This post relates to my previous article, A Belief is Not a Fact, and, it illustrates the points that I was making then.
A young female student at Rye College in East Sussex was subjected to verbal abuse from a teacher that included her being referred to as ‘despicable’ for voicing a contrary opinion in a ‘life education’ class after another student claimed that they identified as a cat! A more comprehensive report of the incident can be found at link 1 below. The recording of the exchange made between the teacher and the student is at link 2 below.
This incident raises several worrying concerns for me. It would appear that the classroom is not a place where rational debates between students, chaired by a teacher, can be expected to be conducted anymore. Quite clearly, the teacher cannot countenance someone, irrespective of age, challenging her view. This is not a form of censorship, it is an act of intolerance on her part.
The use of sex and gender as terms is not a settled argument. Sex refers to the two primary biological forms of a species, those being male and female, and gender is more commonly used in relation to behavioural, cultural, and psychological traits associated with the fact of being either male or female. This is the definition used by people who study gender and sexuality; it makes no room for people who identify as a totally different animal species.
As previously stated in A Belief is Not a Fact I have no problem with people identifying as anything that they wish to, as long as they do not try to enforce their belief on me. I am also unsympathetic if this truth hurts someone who claims a validity to a belief that is unsupported by credible evidence. I would argue that at the heart of both the the subject and the incident reported above is a delusion of the true definition of gender. It is delusional in the sense that it is both falsely believed, not being supported by any evidence, and propagated, as by people in positions of influence like the teacher. Psychology defines delusion as: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. The girl who thinks she is a cat is delusional because she is a human being, not a feline, as evidenced by her physiology and anatomy. Her belief is not a fact and her opinion is illogical and therefore should not be treated as an inalienable truth.
We live in times where some people appear to be trying to ringfence certain subjects so that they cannot be discussed properly or subjected to reasoned arguments. This is a characteristic attribute of intolerance. We have seen it in subjects such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. It should be challenged at every opportunity. As Richard Feynman said: I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.
Links:
Peter C Whitaker 