Razib Khan vs. transgender people

Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American writer and anti-transgender activist. Khan comes to anti-trans “sex science” via “race science” and is best known for laundering extremist views about race into mainstream media.

Khan hopes to usher in the “second age of eugenics” through genetic screening and manipulation to increase “good” trait and eliminate “bad” traits. Many of Khan’s like-minded colleagues consider being trans and gender diverse to be undesirable traits.

Khan has been published in numerous anti-trans publications, including Quillette, Substack, New York Times, Unz Review, Taki’s Magazine, and VDARE.

Background

Newamul K. “Razib” Khan was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1977. Khan’s family moved to the US in 1982. He lived in upstate New York as a child before the family moved to Oregon.

Khan earned two bachelor’s degrees from University of Oregon in 2000 and 2006. Following graduate work at UC Davis, Khan was a software engineer before receiving money from Ron Unz to writed about hereditarian and eugenic topics.

In 2010, Khan co-founded the group blog Brown Pundits with Zachary L. Zavidé and Omar Ali. Khan has also promoted an “intellectual brown web.”

In 2015, the New York Times announced they had contracted with Khan to write monthly pieces, but they rescinded the offer following protests.

Gene Expression

Starting in 2002, Khan and “Godless” aka “Godless Capitalist” published a blog called Gene Expression. It is promoted by conservative Steve Sailer, who runs a eugenics think tank called the Human Biodiversity Institute. People connected with Steve Sailer were heavy promoters of J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen.

In a 26 October 2003 entry that was soon pulled, “Godless” decided to attack world-renowned electrical engineering Professor Lynn Conway for investigating this eugenics think tank. Godless writes:

NKVD tactics
For those of you who feel that I’m too paranoid about anonymity, or who believe that I’m somehow exaggerating the danger to my academic career by even posting here…you need to read this post.
Xsteve recently linked an investigative reporter’s excavation of the membership of an e-group list to which a number of people interested in behavioral genetics belong to:
Beginning in the summer of 2003, our investigators began sending us information about these “HBDG” people, their connections with Bailey, their support of his work, and their coming to his defense as his work and reputation began unraveling….
Over time we hope to fill in even more details about Bailey’s supportive network, and thus better answer such questions as “Why did he do it?” Why did he do it the way he did? What could he have been thinking? Who inspired him to think that way? Who supported the publication of his book by the National Academy Press, and defended it within Academy circles? We’d also like to further reveal how his small circle of supporters tried to defend him, desperately trying to make their defense look in the media like a larger “mainstream” defense by “unaffiliated people” (when in fact it’s been easy to link them all together, and show that only Bailey’s original supporters have come to his defense…mostly from among his key HBDG friends).
To return to our main topic – in the best tradition of the Spanish Inquisition, we are probably going to see an extensive smear campaign directed against Michael Bailey and all other non pseudonymous members of the list, including Steven Pinker. The people who’re running this particular investigation are mainly transsexuals (and are thus politically marginal), but the far larger group of “antiracists” who want to use Nazi smears on guys like Pinker[1] will love the fact that Pinker is on the same list as “the devil himself”, Charles Murray. Bet on it – the HBDG will be used like the Pioneer Fund to smear people with guilt-by-association.
Update:
The plot thickens. The person doing the investigating is Lynn Conway. Now, anyone who’s ever taken a class on VLSI design has heard of Conway – along with Carver Mead, she wrote the seminal text on the subject back in 1978, “Introduction to VLSI Design”.
Thing is, “she” is really a “he”. Seems like investigative reporters tracked down the fact that she was a man in her early career and exposed her. Which makes one wonder why she’d want to invade the privacy of others…
Bonus laugh
This picture is from Conway’s website.
[included an image from this biographical sketch]
Standing next to Conway is Brent Scowcroft, realpolitiker extraordinaire and mastermind of the first Gulf War. Somehow, I doubt ol’ Brent would have had that smile on his face if he’d realized that Conway was a transsexual 🙂

Godless’ Bio:

