Two-Tier Tolerance: Academia Promotes Sex Advocate, Punishes Creationist

In academia, there is tolerance for thee but not for me:
behold an Oxford University professor’s career as a transsexual advocate

 

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

Academia is increasingly stressing the importance of tolerance in the workplace and classroom. One of the latest examples is a person who self-labels as a “trans” (male to female) named Dr. Clara Michelle Barker. On one website she claims, “I am a proud pansexual transwoman and I am a materials scientist.”[1] To be “pansexual” is to be sexually or romantically attracted to people regardless of their sex or gender. She calls herself a scientist but she is actually a lab manager who uses pulsed-laser deposition machines that hit composites of copper, barium, or calcium with a high-powered laser beam to knock some of the atoms off the material’s surface. Those atoms that are knocked off travel through a vacuum and are collected on another surface, forming a thin film.

The goal is to produce materials that superconduct at higher temperatures. Superconduction occurs when all electrical resistance vanishes. From this process, wires are produced that do not lose energy as heat as the electrical current travels along the wire line.

Questionable Record

I was unable to document any progress she had made in lowering the temperature that material can superconduct in the seven years she was at Oxford. I was not even able to confirm that she has published anything in science anywhere. Every article I located about her was related to her transsexual status and activities.

I did locate scholarly articles that mentioned her lab work and troubleshooting role, but these articles did not list her as a contributor to the article. I also located many articles in which a D. Barker was listed as one of the authors, but these articles were not authored by Clara.[2] Nor could I locate anything about her academic or scholarly accomplishments. All faculty list their academic accomplishments on their university’s website.

Conversely, hundreds of websites list Clara’s  LGBT+ and pansexual activities, including YouTube interviews. Judging by her YouTube interviews, she clearly has a very masculine voice and mannerisms, looking like a male with long hair.[3]

Barker even has a laudatory Wikipedia page detailing the many awards given to her as a trans person, which include her volunteer work raising the acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in the minds of the public.[4]  She wrote:

I am the vice chair of the LGBT+ advisory group at Oxford University and in 2018 I won the first diversity role model award from the University. I run a youth group for LGBTI+ people, with a support group for their parents. I give many talks in schools and within the University sharing my story or explaining “LGBTI+ 101’s”. I share my story as a trans scientist who, for so long, believed that coming out as transgender would be career-ending. I vocally campaign for trans rights, reminding people that the fight for LGBTI+ equality is not yet won. I write and talk at various events and can be found on Twitter, YouTube and my blog site. I also love to highlight LGBTI+ hidden histories in museums. For my volunteer work I won a Points of Light Award from the UK Prime Minister in 2017 and in 2018 was invited to a reception to celebrate London Pride at 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister.[5]

I assume that he was born a male and has attempted to transition to a female. All I could find about his upbringing was that he had some mental problems, quit school before graduating from high school, and worked at odd jobs for several years. Now that he is a “she” and has become fairly famous, I would expect that she is less prone to depression. She was even celebrated in a Nature feature article headlined: “‘I was no longer pretending or hiding’: a trans scientist finds a lab to call home.”[6] She was hired in 2015 by Oxford University and has been at Oxford actively encouraging support for so-called “trans rights.” Among other activities, she is the vice-chair of the University’s LGBTI+ 101’s Advisory Group.

Discrimination?

At least one faculty member elected to comment about the trans movement. The media has accused Oxford Professor Michael Biggs, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Fellow of St. Cross College, of making some statements that Clara objected to. One of these statements, which has caused Biggs’s account to be suspended by Twitter, is as follows:

It is not transphobic to discuss the merits of legislation or to debate theories about sex and gender. Dictionary definitions such as ‘woman: adult human female’ and ‘lesbian: female homosexual’ are not transphobic. Nor is it transphobic to call the convicted rapist Karen White—who was placed in a women’s prison—a man.

The Karen White case Biggs referred to was detailed by the London news outlet The Telegraph as follows:

Karen White, 52, who was born a man, used the guise of wanting to change sex to convince the authorities to place her in a women’s prison where she sexually assaulted two female inmates. White carried out the attacks at New Hall women’s prison in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, while being held on remand accused of a knife attack on a neighbor and raping two women. Leeds Crown Court heard how she used her “transgender persona” to put herself in contact with vulnerable women. White, formerly known as David Thompson, had a history of sexually offending which stretched back to 1989 when he indecently exposed himself to a nine year old boy near a children’s playground. Other than changing her name and wearing wigs and women’s clothing, White made no effort to embark on gender reassignment.[7]

Professor Biggs, noting that his reasons are not religious, but are based on logic, defended his comments by reasoning that he does not believe that

gender identity supersedes sex, any more than I believe that Jesus was the son of God. Therefore I oppose any attempt by the University to establish an official doctrine on gender, just as I would oppose the imposition of a single religion or one particular position on Israel-Palestine. The enforcement of orthodoxy—often disguised as ‘diversity’—would destroy the University’s very foundation: academic freedom.[8]

Inconvenient Truths

Clara Barker says nothing about the people who regret transitioning, nor why the rate has increased enormously in the past few years:

In recent years, the number of children experiencing gender dysphoria in the West has skyrocketed. Exact figures are difficult to come by, but, between 2009 and 2019, children being referred for transitioning treatment in the United Kingdom increased 1,000% among biological males and 4,400% among biological females. Meanwhile, the number of young people identifying as transgender in the US has almost doubled since 2017, according to a new Centers for Disease Control & Prevention report.[9]

One example of regret:

When Chloe was 12 years old, she decided she was transgender. At 13, she came out to her parents. That same year, she was put on puberty blockers and prescribed testosterone. At 15, she underwent a double mastectomy. Less than a year later, she realized she’d made a mistake — all by the time she was 16 years old. Now 17, Chloe is one of a growing cohort called “detransitioners” — those who seek to reverse a gender transition, often after realizing they actually do identify with their biological sex. Tragically, many will struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors. “I can’t stay quiet,” said Chloe. “I need to do something about this and to share my own cautionary tale.”[10]

Two-Tiered Tolerance

Clara writes of her own experience growing up and how accepting of her Oxford University was:

I’d long believed that coming out as transgender would be career-ending. Instead, Oxford [University] was the first place where I could be myself, where I’ve enjoyed being in the laboratory, because I was no longer pretending or hiding — I was accepted for being me. What’s most inspiring about our lab is the people I work with: they accept me and treat me as a scientist, so that I can just focus on my work. Since I came here in 2015, Oxford has given me a platform for me to share my story as a trans scientist through talks and articles. It’s such a privilege and an honor to have that visibility.[11]

Clara stresses that “it’s important that we make the lab a place where everyone can be themselves. If we allow that to happen, scientists are going to do their best work.” Unfortunately, this goal does not include everyone. If a creationist received the same support Clara did at Oxford, the previous quote might be reworded to say:

What’s most inspiring about our lab is the people I work with: they accept me and treat me as a scientist, so that I can focus on my work. Since I came here in 2015, Oxford has given me a platform for me to share my story as a creation scientist through talks and articles. It’s such a privilege and an honor to have that visibility… “it’s important that we make the lab a place where everyone can be themselves, including creationists, intelligent design supporters, theistic evolutionists, and evolutionists. If we allow that to happen, scientists are going to do their best work.” [statements in italics inserted]

However, as the story of Professor Change Laura Tan shows,

1. 

   Dr. Change Laura Tan. Click to read her story.

   Sharing one’s story as a creation scientist through talks and articles and will likely result in losing your job – even if you have tenure.

2. Making the lab a place where creationists, intelligent design supporters, theistic evolutionists, and evolutionists can be themselves will not likely occur. Only theistic evolutionists need apply.[12]

Facts of Life Review

It is a delusional that one can change one’s sex, and cosmetic surgery cannot achieve this goal. Except for enucleated cells, every healthy normal human body cell, ignoring aneuploidy, is either male (XY) or female (XX). Given 50 trillion cells in the healthy human body, and 46 chromosomes, the average human has 2,300,000 chromosomal differences compared to the opposite sex. Furthermore, the male Y chromosome contains 55 genes, while the X chromosome contains as many as 1,400 genes, or over 25 times as many more genes. These 1,400 genes produce many of the major genetic differences between the sexes.

After a fertilized egg (zygote) is formed, thousands of other genetic differences are created by imprinting. Imprinting is where certain genes are switched off in males and other genes are switched off in females. Research on 118 fetuses, between 26 and 40 weeks old found significant differences between males and females in 7 of 16 functional connectivity networks. These observations confirm the fact that sexual dimorphism emerges very early during human gestation.

Summary

Although Clara Michelle Barker was publicized as a scientist, I was unable to locate any scientific publications by her – not one. Even her PhD thesis was not in print, nor listed on WorldCat Dissertations and Theses, nor summarized in the journals, as would be normal. Her claim to fame by far is her active work advocating for LGBT+ interests. This work gives her a goal in life and a great deal of positive recognition in contrast to her earlier pre-pansexual/transsexual life. Her on-paper job is to manage the pulsed-laser deposition machines. I could not find any hint that she was objective in touting her lifestyle. She was and is a proselytizer for her new religion.

As Belgian playwright Émile Leon Cammaerts wrote: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything,” such as rejecting true science and 6,000 years of true history, believing that men can become women and women can become men. Gender dysphoria historically called for fixing the mind by a psychiatrist, but now it results in “fixing” the body by a surgeon.

References

[1] Barker, Clara. 500 queer scientists. 500QS. https://500queerscientists.com/dr-clara-barker/, 2023.

[2] Agnese, R., et al. Improved WIMP-search reach of the CDMS II germanium data. Physical Review 92(7): 072003. https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.072003, October 2015.

[3] An Interview with Clara Barker | Thin-film materials scientist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWDZcEmHPoc

[4] Barker, Clara. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barker, 6 January 2023/

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00024-z.

[5] Dr. Clara Barker [She/Her]. https://users.ox.ac.uk/~engs1643/members.html.

[6] Glausiusz, Josie. ‘I was no longer pretending or hiding’: A trans scientist finds a lab to call home. Nature 589(7841): 322, 1 January 2021.

[7] Quine, Oscar. “Oxford professor says ‘academic freedom’ is under threat after he is accused of running transphobic Twitter account.” The Telegraph, 28 October 2018. ISSN 0307-1235.

[8] Quine, 2018.

[9] Schlott, Rikki. ‘I literally lost organs:’ Why detransitioned teens regret changing genders. https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/detransitioned-teens-explain-why-they-regret-changing-genders/, 18 June 2022.

[10] Schlott, 2022.

[11] Glausiusz, 2021.

[12] Bergman, Jerry. Tenure No Longer Protects Creationist Professors. Professor Change Laura Tan expelled: A new book about a new case. Creation/Evolution Headlines. https://crev.info/2023/01/tenure-no-longer-protects-creationist-professors/, 11 January 2023.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,300 publications in 12 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.