What's Makes A Man/Woman?

[Terminal Blue]

Not that universities will allow you to study this phenomenon!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-41385299

They will.

There are so many things wrong with that research proposal and the way it's been reported as "political correctness gone mad" is absurd (and signals how out of touch journalists are with the basics of academia).

For one, the guy is doing a masters degree, in other words a one year full time degree with a few months of that time dedicated to a piece of research. By contrast, a piece of PhD research usually takes 3 years of continuous full time work.

Secondly, it's an incredibly ethically challenging area because of the vulnerability of research subjects. An MSc candidate does not have the time (or probably the experience) to properly account for those ethical problems, particularly when it's not even clear that the researcher can find subjects willing to talk to them.

Universities will bat for research which is actually significant. This is not one of those, it's some random conservative Jungian with a glorified counselling job and no actual research experience trying to push a transparent political agenda in hopes of advancing their own career through manufactured controversy at the expense of their institution and its reputation. The institution has an obligation to protect itself in those cases.

This research would not have changed the world. It would not have advanced the scope of human knowledge, at absolute best it would have been a proof of concept for an actually useful piece of PhD level research later, more likely it would have just been a hastily cobbled together mess with perhaps a couple of interviews at most and a bunch of really shoddy analysis to try and make it seem more relevant than it actually is.

 

[QuiteEnjoyed2016]

Not that universities will allow you to study this phenomenon!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-41385299

They will.

There are so many things wrong with that research proposal and the way it's been reported as "political correctness gone mad" is absurd (and signals how out of touch journalists are with the basics of academia).

For one, the guy is doing a masters degree, in other words a one year full time degree with a few months of that time dedicated to a piece of research. By contrast, a piece of PhD research usually takes 3 years of continuous full time work.

Secondly, it's an incredibly ethically challenging area because of the vulnerability of research subjects. An MSc candidate does not have the time (or probably the experience) to properly account for those ethical problems, particularly when it's not even clear that the researcher can find subjects willing to talk to them.

Universities will bat for research which is actually significant. This is not one of those, it's some random Jungian with a glorified counselling job and no actual research experience trying to push a transparent political agenda in hopes of advancing their own career through manufactured controversy at the expense of their institution and its reputation. The institution has an obligation to protect itself in those cases.

This research would not have changed the world. It would not have advanced the scope of human knowledge, at absolute best it would have been a proof of concept for an actually useful piece of PhD level research later, more likely it would have just been a hastily cobbled together mess trying to draw society-wide conclusions from a couple of interviews with individuals.

Yes, I guess if you ignore the blatant political bias of the university's decision and the craven deference to the Twitter sphere, accuse journalists of "not understanding" for reporting it, pompously mock the researcher, claim the area is too difficult and the subject to vulnerable for any inquiry, you can probably reconcile this suppression of research with your own personal prejudices and feel convinced it's not a deeply ominous decision.

Be interesting to see how you'd react if the same chap had a study regarding the life affirmation and happiness people felt after gender reassignment blocked.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Be interesting to see how you'd react if the same chap had a study regarding the life affirmation and happiness people felt after gender reassignment blocked.

I wouldn't care.

I have an MSc myself, which means I've done masters level research. It's nothing. It's absolutely meaningless save as a means of developing skills which may be put towards a PhD, which nine times out of ten is still meaningless but which may provide the basis for a book or actual serious piece of postdoctoral research down the line, which may matter to someone, but probably won't.

Also, I haven't met James Caspian personally, but I have come up against some of his influences and "friends", and I know the kind of circles he moves in quite intimately. If you want to talk about political bias, maybe we should talk about how someone whose job is to work with trans people (ostensibly for their own benefit) can openly describe SRS as self-mutilation and engage in conspiracy theories about how medical industries promote "transgenderism".

More generally, I will agree that academia is a prejudiced environment. It's designed to be a prejudiced environment. You don't get to walk into a class on evolutionary theory and rant about Noahs ark. You don't get to walk into a class on black history and ask the "valid question" of whether black people are human beings or not. Academia is not a place in which all opinions are equal or where there is an obligation to congratulate all points of view. Sometimes people are just idiots asking stupid questions which, if they had bothered to read or engage with the knowledge that already exists, they wouldn't need to ask.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I think you are making a massive strawman here, in no sane way is the subject close to "blacks are not humanz" or bible stories. And if the university responses of "it might cause criticism on social media" or "engaging in a potentially politically incorrect piece of research carries a risk to the university." are true then I fear for the future of human advancement.

