Jordan Peterson has graciously responded to this essay, offering to have a conversation, perhaps on the campus of New College next year. I will keep you posted.
This proposed discussion is the proper outcome - and the hoped-for initial consequence of your prudence. Dr. Peterson did not reject your work, but expressed doubts that I believe - based on his record - he sincerely holds re: means and ends. These doubts point to more substantive issues - truth/reality, philosophy/ideology, authority/non-authority ("To make grow").
Dr. Peterson is willing to be convinced - or half-convinced - but will only accept reason. The resulting conversation can yield an outstanding document for others to study and learn.
The libertarian tendency is a kind of liberal worry about State power which defers the problem of The Good and becomes a kind of social compromise, but one which is not holding. If that compromise is to be restored, then those who violate it must be educated politically in the costs of that violation via exercise of sovereignty.
The US is a debate dessert; why not take this as an opportunity to start something similar to the Munk Debates in the US.
What we let pass for debates in American is sort of pathetic (Congressional “debates”, MSM-formatted Presidential debates, biased journalistic discussions) - compare these to Prime Minister’s Questions, no comparison.
There are so many big, important, issues that need to be discussed in depth and debated, and so many good, centered, people who could debate these issues; CFR & JD are just the tip of the iceberg. (No need for far left / right participants.)
We need to debate: Immigration, child sexual mutilation, deficit spending / inflation, the war in Ukraine, racial grifting, the power of political parties, the legitimate powers of the presidency, the drug problem, homelessness, anomalies related to crime, politicalization of our judicial system, the need & purpose for Homeland Security, the degradation of the bill of rights, why it takes so much time and money to correct problems with the judicial system, etc., etc., etc.
Call them the Peterson-Rufo debates, and do them every week . . . Please.
nope, that would be the democrats, except they do it in the open, because they feel they can, just like the nazis, its the other guys killing nazis, that did the trick,
some folks can't tell the difference,
pretty words did not stop rabid nazis, and will not it stop rabid democrats, it takes rough men, to do that,
you can vote your way into nazism, boys, your kids will have to shoot their way out,
assuming the dads are to chicken shit to fix the problem they let happen,
Excellent. My first thought on seeing you had responded to his comments with an essay was that a direct in-person conversation between the two of you would be of inestimable value to the public.
Wow. Isnt it nice for two people who disagree on matters to be civil and willing to have some more dialogue and debate? Our current climate is to run smear campaigns on people who don't see it your way. Bravo fellas.
I admire Dr. Peterson's personal strength and his insights on life. I wonder if his philosophy has specific views on how one goes about preserving a civilization, which I believe was the original intent of the universities. Christopher Rufo can answer that question. If Peterson cannot offer a viable alternative, then Rufoism becomes the default choice for cultural traditionalists.
Bravo! I respect Jordon and admire him. I think you two should talk about this together because he might very well change his view on this based on your argument.
Mr. Rufo should also ask Mr. Peterson, what concrete steps he recommends be taken to reduce the preponderance of DEI not only within universities but within K-12 public and private.
This is where the rubber meets the road. The DeSantis-Rufo team is producing tangible results in an area where conservatives have complained for decades. What is Peterson's proposed alternative solution?
Your commentary on Jordan Peterson’s professed position is accurate AND timely. Peterson is definitely voicing a concern that would be applicable if our public universities were privately funded. Your point is well taken that the political milieu which has overtaken these PUBLIC institutions can and must be changed if our country is to survive the devastating ideology promulgated by most of the universities. Because this ideology was implanted by political means the only way to overcome it is with political action. Professor Peterson is guilty of letting perfect get in the way of good and, as such, has not offered a pathway to success as you have so accurately and successfully followed.
