For some time it has become increasingly clear that when progressives say “follow the science,” they have already done everything in their power to ensure the outcome. The scientific field of embryology, for example, is almost entirely ignored – but despite the iron-clad consensus on when human life begins, it is easy for media outlets to procure a scientist to insist that a baby’s heartbeat is actually “fetal pole cardiac activity.” As was the case in the Soviet Union and other ideological regimes, the pursuit of science is, more and more, controlled by ideologues.
This is a key reason I have my concerns with the optimistic argument that because the transgender movement’s agenda is so at odds with science, gender ideology has an expiration date. Eventually, the argument goes, there will be a head-on collision between trans activists and scientists, at which point the house of cards will crumble and we will resume some semblance of sanity. That, however, assumes, that scientists will not succumb – for whatever reason – to gender ideology. Consider, for example, noted science explainer Neil deGrasse Tyson’s slippery responses to Ben Shapiro on the issue – a master class of obfuscation.
Indeed, I suspect we’re more likely to see woke scientists spearhead an effort to change the language and change the facts to suit the ideological narrative just as they have, to a large extent, with abortion. Some members of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Language Project, founded by Canadian and American scientists, have already embarked on this project, advocating for a list of “harmful terminology” commonly used by scientists to be abandoned and replaced. Confronting usage of these “harmful” terms, they have stated, is a necessary response to the fact that “much of western science is rooted in colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy,” which “continue to permeate our scientific culture.”
Their call comes in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, with scientists from the University of British Columbia (UBC) as well as universities in Michigan, New Jersey, and California laying out their efforts to “champion inclusive language” to facilitate the “redressing of ongoing marginalization of many groups.” They list “top 24 harmful terms” as well as potential replacements. And surprise, surprise – “male” and “female” are terms these luminaries believe we should dispense with, replacing them with “sperm-producing” and “egg-producing” or “XY/XX individual instead” to avoid enforcing “societally-imposed ideas of a sex binary.”
