#kate clancy

[ostensiblynone]

August 2023 books

[folklorehorse]

Obviously I am waaaaaay behind on my podcast listening but I appreciated this discussion of stigma.

I was reminded of Angela Bourke, “The Burning of Bridget Cleary (book),” and her proposal that “fairy-belief tradition … might…be labeled a vernacular stigma theory,” (236).

[quailfence]

[Image description: Thirty images, a mix of text and screencaps from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

1: "I hadn't met his kind before. (highlight) His misericord face - really, like a joke on his father (end highlight) - blurred"

2: "Garak: You could say that. Tain is directly responsible for my being exiled from Cardassia. Odo: Then I don't understand… Garak: (finishing the thought) Why I'm risking my life to help him? Odo: Exactly."

3: "What father leaves you for a knife? Chooses his god instead?"

4 and 5: Tain says, "Then you should let him die. And please, tell Garak I miss him"

6: "Tain: Hello, Garak… it's good of you to come. It spares me the trouble of having to send someone else to kill you…"

7: (highlight) A father is bound to kill his favorite son, (end highlight) and to his father's cherishing the beloved answers Yes.

(Highlight) The rest of the week, I hid from my father, grateful I was not prized. But how deserted he looked, with no son who pleased him (end highlight).

8 and 9: Garak is talking to Tain, with Odo standing behind him. He says, "I never betrayed you! At least, not in my heart."

10: "I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart. Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. (Underline) It is not enough To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed (end underline).

11 and 12: Martok says, "He was convinced that you would come." Garak replies, "He knew I had no choice. Tain."

13: "I hate you for what you did And I miss vou like a little kid"

14: "Garak: I should never have come here. I should have let that monster die forgotten and alone. Bashir: Frankly, I'm glad you came. Misery loves company. Garak: All my life I've done nothing but try to please that man. (Underline) I let him mold me, let him turn me into a mirror image of himself, and how did he repay me? With exile (end underline). But I forgave him. And here, in the end, I thought maybe, just maybe, he could forgive me."

15: "'You were my father,' He wanted to say 'So why couldn't you be my father?'"

16: "Tain: Elim? Elim, is that you? Garak: It's me. Tain: Everything's gone dark. I can't see you. Are you alone? Garak: Yes. There's no one else but you and me. (Liar, Bashir is there.)"

17: "Does anybody actually know how to talk to their father"

18 and 19: Tain is lying down and says, " I should have killed your mother before you were born. You have always been a weakness I can't afford."

20: "I have my mother's mouth and my father's eyes; on my face they are still together."

21: "Garak: I'II do as you ask on one condition. That you don't ask me this favour as a mentor, or a superior officer, but as a father asking his son. Tain: You're not my son. Garak: Father. Father, you're dying. For once in your life, speak the truth."

22: "We are hard on each other and call it honesty,"

23: "If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?"

24: Garak says, :Listen, Enabran."

25: "#the word 'father' rotted in my mouth"

26: "Tain: Elim, remember that day in the country? You must have been almost five. Garak: How can I forget it? It was the only day. Tain: I can still see you on the back of that riding hound. You must have fallen off a dozen times but you never gave up. Garak: I remember limping home. You held my hand. Tain: I was very proud of you that day."

27: "Are you crying over what we've lost"

28 and 29: Tain lies down, his eyes closed, presumably dead. Garak looks at him.

30: "by not being near each other, hardly at all?" End description.]

[Plain text: Kate Clanchy, love / 3x20 / Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, questions about the father / 2x22 / 3x20 / Li-Young Lee, descended from dreamers / 3x20 / Terrence Hayes, american sonnet for my past and future assassin / 5x14 / Phoebe Bridgers, motion sickness / 5x14 / Amatullah Bourdon, and my father’s love is nothing next to god’s will / 5x14 / a text from my friend / 5x14 / Warsan Shire, teaching my mother how to give birth/ 5x14 / Margaret Atwood, we are hard / tag on a Sharon Olds poem / Frank O'Hara, lisztiana. End plain text.]

@startrekdescribed

kate clanchy, love / 3x20 / elizabeth lindsey rogers, questions about the father / 2x22 / 3x20 / li-young lee, descended from dreamers / 3x20 / terrence hayes, american sonnet for my past and future assassin / 5x14 / phoebe bridgers, motion sickness / 5x14 / amatullah bourdon, and my father’s love is nothing next to god’s will / 5x14 / a text from my friend / 5x14 / warsan shire, teaching my mother how to give birth / 5x14 / margaret atwood, we are hard / tag on a sharon olds poem / frank o’hara, lisztiana

[a-leg-without-fear]

Leg's Tuna Tober

this is the masterlist post for all of my tuna-tober posts!!! starting october 1, expect either a fic or a drawing almost EVERY DAY of the month :) here's the link to the prompt list if you'd like to participate!!

