Hi Nicholas:
Your email is addressed to a "Michael."  However, I do not recall responding to the sex and gender issue. One reason is that the last few days have been very busy for me, and I have had to triage my email responses, indeed, readings. 
Did you mean another Michael? I am Kazanjian. Maybe there is another Michael with TOK.  
Best,Michael M. Kazanjian
    On Tuesday, May 18, 2021, 06:52:36 PM CDT, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:  
 
 CAUTION:This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.Michael,
Thank you for your insightful comments. While I cannot respond in depth at this time a few points stood out to me. 
1. Yes my use of the word totally was far to absolutist, though gender is readily considered fluid, as it should be minimally from the perspective that it is part of one's development and can change very drastically throughout one's development, though for many is largely stable. 
2. Following, gender is not independent of biology for exactly the reasons you say, predominantly epigenetic processes. However it absolutely is an emergent property of identity in Culture, as it cannot be reduced to biology or sex, but includes and transcends them as Culture does Mind and Life. 
3. As I noted, historically gender and sex are intertwined, but I am of the belief that that to allow gender to be rooted in sex is a somewhat dangerous and simplistic, outdated view of gender, as I see gender identity pertaining far more to roles in a family system than it does to one's sex organs and hormone production, which at earlier stages in human cultural evolution were the easy distinctions upon which gender was built as a social construct (social constructs do have biological representations in the same way that values and morals do, they are epigenetically encoded and passed on through generations).
I am now realizing that in responding on my phone I am unable to go back to review your points so I won't make any additional clarifications/responses at this time. 
I will say that moving forward any serious scientific inquiry of gender as it pertains to sex and social roles need very careful examine its intentions. It is not hard to see that the majority of scientific exploration in this area is used to reduce gender to sex, and role to function, but they take on greater meanings in a world where woman have been historically overlooked in the sense that for most of cultural history they were deemed unable to do most of the work of men (e.g., war, manual labor, thinking and reading, leading peoples) on virtually no naturalistic empirical basis. 

Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
On Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:44 PM Diop, Corinne - diopcj <[log in to unmask]> wrote:



Hi all, 

 

While I support the professor’s right to say what he wants, it seems standard to acknowledge that intersex is a real thing. In fact, depending on what data is used it is statistically as prevalent as being a twin. 

 

There is an uptick in college-age students who identify as non-binary for a variety of reasons including-- there is now the realization that reactionary surgery to “fix” a baby isn’t a good idea; it is more socially acceptable to embrace and identify as intersex; there are statistically more intersex babies being born. 


 

Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic - 2018 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.scientificamerican.com_article_sex-2Dredefined-2Dthe-2Didea-2Dof-2D2-2Dsexes-2Dis-2Doverly-2Dsimplistic1_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Gx3Bu70EpP0re50T8QEvlxjUbLeKD4AUUxWiX4abZGw&s=HCB9123WecccsglbiO1sURjDNHywSgHUbqLUEkkmOxM&e=  

 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH – 2017 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.hrw.org_report_2017_07_25_i-2Dwant-2Dbe-2Dnature-2Dmade-2Dme_medically-2Dunnecessary-2Dsurgeries-2Dintersex-2Dchildren-2Dus-23&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Gx3Bu70EpP0re50T8QEvlxjUbLeKD4AUUxWiX4abZGw&s=h4p6UD7ndS_LznpPenLbri3rUV_HL5g9rUCypYukgq4&e= 




  

The Increasing Prevalence in Intersex Variation from Toxicological Dysregulation in Fetal Reproductive Tissue Differentiation and Development by Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals - 2016  

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov_pmc_articles_PMC5017538_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Gx3Bu70EpP0re50T8QEvlxjUbLeKD4AUUxWiX4abZGw&s=4wv6NNoBnB2nINfETkaqrxIliXJvPVRFEG2xkFzCfh8&e=   

  

Are hasty operations on intersex children becoming a thing of the past? - 2020https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.theguardian.com_lifeandstyle_2020_jul_14_intersex-2Dchildren-2Dhasty-2Doperations&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Gx3Bu70EpP0re50T8QEvlxjUbLeKD4AUUxWiX4abZGw&s=Py3tVVC3G0HTKGv_Ke57f-oUZH2E0UXGu55Dk2lgQIc&e=   

  




There is a movement to consider how language and labeling affect people, so the concept of DSD is changing from Disorders in Sex Development toDifferences in Sex Development.











