...at Harvard (or anywhere else), doesn't work. Larry Summers is resigning:

I've been disappointed by Summers' repeated apologies for raising legitimate intellectual questions in a fair and respectful way. I consoled myself with the thought that, if Summers remained in place, he might ultimately do more for reform than he might have by standing up for principle. Now even this second-best consolation is gone, making it all the more obvious that Summers ought to have stood up to the Harvard's dictators from the start, even if it cost him his job. Now Summers must either remain silent, or hit back and implicitly acknowledge that all those apologies were bogus.

There are two separate issues here. The first, and most important, is that of freedom of academic expression in Universities.

But I'm not going to address that.

I'm going to address the secondary topic, what Larry Summers actually said.

That there are inate differences between men as a group, and women as a group, and that although individuals differ, as a whole these differences may, I repeat may, account for gender imbalance in academic areas.

Depite dynamic MRI scans showing that male brains and female brains actually use different structures to process the same tasks, despite differences found in the size of equivalent structures during autopsies, despite a wealth of pyschological tests that show that guys and gals as a whole think differently, there is a political and ideological push to assert that men and women are not just equal, they are identical, and any gender imbalance anywhere is the result of masculinist oppression.

Such a reality-challenged evidence-ignoring attitude might be harmless in the main, but as we've seen, the philosophy that facts are meaningless and ignorable if inconvenient has infiltrated even into the most exalted seats of learning, and the consequences aren't just limited to one academic resignation, and a career blighted.

Now the crunch, where I get up on my soap-box.

This is killing people. Sounds extreme? Over-the-top? A bit "reality-challenged"? Yes, it does. But it's true.

Any transsexual, someone born with a female body but a msotly male pattern brain, or a male body with a mostly female pattern brain, can testify from personal experience just how much the two sexes differ in their way of thinking.

Such people are victims of Intersex. All other sexually dimorphic structures (obviously genitalia, but there's more) are subject to Intersex with a rate on the order of 1 in 10,000.

The brain is sexually dimorphic, the genitalia is constructed in the middle of the first trimester, the neural system at the end of it. It doesn't take much, a slight glitch in hormone levels, and a human being that is genitically female, with female genitalia, ends up being a guy.

It's not quite that simple of course: gender folows a bimodal distribution, it's not strictly binary. Theer are plenty of men who have some classically female personality traits and talents due to incomplete masculinisation during gestation, yet they're still male, and identify as such. Individuals differ anyway, some women with totally feminised brains still are good at visio-spatial relationships, just not nearly as good as they would be if their brains were masculinised.

It's in the hardware, not the sociological programming.

Now why do I say it's killing people? One study in the UK showed that 50% of TS people were dead before 30. This condition, with a male blood chemistry driving a female pattern brain, or the reverse, is horribly debilitating.

Neurotranmitters are mismatched clinical depression at a dangerous level is universal, and conventional antidepressants are inneffective.

When the base of the brain is Intersexed, the victim has constant body dysmorphia, the body's the wrong shape, things don't move the way instinct says they should.

But there's little or no research in this area to help these people, about 1 in 3500 as a *lower* limit according to Professor Emerita Lynn Conway.

They continue to die in droves, because so many on the Left have a vested interest in the "Nurture vs Nature" argument. And, it must be said, because so many on the Right see TS people as freaks, and perverts who are out to destroy societal norms.

They're just sufferers of a relatively minor developmental anomaly, more common even than having a hair lip or cleft palate, and even more devastating psychologically if untreated. But there's essntially no medical investigation of the causes, and diagnosis remains problematic.

Such people continue to be murdered just for who they are, or have their employment terminated simply because they're "sicko freaks", or denied access to their children, or any of a number of other pesrecutions, many literally fatal.

Some activists are attempting to get this changed, going the left-liberal legislative route. I just want to try to educate a few influential people on the right, or at least, to pique their curiousity enough so that they'll do the research themselves and verify what I'm claiming.

Sorrym trying to convince a woman to unload her pistol rather than fire it into her mouth is pretty wearing, I've had to do this twice this month. Once for an A-10 pilot in Gulf War I, decorated, who now is forced by a Texas Court to cross-dress as a man if she wants to see her son. Once for a woman whose 15-year marriage to the love of her life has terminated.

