Tag: biology

Top Cancer Charity Apologizes for Using ‘Cervix’ to Describe Female Body Part Instead of Trans-Inclusive Term ‘Front Hole’

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has come under fire for yielding to the forces of political correctness, issuing an apology for using the term “cervix” in its health guidelines aimed at LGBTQ+ community members who are biologically female, according to a report by True North.

This move reflects a concerning trend of medical institutions caving to the pressures of ‘woke’ culture, sacrificing clarity and accuracy in health communications for the sake of political correctness.

“Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer. Almost all cervical cancer cases are due to HPV infection. HPV is spread through sexual contact including sexual intercourse, genital skin-to-skin contact and oral sex, regardless of gender or sexual orientation… If you have a cervix and have ever had sexual contact with anyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, you should start having regular Pap tests by the time you’re 25,” the website reads.

The charity mentioned the word “cervix” eight times on its website, including a disclaimer explaining their choice of language.

The disclaimer indicated that while the term “cervix” is medically accurate, it might not resonate with or be embraced by all readers, acknowledging that terms like “front hole” might be preferred by some.

“We recognize that many trans men and non-binary people may have mixed feelings about or feel distanced from words like “cervix.” You may prefer other words, such as “front hole.” We recognize the limitations of the words we’ve used while also acknowledging the need for simplicity. Another reason we use words like “cervix” is to normalize the reality that men can have these body parts too,” the disclaimer reads.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a cervical cancer trust was also under fire for disgustingly suggesting that people call vaginas “bonus holes” to avoid offending transgender people.

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, based in the UK, suggested the language in 2020 — but it just went viral after it was noticed by people and posted to Twitter.

“Bonus hole – an alternative word for the vagina. It is important to check which words someone would prefer to use,” the glossary on the trust’s website states.

British gender-critical writer Julie Burchill accused LGBT activists of erasing women by adopting terms such as “bonus hole” and “front hole” as trans-friendly alternatives to “vagina.”

“Both ‘bonus hole’ and ‘front hole’ are recommended as trans-friendly alternatives to vagina. Trans ideologues have long tried to erase or appropriate any word that is specific to females – from woman to mother and now vagina. And they have gained a foothold in our schools and in our media. Now gynaecological-health providers are swallowing the stupid pills, too,” Burchill wrote in a 2023 essay, according to True North.

Keep reading

Win For Reality: UK’s National Health Service Constitution to Declare ‘Sex is Biological’

In a marked rejection of transgender ideology and a win for women’s rights activists, the constitution of Britain’s National Health Service will publicly declare that sex is a biological reality that must inform how patients are treated.

Following the move by the National Health Service to prohibit the prescription of life-altering puberty blockers to children, another major pillar of wokist medicinal thought, that sex is a fluid concept, looks to be dismantled as the NHS’ constitution will state: “We are defining sex as biological sex.”

In practice, the update to the governing document of the socialised healthcare system will mean that so-called transgender women will be barred from female-only hospital wards, The Telegraph reports.

At present, there is no recognition of sex as a biological fact when determining where patients were placed, resulting in some female patients being forced to share a room with biological males who claim to be transgender women.

The new constitution will state that NHS patients will “not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite biological sex”. Previously, the document said that patients would be placed in the ward of the sex they identified as.

In response to objections raised by female patients over being seen by a transgender nurse or doctor, the constitution will also allow patients to request to be cared for by a healthcare professional of the same sex.

The changes have come at the direction of government ministers, who are tasked with updating the NHS constitution at least once every ten years. The document was last updated in 2015. However, in addition to the input from ministers, a two-month public consultation will be conducted to allow members of the public and from the healthcare industry to submit further suggestions for changes to the constitution.

Keep reading

Two lifeforms merge into one organism for first time in a billion years

For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism.

The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants.

Now, an international team of scientists have observed the evolutionary event happening between a species of algae commonly found in the ocean and a bacterium.

“The first time we think it happened, it gave rise to all complex life,” said Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the research on one of two recent studies that uncovered the phenomenon.

“Everything more complicated than a bacterial cell owes its existence to that event. A billion years ago or so, it happened again with the chloroplast, and that gave us plants.”

Keep reading

Trans Ideologues Would Rather Revolt Against Reality Than Admit They Were Wrong

Gender ideology has a reality problem. Just look at the latest cover story for New York Magazine, in which the trans-identified writer Andrea Long Chu denounced reality itself, writing that “the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.”

Well, that is a … novel philosophical assertion.

It is tempting to dismiss Chu’s denunciation of reality as an insane gambit by a flailing ideology, but declaring war against reality might just be crazy enough to work. This approach provides the collapsing gender ideology movement a way out of myriad difficulties — instead of relying on shoddy science to support medical “transition,” including for children, gender ideologues can instead appeal to a supposed right to physical self-determination and modification, even for children. Liberals like the idea of liberating mankind from the limits of our humanity, and so even as Chu retreats from the usual arguments of gender ideology, he invites the left to join in this more radical vision.

