Freedom fries
Let’s read Ron Lindsay’s Free Inquiry piece on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s abrupt rude apology-free deletion of Jerry Coyne’s reply to a laughably silly article titled “What is a woman?”
In case you have not heard, here is a concise summary of the situation: The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) published on its website an essay by Kat Grant titled “What Is a Woman?” in which Grant concluded that “A woman is whoever she says she is.” Along the way, Grant argued that there is no biological basis for distinguishing men from women.
Jerry A. Coyne, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago and, at the time, a member of FFRF’s honorary board, requested permission to post a reply. Permission was granted. Coyne’s essay (which Free Inquiry is republishing elsewhere on this site) argued, in part, that the clear distinction between male and female gamete types shows there is a biological basis for maintaining sex is binary and that, moreover, one’s feelings cannot change one’s sex. Coyne emphasized that the biology of sex did not, of course, in any way affect transgender rights: “Transgender people should surely enjoy all the moral and legal rights of everyone else.”
Of everyone else. That’s the problem, of course: the zealots don’t want just the same rights everyone else has, they want new “rights” that no one else has. They want the “right” to force everyone on the planet to agree to the lie that men can be women, and to agree that men who claim to be women can do whatever they want while women who don’t agree that men can be women must shut up and apologize and go away.
FFRF then, without informing Coyne, removed his essay from its site. Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, copresidents of FFRF, issued an apology for having posted the essay, calling it an “error of judgment.” Barker and Gaylor explained Coyne’s essay did not reflect “their values or principles” and regretted the “distress caused by [the] post.” They solemnly “committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.”
Yes but there’s more. They also stonewalled all the reaction. They ignored Jerry Coyne and everyone else who objected to the removal and the apology. They hunkered down. As far as I know they’re still hunkered down. I think that’s a big part of this whole mess, and needs to be emphasized.
Now, my take.
FFRF’s removal of Coyne’s post was unwarranted, and Barker and Gaylor’s curious apology shows they are no longer proponents of freethought, however much their organization may advocate for church-state separation. Being a freethinker implies a willingness to consider arguments that challenge one’s beliefs and to conform one’s beliefs to the evidence. Barker and Gaylor’s abrupt removal of Coyne’s post shows that for them the claim that sex is non-binary can never be challenged; it must be accepted as dogma.
Well…yes, but there are in fact (or is it in practice more than in fact?) limits. I don’t really think being a freethinker implies a willingness to consider arguments in favor of genocide or racial persecution or legalizing rape, for example(s). I don’t much want to have a dialogue with men who think women are inferior to men and required to do what we’re told.
So, of course, I’m opening the door to people who say “Exactly, and trans rights are in that category of ‘Let’s just not’ so shut up.”
But it’s true anyway, no? We’re not expecting FFRF or CFI to host articles that make the case for killing all the Jews or Muslims or Catholics or homeless people, right? So I would word it a little more narrowly than Ron did. Do I know the answer to the obvious question “How do you know where to draw the line?” No, of course I don’t.
And exactly which “values and principles” did Coyne’s essay violate? Coyne made no disparaging remarks about transgender individuals. To the contrary, as indicated, Coyne was at pains to point out he supports civil rights for transgender individuals, and presumably Barker and Gaylor do not take issue with that stance. No, what Barker and Gaylor apparently vehemently oppose—to the extent of censoring an essay and issuing an apology—is a science-based argument that sex is binary and cannot be changed at will. Furthermore, the harm they identify as caused by the essay is the “distress” felt by those reading it.
And why is that what they oppose? Because that is the ideology. The ideology is that we are not allowed to say sex is binary. It’s an absolute rule, enforced with punishments, that no one is permitted to point out that sex is binary. Reality is beside the point, truth is beside the point. The dogma is the dogma and you have to bend the knee to it, or else the Inquisition will be banging on your door.
It is true, as Barker and Gaylor point out, that the religious Right and some conservative politicians have cynically manipulated transgender controversies for political and financial gain. These tactics are detestable and should be condemned. But, unfortunately, dogmatic stances on some issues by transgender advocates have provided these individuals and groups with openings they can exploit. Too often people raising reasonable questions—“Gender as a feeling may not be binary, but isn’t sex binary?,” “Doesn’t testosterone provide men, on average, with an advantage in many athletic competitions?,”—are shut down immediately with cries of “Transphobe!” It is no wonder that many may feel that a dubious ideology is being imposed on them.
