Sex And Genders Etc.

Play ‘self-identity’, make yourself up as you go

FRANK FUREDI

Biological sex, determined at the moment of conception, is being rendered meaningless

A modern child can be black, Chinese, male, female — or just confused, like the rest of us
Until recently only children were expected to play and pretend they were someone else — a scary lion, Alexander the Great or Superman. Now adults, too, can join in and get to decide how they want to be seen and identified.

Britain’s Universities and Colleges Union has published a report that contends anyone should be able to identify as black regardless of the colour of their skin.

That means a university teacher with ginger hair and freckles can now — in all seriousness — assert their black identity and gain the validation of colleagues. And anyone who refuses to go along with this performance of blackness risks being accused of a hate crime.

The UCU’s report aims to resolve the current controversy about whether biological males should be able to self-identify as women and be treated as female. The report concludes with a resounding yes — you don’t need to have a uterus and female reproductive organs to identify as a woman. It also went a step further so you can decide if you are white, black or, presumably, Chinese.

It notes that “our rules commit us to ending all forms of discrimination, bigotry and stereotyping” and declares that the “UCU has a long history of enabling members to self-identify whether that is being black, disabled, LGBT+ or women”. The UCU’s argument about the right to self-identify is another way of saying it is up to everyone to decide how others are obligated to see them.

From this standpoint, your sex chromosomes, biology, physical features or cultural origins are more or less irrelevant when it comes to self-identity. Self-identification renders identity a form of role play. It works as a make-it-upas-you-go-along performance and you can adopt whatever role takes your fancy.

Once upon a time the UCU’s report would have provoked the response of “they must be joking”.

Some sensible commentators may still react in astonishment at its preposterous sentiments.

However, with the proliferation of a bewildering variety of new identities, the public has gradually got used to the unannounced arrival of yet another freshly invented identity.

Not so long ago most people were genuinely shocked and surprised when it was announced Facebook now had 71 gender identities to choose from.

Then came the appearance of an endless number of newly minted trans pronouns. In some circles the use of he or she was condemned as a cultural crime of misgendering. Instead zie, sie, ey, ve, tey or e were proposed as enlightened alternatives to the far too restrictive binary pronouns of he and she.

Now with the non-stop attention sections of the media devote to the cultivation of new identities, more and` more people intuit that the obsession with identity is here to stay. The right to self-identify and choose your race or gender enjoys widespread cultural affirmation.

The readiness with which public and private organisations have changed the language used in official forms to include new categories of gender suggests selfidentification is fast becoming institutionalised Society’s preoccupation with identity and selfidentification has acquired an explosive dynamic to the point it is rapidly changing the way we think and the words we use. The recently invented term “sex assigned at birth”, used by numerous institutions and media outlets, conveys the view that one’s biological sex is arbitrary and irrelevant.

Biological sex, determined at the moment of conception, is rendered invisible and meaningless through the administrative fiat of rendering it transitory. The transformation of a birth certificate into a statement of identity preference implies the description of a baby is a provisional one that is likely to alter. The premise of the phrase “sex assigned at birth” is that it is the developing child and teenager who will eventually choose an identity — preferably a genderneutral one — for themselves.

A significant cohort of “up-todate” parents have embraced the ideology of gender neutrality and adopted a style of child-rearing that avoids assigning a biological gender to their child. Such parents assume they are providing their offspring with the freedom to decide for themselves who they want to be.

In reality the embrace of gender-neutral parenting constitutes an act of adult irresponsibility. Instead of guiding their child to help understand their biological attributes and taking responsibility for the development of the child’s identity, they place the burden of character formation on the child.

“Leaving it up to the child” may sound open-minded but its effect is to allow the confusing influences and pressures of popular and peer culture to monopolise the identity formation of young people.

Instead of providing direction and guidance, children are left to deal with a chaotic world dominated by social media, consumer culture and identity politics.

In places of work and in institutions of higher education, people face strong pressure and sanctions should they refuse to embrace a gender-neutral vocabulary.

It is increasingly common to provide people with a list of words they can or cannot use at their workplace. One of the most disturbing targets of linguistic policing are daycare centres and primary schools, which are exhorted to socialise children by preempting them from adopting the language and values of the generations that preceded them. As far back as 1995 the daycare centre at La Trobe University in Melbourne banned the use of about 20 words, including the gender-related terms girl and boy, to promote its mission of altering traditional sex roles. Those who violated the code were forced to pay a fine and treated as if they had used a dirty word.

The focus on altering children’s vocabulary is not accidental. The project of purifying of language is motivated by the objective of altering people’s behaviour.

Language serves as a medium through which human relations are ordered and people’s reality is shaped. Thus, socialising children into a gender-neutral culture and vocabulary aims to alter the meaning youngsters attach to their identity and existence.

Such irresponsible behaviour can mess up and confuse the generations to come, which is why we need to embrace the role of the young boy who exposed the pretensions of the naked emperor with the words “he has no clothes”.