Many kudos and much appreciation to you for your stalwart efforts
Yes Agreed. This article is well said... and fair comment. Something that is still not well understood by most conservatives (outside its intellectual ecosystem) is that key to the 'Progressive' dismantling of their nation's traditional values these past 30 years is that – crucially in its early stages – it managed to advance largely under the MSM radar. The performance of conservative politicians has been a textbook case in strategic failure. They started with all the advantage on their side; in particular an American public with solidly conservative instincts. The failure was to let themselves be blindsided by the enemy’s secret weapon...... its longstanding grip on the institutions of ‘higher education’. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Good points, Graham, but, truth be told, the problem is not so much that the Leftist takeover of the universities "blindsided" Conservatives, it's that they (and most other people outside of academia) just didn't think it mattered all that much... The idea was, "yeah, they teach that Leftist BS in college, but wait to those kids hit 'the Real World,' then they will straighten out," not realizing that ideas do matter, and if you have two generations or more of college grads almost entirely programmed to be "Progressives," then they and their wacky ideas will slowly, almost imperceptibly, take over the society--starting in the HR department of every corporation. And here we are.
Basically what happened is this: in the early 70s, in the aftermath of the radicalism and chaos of the 60s, the universities were given over to the Left under the assumption that they can't really cause any trouble there. Better those radicals be working on a PhD than building bombs, was the idea. Wrongo, and catastrophically so, it turned out. The Left's "long march through the institutions" started with academia, and now we are forced to deal with the results.
"The academy is the fountainhead of our culture" huh? Well friend, hate to tell you but that our "fountainhead" has been spewing raw sewage for a generation or more. You need to get informed.
True. Paulo Freire’s Maoist child education notions are the schoolteacher’s Bible. Francis Fukuyama-minded complacency made the Classical liberals underestimate its reach and breadth.
SOME scientific research is funded by NIH. There are several other agencies that are major funders of scientific research, such as the NSF and the Department of Energy, and there are a number of large private foundations that fund scientific research as well.
This doesn’t seem like an ad hominem attack. It’s an important question: what to do about the leftist ideological take over of universities? And it’s true, conservatives by their nature are not activists and thus often find themselves in the position of being perpetual critics as the left marches forward.
"And it’s true, conservatives by their nature are not activists and thus often find themselves in the position of being perpetual critics as the left marches forward."......Your statement is of extreme precision and accuracy or better known as "You Nailed It'!!
Jordan Peterson is way off base here. The universities are on fire. JP opposes the fire hose because the carpet might get wet. Priorities, JP! Academia is wholly captured by dishonest actors who are warping the minds of our youth. Rufo has shown how to break their grip on power. It has to be done.
Guys like Peterson and Pinker, as smart as they are, have not moved the needle in universities one inch in decades.
As far as I'm concerned, this is not even ideological. Saying something like "gender is a social construct" flies in the face of so much evidence, it's almost unbelievable.
This is a ridiculous argument. Taxpayers don't spend years of their lives to finance delusional bullshit artists to lie to kids. That's not a right, left, or centrist ideological statement, just a commitment to reality.
Well, the term 'gender' actually is a social construct, invented in the 1950s by Dr. John Money, responsible for the scandalous experiment he conducted on the Reimer twins, to prove his behaviorist notion that sexual identity is a matter of upbringing. Well, the experiment failed, because what is NOT a social construct is SEX. The left has gotten us so far down its garden path that much of the world today uses the invented term 'gender' when they actually mean 'sex'. Sex is real, has a deep grounding in biology, and that is the term to use when that is what we mean. As soon as we use 'gender', the left has won.
Agreed. "Gender" as applied to people (rather than say, nouns in Latin-derived languages) is indeed "socially constructed".
Like their use of the term "binary", it is borrowed from terms of art in other domains to make them sound sophisticated. The truth, of course, is that they are idiots who wouldn't know a Chinchilla from De Morgan's Laws.
I'm aware, but am of the "stupid is as stupid does" school of thought. I don't think our job as dissidents is to convince those that push these ideologies, it's to expose them to others.
In most cases, it's just word games, and these people, even if they are intelligent enough to construct meaningless semantic structures to defend their positions, have little or no ability outside of their pushing their ideology.
