Gender activists are currently stirring up a controversy in the most unlikely of places..Anthropologists — the latest in a long line of people who have faced the wrath of LGBTQIA+ activists — are being told they should stop assigning a sex to human remains they excavate during archaeological digs..Activists say its because anthropologists wouldn't have known how the ancient individual identified in terms of gender during their lifetime, so should not be suggesting they are either 'male' or 'female.'.Anthropologists and archaeologists usually use information about human remains, such as the size and shape of the bones, to determine the gender or race of the deceased individual..This data is often vital to specialist anthropologists and archaeologists involved in criminal investigations. The information is often vital to our study and understanding of ancient civilizations..The latest round of finger-wagging has been sparked by Canadian masters student of anthropology, Emma Palladino, who recently took to Twitter to express her point of view on the topic of sexing remains..Palladino said trans individuals “can’t escape” their birth sex because archaeologists who uncover their bones “will assign you the same gender as you had at birth.”.Palladino said in a July 4 tweet: “My trans+non-binary friends: You might know the argument that the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”.“Gender + queer archaeologists and scholars have been working for decades to unpack assumptions that archaeologists make about gender and identity, both today and in the past," Palladino said in a later post to Twitter..“No field is perfect, and there’s absolutely more work to be done, but by and large archaeologists are acutely aware of how culturally and spatially relative the concepts of sex, gender, and identity are,” she said..Palladino, said she thinks sexing human remains is “bullshit,” saying, “Labelling remains ‘male’ or ‘female’ is rarely the end goal of any excavation, anyway.”.“There’s absolutely more work to be done, and more education, empathy, and sensitivity is very much required in the field of archaeology,” the student continued..She went on to reassure the LGBTQIA+ community, “And even IF some shitty archaeologist in the future misgenders you, that will never change who you were, regardless of whether you’ve medically or socially transitioned, regardless of anything,” she wrote. “You are you, a dignified human, and always will be, even in death.”.Some academics are suggesting researchers also stop identifying the race of human remains because they claim it fuels white supremacy. One of the scholars objecting to this effort to stop gender identifications, San Jose State archaeology Professor Elizabeth Weiss, has launched a lawsuit against her school..Weiss claims that she was prohibited from access to the school's human remains collection because of her opposition to the repatriation of human remains..The school objected to her tweeting a picture holding a skull from the collection on social media, saying, “so happy to be back with some old friends.”.US University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff argued in a paper, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, there are not “neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.” .Her best-selling book has been featured on various news outlets, including MSNBC.
