Bill Nye, Chromosome Denier, Seems to Have Edited his 1996 Episode on Gender

We should start calling him “Bill Nye, the Science Deny-er.”  In 1996, Bill Nye the Science guy attempted to explain to children how chromosomes determine whether you’re a girl or a boy.  Watch the clip below:

Bill Nye the Science Guy on gender, circa 1996. (Season 4, Episode 8)

“[Chromosomes] control whether we become a boy or a girl.” pic.twitter.com/oK2xPbRiKx

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 28, 2017

Here’s the transcript of this (now) very controversial statement, consider that most college campuses are teaching there are 52 genders.  Yes, fifty-two.

I’m a girl. Could have just as easily been a boy, though, because the probability of becoming a girl is always one in two. See, inside each of our cells are these things called chromosomes, and they control whether we become a boy or a girl. Your mom has two X chromosomes in all of her cells, and your dad has one X and one Y chromosome in each of his cells. Before you’re born, your mom gives you one of her chromosomes and your dad gives you one of his. Mom always gives you an X and a dad gives you an X too, then you become a girl. But if he gives you his Y, then you become a boy. See, there are only two possibilities.

Okay, compare that clip to this one.

Just.  Wow.  In this…  I’m searching for a word to describe what you just saw, and I’m coming up short.  Basically Bill Nye was advocating that there are more than two genders and that you can choose which one you are depending on the day.  Oh, and something about bagels and lox.

This obvious flip flop just goes with the territory of being a liberal in America, as your values change more than perhaps your socks do.  That’s probably why the very same episode, if you watch it now, doesn’t include the above clip. Daniel Payne of The Federalist explains it:

On Netflix’s collection of episodes of “Bill Nye,” the 23rd episode, entitled “Probability,” is identical to that which originally aired in 1996—except that the segment on sex and chromosomes has been excised completely. The episode offers no explanation whatsoever. The show simply moves from the segment immediately prior the deleted clip to the segment immediately following it.

It is unclear if any other episodes of “Bill Nye” were edited or changed for distribution on Netflix. In the third episode in the fifth season of the series, entitled “Genes,” Nye claims that “the way you are…[is] determined by your genes.” This remark has not been excised from the episode’s run on Netflix.

I guess they hope you forget the bigoted statements of Bill Nye from 1996.  What would be more interesting?  If he explained why the chromosome theory is wrong.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr