risible “debate” over “gender identity” — which is more often a case of Lilliputian civil wars and Rapes of the Lock (part deux) than not. But that was largely as a result of some “discussions” on various aspects of that idea on the Substack, notably the rabbit holes it creates. No doubt that Eliza and many in her tribe are certainly justified in throwing stones at the odious consequences of “gender ideology” — in particular, the “de-sexing” of children asput it recently, turning them into sexless eunuchs, even if many apparently think, some somewhat hypocritically, that that phrase qualifies as. However, methinks that she and many others are rather too quick to throw the baby out with the bath water, rather too unwilling to take the bull by the horns and actually define their terms.

But the rather insightful observations on and summaries of Nietzsche’s psychology by the lads and lassies of Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] reminded me of Bob Dylan’s classic “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”. Talk about the “words of the prophets written on subway walls and tenement halls”. But of particular note and relevance to both Nietzsche, Gahan Wilson, and gender-identity are these verses:

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

Moot exactly what might really be considered sacred, there being so many false prophets, charlatans, and grifters contending for the throne, but Nietzsche’s take on the self seems to carry some weight and may provide some illumination on the murky if not toxic concept of gender-identity:

Still, despite widespread appreciation of Nietzsche’s psychological acumen—and despite the centrality of psychology to his philosophical method, core questions, and evaluative aims—even the most basic outlines of his substantive psychology remain a matter of controversy. Debate begins with the object of psychology itself, the psyche, self, or soul.

One might reasonably wonder how the “soul” figures into discussions of gender identity, but “medical anthropologist” Sahar Sadjadi provides some insights into how that has transpired in an essay in the Journal of Cultural Anthropology (my emphasis for the most part):

The story exemplifies the popularity and intelligibility of the interior origin of self and identity, which reverberated among the adults and youth I met during my research on clinical approaches to childhood gender variance in the United States. …. Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. …. As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition. ….

This use of soul as interchangeable with the brain in the clinical literature is remarkable. It raises important questions about the contemporary scientific understanding of the brain, as well as the relation between the body and personhood that underpins the clinical practices surrounding gender-nonconforming and transgender children.

Moot also to what extent, if any, we might be said to have souls, immortal or otherwise. However, it is hard not to conclude — with Nietzsche — that the “existence of a cognitive self that stands back from particular drives and affects, and so has ‘the ability to control one’s Pro and Con and dispose of them’ in support of the larger cognitive project” is of paramount importance. Seems reasonable to argue that we are all rather more than just something we invest in as Dylan put it, more than just “a play thing of the gods”, more than the biology we’ve inherited, more than the social factors constraining if not straitjacketing us. No doubt that both “nature” and “nurture” contribute to our psyches if not our souls, but some reason to at least hope that we can stand astride those two “horses”; that we are, to some extent, autonomous individuals; that we are our own “first causes”, at least to some limited degree.

But where the wicket gets rather sticky, and probably the crux of the problem with gender identity, is in “thinking” that “the self is the only existing reality and that all other realities, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, and have no independent existence” — solipsism in a word, or at least one manifestation of it. Methinks that way madness lies. And I rather doubt we are doing dysphoric children any favours at all by abandoning them to that fate, not to mention throwing them to the wolves in the process.

No, as much as we may wish to flatter our vanities, to indulge the envies and delusions of the transgendered with anything smacking of “the self alone”, the task of properly raising children — which may well take a village or three — seems to depend crucially on impressing upon them the existence of others, of other “souls”, of various social obligations of one sort or another to other members of the community. As Eleanor Roosevelt once put it in a metaphor that warms the cockles of my heart, not least because the governor of Watt’s steam engine is an exemplar for the whole field of cybernetics:

“...our children must learn...to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices and cope with the results...the whole democratic system...depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.”