Instead of allowing promoters of self-identification to embarrass us into silence, we have to speak out and insist that playing an identity game does not alter the hard facts of biological sex.

Frank Furedi is a sociologist and
author of How Fear Works: The
Culture of Fear in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury).

CarbonFears

LET’S NOT POLLUTE MINDS WITH CARBON FEARS

IAN PLIMER

Talk of an emergency is ignorant, populist scaremongering
As soon as the words carbon footprint, emissions, pollution, and decarbonisation, climate emergency, extreme weather, unprecedented and extinction are used, I know I am being conned by ignorant activists, populist scaremongering, vote-chasing politicians and rent seekers.

Pollution by plastics, sulphur and nitrogen gases, particulates and chemicals occurs in developing countries. That’s real pollution. The major pollution in advanced economies is the polluting of minds about the role of carbon dioxide. There are no carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims.

But then again, we should be used to this after the hysteria about the Great Barrier Reef bleaching that has really been occurring for hundreds of years, fraudulent changing of past weather records, the ignoring of data that shows Pacific islands and the Maldives are growing rather than being inundated, and unsubstantiated claims polar ice is melting. By ignoring history and geology, any claim of unusual weather can be made sensational.

We’ve had reefs on planet Earth for 3500 million years. They came and went many times. The big killer of reefs was because sea level dropped and water temperature decreased. In the past, reefs thrived when water was warmer and there was an elevated carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Reef material is calcium carbonate, which contains 44 per cent carbon dioxide. Reefs need carbon dioxide; it’s their basic food.

We are not living in a period of catastrophic climate change. The past tells us it’s business as usual.

It has never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming.

Climate models have been around 30 years. They have all failed. Balloon and satellite measurements show a disconnect from climate model predictions. If they have failed across the past 30 years when we can compare models with measurements, there is little chance that the climate projections across the next 50 years will be more successful. Modellers assume carbon dioxide drives climate change. It does not. The role of the sun and clouds was not considered important by modellers. They are the major drivers for the climate on our planet.

We emit a trace atmospheric gas called carbon dioxide at a time in planetary history of low atmospheric carbon dioxide. The geological history of the planet shows major planetary climate changes have never been driven by a trace gas. Just because we are alive today does not mean we change major planetary systems that operated for billions of years. Earth’s climate dances to rhythms every day, every season and on far larger lunar, ocean, solar, orbital, galactic and tectonic cycles. Climate change is normal and continual. When cycles overlap, climate change can be rapid and large. Sporadic events such as supernovas and volcanic eruptions can also change climate.

The main greenhouse gas is water vapour. It is the only gas in air that can evaporate, humidify and condense into clouds that precipitate rain, hail and snow. These processes involve a transfer of energy, and water vapour makes the atmosphere behave like a giant airconditioner. Carbon dioxide is a non-condensable atmospheric gas like nitrogen and oxygen. Water vapour in air varies depending on temperature and location from five times the atmospheric carbon dioxide content in deserts to more than 100 times in the tropics. Water is 12 times more effective than carbon dioxide with respect to all incoming and outgoing radiation.

Earth is unevenly heated. Our spinning oblate globe is influenced by two fluids of different composition and behaviour moving chaotically against each other over the irregular solid surface of the planet. Oceans hold most of the planet’s surface heat, not the atmosphere. Processes that occur during sunlight do not occur at night due to the prime driver of our planet’s surface temperature: the sun.

Carbon dioxide is plant food. It is neither a pollutant nor a toxin. Without carbon dioxide, all life on Earth would die. Plants convert carbon dioxide, water and sunlight during photosynthesis into sugars, cellulose, fruit, vegetables and grains, which animal life uses as food. Marine organisms also take up and use carbon dioxide. Plants need almost three times today’s carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere to thrive. For decades horticulturalists have pumped carbon dioxide into glasshouses to increase yields. The fossil record shows that a thriving and diversification of plant and animal life occurs every time the atmosphere had a very high carbon dioxide content. In the past, warming has never been a threat to life on Earth. Why should it be now? When there is a low atmospheric carbon dioxide content, especially during very cold times, life struggles.

For the past 500 million years, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content has been decreasing and if we halved today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide content, all life would die. This carbon dioxide has been removed into the oceans and is sequestered into coral, shells, limey sediments and muds and on the land into coals, muds, soils and vegetation.

Air contains 0.04 per cent carbon dioxide. We add carbon compounds to our bodies from food and drinks and exhale carbon dioxide. The human breath contains at least 4 per cent carbon dioxide. Our bodies contain carbon compounds. If we were so passionately concerned about our carbon footprint, then the best thing to do is to expire.

In our lifetime, there has been no correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature. On a larger scale, the ice caps show that after a natural orbitally driven warming, atmospheric carbon dioxide content increases 800 years later. Rather than atmospheric carbon dioxide driving temperature, it is the opposite. Geology shows us again there is no correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature. Each of the six major past ice ages began when the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was far higher than at present. The thought that a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to unstoppable global warming is demonstrably wrong.