🩸= set in the NFW universe, in which the reader is a blood bender born in 1905 🔥= SMUT 18+ 🌧️= angst 🪻= fluff 🎨= drawing 📖= writing

Day 1: Reading to Each Other🪻(Duke Leopold Mountbatten x f!reader) 📖

Day 2: Threesome🔥(Worst!Wolverine x f!reader x Deadpool) 📖

Day 3: Insomnia🩸🌧️ (Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 4: "Are You Blushing?"🪻(Jack Clancy x f!reader) 🎨

Day 5: Begging🔥(Logan Howlett x f!reader) 📖

Day 6: "You Can Sleep Here Tonight."🪻(Gabriel Van Helsing x f!reader) 📖

Day 7: Nightmare🌧️(Worst!Logan Howlett x f!reader) 📖

Day 8: Overstimulation🔥(Robert Angier x f!reader) 🎨

Day 9: "You Don't Need To Do That." "I Want To."🪻(Duke Leopold Mountbatten x f!reader) 📖

Day 10: "I'm Not Good Enough."🌧️(Charlie Kenton x gn!reader) 📖

Day 11: Sharing an Umbrella🪻(Duke Leopold Mountbatten x f!reader) 📖

Day 12: Sneak Peek🩸🌧️(Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 13: Playful Kiss🪻(Wolverine x Deadpool) 🎨

Day 14/15: Break Day 🎃

Day 16: Scent Marking🩸🔥🌧️(Worst!Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 17: "I'm Not Leaving You."🌧️(Gabriel Van Helsing x f!reader) 📖

Day 18: Pillow Fort🪻(Charlie Kenton x f!reader) 🎨

Day 19: Gags🔥(Robert Angier x f!reader) 📖

Day 20: "Who Did This To You?"🩸🌧️(Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 21: Flustered🪻(Gabriel Van Helsing x f!reader) 🎨

Day 22: Aphrodisiacs🔥(Wyatt Bose x f!reader) 📖

Day 23/24: Break Day 🎃

Day 25: Playing With Their Hair🪻(Logan Howlett x f!reader) 🎨

Day 26: Under The Desk🔥(Frank Tassone x m!reader) 📖

Day 27: Sneak Peek🩸🌧️(Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 28: Hair Pulling🔥(Gabriel Van Helsing x f!reader) 📖

Day 29: Forehead Kiss🪻(Jean Valjean x f!reader) 📖

Day 30: Road Trip🩸🪻(Old!Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

Day 31: SANGUINE🩸🌧️(Logan Howlett x mutant!fem!reader) 📖

hope you all are as excited for tuna tober as i am!!!!

Want to be on the taglist? Fill out this form!

[prentisscminds]

the prettiest girl // her hot husband

[codename-adler]

[chipthekeeper]

Y’all don’t understand how happy I was to recognize Ryder Azadi before they even zoomed in or had him speak

[my-movie-diary]

January 7, 2024. 👍 streaming on Paramount+. Like I said before, Jason Statham is always a yes for me. A movie is only as strong as the supporting actors, and this one is full of great character actors: Clancy Brown, James Franco, Kate Bosworth, Frank Grillo, Winona Ryder, and Stallone wrote the screenplay! When the opening credits were rolling, I knew this one was going to be fun.

[milliondollarbaby87]

Dumb Money (2023) Review

Dumb Money takes David vs Goliath tale and turns it into a real life true story of how everyday people flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop into the world’s hottest company. All started by Keith Gill, and his social media posts risking his life savings. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Continue reading Untitled

[hearth-fucker]

Listening to Kate Clancy's Period, which is about menstruation, and so far she has definitely used gender neutral language "people who menstruate" but still occasionally drops the insinuation that being fem inherently makes your experience with periods more difficult. Butch women and trans men would beg to disagree

[burningexeter]

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN:

Back in 2013/14, Microsoft was looking to get in on the success of streaming with Netflix and Hulu having become break-out hits with their content, especially Netflix with its ORIGINAL content, through the XBOX system. For a while, they were looking for anything that could be XBOX original programming or that they could develop as. Yes, you all read that right, at one point Microsoft/XBOX were looking to start up and have their own original shows to compete or rather get in on the juicy Netflix/Hulu piece of pie. And what was originally going to be XBOX's first original series — a fifth season of the NBC superhero drama, Heroes.

No, seriously.

