There are two items of interest in the Big KerFFRFle, the dispute in which the Freedom from Religion Foundation appears to be melting down over an episode in which they removed my post on gender from their website.
The first is an account of the fracas by Yontat Shimron in the Religion News Service (RNS). The piece is pretty objective but has a few glitches. Click below to read it, or find it archived here. The most interesting part is its confirmatio—heretofore only a rumor—that the FFRF has dissolved its entire Honorary Board, the board of 18 honorees from which Richard Dawkins, Stephen Pinker, and I resigned.
I’d heard rumors that the other 15 members of the Honorary Board were also vanished, even though you can still see them at this link, (archived here) found by Googling “FFRF honorary board”. Curiously, you get two links when you Google those words, with the other one, here, showing only one name, Jeremiah Camara. But the reporter of the piece below verified that the entire Honorary Board is gone—defunct, sleeping with the fishes and singing with the Choir Invisible.
Click to read or, if the article disappears or changes, the version posted this morning is archived here.
The part that I found most bizarre, but conforming to rumors I’ve heard, is this (also noted in the headline):
The nation’s largest freethought organization has dissolved its honorary board after three of its prominent members resigned in an ideological battle over transgender issues.
And that’s all it said, but if a reporter noted it, she must have had information. I contacted Yonat Shimron, who verified that yes, the honorary board of the FFRF has been dissolved, that this was confirmed to her by one of the co-Presidents of the FFRF, and that it was done at the behest of the FFRF’s governing board.
The conclusion, of course, is that the FFRF does not WANT an honorary board at all. Why? The only conclusion I can reach is that other honorary-board members could, in the future, cause “trouble” in the way that the three of us did, publicly criticizing the organization for its mission creep and adherence to woke gender ideology. Ditching the other 15 (I hope they’ve been told!) is an often-seen aspect of wokeness: any index of merit that conflicts with “progressive” ideology must be effaced. (Similarly, many American colleges have dropped requirements for applicants to submit standardized test scores, like those from the SAT and ACT.) It seems that the FFRF doesn’t want to take a chance with people on the honorary board publicly espousing the “wrong ideology.”
A tweet from Colin Wright:
I have internal confirmation that the @FFRF has indeed dissolved their Honorary Board following the public resignations of Dawkins, Pinker, and Coyne.
When your organization has abandoned its core principled, maintaining a Board of principled intellectuals becomes a liability. https://t.co/E1P0OtIoLX
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) January 6, 2025
There are a couple of things I am not keen on about the piece, but in general it’s objective and accurate. I do think the sub-headline overly dramatizes my claim that transwomen are more sexually predatory than “other women” (I of course meant biological women). That was certainly not the main point of my piece, which was the definition of “woman”. But the data certainly support that claim, which shows beyond doubt that, with respect to criminal sexual behavior, trans women are not women. Anyway, this is a quibble; authors and editors have the right to emphasize what they want.
My other beef, however, is more important, as it’s a matter of accuracy. The RNS article says this. I’ve put the contentious bits in bold:
The post, which drew intense backlash, was taken down on Dec. 28, one day after it was published, prompting Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker to resign from the foundation. That led the foundation to dissolve the 14- member honorary board.
The flap offers a peek at a roiling controversy among a select group of New Atheists who have expressed views that are anti-transgender and more generally “anti-woke.” It is a position taken by another atheist group, the Center for Inquiry. But it is also hotly contested by most in the nonbeliever community. In 2021, the American Humanist Association withdrew its “Humanist of the Year” award from Dawkins over his anti-trans comments.
In an interview with RNS, Annie Laurie Gaylor, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, took responsibility for publishing and then removing Coyne’s article.
First, I don’t know any New atheist who has expressed views that are “anti-transgender”, only discussing that the rights of transgender people might rarely conflict with the rights of other groups (viz., sports) and need to be adjudicated. The article makes New Atheists look like people who want to erase trans folks. That ain’t true. (Yes, I suppose you can find a handful of “New Atheist” who are truly bent on curtailing all the rights of transgender people, but they are surely in the minority.)
But the bit about Dawkins is grossly distorted. Below are the purported “anti-trans” comments that Richard tweeted, comments made the AHA withdraw its award, committing a reprehensible act. As Richard has explained, he was merely posing a question for discussion, a question first raised in 2017 by philosopher Rebecca Tuvel in a published paper (“In defense of transracialism“) that concluded that there was no substantive ethical difference between asking people to accept your non-natal gender and asking them to accept your non-natal “race.”