 

I was super-busy during the week of Mother’s Day contributions so I hope this will count! 


(I work full time and usually cook dinner, but that is another story about assumed gender roles.)

 

Corinne 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2021 12:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: TOK Psychology Prof Removed From APA Discussion After Saying There Are Only 2 Genders (*Newsweek*) CAUTION:This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.Hi Nicholas and All:
I want to respond to the Staddon issue, the likes of which seems to be increasing over time.  You will recall that Staddon was ousted from a list serve for a posted entitled, "d "Hmm... Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?” 
Nicholas had a lot of thoughtful and passionate responses to this issue.  I want to reply as best as I can. Nicholas writes:

gender, on the other hand, is totally fluid, role depedent, and as such resides well within the Person-Culutre plane, whereas sex is in the Animal-Mind plane, that seems a fairly obvious distinction to me that no one argues.

The statement that “gender is totally fluid” is a strong one. But what does it mean? And is it true? What evidence exists to support this assertion?  What would it mean to say that gender is “totally fluid”?  Well, here’s one version: It must mean that there are no constraints on one’s gender identity, that it can change within individuals along a dimension (or not) according to…well, what? Whim? Circumstance?  If this is so, then why do I experience my gender identity as stable?  Why don’t I change it?  Doesn’t the stability of gender identity for man people suggest that any strong notion that “gender is totally fluid” cannot be true?  How can something be totally fluid, yet stable for many many people? 
It would seem that this assertion must be modified somewhat.  A more reasonable statement might be that gender is fluid — but not totally fluid. In making this seemingly minor adjustment, it becomes possible to see that there is both stability and variation in gender identity — both within and between people.  And when we make that observation, we can begin to ask: What accounts for the stability and variation?  
To address this question, we need a clear conception of what we mean by gender, a clear conception of the nature of the constraints that govern human development, and clear methods for assessing the sources of stability and variability.  In my view, the best contemporary models of human development are epigenetic ones — these maintain that anatomical and psychological structures emerge from the mutual influence of genes and embedded environments. That is — that genes and environments are inseparable as causal processes in development. They affect each other in complex ways. 
Note how prevailing concepts of gender — the ones that suggest that gender and sex are separate and independent processes — goes against the core of the epigenetic approach.  If it is true that anatomical and psychological structures emerge through the mutual influence of genes and environments, then there is not psychological process that is not a product of relations between genes and environment.  If this is so, it is simply incoherent to say that psychological or social gender is independent of biology or sex. 
But this is what is often asserted — that gender is “socially constructed” and sex is “biological”.  One doesn’t have to go very far to gain prima facie evidence that sex and gender are not independent — and thus that “gender” is not simply unconstrained and “totally” fluid.  That evidence is in the transgender experience itself. When very young children — 3 year-olds — begin to reject their assigned gender (mostly biological males, as I understand it), they do so very much against the social grain.  Against all social experience, they claim an opposing gender.  How could this be possible if gender were unconstrained, "totally fluid”, or independent of biology or biological sex? The very phenomenon of early-onset transgender experiences suggests that such experiences are not simply “socially constructed” (that terms remains undefined in most popular accounts).  The idea that a young child may experience the self in terms of a gender that is opposed to the assigned one even suggests that there is something constrained and biologically canalized about the experience and meaning of gender itself — otherwise, how could we even begin to explain such processes?
The moment one begins to look at the arguments and data on issues of gender from outside of an ideological perspective, one cannot help but see deep contradictions.   The idea that gender is socially constructed or totally fluid contradicts the early onset of stable transgender experiences.  We are told that gender is socially constructed, but that people are able to choose their own gender.  That is a contradiction.  We are told that gender is independent of sex, when modern epigenetic theory suggests that biology and environment are never independent processes — that is a contradiction.  We are told that gender and sex are distinct and independent, yet our very concepts of masculine and feminine have their social and historical origins in biological distinctions and dispositions. The literature that suggests that biological differences between XX and XY individuals bias psychological development to move along different pathways is overwhelming — as is the evidence attesting to the importance of the socio-cultural systems (within which biological processes function) in the development of gender-related processes.
The issue is more complex than any simple set of distinctions is going to suggest to us. We should resist reductive explanations — whether they reduce complex behavior downward to biology or upward to culture. 
My Best,
Mike

Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.Academic Director, Compass Program
Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
978.979.8745 (cell)

Bridging Political Divides Website: Creating Common Ground
Blog: Values Matter
Journal: Pedagogy and the Human Sciences
Author and Coaching Website: www.michaelmascolo.com
Academia Home Page 
Constructivist Meetup Series

Things move, persons act. -- Kenneth Burke
If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. -- Donald Hebb

On May 17, 2021, at 7:53 PM, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
CAUTION:This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.I mean, he had to be totally tone deaf to the current cultural climate to try and use science to argue something as fluid as gender. This issue is still too often conflated as to how many sexes and genders there are. Even in what you shared above there are references to mainly biological sex, which, scientifically speaking there are at least 4 or 5 of (even though they are mainly genetic abnormalities they are still regarded as separate sexes); gender, on the other hand, is totally fluid, role depedent, and as such resides well within the Person-Culutre plane, whereas sex is in the Animal-Mind plane, that seems a fairly obvious distinction to me that no one argues. 
Let us also keep in mind that he was only removed from a listserv, not a position, meaning that the consensus amongst his immediate peers was that they did not want to hear him speak on these points in such a manner, which he apparently had done one too many times. 
The way I see it, if someone wants to identify themselves as a male or a female or nonbinary or fluid, it doesn't concern me (literally, it is not a concern of mine to have). For all I care people can identify as (and I have met and worked with many who do) wolves, vampires, elves, etc., I honestly wouldn't take issue with people identifying as donut or a chair, why make it a big deal? This is a discussion of gender, which needs to be firmly disentangled from sex, as the two are really only related so closely through history with gender emerging from the roles those of the male or female sex were by and large stratified to in the same way that races and ethnicities have been.  Gender is so much more than that. If there is an issue to be had here, it is with the reasoning through which one tends to identify with particular genders or really the way they construct their identity to begin with. For example, I cannot tell you how many patients I have worked with who are so determined to have dissociative personality disorder, but who clearly do not (and I mean clearly - quoting movies verbatim). It is intensely frustrating to work with these individuals if I am fixated on them coming off of their ludacris act, but when I started to ask what must they think and feel about themselves to want to be so severely mentally ill? And in that question lies functional and purposeful answers about what I have called the Identity Crisis in today's world. People are starved of identity, from which they have been misconstrued to find meaning and purpose in some identity instead of learning to find their identity and pull meaning and purpose from it. It is in this pursuit of identity for the sake of identity that postmodern sensibilities find their faults, and modernism is for sure to blame.
I am not saying that gender identity is to the extreme of those feigning multiple personalities, nor am I saying it is merely a manner in which they can stand apart or find a group to connect to (though this is an integral part of any role). What it is is people finding themselves in an ever complexifying and diversifying cultural wasteland. To fight this is the modernist's last ditch effort to maintain control over younger generations that don't hold the same value to science as older ones, for brutishly formed scientific enterprises exactly like this. 
I am a White male. That is a scientific fact with regard to my race and my sex. There's no argument to be had there.
I like to cook, I like to act, I love to play sports and video games, I also do yoga classes (led by women and almost exclusively with women) 3-4 times a week, yet I retain my roughly 90% heterosexuality. I could easily choose to identify as non-binary or something else and I would pretty easily be able to assume such a role because I am already playing it, that I am playing it as a White male seems to be what makes the difference (i.e., no one has trouble with me identifying as a male, but I guarantee there would be aversion, even faintly, to my identification as something not male); exactly what that difference is and why it is I'm not too sure, but that it has to do with power, privilege, and ultimately Culture is certain, and in that sense a bit sickening to think how deeply programmed that root aspect of my place in the world as a social creature is. 
When Dr. Staddon learns how to be a social being then he can get off of his self-mandated high horse and join the rest of us in this muck from which meta-modernism arises and transcends both identity/culture and animal/mind. If only it were so easy for all of us to be so sure of ourselves, but then again being sure of oneself to such a degree has always been the easy, unquestioning way of the living fool. The suffering and pain of those skeptical transformations he refuses to acknowledge will only leave himself behind in that regard.    

