So here’s the story. I’m not only a member and supporter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but am also on its Honorary Board. Thus I was doubly distressed when I saw the post below on their website Freethought Now!, a post that completely ignores the widely-accepted biological definition of a woman—one based on the possession of a reproductive apparatus evolved to produce large immobile gametes—in favor of a definition based on self-identification. (Kat Grant identifies as non-binary.) It’s replete with statements like this:
Much like how Plato’s definition of a man was inadequate (as was his amended definition, but I suppose we can let that slide), any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate. This is reflected in the history of gender in and of itself. Many cultures have historically recognized gender diversity and complexity throughout history. Throughout North America, indigenous cultures have long recognized identities that have come to be categorized under the “Two Spirit” umbrella. In various Arab cultures, the term “mukhannath” is used to refer to transgender and nonbinary people, the term deriving from a class of third gender people in the pre-Islamic era, who were assigned male at birth, but lived as women and often held roles as musicians or other performing artists. In parts of Indonesia, groups recognize three sexes (male, female and intersex) and five genders, all based on the interrelationship of sex and gender identity.
Besides conflating sex and gender, it ends with a tautological conclusion:
A woman is whoever she says she is.
But of course that still leaves open the question” But what is a woman that you feel like, then?” Click below to read Grant’s piece:
Perhaps you won’t be as distressed as I was when you read it, but as someone who, as an Honorary Director, supposedly gets to weigh in on the direction of the FFRF, I felt I had to say something. Recently-confected and ideological definitions of “woman” not only offend me as a biologist, but they have nothing to do with the mission of the FFRF. So I asked if I could make these points in a response at the same site. Mirabile dictu, the FFRF let me, for which I’m grateful. You can read what I said by clicking below or going here:
NOTE: My article seems to have disappeared but one copy has been archived in two places,
here: https://web.archive.org/web/20241227095242/https://freethoughtnow.org/biology-is-not-bigotry/
and here: https://archive.ph/psT4I
It’s short enough that you can read the whole thing (and I recommend it), but I’ll give two short excerpts:
In biology, then, a woman can be simply defined in four words: “An adult human female.”
Dismissal of trait-based concepts of sex leads to serious errors and misconceptions. I mention only a few. The biological concept of a woman does not, as Grant argues, depend on whether she can actually produce eggs. Nobody is claiming that postmenopausal females, or those who are sterile or had hysterectomies, are not “women,” for they were born with the reproductive apparatus that evolved to produce eggs. As for chromosomes, having two X chromosomes gives you a very high probability of being a woman, but a rearrangement of genetic information can decouple chromosome constitution from the gametic apparatus.
But the biggest error Grant makes is the repeated conflation of sex, a biological feature, with gender, the sex role one assumes in society. To all intents and purposes, sex is binary, but gender is more spectrum-like, though it still has two camel’s-hump modes around “male” and “female.” While most people enact gender roles associated with their biological sex (those camel humps), an appreciable number of people mix both roles or even reject male and female roles altogether. Grant says that “I play with gender expression” in “ways that vary throughout the day.” Fine, but this does not mean that Grant changes sex from hour to hour.
Under the biological concept of sex, then, it is impossible for humans to change sex — to be truly “transsexual” — for mammals cannot change their means of producing gametes. A more appropriate term is “transgender,” or, for transwomen, “men who identify as women.”
And my conclusion, which expresses concern about the direction the FFRF may be taking:
Finally, speaking as a member of the FFRF’s honorary board, I worry that the organization’s incursion into gender activism takes it far outside its historically twofold mission: educating the public about nontheism and keeping religion out of government and social policies. Tendentious arguments about the definition of sex are not part of either mission. Although some aspects of gender activism have assumed the worst aspects of religion (dogma, heresy, excommunication, etc.), sex and gender have little to do with theism or the First Amendment. I sincerely hope that the FFRF does not insist on adopting a “progressive” political stance, rationalizing it as part of its battle against “Christian Nationalism.” As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!
Issues of sex and gender cannot and should not be forced into that Procrustean bed. Mission creep has begun to erode other once-respected organizations like the ACLU and SPLC, and I would be distressed if this happened to the FFRF.
After a bit of back and forth with the bosses of the FFRF, they accepted this version, which of course will get me in deep trouble with many who favor “progressive” ideology over the biological truth (see below).
But when they published my piece, the FFRF told me this:
We have decided to publish every blog with a disclaimer going forward so don’t feel picked on.
And so they put their very first disclaimer atop my article:
Disclaimer: FFRF Honorary Board Member Jerry A. Coyne requested that this column be written as a guest blog. The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Make of this disclaimer what you will, but I find it a remarkable coincidence that the appearance of disclaimers just happens to accompany the publication of an article discussing the definition of “woman”. I trust that the disclaimer will appear alongside every article going forward. But seriously, am I not supposed to feel “picked on” as the recipient of the very first disclaimer?
At any rate, in the comments section below my piece, I am accused of all manner of perfidy. Yes, some people agree with what I said, but it’s amazing that a piece on the biological definition of “woman” can elicit stuff like this (click to enlarge):
From Matt Dillahunty. No Matt, I’m not embarrassed, but you should learn some biology. What is embarrassing is to try to force nature into some approved ideological view of sex:
The post is not only poorly researched, this next person says, but DANGEROUS! Apparently my insistence on using a well-accepted biological definition is going to cause harm and hatred:
But I have to exculpate the FFRF in the next comment. I’m sure the FFRF wasn’t delighted to publish my comment (ergo the disclaimer), but they did so in the interest of fair discussion. They are not at fault for anything.
But there are those who support my views as well, and I’ll give two such posts:
and this:
Let me add one comment. Despite my quarrel with Kat Grant’s views and worry about the possibility of an FFRF mission creep, I remain a fan and a supporter of the organization, for they are the most important and active group in the U.S. trying to maintain the wall between church and state. In 2011, the FFRF gave me their “Emperor Has No Clothes Award” which, they say, is “reserved for public figures who take on the fabled role of the little child in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale and ‘tell it like it is’—about religion.” I’m deeply honored to be in the company of many of the notables on that list, including some of my intellectual heroes.
I intend to remain on the Honorary Board unless the FFRF boots me off, though I feel sad that they felt the need to decorate my essay with their very first disclaimer.
Jerry gets at the heart of it with: “Besides conflating sex and gender.” I think this distinction contributed to making sexual orientation and gender identity more acceptable to many people, and that its conflation with trans issues has empowered those who never accepted flexibility of gender identity or sexual orientation. Weirdly, the whole idea of sexual orientation is based on the premise of distinct sexes, yet the primary backlash to equating trans with biological sex has largely been resisted somewhat only by women, including lesbians, concerned about XX only spaces.
“…, yet the primary backlash to equating trans with biological sex has largely been resisted somewhat only by women, including lesbians, concerned about XX only spaces.”
Excuse me?
Women have been fighting trans nonsense since the 1940s. The earliest lesbian organizations (all underground at that time) documented their repeated attempts to keep men from showing up at their meetings.
Women have been leading the fight against gender ideology for decades. GI used to be a far-left fringe belief, but has rapidly gained not only acceptance but promotion since 2008. The ridiculous notion that men can be women is a men’s rights ideology.
But there is a large rump of women, including many feminists, who want to be nice and kind. They support TRAs even though it is against their own interests to do so. But once you notice that this is all just another example of men (some men!) trying to muscle in on whatever women have for themselves, it is hard to unsee it. You touch on this correctly in calling it a men’s rights ideology.
I do not blame confused kids for this (I suspect the inversion of the stats of (one commoner) m>f vs (now much more common) f>m transitions represents the large numbers of pubertal girls looking at what they will have to put up with and deciding to play for the other team, and I cannot blame them): they need care and psychological support as they mature and figure things out.
“A large rump of women…”
I don’t know what that means.
Women are socialized to be nice, accommodating, and to put everyone’s needs above their own. That some women prioritize trans-identifying males over women is a combination of misplaced empathy and ignorance. Trantifa deliberately portrays themselves as ‘our oppressed trans sisters’ and plays the victim card.
The women’s movement has been fraught with infighting ever since its inception, even in the mid 1800s. Feminists like me who actively oppose GI do not regard women who embrace it as feminists. The latter can call themselves whatever they want. However, feminists do not sabotage other women, do not oppose their own best interests, do not defend rapists and pedophiles, and do not want men (again, whatever they call themselves) in our sex-segregated facilities.
You’re correct that girls reaching puberty see the insidious effects of misogyny and want to avoid them. Social media convince them that the only way to do that is to ‘transition.’ It’s not these girls’ fault, as you say. They need to support each other and fight misogyny, not succumb to it by ‘transitioning.’
The choice to write “A large rump of women” is one of the clearest proofs that the author really has no clue about what a woman is or how they respond to things!
+1
men’s rights ideology?
f*** no. These creeps has nothing to do with men’s right advocacy, neither is it mentioned anywhere in /r/mensrights mission statement or any advocacy forum that isn’t infiltrated by modern feminist ideology.
An MRA is firmly in the camp of whatever J.K. Rowling has said about the topic. Not that she wants our support, but anything past second wave feminism is usually ideologia non grata to a men’s rights advocate.
*for the record, I’m not officially a MRA, but neither are anyone else. MRAs isn’t really a moniker used outside of people wanting to use it as a slur or to denigrate someones opinion. I’m just a man fed up by being treated like a second rate human being by society and media
I was very pleased to see “Biology is not Bigotry” appear in my email the other day. Thank you for writing it and getting FFRF to publish it.