Tuvel’s paper caused a huge controversy because some people didn’t like the race aspect, though I read Tuvel’s paper and agree with her. Still, the editor of the journal resigned, the journal (Hypatia) apologized, and many scholars called for the paper’s removal. Tuvel, a brave soul, stuck to her guns and the paper is still up. And the question is still worth debating, as Richard noted. Why is there a difference between transgenderism and transracialism? Isn’t that something to chew on?
Richard noted that he was simply framing the question as one to ponder, as he would with questions posed to his Oxford students to discuss in their weekly essay. You can see his tweet below, and it is certainly not “anti-trans”! The RNS really should change that, as it borders on defamation.
In another piece, secularist, humanist, and writer Ed Buckner wrote a piece on the kerFFRFle on his Substack site. You can access it by clicking below. It is generally favorable toward the views of Richard, Steve, and I, as well as toward our resignations, but makes one point that I want to emphasize:
Buckner refers to an online essay criticizing my now-defunct essay on the FFRF site (archived here), and to an essay by Aaron Rabinowitz on the Unfriendly Atheist site, to which I’ve added the link:
To turn now more specifically to Aaron Rabinowitz’s essay on Friendly Atheist (link below if you missed it), he criticized Jerry Coyne for allegedly pretending to expertise as an ethicist, for overstepping his status as a pre-eminent biologist. But I reread Coyne’s essay with care and nowhere did he state or imply that he’s an ethicist, expert or otherwise.
And Buckner has rewritten part of what I wrote to make it conform with his own ethical beliefs. In fact I agree with Buckner’s writing, which expresses my real views, views I should expanded on in the original FFRF piece:
Coyne does offer some opinions that are related to ethics, of course.
For example,
Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.
My own “ethical” opinion is close to Coyne’s. I would probably—but only after I studied the matter more carefully, including discussions with rape counselors and probably even with women who’ve been victims of rape or of women-batterers, modify some of what Coyne wrote slightly to say:
Neither men or women, cis- or trans-gendered, should serve as rape counselors and as workers in battered women’s shelters, unless the counselors or others working there pass a background check; even then, no one should so serve unless the clients are aware of and accept the status of the counselors/workers.
I can imagine circumstances where there might be an advantage to victims of having a man or a trans woman on hand, but the rights, needs, and wants of the victims, even if sometimes irrational, should be paramount.
I think the second version, expressing Buckner’s views, is better than what I wrote, and it does summarize views I already held (but failed to express). While I still think that at present tranwomen should not compete against biological women in sports, and shouldn’t really be running battered women’s shelters, they should not be completely barred from that job nor from acting as rape counselors—so long as (as Buckner writes), they undergo a background check and the women residents of shelters or women being counseled for rape or sexual assault are made aware that the counselor is a trans woman (a biological man) and are okay with that. This view will, of course still be seen as “transphobic” by some extremists, but there’s a very good case for holding this view in light of the rights of biological women. This involves a conflict between two groups’ “rights”, and in the interests of fairness and the needs of biological women, I come down against sports participation of transwomen and cast a very cold eye on the other two issues.
Buckner’s conclusion (bolding is Buckner’s)
Serious freethinking, requires, in my view, expressing views and understanding and accepting that your views may not be accepted as correct by everyone. Real disagreement can occur, and this should not lead FFRF or anyone else to declare, as it did in (unwisely) removing Coyne’s reply to [Kat] Grant,
We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.
That’s a terrible outcome. Of course FFRF should not publish a hateful, bigoted essay (Coyne’s wasn’t) and then remove it—it should instead post essays that disagree with other essays and promise to keep posting words from people who think freely enough to not always toe anyone’s dogmatic party line—and to say so.
I posted a comment agreeing with Buckner’s rewriting of my views on shelters and counselors, but Richard also posted an excellent related comment (click to enlarge if you’re myopic or reading on a phone):
The fallout from this affair is not quite over, but I think it does constitute a twofold lesson. First, the ideology of Leftist humanists and atheists such as Richard, Steve, and I will sometimes conflict with the ideology of other Leftist humanists and atheists, particularly when it comes to wokeness. We are not a homogenous group.
Second, it is not right for organizations that promote freethought and discussion to censor people whose ideology conflicts with their own, and by “censoring” I mean first allowing the heterodox person to publish material on the organization’s website but subsequently removing it because the publication was “a mistake” that caused “distress”. That is nonsensical behavior, and it does the FFRF no credit. (I hasten to add that I always admired, and still admire, the FFRF’s initiatives to keep religion out of government and educate people about nontheism.)
Anyway, read Buckner’s piece; there’s a lot more in it than I’ve described above.
I’m honored by the attention from Coyne and Dawkins. Please note, anyone who may be interested in my words: my blog is and always will be, completely free. Substack allows for paid subscriptions, but not me.