Regards,
Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 7:50 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


This is an interesting story. Although I don’t know John Staddon well, I have had some correspondence with him.

 

Best,
Gregg

 

 

From: Ken Pope [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: May-15-21 7:51 AM
Subject: Psychology Prof Removed From APA Discussion After Saying There Are Only 2 Genders (*Newsweek*)

 

Newsweek includes an article: "Neuroscience Professor Removed From APA Discussion After Saying There Are Only Two Genders” by Julia Marnin.

 

Here are some excerpts:

 

[begin excerpts]

 

A neuroscience professor was ousted from the American Psychological Association's (APA) email discussion group by vote after suggesting that there are only two genders as well as past concerns over his posts, the College Fix reported Friday.

 

Psychology and neuroscience professor John Staddon at Duke University was removed from the APA's Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology (SBNCP) Division 6 listserv and was notified via email by the group's presidential trio who said use of the forum was a "privilege," in the statements republished by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) on April 30.

 

"It is sad that an audience of supposed scientists is unable to take any dissenting view, such as the suggestion that there really are only two sexes," Staddon said in reply to the notification of his removal from the division's group before allowing NAS to publish the email exchange. "Incredible! I don't mind having one less distraction, but I think you should really be concerned at Div 6's unwillingness to tolerate divergent views."

 

His post that "tipped the scale," according to Staddon, was titled "Hmm... Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?" Staddon toldNewsweek he created the post on April 15.

 

"Science, real science, can and should be isolated from politics. Science has values, to be sure—curiosity, honesty, openness to debate, adherence to empirical facts, and so on—but they are not, and should not be, political," he wrote to Newsweek. 

 

"Most of my comments have been devoted to that fact. I might add that a sense of humor would help."

 

Staddon said he received the email that declared his removal from the division's group on April 23. It was written by Indiana University Bloomington provost Jonathan Crystal, who is a professor of psychological and brain sciences, on behalf of the division's presidential trio.

 

"The division leadership has received complaints about some of the posts that you have sent to the division listserv," Crystal wrote, who attached a link to SBNCP's 2019 code of conduct in the email.

 

"I do not want to get into the particulars of the range of complaints over the years, but I will note that a number of members of the executive committee and others have voiced concerns publicly on the listserv in an attempt to make you aware of how readers of the list might view some of the posts," Crystal added before writing that the executive committee voted to remove Staddon's email address from the listserv.

 

"I can find nothing that should be considered personally offensive," Staddon said after perusing through old emails.

 

Newsweek reached out to Crystal for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.

 

"This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent about issues related to sex and race. Psychology and sociology seem to be especially flawed in this respect." Staddon wrote in an email to the College Fix.

 

<snip>

 

On April 22, he wrote an article forPsychology Today that discussed APA guidelines and criticized the organization for compromising "both scientists and practitioners."

 

"For the scientists, freedom of speech and inquiry are prerequisites. The APA should certainly advocate for those and for the highest research standards," he wrote in the article.

 

NAS published the emails between Staddon and Crystal under "Cancel Culture in the Sciences: A Case Study," as part of the organization's broader effort "to counter cancel culture in higher education," according to the editor's note.

 

<snip>

 

Staddon has done recent theoretical research on operant conditioning, memory, timing and psychobiological aspects of ethical and economic philosophy, according to his Duke University scholar page.

 

He has authored six books and written more than 200 research papers.

 

Newsweek also reached out to the APA for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.

 

[end excerpts]

 

Ken Pope

 

Ken Pope, Melba J.T. Vasquez, Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, & Hector Y. Adames: Ethics in Psychotherapy & Counseling: A Practical Guide, 6th Edition (publication date June 2021—John Wiley & Sons currently accepting preorders & faculty requests for evaluation copies)

 

Pope: Anti-Racism & Racism in Psychology as a Science, Discipline, & Profession: 57 Articles & Books (Citations + Summaries)

 

Pope: A Human Rights & Ethics Crisis Facing the World's Largest Organization of Psychologists

 

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—Saint Augustine (354-430 AD)

 

 

 
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