These women should have had treatment at age 15, not age 45. It's a bit late for them, but not too late for many girls in boy bodies, or boys in girl bodies, just growing up today.

Apologies for the rant, it's just that one day, I know I'll lose one.

interesting comments. you are probably mostly right, though its hard to know for sure given the complexity of the subject. i tend to think "sociological programming" is responsible for more than is obvious, and i think that it is at least partially responsible for differences in personality etc.

this is a (free) radio program about testosterone, and what happened to different people when their levels changed. whether or not its related, its interesting:
http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/02/220.html
its been a while since i listened to it, but i seem to remember the woman who took massive amounts of testosterone to live as a man experienced a noticeable rise in his interest in science.

Hm. I have known quite a few women who were interested in science, to the extent of purusing degrees in the subject. I was one of them once upon a time. (However, I have a more typical female Barbie mind - eg,. "math is hard" -- so that went nowhere.) I also seemed to collect male friends who were almost totally useless in the mechanical area, not being able to do such supposedly male things as drive a stick shift. (And no, I can't either.)

On the other hand, I don't have the time or the inclination to sort interests by peepees. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with a general view that mens are mens and womens are womens, but I still don't understand why the Lifetime channel has an audience at all.

Amen on the Lifetime Channel, Andrea! (Or should I say "A-womyn"? ;-p)

I did get a science degree. Never used it; just wanted it.

Through my life I've worked in several different fields, but my science background has helped in each.

BTW, as far as math goes, I'm just shy of being dysnumeric, but I managed to get my degree. It just takes more work (and someone who's a good tutor at math), and the desire.

I, too, have known a lot of men who were not mechanically inclined. (One didn't know how to jumpstart a car, for pete's sake; another apparently couldn't tell which gauge on the car was for the gas.) I'm pretty good mechanically (no talent, just hard work and study as an adult so I could take care of myself), but would prefer to hire it out whenever possible. Some people admire lawyers; I admire plum bers. [excuse the space; the site wouldn't let me post the full word]

Oh, yeah - and I can drive a stick shift. :-D But I'm glad I learned that first; I can't imagine how hard it would be if you first learned on an automatic.

I guess this is a wordy way of saying damn straight men and women are different! And thank goodness for it. ;-p

I've had to become something of an expert in the subject, though there's still so much I don't know.

I have a rare (~ 1 in 3 million) form of Intersex. Until May 2005 I thought I was just a standard, common-or-garden TS woman, stuck in a male body, but able to cope reasonably well. In fact, I saw myself as a slightly weird Male who had a harmless delusion that he really should have been born female, but it didn't cause me any problems.

Then my body started feminising rapidly, for causes still unclear. I had grossly abnormal hormone levels, just slightly closer to female norm than male norm, but nowhere near enough to cause the drastic changes.

Feminising Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) ended up *lowering* my blood oestrogen content, instead of 50 -> 350 ( normal male to mildly feminising ), I went from 195 -> 185 pMol/L. Fascinating, but my endocrine system is obviously very non-standard.

Anyway, I've had to transition from a male to a female social role in months rather than years. Which has been hideously embarressing, quite hilarious, and a financial and social catastrophe.

The learning curve has been fairly steep, but having a body that fits my mind is such a wonderful relief, it's something of a miracle, despite the inconvenience.

There's so much about this we don't know. My syndrome has been recorded several times before, but there's nothing in PubMed on it, and there's a severe credibility issue that makes life quite difficult. The trouble is, it's so rare that limited research funding would be better spent elsewhere.

Anything to do with research on Intersex and Transsex issues seems to be so embarressing and controversial that nothing much is being done. Studies, where they exist, have sample sizes in single or double figures, at best. The standard rate of Transsex is usually quoted as 1 in 30,000, yet Prof Lyn Conway showed conclusively it had to be at least 1 in 3500, based on surgical records, *far* more prevalent than is commonly believed. But most who suffer from this and get treatment try to hide the fact.

Funny that. Can't think why. Oops, forgot the sarcasm tags.