Well I just clicked though to your site, read the easy and subscribed. Some good stuff there! Somehow I got linked to several others recommended by you but I’ll sort them later. Seeking sites to broaden my outlook, goal is: clear & careful thinking. (when uncertain, when in doubt, run in circles; scream and shout)
What a sad situation. FFRF was for years my favorite organization but they’ve lost the thread and really should stop posting billboards that read “Science doesn’t care what you believe.”
https://ffrf.org/uploads/images/Science_Does_Not_Care_Photo1-R.jpg
It’s like if a Freedom From Smoking Foundation said “Hey, we didn’t say anything about vaping.”
Seriously though this is worth repeating :
PCC(E): “(I hasten to add that I always admired, and still admire, the FFRF’s initiatives to keep religion out of government and educate people about nontheism.)”
I’m wondering what the overall consequences for membership will be. My guess is that attendance at this year’s FFRF convention will be down. FFRF claims membership above 40,000. Will that take a hit? The part of me that supports their stalwart legal actions to keep church out of state hopes this won’t happen. That said, I pulled myself out of the organization because I can’t tolerate this anti-science turn of events.
Membership could conceivably go up if the LGBTQ++ community decides to rally round and support FFRF. If so, expect to see more mission creep (and it won’t be about gay rights.)
It’s also possible that FFRF dissolved their Honorary Board not because they feared encountering similar problems in the future, but because they’re still grappling with the problem happening right now. One or more of the members of the remaining board might be privately complaining to Staff that they either agree with the whole or parts of your article, don’t think it’s “transphobic,” and/or believe that it should have remained in Freethought Now to provoke discussion and debate.
Even more resignations piled on top of the three would have caused so much harm.
Knowing the others on the board, or rather who they are, I don’t think they would be prone to resigning or making trouble. But really, I have no idea what they think; I’ve had no contact with any of them.
Clearly it is a case of get rid of the critics rather than address the criticism.
Rationally, I agree about the slight revision, although for practical reasons, it might in many contexts be easier just to exclude non-women.
Emotionally, I find I am indeed transphobic here. I have had quite a few horrible experiences with sexually predatory men (and in one case, a boy in early puberty). I find it somewhat difficult to speak about these experiences, including to women, for a variety of reasons, but the sex of my interlocutor doesn’t really play a role in that. So I would accept a male counsellor or police officer if asked whether I would be okay with that. I might however find a trans woman counsellor unsettling, as many transwomen I see on media (who might not be representative at all) seem to be somewhat sex-obsessed and/or with a view of femaleness I find degrading. So I might indeed be someone who feels uncomfortable about a trans woman counsellor, although if asked I would probably say I am okay with it out of politeness and shame (hoping that it will be a perfectly suitable individual, as indeed might be the case).
Incidentally and off topic, as a non-native English speaker who learned from older British English, I am always somewhat disconcerted at the grammatically correct subject/nominative “I” used by Americans and other literate English writers after “and”, although of course I know that this is the correct version. But if the “and” follows “of”, as in “the views of Richard, Steve, and I”, shouldn’t this be either “mine” (genitive) or “me”, the generalized pronoun case? What feels right to the real English speakers here, what is the official editor’s rule for such cases? “Me” feels right to me, but I do realize that it might sound low-brow, as “me” after “and” is now stigmatized. Any opinions?
I am no expert on grammar, but it seems to me that “in the views of Richard, Steve, and myself“ would be the formally correct usage.
“I” does sound okay to me, though “me” sounds wrong.
I await more informed opinions.
Thank you, myself sounds good to me, to!
Myself or mine. I make the same mistake all the time.
The heuristic I learned was to mentally remove whatever was messing things up.
“John and (I? me?) went to the store” becomes
“I went to the store” vs “Me went to the store.”
First one.
“The views of Richard, Steve, and (I?me?)” becomes
“The views of I” vs “The views of me.”
A bit awkward, but second one.
“Me” is fine. I come from a grammar-obsessed family. After “of”, “me” is right.
“Me” is correct. “Myself” is too but, in the opinion of this old British English speaker, should be avoided for reasons of style. “I” is strictly incorrect (but John McWhorter and Steven Pinker, expert linguists, warn against schoolmasterly judgments like that).
Thank you all!
I did wonder whether the usual post-preposition rule for “me” also applies to “of”, as it does sound a bit plump. Also, “mine” is genitive, and “me” originally wasn’t a genitive. (“This view of mine” doesn’t sound awkward, does it?).
But according to this page: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/with-her-and-me-or-with-her-and-i
you grammar buffs are right and it is indeed correct to use “me” after “of”.
“Myself” is a placeholder for “I”, “me” and “mine” that doesn’t have an inflected form, so you can’t go wrong with it. I guess it must be the the formally preferred version in such cases as Jerry’s at least in the US which seems so me-phobic.