Again, all of this is based on the premise that we're talking about an actual piece of noteworthy research. We aren't. We're talking about a masters dissertation, which is not a suitable place for tackling any kind of sensitive or controversial topic. It's baby's first research project. It's a simple test of a student's basic research skills, a student who will likely be associated with an institution for only a few months. Recognising the limits of what is possible or practical within that format is actually one of the skills being tested.

I've seen institutions go to the wall to defend their researchers but the university needs to be getting something back. Postdoctoral academics are worth defending because they add prestige to their institution. PhD students are worth defending to a degree because they are investments which may later add prestige to their institution when their PhD is published. Masters students are there to learn basic research skills and become conversant in their discipline. They are not advancing knowledge, because there isn't time in a one year course to do that. There isn't time to produce a piece of research which is worth anyone's time.

Furthermore, the story is openly misrepresentative because Caspian immediately went crying to the press without waiting for an internal investigation to conclude, meaning the university couldn't comment because it was still conducting its own internal investigation. This allowed him to misrepresent the issue as being primarily about "political correctness", when actually the potential damage to the institution was only one of several issues with his research. The primary reason it was rejected was that it wasn't suitable for a masters dissertation. The second most important reason was that there were huge ethical problems which had been pointed out to Caspian but which he hadn't addressed despite changing his proposal.

1) It might save people's life.

Not really, because noone of any significance will listen to a Masters dissertation.

Also, if this guy was remotely interested in saving people's lives, he wouldn't be hanging out with the transgender equivalent of gay conversation therapy practitioners.

2) If it is done incorrectly it will be easy to point out through the methods used in tha paper.

They already did. They pointed out the problems with the proposal, and the guy went crying to the media about political correctness. Research can be misrepresented, it's misrepresented all the time and sometimes the only reason research exists is to be misrepresented. This is why universities have a responsibility to judge the appropriateness of research, especially when it's being done by very early career researchers or students without any research experience.

Just because experts in a field can spot problems with a piece of research, doesn't mean everyone can.

 

[Finis Rerum]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Can you find the University's official response (since I can't find anything excpet news sites reporting on the issues)? Especially if it still references things like "criticism on social media" or "political incorrectness" which should NEVER be a part of a university's goals and if they are they should be renamed "ministery of truth".

The university hasn't responded yet (and probably never will, because universities aren't in the habit of crying to the media) but the concerns about criticism on social media came from the rejection form from the ethics committee. It's not publicly available (because James Caspian hasn't made it publicly available) but again, I'm only a few degrees of separation from this guy.

He came up with a proposal which is totally, totally unsuitable for Masters level research. Resubmitted it several times with slight changes to try and get around the ethics board, and ultimately failed. Then instead of learning a lesson, he went to the media crying about how a single line in his rejection letter mentioned the risk of damage to the universities' reputation, which is a valid concern and something every ethics board has to consider.

But even if I didn't know that, I'm pretty sure everyone who has worked in a university has met someone like this. They're old, they're white, they're usually male, they're doing a degree because they think it will boost their established career or for some unknown, vanity related reason, and they have real issues respecting the "taught" part of a taught degree. They expect to be treated like serious academics and authorities within their field when they haven't earned the right to be treated like serious academics, let alone authorities within their field, and then when they make basic mistakes because (whatever they've deluded themselves) they're not serious academics they adamantly refuse to accept it was their fault, even when they were warned many times and given many, many opportunities to avoid those basic mistakes.

Everyone has to go through an ethics board. I have friends who did research in Iraq and Kurdistan who got through an ethics board. I have a friend who researched paedophilic fantasies among gay men and who got through an ethics board. I have friends working with multiple rape survivors who got through an ethics board. I've only even known one person who got rejected by an ethics board, and it's because they didn't listen to what their supervisor had already told them several times.

Oh yeah, people who are statistically more likely to commit suicide doing life changing surgeries won't consider in any way looking if someone researched if they'll regret it.

They won't check to see if a Masters student has researched it, because noone publishes Masters dissertations (except vanity publishers, but they'll publish anything if you've got the cash, it doesn't mean anyone will find it or it will end up in libraries). It can take years just to edit a PhD for publication. It's not a trivial thing.

