UPDATE: Although I swore I wouldn’t read the comments on my piece, I couldn’t resist. In fact, I’m having a high old time reading them, and even answering some of them. Some are good, but there are tons of them that grossly misunderstand or mischaracterize religion. As of 11:30 a.m. today, there were 436 comments.
If you’ve read here in the last few months, you’ll know about my kerfuffle with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which you can find described in various posts on this website. In short, Kat Grant, at the time a fellow at the FFRF, wrote an essay on the Freethought Now! website explaining their problems with defining sex (the author uses they/them pronouns). Grant finally came up with this unsatisfactory psychological definition: “A woman is whoever she says she is.”
I wanted to respond, and wrote FFRF co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor for permission to publish a short response (I was on the Honorary Board of Directors). She said “okay,” and after a few back-and-forths involving editing, it was published as a short piece called “Biology is not bigotry” (it’s now archived here and has been reprinted in other places). The point of the title was, of course, that the biological definition of the sexes, based on the gamete type potentially produced (sperm or eggs), says almost nothing about how gender-nonconforming people should be treated or whether their rights should be curtailed (answer: almost never, though sports participation is one of the few exceptions).
The day after my piece went up, the FFRF took it down (Kat Grant’s piece is still online but is also archived here). Why? My best guess is that the young people at the FFRF raised a ruckus, but the FFRF also explained that my views were harmful and didn’t reflect the FFRF’s views (that was the point of the criticism, of course). Publishing my piece was, they said, “a mistake.” No, it was censorship, pure and simple.
All this is explained in an op-ed I wrote that was published last night in the Wall Street Journal. If you click on the screenshot below, it should take you to a free version, or you can find it archived here.
I have to say that I didn’t choose the title (for I have not lost my atheism!), and the article was heavily edited. Yes, I do know that Gnosticism was not part of Catholicism, but I also know that Gnosticism also was a form of religion and superstition.
At any rate, I asked the WSJ to add the links to two assertions I made in the text, but they didn’t add those links. I’ve put them in the two paragraphs below taken from the WSJ piece, just so you can check up on how I quoted others:
The FFRF’s road to quasireligious views was a long one, paved by secular philosophers and the movements they spawned. It includes, for one thing, the Gnostic view that one’s true identity goes well beyond the physical body. As a Catholic website comparing Gnosticism with transgenderism notes, “The underlying concept is the same, that who we ‘really’ are is not our bodies, but rather some sort of interior ‘ego,’ or ‘I’ that constitutes our true self. It is incumbent that the body must conform to that true self.”
Some forms of feminism have made their contribution, with constructivists like Judith Butler arguing that sex is a social construct, not “a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but . . . a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies.” This is a denial of evolution.
That’s pretty much all I have to say except to once again exculpate myself from transphobia. The purpose of “Biology is not bigotry” was to show that adhering to the gametic definition of “biological sex” used by many biologists does not make you someone who hates or wishes to erase trans people. I do think that there are a few instances in which their “rights” clash with the “rights” of other groups (women athletes or women prisoners, for instance), but that doesn’t mean you’re a hater—only someone trying to adjudicate for yourself an important difference of opinion.
The only remaining question is this: why is Honorary Board of FFRF still up on the Internet when Religion News Service Reporter Yonat Shimron told me (and published) that Annie Laurie Gaylor assured Shimron that that Board had been dissolved?
I was pleasantly surprised to see your name in the Opinion pages when I opened my WSJ this morning. I hope (but don’t expect) that it will cause the FFRF to reconsider their position, especially as donations dry up.
Your point about donations drying up is right on the mark…when people like Jerry and Richard leave I definitely think twice about donating to such organizations.
And surely I must be in the majority of atheists and secularists who think this way.
Which raises the question of why, like so many other liberal organizations, is the FFRF pivoting in the direction of dubious definitions of biological sex? To placate a tiny minority of trans folks?
It not only makes no scientific sense, it seems to make no financial sense either. A veritable lose-lose situation.
I continue to believe that certain radical ideologies function as parasites.
On their own, they would probably not have much influence. So they infest healthy (but vulnerable) organizations, slowly distort and kill them, and then look for new hosts…
My hypothesis, which is mine, is that the ideological capture is from the demographics in the current leadership. I suggest that they are young and educated in the humanities from farther left colleges where this sort of thing is just the air that they breathe. Meanwhile, they are gob-smackingly unaware that most people just don’t and won’t swing that way.
That seems very reasonable.
A couple of years ago a young co-worker (who is proudly “woke”) asked me what pods I listen too, and I mentioned Joe Rogan as one of them.
She had no idea who he was. At the time, I believe his pod was one of the most popular in the world (and still is).
Now I’m no huge Rogan fan, but I do like some of his guests and I like to get out of my center-left bubble from time to time.
I remembered this when Trump and J.D. appeared on his show and Kamala did not. I’m sure that her staff were feverishly googling “What is Joe Rogan”, while the Trump campaign new exactly who he was and his massive audience.
Gender identity ideology is the only “movement” that rapidly loses public support when the public learns about it and how it’s become institutionalized. Proponents are well aware of this, so they hide their legislation in unrelated bills and piggyback onto genuine civil-rights movements.
They are indeed parasites.
I think it has been suggested elsewhere that some in leadership at FFRF have family that identify as trans, and this has caused the broader pivot to adopt the maximalist position of Trans Rights Activists.
Honestly I think that is the reason that polling clearly shows that most people don’t agree with the maximalist position, those same people don’t say vocalize that opposition too loudly in their various places and spaces.
Catholics: A priest’s incantation of mass causes the wine to be Jesus’s blood (not just represent Jesus’s blood, but actually be Jesus’s blood).
The Woke: A person’s declaration of pronouns causes a biological male to be a woman (not just “live as” a woman, but actually be a woman).
It’s not called transubstantiation for nothing!
+1
And – not that we need yet another obscure religious topic to think about – this is Hermeticism – transformation, and world-making… also known as alchemy – as in Philosopher’s Stone alchemy, but instead of base metals/minerals, it is alchemy of thought.
E.g:
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition
Glenn Alexander Magee
Cornell University Press
2001
This argument is not original with me, but:
If “A woman is whoever she says she is,” what is it that she is saying she is?
It’s all word-magic — spells, curses, blessings, etc. etc.
BTW, I like the plausible etymology of “hocus-pocus” as coming from the priestly “hoc est corpus”.
Excellent examples.
@Coel +++
Very well written commentary, focusing on a single point with examples and clarity.
Wish FFRF had been able to resolve this at an early stage and not paint themselves into an anti-science corner.
I saw your (excellent) article when Michael Shermer tweeted about it earlier: https://x.com/michaelshermer/status/1906528999914000695
Some great comments in that tweet. Loved the wag who said “ it’s now called Freedom from Reason Foundation “.
Very good piece! Short and clear. It’ll be interesting to learn how readers respond. And they will.
Cannot agree more – splendid article, clear and concise (notwithstanding the cutesy title they foisted on you).
I just looked and saw that there were about 240 comments. I’m not sure I’m going to read them!
Currently 613 comments!
Cool. The title is IMHO tapping into R.E.M.’s song Losing My Religion (IMHO good tune).
Glad to see the problem recognized as taking the form of Gnosticism. Here’s a reference I like to cite as a way to figure out the approach from ground-level (or bird’s-eye view?) to its vast, nebulous literature :
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;
Washington D.C.
Russell Blackford has interesting material and things to say in this area as well, perhaps as a counter-argument – perhaps he’ll weigh in.
FWIW : Eric Voegelin – if I am correct – was a Catholic. Make of it what one will. Personally, I do not find Voegelin’s thought threatening to one-god-further-atheism just because he’s a Catholic. In fact, I find it critical to recognize patterns of secular, theosophic religion – or as I like to think of it, just-one-more-god-further atheism.
I find it interesting that Christians and atheist scientists can share an opinion on the issue of gender identity. While most atheist scientists use “facts” to solely justify their opinion, many Christians (not all) go a step beyond hard observable facts referencing the Bible notion that “God created them male and female.” It is a pleasant surprise to observe individuals from these often differing worldviews finding common ground on this often contentious topic. Side Note: While I admire the Sequoia tree (genus of redwood coniferous trees), if I want to identify as one, should my teacher be required to address me as “Sequoia” in the classroom? What’s next?
I think the agreement is, essentially, an accident of history.
But that is how Nature works. As Feynman said, it doesn’t matter who said it, how smart they are, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong…. so in this case, it turned out – FWIW – the Bible got it correct – FWIW.
Three comments – hey, I’m enthusiastic, what can I say – but I’ll try to stop now!
I’ll, take an “accident”. I think it would be interesting to have a discussion or debate with Coyne (scientist) partnering with a famous Christian (apologist?) debating this very narrow subject against two famous supporters of the contra opinion on male & female. A follow-on debate might address the more contentious subject addressing the “accident”…
RR, I also find it interesting that atheism, which draws people because it purports to stand for science over belief, can also fall into a belief trap.
I think the characterization of “science over belief” is a red herring. It might be more accurate to pose the contrast as “science over supernatural.” Even the lives of scientists are saturated with belief — why go into the office in the morning if your assumption that your office will still be there is just a “belief”? Religionists often think that when scientists hold a firm belief (e.g. there are two sexes, male and female…) it is a ‘gotcha’ revelation showing that science is just as susceptible to “belief” as religionists — but perhaps the real issue that science rejects the use of a supernatural in accounts of the empirical universe.
If you do identify as a sequoia, your doctor or nurse (in Canada and the UK) absolutely will be obligated to refer to you as “Sequoia” in clinical settings and in on-line discussion unrelated to a specific patient, on pain of disciplinary proceedings that could lead to licence suspension or revocation. Amy Hamm, RN, has just been found guilty of professional misconduct in the latter sense in British Columbia — this was the “I ❤️ JK Rowling” affair — and she awaits a Decision on Penalty.
She was fired a few days ago :/
https://x.com/preta_6/status/1905312165969756322
Whistleblower Hotline email is vchwhistleblower (at) theneutralzone.ca
I think everyone who is aware of what transpired should complain to them (at least).
No surprise. If a registered professional is found guilty of professional misconduct, she will be immediately fired for cause (hence no severance) or have her hospital privileges revoked, depending. Even if the Discipline Committee doesn’t revoke her licence, no hospital or clinic will hire her as a nurse with a finding recorded against her.
We’re deep in the weeds here! I see no
sign of pushback either.
I think it’s because the male/female concept is very old.
It’s only recently that I’ve even heard the word transgender. It wasn’t even a concept when I was young.
I’m sure such people have always existed but no one used to talk about it.
Excellent article, which cuts to the core of genderwang with
its quote of Butler’s rejection that sex phenotype is “a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed”. This rejection, by the pretentious woke guru, encapsulates the current “Progressive” attitude: pretend that there are no “givens” at all , thus decolonializing the entire progress of empirical science since the 16th century. Even proponents of Astrology do not deny the “givens” of Astronomy, but our postmodern gender theorists have been allowed to make delusion into an academic cult.
(Small comment to connect a couple things):
Gender performativity (Butler, Gender Trouble or Bodies That Matter) arises by gnosis. Drag Queens/Kings are priests for this gnosis.
Great piece, but I wonder if “constructivist” is the best label for Butler here. I get the impression that constructivists were more moderate compared to the post-structuralists who followed them, and Butler seems firmly in the post-structuralist camp.
I liked the title. It made me chuckle.
I think there’s another way gender ideology resembles religion. If you ask people who claim to be experiencing feelings, attitudes, and/or an inner conviction that they are a different sex (or at least not the sex others think they are) to describe, clearly, what they are experiencing —and how they know that this is different than mere imagining or longing — they revert to handwaving obfuscations that sound suspiciously like certain rarified definitions of God.
The gender that is, is beyond explanation or analysis. It’s the ground of one’s being, a fundamental identity without parts. It defies the ability to fit into the understanding of those who haven’t experienced it. To try to say it’s this or that, is to reduce it to meaningless banalities. They don’t “believe” they’re another sex, they KNOW it. It’s unmistakable, undeniable, and incomprehensible.
Which is all a feature, rather than a bug. It demonstrates that the experience is valid. Qualia can’t be described, either.
As I see it, the only way rational skeptics could view skepticism over this as not just wrong, but positively phobic, is if the above is intuitively obvious. Denying it must perverse, an inner act of rebellion against Civil Liberties and Social Justice. It’s similar to being told that everyone knows God. The debate isn’t over His existence, but within our hearts. You accept in love, or you battle in hate.
Atheists ought to recognize that this tactic is familiar.
I have never been able to understand exactly what people who say they are transgender mean, because even as a cis-gender man, if you asked me “How do you know you are a man? What does maleness feel like?”, I could not answer you. Not because it is difficult to put into words, but because there is no “feeling” of being a man. I could relate plenty of experiences in my life that I could only have because I am a biological male, but that is certainly not what transgender people are talking about. I could relate how I have to interact with male stereotypes and social roles, but that can’t be what they mean, since they don’t experience any of that pre-transition.
Do other people have a deep inner feeling of gender identity that I am somehow missing?
This comes up a lot here. The consensus seems to be that we cannot know how others feel, and perhaps we cannot even get our heads around how we feel regarding our own gender other than that we act out a certain role that sort of wells up from deep within. Animals do the same, you know– males and females tend to act differently, only I suppose they don’t wonder about it.
Gender identity is usually expressed at an early age and appears to be independent of parental expectations. Tommy plays with dolls and likes to be in a dress and maybe he will grow out of it, maybe he will just later resolve as being effeminate, a cross-dresser, gay, or straight. But for gay and transgender adults, gender non-conforming behavior seems to start at early ages. Or so I think. I’ve known a couple Tommy’s while growing up.
Same for me. And the idea that you are born with a “gender identity” is very much nature over nurture, which seems counter to what is most recently the view of human nature. Hence Pinker’s book The Blank Slate.
“…if you asked me “How do you know you are a man? What does maleness feel like?”, I could not answer you.”
I’m reminded of the story of the two fish, which ends with one of them asking “What is water?” You might also ask what your personality feels like, but I suspect that (1) you could not answer, and (2) you probably agree that you have one.
Once upon a time it was readily comprehensible what it means to be transsexual: having “a desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one’s anatomic sex and a wish to have hormonal treatment and surgery to make one’s body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex.” (ICD-10: F64.0)
British barrister and LGB right pioneer Allison Bailey, who won her lawsuit against her employer for her sex-realism, put it thusly:
“I believe that a man who professes to identify as a woman does not identify as a woman, because he has no frame of reference from which to do so. What he in fact identifies with are the social concepts and stereotypes that have been misogynistically applied to women.”
🎯
You folks are just exposing your sexism and bigotry. Judith Butler is “the most important philosopher in the United States” at least according to Jason Stanley. This comment was originally surrounded by sarcasm tags (which appear to have been deleted).
I’ve had my own disagreements with FFRF on this issue — going back a couple of years. It has never been clear to me why so many in the atheist and skeptics community have chosen this as their hill to die on. Good to see WSJ willing to publish your critique.
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/trans-ideology-corrupts-everything
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/trans-ideology-corrupts-everything-791
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/trans-ideology-corrupts-everything-ae5
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/trans-ideology-corrupts-everything-5c6
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/dissecting-the-friendly-atheists
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/coda-to-my-discussion-of-the-freedom
I just finished reading those essays — bravo! In addition to the substantive content I’m quite impressed with the non-abusive snark. Thank you.