This is not always a safe assumption, so I do urge caution, but it's right about 90% of the time in my experience.
What is wrong about a conservative education?We have many different churches all expressing different ideas about God. Different political parties expressing different political views.I think we need more conservative schools.Almost any thing you teach can have political ramifications.
"He apparently prefers the posture of the critic and, as a result and perhaps inadvertently, defends the status quo." This attitude permeates our institutions and leaves us leaderless, and when problems arise the finger pointing starts and after much pressure we might finally get "I take full responsibility," which turns out to be meaningless and the status quo remains. Ditto everything you said.
The "I take full responsibility" statement is such a laughable statement by so many people . Especially when they have no intention of firing themselves . Their idea is that the public is so stupid that saying such should be acceptable by the stupid public. That is just how so many , especially politicians, think of the Citizens' they are supposed to be serving.
i read everything you and dr peterson write and have followed your arguments on this issue. you guys have a classic difference, he is watching out for the big picture from above and you are the pragmatist with actionable proposals in the ground. I run an organization and while i understand “mission statements “ i am with you. organizations have to be bold and erase the dei filth or risk this current slide into incompetence and ruin. In the final analysis over indulgence of the erudite arguments such as his in this matter leads to the vaccum that lets the leftists sneak in !
Excellent response. JP is still a modern academic and would rather have the current sewer than potential oversight by the legislature.
I was just down in Florida with a fairly recent grad of the New College, and the stories of student behavior he shared were pretty nuts. One was of a student trash talking his friend during a tennis match with a slur of some sort that would be typical of guys that age a few years ago. It was overheard and he woke up the next morning to over a hundred students outside his door chanting “sick f*ck.”
I believe the same fellow ended up being expelled later on by a false rape accusation and eventually won a substantial lawsuit against the college.
These freaks live off the extortion of taxation like the mold that grows between bathroom tiles. They fight for this insanity because it’s their lifeline as they know instinctively they offer nothing of real value. Until the spigot is turned off they will continue to fester.
I agree with JD (Wrangler, above) - I have nothing but love for Peterson, but in this instance, I believe his hesitancy is unwarranted. Your response is carefully and clearly lain out, and difficult to refute.
I would love to see a Jordan Peterson response, or even a continuation of this discussion live on a podcast, in the style of the old “point / counter-point”.
As an alumnus of “Mr. Jefferson’s University” and a naturalized Floridian, thank you for this very well-written piece.
There's absolutely no evidence that "neurobiology" causes a group of teen girls to all decide they are "gendered." There's nothing in neuroscience to suggest that neuron functioning causes a mediocre male athlete to force his way into female sports. On the other hand, psychology can describe the bandwagon effect among the teens, and the resentment of females by the males.
You are all over the place. Yes mimetics and social contagion are psychological. But brain chemistry is real and not entirely governed by chromosomal expressions and gonadal secretions. They may be aberrant but not irrelevant.
Nowhere did I state your strawman suggestion that the brain is solely controlled by chromosomes and the endocrine system. Gender is a social construct that varies over time while male and female are biological realities that don't change but do have variations. Let's take males with the "trans" label and their clothing and grooming. Virtually all of them wear long hair, earrings, heels, dresses or skirts, and lots of makeup. If this were truly a "brain chemistry" problem causing them to "feel" like a female, then why do none of them wear shorts, t-shirts, sneakers and go sans makeup, like about half the women I see, including me? Instead, like a single organism they take on the most extreme, stereotyped expression of female. Ironically, from what I've observed most of them are even more physically aggressive than the average male.
It was hard for me to understand what you were stating so yes I attempted to interpret it.
As for males that dress as females, I suppose they take the more obvious means of expression to impress upon others their “femaleness” even if they are not necessarily most comfortable in that skin either. But who knows. That is for psychologists to figure out.
There is variation between traits where men and women differ. In every case I am aware of, it is a bimodal distribution (often overlapping).
"Gender" is just a proto-religious way to describe this phenomenon to people who are so mathematically and scientifically illiterate they shouldn't have even been granted a high school diploma.
Not if the objective is to introduce sophistry, no. If the point is to say that variation will result in a small number of men being effeminate and a small number of women to be masculine, still no, as this is irrelevant to most biology, and certainly introductory biology.
Jordan Peterson has graciously responded to this essay, offering to have a conversation, perhaps on the campus of New College next year. I will keep you posted.
https://x.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1829144404768256007
Cool. I hope your arguments can be sharpened by the conversation. I also hope Peterson can come to appreciate your efforts at NCF.
This proposed discussion is the proper outcome - and the hoped-for initial consequence of your prudence. Dr. Peterson did not reject your work, but expressed doubts that I believe - based on his record - he sincerely holds re: means and ends. These doubts point to more substantive issues - truth/reality, philosophy/ideology, authority/non-authority ("To make grow").
Dr. Peterson is willing to be convinced - or half-convinced - but will only accept reason. The resulting conversation can yield an outstanding document for others to study and learn.
The libertarian tendency is a kind of liberal worry about State power which defers the problem of The Good and becomes a kind of social compromise, but one which is not holding. If that compromise is to be restored, then those who violate it must be educated politically in the costs of that violation via exercise of sovereignty.
A good start, but why wait until next year?
The US is a debate dessert; why not take this as an opportunity to start something similar to the Munk Debates in the US.
What we let pass for debates in American is sort of pathetic (Congressional “debates”, MSM-formatted Presidential debates, biased journalistic discussions) - compare these to Prime Minister’s Questions, no comparison.
There are so many big, important, issues that need to be discussed in depth and debated, and so many good, centered, people who could debate these issues; CFR & JD are just the tip of the iceberg. (No need for far left / right participants.)
We need to debate: Immigration, child sexual mutilation, deficit spending / inflation, the war in Ukraine, racial grifting, the power of political parties, the legitimate powers of the presidency, the drug problem, homelessness, anomalies related to crime, politicalization of our judicial system, the need & purpose for Homeland Security, the degradation of the bill of rights, why it takes so much time and money to correct problems with the judicial system, etc., etc., etc.
Call them the Peterson-Rufo debates, and do them every week . . . Please.
One reason: my calendar is full the next month and my wife is expecting a baby in the fall!
Congrats, on the new addition and also the incredible work you are doing!
Family first!
Congratulations 🙏🏻❤️
Auguri
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as free people."
- Thomas Jefferson
I honored TJ's birthday a few years ago in this Stack:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/thomas-jeffersons-birthday
He is the good doctor.
I do not think he has gotten to the point where he understands the need for rough men, doing dirty work in the dark, while he sleeps.
Like the nazi stormtroopers did in pre-WWII Germany?
nope, that would be the democrats, except they do it in the open, because they feel they can, just like the nazis, its the other guys killing nazis, that did the trick,
some folks can't tell the difference,
pretty words did not stop rabid nazis, and will not it stop rabid democrats, it takes rough men, to do that,
you can vote your way into nazism, boys, your kids will have to shoot their way out,
assuming the dads are to chicken shit to fix the problem they let happen,
Your father may have been regularly physically abusive, leading to your dysfunctional perspectives.
nope, he was not a rabid democrat, like most of the other racists that lived around us back in the 60s,
I got spanked twice (I was a smart kid) when did your mommy remove your balls.
amazing how often stupid democrat vermin get things wrong
perhaps because their mommies removed their little boys balls before puberty
I am surprised that Substack does not identify the rabid little democrat orcs that post here. But then, their posts and comments do that nicely.
Hope that helped, but in your case, nah.
Excellent. My first thought on seeing you had responded to his comments with an essay was that a direct in-person conversation between the two of you would be of inestimable value to the public.
Wow. Isnt it nice for two people who disagree on matters to be civil and willing to have some more dialogue and debate? Our current climate is to run smear campaigns on people who don't see it your way. Bravo fellas.
