Scott Tibbs
Neil deGrasse Tyson puts politics over science
By Scott Tibbs, August 18, 2023
Neil deGrasse Tyson generated quite a bit of discussion with a viral video about transgenderism, but no response I have seen addresses this point: He was conflating political ideology and "individual liberty" with science. More accurately, he was replacing science with politics.
Tyson said that we have "the pursuit of happiness," and asked "what business is it of yours to require that I fulfill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?"
The most hilarious thing about his question is that Tyson himself is the one who refuses to think about gender on a spectrum. Do women only wear frilly dresses and makeup? Can men not enjoy poetry or beautiful flowers? A woman is no less of a woman if she is working in her yard wearing jeans and a t-shirt. A man is no less of a man if he is doing the laundry or cooking dinner for the family.
Tyson, while he is sanctimoniously lecturing people for not being open minded about gender, refuses to recognize that many people express their femininity and masculinity differently. Does a girl play with trucks and like sports? She must be a boy. Does boy like poetry and is expressive with his emotions? He is a girl. No matter how broad this hypocrite makes his phylactery, Tyson's rigid sex roles are far more strict than the "bigots" he condemns.
What Tyson is advocating is political and cultural tolerance for people who live as the opposite sex. What accommodations should be made, and what accommodations should not be made? But that is a totally separate question from whether genetics are "insufficient" to determine someone's sex. No, genetics and anatomy are 100% sufficient to determine sex, and no one has ever been "assigned" sex at birth. Equating tolerance with the religious belief that men actually are women is disingenuous. Tyson is far too intelligent to make an argument like this from science, so his dishonesty and hypocrisy has greatly harmed his credibility.
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