Here's all of the information that someone who used to work there around that time had given me on this piece of cancelled media since I devour these type of things or basically collect them like jewels:

• The little synopsis they gave at the time was it would feature "new stories and heroes, while mixing in cameos from the original series' cast". However the actual premise for the season was it was gonna be set a few years after "Volume Five: Redemption" and Claire Bennett having revealed the existence of evolved humans to the world with not only them being public knowledge but the number of them have been growing and growing every year all the while a new government-related threat arises.

• The new main protagonist of the series was to be Roger Deakins, a now worn-out police captain who wants to atone for his past mistakes (the main one ended up costing the life of his partner/close friend) in no one else's eyes but his own, only to learn that he's developed powers of his own. Clancy Brown, of all people, was considered for the role potentially.

• In terms of the "cameos", that was just something they said to get eyes looking and interest in it. Instead of cameos, they're would've been just photo appearances and references like "That story in the tabloids that that U.S. Senator was an evolved human". However, the only character and actor who was gonna return and this time be a part of the new main cast was Samuel Sullivan with Robert Knepper reprising his role.

• Actors and actresses that were considered for the season were Raymond Cruz, Bryce Dallas Howard, Luke Gross, Thomas Haden Church, Kate Mara and even Michael Madsen. The main goal for the season was to go back to the roots and grounded nature of Season 1 and have the new season be "a character drama WITH superheroes rather than a show ABOUT superheroes just like how that first season was".

• Series creator Tim Kring was (thankfully) not gonna come back and be the showrunner because at the time he was too busy with another show he created for Fox, Touch with Kiefer Sutherland.

• But the most interesting thing with this is that apparently they wanted to have a couple of references and easter eggs to the events of other media that established a shared universe for the sole purpose of expanding the Heroes universe, "one would've been to the events of Brad Bird's The Incredibles, one would've been to the events of J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield, one would've been to the events of The X Files' series finale and another would've been to the events of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's series finale".

Now as for the reasons it fell through are a couple of but the big one is mainly budget. From what I understand, they wanted the season to have the same budget and production value of not just other streaming shows such as Orange Is The New Black and that Netflix political show that shall not be named but also other cable shows at the time such as The Walking Dead and the HBO fantasy series that shall not be named either. But it just ended up getting too big and too ambitious for its own good.

There's other reasons but that's the big one that killed it and it all fell apart.

But hey, at least it sounds better than the abominable Heroes Reborn.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Name every breed of dog

There are about 200 breeds of dog, and I hereby name them James, Becca, Donovan, Martin, Nagisa, Carl, Karl, Justin, Kale, Ratso, Mina, Jessica, Benji, Ani, Umma, Verys, David, Duluth, Chroma, Flip, Claire, Alessa, Alessa-Jin, Mona, Billie, Emily, Beth, Dun-Xi, Vessico, Clementine, Ratricia, Chico, Cheech, Helmina, Orlando, Aria, Vulluset, Paprika, Anna, Lemmy, Kwan, Millie, Pim, Pine, Reileigh, Ginger, Artie, Bei, Booberella, Clancy, Lambert, Nina, Lila, Gene, Lynda, Mim, Clarissa, Gustavus, Rya, Urvashi, Dee, Dina, Zhao, Marti-Hawk, Polonaise, Frida, Lima, Larry, Plin, Leeza, Sinan, Delger, Abagail, Bashir, Jupiter, José, Fritz, Sheila, Maria, Malu, Rod, Jon, Ethan, Clarice, Nickel, Ligaya, Sibyl, Frampt, Toi, Gimli, Hibiscus, Barry, Carrie, Mimi-Lou, Vladimir, Katjuk, Flynn, Perrin, Rosemary, Tanino, Sid, Florence, Carmilla, Carmello, Reese, Laura, Lana, Delia, Quince, Kim, Djimon, Bay, Mu, Neil, Krani, Mamu, Namu, Nemo, Neelix, Mac, Den, Medina, Tessa-Kwali, Alfonse, Geoffrey, Masamune, Schmelgert, Arturo, Ricki-Rak, Rico, Tenne, Santos, Emilia, Despereaux, Pete, Phillipe, Squalene, Bill, Kate, Roman, Sally, Bertha, Dru, Ridley, Amelie, Val, Alejandro, Hans, Jean, Mustafa, Kevin, Kev, Ina, Ima, Pinesol, Ernesto, Arnoldine, Bernadine, Homer, Tomoyuki, Clitmondine, Nolan, Michaela, Brainerd, Everly, Szandor, Cosine, Morris, Jamie, Jamie but the other pronunciation, Xan, Gyatso, Kiara, Pontius, Ali, Momo, Junior, Tootsie, Mel, Dustin, Xavier, Mello, Spike, Petra, Dean, Tasha, Guenevere, Jock, Huston, Dwayne, Dominique, Sanchita, Padma, Lola, Golmandine, Gilda, Flemina, Billy-Bob, and Glen.

