But the presidents of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) don't see it that way; a panel titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology," originally scheduled for their November conference, has been canceled. Why? 

Ellie Kincaid reported last week for Retraction Watch that a panel presentation entitled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” had been scheduled for November’s joint AAA-CASCA meeting in Toronto. The conference session had been approved by the programming committee. 

But then AAA President Ramona Pérez and CASCA president Monica Heller decided “safety and dignity” were threatened by anthropologists who think biological sex is still a category worth considering. Overriding the programming committee, the two leaders canceled the panel.

Just to be clear, gender is okay with the presidents. It’s talking about biological sex as if it matters to human experience that is a strict no-no. It’s particularly not okay if panelists are “gender critical,” i.e., scholars who think females are being harmed in the move to talking only about gender constructs and not in terms of biological sex. 

I'm not sure how talking about scientific reality can threaten anyone's "safety and dignity." In fact, that statement alone is worth consideration. In what alternate universe does this threaten anyone's safety? Nobody is physically threatened by this; the statement is simply ridiculous. But they claim that there is a danger, and apparently, it's because the panelists dare to discuss sex as a binary function:

The panelists had intended to talk about sex identification in skeletons, coeducation, tech-centric pornography, and misogyny using a generally feminist perspective to think about harm to females. You might think these topics are far enough left to pass muster in academe. 

But a statement put out by the AAA and CASCA accuses the panel of committing “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship – it assumes the truth of the proposition that it sets out to prove, namely, that sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.”

By "harm to females," we can presume they mean "harm to women." But then, I guess, "woman" is a rather nebulously defined term these days, at least on the left.

But look at the language involved; this is not the language of science. This is not objective. This is denying reality.

“Cardinal sin” is an appropriate choice of language here, because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican. They act as if anytime someone considers the categories of male and female as worthy of study, they must be denying the existence of trans, gender nonbinary, and intersex people. That’s just silly. That’s like saying you can’t compare tangerines and grapefruits because tangelos also exist.

Science (and to be fair, anthropology is one of the "squishy" sciences; you can't measure human behavior like you can moles in a solution or ballistic trajectories) is supposed to be objective. I've done research myself; in research, you go where the data leads you. Yes, you have a working hypothesis that you are setting out to determine whether or not it is accurate, but if the data - the reality - does not fit your hypothesis, you change the hypothesis.

What is being described in this statement from the AAA and CASCA is the opposite of that. The study does not fit the dogma, so the study must be ignored - nay, denied.

Reality matters. For example: One of our four daughters was adopted. We love her every bit as much as the other three; her three sisters love her as much as anyone in the family. In fact, our adopted daughter and our youngest daughter have been inseparable since they were very small. She is married, and when she has children, they will be our grandchildren and we will be their grandparents.

But when it comes to medical matters, no matter how much we love her, no matter how much an integral part of our family she is, she has to get what family history she can from her biological family, not from us. Why? Because reality matters. She is our daughter in every way but genetically, but when it comes to the science-based delivery of medical care, the reality is that it is the medical history of her biological family that matters, not ours.

This issue, this insistence on non-reality, is causing problems in our school systems. It has infiltrated entertainment, and the issue is paraded on ever-increasing portions of the calendar. Personally, I'm really big on the whole "live and let live" thing. I don't care what people do, as long as they don't hurt anyone else - and so long as they leave me alone. 

But we need to stop denying reality. This kind of attitude, this insistence not on acceptance but celebration, this denial of scientific reality in favor of dogma, is damaging.

For all values of A, A=A. Reality exists. That's all.