Moot exactly how children are to be taught that, and certainly a question I have very little experience with. However, there seems to be ample reasons to argue that that is contingent on nurturing something in the way of “ordered souls”, on some training in and appreciation of reason and logic, of logos (λόγος):

For Aristotle, logos is something more refined than the capacity to make private feelings public: it enables the human being to perform as no other animal can; it makes it possible for him to perceive and make clear to others through reasoned discourse the difference between what is advantageous and what is harmful, between what is just and what is unjust, and between what is good and what is evil.

However, much of what we are “teaching” children about gender is largely incoherent twaddle and quite antiscientific claptrap riven with risible contradictions from square one. One is reminded of Ignatius Loyola’s Rules for Thinking with the Church:

"That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity[...], if [the Church] shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.

No wonder then Leonard Cohen’s:

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it's overturned
The order of the soul

How can there be order — in our souls or our societies — if we start off with contradictions? From contradictions anything follows: ex falso [sequitur] quodlibet. No wonder then so many “disordered souls” as far as the eye can see, all being mass produced by our “educational systems”. But that is basically what we doing — telling impressionable children that black is white, that sex is the same thing as gender, that they can magically change sex because they happen to exhibit some personality traits typical of the other sex. Which is why there is some merit in arguing — as I have done in many places, and as many others do, from the British Medical Journal, to the late Justice Scalia, to various more or less sane feminists — that “gender” is, at best, just a rough synonym for feminine and masculine personalities and personality types. Though many supposedly on the right side of history — like— seem rather reluctant to even consider that argument.

But from that point and taking our cue from SEP’s article on personal identity, we might argue that “gender identity”:

… refers to feminine and masculine personality traits to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. My gender identity in this sense consists of those feminine and masculine properties I take to 'define me as a person' or ‘make me the person I am’.

As I put it in another comment on Eliza’s Substack (crickets …), it seems that the crux of the matter is how children, how we all develop our senses of self, and how that process can go off the rails and into the weeds in so many ways. An absolutely awesome responsibility to shepherd kids into a more or less functional adulthood, and in several ways: the hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation. Which is maybe some reason to argue that too many "parents" have fallen down on the job or never showed up for it in first place.

But in any case, some reason — in fact, many reasons — to argue that gender identity, at least at its worst, may be somewhat akin to the imaginary friends that many have argued presaged, that were and are the harbingers of both religion and consciousness itself. For example, see “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.

Something of a delicate operation to tenderly nurture that first spark. But it seems rather unwise and counterproductive to achieving that objective to be trying to force children into shapes that are wildly at odds with their true “natures”. And often in what is little more than “conversion therapy” of one stripe or another — either denying atypical personality traits, or taking them as “evidence” justifying “sex change” operations. And often based on quite unscientific claptrap, on the rather dogmatic insistence that sex and gender are synonymous:

For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watch'd the Potter thumping his wet Clay: 
And with its all obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd—"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Exactly how and why that corruption has occurred is a profoundly complicated and convoluted tale, the roots of which go rather deep and into some quite toxic, mephitic and pathological territory. But there are any number of sources who argue that the too-common conflation of sex and gender has contributed to a conceptual and political muddle – a conflation which has been “implicated in the development of essentialist thinking” which has in turn “been linked to the justification of systems of prejudice in modern society.” Although many people and groups have commendably attempted to clarify that muddle with something in the way of a more or less clear demarcation between those two categories. For example, an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) provided some delineation of the differences, and some more or less credible justifications for those demarcations:

"Distinction is critical for good healthcare:

Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. These categories describe different attributes that must be considered depending on the purpose they are intended for. The World Health Organization states, 'Gender is used to describe the characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to those that are biologically determined.' ...."

Although, in passing, they sort of leave hanging several sticky questions, one of which is exactly how the sexes are to be defined biologically, and another of which is to what extent those “behaviours” might reasonably be said to be heavily influenced even if not entirely determined by biology.