[im-not-an-object-ok]

For three months this year, I bled nearly every day. My doctor doesn’t know why. Google doesn’t know why. The condition is simply called “postmenopausal bleeding,” and medicine’s best guess as to the cause is that the postmenopausal hormone-replacement therapy I started last November suddenly made my endometrium, the lining of the uterus, “unstable.” All scientific knowledge added up to “If it’s still happening in six months, get back in touch.” (I’m still bleeding intermittently, and I don’t know why.) This is the kind of massive medical shrug that anyone with female anatomy has probably encountered.

Despite major advances for women over the past 100 years—the invention of the contraceptive pill, greater access to safe abortions—much of female biology is still woefully underserved by science. There are reasons for this, most notably the historical exclusion of women from medical and pharmaceutical trials, partly because our awkward hormone cycles were thought to skew results. There’s also the fact that some scientists still project findings from research on men onto women, seeming not to realize that women aren’t just small men: Women are different down to the cellular level, meaning that many of our immune responses, experiences of pain, and symptoms (including, for instance, those that accompany a heart attack) may be different from men’s. Are you having a nasty, unexpected side effect from your medication? That could be because most drugs were developed with male bodies in mind. A 2020 review of 86 common medications, including antidepressants, cardiovascular drugs, and painkillers, found that women were likely routinely overmedicated and suffered adverse reactions nearly twice as often as men.

The lagging science is particularly apparent when it comes to periods and female hormones more generally—the subject of the anthropologist Kate Clancy’s new book, Period, a scientific and cultural history that purports to tell the “real story of menstruation.” Clancy’s book makes clear that a lack of data is to blame for many of the ills that women and girls face concerning their reproductive health, like doctors’ failure to diagnose painful conditions such as endometriosis.

My severe endometriosis was discovered only when I was 41, accidentally. For decades, I had been given prescription-strength painkillers, and my doctor never seemed to wonder whether the amount of pain I was in was abnormal. When I published an essay about my menopausal depression in 2018, a deluge of women wrote to tell me that when they were going through something similar, their doctors had told them they were imagining their brain fog or panic attacks, or had put them on antidepressants that didn’t work because many depression drugs are inadequate to treat the symptoms of fluctuating estrogen.

[duchess-of-mandalore]

If the Mandalore story in The Clone Wars was live action

(A group effort by the Obitine server ❤️)

Satine Kryze: Cate Blanchett

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan McGregor

Pre Vizsla: Paul Bettany (yeah, he’s Dryden Vos, I know. But look at his cheekbones! It’s too perfect! Also, I headcanon that Pre and Dryden are half-brothers, and you should too!)

Bo-Katan Kryze: Katee Sackhoff

Darth Ketchup: Ray Park & Sam Witwer

Darth Mustard: Clancy Brown

Almec: Charles Dance

Ahsoka: Laura Harrier

Korkie Kryze: Freddie Fox

Lagos: Lucy Boynton

Soniee: Katherine Langford

Amis: John Bell

Fenn Rau: Kevin McKidd (I’m sticking him in because I can)

Edean Tol’ket: Michael Ealy (from @the-obiwan-for-me’s She Said the Word series)

And bonus flashbacks of the Kryze parents (the artwork is mine and the full edit can be found here)

Adonai Kryze: Charlie Hunnam

Satine & Bo’s mother: Anna Torv

Seriously, Anna somehow looks like both Cate and Katee and it drives me insane.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Alex Byrne

Published: Mar 14, 2024

“Computing is not binary” would be a silly slogan—binary computer code underpins almost every aspect of modern life. But other kinds of binaries are decidedly out of fashion, particularly where sex is concerned. “Biology is not binary” declares the title of an essay in the March/April issue of American Scientist, a magazine published by Sigma Xi, the science and engineering honor society. Sigma Xi has a storied history, with numerous Nobel-prize-winning members, including the DNA-unravellers Francis Crick and James Watson, and more recently Jennifer Doudna, for her work on CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing. The essay is well-worth critical examination, not least because it efficiently packs so much confusion into such a short space.

Another reason for examining it is the pedigree of the authors—Kate Clancy, Agustín Fuentes, Caroline VanSickle, and Catherine Clune-Taylor. Clancy is a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton, and Clune-Taylor is an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at that university; VanSickle is an associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines. Clancy’s Ph.D. is from Yale, Fuentes’ is from UC Berkeley, and VanSickles’ is from Michigan. Clune-Taylor is the sole humanist: she has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Alberta, with Judith Butler as her external examiner. In short, the authors are not ill-educated crackpots or dogmatic activists, but top-drawer scholars. Their opinions matter.

