Mayhem threatened to break out in Berlin on July 2nd, at this year’s “Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften” (Long Night of the Sciences), when it was revealed that a professor was scheduled to discuss the difference between biological sex and gender—there being only two sexes but multiple gender identifications. Such talking points were felt to undermine the focus of the event, “Science as an answer to fake news, conspiracy theories, and fatal errors.”
As part of the program, held at Berlin’s Humboldt University, biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, part of the faculty of Life Sciences and Behavioral Physiology at University’s Institute of Biology—who defines herself as a “feminist” and “very left-wing”—was slated to give a lecture. The topic was “Gender is not equal to sex. Sex, Gender, and Why There Are Only Two Sexes in Biology.”
The “Arbeitskreis kritischer Jurist*innen an der Humboldt Uni Berlin” (AKJ), a leftist activist group, learned of the planned lecture, after which they called for a demonstration in order to deny Vollbrecht a stage. They objected to her support for a “binary reality of sexual human nature,” and its distinction from a “woke trans-ideology.” The threat of a demonstration worked, and the university summarily canceled the lecture.
“Ms. Vollbrecht’s lecture was canceled in the interest of the overall event and the visitors,” Humboldt University announced. “The debate surrounding the lecture threatens to overshadow all other offerings.”
Vollbrecht, for her part, recognized the cancellation as a result of “caving in to radical activists ready to use violence,” conceding the decision was “understandable, but alarming.” Humboldt’s actions to revoke her platform perpetrates the phenomenon, now entrenched in the West, to abandon factual debate and cancel events “for fear of violence.”
In her lecture, which Vollbrecht later gave online, she emphasized the de facto differences inherent in human biology from the sociological gender categories, which are independent of biological sex. But this categorization by Vollbrecht was not progressive enough for some activists, who accused her of ‘queerphobia.’
In an interview with Die Welt, Vollbrecht justified her reasons for identifying as a leftist: her “driving force” is “class struggle,” she said, and she used to be a member of the Socialist Youth. Now though, as a scientist who is also a leftist, she feels compelled to support both the biological reality of the human body, and the possibilities for gender fluidity. But such a position is no longer left-wing enough for her left-wing comrades-in-arms.
She has now been publicly accused of alleged “inhumane biologism” by the Green politician Volker Beck, and the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Research, Jens Brandenburg of the liberal FDP, alleged the binary nature of human sexuality to be among some “long-disproven theses,” and called the subject “utter nonsense that is difficult to bear.”
The Left revolution is once again devouring its own children for deviating from the official line of progressivism.