Listened to Bill Maher confab with Maureen Dowd on his most recent “Club Random” podcast while doing yard work. At the beginning and at 23:15 he does ads for FFRF. Of course he restricts himself to separation of church and state. I spent some time online looking for a clear unambiguous statement from him regarding the bimodal biological basis of sex. No joy so far, though I did hear a Real Time segment where he gave Chase Strangio grief and a brief segment of the Club Random podcast where he jousted with Neil de Grasse Tyson regarding testosterone titers and sexual composition of athletic teams.
Would that Maher would have our host, Richard Dawkins, and the FFRF principals on his show. (Would Maher weigh in the balance the potential loss of FFRF ad revenue?)
Excellent article. If we are rejecting the concept that “who we ‘really’ are is not our bodies, but rather some sort of interior ‘ego,’ or ‘I’ that constitutes our true self”, according to the Catholic Insider, which compares transitioning to tatoos and cosmetic surgery, does that mean that transitioning is a life style choice and not a medical necessity? Should we assume adults have the right to make that choice and not to be discriminated against for it? That would reject the Catholic Insider’s religious conclusion:
“In order to halt the continued degradation of the human, we need to recapture what it means, in a truly integrated way, to be a person, made in God’s divine image, body and soul, male and female. Our bodies are not just malleable canvasses or tools, but temples of the Holy Spirit, to be kept undefiled, as a sign not only of what we are, but of what we are to become in the glory yet to be revealed.”
I say, sure, let them make that choice, and of course their civil rights should be upheld.
But true believers in the cult of gender identity claim they have a “right” to have their subjective “identity” prioritized over their sex* in law and social policy. That needs to end.
And if insurance doesn’t pay for other elective cosmetic surgeries, it shouldn’t pay for trans surgeries.
That is of course if they admit their sex at all.
But how can we honour a rights claim that is based in something that we reject as untrue? The TRAs claim that their beliefs that gender identity must trump sex in policy and law just are their civil rights. What you say has to “end” would be their civil rights as trans-identified people.
This is at the heart of the Amy Hamm case in Canada. She, a registered nurse, has been found guilty by her regulator of professional misconduct. To translate it roughly into American rights language, she violated the civil rights of trans-identified people by saying 1) that there are only two sexes and 2) one can’t discover that one is really the other and change into that sex by declaring so. The British Columbia College of Nurse’s and Midwives declared that a nurse in B.C. must publicly accept the truth of a false belief in order to respect the civil rights of people who say they are trans.
(For clarity, none of Ms. Hamm’s patients complained about her treatment of them. The complaint was filed anonymously by a member of the public who had no professional relationship with her.)
What civil rights does someone retain after you “end” the extreme nonsense rights claim? Some would say employers shouldn’t be permitted to discriminate against trans people in hiring. But this means the employer must punish employees (and customers?) who misgender the trans employee, instead of declining to hire the applicant who is clearly going to be a narcissistic nuisance if hired. Said punishment flows from the recognition that the afflicted employee is what he obviously is not, and gets right back to the claim which you said must end. “Alice misgendered me when she called me a guy when I tried to use the ladies’ room. If you don’t fire her I’m going to make a civil rights complaint.” “But you are a guy….”
Rather, gender expression and identity ought not to be the basis for any kind of civil-rights claim.
What are the limits of discrimination against LGBT people? None at all? An ordinary man, not transgender, has the right to dress in women’s clothing if he wants to. If an employer discriminates against him based on his odd appearance, does he have a civil rights claim? I don’t know, but surely employers can legally reject prospective employees based on their appearance–– at least sometimes. A few years ago, there was a guy who had “East Side San Jo” tattooed across his forehead. Unfair not to hire him?
