Like me, Steve Pinker has resigned from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). His resignation was sent yesterday. Steve is a bigger macher than I. both intellectually and, in this case, because he was Honorary President of that Board. I put below his two emails, reproduced with permission.
The first one was sent yesterday to the co-Presidents of the FFRF as well as the editor of Freethought Today!, which originally published my piece and then removed it.
From: Pinker, Steven
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2024 11:49 AM
Subject: resignation
Dear Annie Laurie and Dan,
With sadness, I resign from my positions as Honorary President and member of the Honorary Board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The reason is obvious: your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.
My letter to you last November (reproduced below) explains why I think these are grave errors. With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics. It has turned its back on reason: if your readers “wrongfully perceive” the opposite of a clear statement that you support the expression of contesting opinions, the appropriate response is to stand by your statement, not ratify their error. It has turned the names Freethought Today and Freethought Now into sad jokes, inviting ridicule from its worse foes. And it has shown contempt for the reasoned advice of its own board members.
There are not the values of not the organization I have supported for twenty years, and I can no longer be associated with it.
Sincerely,
Steve*************
As Steve notes above, this second letter was sent over a month ago to the same people, with copies to me and Richard Dawkins, as all of us were discussing the issue of “mission creep” with the FFRF.
From: Pinker, Steven
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2024 10:04 AM
Subject: RE: Comment for FFRFThanks, Annie Laurie. But I think it’s important to distinguish two things:
1. The right to bodily autonomy, an ethical issue.
2. The nature of sex in the living world, a scientific issue.
Some trans activists believe that the only way to ensure the first is to rewrite the second, imposing what we regard as fallacious and tendentious claims in defiance of our best scientific understanding. This is unfortunate for two reasons: it’s a conceptual error, confusing the moral and the empirical, and it’s counterproductive to force people to choose between trans rights and scientific reality. Those who favor scientific reality will be alienated from the cause of safeguarding trans rights.
I see FFRF as in the vanguard of separating key moral and political commitments from honest scientific inquiry (after all, a major impetus for enshrining religious doctrine such as creationism is that it is necessary for the preservation of moral values). Many people have noted that the radical factions of the trans movement have taken on some of the worst features of religion, such as the imposition of dogma and the excommunication and vilification of heretics. FFRF can be firmly on the side of trans rights without advancing tendentious (and almost certainly false) biological claims. Of course, it’s fine for views that we regard as tendentious to be expressed in FFRF forums, as long as respectful disagreements are allowed to be expressed as well.
Best,
Steve
Good!
Pinker’s response is also masterful, and a fine defense of freedom of thought.
+1. 👍🏼
One would hope that deftly worded resignations from you and Pinker would give them second thoughts, but more likely it gives them the smug satisfaction of knowing that the purge is nearly complete.
Hitting the nail right on the head!
This is my concern as well. If scientific voices leave organizations that are being contested for ideological capture, then the organizations will doubtlessly be captured. Perhaps it would be better for people like Jerry, Steven, and Richard to retain their positions and titles (honorary though they be) and publicly engage FFRF, demanding they give an account of their behavior that is consistent with their professed mission.
When Harvard started devaluing free speech on its campus, I’m glad Steven chose to organize the Council on Academic Freedom and push back rather than resigning in protest. In like manner, if activists want the FFRF, they should have to fight for it.
As I noted today, this is the THIRD time we have brought up ideological capture with the FFRF, and it has had no effect. You reach a point where you realize that your efforts will bear no fruit. The three of us have reached that point. We have no power to change anything in this organization.
100% this.
No surprise, Steven Pinker’s letters are brilliant–particularly the resignation letter’s description of how FFRF is attempting to impose religion itself.
S. Pinker is a great writer. Always has been. What would you expect from a person who actually wrote a book (‘A Sense of Style’) about great writing?
I’m sorry that Pinker, and Prof. Coyne, phrased it as “religion.” I think it is more accurately described as ideology, since it lacks the component of the supernatural that is the core of “religion”. I understand that Pinker wants to make an ironic point, but I think his aim is a little off.
