ASU Scientist Lists Pronouns

He determines how you think and speak

We all remember when Justice Jackson was unable to define “woman” during her Senate confirmation hearing. She said that she could not define “woman” because she is not a biologist. This, despite the fact that she claims to be fighting for women’s justice and rights. It then makes sense to ask her: Who are the people you are fighting for? Her answer: women. Next question: And what is that? Her answer: the people I am fighting for.

Of course, this is ridiculous and shows the sorry state of the liberal legal mind. But let’s say you thought, “Maybe she’s on to something, maybe you can’t define ‘woman’ without being a biologist.” Well, ASU says, “Hold my beer.” You might remember that one of my hobbies is collecting email signatures from intellectuals who, while claiming to be in the top 2% of educated humans alive today, feel the need to tell others their pronouns. I added to my collection today as one of ASU’s leading scientists ended his email with pronouns. Presumably, he’s had enough of a science education to know how to define “woman,” and therefore, “man.”

What could be going on here? One possibility is that this scientist has bought into the “performance” theory of gender. This theory claims that gender is a social performance and that the individual has no obligation to go along with traditional expectations of performance. Instead, the individual gets to decide what gender they will perform as. From here it is an easy step to “there are infinite genders.” Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t expect a scientist to fall victim to such poor thinking, but perhaps he spent more time reading Foucault than biology textbooks.

Science studies the objective facts of the matter. What is, in fact, the truth about your sex? Scientists know that in humans there are two sexes. They don’t fall victim to the silly argument, “But clownfish can change their sex,” because they know a secret: humans aren’t clownfish. Performing as a gender to communicate your sex doesn’t make it so. That’s called acting. And we all know that acting isn’t real, at least, I hope ASU scientists know this. Tom Cruise isn’t really a secret agent; he’s acting. And if he were to tell us that he really is Ethan Hunt we’d be worried he is having a mental collapse. Next thing you know, he’ll say he is a six million year old alien pledged to guard humanity from other aliens who are frozen in a volcano (that’s a post for another time).

Acting like a man or woman doesn’t make it so.

And even then, across human societies, the performance of gender displays remarkably consistent universals for men and women. Students are led to believe that there is only radical difference—and that Western Civilization invented the idea of “man” and “woman.” But the truth is that every society knows that each new baby has a mother and a father. Whatever other aberrant sexual behaviors they may have indulged in, this fact is known to all. Even Saturday Night Live knows this, and they managed to break out of their usual leftist bias long enough to run a skit asking two men where they got their baby.

This means that even if we grant that gender and sex are different they are still related. And the “performance” of gender cannot be disconnected from the objective reality of sex. To perform in a way that purposely misleads everyone about your sex is to lie. And that has big implications for science. It means that scientists like this one at ASU are encouraging dishonesty through social performances that mislead about sex. But science is supposed to be about the truth. The scientists will tell you that they will stop at nothing to uncover the truth but then they end their email with this charade.

Another possibility is that this scientist thinks the question of who is and is not a man or woman is a deep mystery of the universe, something most people simply can’t figure out. Even at their best, with all their powers of deduction firing away, the vast majority of his email recipients will supposedly be unable to determine his gender, and so he has to tell them. But here is where he fails as an educator. If this really is such a difficult concept to grasp, then he should include a link to a lesson on how to define “woman.” That way, he would be teaching us how to know, rather than merely telling us what to think. Pronouns inform; they don’t instruct.

The final option is that this scientist thinks the recipients of his email are especially dumb. He assumes they can’t grasp the obvious and must be told directly. Even then, they still might not get it. After all, being so slow, they may not even understand what pronouns are exactly. Couldn’t we operate without them? Why are scientists insisting on gendered pronouns? That might be a good line for legal exploration: Why are scientists at state universities forcing their email recipients to use gendered pronouns? What about freedom of thought and speech? Can’t we choose what pronouns to use in our own sentences? Even the intellectually slow have First Amendment rights. But the university professors wants to be lord of your thought and speech, they want tyrannical power. Don’t let them have it.

The truth is that those engaged in the gender performance are not simply rejecting human cultural norms, they are rejecting God’s creation. They refuse to believe that God created humans male and female. That truth drives them nuts and instead they believe they can determine realty for themselves.

Whatever else we can conclude, this shows the sorry state of scientific thinking at ASU, and probably across American universities. Scientists have abandoned objective reality for feelings, perhaps having listened to Shania Twain one too many times (“Man, I feel like a woman!”). If your plan is to get a scientific education about objective reality, then you might want to pay careful attention to your science professor’s emails. Do they include pronouns? Then science isn’t being done.