Question: what’s the connection between Houghton University, a conservative Christian school in western New York, and female Bobolinks cloaked in male Bobolink plumage? And no, Houghton University’s sports teams are not the Fighting Bobolinks, although that would be an extremely cool name, not to mention much more fearsome than the school’s actual mascot, which is the “Highlander Lion.”  Just saying.

But on to the link between Bobolinks and Houghton University—followed by Ron DeSantis, Ken Ham, Dylan Mulvaney, European moles, and Modest Mouse, among others. They’re all connected, right?
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Bobolinks are among the suite of grassland birds that I studied for over two decades. In 1996 one of my former graduate students flushed an oddly plumaged female Bobolink off her nest, which contained a clutch of eggs. She looked more male than female, although she had a fully developed brood patch for incubating eggs (male Bobolinks don’t incubate). Twelve years later, and another breeding-season female Bobolink that resembled a male showed up, this time in the peer-reviewed literature. The author of the paper hypothesized that the female was an older bird, with high levels of androgens and low levels of estrogen, hence the unusual plumage. In both cases, the female’s eggs didn’t hatch.

Now to Houghton University, a small school in western New York affiliated with the Wesleyan Church. Houghton recently  fired two employees for including personal pronouns in their email signatures. Houghton maintains that it “has never terminated an employment relationship based solely on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures,” although the New YorkTimes makes it clear that’s exactly what happened. I assume that personal pronouns can still be used in Houghton’s English classrooms, even if Thou Shalt Not Use Them in an Email Signature, given the school’s religiously conservative views on sex and gender.  “A Wesleyan View of Gender Identity and Expression” explains Houghton’s attitude about all things gendered; it’s a long article, but three statements jumped out at me:

1) “Maleness and femaleness are universal human categories. A Christian perspective begins with the assumption of “divine assignment” at the head of the list of determining factors for one’s gender identity. At the same time, it must be recognized and acknowledged that feelings about gender identity also involve an intricate interplay of physiology, hormones, genetics, psychology, family nurture and the will (one’s own moral choices). The “distortion” (Italics mine) of one’s sense of identity occurs whenever any of these causal factors is abused, ignored or goes awry.

2) “Gender confusion and dysphoria are ultimately the biological, psychological, social and spiritual consequences of the human race’s fallen condition.”

3) “Psychological disorders, genetic defects and social stigmas are all consequences of this fall caused by human sin.”

The line of logic engendered here (sorry) seems to be that there are two “divinely assigned” human sexes/genders, male and female. Any “distortions” of this absolute dichotomy due to “biological” factors and “genetic defects” result from human sin and “the fall,” which takes us back to Adam and Eve. The Wesleyan Church doesn’t strictly adhere to an interpretation of Genesis that includes a 6,000-year-old Earth and literal Garden of Eden, as does Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis crew.  However, Wesleyans seem to believe, like Ken Ham, that human sin, as first practiced by Adam (he/him) and Eve (she/her), were responsible for the wrath of God (most definitely He/Him), the fall, and all ensuing “genetic defects,” “gender confusion and dysphoria,” and departures from the “universal human categories of maleness and femaleness.”  Bummer. 

Well. If God’s wrath was responsible for the presence of “genetic defects” and “gender confusion and dysphoria” in a perfectly created world, then the same divine rage must have produced divergence from absolute categories of “maleness and femaleness” in other animals. Which brings me to theodicy (explaining the existence of pain and suffering in a world created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God) as it applies to non-human animals. I’ve traveled to Theodicy Land before, with white-footed mice and botflies, and Inyo Mountains salamanders and House Sparrows, so why again? Because theodicy and the existence of pain and suffering (and all those “genetic defects” etc.) in animals—human and otherwise—challenge anthropocentric, absolutist world views and is relevant to current attacks on transgender rights. 

Contrary to Houghton University, Ron DeSantis and at least 19 states, scientific research demonstrates that human sex and gender are complicated phenomena. As a 2015 article in Nature states: “if biologists continue to show that sex is a spectrum, then society and state will have to grapple with the consequences, and work out where and how to draw the line . . . if the law requires that a person is male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash?  ‘My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter . . .  gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,’ says Vilain [clinician and director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles].  In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask.” (Of course, in Ron DeSantis land, one is no longer supposed to ask about any of this.)