In the past decade China has increased its carbon dioxide emissions by 53 per cent, 12 times Australia’s total carbon dioxide output of 1.3 per cent of the global total. The grasslands, forests, farms and continental shelves of Australia adsorb far more carbon dioxide than we emit. The attack on emissions of the gas of life is an irrational attack on industry, our modern way of life, freedoms and prosperity. It has nothing to do with the environment.

Emeritus professor Ian Plimer’s latest book is The Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Ripoff (Connor Court).

There are no carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black

Social pressure

Follow Michael Crichton’s Rule

The late writer warned about bending to social pressure instead of heeding evidence.

Jurassic Park” and “Westworld,” from the brilliant mind of Michael Crichton, aren’t real. But neither are a lot of things that pass for arguments these days. Crichton, who died in 2008, gave a lecture at Caltech in 2003 titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” In his words, it was about the “uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy” but I took away a lot more. Relax, this column isn’t about climate change.

His first example was nuclear winter. In 1975 the National Academy of Sciences stated that even with multiple nuclear detonations, the effect from dust would be minor. In 1979 Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment said the science was poorly understood and it wasn’t possible to estimate damage. Yet by 1982 the Swedish Academy of Sciences speculated that smoke would cover the Northern Hemisphere, blocking the sun and disabling photosynthesis—nuclear winter.

Within five years, famed astronomer Carl “Billions and Billions” Sagan figured a 5,000-megaton nuclear exchange would cause temperatures to drop below freezing for three months. Of course, there was no empirical study to back any of this. But what amazed me was the observation that no one could take the other side of the argument. Physicist Freeman Dyson said, “It’s an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?” Argument over.

Same for secondhand smoke. In 1994 the Environmental Protection Agency found that 11 studies of the link between smoke in restaurants or offices and cancer were not conclusive, but nonetheless labeled secondhand smoke a Group A carcinogen. The World Health Organization also began to warn against secondhand smoke despite inconclusive studies of its own. Since then, study after study has found no statistically significant relationship between cancer and being near indoor smoking. Yet no one takes the other side of the argument. Except for smokers, no one likes the smell of tar and nicotine while they’re eating or working. Yuck. No one, including me, is actually for secondhand smoke.

Crichton observed: “Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.” That includes children at the United Nations yelling, “How dare you.” It’s knee-jerk analysis. I call it the Crichton Conundrum: “I’m against it, so these theories must be right—even though the science is most likely bunk.” Shallow, but sadly a reality.

The conundrum is everywhere. Take the $15 minimum wage, a so-called living wage—who could be against that? The problem is that the alternative isn’t necessarily $8 or $10 an hour; often it’s no job and $0 an hour. Lo and behold, restaurants are closing in San Francisco.

Or take net neutrality. No one wants an un-neutral internet, even though that enables innovative pricing to help fund fiber-optic and wireless buildouts. Similarly, we all feel good about “natural” forest management and now California burns.

These arguments are often vague, even Orwellian—the expressions “net neutrality” and “climate change” conceal their shallow concepts. But they’re also Crichtonesque in the way they foreclose any argument from the other side. If you’re against food stamps or children’s health spending, you’re heartless, even though they are inefficient, ineffective and rife with fraud. And friendly sounding No Child Left Behind and Common Core? Sorry, math scores went down.

Free college, day care and medical care? Didn’t Cuba try that? Free or price-controlled goods always end up like subsidized bread in the Soviet Union. You get less of it and empty shelves. The same is true of rent control, as California will soon learn.

Nobel Prize-winning economist (who could be against that?) Joseph Stiglitz last year suggested relief of Puerto Rico’s burdensome debt. Ah, relief—except then Puerto Rico would probably not be able to borrow again for a long time (which applies to student loans as well). And then there’s social justice. No one is for injustice, but now campus mobs are threatening free speech.

Many counterarguments are hard to frame. You can’t just argue the opposite. Crichton reminds us to question the science, the data and the studies, and to argue outside the box you’re put in. Often the answer to most policy questions is “Who pays?” Of course, it’s “greedy corporations” or the 1% fat cats, except that jobs are created by corporations, or funded out of the investment savings of the wealthy, creating new companies and progress. Are you against that?

Why doesn’t anyone make the case for free markets? Because it doesn’t lend itself to easy sound bites: “What do you mean millions of people make billions of price decisions every day that efficiently allocates capital?” Michael J. Fox’s character on “Family Ties,” which ran until 1989, was the last popular free-market spokesman but was portrayed as greedy. Plenty of people still believe it’s better to have governments set prices.

Crichton would have a field day today: democratic socialism, implicit bias, medical marijuana, open curriculum, small class sizes, surveillance capitalism, HOV lanes, electric-vehicle credits, renewable-fuel standards, carbon taxes—it never ends. We’re sorely missing the other side of the argument.