Colorful clusters along a shallowly sinuous arc

Steve Schwartzman

Sep 9

American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) alongside our house on September 2nd.

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I call to your attention David C. Geary's well-researched September 1st article "The Ideological Refusal to Acknowledge Evolved Sex Differences." The subhead is "Boys and girls are not infinitely malleable, socially constructed products of the patriarchy." Here's the article's bottom line, which is to say its final paragraph:

The claims made in a virtual world of internet algorithms populated by ideological social media pundits, journalists, and gender studies professors contradicts common sense and rational analysis of real-world phenomena. This is a world of words and ideas fraught with wishes and desires that are not always tethered to reality, including many far-fetched beliefs about the number of sexes and the origins and malleability of any associated sex or gender differences. Much remains to be learned about these differences which leaves plenty of room for legitimate debate. But there is no scientific room for the nonsensical idea that boys and girls and men and women are infinitely malleable and merely socially constructed products of the patriarchy or some other social system.

You're welcome to read the full article by David C. Geary, who is a Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri.