Pittsburgh Law and Anthropology Professor Causes Uproar in Denying Ability to Tell Gender from Human

[mystery-ak]

Pittsburgh Law and Anthropology Professor Causes Uproar in Denying Ability to Tell Gender from Human Bones
Jonathan Turley


There is an interesting controversy that has erupted at the University of Pittsburgh after Dr. Gabby Yearwood, who teaches in both the anthropology and law schools, was asked by swimmer Riley Gaines if he could tell the gender of persons from skeletal remains. He denied that it was possible despite the widely accepted ability to do so in his field. The answer may reflect the ongoing push in anthropology, discussed in an earlier blog column, to put an end to gender identifications. Some insist that anthropologists need to know how an ancient human may have chosen to identify themselves.

Yearwood reportedly was asked the question by Gaines, who achieved national notoriety in opposing the inclusion of transgender athletes like the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas in women competitions. Like J.K. Rowling who has raised concerns over the threat to feminist gains from some transgender policies, Gaines is now ostracized and often prevented from speaking at events.

To its credit, Pittsburgh refused to yield to demands to bar Gaines and others from speaking on campus. This controversy appears to have resulted during the event that many sought to cancel.

Gaines asked Yearwood, “If you were to dig up two humans one hundred years from now, both man and woman, could you tell the difference, strictly off of bones?”

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https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/01/pittsburgh-law-and-anthropology-professor-causes-uproar-in-denying-ability-to-tell-gender-from-human-bones/

[LMAO]

How is one both a law and anthropology professor?

And this is an anthropology professor making such a preposterous claim. Not an activist, media figure, or politician. This is somebody that supposed to teach young adults about anthropology.

The university system is a different environment from when I was in

[Free Vulcan]

According to Fox, Yearwood answered “No!” and then took umbrage after the room erupted in laughter. He reportedly reminded them that he was “the expert in the room” and asked “Have any of you been to anthropological sites? Have any of you studied biological anthropology? I’m just saying, I’ve got over 150 years of data, I’m just curious as to why I’m being laughed at. I have a PhD!” The videos posted on Twitter only show the first part of that exchange.

Apparently this guy is the Neville Chamberlain of anthropology.

[The_Reader_David]

Well, since "gender" as used by the turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Left is a characteristic determined by the subjective feelings of the person in question, speaking within his own frame of reference, he is right.  Sex, however, is easily determined from any reasonably complete set of skeletal remains by any competent archeologist or forensic pathologist (or even from a little bit of bone marrow if genetic tests can be applied).

The mischief we are enduring in this regard is caused by the demand from the Left that we replace the objective biological category of sex with the subjective and socially constructed category of gender as a matter of law and in all social discourse.  Doing so is manifestly harmful to women in sport, to women who are incarcerated after conviction for a crime, and to women seeking shelter from domestic abuse, and somewhere between actually harmful and merely annoying to women who use public toilet facilities.  (Here I use the English word "women" as it has been used by all English speakers since the pronunciation shifted from the Old English wifman until the last five minutes, world historically speaking, to refer to adult female human beings.)