Auditing an Anthropology Spat
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 3, 2023
A spat at an academic anthropology conference may outlive whatever other topics might arise in a review of what makes humankind tick by directly illustrating what ails us as a society.
Conflict arose over a decision to cancel a conference panel aimed at arguing that current concern about transgender life is erasing research based on binary gender choices.
What with government shutdown arguments, the prosecution of a former president for attempting to overthrow democracy and the would-be impeachment of the current president for somehow helping his son sell influence with the government, you may have missed notice of an academic schism that curiously captures our emergent inability to hear opponents’ voices and still protect people’s rights and sensitivities.
Indeed, there was a little bit of fodder for every point of view in this flare-up on the cultural front, and yet, the absurdity that there is a fight at all.
The irony, of course, is that it happened at a gathering of anthropologists — academics who have devoted their social science to the study of how we humans choose to act.
According to The New York Times, which wrote about the conference clash, organizers of the conference said the planned session lacked scientific merit and would be harmful to transgender members among 8,000 members of the two groups involved. Those who wanted to speak out said they were surprised to find themselves shunned and talked about academic freedom to air their views and the slippery slope of barring research that might lead to politically incorrect results.
Organizers from American and Canadian anthropology associations countered that this was akin to promoting eugenics and “race science,” dropping more than a century ago, adding that there are emerging genetic questions even about biological birth sex since we’re now aware of births with XXY chromosomes, for instance.
Sex and Gender
As a discipline, many anthropologists have moved in recent decades to a more nuanced view of gender, one that often rejects it as simply binary.
Dr. Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, had assembled a panel to discuss a topic labeled as “Let’s Talk About Sex Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology. When the topic was approved, it was the result of proposals that suggested there are academic interests in following some research that depends on gender-specific information. One example offered was looking at sex preferences in infanticide of past populations.
The argument overall was that sometimes it is important to treat research questions about sex and gender separately.
Besides, Dr. Lowrey argued, the panelists were not consulted and In a statement, her panelists said that it was a “false accusation” that their ideas were intended to harm the transgender community. Her panelists say anthropology is erasing discussions of sex, which they believe is binary — either male or female.
One of the panelists, Elizabeth Weiss, a physical anthropologist at San Jose State University, said her position was that sex is binary, but gender is not.
In its joint statement, the two sponsors of the conference said that they wanted to protect the transgender community. They added that “The function of the ‘gender critical’ scholarship advocated in this session, like the function of the ‘race science’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is to advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.”
“This was an intention to marginalize, not engage scientifically,” Dr. Ramona Pérez, American Anthropology Assn. president, said.
Hearing the Other
Okay. These are academics arguing about what is a legitimate set of topics for academic review. And the fine distinctions between gender and sex or gender and identity may be, well, academic. It could have been a school board meeting with yelling about acceptable books or bathroom rules, or senators trying to preen with hearing questions about the science of biology.
But two things seem evident here — and both seem important to an anthropological or cultural review of the times in which we find ourselves.
One focuses on our insistence even before airing arguments that we need to be comfortable with what is said — even in the name of scientific exploration. The other is whether we encourage or discourage social scientists — or politicians, television commentators, and county clerks’ offices — to acknolwedge that there are lots of ways to abridge sensitivities out there that may be important in figuring out what questions are worth pursuing in such settings.
The resulting answers cry out for context,
Of all academic disciplines, here is anthropology, which concerns itself with how we choose to interact as humans, how we come up with and pursue customs, habits, and rules, having exactly the same kind of difficulty in addressing discussions of transgender life adaptation as we see in out-of-control school board meetings on bathroom policies or how we fear the books that students might read.
The cultural fact is that whatever birth biology says or not, people are making choices about gender identity — some while still young, and some while maturing into different adult age groups. The questions we have concern how willing society is proving to be in its rules and how we are handling the discussions between those pursuing tradition and those pursuing individual rights.
I’d propose an anthropological panel on how we’ve forgotten how to talk with one another respectfully,
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