Mortar decay and Armageddon

I’m grateful to Stuart Campbell at Wings Over Scotland for sharing this video of an exchange on the fairly simple question of whether men can get pregnant between Republican Senator Josh Hawley and OB-GYN Doctor Nisha Verma during a US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs”. Please watch the video before reading on. In fact, you better watch it at least twice, as you will surely doubt the evidence of your senses initially.

It occurred to me that a transcript of this exchange might be useful to those who, like myself, find some of Sen. Hawley’s remarks eminently quotable. I had the video transcribed at TurboScribe.

Transcript of an exchange between Republican Senator Josh Hawley and OB-GYN Doctor Nisha Verma during a US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs”

Senator Hawley: Do you think that men can get pregnant?

Doctor Varma: I hesitated there because I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was. I mean, I do take care of patients with different identities. I take care of many women. I take care of people with different identities. And so that’s where I paused. I think, yeah, I wasn’t sure where you were going with that.

SH: Well, the goal is just the truth. So can men get pregnant?

DV: Again, the reason I paused there is I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is.

SH: The goal is just to establish a biological reality. You just said a moment ago that science and evidence should control, not politics. So let’s just test that proposition. Can men get pregnant?

DV: I take care of people with many identities, but I take care of many women that can get pregnant. I do take care of people that don’t identify as women.

SH: Can men get pregnant?

DV: Again, as I’m saying…

SH: Let me just remind you what you testified to a moment ago. Science and evidence should control, not politics. So can men get pregnant? You’re a doctor, I think.

DV: I totally agree. Science and evidence should guide medicine.

SH: Do science and evidence tell us that men can get pregnant, biological men? Can they get pregnant?

DV: I also think yes-no questions like this are a political tool.

SH: No, yes/no questions are about the truth, doctor. Let’s not make a mockery of this proceeding. This is about science and evidence. I’m asking you. The United States Supreme Court just heard arguments yesterday at great length on this question. This is not a hypothetical question. This is not theoretical. It affects real people in their real lives. And you’re here as an expert, called by the other side as an expert. And you’ve been telling us that you follow... Right, you’re a doctor. And you follow the science and the evidence. So I just want to know, based on the science, can men get pregnant? That’s a yes-or-no question. It really is, I think.

DV: I think you’re trying to reduce the complexity of…

SH: I’m not. I’m trying to… It’s not complex. I’m trying to get to an answer. And I’m trying to test, frankly, your veracity as a medical professional and as a scientist. Can men get pregnant?

DV: I think you’re also conflating male and female with…

SH: This is extraordinary. No, I’m not conflating male and female. They’re two different things. There’s biological men, and there’s biological women. And I want to know, can men get pregnant?

DV: What you were talking about is biological…

SH: You’re not going to answer my question, it sounds like to me. Biological males... This isn’t hard, doctor. Can men get pregnant? Yes or no?

DV: I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you that is not coming from a place of trying to be polarised and push people…

SH: I’m not trying to be polarising. I’m trying to ask... I think it is extraordinary that we are here in a hearing about science and about women. And for the record, it’s women who get pregnant, not men. We are here about the safety of women and science that shows that this abortion drug causes adverse health events in 11% of cases. That’s 22 times greater than the FDA label, another fact you haven’t acknowledged. And yet you won’t even acknowledge the basic reality that biological men don’t get pregnant. There’s a difference between biological men and biological women. I just... I don’t know how we can take you seriously and your claim to be a person of science if you won’t level with us on this basic issue. I thought we were past all of this, frankly. I can’t believe we’re still here talking about this.

DV: I am a person of science, and I’m also someone here who’s here to represent the complex experiences of my patients. And I don’t think polarised language or questions serve that goal. I don’t think they serve the American people.

SH: It is not polarising to say that there is a scientific difference between men and women. And I want this to be clear. And for the record, it is not polarising to say that women are a biological reality and should be treated and protected as such. That is not polarising. That is truth. It is also, by the way, the United States Constitution, which offers unique protections to women in a variety of circumstances as women. And your refusal to recognise women as women and men as men is deeply corrosive to science, to public trust, and yes, to constitutional protections for women as women. And I just... I think it’s extraordinary that you would sit here and advance a political agenda that has been thoroughly discredited and rejected by the American people in this forum. And I’m glad we had this exchange because it is exceptionally clarifying. It is also, in many ways, quite depressing.