This effort to find a better justification for gender ideology pushes Chu to argue that it was a mistake for the left to hang “trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity.” This approach won some victories, but it “failed to form a coherent moral account of why someone’s gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.” 

The radical bodily alterations of “gender-affirming care” have been justified by elevating “gender identity” to the status of a person’s essence, deeper and more real than the body itself. But people are realizing that a “gender identity” is metaphysical conjecture, not medicine or biology. Thus, Chu sees reliance on gender identity as a trap for transgender advocates. It is superstitious to imagine that there is something like gendered souls that sometimes, somehow, get stuck in the wrong bodies. 

He also sees that searching for reasons and explanations for transgenderism may prove deadly to the cause of gender ideology. By making the case for “transition” (again, especially for children) contingent on generating favorable evidence (medical, sociological, psychological) for it, the transgender movement has become more vulnerable as that evidence has failed to materialize. Furthermore, requiring reasons for transition tends to establish some form of gatekeeping, in which transition is doled out only to those determined to be truly transgender. 

Chu fears that subjecting the transgender movement, and especially its medical wing, to rational, evidence-based scrutiny will restrict and ultimately destroy it. Instead, he wants transgender activists and their allies to:

[S]top relying on the increasingly metaphysical concept of gender identity to justify sex-changing care, as if such care were only permissible when one’s biological sex does not match the serial number engraved on one’s soul. … [W]e must rid ourselves of the idea that any necessary relationship exists between sex and gender; this prepares us to claim that the freedom to bring sex and gender into whatever relation one chooses is a basic human right.

He thereby makes explicit what has always been the position of gender ideologues, which is that there should be medical transition on demand for everyone. He writes, “We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history.” This is not about medical need, but about a subjective desire to flee from the reality of one’s embodied self.

Keep reading

New Study Shows For First Time Men and Women’s Brains Work Differently

In what may prove a massive blow to the transgender lobby, scientists have officially proven for the first time that male and female brains are distinct and operate differently.

“There has never been any definitive proof of difference in activity in the brains of men and women, but Stanford University has shown that it is possible to tell the sexes apart based on activity in “hotspot” areas,” reports the Telegraph.

Researchers discovered that “sex is a robust determinant of human brain organisation” in key areas of the brain including ones that regulate emotion, memory, sexual stimulation, habit forming and introspection.

The “default mode network” which is the neurological center for “self” is also different between men and women.

The differences explain what we normally experience in the real world – for example why men have better spatial awareness and working memory whereas women have better long term memory.

The team trained an AI system to process vast amounts of data and was then tasked with being asked to determine whether an MRI brain scan came from a man or a woman.

“When the researchers tested the model on about 1,500 brain scans, the model was able to tell if the scan came from a woman or a man more than 90 per cent of the time,” reports the newspaper.

“Our findings suggest that differences in brain activity patterns across these key brain regions contribute to sex-specific variations in cognitive functioning,” said Dr Vinod Menon, prof of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford.

So there you have it. It’s biology, not society that shapes brain divergence.

Keep reading

Revealed: The vindictive academics blasted by judge for hounding lesbian professor out of the Open University in a harassment campaign over her gender critical beliefs

These are the academics who were blasted in a stinging judgment by an employment tribunal after they hounded a lesbian lecturer out of her job.

Criminology expert Prof Jo Phoenix, 59, saw her name dragged through the mud at the Open University once her views on the importance of biological sex became known.

Despite assuring colleagues she was not transphobic, a small group of trans activist lecturers refused to set aside their personal politics to allow freedom of opinion.

Instead, ringleader Dr Leigh Downes, a female who identifies as non-binary, led a campaign against Prof Phoenix – publishing an open letter ‘in order to create a pile-on’, which amassed 368 staff signatures

Last week, in an extraordinary judgment, the participants were criticised for their vindictive motives; as well as their evidence, which a judge described as ‘evasive’ and ‘not credible’.

Employment Judge Jennifer Young said: ‘On multiple occasions, whenever gender critical views were expressed at the Open University, Dr Downes complained or tried to get the view suppressed. 

‘The claimant’s gender critical beliefs made Dr Downes feel palpably uncomfortable.’

The judge went on: ‘The purpose of signing the open letter was to create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for Prof Phoenix. 

‘We conclude that having 368 of your colleagues sign a public letter saying that you are part of a group that is fundamentally transphobic, is stigmatising and damaging.’

Besides Dr Downes, other signatories in the open letter – Dr Helen Bowes-Catton, Dr Nicola Snarey, Prof Peter Keogh, Natalie Starkey and Dr Chris Williams – were found to have contributed to the hostility, despite their claims that they were expressing academic freedom.

The judge dismissed this reasoning and wrote: ‘[It] was not an exercise in academic freedom. There is nothing scholastic about the open letter, it stigmatised the claimant and damaged her reputation.’

Rather than stamp out the febrile atmosphere on campus, departmental leaders at the university left Prof Phoenix to face the onslaught alone and even blamed her for having spoken out in the first place.

Prof Louise Westmarland, a former friend who had unsuccessfully competed for the same job, likened the under-fire professor to ‘a racist uncle at a dinner party’.

The head of the department, Dr Deborah Drake, caused huge distress by comparing Prof Phoenix to controversial US political scientist Charles Murray, whose views have been likened to a racist.  

Keep reading

Fossil evidence of photosynthesis gets a billion years older

It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that the most significant event on Earth was the evolution of photosynthesis. The ability to harvest energy from light freed life from the need to scavenge energy from its environment. With this new capability, life grew in complexity and invaded new environments, ultimately reshaping the Earth.

For such a pivotal event, we know remarkably little about it. Tracing the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere suggests photosynthesis evolved at least 2.4 billion years ago, although the rise in oxygen levels turns out to be impressively complicated. Tracing the variations of present-day genes places photosynthesis’ origin at about 3 billion years ago. That timing is similar to the origin of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which both continue to live independently and have been incorporated into plant cells as chloroplasts.

What we don’t have is clear evidence of photosynthetic cells of similar age. A few microfossils with similarities to cyanobacteria have been identified, but it’s impossible to determine whether they were making the proteins that power photosynthesis. Now, new fossils described by a team at the University of Liège push unambiguous evidence of photosynthesis back over a billion years to 1.7 billion years ago.

Keep reading

Male or Female: There’s Nothing In Between

The male and female sexes are ancient, having emerged on the evolutionary landscape more than a billion years ago. This is much older than humans, older than most plant and animal species, older than most marine life, and even older than the brain itself.

More than just keeping an individual alive, as food and water do, the two sexes keep entire species alive by producing more genetically unique individuals through sexual reproduction: the mixing of genomes and the fusion of sex cells called gametes. The evolution of male and female sexes is a major reason why the diversity of plant and animal species exists. It’s why we humans exist. It’s why you exist.

More than 99.9 percent of animal species that have developed since the emergence of male and female sexes reproduce sexually. And 95 percent of those animal species—including humans—have male and female sexes in separate individuals, whereby organisms are either male or female for their entire lives.

It may be surprising, but the two sexes follow a universal biological definition that applies to all species with male and female systems: the male sex is the phenotype (or structure) that produces the smaller gametes (i.e., sperm), while the female sex is the phenotype (or structure) that produces the larger gametes (eggs). The sperm are numerous and fast, contributing half the genetic material of the parent, but no resources for the survival of the fertilized egg (zygote). The eggs are relatively few, and very slow, contributing half the genetic material of the parent and all the resources for the zygote’s survival. Combine these two different gamete types together and a genetically unique individual is formed.

The technical term for this system is known as anisogamy (from the Greek aniso, meaning unequal; and gámos, meaning marriage), which involves the fusion of two gametes with different size and form. It is so efficient for reproduction and producing genetic diversity that it has evolved independently in nearly all lineages of multi-cellular organisms.

Biologists consider the evolution of the two sexes mathematically inevitable, because this system maximizes the efficiency of sexual reproduction—providing resources to the offspring through investment in large, nutrient-heavy eggs, while also maximizing gamete fusion through the production of many sperm that can quickly find an egg. This efficiency explains why the same system has evolved independently so many times.

Keep reading

‘Scientist’ Neil deGrasse Tyson claims biology is ‘insufficient’ during unhinged rant defending radical trans agenda

Astrophysicist and noted science personality Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke out in favor of gender ideology and the ability of a person to actually change their sex. He made the remarks on the Stephen A Smith podcast “K[no]w Mercy.”

“Apparenly the XX/XY chromosomes,” he said with obvious derision, “are insufficient because when we wake up in the morning, we exaggerate whatever feature we want to portray the gender of our choice. Either the one you’re assigned, the one you choose to be—whatever it is!”

“And so now,” he went on as though swapping sex was the most obvious thing in the world, “just to tie a bow on this, I say to you, somewhere I read— somewhere, I think I read— that the United States was a land where we have the pursuit of happiness. Suppose no matter my chromosomes today, I feel 80 percent female, 20 percent male. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna put on makeup. Tomorrow, I might feel 80 percent male. I’ll remove the makeup and I’ll wear a muscle shirt. Why do you care? What businesses is it of yours to require that I fill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?”

Detransitioner Chloe Cole took issue with Tyson, noting that in his assessment, he conflates appearance and cosmetics with biology, as though a person’s external presentation has an effect on their biological reality.

Keep reading

Veteran biology professor who teaches scientific fact that sex is determined by chromosomes X and Y is FIRED after four students walked out of his reproductive class – accusing him of ‘religious preaching’

A veteran biology professor in Texas who has been teaching that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes for over 20 years was allegedly fired after four students walked out of his classroom. 

Dr. Johnson Varkey has claimed he was let go from his teaching position at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio after he was accused of ‘religious preaching’.

He was discussing the human reproductive system on November 28, 2022, when four students stormed out of the lecture. 

Varkey was then accused of ‘discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter’. 

The professor said he received an email from the Alamo Colleges District Human Resources department in January, which said his credentials would be revoked pending an investigation. He was later fired. 

Keep reading