I was equally disappointed, yet unsurprised, to read some of the foolish commentary like Dillahunty’s rather stupid comment.
I fear that FFRF (which has been my favorite advocacy group for years) will succumb to the idiocy that has caused the ACLU to lose its way.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Should we ditch the religion of Copernicus, Galileo, William of Occam, Descartes, Bacon, Pasteur, Pascal, Ampere, Mendel, Coulomb, Fermat, Fermi, Vernier, Lavoisier, Mersenne, Fibonacci, Volta, Cassini, Lemaitre, Collins?
Get rid of the religion that spread to every corner of the world the idea that nature was a neutral, rule based, rationally comprehensible order?
Chuck the religion that insisted that rational inquiry would never be futile, and always be fruitful? That venerated logic and systematic thinkers? That built observatories in its medieval cathedrals, and invented the university? That has built more schools, universities and research facilities than any other organization in history? That has taught science to more students than any other group on earth?
If we get rid of the religion that gave us the foundations of our scientific civilization, another rushes in to take its place.
But the new religion, as you see, is not so science-friendly.
I am not too surprised by Dillahunty’s response. I’m not sure what on earth he thinks is “embarrassing” about Coyne’s piece. If there were something factually wrong with it, why not say what that was? If he had a disagreement about the usefulness of such biological language in a discussion of human rights, gender norms as they relate to sex, why not focus on that?
Instead the whole thing is “embarrassing?” I suspect there is a need by Dillahunty to validate transwomen as, in some sense, real, given the fact his partner is a trans woman.
I don’t really get the outrage at Coyne’s piece though. It wasn’t transphobic.
In biology, then, a woman can be simply defined in four words: “An adult human female.”
Of course I agree with your definition, but there is the danger that the trans-rights activists will just redefine “female” like they’ve tried to redefine “woman”. (This is similar to the concept of the euphemism treadmill about which Pinker has written.)
I have thought that if the t.r. activists completely hijack the terms female and male, then someone would have to come up with new terms to define the two biological roles in reproduction. After all, we need terms for this, alongside with terms for what are eukaryotes, mammals, primates, and so on.
But then the t.r. activists would try to steal those too.
NIH and OWH already separate “woman” from “female.”
While any man can declare himself a woman, females are born this way.
So NIH no longer has women’s health, but “female-specific health concerns.”
So yeah, that’s already happened.
This BS proudly assumes its place alongside such progressive oxymorons like “pregnant people,” “people with ovaries,” “birthing people,” etc. Words that refer exclusively to women — mother, daughter, lesbian, WOMAN — are all but erased.
But soon the TRA will start saying not only that anyone can identify as a woman, but that anyone can identify as female.
Of course. As you said below, it’s a euphemism treadmill.
It’s also moving the goalposts.
Trantifa will not be satisfied until TIMs can receive free uterus transplants and literally become pregnant and give birth. Actual women will become superfluous.
That is the euphemism treadmill, except that in this case they aren’t really euphemisms.
Good point. Perhaps better to retrench: a woman is an adult human being who has the body plan evolved to make large non-motile gametes.
Since the prediction that this is indeed the body plan a typical-appearing baby girl will hew to is wrong about as often as you will be dealt a straight flush* in a five-card draw, and since trans has nothing to do with differences in sexual development anyway, this should be proof against incursions against “female.”
Jerry and others have made this point before, of course. If the activists come for “female”, the realists should be ready for them.
(Showing my work: The frequency of all DSDs is 1 in 5600 live births, about the same frequency as four of a kind in five cards. Almost all of these babies have ambiguous genitalia, which alerts everyone at birth, or before, that something went wrong. Only a minority have an internal body plan opposite to that predicted by normal-appearing external genitalia where a girl turns out much later to be really a producer of small motile gametes and has no organs to produce eggs. So take that as a straight-flush level of rarity. The likelihood that a normal-appearing baby boy will have ovaries and not testes is the same as five aces.)
As an aside, why do trans activists seem to be so convinced that scientific skeptics are trying to kill them? Is it just part of the propaganda that they adopt to justify advocating censorship and violence against people who disagree with them? Or is there something deeper going on their psyches? The comments about Jerry’s article (“bl*g”) are deeply troubling…not merely wrong.
Perhaps it was the positive response to the do you want a dead son or alive daughter trick they embraced with the trans kids. It worked so well first time that they then can wrap the wolf in sheep’s clothing again.
Fortunately must people are becoming inured to this emotional blackmail.
Also coupled with the idea that hate speech exists* and is equivalent to violence. Thus any argument contrary to the accepted trans ideology is perceived as actual physical violence and generates demands for punishment of the speaker.
*hate speech may or may not exist, but if it does, it’s certainly rarer than what we’re lead to believe.
Agreed,
My thought experiment imagined each DSD individual in an accident, with their parents trying to save their gametes in order to have grandchildren. My suspicion is that the chance of the external body type NOT matching the gamete would be vanishingly small by many orders of magnitude compared to one in 5,600.
Well, yes. I appreciate your thought experiment and I agree with your conclusions. My numbers apply to live births — infants —, not growing children or grown adults. If the dying injured person was a phenotypic male of any age, he could only have spermatozoa. (Or no gametes at all if he was immature or had a condition that precludes the generation of spermatozoa. But never ova.) If the injured person was a prepubescent girl with as-yet-undiagnosed complete androgen insensitivity, then the search for (immature) gametes to preserve would lead to a surprise. The incidence of CAIS is about 1:30,000 live births, so that’s almost one order of magnitude right there. But if the girl was old enough to had been investigated for failure to reach menarche, she and her parents would be aware that she didn’t have ovaries, or ova, and had testes, and so there would be no surprise at the time of the car crash. The period of potential surprise would comprise less than half of her life to age 40 or so.
So when you factor in these post-natal pieces of information, I think you are correct that the likelihood of of a gametic surprise not matching the phenotypic sex would indeed be at least one order of magnitude less than 1:5600. 1:56,000 is entirely reasonable, and it would apply only to prepubescent girls. For all girls known by their grieving mothers to be menstruating, and for all boys, the discordance would be zero.
Just want to add that I have to empathize with Jerry’s feelings on his cancellation at FFRF, whatever they are. Some amalgam of disbelief, hurt, and anger, I should think. Egregious behaviour by an organization supposedly devoted to rationality.
The extremism is a tactical response for a deficient argument; they are inherently fallacies disguised as political accusations. Why would they do this? Because they know they’re wrong. Underneath the public presentation are doubts of their own thinking; the threats, demands and accusations are as much for themselves as for the perceived or invented enemy. This is a politics divorced from reality and anyone questioning the Emperor’s clothes must be quashed lest the spell be broken. Those acting or agreeing with them are also acting politically out of ideological agreement rather than reality, and again one dare not mention the Emperor’s nonexistent underwear. Rather than acknowledge biological sex, they are conflating gender with sex so as to not say “You have the right to wear a dress but that doesn’t mean you’re a female.” The absurdity of the public consequences is a serious problem for the left (or anyone else) when ideology commands over nature. It is the same as the insane proposed crop yields of the Great Leap Forward or the “No limits to human population” techno-utopians, existing in a very dangerous fantasy world. It may not end in a famine but it could certainly end in a horrendous social backlash.
Thanks for posting this. As a lifetime FFRF member, I find the organization’s response troubling.
I too am a Lifetime Member of FFRF, and I too have been deeply disappointed that this is the hill they have chosen to die on. Your essay is evenhanded, factual, and compassionate — and yet, words like “biology” are taken as transphobic dogwhistles, eliciting shrieks of outrage from the Faithful.
We’ve sometimes wondered: if we get rid of religion, what will we replace it with? Something like this, apparently.
+1
The irony of this current Freedom From Religion situation is that the very issue has more than a few parallels to religion.
It goes further, unfortunately. I just finished reviewing a paper for a Springer journal in a medical field that conflates sex and gender. If there is ONE place that we would hope could get it right, …! As a biological anthropologist, I recognize and accept a variety of gender roles that cultures overlay on biologic sex, and a VERY SMALL percentage of individuals with incomplete biologic expression of sex-related or sex-determined traits. That people are uncomfortable with the gender roles that their sociocultural milieu imposes on them and may wish to find some alternative that it more suitable is a cultural, not a biologic, lack of fit.
From Grant’s article:
This is so confused. If “woman” is a gender category instead of a sex category, then the difference between men and women is that a woman thinks, behaves and is treated in ways that men don’t and aren’t, and a man thinks, behaves, and is treated in ways that a women don’t and aren’t. Gender nonconformity negates the categories. You can’t have it.
It’s only “adult human females” who can buck what social systems say a woman ought to be and just be themselves. The question “what’s the defining difference between a man and a woman?” only avoids telling women they can’t behave like a man if the answer involves reproductive anatomy.
It’s not just conflating sex and gender. They need to be able to explain why people who identify as trans are NOT just people who don’t conform to gender norms while simultaneously defining trans people as those who don’t conform to gender norms.
That gets to the heart of the issue. I think even most of us “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” wouldn’t have a problem with men who want to adopt the appearance of women and play sports, swim in public pools, go to prison, etc. — as long as it’s the men’s sports, pools, prisons (literary competitions, domestic violence shelters, beauty contests, etc. etc.). The acceptance of trans-identified men is a men’s problem, for men to handle. Women have enough problems in this society!
Yes, that’s been my argument too, that forcing biological women to accept trans-women into their spaces is telling them that their rights, as usual, are secondary to another group’s. If I were a woman, I would take offense at that, while also having no problem with biological men who want to adopt female gender habits, so long as they don’t forcefully intrude into my space.
Thank you.
What if you were a woman in a corporation that was trying to promote promising women into a management track by, say, extra mentoring from successful female executives who had tilled that field earlier? (This might be illegal in the U.S. but it’s certainly OK in Canada.) If there was a biological man in your department who was adopting female gender habits — all of you had got into the habit of calling him “her” —, would you be OK with his bidding for the competition, as a promising woman, and possibly beating you out for it? Or would that count as forcibly intruding into your female space as far as you were concerned? (But, obviously, not as far as he was concerned.)
Consider the dilemma for the firm. If it allows him to compete for the mentorship, it might end up having to award it to him, which would instantly alienate all the ambitious women in the firm, including the female mentors. (Note that the unambitious women, who don’t want to be managers, might be rooting for him if they think he’s nicer than you are. So it might be only a few women who resent him, not a groundswell of discontent.) If it awards the spot to a woman, he will probably sue the firm for anti-trans discrimination. So the firm’s safest course is, having signalled its virtue by hiring a transwoman, to abandon all attempts at female talent-spotting and just try to promote on something safe, like race or seniority.
Leslie, this has been happening for years.
Men are winning “Woman of the Year” awards. On Lesbian Visibility Day, President Biden met with two men, Dr Richard Levine and Charles Clymer, the latter a virulent misogynist before he suddenly discovered his gendered soul.
Many women in tech tell stories of trans-identifying males (TIMs) being hired instead of women since companies count TIMs as women for DIE purposes. So TIMs get counted twice: once as actual women and again as trans-identifying. Once hired, some TIMs simply drop the pretense after a while, similar to how men jailed in women’s prisons drop the pretense as soon as they are released.
Absolutely.
I could not give less of a shit about an adult male making whatever changes he wants to his wardrobe, grooming habits, bodily systems, and physical features in the service of appearing female.
I care a lot when this person attempts to access female-only spaces and sports. I care a lot when this person demands that the rest of us adjust the look on our faces and they way we speak because this person has not been successful in appearing female enough to warrant the reflexive use of the pronouns “she” and “her” or to be seen by others as a woman. I care very much when this person advocates for the upending of sex-specific language in medical, legal, and journalistic contexts. I care tremendously about giving minors access (and encouragement) to these medical interventions.
And now that I’ve been convinced through very persuasive argument by some in the LGB community that way too much of this trans ideology is deeply homophobic and damaging to the hard-won progress that the LGB movement has delivered to the betterment of society, I find I care a lot about that, too.
I can well imagine that it’s very difficult to be born male and come to feel strongly and miserably that you want to try to be perceived as female. And adults should be able to pursue that remedy if they want to. Hopefully it alleviates some of their discomfort. Inevitably, it will introduce other problems and complications and a transwoman may find male restrooms, locker rooms, prisons, sports, and crisis shelters unappealing and even frightening.
And that’s certainly a problem.
But you know whose problem it isn’t? Biological women’s.
Well put!
Thank you, Anna!
+2
Exactly, Peter N.
To paraphrase JKR, everybody can call themselves whatever they like, dress however they like, sleep with as many consenting adults as they like, but biological sex is real and it matters in some specific situations.
+1
When I learned of this new stand by an organization that had, as far as I could see, no substantive reason to jump in on such as it had nothing to do with the freedom from religion, I cancelled my membership. I’m all for adults living whatever lifestyle they wish, as long as it poses no danger to others. But in some important areas, biology rules. One such area, for example, is competitive sports where physical strength, agility, speed, endurance, etc are involved. Biological women are in danger of real and substantial injuries from biological men in many contact sports and in all but rare instances will lose to biological men in most of the rest. This is the principal reason sports have been biologically separated in the past. Or, hasn’t anyone noticed.
Well done. Part of the problem is that we use the same words—man and woman—for two different things: sex and gender. If we could only disentangle those we might make some progress. The fact that the same two words are used for different things makes way for lots of confusion or even mischief. Biological sex is a binary, but gender is malleable. My guess is that the activists are fully aware of the distinction, but are keen to exploit the potential confusion.
Your last sentence is the key. There was no confusion until it was deliberately introduced recently but the activists. AFAIK, before the TRAs became prominent, “man” and “woman” always meant what we all take them to mean. At best, one could use “masculine” and “feminine” for both men and women, the former referring to “gender” and the latter to biology. I’ve put “gender” in scare quotes because it is not a well defined concept. Many or most TRAs use it to mean something akin to “Leave it to Beaver” style roles for the sexes.
+1
I think that Norman makes a very important point that language is key. Caitlyn Jenner is most likely chromosomally male and gonadally male but phenotypically female. Thus, what do we call him/her? Ditto for Elliot Page and the inverse transition. I would guess that Jenner wants to be called a woman, not a female, and Page a man, not a male. Chromosomal sex and gonadal sex are binary, but phenotypic sex is not.
This is one of the important areas, and it’s a tough one for me. A trans-woman wants to be called a woman w/o “trans-” being put in front with it. Others here may differ in opinion on this and refuse to comply, but I am willing to call her a woman since that is what she wants and it’s seems polite to do so. It does not pick my pocket nor break my nose, as Thomas Jefferson would say. Likewise, if their preferred pronouns are she/her, I’m ok with that. She/her it is.
But… although I would call a trans woman a woman, is she really a woman in the way that it has been intended for centuries? No. Sorry.
Well said Mark.
Mark S, I used to do the same thing. I wanted to be polite. However, I will no longer reinforce someone’s delusions.
If, for example, I “identified” as Abraham Lincoln, dressed like Lincoln, had cosmetic surgery to resemble Lincoln, am I actually Abraham Lincoln? Of course not. Can I demand that everyone refer to me as “Mr President?” Of course not. I have no right to compel others to reinforce my “identity” because my assumed identity isn’t real.
Currently in CA, a man is on trial for raping two women in a women’s prison in which he is incarcerated because he “identifies” as a woman. The judge is set to rule on whether the prosecutor, witnesses, and everyone else involved in the case can be compelled to refer to this male rapist as a woman: her penis, her pronouns, etc. If I were the prosecutor/witness/person involved in this trial, I would refuse to refer to this male rapist as a woman on the grounds of committing perjury.
Right. The politeness is a slippery slope.
But what if the defendant’s lawyer was likely to get the case thrown out on appeal if the prosecutor insisted on “mis-gendering” the defendant in an effort to bias the jury against him? Or if the judge didn’t admonish witnesses to speak “correctly” by sustaining objections from the defence? Then there would surely be a directive from the DA’s office that all prosecutors must respect gender identity in order not to risk losing winnable cases. Eyes on the prize.
This is what I mean by weaponizing the duty to be nice. “You don’t dare mis-gender me because there will be grave consequences for you.”
What is she insists on being called female?
If the male rapist insists on being called female? Too frickin’ bad. He’s male. Period. End of story.
Regarding a possible mistrial and/or appeal, that is sadly a possibility.
Sorry. My reply to you ended up down at #42.
Glad I never joined. I noticed several years ago that they seemed to be adding a large amount of smugness to what should be a simple message of separation of church and state. It seemed to me at the time to be counterproductive. This is even more counterproductive and has nothing to do with their mission.
“Though a fair number of plants and a few species of animals combine both functions in a single individual (“hermaphrodites”), these are not a third sex because they produce the typical two gametes”
And the species who have males, sexual females (who reproduce by mating) and assexual females (who reproduce without mating), like Phylloxera? For all practical effects, it seems 3 sexes; you can say that assexual females (in spite of we calling them “females”) are not really a sex because their eggs are not really gametes, but in the end, there are (at least) 3 types of philoxera with different roles in the reproduction process (even if we call to these roles “sexes” or other thing).
The asexual females are always considered females in the biological literature. They produce eggs, but there are various ways that they get the eggs to develop. Even if the eggs are diploid clones of the mother, they are still eggs. Ergo, they are females, and that’s what biologists call them: “parthenogenic females”
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) these examples are irrelevant with respect to humans.
Jerry’s essay is clear, concise, and respectful. It is troubling to see the toxic responses of some of the commenters. They have no argument but instead attack the person.
Yes, that was my reaction too, that the dissenters had no argument but only crass insults. They’re exercising ideological condemnation of anyone who disagrees with them.
A quote:
“Let’s now stop being so damned respectful!”
Richard Dawkins
Since FFRF’s primary mission is to critique religious doctrines and their influence on public policy and individual rights, Grant’s essay undercuts this mission by promoting an idea as silly as Jesus being the Son of G*d. I’m surprised she, and yes, I’m going with “she,” doesn’t spot that assigning divine paternity and assigning sex of one’s choice are analogous and just as ludicrous. Moreover, I see no difference between forcing religious conversions and forcing use of pronouns.
In an increasingly secular society where social justice has become the new religion, one would think that FFRF would be aware of the danger of becoming itself a moralizing authority. Grant’s essay is especially embarrassing as it is smug and likely to alienate those on the religious right who might otherwise be open to letting go of childish ideas about the Great Bearded Guy in the Sky. But they will dismiss FFRF once they see Grant’s religious drivel. Why should an evangelical Christian swap heaven for the belief that men can give birth? At least Christian salvation doesn’t make Christians distrust their own eyes.
FYI, I left this same comment on the FFRF’s website and it was swiftly taken down.
Ouch. So FFRF promotes “freedom for me but not for thee”?
