Hey everyone.
Welcome back to my channel.
If you’ve ever had a discussion about gender
identity, you’ve probably heard someone
say “There are only two genders.
It’s basic biology.”
What they mean is that certain biological
characteristics determine gender and that
these gender categories are so rigid that
they exclude the possibility that trans and
non-binary people exist.
When people provide evidence for the idea
that there are only two genders,
they often cite introductory science textbooks.
When I see people doing this,
I’m pretty sure that their main goal is not
to make an argument, but rather their goal
is to belittle their opponent.
Occasionally though, you’ll meet people who
earnestly say “I don’t understand this
whole idea of being transgender.
In elementary school, we all learned that boys have XY chromosomes and girls have XX chromosomes.
I thought that that's basic biology.
Can you explain this stuff to me?”
If you are one of those people, or if you're just somebody who wants to learn a new way to respond to that
question, this video is for you.
Now I’m not a trans person, so I can't
tell you, first-hand, what the trans experience is like.
But I am somebody who took those same
8th grade biology classes as you probably did.
And I'm somebody who learned to rethink gender during my adult life.
I'm also someone who has some teaching experience,
so when I see people cite elementary
school textbooks, it makes me think that they don’t understand what the purpose of those textbooks is.
So today I want to take a closer look at the way we teach students about sex and gender.
To show the error of the slogan “There are
only two genders.
It’s basic biology,” I’m gonna make
two big points.
Point 1: Elementary school textbooks contain
intentional lies
Now you might be thinking lies in textbooks?
For children? You must be kidding.
This might surprise you at first, but it actually
makes a lot of sense.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this,
but children don’t know anything.
So teachers have to slowly guide children to knowledge,
sometimes, by stretching the truth or by oversimplifying things.
In teaching, this technique is sometimes called
a “lie to children,” or a “useful fiction,”
and you are probably familiar with quite a few examples.
For instance, the Bohr model of the atom is
partly a lie.
For 8th graders, it gives you a basic idea
of what an atom is like, but when you get
beyond 8th grade, you'll learn that it's a caricature.
Electrons don’t whizz around the nucleus of an atom like planets around the sun.
That would be too perfect of a coincidence.
But it's a nice analogy to help people who don't know about atomic physics yet.
A well written textbook will avoid explicitly stating a lie.
A good author will say something that's technically true, but just incomplete
For example, some math textbooks will say that when you take the square root of a negative number
There's no solution.
Carefully written textbooks will say that there's no real solution
anticipating the rest of your education.
In algebra II, you'll learn that there is a solution
But it's not a real number, it's an imaginary number.
Now some examples of lying to children in class are not so innocent.
Your teacher might have told you that Columbus discovered America.
But we know that that's a harmful lie
because it frames Columbus as a heroic explorer, instead of as somebody who committed genocide.
By the way, America wasn't really discovered by anyone because there were people already living here.
And anyway, Leif Erikson beat Columbus to the punch by like 500 years.
Lies to children are meant to be built upon later, so if they ingrain a harmful idea
They're not really serving their purpose.
Now back to the main point.
Elementary school textbooks will often say “Boys are
born with XY chromosomes and girls are born
with XX chromosomes.”
But the textbook isn’t stating an immutable
truth of biology.
It’s oversimplifying, because teaching kids
about chromosomes is a nice introduction to teaching
them about reproduction.
If the student continues to study biology, they’ll eventually learn about intersex traits and
the psychological and social phenomena
of gender as well as the physical, but still murky,
concept of sex.
So when someone says “There's only two
genders.
It’s basic biology,” you could say “Yeah,
I guess that is sometimes taught in basic
biology, but that’s biology made simple,
you know, for children.”
Elementary school science textbooks are not
meant to present truths beyond all doubt;
they are meant to give student the first rung of a ladder that they can climb to attain higher knowledge.
