The Battle Between Gender & Biology - Colin Wright | Modern Wisdom 251

Wright defines sex by gamete type (small sperm vs large ova) or developmental organization of gonads (testes vs ovaries), emphasizing there is no third gamete and thus no third sex; gender, by contrast, has multiple competing, often vague definitions tied to roles, identity, or stereotypes.

He describes activists routinely swapping ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mid-argument, redefining terms on the fly, and using emotionally loaded reinterpretations (e.g., calling a developmental ‘error’ a personal insult) to win rhetorical points rather than clarify reality.

Wright cites examples like a major policing study being retracted without data problems, diversity statements as political litmus tests, and colleagues publicly denouncing him under social pressure, arguing this produces a biased literature that reflects moral preferences over truth.

He argues that approaches grounded in narratives, power, and assumed systemic explanations (e.g., disparities = racism by definition) undermine falsifiability and prevent serious examination of alternative hypotheses like cultural factors or pipeline issues.

Areas like ecology, psychology, and humanities lack obvious, immediate ‘bridge collapse’ failures, making them more susceptible to unfalsified narratives, whereas engineering and hard physics still face hard external reality checks that constrain postmodern creep.