I think it’s the conflation of being gay with being transgender that captures the imagination and heart of so many atheists. Most arguments against homosexuality are moral ones involving God’s will or Nature’s purpose. Freethinking organizations thus had a legitimate case for supporting gay rights against religious bigotry.
The arguments against transgenderism, however, aren’t primarily moral ones but have their foundation in reason and science. The moral concerns are secondary to the recognition that transwomen are not women. And none of it is driven by the need to adhere to God’s will. The religious who claim to be motivated by this are simply behaving as usual in piggybacking theology onto fact.
Yet atheists keep telling me that the arguments against letting people identify themselves into and out of biological sex categories are JUST LIKE the arguments against gay marriage — religious bigotry based on “ick.” Superficial resemblances plus desires to help their trans friends undermines reason.
Yes, important point. Not only are men not women, but “trans” is not the same thing as “gay.”
Nobody needs to adopt a new religion to allow consenting adults to have sex with and marry whomever they please.
But the trans movement is a social contagion and fad that polices speech, denies biology, harms children — especially gay and lesbian ones and those with autism — when hormones and gender-affirming care are given, and tramples on the rights of women to have private spaces.
It’s a negative force in society. None of those things happen by giving a blessing to gay marriage.
Conservatives are correct on the trans issue and wrong on gay marriage.
Indeed. The ability to admit that conservatives can be right on some things though wrong on others seems to be a bridge too far for some self-identified skeptics. I get the feeling that if religious Republicans used Separation of Church and State to get some New Age spiritual claptrap out of the public schools, there are atheists who would reject the principle in order to keep it in.
Roz, I could not agree with you more. Every word. Thank you.
Well said, Roz.
Gender ideologues know on some level that they lack evidence for all of their claims (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, after all) so they have piggybacked onto LGB rights. If you look at all the lesbian & gay rights demonstrations from the 60s to early 90s, the T was completely absent. The TQ+ alphabet soup brigade hijacked the LGB movement (and their method was dishonest and documented) in the mid 1990s.
Gender ideology is not a civil rights movement. No civil or human rights groups has ever demanded that another group forfeit its rights. Trantifa demands that women forfeit our rights in favor of men — our rights to single-sex facilities, education, athletics, prisons, domestic violence/rape services, even social groups.
Not quite. Matin Luther King did call for Negro hiring quotas in construction and manufacturing to make sure that the “content of character” of his (Negro) children got a proper look-at. This necessarily put white workers at a disadvantage competing for the same jobs which at the time were shrinking due to automation. It led to official affirmative action policies and, when racial quotas were struck down as unconstitutional, to modern-day DEI initiatives that work against the equality rights of the unoppressed. Straight white men have no chance of being hired in proportion to their prevalence in a DEI environment unless they claim to be transgendered women, where they will tick two boxes….or unless they do work that only straight white men will do.
Trans advocacy is thus no different from all other civil rights movements that use group-based discrimination to redress grievance in a zero-sum game (which is all of them.) The only difference now is that for the first time ever, women are getting the short end of the stick in the diversity spoils. You’ve always been the oppressed. Now, in conflict with trans people, you are the oppressor. I’m glad woman are starting to recognize that DEI gives with one hand but takes away with the other….as well as working against merit.
Now, you can certainly argue that it is reasonable and just to discriminate against men in favour of women, or against non-blacks in favour of blacks, but not reasonable and just to discriminate against women in favour of trans-identified men. But you have to argue each example of discrimination on its merits, against the opposing arguments brought in each case. You can’t claim that the trans rights movement is the only one to advocate for the abridging of the rights of other individuals or groups. They all do. That’s just the nature of civil rights advocacy.
I am so sad to hear this about FFRF and am considering canceling my membership (as some of you have done), for how else can we meaningfully make our opinions known?
Disappointing that FFRF (and Matt Dillahuntly) don’t recognize magical thinking when it doesn’t have a deity. Like genderwang/gender ideology as an example.
This has been a heavy lift people like PPC(E) and even myself have been trying to wretch into the public space: nonsense magical thinking doesn’t need a “god” at top to be irrational and wrong.
Hitch made this point I think about KimIlSungism in particular and I’d add communism in general: the only difference between those and “religion” is a deity, and KimIlSungism even has that!
FFRF, much of the “secular” left etc. don’t get it so they fall for all sorts of feely moral panics and social contagions which are anything but rational. And they resemble old time religion SO DAMN CLOSELY! Add climate apocalypticism, the BLM racism cult, etc. Social media and the internet in general are the vector of these social contagions like a flood of sewage contaminated water is a vector for cholera.
PCC/E (and Dawkins for the flack he got years ago, I think from the Atheist Alliance?) ought to be steamed.
D.A.
NYC
ps Happy belated Coyenza everybody.
Politics is the religion of the modern era. Follow the orthodoxy of your tribe and its high priests or be excommunicated.
I welcome your FFRF post, but I have two observations (I haven’t parsed through all those who commented there so I don’t know if somebody raised the same questions).
First, about “transwomen” inmates. “Transgender (…) appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders”. I’d say this is NOT the correct conclusion from the data. And since it doesn’t hurt to be charitable, I think we can concede another intepretation: sex offenders are more likely to identify as trans. I think it’s worth pointing out because these allows one to steelman a position against self-ID: the trans activists would reply “ah, but those are DISINGENOUS identification, they are not ‘true trans'”. To which we can in turn reply: (what is a “true” trans?) how do you propose to objectively distinguish those who are faking it before they offend? The only possible conclusion is that self-ID policies are dangerous garbage.
I also politically disagree with your suggestion that “transgender” is a better term than transexual. Of course you cannot change sex (biologically; whether society wants to allow a legal fiction -like adoptive parents or presumed death- is another question). But the notion of transgender may be even worse in that it would essentialize gender as inevitably linked to sex and as an identity instead of a shortcut for “sex norms and stereotypes”. What does being transGENDER could possibly mean? a male can wear a skirt, lipsticks, be kind and nurturing, why should this change his “gender” in any way? I can’t expand on this here, but I think history shows that the shift in usage from one term to the other coincided with activism going awry.
Men thinking they can “do woman” as well as actual women is the most man thing ever.
“No, really, I’m a woman!” as mansplainig.
And gaslighting.
We can look forward to neuroDiversity, neuroEquity, and neuroInclusion, according to which Jesus Christ is whoever He says He is—a rule applying also to those who say they are Napoleon, Elvis, or Tsar Ivan V of the Russian Empire.
One cannot help being impressed by the influence of academic wizards on the outer culture. The Children’s Crusade of 1212 was created by monks, equivalent at the time to professors or associate deans; and later on, we got
to enjoy such developments as recovered memory therapy,
whole language reading instruction, and gender theory. One can certainly expect neuroDEI to arrive soon. It lacks, so far, only its counterpart of Professor Judith Butler
I saw a TV doco yesterday featuring people with ADHD. Several objected to the use of “normal” to refer to non-ADHDers as being stigmatising; instead they use “neurotypical”. Apparently the word magic of changing “normal” into “typical” is supposed to have some beneficial effect. I despair.
On NPR, you will never hear the word “homeless”. It is always “unhoused”, since the former is seen as stigmatizing. It’s a distinction without a difference, really.
But performance is what really matters.
It is quite meaningless for a biological male to “identify as a woman” unless he/she attaches SOME meaning to the word woman beyond “the label I like to call myself”. What then is the meaning? If we define a woman to be anybody who identifies as a woman, we seem to have a meaningless infinite regress.
I identify as a woman = I identify as a person who identifies as a woman = I identify as a person who identifies as a person who identifies as a woman = etc.
As the old saying goes, it is turtles all the way down.
Presumably a person who identifies as a woman is asserting a feeling of membership of or belonging to the half of humanity that are women, 99.99% of whom are ordinary biological females. This so called self identity only has a meaning with respect to the rest of humanity. It has nothing to do with one’s inner self, but only with how one views oneself relationally to other people and wishes to be perceived by other people. It is all about presentation to others and not about one’s own self. If one lived in isolation on a desert island, it would be quite meaningless to be trans. It would, however, be meaningful to be male or female as a biological reality.
I detect a little Sapolski and Dennett in that delightfully honest and philosophically cogent summation. How refreshing!
Thank you for pushing back against FFRF going woke. I’m glad that you finally got jack of it and spoke out. I’ve also been a member for years but can’t stomach the authoritarian, scolding, neo-religious group that the FFRF has become.
I have also tried pushing back on other sites that call themselves atheist skeptics, such as Atheist Experience, Professor Dave Explains, Darkmatter2525, and The Thinking Atheist. Oh boy, do I get viciously set upon for pointing out that there are only two sexes, that mammals can’t change sex, and there’s as much evidence for Gender Identity (GI) as there is for a soul. And yet, when I politely ask for the evidence that convinced my fellow conversationalists (usually spittle-flecked, blasphemy-bellowing zealots) that GI is real, I am sent references to opinion pieces or consensus statements with zero foundational research. Every single one assumes that GI exists. Not a single study tests the null hypothesis and woe betide anyone who suggests the obvious alternative hypothesis.
I was recently sent a more cunning paper from JNeuroendocrin. It is worthy of a Templeton award. It calls itself a review and cleverly interweaves what is known about sexual orientation and gender identity, as if they are both equally studied and understood. In the article, studies regarding sexual orientation are mostly well-referenced to high-quality, original research. In contrast, claims made about gender identity are referenced to opinion and consensus articles (aka a circle jerk). Yet again, the article assumes that GI exists. You would think that skeptics would be alert to such fallacious thinking.