I think this decision by the Supreme Court protects crossdressers in the US:
https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/landmark-u-s-supreme-court-ruling-prohibits-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-based-discrimination-in-employment-us/
From the link:
If you read the link (it’s not long,) you’ll notice that the Court reasoned that such discrimination is not allowed (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) insofar as it is sex-based–it’s penalizing a male employee for behavior that would be tolerated in a woman (or vice versa.)
(Emphasis added by me.)
(Mindful that I’m skirting da Roolz, I’ll make no more comments on this post!)
Leslie,
That’s all I mean: the civil rights they share with all other citizens would of course be upheld. No special status.
I strongly agree that we need to do away with that nonsense. I’m suggesting that people should be free to cross-dress and/or use hormones to appear like the other sex–but others should not be compelled to pretend they’re the sex they’re not.
In other words, we recognize their actual sex, and they’re free to be gender non-conforming but don’t get any special rights based on any supposed innate transness.
(I’m skeptical that transition is worth it for anyone, but I’d hesitate to forbid adults from choosing to do it–unless at some point in the future we find definitive evidence that it only harms, and doesn’t help anyone.)
But if they didn’t have special status, employers could simply reject those who seemed likely to be difficult.
If we took away social and legal collusion in gender wankery, and just looked on them as people who are gender non-conforming, I suspect a lot fewer people would transition, and those that did would not feel entitled to attention and “validation” from those around them.
That was outstandingly excellent, LadyM. I thank you for such a thoughtful discussion.
We’ll see how behaviour that would be tolerated (by an employer) in a woman must be allowed in a man shakes out when the bathroom, shelters, sports, and prisons cases get to the Supreme Court. At least the learned justices were calling men men and not women when they set out what sex-non-conforming behaviour is protected. Be thankful the justices didn’t say, “There is nothing to discuss here. The plaintiff, a woman, was being told by the defendant that she couldn’t wear women’s clothing at work. The defendant claims, absurdly, that the plaintiff is a man, which she clearly isn’t. Anyone with eyes can see that, and she says so herself. What’s next? Employers will claim some of their employees are horses to justify quartering them in stables? How did this case even come to appeal?”
“The opposition to gender, along with the defense of the family (against any challenge to its heteronormativity) and the nation (against any challenge to its racial purity), is linked with a eugenics that belongs to the history and present of fascism.”
(Butler, Judith. Who’s Afraid of Gender? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024. p. 52)
That’s an example of the woke “brown scare” rhetoric. Butler implies that you are either a genderist or a fascist; but this is certainly a false alternative.
(By “genderism” I mean the antinaturalist, constructivist, identitarian philosophy & politics of gender as endorsed by the woke left.)
I loved the article.
When I read it earlier, the comments that actually addressed the piece were all in agreement with it. The others were off-topic; they were from theists tut-tutting about atheism.
I asked AI, the following question: “Briefly describe how and why in the 21st century our imagination and poetry has evolved into what many now claim is reality?” See below. Comment: Interesting that ChatGPT did not reference anything about the evolution of religion in society, even though it does mention “a deeper human need for meaning, identity…”
ChatGPT said:
In the 21st century, imagination and poetry have increasingly blurred into what many perceive as reality due to several converging forces:
Digital Media and Technology: The rise of immersive technologies (virtual reality, AI-generated art, social media narratives) has made imagined experiences feel tangible. Fictional stories, personas, and aesthetic constructs now coexist with factual reporting, often without clear boundaries.
Cultural Shifts in Truth and Identity: Postmodernism has eroded confidence in singular truths. Personal narratives and subjective truths—once the domain of poetry—are now widely accepted as legitimate forms of reality.
Influence of Popular Culture: Fantasy, myth, and speculative fiction have become dominant cultural forms (e.g., Marvel, Star Wars), shaping collective imagination and public discourse in ways that feel real and emotionally resonant.
Political and Social Narratives: The power of storytelling has entered politics and activism, where emotionally charged and symbolic language often outweigh empirical evidence in shaping public opinion.
This evolution reflects a deeper human need for meaning, identity, and transcendence—needs that traditional reality, bound by facts alone, struggles to fulfill.