It’s interesting to see how much “feels right” varies even within native speakers!
I see that I wrote “generalized pronoun case” in my first post. That’s nonsense, I meant “generalized preposition case”.
“I” in the objective case is never correct unless you are quoting or creating dialogue of course. “The views of Richard, Steve, and me” is correct, as you say. “I” is wrong because the subjective can’t be the object of a preposition. If the expression sounds clumsy or dysphonious, I’d recast the sentence. Something like, “My view, which Richard and Steve share, is…” or “Richard and Steve argue, and I agree, that…” But this is a style point, not grammar. It might depend on if your views were jointly arrived at, or one spoke first and the others chimed in.
I would restrict “myself” to reflexive expressions, such as “I reflected on my drug use as being harmful to myself and to others.” I think it’s overdoing it to say “The views of Richard, Steve, and myself…”
Children are taught that “Me and him went to the beach” is wrong because the construction demands “He and I” for grammar and for politeness. This leads, I believe, to a bias against using “and me” at all, even when it’s correct. “Just between you and I” is so widely used that it sounds as if it has to be correct.
Agreed.
Tangentially, I’ve noticed that narcissists never use ‘me’, always using ‘myself’, ‘yours truly’ or ‘moi‘ instead. It’s a tell.
I share my bed with a linguist, so just between you and I, I’ll keep “me” comments to myself.
It should be “me”, I think. This is an odd example, but people will often write “I” where “me” would be more grammatically correct because there’s a feeling that “I” is somehow more polite or educated. Perhaps they’re confused by sentences such as “Steve and I went to France.” In that case, as teachers used to drum into us in primary school, “I” really is correct, and it would be considered uneducated or vulgar (and in any event, ungrammatical) to say, “Steve and me went to France.”
In this particular situation, I’d probably restructure the whole sentence to avoid the issue! But I’d also feel comfortable writing: “According to the views held by Richard, Steve, and me …”.
I’d also trust more a random normal man than a man impersonating a woman.
“I might indeed be someone who feels uncomfortable about a trans woman counsellor, although if asked I would probably say I am okay with it out of politeness and shame…”
We women are culturally conditioned to be polite, nice and gentle, not to rock the boat – to the detriment of our well-being and safety. That’s why I am always uncomfortable with suggestions to exclude trans “women” from female spaces unless biological women agree. Of course most biological women will agree, though they will feel highly uncomfortable. (It is the same with the alleged high acceptance of immigrants from misogynist cultures by women.)
Orwell, in 1984 (which woke crazies seem to regard not as a warning against totalitarianism, but as a how-to manual), referred to this as “memory holes”.
This comment is the winner of the Interwebs for today!
The FFRF seems to have excommunicated the Honorary Board.
+1
Good think there isn’t going to be an Inquisition!
I have said before, and will no doubt say again. For the left (cultural left, not economic left), ‘trans’ is the highest god. If you don’t accept the religious mantras of the ‘gender woo’ religion, you are guilty of the crime of blasphemy.
This whole business reminds me of the people getting fired for saying “All Lives Matter.” Unless you toe the line precisely, you are regarded as a heretic and burned at the stake.
These ideological purity tests are not compatible with people thinking for themselves. But maybe that is the point?
Good comparison. 🎯
I’d be interested in Jerry’s and others’ analysis of why FFRF has taken such unthoughtful position. I assume its about context rather than content. That is, the FFRF isn’t interested in being a discussion forum or think tank. It’s an advocacy group and believes it needs to align with others in advocacy communities.
The people they meet with at conferences seeking support, the groups they co-sponsor events with, the sites and podcasts they advertise on, etc, are liberal and include trans-supporting groups. Its membership and audience are far more activist on social issues than we might expect if we’re coming from a science perspective. They can’t afford to lose those constituencies, even it means losing people who want to carefully think through these issues.
Perhaps. All I know is what they did, not the psychology behind it. For example, I have no idea why they disbanded the Honorary Directors group. Even so, it seems to me that they behaved in a way that did not advance their status as an “advocacy group”. They could have left my post up and none of this stuff would have happened!
A good description. From the comments on The Friendly Atheist (warning, it’s not friendly) I’ve concluded that it’s rooted in the total opposition of fundamentalist Christians to the entire concept of transgender.
Their reasoning seems to be that they’ll support what fundamentalist Christians oppose.
Given that men (in general) are 30 times more likely to be sexual predators than women (in general) it would be utterly astonishing if “trans women” are not more sexually predatory than women.
The only interesting question is whether “trans women” (in general) are more sexually predatory than men.