Thanks again, JAC, for your work and the opportunity to comment.
Yes, other David. 100% and a cheer to PCC-E for not letting them off the hook!
🙂
D.A.
NYC
I think it is true enough, though, that Gender Identity is real in the sense that it is an experience that everyone has in their mind. You and I have a mental state of GI. It is not made up or voluntary. We are stuck with it. So too for people who identify as trans. Their GI is as real and as involuntary to them as ours.
A reasonable analogy is our sexual attraction. Being heterosexual or homosexual is also a mental state that is real to us and is not voluntary.
The controversy seems to be about whether the inner state of “knowing we’re a boy or a girl” is something we’re born with, or something we learn from our anatomy and environment and don’t always just know.
@mark I think you would profit by engaging with the writing of gender criticals, like Byrne or Kathleen Stock. Gender Identity in the medical literature used to mean awareness of one own biological sex. Now that it’s taken as an identity, related to something called gender that is supposed to be different from sex, is a pretty controversial concept. I believe on the contrary nobody has it. Helen Joyce called it “a sexed soul”. I don’t have a feeling of being a man; I simply know I am male. According to the activists this would make me agender. I reject the label because it would mean accepting the belief system. It would be the same as accepting “infidel” instead of atheist. Sorry, I don’t have to believe neither in souls nor in gender indentities
Hear hear!! I’ve read your references, along with many others (including Cass, Haidt, Shrier, Barnes, Soh, Hughes, and countless research papers of dubious quality). I agree with Helen Joyce’s conclusion that GI is an entirely culture-bound phenomenon. I think this assertion is relatively easily tested and has strong evidence. For example, it is found only in some countries and the prevalence of trans-claiming people is predicted by the degree of exposure to (and social nurturing of) the idea. This dose-response relation is seen within countries and also between them. Further evidence comes from ROGD studies, where one child in a class claims to be “trans” and is immediately followed by a half dozen classmates. Moreover, the fact that “detransitioning” tends to occur when “dose” is diminished or extinguished is yet further evidence that GI comes from without, not within.
Of note, at the start of this craze, I went along with it as a liberal Lefty, thinking it was part of the progression of LGB rights. I quickly realized it’s nothing like that, but in fact, it is a negation of LGB rights, women’s rights, child safeguarding, and free speech, and a threat to evidence-based society. It is the antithesis of Liberalism.
And in response to your comment, Enrico, I say again: Bravo!
+1
Once someone decides that men can be women, their entire cognitive process breaks to accommodate that falsehood. They start spewing out nasty and nonsensical claims and arguments that they would not accept for a moment on any other issue. — Helen Joyce via Twitter, 12-15-2024
Gender [he means sex] denialism is currently the fuzzy testicle drooping out of the intellectual left’s gym shorts: it’s obvious, embarrassing, and people are wondering “are you gonna do something about that?” — Jeff Maurer, I Might Be Wrong, 11/27/2024
I love that metaphor. Hilarious :0)
Happy Coynezza.
Thanks (again) for a voice of reason, tolerance, and sanity. It isn’t surprising that you’ve gotten such nasty, heated responses. The angry ones are the ones most likely to vent. Their religion, like so many others, does not let blasphemy go un-avenged.
One of the comments quoted above talks about friends who’s rights are being denied. I still have not, after years, heard what rights it is that people who say they are trans are being denied. If it’s just the right to be treated how they want to be treated, that’s not a right–for anyone.
Probably the most common issue is to be able to use a public restroom that comports with their identity. As someone who identifies as a man, it would be pretty difficult for me if I were forced to use the woman’s restroom. I am not saying that we all should get to use whatever facilities we want and whoever is in the next stall can just deal with it. I am saying that it would really suck.
DrB, Think of the various powers to compel (sometimes cast as creating a legal obligation to be nice) that most people of good will (such as those here) think trans people should be reasonable and not demand, because they impose too much on others, particularly vulnerable others like women and children. But those are the very compulsive “me-against-you” powers the activists want enshrined as civil rights and enforced by the state, yes indeed, taking action on my behalf against individuals who don’t treat me the way I want to be treated. They are quite open about this. State (and provincial) laws intended to protect women and children from the harmful externalities of trans ideology are condemned as being “anti trans rights” measures intended to kill trans people.
Remember, Constitutions place limits on what the state (or the government of the day) can do to the individual. Civil-rights laws create new state-backed obligations for individuals to behave toward others defined by group in certain prescribed ways. If you prohibit discrimination by gender identity or expression then effectively you have indeed compelled everyone to treat trans-identified people the way they want to be treated because any lapse becomes a civil-rights violation. This is especially a problem in countries like Canada with weak Constitutions where the administrative state’s power to compel niceness is not circumscribed. America’s Bill of Rights trumps civil-rights laws. Our watered-down version explicitly yields to group-identity rights where they conflict.
We have enshrined the right of trans-identifying people to be treated in all respects as the sex they aren’t, on pain of ruinous administrative tribunals for alleged breaches and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. Even if we get a new government that eviscerates our Human Rights Codes, the Courts may deem that to be, itself, a violation of group-based trans civil rights. If the current government gets its way it will further become a criminal offence to hurt the feelings of trans people by contesting their “rights” using language the aggrieved activists find harmful. You just have to look at the response to Jerry’s op-ed to realize how that would play out here if their outrage could be legally weaponized and untrammelled by a robust Bill of Rights for individuals.
Leslie, are you hinting that the fabled Canadian “niceness” is merely compelled by the administrative state? Eh? And I used to suppose that it was an inborn part of Canadian Identity, or CI, sort of like GI, the British stiff upper lip. and French savoir faire.
Maybe it is just me but I cannot access Jerry’s article at FFRF.
Something has happened and it appears to no longer be there.
It seems to be gone but there is a copy archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241227095242/https://freethoughtnow.org/biology-is-not-bigotry/
Thank you for the fine article, I hope it finds a wide audience.
Ditto — cannot complete the link right now.
I really think this infighting is not good for FFRF credibility and central mission (as I understood it).
I am unable to get Jerry’s article on the FFRF website. Clicking on the title of his piece and the “Read More” link just gets me back to the home page. What’s the trick?
Same problem here. I sent a query about it to FFRF via their “Contact Us” page.
There are two links to the original article (I have a copy but fortunately somebody archived it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241227095242/https://freethoughtnow.org/biology-is-not-bigotry/
or
https://archive.ph/psT4I
It seems to have disappeared; I hope they didn’t cancel me!
There are two links to the original article (I have a copy but fortunately somebody archived it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241227095242/https://freethoughtnow.org/biology-is-not-bigotry/
or
https://archive.ph/psT4I
They did! You’ve been cancelled!
Sigh. Next will come the Groveling Apology, and that your opinion piece was not properly screened as it clearly did not meet standards. We know the tune.
Entirely missing the point that this entire issue is far far off the subject of religion.
Matt has somehow crept into my YouTube feed, which is saturated with him now. I don’t find him a pleasant fellow.
I feel very conflated about Dillahunty. He’s a great orator and debater but has a very abrasive manner that’s turned into outright bullying. As regards this issue of sex vs gender I think he’s chosen to adopt a much more ‘woke’ approach than his previously quite reasonable view, following the paranoia at the Atheist Experience after the appearance of Stephen Woodford on the show.
+1
That’s exactly how I feel about him, Geoff. I find I can only listen to him if he’s not in conversation with a “regular” person. He’s too much of a jerk, even if I agree with him on many things.
So I had a quick look at some of their articles and here are some examples from one titled-
Gender-affirming care for minors goes to the Supreme Court
Gender-affirming care is a treatment model that has existed for decades and is safe, effective and backed by reputable medical organizations.
Really decades? I think the Cass review has some stern words re the safety.
Don’t forget the intersex people if they think it bolsters their argument.
The exact same type of health care that is being banned for transgender youth is still freely available for the treatment of precocious puberty, hormone imbalances, gynecomastia and even purely cosmetic purposes such as breast augmentation surgeries (which by definition are also a form a gender-affirming care). Even more notably, the law carves out an exception for the treatment of intersex conditions, which includes genital surgeries on minors (often under the age of 2 years old), which despite what the anti-transgender camp would have you believe, does not occur for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors in the United States.
The article goes on to state that to deny affirming care to confused youth is just a giant right wing Christian conspiracy.
There is a major network of Christian nationalist organizations working together to create model legislation and lobby politicians to ban transgender health care.
This network is dangerously shrewd, with members often masking their true allegiances in order to seem more legitimate and deceive the average American.
Of course it is written by a they/them who is Equal Justice Works Fellow.
FFRF removed the article from their website saying that posting it was a mistake. I too am a lifelong member of FFRF and am upset they removed the article. Below is the FFRF Email response to me.
I just got this same message from them.
I also am a lifetime member and received this same email; which displeased me intensely. After reading Jerry’s blog, I was very much pleased that someone at FFRF was finally seeing the light in regards to the dogma being put out by the cult of transgenderism. But then I got today’s email. I was almost overcome with sadness, realizing how far off the rails of reason the FFRF has gone. Young children are being permanently damaged by these unnecessary medical procedures as shown in many YouTube videos about transregret and de-transitioning. I am contemplating resigning my life membership in the FFRF in protest. I applaud Jerry Coyne for having the courage to tell the truth. I have saved his blog and have printed out hard copies to give to friends and fellow freethinkers.
Wow.
Well, there you go. The mission done crept out the barn.
And burnt it down on the way out.
I indented their email to you, if you don’t mind. I’ll write about this tomorrow. Thanks for posting this.