Once they've attained higher
knowledge, they might even kick that ladder away
because they don't need it anymore
Now if you're interested in learning some advanced biology,
I'd recommend checking out Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social
World by Anne Fausto-Sterling or you can read one of the many essays by Julia Serano, a biologist who
also happens to be a trans person.
But you might say “Wait. Isn’t it bad that we
don’t teach young students about the complexities
of sex and gender?
Maybe oversimplifications about gender are some of those harmful lies that we talked about earlier.
What if there are students in the
class who are intersex?
Or students in the class who
are questioning their gender identity?
Shouldn’t they get to learn about the modern-day
scientific consensus about sex and gender?”
And I’d actually agree with you.
Which brings me to point 2
Elementary school science textbooks
require revision
I frankly think it's embarrassing to cite an elementary
school science textbook in an argument with an adult.
However, there is a deeper underlying point
to the appeal to elementary school.
When people say “There are only two genders.
It’s basic biology,” they are saying
that the basics can’t change.
And when the basics do change, the same people
perceive that as a hostile takeover.
They might even accuse scientists of altering
the truth in order to seem nice.
Now I don't like what this objection implies
because in my opinion, being nice is good, actually.
But the scientific content of elementary school textbooks doesn’t change merely because the scientists
wanna seem nice.
Textbooks change when the scientific community
learns new things and decides how best to
communicate those things.
They don’t change just because the libs
complained.
Interestingly, it’s often conservatives
who want to change science textbooks to match
their personal beliefs.
I'm referring to the conservative push to get creationism taught alongside evolution
And I’m referring to Kitzmiller v. The Dover
Area School District, a court case from the
mid-2000s.
The Dover school board wanted to assign students
a biology textbook that taught intelligent
design, a theory that nature is so well-designed that it must have been created by an intelligent
being, like God.
The school board was trying to argue in court
that intelligent design was just as scientific as the theory of evolution, and they cited numerous people with PhDs
So, was intelligent design actual science?
Well that's a very hard thing for a court
to decide.
Luckily, they didn’t have to theorize some
philosophical definition of science.
Instead, the idea that intelligent design
was science was debunked by expert witnesses,
like Kenneth Miller.
If you ever took AP or college biology, you
may have actually used one of Miller’s intro
textbooks.
Miller argued that the theory of intelligent
design was based ideas, like “irreducible
complexity,” ideas that are not accepted by the scientific community and that are popularized
by creationists.
Unable to refute Miller’s points,
Dover lost the court case.
Intelligent design is not science,
but rather cleverly disguised religion that doesn't below in textbooks
Miller is a Catholic and he doesn't see any
contradiction between believing
in God and believing in science.
To me, that guy is kind of a role model.
Not because I agree with his religious views,
but because I respect his commitment to reasoning
through things.
I’m sure he was raised with very
traditional religious views, but he revised his
beliefs when he encountered new evidence.
And he encountered new evidence because he
was curious.
I hope that one day elementary school science textbooks are revised to explain the biology
of sex and gender in a way that includes trans and non-binary people.
But even then, there will probably be oversimplifications.
So, at the end of the day, you're probably going to have to teach yourself a bit about these things,
and you're going to have to learn from others as well.
New ideas about gender might seem counterintuitive
at first, but that's part of the learning process
Over time, you might look back on your old beliefs as the ones that are counterintuitive.
Learning is supposed to be a lifelong process.
And if you're brave enough, you might learn
something about yourself along the way.
Of course, this advice is just for those of you who are curious.
Whether you care to learn or not, you should
respect the rights of trans and non-binary
people and try your best to see that those
rights are protected.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if all of us
fully understand the biology of sex and gender.
Trans and non-binary are already part of our communities, and their existence doesn't
depend on what a science textbook says.
So, I say we learn more about the problems these communities faces and see if
we can help.
That might require us to relearn some things that we learned as a kid.
But mostly it just requires having an open mind and a willingness to change it.
Thanks for watching.
I’ll see you next time.