I think his point was to make a comparison to how religions also censor facts that contradict their dogma.
To me, it could be considered a supernatural idea — the idea that there is a gendered soul that exists independent of one’s actual physical molecules.
+1
The differences from usual religions (lack of a sky father and/or earth mother, propitiation and supplication of these, tithing, etc.) do not in any way take away from the substantial (even essential) similarities.
I guess that the word “religion” is used by S. Pinker in the way as in “Woke Racism How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” by John McWhorter. It could be “quasi-religion” ; anyway it seems to me there is an hidden supernatural element in such ideologies. But this is a “a significant amount of zero importance” point.
Best from France (forgive me my english)
Religions = ideologies
And vice versa when ideologies are considered sacred in the sense of being beyond question or debate.
While it might be argued that all religions are ideologies, not all ideologies are religions. And while it can be argued — as Durkheim did — that one of the functions of religion is the creation of the ‘sacred,’ there are many forms of sacred-ness that are not religious (single-sex bathrooms, for example).
It may also be worth pointing out that every culture has unquestioned, deeply held beliefs and convictions that are not ‘religious’ in any sense — when we apply the label ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ to them we are using it metaphorically. As I wrote, for Pinker, the use of ‘religion’ in his accusation against the FFRF was strategically ironic, and thus clever, but it was metaphorical nonetheless.
There is an element of the supernatural to their ideology though. The whole “people can change sex” nonsense is a great example of supernatural thought.
I think we have a different understanding of “supernatural”. Consider that what we mean when we say that “people can change sex” is that it is only possible through surgical and chemical means, which are fundamentally empirical, not supernatural…. No one expects that praying to some deity to change their sex is going to be effective.
You may feel that the belief that “people can change sex” is false, even delusional, but that doesn’t make it supernatural.
Most “trans” individuals do not believe that surgical or chemical means are necessary in order to change their sex. In the case of the so-called autogynephilic trans people, the vast majority are heterosexual males who have no intention of using medical means to make themselves into a facsimile of a female; for them, it is sufficient merely to self-declare themselves as “women”. No need to “pray to a deity” for a sex change. But they remain heterosexually oriented towards women, while posing as “trans lesbians” who just happen to have “lady penises”. That’s “supernatural”.
Not all people who have autogynephilia regard themselves as transgender, but instead transvestites. To say that they are all “trans” is incorrect.
I believe I called it a quasi-religion, and somewhere said that it lacked the elements of fealty to a supernatural being
Exactly, and I believe you wrote that in response to one of my cranky points that we toss around terms such as “religion” without defining what we mean by that, which is an odd oversight for scientists.
I’m happy with the metaphorical use of “religion” to refer to beliefs and convictions that are deeply held and unquestioned, but we should also recognize that we have many deeply held beliefs and convictions that are eminently empirical — I was reminded of our unquestioned assumptions about gravity when reading an article recently about a group of ‘seniors’ who have taken up sky-diving. Most of us feel deep in our gut that stepping out of the plane without a parachute would be suicidal, but I would not call that belief religious!
There is nothing more supernatural than believing you can ‘magically’ change sex. Using the term religion perfectly points out it’s dangerous practices, brainwashing of the young & vulnerable and violent oppression of dissenters.
‘since it lacks the component of the supernatural’
Born in the wrong body, gendered souls and transubstantiation whereby with a declaration a man becomes a woman, a womans brain in a mans body, trapped in the wrong body, cracking the egg.
all fairly supernatural
“gendered souls” — not a feature of transgender as far as I am aware. Some people might believe in a “soul,” but that is not necessary for transgender identity.
“with a declaration a man becomes a woman” — what is supernatural about a declaration, apart from your claim that it is? It might be delusional, but that is not the same as supernatural.
“a womans brain in a mans body” — again, not a necessary feature of trans identity, and doesn’t appear to have any supernatural features anyway. The claim might be wrong, predicated on a false belief about anatomy and physiology, but false beliefs about anatomy and physiology are not perforce supernatural.
Gendered souls are very much a feature of transgender identity. How else can you be a woman born in a man’s body?
