Saturday, May 20, 2017

The conceptual penis as a social construct

Some pranksters published this sociology research article:
Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.
The paper is amusing. I criticize Physics because I think that it should be held to higher standards than sociology.

Physics has announcements like this:
Four years ago, theoretical physicists proposed a new quantum-communication scheme with a striking feature: it did not require the transmission of any physical particles. The research raised eyebrows, but now a team of physicists in China claims it has demonstrated that the "counterfactual" scheme works. The group built an optical apparatus that it says can transfer a simple image while sending (almost) no photons in the process. ...

As to exactly what is physically transmitting information from Bob to Alice, if not particles, that remains an open question. Hatim Salih of KACST, lead author on the theory paper, is convinced that the culprit must be the photon's wavefunction. As such, he argues, the research would help settle a decades-old debate among physicists about the reality of the wavefunction: it must be real, he says.
Does the physics article make more sense? I am not so sure.

6 comments:

  1. There is no scientific evidence that gender even exists. How does one even define it? It is all a social construct. So how did this superstitious belief develop?

    Notice that most Western languages have masculine and feminine nouns. Because of this, early Western man arbitrarily assigned genders to people, based on perceived physical attributes, in order to fit into their language paradigm. And eventually, it became accepted that every person can be labeled in a binary manner with "male" or "female". Through time, this custom became the norm as Western Civilization conquered and enslaved the rest of the world.

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  2. @Craig,

    That was a delightful synopsis (regurgitation) of leftist sociological academic stupidity that had precious little to do with actual science (or actual human history), and a lot to do with your personal identity politics. Self identified transgender males have a suicide attempt rate of about 46%, for women I believe it is around 42%. Suicide rates in the holocaust did not even begin to approach this level, and those were three times above average. Before you throw the discrimination card around, be aware that even after extensive sexual reassignment surgery, the suicide rates remained basically unchanged. This is a pretty strong indication of a very self destructive mental illness.
    .
    Assuming you are human,
    If you like butterflies, that's perfectly fine. If you are sexually attracted to butterflies, I think that's bizarre, but that's your preference. However, If you feel you are an actual butterfly, you are still not a butterfly, even if you mutilate yourself, no matter how much you might wish it to be so, that is called a 'delusion' and no one has to share that with you to make you feel more comfortable with your body dysmorphic disorder.

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  3. @Craig,
    Typical lazy soft science major with next to no effort.
    Do you think you can just mindlessly repeat things you heard in class without a wit of any actual historical or scientific evidence to back your claims and expect to go unchallenged?

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    Replies
    1. My comments were just a parody just like the prank article.

      Delete
  4. Academic Journal: Newtonian Physics Is ‘Oppressive’ to Marginalized People

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448102/quantum-physics-oppressive-marginalized-people

    ReplyDelete