A Harvard University "diversity leader" took to Twitter last week to blast a colleague who had the temerity to assert that there are actual, tangible differences between males and females and that science recognizes those differences.  Laura Simone Lewis stated that she was "appalled and frustrated by the transphobic and harmful remarks" made by her human evolutionary biology colleague Carol Hooven while on Fox & Friends.  

Lewis added: "Let's be clear: if you respect diverse gender identities & aim to use correct pronouns, then you would know that people with diverse genders/sexes can be pregnant incl Trans [sic] men, intersex people & gender nonconforming people.  That isn't too hard for medical students to understand."  Actually, it may well be, given that it is a bald-faced lie.  It is not the purpose of science, Ms. Lewis, to "respect diverse gender identities" and to "use correct pronouns."  It is the purpose of science to explain natural phenomena and seek the truth.

Lewis purports to study the social cognition of chimpanzees and bonobos.  She ludicrously identifies as a "Blewish feminist mermaid" in her Twitter profile, Blewish meaning a person of mixed Black and Jewish descent.

She went on to attack Hooven's belief in the binary male and female classification of sexes, opining that "dangerous language perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people within the med[ical] system."  Moreover, she whined that Hooven's comments "directly oppose our Task Force work that aims to create a safe space for scholars of ALL gender identities and sexes."  Yes, all 1,497 of them...or whatever number we are currently up to.

Does Ms. Lewis's "task farce" work aim to create a safe space for those who don't wish to participate in the preposterous charade that one can choose one's own sex and gender?  I'm guessing not so much.

I would like to ask Ms. Lewis how many genders/sexes of chimps, horses, elephants, and gerbils she thinks there are.  If the answer is, say, two, because those animals don't have the ability to imagine themselves as something other than what they obviously are and cannot "identify" as the opposite sex, we would have just proved that biological sex is real and primary.  And thank God for that, or none of us would be here.

In days of yore, people did not endlessly and excruciatingly wrestle with the question of how to decide a person's sex.  But science isn't what it used to be...on that the science is settled.

How would Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, and Jonas Salk "identify" if they were alive today?  How many sexes would they say exist?  Would any one of them insist we address them individually as "they"?

I am surprised that no one has yet deemed computer code too binary and asked what Gottfried Leibniz was thinking.  Did he not realize that binary codes are hurtful and exclusionary?  Surely, we can do better.  We must be more diverse than that.  Just ones and zeros?  Really?  What about twos, threes, nines — and even 78s, 444s, or 6,456s for that matter?  How much longer will we continue to marginalize or exclude a nearly infinite number of...numbers?  Frankly, I am tired of the systemic numerism rampant in this country.

Image: 112 Genders by Andrea Widburg.

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