Oh that's right, I'm throwing Thaddeus in the deep end with a debate on gender and race. Hooray, let's not just kick the hornets nest but kick the living shit out of it. There is method to my madness, as debate between controversial ideas is key in scientific courses, so should pose a good test to see if Thaddeus can put his money where his mouth is. The debate begins with a brief outline of postmodernism, which according to Thaddeus is the greatest ever achievement in academia. So let's get this straight; apparently the greatest works ever done by academics is the idea that there are no races. Obviously Thaddeus has never heard the works of Newton, Darwin, or Curie, which is a great start if he's going to be lecturing me on science. In the words of the late great Christopher Hitchens 'The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.' That's going to become a key theme throughout this debate.
I'm not going to go through the ins and outs of postmodernism, mainly because I'd be out of my depth, but also because I have a ground rule that I will never engage in philosophical debates with philosophers unless copious amounts of alcohol have been consumed. It's just a pointless exercise where you end up being lectured about the semantics of their made up worlds. What I will briefly say is that the identity politics of the modern era has nothing to do with eugenics of the past. Eugenicists such as Darwin believed their race was superior due to their primitive ideas of evolution and genetics. That's a world away from the 'victimhood complex' of social justice warriors today, and it's important we don't conflate these two separate sets of people. This is the first example where postmodernist thinking purposely muddies the water to make any logical sense. What comes next is enough to make me completely reject it as any form of academic thought. To say that nothing is biologically determined is factually incorrect, and moronic to say the least. What the hell do you think race is? You can't pick and choose what race your baby is, and there's noticeable phenotypical differences between humans of differing origins. Please tell me what social constructs are in place that determine the colour of one's skin. Just because you don't like the concept of racism doesn't give you the excuse to bury your head in the sand and flat out deny it exists. Whether you like it or not there are biological factors at play that make different organism with different genomes come into conflict with each other. It doesn't matter what bullshit philosophy you buy into, this is a scientific fact. If this way of thinking is a universal achievement then send me on the next fucking Mars mission.
Well that's race dealt with, so we'll move onto gender. And no, it's absolutely not a human invention. Sexual reproduction requires two sexes to reproduce, one of which is determined by the number of mates they can have, which is men, and the other by the amount of resources available, which is women. Again, this is biological fact. Just because you think differently in your little fantasy world doesn't change this objective notion in the real world. Humans cannot biologically move between sexes, at least in this current time period, and so remain the sex they were assigned at birth by nature. If nobody is born with a biologically determined sex then it would be physically impossible for human beings to exist; it's that simple. I'm amazed that I've just had to spell that basic fact out.
To counter the idea of this dichotomy Mr. Russell plumps for the old 'what about intersex people argument'. I've talked about this idiotic argument a number of times, but briefly I will once again say that intersex people comprise a tiny proportion of the population, and do not represent a trend. The dichotomy between human sexes is about the most perfect dichotomy you will ever find in nature, chiefly because it's biologically determined. Even more bizarrely Thaddeus then brings up impotent men as evidence for why gender is a social construct. Just because you can't produce sperm doesn't mean your chromosomes change. Funnily enough the reason why sperm production is associated with men is because that's what the typical male genome codes for, and not because of your bullshit social conditioning, as that has no influence on your genetic makeup. There's this clear lack of biological understanding that pisses me off with this argument. It's all very well being ignorant, but then denying objective facts because of your mental fantasies is another travesty entirely. It's a completely fallacious approach that thankfully in this debate is repeatedly ridiculed.
I would just like to add that I've never heard any evolutionary biologist refer to sickle cell anemia as evidence for races, so this seems to be a massive strawman argument. What I have repeatedly heard is that this is a deleterious mutation that has become selected for and presented in populations because there is a fitness advantage presented in that the individual becomes immune to malaria, which explains why it's more frequent in black majority countries. This is absolutely not the same thing as the dichotomy between sexes.
Somehow it then gets even worse. This guy is so arrogant he's now implying his own subjective nonsense to fucking dogs. Dogs can't even recognise themselves in the mirror, so why the fuck are they being applied to your human derived philosophy? To back this up Thaddeus uses the classic philosophical technique of asking a contrived question that can't possibly be answered. The question he asks is 'are any two things identical?' Of course this is irrelevant considering nobody is making the argument that males and females are clones of each other. They're clearly not, but that doesn't provide evidence that there isn't a divergence between sexual phenotypes.
The bullshit then gets worse. Seriously, this is a fucking train wreck. We then get introduced to the idea that any boy who doesn't identify as a boy is seen as unnatural. We'll ignore the fact that the word unnatural is used completely incorrectly here, because this point makes way for possibly the most delusional idea yet. For some reason Thaddeus decides to debate whether the majority of males are attracted to women. Words cannot describe how fucking stupid you would have to be to deny the basic fact that the majority of men are attracted to women. If the only way for human males to reproduce is to fuck women then funnily enough this behaviour manifests itself in a population, otherwise reproduction isn't going to happen. But where's the evidence that a significant proportion of men are androgynous? Well it's some undetermined study from the 1950's, or if that doesn't float your boat, some anecdotal stories. Terrific use of evidence there. I might be inclined to call bullshit. Also, just because you fuck men doesn't mean you aren't attracted to women, and if you do fuck only men that doesn't make you any less of a man with respects to gender. Rogan's retort to this is fucking brilliant actually, and just hits the nail on the head of how fucking dumb this whole argument is. I just don't understand where the evidence is found for this extraordinary claim.
Lord Snooty concludes his argument by claiming that transgenderism is not recognised in countries such as America. I would argue that that statement is completely untrue, but more importantly that argument still doesn't disprove the idea that gender is based upon biology. I really don't understand this line of reasoning. On one hand this man is defending the rights of transsexuals, but then the next he encourages their identities to be taken away from them. Who is this misleading philosophy benefiting? Of course Thaddeus then ruins his arguments once again by saying the complete opposite, and claiming that sex is now fluid. Fuck right off. I'm just glad I'm not Joe Rogan and having to listen to this shit, but I thought he handled it very respectably considering the shit being showered in his direction. The smugness from Thaddeus is possibly the most concerning thing about this clip, as he acts like he has this preconceived notion that only he understands the truths of this world. He clearly doesn't, and his piss poor argument is evidence for this. This is all from a man who claims to be a revolutionary teacher. Fucking hell, get your head out of your own fucking ass.
I'm sorry mate, I'll think I'll pass on this revolution in academia.