I don’t think that’s the only interesting question given the mantra that “transwomen are women”, which we now know does not apply in the case of criminal sexual behavior. I don’t think the question you think is interesting is that interesting.
Trans-identifying males ARE men.
Reality doesn’t care about their feelings.
A childish response on the part of FFRF, frankly. Rather than admit that they have not handled the situation well, they attempt to insulate themselves from anyone who points that out, which is a tacit admission that they have no counter argument.
Talk about shooting the messenger 🤦♀️
Scrapping the board and doubling down on their nonsense doesn’t make them correct. Quite the opposite. It shows how narrow minded they are and that they are scared of the truth.
We need Freedom from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Well, we already have it, you know. The FFRF can’t actually do anything to us, any more than the Queen of Hearts could do anything to Alice.
Count our blessings.
Their very existence spouting gender ideology harms us all. It used to be an excellent example of rational thought fighting against woo. Now it has become the very thing it fought against and that, by association, tarnishes everyone who used to support it.
Their capitulation also makes it harder for everyone trying to push back against biology denial. This will give the nonsense peddlars more incentive to push their lies if they think that big organisations can still be corrupted.
The People’s Front of Judea versus The Judean People’s Front??
Now, now. Their names weren’t quite that close to identical. Some real ideological differentiation was suggested by, iirc, “The Judean People’s Liberation Front” and “The Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea.”
I hope that the FFRF reads this:
I had your organization listed as one of the beneficiaries in my Will, probably something like $100,000.00. Had you stayed in your lane, I would not have now removed you from my Will. Consequences.
Last year I sent a letter via US mail to Annie Laurie and Dan. I told them that I had already removed them from my estate plans and would not renew my membership (since 1996) until they renounced gender ideology.
Annie Laurie never responded. Dan emailed me and said “Thank you for being an FFRF member.” That’s it.
So maybe you and I are not big enough donors to make them care about losing our money.
I wonder whether we didn’t take an unthinking dive into the deep end of “equality” long before trans issues became so prominent in public life. A decade ago, my mother-in-law was on home hospice. She asked me one day while my wife was traveling on business to call the hospice providers and arrange for someone to bathe her. I was at her home and answered the door when 6’2” Richard paid a call. Going on a confident hunch, I informed Richard (not his real name) that my mother-in-law had changed her mind about wanting to bathe and I apologized for his inconvenience. Nevertheless, I brought him to her room to meet: she was horrified and literally speechless. Let me note that Richard was not trans; Richard was not even obviously gay. But Richard quite clearly was a strapping young man.
The hospice supervisor later explained to my wife that they were prohibited from honoring same-sex caregiver requests because it was considered discriminatory. Call me old-fashioned, but I consider it insane. This isn’t a physician in a clinical setting. This is a low-paid, easy-entry job in the unsupervised and possibly remote setting of a home. Imagine a woman at her house alone—maybe an old woman on hospice, or a young, attractive, and disabled woman needing regular care—and the provider sends a 30-year-old man to remove her clothes and bathe her. Now imagine a woman who had previously been sexually abused. Background check or not for the caregiver, I’m curious how the ladies here would feel about it if you or a daughter were the one to be bathed?
Here’s what we think of YOU honorary board member.
But, but… it was those three 👉
Goodbye.
This is downright dangerous, nevermind the understandable discomfort. The level of background checks might be on the order of finding out if the employee has an arrest record.
I completely agree with you. Sadly I don’t think the situation will change.
+1 Doug.
If you want to see how women feel and how they are victimised, check out Henrietta Freeman’s account on X. @Hen10Freeman
Hen is a lovely woman who is immobile and depends on carers for everything. She’s campaigning for single sex care, but keeps getting sent men to assist her. This is very distressing, as she cannot move to defend herself if she is attacked in her home.
Read through her posts and you will see the terrible abuse she gets for fighting for her rights.
Gandhi said that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
We should all hang our heads in shame at the way we allow people like Hen to be treated.
We should all hang our heads in shame . . . and reflect on how we got here when earlier generations (and many still today) would have immediately called it insane.
Thank you for the link, and thank you to all who responded.
The film Conclave with Ralph Fiennes shows the insanity when cults rise to power, in more ways than one. Highly recommended. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t say more without spoiling it.
All members of the Honorary Board erased! What senseless violence. (Not erased, let go. And there was no violence, just pink slips.) Anyway, it’s intolerant. (You got that right.)
When you have a singular mission it is not wise to add another. Just ask Greta Thunberg.
Yeah, and it’s doubly bad when you are in the wrong about the side mission.
