The repercussions of my kerFFRFle with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) continue, long after I thought the fracas had died down. You may recall the details, which are summarized in a post on this site. In short, the FFRF published a blog post by one of its interns, Kat Grant, called “What is a woman?” (The post is still up.) Its aim was to define who is a “woman”, a definition that seems to have become very difficult for some people. (Three words will suffice: “Adult human female.”) But Grant’s article ends with the sentence, “A woman is whoever she says she is.” That defines the term using self-identification alone, so that anyone, including a biological male, can be a “woman” if he so claims.
As a biologist and member of the FFRF Honorary Board, I asked the FFRF if I could write a brief rebuttal to this claim, a claim that flies in the face of the biological definition of a woman: an adult human being with the reproductive equipment evolved to make large gametes (i.e., eggs).
I was given permission to publish the piece, which I called “Biology is not bigotry”, an archived version of which you can see here or here. It dealt largely with the biological definition of sex and emphasized, as the title notes, that being transgender should not lead to the loss of one’s rights or dignity—save in the small subset of cases in which transgender rights conflict with the rights of others, as in sports participation or whether a convicted person is sent to a men’s or women’s prisons. (I also noted that by taking on this issue, the FFRF was engaging in mission creep, abandoning its goal of keeping church and state separate and educating the public on the First Amendment.)
My letter—again, published with the FFRF’s permission and vetting—was posted on the FFRF’s blog as a response to Grant’s piece—for about a day. Facing opposition from some of its staff, the FFRF then took my letter down without notifying me or even answering my inquiries about its disappearance. At that point I had no choice but to resign from the FFRF’s Honorary Board. At the same time, but independently, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, also members of the Honorary Board, also resigned. In response, and for reasons that aren’t clear, the FFRF dissolved the entire Honorary Board, though, curiously, the Board still appears on the FFRF’s site.
Well, that was pretty much the end of it, though my letter led to defamatory and misguided slurs that I am a “transphobe”, which occasionally leads to my getting unpleasant emails or website comments. Trans issues, it seems, are immune to rational discussion unless you buy the entire gender-activist program promoted by “progressives.”
I haven’t quite figured out why this one issue raises such rancor, leading to the demonization of those who try to rationally contest “progressive” gender activism. J. K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock (OBE), for example, have been consigned to perdition—and Stock forced to resign her job at the University of Sussex—after being demonized for their “gender-critical feminism” and views that male self-identification as women is inimical to society as it can infringe on the rights of biological women.
The slur of “transphobia” attached to critics is one lesson from this sad story, but there’s now a second one: your damnation will follow you for life, no matter how hard you try to clarify your views on the issue. And that is instantiated by what just happened to Steve Pinker.
Yesterday I got an email from Desh Amila, a producer, educator, and entrepreneur, one of whose activities is arranging public appearances of famous humanists or nonbelievers. As such, he was setting up Steve Pinker’s tour in Australia to promote his recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. . . : Common knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Here is part of Amila’s email, which I reproduce with permission:
. . . . .My name is Desh Amila. We have exchanged emails in the past regarding Richard Dawkins and Coleman Hughes. I am also the organiser for our mutual colleague Steven Pinker’s upcoming speaking tour in Australia. I’m writing to you today because one of your articles has found itself at the centre of a disappointing, though telling, controversy.
We recently had the Humanist Society of Australia officially withdraw its partnership and support for the tour. After several days of internal debate, their CEO informed us that they were unable to reach “consensus” on how to handle Professor Pinker’s public support for your article, “Biology is not Bigotry.”
The issue was initially raised by their “Rainbow Atheists” community, and it appears the organisation ultimately chose to withdraw rather than stand by the principles of open inquiry and free discussion.
It strikes me as a powerful, real-world case study of the ideological capture and institutional retreat from science that you so frequently and eloquently document on your website. The irony of a Humanist organisation being unable to even support a tour associated with a rational discussion of biology is profound.
I have already briefed Steve on the matter. I wanted to ensure you were aware of it as well, given your article was the explicit catalyst. Of course, you are welcome to share or write about this story if you see fit; it seems a particularly well-documented example of the chill spreading through these organisations.
Desh is right: this is a huge irony. The Humanist Society of Australia is of course free to support or not support anyone they want, but I can’t think of a more prominent humanist than Pinker, and of course he is NOT a transphobe. His resignation from the FFRF’s Honorary Board was prompted by free-speech and mission creep issues, not by some attempt to “erase” trans people. The Humanists Society of Australia should be ashamed of itself for damning Pinker in this way. Apparently some members will brook no opposition to their views, and thus start engaging in “cancel culture.” I repeat: I know Steve Pinker well, and he is NOT a transphobe. Nor is he a Nazi, a fascist, or—as I was called the other day)—a “goose-stepper.” Historically he has been one of Harvard’s biggest donors to the Democratic Party.
I have seen the Humanist Society’s original letter, which, as Desh reported, says that it can’t support Steve’s book tour because the organization couldn’t reach a consensus about how to regard Steve’s support for my piece on “Biology is Not Bigotry”. In the absence of a consensus, they withdrew their support (I think that means money) for Steve’s tour. (I am characterizing the letter as I haven’t asked for permission to reproduce it.) Because of this one action, Pinker is doomed to suffer eternally, at least in Australia.
This is one example of the quasi-religious nature of gender ideology that I described in a WSJ op-ed. As I wrote in that piece, transgender ideology
. . . makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as “transphobes”), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics (J.K. Rowling is the best-known example). Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say.
A later email to Desh from the Humanist Society of Australia added that the reservations about Pinker’s support for my letter were particularly raised by the Australian “Rainbow Atheist” community, citing a link to what was apparently a rebuttal to my now-vanished FFRF piece, a link that now goes nowhere!
The good news is that Steve’s Australian tour will go on, as there is still ample support for it.
The bad news is the Humanist Society of Australia has gone the way of other humanist/atheist/secular societies, including the FFRF. In fact, the “progressive” ideological capture of these societies seems to have no exception—save for the Center for Inquiry, which has admirably resisted a mindless adoption of the ideological Zeitgeist.
The desire to show one’s virtue by publicly flaunting the au courant ideology of the far Left seems to have few exceptions, even among Leftists. Those on my own side of the political spectrum—also the Left—are too intimidated to speak up against ideological capture of societies like the Australian Humanists.
This needs the Monty Python treatment – I’d want Graham Chapman in the role :
“Attention please! Right! We at the Humanist Society do hereby publicly withdraw support for Steven Pinker’s new book, which can be ordered anywhere fine books are sold! Please do not buy or read Steven Pinker’s book! In fact, it might be in a library somewhere, so don’t go there either! And give them a good talking to if you do.
Once again, that is Steven Pinker, who says things that are not good and humany, has a new book nobody should look at, if they want to continue to be good and humany!
Thank you!”
Nice one, Centurian.
Jolly good show!
I suspect biology will come back to bite binary exists. There is evidence that trans is a form of intersex. The in utero sex development get disrupted.
I wish I could say I was shocked at this, but the trans insanity crowd seems to have reached hysteria level these days as more and more people (and courts, a la UK) finally push back and say enough. I’m glad his tour will still go on; hopefully it’ll embarrass the Humanist Society enough to start rethinking their views and who they let shut down invited speakers.
One can not embarrass the shameless; “they have no shame, no empathy”. Feeling (self-) righteous is a very effective shield against such things, as is feeling persecuted, etc.
From what I gather via the sex realist (gender critical) people I follow, Australia is something of trans-mess these days.
Only the institutions and the numpties involved support the trans stupidity. Ordinary Australians are flummoxed and think it is nonsense.
Australia just put a man who raped his own daughter into a women’s prison after he proclaimed himself a woman. So I guess the philosophy of “a woman is whoever she says she is” prevails here in the land of Oz. But how far does this logic go? If I proclaim myself Augustus Ceasar, does that make me First Citizen of Rome? If I say I am a cat, are you then required to provide a litterbox for me when I visit your home?
Is the “four words will suffice” phrase a reference to anything or is it a mistake?
Comment by Greg Mayer
Fixed, thanks.
GCM
Atheism without the atheism (like atheism+). Instead a generic leftist pressure group that promotes the omnicause.
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/meet-the-omnicause
This would be ridiculous if it weren’t so ominous. Cancel culture is still alive in
some quarters. It may take a generation for the perpetrators of today’s censorship to age out and go away.
Thank you for bringing the situation to our attention. What a woke mess Australia is in! No doubt, if any mention is made, Steven Pinker will be smeared by the woke ABC and BBC as a far-right, hate-mongering bigot that the Australian public must be shielded from. I continue to be dismayed by the zombie-like woke views of Aussie friends and family who only taste the news by the red pudding they are spoon-fed via the ABC/BBC. (Red is the color of the Australian Left-wing Labor party)
Cheers – other Aussie “David” on WEIT, mate. 100%.
best,
D.A.
NYC
👍
Green parties are even more in thrall to gender-identity ideology than traditionally social democratic parties (Labor parties, in the anglo-sphere). In Germany, the plurality of journalists have as their party of choice the Green party (even though in most recent federal election this party came in fourth only).
True confession: I used to vote Green, having been impressed by their longer-term view and relative rationality. O tempora, o mores!
Yes, the Australian Greens recently expelled their co-founder from the party over trans issues, I can’t recall the exact ‘infringement’, but it was something trivial.
He said biological women have a right to single sex spaces. Drew Hutton was the founder of the Queensland Greens. He often speaks at the Let Women Speak rallies. He stood up for womens rights and was expelled from the greens
But I think the reason he was expelled was because he wouldn’t take down other people’s comments on social media and that broke Greens policy
Can you give a reference for your claim that in Germany, “the plurality of journalists have as their party of choice the Green party”?
https://de.statista.com/infografik/33595/parteineigung-von-journalisten/
It’s in German, but you probably know … I use the Google browser which has a Translate feature which will translate the text.
If you are interested in understanding contemporary politics in advanced capitalist countries, I strongly recommend this paper:
Laurenz Guenther: Political Representation Gaps and Populism. May 2024 (Last revised: 18 Aug 2025) [available for free download on the web]
also intersting:
Oliver Strijbis, Céline Teney and Marc Helbling: Why Are Elites More Cosmopolitan than Masses? in: The struggle over borders: Cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, edited by Pieter de Wilde, Ruud Koopmans, Wolfgang Merkel, Oliver Strijbis and Michael Zürn, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp.37-64
On the media in Germany (on why it’s coverage of politics is the way it is), there is now this book by a conservative journalists who works for public tv & radio:
Julia Ruhs: Links-grüne Meinungsmacht: Die Spaltung unseres Landes. München, Langen-Müller Verlag, August 2020, 208 S.
None of this shows that a plurality of journalists in Germany vote Green. Or are you simply using “Green” as a synonym for “liberal”?
I don’t know what you are going on about. I originally wrote:
This is what the referenced study found. I did not say that the plurality of German journalists votes for the Green party, though if I had to venture a guess, I would say that this is indeed the case (it would only be false if a lot of these journalists did not vote at all).
And no, I do not use Green as a synonym for liberal. The Greens are the most woke party in many (probably most) European countries. For Germany, for instance, we know that the Greens draw almost all their electoral support from the higher educated – and wokeness is the dominant ideology of the professional-managerial class.
Interesting. I’m going to see him talk tomorrow evening in Oxford (England). I haven’t heard any rumours of protest or objection, but who knows? I personally think he is a bit Whiggish, but he is a sane and rational voice in an increasingly crazy and irrational intellosphere, so I’m looking forward to it.
I’m curious: Whiggish in what respect?
In a British context, Whigs were liberals and eventually became the Liberal Party. Steven Pinker seems a fairly classical Liberal to me.
More precisely, “whiggish” means a believer in progress, which of course was more common in the 19th century. Steven Pinker’s well-supported belief that things have been generally getting better (in Better Angels and Enlightenment Now) makes him a notable modern example.
Sign me up for Wigs then! “Wiggish” sounds like an insult, so even better! Does it come with a special style of walking?