Just trawling through the later comments on the stunning FFRF stories. I’ve learned a lot about the interface between religion and trans ideology.
Hormones and surgery don’t change sex. Changing sex in humans would require supernatural intervention on every cell in the body, like a princess changing a frog into a prince by kissing it, or Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (where the irreversible effects of anoxia would have to be reversed in every mitochondrion of L’s body.) Magic, in other words. Someone who says sex can be changed and does change is expressing a magical belief, that drugs and surgery perform magic.
However I don’t think most trans ideologues believe sex can be changed. They therefore aren’t resting on a belief in magic. (Which isn’t to say some people don’t believe in magic in general. I just don’t think trans ideology is based in this particular magical belief.) Rather, the claim is that there is some innate part of the mind expressed somehow as gender knowledge. We don’t have to call it a soul, since the atheist gender activists don’t for obvious reasons. Presumably the same percolations of interconnected action potentials — natural physical processes — that give rise to “spirituality” or schizophrenia or interest in model railroading also create “gender knowledge.” Because gender is imperfectly correlated with sex (and can be fluid) it follows, as I understand the claim, that those in whom gender doesn’t match sex can feel mental distress from “knowing” they are women but 1) seeing they have Adam’s apples and penises and 2) also knowing that the world makes the enforceable claim that they are men. They further claim that altering the body to make it more closely match the innate gender (instead of trying to bring gender feeling into concordance with sex) will relieve both sources of distress (internal and social.) And finally that this quest gives them special civil rights to wrest power from those who are privileged by having mental comfort in their naturally sexed bodies — the cis-heteronormative patriarchy.
I don’t think any of this is supernatural (religiously or magically) because it doesn’t make any claims that require, on their face, supernatural mechanisms: it doesn’t claim sex can be changed. It claims only that sex is an inadequate definition of “women like me.” It’s not even wrong in the sense of being falsifiable. It’s just a gnostic political ideology.
I would argue that it has much in common with religion. The idea of a “gendered soul” being one of them.
Both religion and ideology are part of the dogma realm. That’s the point.
When something is circling the drain like FFRF it is time to get out. The same can be said of much of academia that has been captured by the trans-queer ideology. Why couldn’t someone like Colin Wright get a job in BIOLOGY (biology!)?
Bravo, Steve Pinker!
This is excellently written. I like that he does not hold back in his accusations. I hope that many more also follow you out the door. As you mentioned, the whole point of being on that Board is to help guide the organization and keep its leaders on track. When they not only flagrantly ignore your advice but disrespect you in such a manner, there really is nothing else to do.
FFRF has become what it was founded to work against.
They clearly. made a huge mistake, out of a sense of politically correct “concern”.
They likely can’t be shown why extremist partisanship is wrong when it comes to issues like this. It’s part of the “religion”.
Well put, Dr. Pinker!
https://freethoughtnow.org/freedom-from-religion-foundation-supports-lgbtqia-plus-rights/
Read the comments. FFRF going to regret this shameful move
Expect Dawkins will resign to from the board
Wow. The comments seem to be overwhelmingly against the FFRF. I think they will be Atheism+ 2.0.
One of the unhinged rebuttals to a sensible comment saying that Jerry supports LGBT rights:
“He lies. He lies. He’s a two-faced snake who wants us all dead. Read between the lines. He won’t be happy until we’re all swinging from a rope.”
I’m wondering if the comments will suddenly evaporate
The comments are archived, alongside the posting itself, at https://web.archive.org/web/20241229155805/https://freethoughtnow.org/freedom-from-religion-foundation-supports-lgbtqia-plus-rights/ .
Doubly sad.
Religion will still be around – and so will Steven Pinker and PCC(E) and an impetus to defend freedom from religion
Meanwhile
There will be an answer – Let It Be
How can FFRF not understand such eloquent arguments that Pinker and you offered, if not because they have succumbed to a religion?
I a convinced that this issue is going to be another wedge separating skeptics from each other. What surprises me is the number of atheists and skeptics who suspend their skeptical approach to the issue of gender identity, and accept that questioning is intolerable bigotry.