I find it upsetting the way the skeptic/atheist movement has been rent by the cult of transgenderism. Watching the likes of Novella and Gorski spouting faith-based rubbish and then using egregious warping of science to try to justify their position is disturbing in the extreme. To further see them shouting down and censoring the late and much-missed Harriet Hall, a fellow skeptic who expressed opinions – facts – with which they disagreed (and who also had the audacity to be an actual woman), summed up much. Thankfully the respected voices of Jerry, Richard and Steven appear to be being listened to by many and their words heeded.
Gorski lost my respect years ago when he was sniffing after the Skepchicks, and threw Harriet Hall under the bus to win their favor.
I appreciated Gorski’s and Novella’s writing at SBM for a long time and was frankly surprised by their positions on the trans issue.
I find it upsetting the way the skeptic/atheist movement has been rent by the cult of transgenderism. Watching the likes of Novella and Gorski spouting faith-based rubbish and then using egregious warping of science to try to justify their position is disturbing in the extreme. To further see them shouting down and censoring the late and much-missed Harriet Hall, a fellow skeptic who expressed opinions – facts – with which they disagreed (and who also had the audacity to be an actual woman), summed up much. Thankfully the respected voices of Jerry, Richard and Steven appear to be being listened to by many and their words heeded.
Did anyone else see the top comment to the Rabinowitz article? It’s by the self-nominated Friendly Atheist himself (Joe King):
So, a claim that there are differences between trans women and natal women that justify the exclusion of trans women from certain settings is logically and morally equivalent to a claim that there are differences between black people and white people that justify the exclusion of black people from white spaces.
If you want to provide arguments that the Friendly guy’s claims are not only morally indefensible but intellectual dogmeat, you can’t, because he has proclaimed in advance that you are a transphobic troll and banned.
This is where the legislature has to step in and say to Friendly Atheists, “Listen, Dogmeat, we don’t care that you think we in this chamber are all transphobic trolls. We are passing a law that says only women can play in women’s sports, and transwomen aren’t women. So there.”
Otherwise you can waste your time arguing with these deaf people till you’re blue in the face. The only people you need to engage with are those people who, upon changing their minds or screwing up their courage, have the actual power to lay down the law.
I noticed that too. That’s typical of them. A horrid, misogynist group.
+1, Frau Katze.
That claim is not only deeply stupid, it’s racist.
Drinking fountains were segregated because of a belief that black people were inferior to white people.
“Trans women” are excluded from women’s same-sex spaces not because they’re believed to be inferior, but for the same reasons other men are excluded: because they’re male. If the FA thinks there shouldn’t be any same-sex spaces, he needs to make his case for that.
Comparing the exclusion of a subset of male people from women’s same-sex spaces to white supremacist attitudes grounded in 400 years of race-based slavery: “intersectional” Wokeness at its derpiest.
Several decades ago I was a volunteer for a rape crisis center. I answered the crisis phone line. I also did follow-up work such as counseling, support at court & hospital emergency rooms, and other such needs. I don’t have statistics, and no doubt services have changed, but let me share my experience.
The vast majority of calls are from women. All of them were assaulted by men. If a male voice had answered the phone, I assume the caller would hang up. I am white but none of the women I worked with who had a different ethnicity than I asked for a different counselor. If they had, that request would have been honored. However, if a white woman didn’t want to work with a black, Latina, or Asian counselor, that wouldn’t have been honored. We also had lesbian staff, and similar policies would apply.
We had calls from gay men who had been assaulted by men. I took one gay man’s call. He wanted further counseling. He did not request a gay male counselor, but the agency insisted on transferring him to their gay male counselor. The reason they gave me was that male victims of sexual violence are more likely to become physically violent and they were concerned with safety.
Trans issues had no visibility at that time. I can easily imagine such an agency having a transman and transwoman counselor on staff currently. Their experiences with sexual assault will have unique needs. The training for all counselors would need to include understanding those issues, so the women answering the crisis line can respond with sensitivity.
The best people to answer crisis lines, in my view, are women. Women who exude compassion and understanding over the phone will be trusted by the vast majority of callers of all stripes. Rape crisis centers can’t afford a huge staff such that callers can select from a variety of identities on a 24 hour line.
This is long, so I apologize for that. Hope this gives some insight until you hear from someone currently involved with such an agency.
+1 Emily.
Many years ago I was the director of a 24-hour crisis hotline for battered women and their children. I received 2 calls from men in my years there: one from a gay man who was trying to escape an abusive gay relationship and another from an abusive man trying to locate the woman he abused.
We also did not allow boys older than 12 years into our shelter. We had so many problems with adolescent boys committing violence, threatening violence, threatening sexual assault, committing emotional abuse/harassment, and bringing contraband (drugs, weapons, etc.)
Yes, this made sheltering women with teenage boys even more difficult, but all the shelters in the eastern part of my state had the same policy.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds very intense.