However, while the consequences of that conflation can sometimes be amusing – who knew that fish had personalities? 🙄 – a particularly pernicious consequence is the too common effort to redefine the sexes from a binary to a spectrum (here, & here). Moot of course what are the ultimate justifications and “reasons” for that redefinition, but the “politicisation of the definition of sex” has come from virtually all quarters of the compass, many based on very shoddy “science” indeed:

Tangled webs and all that, but one of the primary motivations for that seems to be the rather desperate if not unseemly efforts of the transgendered to promote the view that they can actually change their sex, most often by equivocation and bait-and-switch with the biological definitions:

One may be amused or horrified to note that Merriam-Webster’s definition 1b for “male” is “having a gender identity that is opposite to female” – a charter member in the “Circular Definitions R Us” franchise.

But how else can they justify a claim to compete in sports that are rather clearly designed for the exclusive use of women (i.e., “adult human females”)? But that position is flatly contradicted by standard biological definitions. Houston, we have a serious and mission-critical problem.

In any case, with that preamble under our belts we’re now able to address the bills of particulars for each of the 3 institutions “ideologically captured”, directly or indirectly, to a greater or lesser extent by gender ideology of one flavour or another. And first in the docket is Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) which apparently attempted to change the 2021 Census to allow citizens to use their (entirely subjective) “gender identity” as an answer to the question, “what is your sex?” And wound up getting spanked for their troubles by the High Court following a commendable challenge by the campaign group Fair Play for Women. Alice Sullivan – Professor of Sociology and Head of Research at the Social Research Institute, University College London (UCL) – wrote an illuminating summary and analysis of that case, the abstract of which includes:

Yet, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) sought to redefine sex to encompass gender identity for the purposes of the 2021 England and Wales census. With just days to spare before the census date, the ONS was forced to concede that it did not have the authority to redefine sex in this way, following a preliminary judicial review hearing where their arguments were given short shrift. This outcome raises the question: how and why did the ONS find itself in court defending a position which appeared to lack both coherence and legal foundations?

“How?”, indeed. Clearly, the barbarians are not just at the gates, but have managed to weasel their way into positions of authority in our most reputable and important institutions.

The second such institution that also has “pride of place” in the docket is New Zealand’s own department of Statistics. While they do have a fairly impressive looking “Concept and Classification Management System” – at least at first blush – any detailed spelunking there reveals the extent of the rot that gender ideology has wrought – so to speak. For instance, their definition of:

Lesbian: A woman who is sexually attracted to people of the same sex or gender.

Some women certainly weren’t impressed:

Stats New Zealand has clearly failed not just lesbians but Biology 101. And they never do get around to defining precisely what is meant by “male” and “female” – presumably a “concept” of more than passing relevance and utility. Although, to be fair, the definition of those two terms is, distressingly, such an open and contentious question – here be dragons, more of which later – that they may have been reluctant to stick their necks out very far on the topic. But the closest they manage to get to calling a spade a shovel is this bit of blathering:

Sex: The distinction between males and females based on the biological differences in sexual characteristics (Statistics NZ, 1995). Sex is biologically determined and is based on chromosomal and physical attributes.

Which attributes? Which “sexual characteristics”? How is it “biologically determined”? But they really cross the Rubicon in style while showing their true colours with this bit of gobsmackingly anti-scientific claptrap:

Sex reassignment occurs where a person has undergone the necessary treatment to permanently change their sex. If a person's sex is indeterminate at birth, sex assignment occurs when they undergo treatment to become male or female.

Only clownfish – and members of more than a few other species – “become male or female”. And that because they change the type of gamete they produce – which is flatly impossible for humans.

But to conclude this sad tale – rounding out our rogue’s gallery of those guilty of various crimes against reason, logic, biology, and the venerable principles of government itself – we have Canada’s own Statistics Department. Some eighteen months ago Statistics Canada opened up their “consultation on gender and sexual diversity statistical metadata standards” to all and sundry – to which I, as a dutiful Canadian, made my own contribution (article here on Google Drive). Which was largely motivated by astoundingly clear evidence of their “ideological capture” by gender ideology in one egregious manifestation or another.

For instance, while their opening statement (below) of their objective seems commendable at first blush, a comparison between it and their subsequent “definitions” of gender makes a mockery of their claim to a “consistent manner”:

Statistical standards for gender and sexual diversity … allow for the reporting of statistically diverse groups of the population in a consistent manner.