I am quite sympathetic to the issue of those who suffer a crisis of gender conformance, especially as adolescence tosses its spanner in the works, but am not willing to accept that this is the result of a gender identity that socially trumps the protection of sex-based rights for women. I don’t think that medicalizing to mimic the other sex is a proper solution. Yet, my position is considered bigotry.
We would hope that organizations such as FFRF would be welcoming the discussions, but they, along with the NESS do not entertain any discussion. Likewise the Skepchicks.
I don’t get it. Pinker, And many others who dare express skepticism, will be shunned with the same vile hatred as directed towards radical feminists.
Thank you , 👍 totally agree
NESS ?
The New England Skeptical Society, home of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.
Totally agree.
And I also think it’s bizarre and harmful to suggest — to anyone, but most importantly to children heading toward and into adolescence — that because puberty is very often unpleasant in any number of ways, that it somehow means that there’s something wrong and that the unpleasantness has to be remedied with interventions other than time.
Puberty is often unpleasant. In other news: water is wet and the sun rises largely eastward.
This is how we grow resiliency. We are tired–then we rest and feel less so. Something hurts or we get ill and then we heal and recover and feel better. We get our feeling hurt and after a time, the low feelings lift and we return to ourselves.
We are doing a grave disservice to young people by not reassuring them and supporting them–in their not-wrong bodies–that this, too, shall pass.
Kudos to you both
Wow! And I thought PCC(E) put it well! That resignation letter was perfect.
Well written. There will be more; there need to be.
Another good letter. Best of luck to you both.
Cheers to both of you. I noticed a few (Bogossian for eg.) retweets of your original one.
D.A.
NYC
Just sent to FFRF:
“As a member and donor for 12 years, I was appalled at the treatment of Jerry Coyne and his article regarding biological sex. The Freedom from Religion Foundation, above all others, should support reasoned discussion and avoid dogmatic tribalism.
By responding to Jerry Coyne’s article with rejection and a thoughtless “support” statement, you have avoided a debate that is actually happening in society in favor of a particular position that allows no discussion. That’s extremism. It’s dogmatism. And it conflates reasoned positions with bigotry by equating, as your “support” statement does, that resisting Orwellian redefinitions of clear and accepted biological terms is somehow denying someone’s rights. The march of equality for groups such as trans people is too important to be left to extremists, which sadly now includes The Freedom from Religion Foundation.
I therefore resign my membership. Please immediately remove me from all digital and physical lists.”
FFRF joins the sad list of formerly venerable organizations that were captured and subverted by the Woke: AAUP, ACLU — and well as the whole slew of professional organizations — American Association for Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Royal Chemical Society, etc. Someone should start a list documenting those.
And the Democratic Party. Among the party officials, fundraisers, and activists, they brook no more dissent on this issue than does FFRF.
This was the correct decision. I will also no longer show support for the FFRF.
Excellent statements from both professors Coyne and Pinker, no doubt accompanied by similar letters from other departing members and contributors. Needless to say, whenever an organization is captured by the wokely faithful, what we need is an uncaptured or NEW outfit, in this case an FFRF counterpart without postmodernist denial of reality.
Thus, FIRE already replaces the ACLU, Heterodox Academy replaces the AAUP, etc.. The University of Austin is, in a sense, replacement for the whole, prevalent academic program corrupted by woke/DEI/postmodernist fetishes.
I, a lifetime member, requested removal from membership.
Both resignation letters are devastating, in their different ways. It is tempting to wish that this shameful episode could be brought to a wider readership. Unfortunately, the sort of mainstream media that might give it prominence would also be likely to use it to undermine the FFRF’s original agenda, as well as those rights of trans people that our host and Prof Pinker actually defend. But at least the people whose opinions it is possible to respect are likely to read about it, and to support your brave stance in their own way.
I am going to try to give it a wider audience.
Bravo.
You should see the anti-science, pro-rape, pro-violence commentators over at Hemant’s substack. Same over at Pharyngula.
Yuck.
More of Myers conflating sex with sex characteristics, oh goody…
I did not read all 444 comments but of the comments I did read, none of them were pro-rape or pro- physical violence. I don’t agree with most of the comments, but again, saw none that were promoting violence. Maybe you can point one out.
