But amused by your "He’s just officially become the Leni Riefenstahl of his age." 👍🙂
Though not sure about your endorsement of Tommy Robinson -- same family as Kirk's assassin? 😉🙂 Melannie Phillips had a recent post questioning his endorsement in Israel.
Will probably comment further after I read Pinker's article but I was rereading the chapter on Gender in his Blank Slate last night and was somewhat "disconcerted" to see him endorsing the idea of "sex change" -- a medical and biological impossibility. Now THERE is a "meme" to shake the foundations of a civilization if not reduce it to rubble. 😉🙂
I've read several of Pinker's books -- The Blank Slate, and How the Mind Works -- and had generally been quite impressed with them.
But -- on re-reading his chapter on Gender in the first one -- I was rather less than impressed with several of his comments, notably where he apparently "thinks" that it is actually possible to "change sex" -- a medical and biological impossibility:
SP: "When women preparing for a sex-change operation are given androgens, they improve on tests of mental rotation and get worse on tests of verbal fluency.
The ultimate fantasy experiment to separate biology from socialization would be to take a baby boy, give him a sex-change operation, and have his parents raise him as a girl and other people treat him as one."
All that happens in such "sex change operations" -- AKA, "gender-affirming care", a rather odious euphemism for sterilization and castration -- is the mangling of the patient's genitalia into some ersatz and non-functional replica of the other sex -- a "trans-mogrification". To really change sex one would have to replace testicles with ovaries or vice versa -- still medically impossible with today's technology -- since those are, more or less, the essential and defining criteria that must be met to qualify as males or females, respectively:
But sadly, that "cognitive distortion" of Pinker's -- being charitable -- is far too common, and is largely what undergirds the rather demented efforts of various "Dr. Mengeles" to sell autistic and dysphoric children a bill-of-goods that such changes are actually possible.
For some examples, right from the 1950s Christine Jorgensen and "her" "sex-change operations", see these cases:
And in Australia in the Tickle-vs-Giggle case, the “judge” ruled that it is likewise possible to “change sex”:
Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle wins discrimination case after being banned from women-only app; Tickle successfully sued social media platform Giggle for Girls with judge stating ‘on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable
More recently, just the other day, US journalist Andrew Sullivan gave plenty of evidence that he is equally clueless that it is medically and biologically impossible to actually change sex:
AS: And let’s look at what Americans actually believe “about what policy should be toward trans people”: there are big majorities for allowing transadults to transition to the sex they want ...
The rot goes rather deep. It is going to be a challenge, though arguably "Job One", to tear it out by the roots, to extirpate that quite unscientific claptrap root and branch.
Your link to Pinker's article gives a "Not Found" error. Here's a share copy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/charlie-kirk-republican-reaction.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rE8.rMNR.Cb0yJkyLySCj&smid=url-share
But amused by your "He’s just officially become the Leni Riefenstahl of his age." 👍🙂
Though not sure about your endorsement of Tommy Robinson -- same family as Kirk's assassin? 😉🙂 Melannie Phillips had a recent post questioning his endorsement in Israel.
Will probably comment further after I read Pinker's article but I was rereading the chapter on Gender in his Blank Slate last night and was somewhat "disconcerted" to see him endorsing the idea of "sex change" -- a medical and biological impossibility. Now THERE is a "meme" to shake the foundations of a civilization if not reduce it to rubble. 😉🙂
I suspect that Dr. Pinker is one of the men I describe as cowards (below). Too attentive to his image, too cautious, too conformist.
We used to barely consider people like this ‘men’ at all. We should return to those standards, I think.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/androgenic-preference-cascade
I've read several of Pinker's books -- The Blank Slate, and How the Mind Works -- and had generally been quite impressed with them.
But -- on re-reading his chapter on Gender in the first one -- I was rather less than impressed with several of his comments, notably where he apparently "thinks" that it is actually possible to "change sex" -- a medical and biological impossibility:
SP: "When women preparing for a sex-change operation are given androgens, they improve on tests of mental rotation and get worse on tests of verbal fluency.
The ultimate fantasy experiment to separate biology from socialization would be to take a baby boy, give him a sex-change operation, and have his parents raise him as a girl and other people treat him as one."
https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/3334/pinker-blank_slate_gender.pdf
All that happens in such "sex change operations" -- AKA, "gender-affirming care", a rather odious euphemism for sterilization and castration -- is the mangling of the patient's genitalia into some ersatz and non-functional replica of the other sex -- a "trans-mogrification". To really change sex one would have to replace testicles with ovaries or vice versa -- still medically impossible with today's technology -- since those are, more or less, the essential and defining criteria that must be met to qualify as males or females, respectively:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex
But sadly, that "cognitive distortion" of Pinker's -- being charitable -- is far too common, and is largely what undergirds the rather demented efforts of various "Dr. Mengeles" to sell autistic and dysphoric children a bill-of-goods that such changes are actually possible.
For some examples, right from the 1950s Christine Jorgensen and "her" "sex-change operations", see these cases:
Christine Jorgensen: 60 years of sex change ops
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20544095
EXCLUSIVE: Corporate Executives Sit on Boards of Hospitals That Perform Child Sex Changes
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/11/12/exclusive-corporate-executives-sit-boards-hospitals-perform-child-sex-changes/
Sex-Change Procedures at Texas Children’s Hospital
https://christopherrufo.com/p/sex-change-procedures-at-texas-childrens
And in Australia in the Tickle-vs-Giggle case, the “judge” ruled that it is likewise possible to “change sex”:
Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle wins discrimination case after being banned from women-only app; Tickle successfully sued social media platform Giggle for Girls with judge stating ‘on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/23/roxanne-tickle-v-giggle-for-girls-transgender-woman-wins-discrimination-case-against-women-female-only-app-ntwnfb
More recently, just the other day, US journalist Andrew Sullivan gave plenty of evidence that he is equally clueless that it is medically and biologically impossible to actually change sex:
AS: And let’s look at what Americans actually believe “about what policy should be toward trans people”: there are big majorities for allowing transadults to transition to the sex they want ...
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-utterly-lost-is-the-left-960
The rot goes rather deep. It is going to be a challenge, though arguably "Job One", to tear it out by the roots, to extirpate that quite unscientific claptrap root and branch.