Let’s talk about sex, baby

Before wading into the essay’s arguments, let’s look at the context, as noted in the second paragraph. “Last fall,” the authors write, “the American Anthropological Association made headlines after removing a session on sex and gender from its November 2023 annual conference.” The session’s cancellation was covered by the New York Times as well as international newspapers, and it eventually took place under the auspices of Heterodox Academy. (You can watch the entire event here.) Scheduled for the Sunday afternoon “dead zone” of the five-day conference, when many attendees leave for the airport, the title was “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.” The lineup was all-female, and included the anthropologists Kathleen Lowrey and Elizabeth Weiss. According to the session description, “With research foci from hominin evolution to contemporary artificial intelligence, from the anthropology of education to the debates within contemporary feminism about surrogacy, panelists make the case that while not all anthropologists need to talk about sex, baby, some absolutely do.”

Nothing evidently objectionable here, so why was it cancelled? The official letter announcing that the session had been removed from the program, signed by the presidents of the AAA and CASCA (the Canadian Anthropology Society), explained:

The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.

Why “the Trans” were double-counted (the T in LGBTQI) was not clear. And although ideas can harm, a handful of academics speaking in the Toronto Convention Centre are unlikely to cause much. In any event, the authors of “Biology is not binary” seem to think that the panelists’ errors about sex warranted the cancellation, not the trauma their words would bring to vulnerable anthropologists. “We were glad,” they say, “to see the American Anthropological Association course-correct given the inaccuracy of the panelists’ arguments.”

Never mind that no-one had heard the panelists’ arguments—what were these “inaccuracies”? The panelists, Clancy and her co-authors report, had claimed that “sex is binary,” and that “male and female represent an inflexible and infallible pair of categories describing all humans.”

“Biology is not binary” is not off to a promising start. Only one of the cancelled panelists, Weiss, has said anything about sex being binary in her talk abstract, and even that was nuanced: “skeletons are binary; people may not be.” No one had claimed that the two sex categories were “inflexible” or “infallible,” which anyway doesn’t make sense. (This is one example of the essay’s frequent unclarity of expression.) Neither had anyone claimed that every single human falls into one sex category or the other.

Probably the real reason the proposed panel caused such a stir was that it was perceived (in Clancy et al.’s own words) as “part of an intentional gender-critical agenda.” And, to be fair, some of the talks were “gender-critical,” for instance Silvia Carrasco’s. (Carrasco’s views have made her a target of activists at her university in Barcelona.) Still, academics can’t credibly cancel a conference session simply because a speaker defends ideas that bother some people, hence the trumped-up charges of harm and scientific error.

Although Clancy et al. misleadingly characterize the content of the cancelled AAA session, their essay might yet get something important right. They argue for four main claims. First, “sex is not binary.” Second, “sex is culturally constructed.” Third, “defining sex is difficult.” And, fourth, there is no one all-purpose definition of sex—it depends “on what organism is being studied and what question is being asked.”

Let’s go through these in order.

“Sex is not binary”

When people say that sex is binary, they sometimes mean that there are exactly two sexes, male and female. Sometimes they mean something else: the male/female division cuts humanity into two non-overlapping groups. That is, every human is either male (and not female), or female (and not male). These two interpretations of “Sex is binary” are different. Perhaps there are exactly two sexes, but there are some humans who are neither male nor female, or who are both sexes simultaneously. In that scenario, sex is binary according to the first interpretation, but not binary according to the second. Which of the two interpretations do Clancy et al. have in mind?

At least the essay is clear on this point. The “Quick Take” box on the first page tells us that the (false) binary thesis is that “male and female [are] the only two possible sex categories.” And in the text the authors say that “plenty of evidence has emerged to reject” the hypothesis that “there are only two sexes.” (Here they mystifyingly add “…and that they are discrete and different.” Obviously if there are two sexes then they are different.)

If there are not exactly two sexes, then the number of sexes is either zero, one, or greater than two. Since Clancy et al. admit that “categories such as ‘male’ and ‘female’…can be useful,” they must go for the third option: there are more than two sexes. But how many? Three? 97? In a striking absence of curiosity, the authors never say.

In any case, what reason do Clancy et al. give for thinking that the number of sexes is at least three? The argument is in this passage:

[D]ifferent [“sex-defining”] traits also do not always line up in a person’s body. For example, a human can be born with XY chromosomes and a vagina, or have ovaries while producing lots of testosterone. These variations, collectively known as intersex, may be less common, but they remain a consistent and expected part of human biology. So the idea that there are only two sexes…[has] plenty of evidence [against it].