This guy could have written some garbage about his professional experience and published it in a non peer reviewed or private journal somewhere, and it at least might have ended up searchable on the internet. But that wouldn't have the legitimacy of institutional affiliation.

Also, if the people this guy was proposing to use as research subjects are reluctant to talk to him because they're too distressed, do you not think there might be a risk of immediate harm to them through their involvement in the research? Do you think that risk is something a novice researcher with no experience and no time to seriously study research methodology for working with vulnerable subjects should be taking on?

Also besides the fact I have nothing on your word that the guy is labour style closet transphobic are you against radical feminists doing papers on gender issues?

Nope. Not if they're qualified and the research they're doing is well thought out and appropriate to their experience and available time.

But I don't think they have the right to claim the legitimacy of institutional affiliation without some degree of institutional oversight.

So instead of a minor paper no one cares about (and if it is true and well researched might have potentially follow up on it) and is likely to easiely be proven wrong we have a huge media circus about universities banning research paths, that's an improvement.

Are you suggesting that universities should make decisions based on the risk of media criticism? Should we assume that every student will go blubbing to the press about political correctness gone mad whenever an institutional decision doesn't go their way.

I mean, they could have let him go ahead and just failed him for the mess they got back at the end, but that seems unnecessarily cruel and actually quite negligent of an ethics board.

 

[09philj]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

You do know that it's possible to have both a Y chromosome and a natural vagina, right?

 

[Mr Companion]

A man is pride, power, stoicism, independence, recklessness, lust
A woman is tenacity, wisdom, control, soul, willpower, caution, creation

I've always enjoyed being a man so I can't comment on being trans but I'd recommend picking the traits you like from either.

 

[Silvanus]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

This isn't even true from a biological perspective, even if we put aside everything else. There is no perspective from which this is true.

It staggers me how people can speak with such certainty, and lay out a simplistic binary, even when it flies in the face of the biological science to which they are referring.

 

[09philj]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

This isn't even true from a biological perspective, even if we put aside everything else. There is no perspective from which this is true.

It staggers me how people can speak with such certainty, and lay out a simplistic binary, even when it flies in the face of the biological science to which they are referring.

Anyone who did any kind of science experiments at school should know that what works in theory often doesn't work in practice.

 

[Finis Rerum]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

You do know that it's possible to have both a Y chromosome and a natural vagina, right?

Yes, and we call those people intersex. But that wasn't the question.

 

[09philj]

XX and XY chromosones. If you were born as a male then you will never be a female and vice versa, regardless of how you feel about it.

You do know that it's possible to have both a Y chromosome and a natural vagina, right?

Yes, and we call those people intersex. But that wasn't the question.

I can't be bothered to rewrite my crash course in prenatal development from earlier, so here it is again.

Ah genetics, genetics. So fascinating, so complex, so imperfect. Within every cell lies all the information needed to create a being that is largely, if not entirely, unlike you. Conception is not the end point in the creation of a human being. It's the start of a long and messy process, filled with opportunities for things to drastically deviate from what their DNA says they should be. In this particular case, of interest to us is precisely how a person comes to acquire a male reproductive system, or lack thereof, and a generally masculine brain to go with it. Neither of these things develop without an external trigger, which comes in the a mixture of a few different androgenic hormones which are released to every foetus in the uterus. In normal development, a foetus with XX chromosomes will not be sensitive to the hormones and develop a female reproductive system, and all the other relevant physical traits, and a generally feminine brain. A foetus with XY chromosomes, on the other hand, will be sensitive to the hormones and will get a male reproductive system and brain. This is, of course, merely an idealised view of development. In practice, a small minority of foetuses, for one reason or another, often an abnormal X or Y chromosome, don't respond to a hormone they should, or do respond to a hormone they shouldn't. This goes some way to explaining why some people are trans (and intersex), although it's only a factor, and there are many other things both in and out of the womb that can influence a person's identity. Talking about the human brain in terms of genetics is reductive and unhelpful, as is any such notion of a "true" man or woman. There is more to being a man or woman than being male or female.

Basically, there's more to gender than "a feeling", it's more fundamental than that. We can't entirely transplant the reproductive system (yet), but we can reshape the body into something that an individual feels more comfortable with, and that is the real point; to make an individual as happy as possible.

 

[Silvanus]

Yes, and we call those people intersex. But that wasn't the question.

This is simply factually incorrect. Psychology and law aside, it's scientifically wrong, even if we're talking about biological sex. You don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Signa]

Your ideas of gender are your own, and for you to decide how to define. I couldn't even tell you what I think makes me a man, but I know I'm a man. If the gear between your legs isn't enough to prove to yourself what you are, then you should get a DNA test done to make sure you're not intersex. If that's not enough, then just remember that whatever you feel is in your head, and it's up to you to figure out how much that actually matters to you to display externally. Just remember, people will treat you as what they see from you, so if they see a man, they will treat you like a man. If they see a man in woman's clothing, they will treat you like that. If you're comfortable with that for your own expression, that's great! I just ask that you don't require others to conform to what is in your head, as I have seen so much of lately. Your head is you, not me.

 

[Silvanus]

Your head is you, not me.

By the same token, your perception is you, not the truth. It's valid for somebody to correct somebody else if they're mistaken in how they've perceived something.

 

[Terminal Blue]

If he lied I want a proof he lied, which should be in no short supply rather than heresay.

You can want what you want. There is never going to be any "proof" of anything, because all we have to go on is a single student crying to the media when they didn't get their way. Institutions are not going to stoop to the same level of unprofessional conduct just to soothe your anxieties.

And there's a difference between lying and misrepresenting. Lying is when I say something which didn't happen. Misrepresenting is when I infer something which didn't happen by carefully wording things that did happen. I have no doubt that the ethics committee expressed concern over damage to the institution's reputation, because that is one of the things an ethics committee exists to weigh up. However, the intention is very clearly to give a misleading impression that this was the primary motivation and that what is at stake here is some kind of political suppression of important research rather than a student proposing to do highly inappropriate masters dissertation and being rightly picked up by an ethics committee for it.

Heck, I've seen numerous news outlets describe him as an "academic", which kind of illustrates how grossly out of line with reality the narrative is.

If what he did had merit he could have continued it further from master's level or encouraged other organizations to deal with an issue, if what he done would have made no effect then why are they so afraid of its effects and if he was stopped by the ethics commitee from where the "social media" explanation came from?

1) Because he would have fucked up his degree, and thus the university would be failing him by letting him continue.
2) Because his research could have caused emotional or psychological harm to its participants, which he was not equipped with the research skills or the time to avoid.
3) Because any backlash could have caused damage to the institution while contributing nothing of value to it. It would have an entirely negative impact from their perspective.

Everything you say he could have done, he can still do. Heck, there are people with actual PhDs who are making the same argument he was intending to make. The reason they aren't doing the research (although I know some have written on this topic before) is because actually doing research is a big deal, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to do it properly and most people advancing this kind of argument aren't fundamentally very interested in trans issues, it's just a convenient outlet for their conservative views.

If Caspian was really so deeply motivated by this one conversation he had with a surgeon (because that's the basis of his argument, he spoke to a surgeon once) that he really, really wants to do the research, he still can. All he needs to do is finish his taught degree, actually learn what they're trying to teach him and then apply to do a PhD and see if he can find a supervisor willing to accept it. Of course, he'll still have to face an ethics board again but hopefully by then he will have learned enough and have a better proposal. Then he can spend 3-6 years of his life working on this, which is what it actually takes to turn out a good piece of research.

And the institutional oversight is behind a thought paywall.

Yes, welcome to Earth. I'm sorry to inform you that the "knowledge economy" is exactly like all other sectors of the economy, meaning you don't have a magic and special right to speak freely. Noone's interested in your super important special personal thoughts, that's what your blog (or god forbid, your twitter account) is for. In academia, you have to go through the process if you want to speak or to have a voice. Freedom of speech is not an academic value and never has been, which is why these conversations never involve the "free speech" of actual academics. Academics know that their jobs are not licenses to blurt out whatever thought comes into their head, but are contingent on the quality and relevance of their speech, as well as the procedural correctness of how it is conducted. These are skills acquired over many years of specialised training, and even that training is no guarantee that a person will actually be able to work or speak in an academic environment. It depends largely on whether an institution sees them as enough of an asset to take on.

It's only non-academics who assume that academia has to be some kind of groovy free-association space where everything goes.

Also if I read it right the university in question recieves funding from the UK government so it's definitely the public's right to know.

Nope. In this case it's the individual's right to disclose, which he did. The issue is that he did so in a highly manipulative way which accords the university no option to respond, and without waiting for internal procedures to run their course.

But this is exactly why universities seek to avoid damage to their reputations, because trials by media are very seldom fair or balanced.