I don’t mind at all. You’re welcome Jerry.
FFRF posted the content they emailed to me as an article on their website. I am sure that the intent was to post it prior to receiving the email from me. Their article is here: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/freedom-from-religion-foundation-supports-lgbtqia-plus-rights/
Very sad.
Agree, Barbara. It is sad. FFRF is ideologically captured, it seems. I will not be able to support them further. Might as well put my support behind so-called “right-wing” groups that have similar aims but aren’t captured if I can find them. Removing my comment and removing Jerry’s article are beyond the pale, as is that telling email from them to Rob Kraft.
Per that email to Kraft above, Christian Nationalists are basically demons. No wonder Christians dismiss atheists. They should if spoken to like the person did in FFRF’s email to Kraft or Grant’s essay.
This is why Trump won. Centrist liberals like me voted Red for the first time. The landscape of liberalism has shifted so far to the progressive Left that most of its institutions are captured. This happened before the rationalist old guard fully groked the takeover. And I don’t think it is getting better. (Sadly, having John McWhorter on the NYT payroll isn’t a sign the media is getting any less leftward biased. He was a token hire to stave off such criticism.) If anything, progressives will double down with Trump in office. The center Left ceded its power by not realizing how entrenched all of this is, by being unwilling to converse in many instances with those on the Right, and by ignoring or endorsing leftwing extremists, believing however bad they are, they aren’t as bad as those on the Right. In many ways, the Right is more rational now, which is one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Didn’t think I’d live to face the day that I’d vote for Trump, but I did after being mobbed online repeatedly by the left (both progressive and centric/humanist left, I must add) and witnessing how Harvard handled 10/7. Gender ideology was the last straw. It’s just part of the new brand of communism marketed as “kindness.” Anyway, I suppose this is just me expressing how sad and disillusioned I am at the institutions I once trusted becoming propagandist tools for far-left authoritarians, FFRF included.
Yeah, if one is fighting demons then no atrocities are off the table. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but all this rot seemed to explode awfully quickly. It’s almost enough to make one believe in some vast conspiracy; but not yet….
I made some similar comments in my email to FFRF, that wokeness drove many to vote for Trump over Harris. I would never vote for Trump, but I can imagine that I would just not vote at all if I had to choose between Trump and an extremely woke (putting dogma above facts) person.
I did not vote. I didn’t want to vote for Trump but if Harris won I didn’t see how things could get better. And the actions of FFRF show that it hasn’t. I don’t know what Trump will do when he takes office. But so far I am glad the Dems did not win. Never thought I would say that.
Not to derail, but voting for an authoritarian — Trump — isn’t how you change institutions. It is, though, a great way to destroy them altogether. This isn’t how principles work.
+1111 Jody!
OMG! What are they afraid of?
The truth.
Reality, I expect. You know, the stuff that doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it, and doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about you. Diddums.
…when biological fact is bigotry, when emotional overdrive sucks up science & reason and does easy.
The hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and limbic cortex are the culprits Mr Grubb and there seems to be no lack of incoming signal issuing from them.
Engaging the prefrontal cortex can elevate some of the amplitude but not all. Be on your guard.
FFRF has removed the article. If I were a member I would quit right now.
Me too. Somehow I haven’t joined and now know why I won’t.
I let my membership lapse a while ago. I could rejoin and quit, I guess. But that’s giving them money.
As usual they are force-teaming gay and trans. So much for same-sex attraction.
+1
IMO it will be a significant blow to TRAs when (if?) more LGB organisations start calling “bullshit” on the force-teaming.
That’s not likely to happen, as most of the formerly LGB organizations are now trans organizations. Any organization that tries to focus on LGB only (like LGB Alliance) is immediately demonized.
Seems the FFRF have taken down the Professor’s piece. I read his article this morning along with all of the comments. Some of the reactions were quite vicious. Obviously cancel culture is not dead yet, in spite of what Chait wrote in The Atlantic recently.
Grant’s piece recycles the same insupportable arguments we have read before. This nonsense is repeated regardless of how many times it is contradicted with facts, because those writing about facts- biological and otherwise- are labeled TERFs.
As an old second wave feminist, it angers me to see liberatory feminist ideas being appropriated by the trans movement. We believed women and men could live their lives without conforming to preconceived gender roles. The trans movement prefers the philosophy that one must change sex or claim to be be binary if one does not conform to femininity or masculinity. This intentional confusion between sex and culturally-based sex roles (gender) is reactionary in spite of its embrace by progressives.
Too true and too sad.
“A woman is whoever she says she is.” – Kat Grant
This leads directly to men in women’s sports and prisons. That’s not acceptable and it has nothing to do with religion.
The removal of the article is shocking, cowardly and despicable. It might be different if they had simply decided to step away from this issue altogether and focus on separation of church and state, which is their core mission. But no, they make it clear that they are choosing sides. They’ve previously published Grant’s utter rubbish, which I’ve felt was a grievous error in the first place, and now I assume we can expect more to come. They’ve expressly chosen to stand (and die) on that hill and to censor dissenting views, even one from a distinguished scientist (and Board Member no less!).
This organization has totally lost the plot. I have supported them for a long time and this makes me very sad.
Indeed. This is shameful. I’m angered and disheartened and will likely quit. Perhaps it is best for me to wait a day or two and cool down before writing a goodbye note to them.
My thoughts exactly.
I just noticed that the headline to Grant’s piece seems to suggest that a woman is some kind of a chicken.
Gah. I tried to read it. Got this far:
Really? Who has ever floated that simplistic definition?
Of course it does. Such ‘problems’ are the entire point of the ensuing list of strawman “definitions”. The rhetoric is so obvious.
Do they though? Do they really?
And…wait…that’s not the problem anyway, is it, from the author’s perspective? The “problem” would have to be that there are Women without vaginas, right?
That’s not only rhetoric, it’s duplicitous rhetoric.
Well, they fashion a pocket out of a scrotum, but it is in no sense a vagina. It is a hole that does not lead to a uterus and is unable to participate in producing an orgasm. I mentioned something like that in the first version but removed it because I did not want to make the piece too long and thought it was too much of a gratuitous swipe.
The misogyny and autogynephilia of biological men fantasizing that a scrotum hole is a vagina nauseates me. I’m of a certain age now: I’m going through the change of life. This change (and menarche before it) are defining for me as a female. Ovaries have ruled my life. My sense of myself as female comes from my ovaries! Why aren’t these autogynephilic men demanding ovaries? Aside from the obvious that that is impossible, I mean. Instead, they request superficial, secondary sex features and a way to arouse themselves with a mutilated scrotum, which other men can put things in. THIS IS NOT what it is like to be a woman. Neither is it about doing one’s hair or makeup to look like a drag queen. It’s about the cycles each month, fertility, and the loss of fertility. Biological men wanting to be women are just men.
That’s a lovely insight, Roz. Male trans activists often scoff at the notion that gametes define biology. “When I encounter people on the street, or as sex partners, I never know anything about their gametes and neither do they.” But as you so eloquently put it, women do know about their gametes and the organs that produce them and prepare every month for the possibility that one will be fertilized….until they no longer do and the changes that occur as a result.
In one paragraph you’ve kicked the trestle out from under a central claim of trans ideology.
How sad that the organizations needed to spearhead the resistance to Christian Nationalism are splintering over this. FFRF is failing in its mission.
All the future good they could do about the encroachment of religion is being tossed out. Their authority to call out on that issue is now compromised.
Thank you for standing up for the facts. Sadly, I think this is a trend in the secular movement. A large atheist YouTube channel called Genetically Modified Skeptic has also gone down the trans rabbit hole and recently denounced Dawkins as transphobic. It seems like they are replacing Monotheism with a new religion.
The new religion of Critical Social Justice is also a monotheism. It allows no other gods before it. No one enters paradise except through it. You are either one of the chosen / saved / righteous deserving of life, or you are lost / damned / unworthy / cancelled.
GM Skeptic is even publicly bragging about having refused to work with the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist during his recent event in Austin. Just published today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n09JGRMfMds
Ok, I’m speaking as a “traditional” progressive (not a “Woke” one), an agnostic, and a straight dude who didn’t fit the traditional roles as a kid and doesn’t now. What’s football? What’s hunting? What’s NASCAR? etc. It goes deeper than that, of course. I’ve also worked with kiddos all my life and have always told them boys and girls can feel, think, and behave in ways that suit them while still being boys and girls. I’m totally with you and I’m appalled by what happened. While there are still institutions that are falling for gender ideology, I do see signs that individuals, many liberals and lefties among them are increasingly open to questioning all this. Ok, I may be a dreamer, but I’ve been called worse. Stay strong – more of us are with you than lots of people dream.
I wonder if some big money FFRF donor contacted them with threats and they caved. Money talks.
My guess is that it was the employees. The email I got, same as above says: “We are proud to have a diverse staff and membership, 13 percent of whom identify as LGBTQIA and 97 percent support civil rights for the LGBTQ community” it is not clear if 13 percent is staff or members or both but I can guess that a significant number of staff threatened to quit. Also shocking if 3% don’t support civil rights for LGBTQ community. Can that be true?
It can if someone doesn’t include T & Q in the same category as LGB.
John Snyder’s suggestion that employees objected to the publication of the Coyne piece is very plausible. Compare the suggestion by Hannah Barnes that the 23 publishers who were uninterested in her proposal for the book (eventually published as Time to Think) about the Tavistock Gender Service were afraid that their staff would object to a book criticizing the willingness of the Service to give puberty blockers freely to their adolescent patients. Also compare the objection by Oxford University Press employees to the publication of Holly Lawford-Smith’s book on gender critical feminism. They objected before the book was out; they had not seen it, but wanted to prevent the Press from taking any such books in the future.