But back to theodicy and non-human animals, sort of. For a millisecond, let’s grant Wesleyans and Ken Ham their beliefs about sex and gender in humans. What about intersexuality and related phenomena in other mammals? Intersexuality has been documented in many domestic mammals and wild species like European roe deer and crab-eating foxes. And then there are four species of moles in which females have ovotestes (gonads with male and female aspects); wood lemmings, in which females can have either XX, X*X, or X*Y sex chromosomes (X* being a “mutant” X chromosome), and spotted hyenas, in which females have an impressive phallic-like clitoris. I could go on, but the bottom line is that it’s a messy, variable sex-determining world in mammal-land, whether we’re talking humans or other species—courtesy either of Adam and Eve and an angry, petulant God willing to punish innocent creatures because humans messed up, or because natural processes (evolution, ecology, physiology, cell division and replication) are inherently variable, imperfect, and subject to the effects of probability and environment.  

Birds, like mammals, have a primarily genetic system of sex determination, although in birds females are heterogametic (ZW), while males have two Z sex chromosomes. Birds occasionally exhibit an amazing condition called bilateral gynandromorphism, in which half the individual is male and half female—in plumage, gonads, and sex chromosomes. In a well-known Zebra Finch example, the right half of the bird was genetically and anatomically male while the left half was female. The bird behaved as a fully masculinized male and successfully courted a female, although her eggs were, alas, infertile. 

Which brings me back to that female Bobolink and my own exposure to the “messiness” of sex determination in non-human animals. In the Wesleyan/Houghton University/Ken Ham view of the world, presumably both gynandromorphism and that female Bobolink’s issues with androgen/estrogen balances (those Wesleyan “genetic defects” and “biological consequences”) ultimately lead back to human sin and the fall.  Hmm. But there are larger implications here, about a vengeful God (pity the poor animals) and a perversely anthropocentric ideology and world view.  Either Ken Ham and his Wesleyan fellow-travelers are right in all of this, or there’s a natural world out there that is built on evolutionary, ecological, and physiological “messiness” and variability.

But never mind scientific research on human sex, mole ovotestes, intersex mammals, bilateral gynandromorph birds, or female Bobolinks in feathered drag—let alone statements by thirty professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, supporting gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Never mind the actual world. Paranoia about pronouns in email signatures, Bud Lite™ sponsors (Maybe if Dylan Mulvaney had pitched Bell’s Two Hearted IPA, none of that brouhaha would have happened?), bathrooms, and medical care for transgender youth has nothing to do with biology or expert opinion. Instead, DeSantis and his fellow gender-bashers are motivated by political considerations, fear, and rigid belief systems predicated on absolute certainty and invariant dichotomies. 

Cue Answers in Genesis and the Wesleyan Church.

Cue Nikki Haley and her unbelievably stupid comment that the debate over whether transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete on sports teams alongside their cisgender peers is the “women’s issue of our time.” (Conveniently ignoring the epidemic of domestic violence directed at women, failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the persistent pay gap between men and women, loss of reproductive choice, and inadequate support for childcare, not to mention the intersection of race, sexuality, and women’s issues.)

And cue Modest Mouse and the lyrics to “Missed the Boat”: “Our ideas held no water, but we used them like a dam.”

But to use a bit of Nikki Haley’s language here, arguments over transgender rights and all they encompass are a proxy for the true “issue for our time,” which has to do with conflicting world views predicated either on nuance, uncertainty, and variability, or on absolute certainty and rigid dichotomies (in other words, ideology). Examples of the corrosive effects of blind and absolute ideology are proliferating, and are the source of so much human folly and anguish:

Truth with a capital “T.”
Fear of “The Other.”
Categories of Us versus Them, based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic group, political belief, citizenship, or economic status.
Dismissal of science and expert opinion.
An originalist interpretation of the U. S. Constitution. (One of my pet peeves.)
Banned books and censorship in our schools.

Marry these attitudes to a conviction that the ends justify the means and what you get are a slew of William Butler Yeats’ rough beasts, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born and willing to do or say just about anything in pursuit of their goals. Ron DeSantis (he/him), Ken Ham (he/him), and Nikki Haley (she/her), anyone?

And oh yes—Happy Pride Month, y’all.