Yours as well.
Couple of questions around who does the barring or, alternatively, who might be charged with enforcing a prohibition on complete barring, depending:
1) If the clients are universally opposed, or even one of them is, does their/her customer expectation rule? The centre will send the newly hired guy home on his first day? Or let the clients present on the day of his job interview weigh in, with a veto? If all the current denizens are OK with the incumbent male counsellor but a new highly traumatized woman comes in and freaks out, does the centre send him home just for her? With pay? Do they have to find a replacement or do they tell the other women that they’ll be one counsellor short for the duration. The budget, you know.
2) If the centre finds that no census of female clients, ever, is unanimously OK with a male counsellor, could the centre face reality and post a blanket policy that they will not hire men? They would acquaint both clients and potential job applicants with the policy. The state isn’t “barring” men by law. The centre is just acting within its rights to not hire people who make its clients worse, not better.
It’s one thing to say “should”. We “should” respect pronouns. We “shouldn’t” hire men in crisis centres unless the transient clients agree — which is no way to staff a workplace, I have to say — but we also “shouldn’t” bar them absolutely. But what does the Board of a rape crisis centre do with all those shoulds and shouldn’ts? Should/would the Justice Dept. or the Human Rights Commissions uphold “transphobia” discrimination complaints against the centre if it honours a client’s wish in the individual case or if it decides it’s best for its mission not to hire men at all, ever? After all, if we “shouldn’t” bar them absolutely, isn’t that what Human Rights Commissions are for, to stamp out barring that shouldn’t be engaged in? Or should/could the legislature simply pass a law saying that notwithstanding any human rights laws, a rape crisis centre for women is legally permitted to decline to hire men, or to hire men on sufferance of the clients, whichever suits its own mission and values and appeals to donors?
At some point you come down to saying, “Men, including transwomen, are not useful here and will not be hired under any circumstances.” Is that permissible? If not, what do you do about the centre’s impermissible behaviour?
I’m not expecting answers to these questions on the fly. But they are questions that a rape-crisis centre’s Board would be asking of someone when it is trying to develop policy on whom its management can refuse to hire and whom it can’t.
Rape and battered women’s services can hire men for non direct-care jobs. For example, IT, security, PR/media, data entry, fundraising, anything that does not provide direct services to women.
As an abuse survivor, I don’t know what I would have done had I sought services and was met with a man LARPing as a woman.
If transgender people can legally change their sex, then even if such an agency could legally hire only women for counselor positions, then a transwoman could sue if they were denied a job on those grounds.
Given the politics of younger people running these agencies currently, maybe they believe transwomen are women. If a potential client doesn’t like it, they can choose not to use the service. I don’t agree with that of course. The needs of women who have been sexually assaulted or who are victims of domestic violence constitute the mission of the agency. But we are back to the same conundrum: transwomens’ rights to employment conflicting with women’s rights to feel safe in this environment. Clearly I believe women’s needs are the prime concern.
Unfortunately you can’t point to a defined right of women to “feel safe”, even clients of a violence shelter. The trans-identified male can point to a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of “her” gender identity (if “trans civil rights” are honoured in your jurisdiction’s civil rights law.). If “cis-women” are hired but trans-women are excluded, that is to discriminate within the class of women on the basis of “her” gender identity, cis- vs. trans. If trans-identified men can point to a statutory right in civil rights legislation that protects them from gender discrimination as trans people, then their named right will trump your clients’ “rights”, which aren’t written down anywhere. Every time.
So the only solution is not to honour “trans civil rights” at all. No such thing. Tell a transwoman, who is legally a woman, that she won’t be hired as a client-facing service worker, because her trans gender identity makes her an ineligible woman. You and I know the real reason is because he is a man, but if the law says he is a woman, you have to have a response. Which is, OK, you’re a woman, but the wrong kind of woman. That’s the only way I can see to eliminate the tension between client service obligations and trans rights to employment: there aren’t any such rights, therefore no conflict, no balancing, no compromise. Unfit for the job.
One concept I’d like to see added into this whole discussion is that of Tinbergen’s 4 Questions. For non-biology experts, Tinbergen was a Nobel Prize-winning ethologist who noted that in order to fully understand any biological phenomenon, one has to investigate its 1) Mechanisms, 2) Function, 3) Ontogeny, and 4) Phylogeny. This framework has come to be known as Tinbergen’s 4 Questions. Look it up on wikipedia.
What I see over and over in these trans debates, is a refusal to acknowledge that ontogeny matters, even though it is clearly a part of the story of a person. Ontogeny affects the present day because of the mechanisms that occurred in the past as a result of phylogenetic histories that evolved towards certain functions. That is the whole story. It should not be a thought crime to acknowledge and understand that. It is not “denying the existence of trans people” to tell their whole story when it matters. Seeking answers to all 4 questions strives to know a person better!
