Neil deGrasse Tyson's Thoughts on Transgenderism

it seems like the left is militating against the the advent of science one of those areas is is the area of transgenderism uh the the argument that is typically made by gender theorists is that gender is entirely separate from sex uh you've seen the argument made that it makes no difference on average if men are stronger than women are and that if we were to allow transgender women to compete with non-transgender women then this would somehow not disadvantage biological women and this seems to me absolutely a scientific that if we're actually going to have a discussion about gender and sex that that should be based in data which suggests that mammals are in fact binary in terms of their sex unless you have intersex birth defects typically or genetic defects i'm happy to opine on this um this only matters because today we segregate most nearly all sports by gender otherwise why do you even give a what's what someone identifies with so this is we live in a free country and with consenting adults and people free expression of who and what they are man adult level i agree with you i think it doesn't matter what you teach and so there's the there's the the matrix of of you know what you are biologically how you express yourself who you choose as a sexual partner if we actually live in a free country as we tell ourselves people's freedom to behave in any of those ways should not concern you at all nor are they requiring that you behave that way okay this is for their own freedoms because we live in a free country now what is unresolved here is what do you do with sports it's unresolved and i've followed that closely and i don't see any i don't see any meaningful solutions to come down off of that um we know that hormones manifest differently in different people and have just the whole thing with steroids steroids are hormones right and we rallied against steroids in professional sports because it gives you an undue advantage so i i've tried to think of what the future of sports would be in the world of a gender spectrum and it may be you don't specify whether it's a male or female sport you just take measurements of what your hormonal balances are and so you compete based on your mother this is thought i had i don't know i don't know where it's going to land the wnba won't be in business for very long if that's the case it would just be uh you'd have to you'd have to find some way to compete people against each other if you still care that sports is an interesting activity i guess the area where it does come up in a non-sports area i don't know so it would be you talk in your book about the education of children and teaching children about science and right now children are being taught about the quote unquote gender spectrum which is not scientifically based that is a that is a theory based idea no wait wait wait wait wait hold on people express themselves on a spectrum so you learn that that's right that's that that's that's a social that's a social point not a scientific point it's it's meaning we express ourselves in based in different languages that's something you teach in science class or is that something that you teach when you're teaching language um so whether the fact that people want to express themselves on a spectrum on a gender spectrum whether that fact is something you want to put in a sociology class or in a science class maybe that remains to be determined but it is a real fact about real society of course nobody's denying that people identify how they want to identify so so so the question is what is the relationship of that to biology meaning right the argument is made that trans women are women for example and what that seems to mean is that trans women are identical to women now people want to say trans women are not biological women obviously that is the case but people don't seem to want to say that although that is obviously scientifically true trans women are not biological women biological women are biological women but where are you going with this what what is your what is your what are you trying to accomplish by asking yourself is it science or is it not science it's how it's people in society but this is this is a perfect example of an area where suddenly it doesn't matter to say things that are just true like why is it why is it bad or wrong i have another way to to approach this um i care what is objectively true in the world as a scientist um but let me not say even as a scientist i just simply care what is objectively true and science happens to be a pretty potent path to invoke to find out what is true and so if people express themselves on a gender spectrum and that is an actual thing in an actual society if we have not fully explained that scientifically that's an interesting frontier to study if you want to say it's only sociological then it's the purview of the social sciences i don't care who studies it it's an interesting fact about society that's worth learning about if to make it to fight someone and say it's not biological it's just your this is it's real and it's there well because it's real because it manifests but it it is real because it manifests but the question of the of how to classify manifestation is a scientific question meaning that for example there's a there's a woman over brown university she came out with a study that suggested that there was a phenomenon called rapid onset gender dysphoria in which a member of a particular group would suffer from gender dysphoria and this person's immediate peer group would suddenly have an onset of gender dysphoria this paper was so controversial that brown tried to pull it and then was was forced to re reassign it later you see this sort of that's a different question what you're asking now is are there some topics that should not be studied scientifically right and is there some taboo and sam harris speaks a lot about this yes and um i think the concern is if you study some topic that's a hot button topic and you bring scientific methods and tools to it there we don't trust i'm interpreting here i think we as a society don't trust that people in charge in a free country won't try to legislate something that will constrict people's freedoms in the face of that information i think that's the fear well isn't that it's a fear i mean and isn't that you don't trust our own ability to govern ourselves in the face of what could be some information relative to other right other kinds of issues isn't that a bit of a problem yes yeah it's not it means it's not a free society it's not a society of free inquiry which i think you need ultimately but um yeah my general take on all of this stuff from climate change to gender dysphoria to all these issues is bring out the science and then let's hash it out i think that the problem i'm seeing on a lot of sciences what is your motivation why why does that matter it matters because if you have political power you could end up creating legislation that subtracts freedoms from people who previously were enjoying the same freedoms as you the history of that exercise and make a better argument it doesn't end well well but the the history of which exercise bring out all the science and let's hash it out i'm saying if you bring out all the science and the politicians hash it out the history of that exercise is a recipe for disaster if it involves discoveries that put people's freedom as defined in our constitution at risk but now you're arguing for limitations on areas of particular study no i'm arguing on we need a way to shield we need a way to protect people's freedoms in the face of whatever gets discovered scientifically so i i i'll give you i mean i agree i think that's what the constitution is for is to guard rights from but we're always i mean people who want rights are always fighting others who are saying they don't get the rights from the constitution this is a daily challenge on the progressive left it is a daily challenge right here's an example i was i forgot how i ended up getting this phone call it was some magazine that serves the gay community and they want i remember why because they wanted my opinion on um there was some they wanted my opinion about whether being gay was biological or matter but there's that new study that came out this is psychological right okay right and i said i don't care which it is it find out what it is fine but the answer to that question should have no consequence on legislations or laws because for example suppose it's suppose it said it's purely biological okay then you say oh that explains it let's suppose it says it's purely psychological what are you going to do now i say well now you can you're going to go to the the the re-orientation camps or whatever those are called where they realign you because they say it's psychological rather than biological all of a sudden people start behaving in ways in society that want to constrict the freedom of expression of who and what people are and that is a danger so maybe there needs to be a line in the sand let science do what it does but politicians keep us free yet there's so many politicians that are doing the opposite of that so why aren't you a libertarian i'm a libertarian come over here just okay the line is right here join me over here

Channel: Ben Shapiro

Views: 5,264,023

Keywords: neil degrasse tyson, transgenderism, what is transgenderism, neil degrasse tyson (astrophysicist), cosmos neil degrasse tyson, neil degrasse tyson podcast, neil degrasse tyson black holes, niel degrasse tyson, transgender child, transgender model, transgender information, transgender, transgender rights, ben shapiro, shapiro, neil degrasse, neil degrasse tyson science, ben shapiro neil degrasse tyson, shapiro neil degrasse tyson, ben shapiro vs neil degrasse tyson

Id: w89etN8QqNQ

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021