The Nobel Disease

 You've no doubt heard of it -- via Wikipedia, "the embrace of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life." Actually there isn't any evidence that Nobel winners are more prone to this than other scientists, it may just be that it's more noteworthy when it happens to them. Most of the time -- not quite always -- they step out of their area of expertise. Basically, they've been told they're incredibly smart because they know a lot about physics, or chemistry, or biology, so they think they must be just as smart about everything.

 

Richard Dawkins is not a Nobel winner. Actually, he's not even a highly distinguished biologist, he's more noted as a popularizer of biology and an advocate for science in general. Still, I'll grant you that he's smart. However, like many of his distinguished colleagues, he has become a crank. Unfortunately, Free Inquiry magazine gave him 5,000 words and a cover story to promulgate his crankery, to which I felt compelled to respond. 

 

Since you presumably haven't read Dawkins's original turgid and tendentious screed, I'll just summarize it as follows. (And I believe this is entirely fair.)

There is a precise biological definition of sex, which has to do with large vs. small gametes.

[A lengthy biology lesson which is not clearly relevant to the rest of the argument, in which he claims that there are "rules" about the behaviors associated with male and female sex. Yes, yes, there are exceptions to all these rules but they are exceptions that prove the rule. For example, the male seahorse incubates the eggs, which proves the rule that females always invest more in the offspring because -- well actually I don't know why this happens, but somebody should figure it out.]

The word "gender" only has a distinct meaning in grammar. Otherwise, gender is synonymous with sex. Because I say so.

There are only two sexes and  humans, like all creatures, can only be one or the other, and since sex and gender mean the same thing, it is impossible for people to change their gender or to claim they are of a gender different from their biological sex, therefore trans people do not exist and they should stop pretending that they do.

 

Really. This is a smart guy. Next time, I'll discuss why people can go off the rails like this.