Tinbergen’s 4 questions are not well known enough so this is an excellent way to spread the news about it.
You haven’t specified WHY you think ontogeny (development) matters. Yes, it is how sex comes to be (there are three parts: definition, development, and recognition), but what you are trying to say is opaque to me. How is this supposed to resolve the present social issues?. Nobody has “refused” to acknowledge that ontogeny matters; for most purposes it does not.
Ah, thank you for asking for clarification. I don’t mean to imply that this will resolve all of the social issues. Your original FFRF essay was heavily concerned with the biological facts about “sex” as opposed to “gender”. That is still heavily misunderstood and I believe you were right to raise your points. I just see Tinbergen as a comprehensive way to make sure all other issues are covered as well.
What I’m thinking about for ontogeny is that it helps address the person who insists that a trans woman (now) is a woman (full stop). Yes, we may treat them that way for most things (since I am also pro trans rights, as you said you are), but their view insists on some kind of black-and-white, all-in-or-all-out, essentialist view of “woman” as opposed to having a shaded evolutionary view of personal development as aided by Tinbergen’s multifactorial and dynamic perspective. When they say a woman is a woman is a woman, they seem to want to ignore the ontogeny of how a trans woman got there. But since there is a real difference in the development of that person, the full story of a trans woman is just not the same as the full story of a biologically born woman. That’s the main point in the trans sports issue. This shouldn’t be controversial, and yet it appears to be.
Another place this comes up is the vocabulary used to discuss this. On BlueSky, I tried to ask Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist) why he posted that your FFRF essay was an “anti-trans screed”. He didn’t respond, but other trans activists did. One, for example, wrote “No trans-friendly person says something like
‘men who identify as women (“transwomen”)’.” I saw that statement of yours as simply providing some more information about the ontogeny of this person’s path to where they are now. Some things can get confusing if this isn’t made clear. But the trans activist seemed to see this as purposeful and hateful, as cosying up to transphobes, and akin to misgendering / deadnaming. Such acts directed at specific people can be hateful because it tramples their privacy, but to talk about it in the abstract like this should not instantly incur the label of transphobe. Again, I think being clear we are simply talking about the path of ontogeny makes this more factive and less open to misinterpretation.
I can’t agree what specifying what a transwoman is, without passing judgment on her, is a hateful statement. People are simply looking for an excuse to hate, thereby flaunting their virtue.
My point is simply this: transwomen are biological men who want to assume the social role (and often the appearance) of a biological woman. How they got to be biological men, or the causes of their desire to transition, is a matter of development that seems to me irrelevant when discussing things like rights and women’s spaces. But I’ve said all I have to say on this, so no need to respond.
Last Saturday (January 4) FFRF ran an advertisement on a hard rock/ alternative rock radio station out of Tucson. It was narrated by Ron Reagan. It took me by surprise. I wasn’t aware that they advertised. I was also surprised by the venue they chose. Interesting in light of all their recent/current travails.
For those interested in a deep dive into the topic of transracialism, there is this paper written by Rogers Brubaker. I must admit that I’ve not read the entire paper.
The Dolezal affair: race, gender, and the micropolitics of identity
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2015.1084430
“On the cultural left, race remains a more closely policed category than gender: gender voluntarism can fairly be said to be hegemonic in this milieu, while racial voluntarism is heretical or at best suspect. Speculatively, one might suggest that this reflects the fact that transgender claims have been framed as a civil rights issue and as a response to exclusion, oppression, and marginalization, while claims to choose or change one’s racial identity– such as those advanced by the multiracial movement– have not been frameable in the same way, and indeed have been criticized for weakening and fragmenting the black community and undermining the civil rights and racial justice agendas. On the cultural right, by contrast, sex and gender are much more closely policed than race or ethnicity: the destabilization of the basic categorical frameworks of sex and gender is much more threatening to the core agendas of the cultural right, centered on the defense of the family, than is the destabilization of racial and ethnic categories.”
My primary concern is the raging river of theocratic nonsense heading our way the next four years. While I don’t disagree with the general sentiments expressed by now-former board members, in-fighting will only inhibit that necessary pushback and potentially jeopardize the monetary strength of one of only a few groups capable of battling religious extremism in court.
I know the following statement is tangibly feckless, but it would be nice to de-prioritize cultural issues and baseless biological claims for the sake of reinforcing our very limited secular defenses.
Psychotic Christian groups and law firms and foundations are unified in forcing pious detritus upon all of us, at taxpayer expense no less, and that has to remain the priority. The only thing worse than idiocracy is theocratic idiocracy.