Gender, Vaccines and more…

Craig Shearer - 9 October 2023

Over the past week or two, I’ve been having email conversations with a person from the other side of the skeptical fence. This person I’ll refer to as Mark - which is his real name, but I’ll not give any more information about him. (By the way, our skeptical newsletter writer Mark Honeychurch has sworn he’s not running some elaborate joke on me!)

Mark has emailed us in the past expressing some unusual views. He’s used his real name with us in the past, though recently he’s just been signing off as Mark plus a last initial. As he used his real name previously, I was able to look him up, so had some good background information about him - which will become relevant later.

It appears that Mark is a fairly typical conspiracy theorist. As we’ve seen, a lot of them came out of the woodwork during the Covid pandemic. Did the pandemic reveal them, or did it breed them? That’s an interesting question. Perhaps some people’s minds are primed to accept conspiracy theories as the explanation for particular events.

I’m going to present some excerpts from the emails, though not in their entirety. I recently created a document containing all the back and forth, and it ran to 7 pages, so a little long and overwhelming for the newsletter! I’m also going to leave all errors and typos in, without peppering them with sic.

A week or so ago, Mark wrote questioning us about our thoughts on gender, and in particular, on its relation (in his mind) to the upcoming general election:

Hi folks,

With elections coming I have noticed that Luxton and Hipkins don’t agree on what a woman is. They cant both be right, so I thought I should turn to you folks at Skeptics to find out who is right.

Do people decide what sex they are as they grow up? or is a woman an adult female? and what do chromosomes have to do with it ?

What is the truth about this ?

So, right off the bat, Mark makes a seemingly common mistake of referring to the National Party leader as Luxton, when his name is Christopher Luxon. I guess he’s in the same breed of people who referred to our previous PM John Key as John Keys.

It may just be Mark’s writing style, but I was fairly sceptical that he would listen to what we had to say.

Being in a snarky mood, I wrote back asking who Luxton was:

Who is this Luxton person you’re talking about? I don’t know of any candidates in our election with that name.

It seems you’re confusing sex with gender. Most simplistic notions of sex turn out to be wrong in reality.

I suggest you have a read of this excellent article first, then come back to us if you have more questions. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/

As you can see, I provided a link to a Science-Based Medicine by Dr Steven Novella, which is an excellent primer for understanding the messiness of the reality of human sex, orientation and gender.

Mark responded, doubling-down on the Luxton mistake, which did amuse me. But he makes some further dubious claims without providing any supporting evidence (something which he does seem to excel in.)

Thanks for that. I was referring to Christopher Luxton from the National party.

I don’t understand how so many young people are getting steroid hormones without a diagnosis. I had to get a proper diagnosis to get the testosterone I need to take, based on science and blood tests.

Does any of that apply to teenage transgender treatment ? It looks very unscientific, and what is their diagnosis to qualify for hormones ?

If there is nothing wrong with them, and they are just part of a spectrum, why do they need medical hormones ? I don’t think your article explained that.

I went back to him asking for evidence that young people are getting hormones without a diagnosis.

And, on why people have hormone treatment:

Some people have gender dysphoria in that their perception of how they feel mismatches their assigned birth sex or sex-related physical characteristics. In these cases, rather than be forced to live a miserable life in a body they feel discomfort with, there are options to be prescribed hormones which can alter expression of these characteristics, especially around puberty. Some trans people will go on to have gender-affirming surgery, and I note that recent studies of these surgeries have a regret rate of around 1%. People seem happier and live better lives when gender-affirming care is used.

Mark responded stating he thought there were “a lot of opinions” about the subject and that it was “just a passing fad”.

As for it being a passing fad, I responded that it was more likely that the real rate of incidence was being revealed now that expressing one’s perceived gender identity was less stigmatised.

Mark then pivoted to complaining about neuro-divergent people, and that teachers now had to deal with an “exponential increase” in the number of neuro-diverse students.

Then, Mark’s identity as an anti-vaxxer was revealed:

When I suggested that gender dysphoria could have a cause, like vaccinations, people in that Trans group got a bit defensive, as if there couldn’t be a cause, so don’t pathologize us.

But I still think it likely that there is a cause for dysphoria that involves hormones, and normal people people would want to know any cause to facilitate the remedy. I keep looking at the loss of natural selection for people over recent decades as a cause, but I think childhood vaccinations are the chief suspect.

I don’t believe the suggestion that the whole problem of neurodivergence is caused by discrimination and bad treatment as Trans people have said, cos neurodivergent people that have been treated well are still handicapped.

I know vaccinations are controversial, but they are in the wrong place at the right time, and they are known to cause damage. One transgender person insisted that vaccines are safe, but of course they want to think that.

Sigh, now he’s back on the classic anti-vaxxer thing. I responded stating that vaccines had potential for side effects, but that the benefits vastly outweigh the risks.