How unfortunate that Progressives in academia, the ACLU, the AAUP, and various secularist outfits lack a formal organization to coordinate their eternal struggle against wrongthink. They obviously need a committee for this purpose, perhaps entitled the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. They could distinguish it from their model at the Vatican by adding the words “Rainbow” or “Inclusion” somewhere in the title.
Snap!
Ugh.
To PCC(E) and Pinker:
I modestly, as a former Australian (and still citizen) apologize for the stupidities
of all the “Bruces” and other larrakins and drongos there for their idiocy – for what it is worth.
Embarrassing isn’t it when somebody from one’s tribe does something idiotic. (sigh)
I’ll note transmania is huge there. Just huge. (Many personal implications in my life on that score, I’ll spare you, but I have skin in the game).
Onwards sane atheist heroes!
D.A.
NYC (formerly of Melbourne)
Perhaps this Anglosphere mania in the South Pacific could be called “transtasmania”. Perhaps.
I shouldn’t say what “map of Tasmania” means in Aussie-speak.
Oh, please do.
Its not family-friendly. Look at the map and perhaps you can guess.
Hint: the phrase must have originated before full body shaving was a thing.
Oh, duh!
We have often talked about the attempts to redefine sex, to remove the definition of sex from the context of sexual reproduction (what political analysts Ruy Teixeira and John Judis call “sexual creationism”, in their book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (November 2023))
Of course, scientifically speaking, there is no need for a new definition of sex. A definition is not a scientific statement (it’s not a statement that is capable of being right or wrong, as the philosopher Karl Popper used to say). Definitions are more or less useful. And the gametic definition of sex is useful for the explanatory work it does in various theories, like, for instance, the theory of sexual selection. Those who want to change the scientific definition of sex have so far totally failed to show how their preferred definition is scientifically more productive than the gametic definition of sex.
For people like Augustin Fuentes (Princeton anthropologist) and Sarah Richardson (Harvard historian) changing the definition of sex is about politics. If you can change this definition, then you can actually change social reality (create new rights, and redistribute rights and burdens) without passing new laws, because the word sex figures in various old laws (the meaning of which change as you reinterpret the word sex).
We also see this in Australia. The Australian sex commissioner just came out saying that Transwomen are women ( see here ). But Australia has not changed its laws on that score. It’s basically like the UK before the Supreme Court judgment in April 2025 in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers: In daily life self-ID rules in many places (a woman is whoever claims to identify as such), even though no law was passed that abolished female-only spaces. This is because scientists tell us that there is no sex binary, that sex is so terribly complicated, and people can change their sex … So the laws that bear on sex have gotten reinterpreted based on this new and improved scientific understanding of sex. And before you object, ask yourself whether you really want to be an ignoramus and science denier (and a fascist)?
Be nice; “fascist” is so right wing. I prefer “Stalinist”.
Thanks. I had no idea Australia has a sex commissioner.
Must be the head of the Sex Commission. Is there also a Sex Omissioner? …?
Do not underestimate the power of the Suicide Myth, particularly when it comes to children. The refusal to debate, the horror at looking at the trans issue as if it had two sides, the hasty cancellations of speaking engagements and awards being given to people who argue against immediate affirmation, is what calm, reasonable people would do if protecting an innocent from a clear and present danger. The trans-identified regularly kill themselves; they’re routinely beaten or killed “just for being trans;” they no longer exist — or aren’t even human — if what they know about their fundamental selves isn’t accepted, but challenged.
I think trans people differ from oppressed people in other categories because they’re the only ones standing on a dubious and disputable metaphysical claim. If someone is taken to be “a man who considers himself to be a woman” instead of “a woman with a less conventional body type,” then the “woman” doesn’t exist.
Adding, Stephen Pinker is dealing with a de facto Honor Culture, as opposed to a Culture of Dignity.
Good analysis. Evidence for this underlying fragility of the “trans” claim comes from the claimants themselves. Starting a new social interaction with “I use they/them pronouns” is a demand for gentle treatment: don’t refer to me by my obvious sex class; pretend that I am some other sex.