However, this reasoning is fallacious. The premise is that some (“intersex”) people do not have enough of the “sex-defining” traits to be either male or female. The conclusion is that there are more than two sexes. The conclusion only follows if we add an extra premise, that these intersex people are not just neither male nor female, but another sex. And Clancy et al. do nothing to show that intersex people are another sex.

What’s more, it is quite implausible that any of them are another sex. Whatever the sexes are, they are reproductive categories. People with the variations noted by Clancy et al. are either infertile, for example those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) (“XY chromosomes and a vagina”), or else fertile in the usual manner, for example many with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) and XX chromosomes (“ovaries while producing lots of testosterone,” as Clancy et al. imprecisely put it). One study reported normal pregnancy rates among XX CAH individuals. Unsurprisingly, the medical literature classifies these people as female. Unlike those with CAIS and CAH, people who belonged to a genuine “third sex” would make their own special contribution to reproduction.

“Sex is culturally constructed”

“Biology is not binary” fails to establish that there are more than two sexes. Still, the news that sex is “culturally constructed” sounds pretty exciting. How do Clancy et al. argue for that?

There is a prior problem. Nowhere do Clancy et al. say what “Sex is culturally constructed” means. What’s more, the essay thoroughly conflates the issue of the number of sexes with the issue about cultural construction. Whatever “cultural construction” means, presumably culture could “construct” two sexes. (The Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan were literally constructed, and there were exactly two of them.) Conversely, the discovery of an extra sex would not show that sex was culturally constructed, any more than the discovery of an extra flavor of quark would show that fundamental particles are culturally constructed.

Clancy et al. drop a hint at the start of the section titled “Sex is Culturally Constructed.” “Definitions and signifiers of gender,” they say, “differ across cultures… but sex is often viewed as a static, universal truth.” (If you want to know what they mean by “gender,” you’re out of luck.) That suggests that the cultural construction of sex amounts to the “definitions and signifiers” of sex differing between times and places. This is confirmed by the following passage: “[T]here is another way we can see that sex is culturally constructed: The ways collections of traits are interpreted as sex can and have differed across time and cultures.” What’s more, in an article called “Is sex socially constructed?”, Clune-Taylor says that this (or something close to it) is one sense in which sex is socially constructed (i.e. culturally constructed).

The problem here is that “Sex is culturally constructed” (as Clancy et al. apparently understand “cultural construction”) is almost trivially true, and not denied by anyone. If “X is culturally constructed” means something like “Ideas of X and theories of X change between times and places,” then almost anything which has preoccupied humans will be culturally constructed. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are culturally constructed: the ancients thought they revolved around the Earth and represented different gods. Dinosaurs are culturally constructed: our ideas of them are constantly changing, and are influenced by politics as well as new scientific discoveries. Likewise, sex is culturally constructed: Aristotle thought that in reproduction male semen produces a new embryo from female menstrual blood, as “a bed comes into being from the carpenter and the wood.” We now have a different theory.

Naturally one must distinguish the claim that dinosaurs are changing (they used to be covered only in scales, now they have feathers) from the claim that our ideas of dinosaurs are changing (we used to think that dinosaurs only have scales, now we think they have feathers). It would be fallacious to move from the premise that dinosaurs are culturally constructed (in Clancy et al.’s sense) to the conclusion that dinosaurs themselves have changed, or that there are no “static, universal truths” about dinosaurs. It would be equally fallacious to move from the premise that sex is culturally constructed to the claim that there are no “static, universal truths” about sex. (One such truth, for example, is that there are two sexes.) Nonetheless, Clancy et al. seem to commit exactly this fallacy, in denying (as they put it) that “sex is…a static, universal truth.”

To pile falsity on top of fallacy, when Clancy et al. give an example of how our ideas about sex have changed, their choice could hardly be more misleading. According to them:

The prevailing theory from classical times into the 19th century was that there is only one sex. According to this model, the only true sex is male, and females are inverted, imperfect distortions of males.

This historical account was famously defended in a 1990 book, Making Sex, by the UC Berkeley historian Thomas Laqueur. What Clancy et al. don’t tell us is that Laqueur’s history has come under heavy criticism; in particular, it is politely eviscerated at length in The One-Sex Body on Trial, by the classicist Helen King. It is apparent from Clune-Taylor’s other work that she knows of King’s book, which makes Clancy et al.’s unqualified assertion of Laqueur’s account even more puzzling.

“Defining sex is difficult”

Aristotle knew there were two sexes without having a satisfactory definition of what it is to be male or female. The question of how to define sex (equivalently, what sex is) should be separated from the question of whether sex is binary. So even if Clancy et al. are wrong about the number of sexes, they might yet be right that sex is difficult to define.