John, as I said in comment #53, “I’ve also discussed FFRF’s mission creep with several staffers. Each of them told me that they personally oppose the direction Annie Laurie is taking them. The staffers all said this BS comes directly from her. Annie Laurie was once a feminist. Now she promotes misogyny.”
So for FFRF to virtual-signal by flaunting their “diverse staff,” remember that they oppose FFRF’s capitulation.
Emily points out above: “This intentional confusion between sex and culturally-based sex roles (gender) is reactionary in spite of its embrace by progressives.” This isn’t the only such phenomenon. In DEI-ruled academia, progressives have embraced segregation in “affinity groups”. Prof. Judith Butler called atavistically reactionary Islamist terror groups “progressive”, welcoming them to her “global left”. Parties touting the word “Socialist” have embraced rule by family dynasties (once the very definition of the ancien regime) in North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua, etc.
Could it be that the words “progressive” and “left” don’t mean quite what conventional usage has long pretended?
+1
It is probably wrong for us to visualize the “progressive-reactionary” continuum as a line. It is more like a circle- or a helix.
This is a very sad and an indicator of a bigger trend. The further collapse of the skeptical movement.
I am not a biologist or scientist, but I would have thought that if there were viable other sexes they would be able to reproduce. The reality as I understand it is that intersex etc. are mistakes in development of either of the two sexes. Biology is a bit messy at times.
That arguments are made from this basis to the assertion that a woman is whoever she says she is, is fallacious.
However, the most important thing in this is that I may be completely wrong and that someone else’s ability to counter my argument must be preserved.
The censorship aspect of this whole mess is terrible.
I remember a few years back when Matt Dillahunty defended housing male rapists in women’s prisons by saying that “Women rape too.” No one was denying this was the case, mind you. More like when a rape happens, 90% of the time the perpetrator is male and something like 85% of the victims are female. To him, a male convict who declares himself to have lady-feels is a precious and delicate flower in need of protection, lest he be attacked by those awful equally male criminals and have his maidenhood stolen. Meanwhile, female convicts are unworthy even of the protection that single sex prisons provide and deserve whatever they get because they “rape too.”
PCC(E)’s piece is about as strong and clear cut a defense of the importance and limitations of empiricism and Enlightenment values as one could get in such a point—counterpoint setting. Strong Sagan or Dawkins plain speak gives scope and clarity the ideas. A disclaimer speaks volumes here – usually expressed on eXtwitter as 🎯.
I’ll have to comment later on the Dialectical Epistemic Inversion in the other piece.
In a word, Grant’s piece is alchemical. The epistemology is upside-down.
Dialectically, it requires the opposing piece to lay out precisely the base material for alchemy – and that is transcendence of the observable, material world. The power to do so is a god like power – what else would it be? It is to dazzle and mystify. Theosophic wisdom of God vs. a theologic orthodox god.
The transformation of the base material form to a new, sublated form is a spiritual process – it is saving the soul, for completion in the undifferentiated whole.
What religious doctrine is this? Queer Theory – the doctrine of a gnostic, Hermetic religious cult centuries old at least. Notice the reference to Plato – this is confusing on purpose – consider Platonism, nous, and Gnostic thought associated with the Greeks.
Body Alchemy
Loren Cameron
1996
Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought – Behmenism and its Development in England
B. J. Gibbons
Cambridge U. Press
1996
From the FFRF’s snivelling auto-da-fe:
“We are proud to have a diverse staff and membership, 13 percent of whom identify as LGBTQIA and 97 percent support civil rights for the LGBTQ community.”
Behind the rhetoric, this is probably the key point. They are another organization, like the NYT and several publishers we’ve heard about, who are simply afraid of their own staff and don’t dare cross them.
See my comment #53.
FFRF staff oppose this insanity.
Thanks for that insight from your staff contacts — so it sounds as if it’s the editor hiding behind the staff as an excuse. I’m not sure which is more contemptible, fearing them or hiding behind them!
I also agree with your comment 53 that the ideology is essentially a deeply misogynistic branch of the men’s rights movement.
+1
Staff said all this GI nonsense is directly from co-pres Annie Laurie.
She used to be a feminist.
As a European (I am Norwegian) i can’t get my head around how utterly insane secular/atheist/humanist organization in USA are when the issue is “gender ideology”
Of course, also European secular humanist has been infected by the woke mind virus, but reading about the discussion about this case in FFRF, to me at least, it’s so crazy it’s hard to believe.
This is one of the reasons why Trump won. Also in Europe we see the wind is changing. ( to more right wing parties). Many reasons for that, but one major reason are that people are getting fed up of the woke mind virus
One positive thing here: a recent poll in Norway indicated that the majority of young people (18-25) agree that sex in binary. The most woke people her now seems to be folks in their 30, 40 and 50’s
On the latter point, I’ve heard of that before — that the crop of youngsters coming up are not buying into these activisms. I suspect they see it as something that older people are into, and so they are not.
I retired as a teacher (high school level) in 2022, but saw the last few years before that a tendency that young people (especially boys) getting fed up of the woke madness (not only the issue about gender). May be the typically reaction to the parent generation we always see or may be something deeper going on here.
Latest poll from Norway (november 2024) among 18-29 year old men and women
Should Norwegian schools teach children that there are only two genders?
Result:
Yes 71.2 % (men), 41.3 % (women)
No 16.7 % (men), 31.3 % (women)
Don’t know (no opinion): 12.1 % (men), 27.5 % (women)
So things are definitely changing here in Norway (as the rest of Europe)
It seems to me the US is going to need some newly founded organizations to cover the remit that FFRF has now abandoned, with not just a change of ethos but explicit policy statements that ensure this kind of confusion can’t re-emerge. Take a leaf out of the University of Austin’s book. Once such an organization is founded, we might be surprised to see the flow of FFRF members flocking to join it.
I hope I’m not being needlessly contentious by saying Caitlin Jenner is phenotypically male and Elliot Page is phenotypically female (so far as we know), according to the way I believe biologists and geneticists use the term. Jenner and Page developed as phenotypic male- and female- appearing embryos, children, and adults, driven by their genotypes. Neither, as a result of their transitions, has acquired the phenotypic ability to make gametes of the opposite sex. Manipulations of the secondary sex characteristics or the external genitalia after the genes have committed the embryo to its development don’t change the phenotype. Both remain the phenotypic sex they committed to at conception.
Predicting the phenotype from the genotype, and imputing the genotype from the phenotype, is the study of gene regulation and expression, which we get introduced to with eye colour and Mendel’s peas. A brown-eyed person who dyes his irises blue — this is apparently possible now — doesn’t change his phenotype. Environmental factors can influence the way a genotype produces a phenotype, yes.
All sex in humans is binary. I submit that it causes confusion to say that phenotypic sex is non-binary — on a fluid spectrum — or mutable according to what trans-identified people claim falsely they have done, which is to change their phenotypes to match some metaphysical gender identity. I suggest the term be reserved for interventions that do change gene expression in a way that causes an observable phenotypic change, e.g., CRISPR therapy for sickle disease.
As to what we call them, well, Jenner is a he and Page is a she, unless the ad baculum argument applies. Which it surely does for many people who haven’t become financially independent yet and so I don’t hold it against you if you capitulate to those who can hurt you.
Your definition of phenotype is different than mine. Most simply it means observable characteristics. And yes, many/most phenotypic characteristics are determined by genotype, not not all. Environmental factors also affect phenotype, from estrogen in streams affecting frogs to estrogen supplements affecting genotypic males.
I think we need to be incredibly careful about using “most simply” definitions. That really is why we’re down such a rabbit hole with “woman”.
Leslie has it right. Phenotype is the (often observable) trait expression of the genotype. Caitlyn Jenner is still phenotypically male, but has artificially (through medical and surgical techniques) masked their phenotype. It’s like the old joke about the woman who gets plastic surgery and then is surprised that her baby has a big nose.
I simply disagree that Leslie and you have it right. I will stay with the classical definition of phenotype rather than your new one. “In genetics, the phenotype (from Ancient Greek φαίνω (phaínō) ‘to appear, show’ and τύπος (túpos) ‘mark, type’) is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism’s morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. An organism’s phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism’s genetic code (its genotype) and the influence of environmental factors.” Bruce Jenner’s and Caitlyn Jenner’s genotype is the same, but the phenotype is clearly different [at least to my eye :-)]
It’s hardly new, Douglas. Nor is it mine (though Leslie may have a claim to it) having learned it from a substantial line of geneticists.
I don’t know who the “substantial line of geneticists” would be, nor do I understand the oxymoronic “masked phenotype” but this is from the NIH’s National Human Research Institute’s definition of phenotype:
“Phenotype” simply refers to an observable trait. “Pheno” simply means “observe” and comes from the same root as the word “phenomenon”. And so it’s an observable type of an organism, and it can refer to anything from a common trait, such as height or hair color, to presence or absence of a disease. Frequently, phenotypes are related and used–the term is used–to relate a difference in DNA sequence among individuals with a difference in trait, be it height or hair color, or disease, or what have you. But it’s important to remember that phenotypes are equally, or even sometimes more greatly influenced by environmental effects than genetic effects. So a phenotype can be directly related to a genotype, but not necessarily. There’s usually not a one-to-one correlation between a genotype and a phenotype. There are almost always environmental influences, such as what one eats, how much one exercises, how much one smokes, etc. All of those are environmental influences which will affect the phenotype as well.