Excellent! You are on the same side, so this is an honest dialogue about making a better world and preserving a decent system of higher education.
I admire Dr. Peterson's personal strength and his insights on life. I wonder if his philosophy has specific views on how one goes about preserving a civilization, which I believe was the original intent of the universities. Christopher Rufo can answer that question. If Peterson cannot offer a viable alternative, then Rufoism becomes the default choice for cultural traditionalists.
I look forward to this discussion! 👏
He is ALSO great ! Open and willing to discuss. This would be an awesome conversation - would love to attend !
Bravo! I respect Jordon and admire him. I think you two should talk about this together because he might very well change his view on this based on your argument.
Yes, we are working to put something together.
Mr. Rufo should also ask Mr. Peterson, what concrete steps he recommends be taken to reduce the preponderance of DEI not only within universities but within K-12 public and private.
This is where the rubber meets the road. The DeSantis-Rufo team is producing tangible results in an area where conservatives have complained for decades. What is Peterson's proposed alternative solution?
Agree. I hope to hear you two discuss ideology in education soon on DW+.
Or Chris might very well change his view on this based on Jordan’s arguments.
Your commentary on Jordan Peterson’s professed position is accurate AND timely. Peterson is definitely voicing a concern that would be applicable if our public universities were privately funded. Your point is well taken that the political milieu which has overtaken these PUBLIC institutions can and must be changed if our country is to survive the devastating ideology promulgated by most of the universities. Because this ideology was implanted by political means the only way to overcome it is with political action. Professor Peterson is guilty of letting perfect get in the way of good and, as such, has not offered a pathway to success as you have so accurately and successfully followed.
Many kudos and much appreciation to you for your stalwart efforts
Yes Agreed. This article is well said... and fair comment. Something that is still not well understood by most conservatives (outside its intellectual ecosystem) is that key to the 'Progressive' dismantling of their nation's traditional values these past 30 years is that – crucially in its early stages – it managed to advance largely under the MSM radar. The performance of conservative politicians has been a textbook case in strategic failure. They started with all the advantage on their side; in particular an American public with solidly conservative instincts. The failure was to let themselves be blindsided by the enemy’s secret weapon...... its longstanding grip on the institutions of ‘higher education’. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Good points, Graham, but, truth be told, the problem is not so much that the Leftist takeover of the universities "blindsided" Conservatives, it's that they (and most other people outside of academia) just didn't think it mattered all that much... The idea was, "yeah, they teach that Leftist BS in college, but wait to those kids hit 'the Real World,' then they will straighten out," not realizing that ideas do matter, and if you have two generations or more of college grads almost entirely programmed to be "Progressives," then they and their wacky ideas will slowly, almost imperceptibly, take over the society--starting in the HR department of every corporation. And here we are.
Basically what happened is this: in the early 70s, in the aftermath of the radicalism and chaos of the 60s, the universities were given over to the Left under the assumption that they can't really cause any trouble there. Better those radicals be working on a PhD than building bombs, was the idea. Wrongo, and catastrophically so, it turned out. The Left's "long march through the institutions" started with academia, and now we are forced to deal with the results.
The academy is the fountainhead of the culture.
"The academy is the fountainhead of our culture" huh? Well friend, hate to tell you but that our "fountainhead" has been spewing raw sewage for a generation or more. You need to get informed.
That's what I meant.
It seems you need to read more so to get biff's reference.
True. Paulo Freire’s Maoist child education notions are the schoolteacher’s Bible. Francis Fukuyama-minded complacency made the Classical liberals underestimate its reach and breadth.
"Peterson is definitely voicing a concern that would be applicable if our public universities were privately funded."
I get that they receive public funding. I very much doubt they do not receive private funding. Especially for research.
A drop in the bucket compared to public funding. All scientific research is funded by the NIH.
SOME scientific research is funded by NIH. There are several other agencies that are major funders of scientific research, such as the NSF and the Department of Energy, and there are a number of large private foundations that fund scientific research as well.
I really meant universities' scientific research is funded by NIH.
This doesn’t seem like an ad hominem attack. It’s an important question: what to do about the leftist ideological take over of universities? And it’s true, conservatives by their nature are not activists and thus often find themselves in the position of being perpetual critics as the left marches forward.
Agreed!
"And it’s true, conservatives by their nature are not activists and thus often find themselves in the position of being perpetual critics as the left marches forward."......Your statement is of extreme precision and accuracy or better known as "You Nailed It'!!
Jordan Peterson is way off base here. The universities are on fire. JP opposes the fire hose because the carpet might get wet. Priorities, JP! Academia is wholly captured by dishonest actors who are warping the minds of our youth. Rufo has shown how to break their grip on power. It has to be done.
Guys like Peterson and Pinker, as smart as they are, have not moved the needle in universities one inch in decades.
As far as I'm concerned, this is not even ideological. Saying something like "gender is a social construct" flies in the face of so much evidence, it's almost unbelievable.
This is a ridiculous argument. Taxpayers don't spend years of their lives to finance delusional bullshit artists to lie to kids. That's not a right, left, or centrist ideological statement, just a commitment to reality.
Well, the term 'gender' actually is a social construct, invented in the 1950s by Dr. John Money, responsible for the scandalous experiment he conducted on the Reimer twins, to prove his behaviorist notion that sexual identity is a matter of upbringing. Well, the experiment failed, because what is NOT a social construct is SEX. The left has gotten us so far down its garden path that much of the world today uses the invented term 'gender' when they actually mean 'sex'. Sex is real, has a deep grounding in biology, and that is the term to use when that is what we mean. As soon as we use 'gender', the left has won.
Agreed. "Gender" as applied to people (rather than say, nouns in Latin-derived languages) is indeed "socially constructed".
Like their use of the term "binary", it is borrowed from terms of art in other domains to make them sound sophisticated. The truth, of course, is that they are idiots who wouldn't know a Chinchilla from De Morgan's Laws.
Know your enemy: most are actually not idiots at all. They are instead, intelligent people indoctrinated into an irrational, dangerous belief system.
I'm aware, but am of the "stupid is as stupid does" school of thought. I don't think our job as dissidents is to convince those that push these ideologies, it's to expose them to others.
In most cases, it's just word games, and these people, even if they are intelligent enough to construct meaningless semantic structures to defend their positions, have little or no ability outside of their pushing their ideology.
This is not always a safe assumption, so I do urge caution, but it's right about 90% of the time in my experience.
We just need a Rufo / Peterson interview.
There has already been one. Another would be good. Two outstanding individuals fighting for sanity and truth.
Agree with you, Rufo. Love me some Jordan Peterson, but his perspective is Canadian life which is parliamentarian.
He also taught in the American Ivy League for many years.
What is wrong about a conservative education?We have many different churches all expressing different ideas about God. Different political parties expressing different political views.I think we need more conservative schools.Almost any thing you teach can have political ramifications.
I love Hillsdale College. Lots of free courses, and a classic liberal arts education. Not funded by the government.
I love JP but Rufo wins this round. I expect this to play out as iron sharpens iron. Yes, Rufo and Peterson should have a public dialouge!
Working on it!
"He apparently prefers the posture of the critic and, as a result and perhaps inadvertently, defends the status quo." This attitude permeates our institutions and leaves us leaderless, and when problems arise the finger pointing starts and after much pressure we might finally get "I take full responsibility," which turns out to be meaningless and the status quo remains. Ditto everything you said.
The "I take full responsibility" statement is such a laughable statement by so many people . Especially when they have no intention of firing themselves . Their idea is that the public is so stupid that saying such should be acceptable by the stupid public. That is just how so many , especially politicians, think of the Citizens' they are supposed to be serving.
great job mr rufo
i read everything you and dr peterson write and have followed your arguments on this issue. you guys have a classic difference, he is watching out for the big picture from above and you are the pragmatist with actionable proposals in the ground. I run an organization and while i understand “mission statements “ i am with you. organizations have to be bold and erase the dei filth or risk this current slide into incompetence and ruin. In the final analysis over indulgence of the erudite arguments such as his in this matter leads to the vaccum that lets the leftists sneak in !