I haven’t found any threatening violence, although there are a number that have been deleted.
There are some comments from trans people or their relatives. They definitely feel they’ve been attacked.
Example:
“I have a trans son. I know he is brave. He doesn’t say much about the difficulties. I know he has encountered bigotries. Thank you for sharing.”
Yet the intent was never to attack them per se. They seem paranoid.
My experience is that trans-identified folk (and their supporters) need persecution as much as evangelical Christians do. Without it the bonds to the primary group are looser and conformance to the ideology is threatened.
pz myers latest: “I reaffirm my support for the Freedom From Religion Foundation”
LOL!
They can keep him. He and they deserve each other.
Heavens, PZ Myers’ identity appears fragile and juvenile — based on reactionary responses to most anything Jerry, Pinker, and Dawkins do. He’s like a high school mean girl who still buddies up with high school mean girls at near retirement. Pathetic.
I just went to his Bl*sky page: “Wow, both Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker have announced their resignation from the honorary board at the FFRF. Good. They were a terrible influence, and their departure strengthens the FFRF as a defender of reason.” He goes on to invoke Harvard’s Hoekstra to needle Jerry.
Man, Myers is off the mark.
All FFRF and Myers et al are doing is making themselves irrelevant.
Myers is already irrelevant. His animosity toward Coyne, Dawkins, Pinker, and others is obviously based in envy. No one should be giving him the oxygen of attention he so desperately craves.
Thanks, yes, I thought about not engaging on the matter and struggle between not giving oxygen to the undeserving and being risk averse enough to look out for what those filled with animosity are up to.
I learned of Myers at the same time I learned of Jerry in 2014. It’s been a wild cultural ride since that time in that it was (and still is, though less so I hope) the Age of Cancel Culture. But one hindsight advantage (and a bit of wisdom) I’m gaining is tides turn. What’s popular and socially acceptable changes, just like in high school. In the end, the contributions of those who kept focused, not on the moral proclivities of the day, but on their fields and reason are what matters. I feel a little like I’ve uttered something sentimental, but there is something in me that is learning from all these once-great institutions caving to quasi-religious dogma. For myself, it’s a reminder to keep on doing the things that are lasting. But there is also a lesson in how to do so. Jerry, Dawkins, and Steve carry themselves with such class. That’s so important, especially when things are hard.
FFRF used to be an effective organization, with a small budget that concentrated on fighting for separation of church and state. They seem to be evolving into a quasi-religious organization suppressing science in support of dogma. I’ll help them achieve purity by removing them from my will.
I did not read all 444 comments but of the comments I did read, none of them were pro-rape or pro- physical violence. I don’t agree with most of the comments, but again, saw none that were promoting violence. Maybe you can point one out.
This was misposted. Sorry-
Not that they’d notice or care, but i wonder if we “Lifetime” members (I used to donate $5000 each year) can resign? Sad for me, because I told my spouse just a couple weeks ago that FFRF was about the only outfit remaining that seemed to be doing stuff — well, making life miserable for religious jerks in local schools, is something. I disagreed with them bragging about filing an amicus brief in a trans-sports case, and got the same basic canned letter Annie sent Jerry. I donated something like $10 for a couple years; this year $3333, and got a calendar (with my name misspelled) and a small box of See’s Candy. Nice to see they know how to spend their money… when they are not giving $50,000 grants to other organizations. Empire builders have no proper place in what we need to get done.
As a nice thought experiment imagine if FFRF decided to honestly reappraise their position and just came out and said outright that it was in poor judgement to cancel such distinguished scientists and critics that honestly (and with admirable restraint) politely challenged their views. By cancelling Jerry instead of welcoming some honest debate, they suggest a certain insecurity that even in my field of Fine Arts would seem suspect. This contempt for critical thinking, sadly, is understandable with ultra orthodox Jews and hard core Catholics and much if not all of Islami, but certainly weird for FFRF. As one more seductive thought experiment: a one hour debate with Steven and Annie on cultural definitions and brute force biological realities. Substitute Dawkins or Jerry Coyne will do, too.
