Serinus opens his remarks in his recent column by drawing attention to a couple “doozies” in the previous Leader. The objects of his scorn are two examples of a kind of diversity many these days can’t abide: viewpoint diversity.

Serinus pillories Marcia Kelborn for wrong-think and states “...rejecting mounds of peer-reviewed scientific research on gender to deliver the classic trans exclusionary, so-called “feminist” party line: Trans women are biological males, and they have no business playing on women’s sports teams.” This doozy of a sentence deceptively switches the subject from “gender” to “biological sex” as though they were interchangeable terms. They clearly are not. Whatever these “mounds” of research on gender may purport, they can’t argue that basic biological processes don’t lead to functional differences among sexes. While that truth may be inconvenient to Serinus’ argument, it has been thoroughly established by peer reviewed, scientific research on biology, among other sciences.

Which of course is why Serinus’ argument deceptively re-focuses on gender and not biology. Similar activists, likewise cornered by scientific reality, rely on tautologies (transwomen ARE women) or hope to re-educate us to this orientation: science is nothing more than a social-construct. Apparently when we weren’t looking, radical activists waged a revolution on reality itself and reality lost. Sorry ladies.

Of course Serinus knows the difference between gender and sex, but doesn’t bother to engage with the ethical implications underlying this issue. Instead, he finds it more expedient to slur Ms. Kelborn with the TERF label. Another doozy. I believe this issue deserves more serious consideration, so I ask: can we reconcile our belief that a transgender person has an undeniable right to self-determination while simultaneously acknowledging that women and girls deserve equality and fairness in competitive pursuits? That is a serious question, Jason. A bit of a doozy, really.

Keith Early

Port Townsend