Mark’s response then went into the territory of discussing “gut problems” in relation to neurodivergent people, and brought up the MMR vaccine.

I asked him where he was getting this evidence, strongly suspecting he’d been listening to disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield.

To me, this illustrates the danger of these misinformation villains like Andrew Wakefield. Their dangerous ideas, while debunked and disproven in serious scientific and academic circles, continue to exist in pockets of popular culture where anti-vaxxers dwell.

Re Andrew Wakefield - he was deservedly vilified and struck off as a doctor in the UK. He fraudulently produced studies and has caused much harm, of which you seem to be one of his victims.

Then, we’re back to talking about gender again:

Maybe we don’t have a shared reality, cos I noticed that you couldn’t say what a woman is, just like Chris Hipkins, who is about to lose the election for not being able to say what a woman is.

So I understand if you want to pull out of discussion.

OK, so I thought I’d try to give a thoughtful answer to the “what is a woman” question:

The “what is a woman” question is really just a gotcha question, meant to trap the person asked into having to give some sort of definition on the spot. I don’t accept the “adult human female” thing as it denies reality for many people.

In reality, the idea of man or woman is a social construct. Humans are strongly bi-modal in terms of sex, but not exclusively so. For the majority of people, their gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth. But for some people, their internal self expression doesn’t match up. There are also some people who have ambiguous physical sexual characteristics, and for whom the decision at birth was inappropriate. There are even those who underwent surgery at birth to “correct” some supposed ambiguity.

I don’t think the question is that important. If somebody says they’re a woman, I’m happy to accept they say they are, if expressed honestly. I’m sure you don’t demand to inspect the genitals of every person you meet to ensure that their “biological sex” matches with how they present themselves.

The evidence shows that when people are allowed to live their lives as they desire, they are happier. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you are so concerned about this. Why is gender so important to you? Why can’t people just be people and live their lives how they desire? How does it affect you how somebody chooses to live their lives?

Mark then gave me a story about how his mum was at the Posie Parker event in Albert Park in Auckland back earlier in the year. For those who aren’t aware, Posie Parker is the aka of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a British anti-transgender activist.

Its just that my mum was at Albert Park in Auckland to hear people speak about women’s rights, and a mob of 2000 protesters turned up and caused a riot, regardless of police being right there. My mum couldn’t get away fast enough. And she was pushed over and trampled on and kicked by men in dresses while the crowd cheered. My mum is not stupid, and she knows now that politicians and police colluded to arrange that mob violence. She wont go out alone now, cos she doesn’t trust the police, and I don’t think she will ever vote Labour again. I suppose you will say it is her fault for being there, but there plenty of others who were roughed up. So I understand why most people now think that transgender women are mentally ill men, and F to M are no better. I can accept people being different, but not when they treat people like that. If that is the rainbow folks idea of being kind, I can see trouble ahead. You want to see what people have been posting online.

I felt that that email was quite untruthful. Given what I knew about him from my previous interactions. I responded, calling out his BS.

I call BS on your story of your mum going to Albert Park. You’re a 65 year old man, so you mum must be in her late 70s at the least, probably in her 80s. Does she live in Auckland? You’re down in Nelson, I believe.

Nevertheless, the Posie Parker event was designed to rile people up. Most of the people there were people who support the trans community. I don’t condone violence in any form, but it was a volatile situation. People have a right to protest, particularly when what’s being presented certainly wasn’t about women’s rights.

That was how that particular conversation ended earlier last week. He hasn’t responded to that particular email, so not denying that he made it all up.

In his latest email he’s now back to using his real name, probably realising that I know who he is!

What do you make of a recent survey by a doctor comparing the health of vaccinated children vs unvaccinated ?

He found a much greater incidence of many conditions like excema, asthma, autism, infections, and more sick days off, in vaccinated children than in unvaccinated.

Would you try and discredit the author ?

Or do you think studies like this should be banned ?

Of course, he’s not provided any links to the claimed study. But science doesn’t rest on single studies, but on a body of evidence, backed up by multiple studies and woven into a scientific consensus.

At this stage, I feel Mark is really just trolling us - he seems to have a bit of time on his hands.

Some of my readers might be wondering why I waste my time responding to somebody whose mind is seemingly made up, and appears to be immune to evidence, or in, in fact, just trolling us. I think it’s good being able to practise honing my sceptical skills. It challenges me to clarify my own thinking and ensure I have good reasons for my stance on things. The true skeptic should be open to having their views challenged, and auditing the evidence they believe they have to back up their ideas.

If you’re a watcher of YouTube, Susan Gerbic, who will be a speaker at our conference, has a channel called Psychics Explained. She’s been trying to grow her subscriber base and needed to get over 1,000 subscribers before her channel could monetised. If you’d like to see her channel grow, please subscribe.