Thank you both for retaining your principles and common sense on this issue. It’s such a disappointment to me that atheist/secular organisations cannot seem to separate the religious and anti-science aspects of trans activism from trans rights.
In Oxford, England, in 1860 the ‘Great Debate’ happened when the scientist Thomas Huxley debated Darwin’s theories with Bishop Wilberforce. In that some students might have been mortified by hearing a challenge to Biblical truths the church arranged for clerics to be on hand to offer the students spiritual comfort.
When last year, the gender critical academic Kathleen Stock spoke at the Oxford Union (the student debating society) the Oxford LGBT+ Student Society provided safe spaces and the like less any student be upset.
Progress?
There is a real sense of anger in Steven Pinker’s message, which is entirely justified. I hope the recipients pick up on this and have a sense of the respect that they have forfeited by their actions.
I went back and read the original article. The author seems very careful not to conflate sex and gender. They consistently use man/woman for gender labels and where they mention sex they use male/female labels.
“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.”
Dr Coyne is actually the first one to use a gender label “woman” and link it to sex – so he seems to be misrepresenting the original article and the rest of his argument is against a strawman.
Now, Dr Coyne can use any definition of labels he wishes, of course, it’s his house – but the other writier is clear in what they mean when using these labels and Dr Coyne changes that in his critique. Also, I’m aware that many people other than this author DO conflate the two, so I have much sympathy for Dr Coyne’s argument – but it seems misplaced this time.
That’s an interesting take. I admit to having similar thoughts over the past few days. Dr. Coyne’s piece is a better rebuttal to the claim that ‘sex in humans is a nonbinary spectrum’ than to Grant’s piece, the point of which seems to be that the term ‘woman’ refers to a concept so nebulous and intangible that it literally cannot be defined.
That said, ‘woman’ has always before referred to both sex and gender. Insisting, even implicitly, that starting now it can only refer to an (undefinable) psychological state amounts to co-opting an existing, well-understood vernacular word for strictly ideological purposes. [See also ‘racism’.]
No one is insisting. Using separate labels is what the original piece did, and it’s a formulation my family often uses. Biological sex is binary. Gender is not. Using different labels for these makes sense and helps with clarity.
People of common purpose, supporting gender fluidity (which is new to me, at least) while maintaining alignment with scientific understanding, should be able to have these types of discussions.
Agreed.
And if everyone agreed on which labels to use for which concepts, clarity of communication would indeed be enhanced.
But, quite obviously, not everyone agrees that ‘woman’ is a term of psychological gender only. If Grant’s piece had any point at all it was to insist on that meaning and only that meaning.
This is like the free will arguements. You can talk past each other if you have different definitions of free will. The idea that one person can “insist” on a definition just doesn’t get purchase with me – people are free to use language as they wish. But if we’re interested in real communication then understanding how people are using terms should be a shared goal. The idea that one person can “insist” on someone else using a definition just doesn’t seem possible – what’s the enforcement strategy?
The use of gender terms separate from biological terms makes sense, and is something that is done in my circles for quite some time now. This really does seem like just a confustion of semantics.
Reading Grants writing, with an understanding of gender labels, shows that it’s a clear, concise discussion of how gender roles can be handled in our culture. The whole “conflating” hubbub goes away, and people like me are left wondering why Jerry, Stephen and Richard are so worked up.
The idea that gender means anything distinct from sex or from personality is what’s contentious here, which is why I think Prof. Coyne’s argument is on target and didn’t hit a straw man. Personality is obviously not binary. But the male-bodied people in whom the most effeminate of Indonesian personalities reside are still clearly and obviously men (unless they have ambiguous genitalia which really is a straw man by Kat Grant.) Even if you had to strip them naked to be sure, you would find them to be men. If they had been wearing women’s clothing, we gender-skeptics would say they were masquerading, not “expressing their feminine gender” and certainly not being women. The opposite and analogous argument holds for “mannish” female personalities. They are still women. Nothing entitles them to call themselves men. They are unmasked, not misgendered.