People from other “equity-denied groups”
https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/publications/equite-diversite-inclusion-equity-diversity-inclusion-eng#notion-99335
don’t start their business meetings or conversations with “I identify as indigenous” or “I identify as a lesbian”. It’s only the genderists who are on such shaky ground that they need to stake a claim before anything else is said.
Maybe not so unique. Consider Land Acknowledgements.
Is the opener “I use they/them pronouns” a demand for gentle treatment, or a demand for compliance, with BeKind™️ used as an enforcer?
The statement itself is false, anyway – he/she doesn’t use they/them pronouns, he/she is telling you to use them; in other words, defining how you may speak, with the implication that your speech will be policed, the crime of ‘misgendering’ having been established.
I contend that any declaration of ‘my’ pronouns is a subtle assault on free speech.
To be honest, when used in a professional setting at my university I treat that opener like the noise from a rattlesnake, and I tread carefully around that person. As Leslie M noted @15, Canadian Human Rights Tribunals are not to be trifled with.
This is enough for the Humanists to label you (and Steve Pinker, JK Rowling, and everyone else defending women’s spaces) as transphobic. As with “racist”, it’s the smearers who rule, not the smeared. The accusation is the conviction. It’s exactly those rights which do conflict with the rights of women, the ones we want trans people not to have, that the Humanists insist they must have, because those are the “rights” that affirm them most vividly and publicly, that rub the noses of the transphobes in their bigotry. They can’t yield on those. Besides, no rights-seeker will accept limitations the oppressor tries to place on his expanding rights. Would Martin Luther King Jr. pushing for race quotas have accepted a legislative proposal to displace whites from factory work but not from medical school? Trans activists say transwomen are women, no exceptions. There is no basis to keep them out of women’s spaces or to deny adolescent “women” the “right” to be mutilated to fix their disordered bodies. Being transgender is not the basis for a carve-out of rights at all. Rather it has become a prohibited ground for exclusion from women’s spaces! “You can’t exclude me from this locker room because I’ve a penis. That’s hateful. Rather, you must include me because I’m a transgendered woman.” This is Canada.
If we do get the activists to agree to let us carve out those women’s-rights exceptions to trans rights, (which they never will, and which are examples, surely, and not an exhaustive forever list) what then is left of trans rights? Name some trans rights, beyond the civil liberties that everyone enjoys and are not under threat, that don’t encroach on women’s rights. Besides, the activists say that transwomen’s rights just are women’s rights. Checkmate.
I confess I don’t know what a a loss of “dignity” is. If it’s just an aspirational unenforceable social expectation of respect, kindness, and good will, even if not reciprocated, it’s not a right. If I were a trans rights-seeker, I wouldn’t trade anything away for “dignity.” I would want it framed it as an obligation imposed on others to behave in a prescribed manner toward people who say they are trans. The definition of dignity would come from trans people, not from the cis haters. Misgendering would surely be a dignity offence. I would want it enforced by a state tribunal that would order an individual to pay a cash award to an aggrieved person for violating his dignity. (Canada’s Constitution does have “dignity” language in it. We came within an ace of doing exactly that. The bill to enact it died on the Parliamentary order paper when the new Prime Minister called an election.)
The fundamental difficulty in trans rights, even putative ones that might not conflict with women’s rights, is that, per Sastra, they are based on a pseudoscientific claim. Someone can believe he is trans but no one can be the sex he isn’t. That just doesn’t seem like a basis for a rights claim beyond private belief. It’s more like a demand for the power to punish blasphemy against one’s religion. The adherents of both can be “erased” from policy-making and rights-seeking.
Leslie, maybe of interest ( I just got a copy of it through inter-library loan):
(the title sells the book short a bit because it also deals with rights conflicts between transgenderism and children, and between transgenderism and gay people – the author is gay and a professor of human rights law at King’s College, London, England)
Yes, much of interest. Thanks. Dr. Wintemute now leads the LGB Alliance in England, dismissed as a hate group by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation when it covered his attempt to speak at McGill Law in Montreal in 2023. A mob of (male) trans activists breached the door to the seminar room where he was speaking and covered him in flour, ending his talk. Some of their goons chased some female attendees off the campus into the subway. McGill admin. did nothing.
