Inaccurate and transphobic

I missed this when I was away over the weekend, but Jerry Coyne has the details, here and here. From the Bangor Daily News:

Nearly two dozen graduate students at the University of Southern Maine are demanding their education professor be replaced after the professor allegedly said only two biological sexes exist.

The students said professor Christy Hammer’s remarks were inaccurate and transphobic.

After all but one student walked out of Hammer’s class on Sept. 14 in protest, they demanded a facilitated restorative justice meeting between the 22 students and their professor....

“We are aware of this situation and are taking steps to provide students with the support needed,” said interim Provost Adam Tuchinsky.

Well yes. It was clearly a traumatic experience for the poor dears.

“I want her to do some diversity training at least — or just retire,” said student Elizabeth Leibiger, who plans to become a high school English teacher.

According to several students, the situation began Sept. 7 while Hammer was teaching a graduate course in the Extended Teacher Education Program titled “Creating a Positive Learning Environment.”

The class is required to complete the graduate program and become a certified teacher in Maine.

During the session at Bailey Hall on the Gorham campus, a free-for-all discussion erupted over both social gender and biological sex identifications, with one student and Hammer saying they believed only male and female biological sexes exist.

The rest of the class maintained both biological sexes and social genders are on a spectrum.

The heated discussion was not resolved before the end of the class period.

Leibiger, who is non-binary, was absent from class that week but learned about the incident from classmates. When Leibiger arrived for the next class, on Sept. 14, they immediately brought up the discussion again.

“I asked [Hammer] how many sexes there were,” Leibiger said. “She said, ‘Two.’ I felt under personal attack.”

Leibiger then gathered their things and walked out of class because they no longer felt respected.

“I let her know I didn’t think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments,” Leibiger said. “It’s the ultimate irony.”

After leaving class, Leibiger stopped in Bailey Hall’s lobby where all but one of their classmates joined them after the group also walked out of Hammer’s class.

The students then drafted a letter to the school of Education and Human Development, asking for a facilitated restorative justice meeting with their professor and the single student who agreed with her.

“We thought she was just speaking from a place of ignorance, not hate,” Leibiger said.

The meeting took place Wednesday, and the sole student who had disagreed reportedly apologized to classmates. But Hammer maintained her position on the binary nature of sex.

“I went in very optimistic, but at the end of the three hour session it felt like we weren’t listened to,” said Lombardi, who plans to teach high school science.

The university authorities, needless to say, supported the outraged students rather than the professor who dared to state a simple and basic scientific truth. A new teacher will now teach the identical class with the ideologically preferred version, while the professor will talk truth to an empty room. Which kind of sums it all up really.

Comments

[Anon]

The professor did not state "a simple and basic scientific truth". No matter how you define biological sex, you cannot unambiguously place every human being into just two categories of it.

Whether anyone should have taken actual offence at their inaccurate statement is another matter.

[Mick H]

Are there only two sexes? Yes, there are only two sexes.

[Anon]

OK. So, what is the defining characteristic of each sex, that allows you to determine unambiguously, for any human being at all, what their sex is?

[Mick H]

It's in the chromosomes. I'm really not interested in a debate here, to be honest. If you don't understand biology, I'm not here to enlighten you.

[Anon]

Are you not aware that there are people who have neither XX or XY chromosomes? Or are you denying a basic biological fact for ideological reasons?

[Mick H]

And what sex are these people with abnormal chromosomes? Klinefelter syndrome, for instance - XXY. They're males. Men.

Chromosomal abnormalities have no bearing on the debate about the number of sexes. It's still two.

I won't be responding to any more of your comments.

[Anon]

Reacting with such hostility to a point of basic biology is strange. It is an undeniable fact that not everyone has XX or XY chromosomes. You can attempt to define away that issue by stating that having XX chromosomes or not is the only property that determines gender. But not everyone with XY chromosomes is judged to be male at birth, not everyone with XX chromosomes is judged to be female, and there are people who live their entire lives with a gender identity that does not correspond to their karyotype. Reality doesn't conform to your ideology.