Michael Biggs

Savage Minds

Michael Biggs, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, discusses his foray into gender criticism from his graduate studies in the United States to being told by students to “get educated.” Bigg reports: “I did educate myself but I came away with the ‘wrong’ views.” Sharing his thoughts on the origins of gender ideology, Biggs examines inert facets within feminism where some feminists have maintained that there are no differences between men and women, a posture which inevitably led to the likes of Judith Butler being able to step into this discourse and to further disassociated gender from sex. Covering the history of transsexualism from the 1950s through the 1990s, Biggs considers how this era was a fundamentally male phenomenon with 90% of transsexuals being men and their clinicians were also invariably male (eg. John Money, Harry Benjamin). Conversely, Biggs apprehends an interesting shift from the beginning of this century where not only the majority of those claiming a trans identity have been women, but he observes that it is mostly females (eg. Judith Butler, Stephen Whittle, Ruth Hunt, Nancy Kelly, Polly Carmichael) driving this movement to include the incredible push for institutional and political capture. Biggs also elucidates how the transgender movement of today has nothing to do with the transsexual phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. Detailing how the scientific hokum within the literature of gender identity has been successful in elaborating what he calls “idea laundering,” Biggs expounds upon the mechanism whereby articles advancing bad ideas with poor research behind them are incredibly difficult to discredit while, even if one succeds in publishing a critique of a flawed study, the refutation, in all likeihood, will result in the flawed study being cited even more.

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