I don’t think people would consider wearing the clothing and hairstyles that are culturally associated with the opposite sex as phenotypic changes. That seems a bit of a stretch, even when the subjects choose to enhance their opposite-sex costumes with surgical breast implants or removals and synthetic hormone regimens to redistribute body fat and change body hair growth patterns.
The transgender phenomenon makes much more sense looked at through the lens of social behaviour — biological sex denialism and medically-enhanced cross-sex presentation is a cultural phenomenon, which in females is closely related to their socially-contrived ideas about manhood and womanhood and transcending/escaping constricting “gender roles”, and which in males is closely related to their sexualities (gay males trying to attract hetero male mates, and straight males becoming sexually fixated by their own bodies) — rather than through biological concepts like phenotypes.
Agreed that folks would not consider cross-dressing as a phenotypic change. But I believe that hormonal manipulation of secondary sexual traits does lead to phenotypic change. I also agree that social behavior is also an important component of this whole issue. And I will iterate from comments above – I believe that trans-women should be called trans-women rather than women as Jerry has argued. I also believe that trans-women should not be competing in women’s sports where being a biological male gives a distinct advantage. Many Democrats could not bring themselves to take that stand, and it likely cost them votes.
Preach it, sister. The principle that gender norms don’t have to define and constrain you due to your natal sex is an idea that second-wave feminists got exactly right.
Well, I just joined FFRF. The “How did you hear about FFRF?” item lists numerous spots or sites, but I used the Other slot to credit Jerry / WEIT.
Demand a refund, Mitch4!
Wow, just opened my email from FFRF with link to their press release, expressing, in the same sentence!, that they advocate reason but that this was a “mistake.” I’ve communicated previously with them about this, but this is too much.
As feminists have been saying for many decades now, “gender” is effectively a spiritual belief; “gender identity” is a way for people who don’t want to think of themselves as icky religious believers to talk about their “souls”.
A big thank you to Jerry, and to all who speak up. It’s tiresome, but apparently necessary.
I’m stunned FFRF removed his article. And during Coynezaa no less! ☹️
I cancelled my membership with them years ago. They were promoting very progressive ideas unrelated to their mission of fighting for the separation of church and state for a long time. Also, they waste a lot of time threatening small towns with lawsuits for starting their city council meetings with prayer. I think that going after small fish like that makes people hate atheists and does more harm than good. It’s sad to see that the organization has apparently degraded even further.
I dunno, PCCE. I’ve parted ways with FFRF a year or two ago because of their capitulation to trans nonsense. I think you and other Honorary Board members would do better for both yourselves and FFRF if you all publicly and loudly resigned over their reality-denial. All legacy secular organizations (except perhaps CFI) have also been brainwashed. How disgusting for alleged “reality-based” and “critical thinking” groups to behave like this.
I couldn’t help noticing that all the anti-science comments you posted all came from men. Gender ideology is a men’s rights ideology.
I’ve also discussed FFRF’s mission creep with several staffers. Each of them told me that they personally oppose the direction Annie Laurie is taking them. The staffers all said this BS comes directly from her. Annie Laurie was once a feminist. Now she promotes misogyny.
I don’t think that FFRF is even effective anymore at their previous mission to ensure the separation of government and religion. They’ve fallen to the dark side, and forever will it dominate their destiny.
I wish I had something to say beyond “yes, this, very this, what you said, a lot!” — I guess that’s why upvote buttons were invented. But I appreciate your post, lots 🙂
Thank you, Kim!
Dillahunty is deluded and ideologically captured by trans activists. He is typical of a certain type of rational skeptic who, however well-versed in philosophy or argumentation, is science illiterate and appeals to scientific subjects he knows little about.
There are few things more insulting to a scientist (I’m one) than being lectured/scolded/accused by a layperson ignoramus for not knowing our own field of expertise that we’ve devoted a lifetime to. Jerry is right – Dillahunty should shut his yap before saying anything about biology that he obviously misunderstands. Matt would probably object, asserting that this is invoking an “argument from authority” but it is not because “opinions from laymen” like him can be dismissed without evidence.
There’s a recent YouTube video hosted by apologist Justin Brierley featuring an interview with Stephen Woodford, aka RationalityRules. This subject came up and it’s heartening that Woodford takes a similar approach to that of Jerry (not entirely the same, but enough), and which is why there was a near civil war broke out at the Atheist Experience when it (inadvertently they claim) allowed Woodford to co host a show. In particular he argues that trans women should not be competing in women’s physical sports, and that perhaps the categories should be redefined.
As for the FFRF, I know little about it other than what I read on sites like this, but it seems that they are fearful of taking on the very vocal protagonists at the more extreme side of the debate. The trouble is it plays into the hands of right wing bigots who want to define the issues as being mental health based.
I don’t know, I don’t have any hope for Stephen Woodford. He recently wrote this comment in a YouTube video:
“It’s been surreal to watch not just Richard Dawkins, but so many figures in the sceptical, free-thinking realm so often abandon their own principles of evidence-based reasoning when it comes to especially trans topics. (…) Dawkins’ stubborn persistence in the face of contrary evidence isn’t just disappointing—it’s a betrayal of the scientific method he spent decades defending.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n09JGRMfMds&lc=UgxFScH7yChpco9Sf4N4AaABAg)
I think Dawkins struggles to communicate his view, to the extent I frequently really don’t know what he’s actually trying to say. Woodford is much clearer in his views and I suspect his criticism of Dawkins is valid, though I’m overall very much a Dawkins supporter.
If ever you wonder why otherwise sensible people seem to be falling for the “sex is not binary” religion, I propose as follows: Cherchez les enfants. Chances are they’re trying to curry favour with their own children. Either that or with junior staff of their own organisation. More than one experienced publisher has made this second suggestion to me with respect to their own company. As for my first suggestion, I won’t mention names for fear of wounding respected friends.
Good point Richard. Surely this is part of the problem since we social primates do fear excommunication from the tribe and with good reason. Currying favor with their own children or students or younger coworkers indeed. Social media has empowered young people and given them voices as “influencers” like no other time in history which has metastasized into cancel culture, enabled by feelings over facts. The attempted cancellation of JK Rowling is a testament to the kids being pandered to by the many adults in the room and allowed to spread biological falsehoods to preserve the smiles of the next generation, however misguided.
One of the most confusing things about laypeople jousting with scientists (and science itself, really) about this topic is that I can’t tell if they think it’s reasonable to believe that other mammals have this sex spectrum? Are some bucks innately does inside? Some rams are actually something in between a ram and a ewe? Or is this a uniquely human complication?
If so, why would that be? I have to think that a prominent feature of most stripes of atheism is the idea that human beings aren’t a “special creation”.
Clearly some number of humans feel that they are, at some fundamental level, a different sex than what their outward presentation or even their biology would indicate.
And there certainly can be discussion about what these feelings should obligate the rest of society to do in concert with what they want/choose to do about their feelings. (Personally, I’d say not bloody much.)
But agreeing to the obvious fact that some people feel this way and that it motivates some of them to dress a certain way or take hormones and have surgeries is not at all the same as agreeing what is demonstrably true in material reality and how to go about testing and confirming this.
Anna H, when I ask trantifa those questions, first they get an entirely blank look on their faces for several minutes. Then inevitably one will scream “Humans aren’t mammals/animals! We’re special!” then proceed to claim that humans = clownfish.
It’s religion all over again, from gendered souls to human exceptionalism.
The absurdities pile up fast, don’t they?
I, like you, feel perplexed and dismayed by the FFRS’s lack of sense in publishing Grant’s piece, considering it is controversial and veers away from their purview.
It hardly ever matters in our society whether one is a man or a woman, but, when it does matter, it is which sex one is that matters, not what ‘gender’ one identifies as; this is seen in areas such as women’s sports and women-only spaces and refuges, for instance. Besides, it is very questionable whether there is such a thing as a gender identity at all. If you ask me, there are two sexes and infinite personalities — no need to invent gender identities to force into the equation, when they are not a thing to begin with. All the same, I agree with you that binary biological sex is extremely relevant and it matters, so thank you for speaking out. And no, it is not transphobic to state biological facts based on reality, no matter how much the zealots insist it is.
It is a focal point for two reasons. First, this distinction (the gametic one) between the two sexes is universal: in all animals and vascular plants. There are no exceptions, no individuals with a third sex that makes a third kind of gamete. Second, it is USEFUL. It is the distinction between the two types of gametes that explains a lot of biology that is otherwise mysterious: the biology involved in sexual selection that has led to differences between males and females. And that is due to differential investment in making gametes. This universality and utility is what has led biologists to adopt the gametic definition of sex (one based on chromosomes or genitals, for example, is neither universal nor of such evolutionary utility). I hope that explains it.
OK, what’s astounding is that neither Grant nor anyone here mentioned Matt Walsh and his film “What Is A Woman?”:
https://www.dailywire.com/clips/what-is-a-woman-official-trailer
I had this in the back of my head when I first saw headline for Ceiling Cat’s post. Before reading it, I assumed it was in relation to something Matt Walsh had done or said. I was actually surprised to see that Jerry had written a rebuttal to Kat Grant’s piece, which of course I hadn’t seen or known about.
FFRF’s mission seems less about tackling separation of church and state and more about going after conservatives and anyone not at the Left Pole, from which everywhere in any direction is considered Far Right (or something like this to paraphrase Pinker).