It’s no wonder that many of us know damn well we’re being systematically bullied for not embracing a ridiculous fantasy-based ideology about magic swappable sex.
Contrary to some of those who have criticized FFRF’s actions, I have no problem with the fact that FFRF posted Grant’s essay. That essay presents a viewpoint held by many, and it is entitled to a hearing.
But it’s not a good essay. It’s not intelligent or persuasive. Its punchline is ludicrous. I do have a problem with FFRF’s posting it: it’s not good enough. Quality matters.
Especially since there are a number of people at FFRF who can write well…including Dan and Annie Laurie. Why did they allow a half-baked essay that makes the organization look ridiculous?
Coyne’s article is terrific.
Meanwhile, back on the farm, a good friend sent around a New Year’s greeting recently in which he identifies his daughter as “they”. I’m afraid I will not know what to do if he asks me to refer to his daughter as “they”. I don’t want to alienate a friend, and yet I don’t want to participate in spreading BS, either.
Oh dear.
Allow it and promote it and protect it. I would love to know why.
iknklast – why indeed. It’s baffling.
I’ve thought a lot lately about where to draw that line, as I’ve seen prominent critics of trans ideology and their organizations move further towards the ideological position that any line at all is an artifact of wokeness and a supposed violation of free speech principles. (I’ve been particularly irked, because the specific lines I’m seeing crossed more than ever are the ones that protect the rights of same-sex attracted people.)
I’d venture to say that a line can and should be drawn to relegate a view to the dustbin of history when there’s a clear an authoritative consensus that the argument has lost on its own merits — that there has been a comprehensive examination of it, and there’s an authoritative, widely-accepted, and thorough rebuttal of it. And further, that the ins and outs of the debate are available for reference, in libraries and historical resources, so that if anyone wants to revisit such an argument and perhaps find a new angle or discover that the established consensus against it was mistaken, in principle, they have the resources to do so on their own without demanding that the entire argument be dragged back out into the active academic and public forums of discussion and debate.
Holocaust denialism is the prime example of this: the reason we now mark iit as over the line is simply that it’s a dead and buried argument, not that it’s a bad or scary one. There are still places people can go to read about the holocaust denialism debate — the argument itself has not been memory-holed. It’s just that it’s near-universally accepted as a defeated argument, so it’s no longer reasonable to invite it back into public discourse.
Ironically, there’s a far better argument to be made that the sex binary is also a settled matter and that it has been for a century or more — in a decisive loss to the trans activists’ position. If anything, the fact that we’re inviting the likes of Kat Grant to argue against long-established biological facts at respectable domains such as freethought blogs (lowercase — not “Freethought Blogs”!) is an example of graciously allowing people to dig up and re-examine a firmly-established view when social circumstances change and create a reasonable-enough justification to revisit it. (In this case, the emergence of the trans movement asks us to dig up and reexamine the long-established facts of biological sex.)
The trans activists are actively refusing to allow their views to be examined at all, let alone be debated fairly out in the open. That’s doubly outrageous when the facs of biological sex were in fact already established firmly, and this whole contemporary “debate” is effectively a polite gesture towards a “rematch,” to appease a few activists who can’t accept that their side lost long, long ago.
Well said, Arty.
By the way, I must admit my guilt – I have read Jerry Coyne’s essay, but not the piece which prompted it. After more than a decade arguing with the terminally faithful online, I’m afraid that I might have become allergic to bad writing and logical fallacies; and I don’t want to have to call an ambulance.
Well if you want to sample it I quoted a few bits the other day.
Some disconnected thoughts:
Not only did FFRF remove the essay, but they did so within a very short time, it might not even have been up for an hour, and this after granting Coyne permission to write and submit the article in the first place. His views on the topic are well known. Sounds like the people who freaked out about the article were not the same ones who granted permission or who published it.
Among the special rights demanded by the trans lobby are punishments for “misgendering”, which always seems to apply only to correct sex identification of people who call themselves trans. Bullying a boy by calling him a girl does not seem to run afoul of misgendering rules.
I don’t know where the free speech line is, either, but surely it should be OK to discuss scientific positions that were only disputed in the last few years, and which most experts in the topic maintain are correct?
Wait, isn’t this the same Dan Barker who wrote the book Contraduction?
https://secularhumanism.org/exclusive/comedian-cartoonist-or-philosopher-a-review-of-dan-barkers-latest-book/
The irony hurts my brain.
Interesting, thanks for the link.