Why do they think it is difficult to define? Here’s their reason:

There are many factors that define sex, including chromosomes, hormones, gonads, genitalia, and gametes (reproductive cells). But with so many variables, and so much variation within each variable, it is difficult to pin down one definition of sex.

Readers of Reality’s Last Stand will be familiar with the fact that chromosomes and hormones (for example) do not define sex. The sex-changing Asian sheepshead wrasse does not change its chromosomes. Interestingly, the sex hormones (androgens and estrogens) are found in plants, although they do not appear to function as hormones. How could the over-educated authors have written that “there are many factors that define sex,” without a single one of them objecting?

That question is particularly salient because the textbook account of sex is in Clancy et al.’s very own bibliography. In the biologist Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow there’s a section called “Male and Female Defined.” If you crack the book open, you can’t miss it.

Roughgarden writes:

To a biologist, “male” means making small gametes, and “female” means making large gametes. Period! By definition, the smaller of the two gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg. Beyond gamete size, biologists don’t recognize any other universal difference between male and female.

“Making” does not mean currently producing, but (something like) has the function to make. Surely one of Clancy et al. must have read Roughgarden’s book! (Again from her other work we know that Clune-Taylor has.) To avoid going round and round this depressing mulberry bush again, let’s leave it here.

“Sex is defined in a lot of ways in science”

Perhaps sex is not a single thing, and there are different definitions for the different kinds of sex. The standard gamete-definition of sex is useful for some purposes; other researchers will find one of the alternative definitions more productive. Clancy et al. might endorse this conciliatory position. They certainly think that a multiplicity of definitions is good scientific practice: “In science, how sex is defined for a particular study is based on what organism is being studied and what question is being asked.”

Leaving aside whether this fits actual practice, as a recommendation it is wrong-headed. Research needs to be readily compared and combined. A review paper on sexual selection might draw on studies of very different species, each asking different questions. If the definition of sex (male and female) changes between studies, then synthesizing the data would be fraught with complications and potential errors, because one study is about males/females-in-sense-1, another is about males/females-in-sense-2, and so on.

Indeed, “Biology is not binary” itself shows that the authors don’t really believe that “male” and “female” are used in science with multiple senses. They freely use “sex,” “male,” and “female” without pausing to disambiguate, or explain just which of the many alleged senses of these words they have in mind. If “sex is defined a lot of ways in science” then the reader should wonder what Clancy et al. are talking about.

In an especially odd passage, they write that the “criteria for defining sex will differ in studies of mushrooms, orangutans, and humans.” That is sort-of-true for mushrooms, which mate using mating types, not sperm and eggs. (Mating types are sometimes called “sexes,” but sometimes not.) However, it’s patently untrue for orangutans and humans, as the biologist Jerry Coyne points out.

Orangutans had featured earlier in the saga of the AAA cancellation, when Clancy and Fuentes had bizarrely suggested that the “three forms of the adult orangutan” present a challenge to the “sex binary,” seemingly forgetting that these three forms comprise females and two kinds of males. Kathleen Lowrey had some fun at their expense.

As if this tissue of confusion isn’t enough, Clancy et al. take one final plunge off the deep end. After mentioning osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, they write:

[P]eople experiencing similar sex-related conditions may not always fit in the same sex category. Consider polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a common metabolic condition affecting about 8 to 13 percent of those with ovaries, which often causes them to produce more androgens than those without this condition. There are increasing numbers of people with PCOS who self-define as intersex, whereas others identify as female.

They seem to believe that two people with PCOS might not “fit in the same sex category.” That is, one person could be female while the other isn’t, with this alchemy accomplished by “self-definition.” PCOS, in case you were wondering, is a condition that only affects females or, in the approved lingo of the Cleveland Clinic, “people assigned female at birth.”

How could four accomplished and qualified professors produce such—not to mince words—unadulterated rubbish?

There are many social incentives these days for denouncing the sex binary, and academics—even those at the finest universities—are no more resistant to their pressure than anyone else. However, unlike those outside the ivory tower, academics have a powerful arsenal of carefully curated sources and learned jargon, as well as credentials and authority. They may deploy their weapons in the service of—as they see it—equity and inclusion for all.

It would be “bad science,” Clancy et al. write at the end, to “ignore and exclude” “individuals who are part of nature.” In this case, though, Clancy et al.’s firepower is directed at established facts, and the collateral damage may well include those people they most want to help.

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About the Author

Alex Byrne is a Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. His main interests are philosophy of mind (especially perception), metaphysics (especially color) and epistemology (especially self-knowledge). A few years ago, Byrne started working on philosophical issues relating to sex and gender. His book on these topics, Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions, is now available in the US and UK.