Which is rather impossible in the light of the following:

While sex is understood in terms of biological features, gender is a multidimensional concept that is influenced by several additional factors, including biological characteristics, cultural and behavioural norms, and self-identity. Caution should be exercised when comparing counts for sex with those for gender. For example, female sex is not exactly the same as female gender. …. Gender is a complex subject with various cultural and international conceptions. Furthermore, this concept is strongly affected by ongoing social change and, as a result, is constantly evolving.

If, as they claim, “gender is a multidimensional concept that is … constantly evolving” then it seems rather risible to claim that they’re able to report on the various genders – 56 and counting on Facebook – in any “consistent manner”. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg since their later definitions make it manifestly clear that they haven’t a hope in hell of ever reporting on those groups in that “manner”:

1. Male gender: This category includes persons whose current gender was reported as male. This includes cisgender and transgender persons whose current gender was reported as male.

2. Female gender: This category includes persons whose current gender was reported as female. This includes cisgender and transgender persons whose current gender was reported as female.

They can’t even define what they mean by “male gender” and “female gender” without falling into a bottomless pit of circular definitions – hardly “consistent” with anything right out of the chute. Another outlet in the “Circular Definitions R Us” franchise.

But while Stats Canada has usefully and commendably differentiated between sex and gender – a step up from Britain’s abortive and quite ridiculous efforts to adulterate sex with gender – it is a matter of serious concern that it has thrown its lot in with a feminist and risibly pseudoscientific conceptualization of gender – largely a synonym for personalities and personality types.

If they were really serious – and if they actually had any commitment to, or even knowledge of various scientific principles – about “reporting on statistically diverse groups” then there are far better models of personality types than those provided by the currently defined concept of gender. Though it is maybe a bit of a puzzle why Stats Canada thinks it of any import or value to “report” on the myriad of personality types that are on tap: 25% of Canadians are introverts, and 75% of us are extroverts? 🙄 Our tax dollars at work … But as I put it in my submission:

And relative to those questions, one might wonder why StatsCan did not base those efforts on a greater quantity of mainstream and credible science and psychology. For instance, StatsCan could just as well have based its personality type categorizations on, say, Jung’s “eight psychological types” or on the 16 types of the Myers-Briggs system [MBTI].

Although, according to Wikipedia, the MBTI is deemed to be little better than “a Chinese fortune cookie”, and “pseudoscience.” But this same accusation could be plausibly made about the definitions for various personality types subsumed under the heading of “gender” being promoted by WHO and Statistics Canada. Furthermore, if StatsCan wishes to be considered forward-thinking, it could be pressured to go the way Facebook has, by providing users 56 gender choices. One might reasonably wonder also – given StatsCan’s efforts to track gender’s “constant evolution” – whether it has any plans to update their “standards” accordingly.

Hard to believe the social and psychological rot that gender ideology has produced – and in institutions that should have been immune to pseudoscience. But my conclusions and recommendations were largely as follows:

1. Statistics Canada should clearly emphasize and endorse biological definition for the sexes, and that “gender” denotes various psychological and sociological attributes apart from the biological.

2. Further, it should promote the exclusive use of “male” and “female” to describe the sex categories, and promote the use of “feminine” and “masculine” to denote the major but non-exhaustive categories of gender.

3. Statistics Canada is more likely to reach its broader objectives for the Canadian public by subscribing to and endorsing the biological definition for the sexes, rather than the “institutional” one, and consider a thorough review of the questionable provenance of its definitions for gender.

As I’ve argued or suggested in my Welcome post, there is some merit and value in the concept of gender, at least to the extent that it is a synonym for personalities and personality types, many of which show clear differences in frequency of occurrence between men and women:

But any social benefits that might accrue from having a better understanding of those differences are going to be lost if our various social institutions – statistics departments in particular – are ideologically captured by the pseudoscientific claptrap being peddled by gender ideologues of various stripes.