Brief bio: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/27/i-lost-friends-when-i-changed-my-mind-on-trans-rights/
Edit: he mentions in the story that he believes that trans people should not be victims of “discrimination”. I would like to read more what he has to say about that. To my understanding, you can be guilty of “discrimination” only if you discriminate on the basis of a prohibited ground, sometimes called a protected characteristic. If you discriminate against someone (by not hiring him) who can’t lift 60 pounds when the job requires it, that’s not illegal discrimination. So he has to be arguing that being trans is somehow a protected characteristic. I’m skeptical about that. I could argue that trans people are too narcissistic to fit into any workplace where they have to get along with others and it is legitimate to discriminate against anyone who opens the interview by specifying his pronouns.
Leslie MacMillan notes (in passing) that “Misgendering would surely be a dignity offence”. My impression is that hysteria about their “dignity” flows from two parts of self-definition. One is the obvious one involving pretended “gender”. The other is the pretense to being “oppressed”, thereby gaining points in the victimhood competition. With the clichés of “intersectionality”, the Grievance Academy concocted the role of oppressed-victimhood for several different categories of narcissists to play. This pose is no doubt what commends trans ideology to the pop-Left.
I’ve emailed the Australian Humanist Association as follows:
I’m writing to express my disappointment in your withdrawal of support for the Steven Pinker book tour of Australia. Part 2 of the Modern Declaration of Humanism states that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human reason and action. Your action here flies in the face of that statement – if you’re not willing to support a tour from someone that some of your members disagree with, and who has a strong record of speaking out for people treating one another with dignity, how can you say you stand for human reason? You also say you value “a continuing process of observation, learning, and rethinking”, yet your action here is more like that of a dogmatic church that refuses to countenance any view that it finds disagreeable or uncomfortable. Be careful you don’t turn your organisation into yet another religion with its eyes and ears closed to anything but its own views.
It may be too late, but you might want to rephrase at least your sentence “and who has a strong record of speaking out for people treating one another with dignity,” as Pinker wrote a longish article for the New Republic (May 28, 2008) entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity” in which he argued that the concept of human dignity is ridiculous. And while I more or less get what he was trying to say in his article, this was one of the few times that I found myself disagreeing with Pinker.
https://newrepublic.com/article/64674/the-stupidity-dignity
I think Pinker is developing the argument that the slippery concept of dignity can become a claim on the state to “weaponize niceness”*, as I have quoted Bruce Pardy elsewhere. In order to enlist the state to hammer those people who hurt my feelings and weren’t nice to me, I need only show that they have injured my dignity. This hits close to home because it is what Canadian Human Rights Tribunals do, as long as the complainant can show that his dignity claim arises from membership in a protected group. In any event, I think he’s correct that upholding dignity should not be a guide to state policy and action — restricting human embryo research was the policy at issue at the time he wrote. Even as a guide to personal behaviour between individuals, it’s not clear that even if I ought to respect the other’s dignity, does he have a claim against me if I don’t? This becomes a question for the state if the answer is yes: weaponized niceness.
(*Niceness, of course, is the stereotypically Canadian value that American late-night talk show comics are always going on about.)
I’ll have to check that out, Jared. Thanks for pointing it out.
My comment is based on Pinker’s position regarding science and ethics, which I fully support. He’s stated (and I’m paraphrasing) that when we look to science to support our views on how to behave with one another, we’re on shaky ground, as science can change its position as new knowledge comes to hand. So we should act decently towards one another, not because science shows we should, but because it’s simply the ground we stand on. In effect, he’s saying science and ethics aren’t related and we shouldn’t try to connect them.
He may not have used the word “dignity” though!
It’s the good old is/ought distinction. I daresay he and Rebecca Goldstein enjoy chats on the subject.
Transgenderism is a secular cult by whose tenets the ritual of trans-substantiation makes a profane person sacred. The furious defence of that fundamentally irrational (not to mention anti-social, harmful, toxic) belief system is in direct proportion to the awareness that one is arguing bollocks.
I’m surprised the Humanist Society of Australia hasn’t yet changed their name to Transhumanist Society of Australia.