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The whole "social construction," "cultural construction" thing is idiotic.

Not only does it mean you would be a different sex in a different society/culture, but it becomes necessary that cross-cultural/cross-societal reproduction is fraught with complications.

[cantsayidont]

Some bad teevee:

FIGHT NIGHT: THE MILLION-DOLLAR HEIST (2024): Tasteless, embarrassingly bad eight-part Peacock miniseries wastes a high-profile Black cast (including Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Taraji P. Henson, Chloe Bailey, and Terrence Howard) in a clumsy attempt to turn a true crime podcast, about the armed robbery of an afterparty for the October 1970 Muhammad Ali–Jerry Quarry fight, into a self-consciously retro blaxploitation pastiche. Starring comedian Kevin Hart as Gordon "Chicken Man" Williams, the Atlanta hustler who organized the party for an array of top Black mob figures and then found himself on the hook after the robbery, the show is a tonally uneasy mix of grim drama and leaden shtick, which smothers some flailing stabs at social commentary while giving the more serious scenes (which are often quite brutal) an inappropriately campy vibe. Hart (who also produced) acts like he's in a latter-day FRIDAY sequel with all the punchlines removed, while Henson looks so uncomfortable that you can't help cringing every time she's onscreen; even Don Cheadle's weary dignity is very hard-pressed, and Dexter Darden's weak caricature of Ali doesn't help. Worse, the story just isn't interesting enough to sustain eight one-hour episodes. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: One can see what they were going for ("COTTON COMES TO HARLEM meets ACROSS 110TH STREET, but based on a true story!"), but it's a complete train wreck.

NOBODY WANTS THIS (2024): Thinly plotted, stupid sitcom about an obnoxious blond shiksa (Kristen Bell), who runs a confessional podcast with her equally obnoxious sister (Justine Lupe), unexpectedly falling for a cute rabbi (Adam Brody), whose family and friends can't believe he's dumped the hot Jewish woman (Emily Arlook) everyone expected him to marry. Feels like a (bad) romcom feature script stretched awkwardly into 10 half-hour episodes, and it becomes more and more offensive as it goes on, villifying every Jewish woman older than about 15 in a vain attempt to make the boorishly antisemitic heroine seem like a reasonable romantic choice. CONTAINS LESBIANS? The main character periodically mentions that she was a lesbian for a year, but she's not now. VERDICT: Aptly titled.

PENANCE (2020): Eye-rolling British drama/thriller, based on a Kate O'Riordan novel (strictly beach and bathtub reading, one assumes), about a middle-aged mum (Julie Graham), reeling from the unexpected death of her 20-year-old son, who has a Horniness Crisis™ involving a hunky, manipulative young man (Nico Mirallegro), who's also dating her teenage daughter (Tallulah Greive) and is plainly up to no good. Not at all credible even before some absurd third-act contrivances, it's essentially a wish fulfillment fantasy (or porn scenario) drenched in just enough sour self-loathing and turgid melodrama for the target audience (Tory-voting sexually frustrated middle-aged white women) to reassure themselves that they're not really having fun. Just to make sure, Art Malik costars as the kind of insufferably chummy local priest Pat O'Brien used to play. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Nope. VERDICT: Probably well-tailored for its intended audience, but for everyone else, it's too silly to take seriously and too dour to even constitute good trash.

THE PENGUIN (2024): HBO Max dared to ask, "Will the market bear yet another Batman-less Batman TV project?" and came up this spinoff of THE BATMAN (2022), returning the film's version of the Penguin (Colin Farrell, buried beneath half his weight in prosthetics), maneuvering between the rival crime families of Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) and Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown), with his only ally a Black teenager (Rhenzy Feliz) who becomes his driver and protégé (not unlike the relationship between Dwight and Tyson in TULSA KING). Cristin Milioti costars as Alberto's unstable sister Sofia Falcone, newly released from Arkham Asylum, with Shohreh Aghdashloo as Sal's ruthless wife Nadia. There's no reason to assume this show won't follow exactly the same pattern as GOTHAM and PENNYWORTH — i.e., a brief flirtation with gritty urban crime drama that quickly goes off the rails into campy derangement while stuffing its pockets with as many second-tier Bat-adjacent characters as Warner Bros. will permit. (Alberto and Sofia are borrowed from the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale series BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN and DARK VICTORY, although this version of them bears only a vague resemblance to the original.) Since the show's only apparent reason for being is to juice interest in the eventual Matt Reeves/Robert Pattinson theatrical sequel without impacting that sequel (or even showing Batman) in any meaningful way, why bother? CONTAINS LESBIANS? TBD. VERDICT: Lucy with the football.