I need to stay anonymous (or at least preserve plausible deniability) for career reasons. Till then, I can volunteer the following facts:

1. I have never met Razib in person.
2. I was born in the United States and have lived here all my life.
3. I am of Asian ancestry.
4. I’m a non-evangelistic atheist. I look at “God” as a shorthand for “that which we don’t know yet .”
Philosophically, I’m a pragmatist who believes that the most important issue facing us today is the potential of transhumanism: both genetic and cybernetic. I’m a unrepentant materialist who believes that every physical phenomenon (in principle) can be reduced to calculating dynamics with the four fundamental forces. In other words, I’m against vitalism and the “ghost in the machine”.
Politically, I’m a registered Democrat who voted and campaigned for Gore, but I started leaning right after 9/11 and will vote Republican until & unless the Democrats put up a candidate who’s not afraid to kill people when necessary – perhaps like Wesley Clark or John McCain. I’m basically center-right on most economic matters, center-left on most social matters, and center-right/right on foreign policy. Most people mistake me for “far right” because I believe in th e reality of human biodiversity, but I have very little in common with ethnic national socialists (e.g. Stormfront) or paleoconservatives (e.g. Lew Rockwell). My package of beliefs is probably best approximated by the label “neo-libertarian”. I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of those that threaten them. [1]
Concerning human biodiversity (aka h-bd), I’m a reluctant convert from the school of egalitarianism. I used to be a committed anti-racist, to the point that I harangued my relatives about the statistical illiteracy inherent in the use of anecdotal examples. [2] Once I started seeing the science, though – crime statistics, IQ research, brain research, population genetics, genomics – I started to convert. My change in beliefs was complete by the time I started my current line of work. To the extent I’ve incorporated my beliefs into my political philosophy, I’d say I subscribe to cognitive elitism: the belief that the intelligent (of either sex and any ethnic origin) are the engine of society. In my personal life, I prefer talking and socializing with the sort of intelligent, deracinated people one meets around Route 128. I’m not blind to the potential of racial balkanization, which is why I believe it’s a good thing that the multiracial American cognitive elite have high intermarriage rates. If history is any guide, mutts have loyalty to the USA rather than foreign powers.
My personal, idiosyncratic definition of racism is: judging something by their ethnic ancestry *rather than* the content of their character, after the content of their character is known to you. I have no tolerance for people who employ racial epithets, because I believe that the truth of h-bd can and must be communicated without hostility or vituperation.
Finally, I believe that scientific truth will always come out sooner or later. Like Galileo and Darwin, the ideas of h-bd are currently unpopular…but after the haplotype map is completed, they’ll soon become common sense.
[1] Not my saying – found it at the Neolibertarian News Portal, but I like it.
[2] The whole business reminds me in retrospect of the Soviet Union and China, where children were propagandized to rat on their parents.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000734.html

Podcast

Khan has platformed a number of anti-trans guests, including:

Bryan Caplan
Ross Douthat
Diana Fleischman
Sarah Haider
Jonathan Haidt
Richard Hanania (3 episodes)
Carole Hooven
Iona Italia
Lee Jussim
Eric Kaufmann
Claire Lehmann
Glenn Loury
Megan McArdle
Charles Murray
Steven Pinker (2 episodes)
Tania Reynolds
Matt Ridley
Stuart Ritchie
Kat Rosenfield
Christopher Rufo
Oliver Traldi
Leighton Woodhouse
Colin Wright
Cathy Young

Steven Pinker interview “The ghost in the machine, particularly as repurposed today in service of gender ideology.”

References

Cussins, Jessica (June 26, 2014). Quantified and Analyzed, Before the First Breath. Center for Genetics and Society https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/quantified-and-analyzed-first-breath

Khan, Razib (June 18, 2008). Curing the Gay. Unz Review https://www.unz.com/gnxp/curing-the-gay/

Khan, Razib (April 2, 2023). Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate 20+ years later. Unsupervised Learning https://unsupervisedlearning.libsyn.com/steven-pinker-the-blank-slate-20-years-later