The central claim of gender ideology is that a man who says he feels feminine can call himself a woman on the basis of his self-experienced personality and the representation must be accepted as fact by society. The word gender (which was after all merely a grammatical property of nouns that aren’t necessarily sexed and for parts of speech that must agree with them) has been appropriated from its more recent meaning as an exact euphemism for sex to encompass personality traits that, of themselves, carry no clout in the definition of “man” or “woman” in bathrooms, violence shelters, and prisons, yet rolled into gender identity suddenly do.
What I think Prof. Coyne is arguing is that there are only two immutable sexes in mammals and therefore the words man and woman can describe only these sexes exclusively and exhaustively. The infinite personality variations don’t provide any basis to expand the meaning of the words beyond the way they are defined by sex. “Masculine” and “male” are not broader or narrower categories than “man.” They are merely adjectival equivalents. Masculine or male humans = men. Masculine or male traits are those that men have. Indeed women with excessive body hair and clitoral enlargement from a medical condition are said to be virilized, not masculinized, because everyone including the affected patients knows they don’t “become” male. (Yes I know vir means “man”. We’re not etymologic purists.)
So while gender may be a concept that some people use to describe how they feel about themselves and how they think society should be made to regard them, there is no basis for them to encroach on the sex-based meanings of man and woman. If the activists want to argue that a man who wears a dress because he says he feels like a woman should not be discriminated against in selecting the Surgeon-General, they should say so: “men who say they feel like women should be treated as if they are women.” Even so, they can’t be women. But I suspect that deep down the activists know that society won’t accept this: people won’t accept a “he” winning a women’s sport championship just because “he” wants to. Rather you have to convince the authorities and the ticket buyers that this “he” really is a (courageous!…groundbreaking!) “she”, and then it’ll go down easy.
I’m not trying to put words in Prof. Coyne’s mouth. I’m only trying to rebut the charge that he straw-manned Kat Grant or argued beside the point.
The idea that you can determine someones biological sex by checking under their clothese seems to show that you don’t understand what Prof Coyne has said.
Jerry links these sexes to the production of the two different kinds of gametes. In almost all life, this rule holds true, and we use the labels male and female to differentiate. This holds true for all biology – male/female chickens, male/female corn, etc. For humans we have traditionally linked the words man and woman to sex, but this isn’t a biological term – you don’t say a man cow and female cow. So it’s possible to de-link these terms from biological sex without any harm to science, and that’s what a large portion of our society has done, and introduced new terms. It can be confusing, and we’re not all on the same page, but it doesn’t do any harm to science when used in the proper, cultural context – which the original author does.
Your whole argument boils down to semantics – you reject that we can use “man” as a gender label unassociated with biological sex, so therefore…
It reminds me of the argument against gay marriage, “god created adam and eve, not adam and steve” – marriage was between two different sexes, by definition, so two men CAN’T be married. Checkmate, liberal.
I think you get to the heart of the issue when you say that many people aren’t willing to recognize these gender decisions. We used to have gender based jobs, gender based education, gender based roles in society. We’ve done away with almost all of these and… society is fine. Many people are still resistant – they think someone’s role in society should be determined by their birth sex. But except in a few areas, medical treatment and sports, for example, there really is no biological sex based difference, and so separating the cultural expression of sex (ie gender) from the biological sex in those areas makes sense and allows room in our society for lots of people who were not comfortable (or downright harmed).
Doctors should still know someone’s birth sex, and sports should have rules about this as well, and I think it’s people arguing against those types of issues that Dr Coyne’s argument is directed against. The original article doesn’t do seem to do that.
There used to be dandies and tom boys, i.e. people which didn’t conform to the stereotypes of their gender, but the difference is that they didn’t claim to be the opposite SEX. That is the whole problem here. No sensible person cares about sex-based stereotypes. Liberals left them decades ago. But they are now returning, being used to define what a woman is. (Except—logic was never their strong point—that self-ID trumps everything.)
The FFRF without any weight will be relegated to irrelevance. I view that as good news, and another win, and applaud Jerry, Steven and Richard.
Go woke, go broke!