Transcript ends

Depressing indeed! Like Senator Hawley, I thought we were “past all of this”. I also find it very depressing. I find it incredible that anyone would so egregiously disown the power of human intellect as this Dr Varma does. That this person is trained and qualified in a scientific discipline only makes it all the more incomprehensible.

It really is basic. There are two human body architectures. One for producing large gametes (Mature sexual reproductive cells having a single set of unpaired chromosomes—sperm and ova.) Males are humans with a body architecture that supports the production of small gametes (sperm). Females are humans with a body architecture that supports production of large gametes (ova).

This is a fundamental scientific truth. Which means it is subject to disproof. It has not been disproved. Therefore, it remains the truth. It is a truth so fundamental that to disprove it, one would have to rewrite the whole of scientific knowledge in the area of reproductive science—with knock-on effects on many other areas of scientific knowledge. Dr Varma doesn’t attempt scientific disproof. She just blankly denies the scientific truth.

Why? What motivates this denial of scientific truth? Why should we care?

We should care because the issue is not just about sex being binary and immutable. It's not just about the science that supports this truth. The whole ‘pronoun war’ phenomenon has both societal and political aspects. As I wrote just over four years ago in an article titled Exclusive categories:

Male and female are exclusive categories. Exclusive categories are very useful things. They are useful quite apart from being essential. Even if they weren’t an absolute necessity of existence, they would still be useful. Sex is an exclusive, definitive categorisation just as is the categorisation most commonly referred to, at least idiomatically – black/white. I’m not talking about skin colour or ethnicity. I mean black and white per the scientific criteria defining these two exclusive categories. White reflects light at all wavelengths. Black reflects no light at any wavelength. Doubtless, this will be criticised as a very simple definition. But then, that’s one of the most useful things about exclusive categories – they simplify the world.

Black is black and white is white. That which is black cannot be white and that which is white cannot be black. To satisfy the criteria of one category is to fail to satisfy the criteria of the other category. Satisfying one set of criteria excludes the possibility of satisfying any of the criteria of the other category. It must be one or the other. And if it is one there is no chance that it might be the other. We don’t even have to consider the possibility of it being the other. We can proceed on the basis that it is the one that satisfies the criteria without the need to consider the possibility that it might conform to any of the criteria of the other category. We can have certainty. The highest degree of confidence.

Certainty is good. Certainty gives us reference points. Reference points are essential if we are to build internal and shareable maps and models of our environment. Internal maps of our physical, temporal and social environment are necessary for a functioning individual. Shareable maps and models are necessary for a functioning society. Take away the certainties of exclusive categories; take away the fixed reference points; eliminate the capacity to create internal and shareable maps and models, neither individuals nor society can survive. Exclusive categories are good.

Insightful readers will see immediately how this issue relates to what we might call Trump-style politics. If you sufficiently undermine the relative certainties that form the (relatively) fixed points on which people base their mental representations of their material and social world, it becomes possible to persuasively present people with an alternative model. There might be many different models that change according to the expediency of the moment, thus further loosening the general public’s grip on what is real. What is real to people then becomes a matter of propaganda.

Sound familiar? I’ve just described the news cycle.

If those controlling mass communication can manipulate basic concepts like sexual differentiation, they can similarly alter categories such as true and false, right and wrong, and moral and immoral. Is this not precisely what the Trump/Netanyahu nexus is doing, aided and abetted by figures such as Keir Starmer?

Mortar decay is the gradual breakdown of the material that binds bricks or stones together. This deterioration can significantly impact the structural integrity of buildings if not addressed promptly. This phenomenon is loosely analogous to the purposeful erosion of the exclusive categories that help create shared mental maps that bind the various components of a civilised society.

Who would want to destroy civilisation's integrity? Only those whose insane ambition is to remake civilisation in a form they suppose will better conform to their idea of what constitutes civilisation.

That sounds like Armageddon.