Excellent response. JP is still a modern academic and would rather have the current sewer than potential oversight by the legislature.
I was just down in Florida with a fairly recent grad of the New College, and the stories of student behavior he shared were pretty nuts. One was of a student trash talking his friend during a tennis match with a slur of some sort that would be typical of guys that age a few years ago. It was overheard and he woke up the next morning to over a hundred students outside his door chanting “sick f*ck.”
I believe the same fellow ended up being expelled later on by a false rape accusation and eventually won a substantial lawsuit against the college.
These freaks live off the extortion of taxation like the mold that grows between bathroom tiles. They fight for this insanity because it’s their lifeline as they know instinctively they offer nothing of real value. Until the spigot is turned off they will continue to fester.
Wow
"JP is still a modern academic and would rather have the current sewer than potential oversight by the legislature."
Well, look at what the Canadian legislature has done!
The US government is toxic and I wouldn’t want the legislature running a coffee shop, but giving academics free money is even worse.
I agree with JD (Wrangler, above) - I have nothing but love for Peterson, but in this instance, I believe his hesitancy is unwarranted. Your response is carefully and clearly lain out, and difficult to refute.
I would love to see a Jordan Peterson response, or even a continuation of this discussion live on a podcast, in the style of the old “point / counter-point”.
As an alumnus of “Mr. Jefferson’s University” and a naturalized Floridian, thank you for this very well-written piece.
Bravo Mr. Rufo! You are a lighthouse in the storms of our day.
For instance there should be no courses in Gender Studies, while there can be discussions of theories of gender in a course called Biology.
"Gender" is not biology and does not belong in a biology course. It belongs in a psychology course.
Arguably neurobiology.
There's absolutely no evidence that "neurobiology" causes a group of teen girls to all decide they are "gendered." There's nothing in neuroscience to suggest that neuron functioning causes a mediocre male athlete to force his way into female sports. On the other hand, psychology can describe the bandwagon effect among the teens, and the resentment of females by the males.
You are all over the place. Yes mimetics and social contagion are psychological. But brain chemistry is real and not entirely governed by chromosomal expressions and gonadal secretions. They may be aberrant but not irrelevant.
Nowhere did I state your strawman suggestion that the brain is solely controlled by chromosomes and the endocrine system. Gender is a social construct that varies over time while male and female are biological realities that don't change but do have variations. Let's take males with the "trans" label and their clothing and grooming. Virtually all of them wear long hair, earrings, heels, dresses or skirts, and lots of makeup. If this were truly a "brain chemistry" problem causing them to "feel" like a female, then why do none of them wear shorts, t-shirts, sneakers and go sans makeup, like about half the women I see, including me? Instead, like a single organism they take on the most extreme, stereotyped expression of female. Ironically, from what I've observed most of them are even more physically aggressive than the average male.
It was hard for me to understand what you were stating so yes I attempted to interpret it.
As for males that dress as females, I suppose they take the more obvious means of expression to impress upon others their “femaleness” even if they are not necessarily most comfortable in that skin either. But who knows. That is for psychologists to figure out.
Nope, thanks
There is variation between traits where men and women differ. In every case I am aware of, it is a bimodal distribution (often overlapping).
"Gender" is just a proto-religious way to describe this phenomenon to people who are so mathematically and scientifically illiterate they shouldn't have even been granted a high school diploma.
The satanic religion of equality
Equity
So would it be wrong to include Sapolsky in a college biology course?
Sapolsky is pretty shockingly dumb. And/or naïve, and/or completely bought and sold.
Who rlly knows which.
Not if the objective is to introduce sophistry, no. If the point is to say that variation will result in a small number of men being effeminate and a small number of women to be masculine, still no, as this is irrelevant to most biology, and certainly introductory biology.
And psychology