Sarah Haider on atheism and gendertheism:

I have never seen anything like it. In amazement, I watched scores of people I respected add pronouns in their emails, flags to their bios, and repeat circular mantras like “trans women are women”. The same people who laughed at religious credulity accepted the idea of a “gender” fully and without question, and worse–they suppressed all open discussion. Overnight, the same people who campaigned against blasphemy laws enacted their own version without a hint of irony. I watched long-standing figures in the movement be cast down for this crime of doubt; first by insane radicals on social media, but as the disease progressed, also by the most prominent organizations we had.

In other words, movement atheism had betrayed nearly every value it claimed to stand for.

I think of all the kind and generous people I had met there (including the heads of FFRF), and my heart breaks to see their fall. There are many, I’m sure, who are bowing only because the pressure to do so is enormous, and I can sympathize with this and wouldn’t wish a woke mob on anyone. I myself stayed silent far longer than I should have. But while I have compassion for the bullied, I am astonished at the zealotry of the believers, who are legion.

Same. Same, same, same.

Insight! As the New Agers liked to say.

Oh is that so.

“Inclusivity comes first – and fairness, I’m afraid, is affected by the drive towards inclusivity.”

Who says “inclusivity” comes first?

And what kind of “inclusivity” are we talking about anyway? The word as I understand it means not excluding people for bad reasons. It can’t mean including everyone in everything. We can’t include everyone in everything; there isn’t room.

Furthermore we can’t include everyone in everything because lots of organizations, jobs, activities, institutions, competitions and the like have rules, requirements, criteria, goals, needs. Fire departments can’t be inclusive because it’s a physically demanding job, so joining a fire department is notoriously difficult. You have to have really top notch strength and endurance. There’s a test, and most people fail it.

Now extrapolate from that to everything. Jobs, schools, universities, groups, campaigns all have criteria, and don’t just throw their doors open to everyone. Some institutions do have to be inclusive: schools, hospitals, public transportation, shops, entertainment venues and the like all have to let pretty much everyone in, but even they can ban people who are violent or drunk or contagious.

Sports are like fire departments rather than supermarkets. At the top level they exclude almost everyone. So why in flaming hell does this goon think inclusivity of men comes first while fairness comes second?

Oh those rape gangs.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.

It comes after Home Office minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation – saying the council should lead it instead.

Why? I’m guessing the government has more resources than a local council, so why shouldn’t the government investigate? Is it too…trivial?

Posting on X, Badenoch said: “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”

There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol.

The sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs has fuelled a number of far-right campaigns which have focused on cases of large-scale abuse carried out mainly by men of Pakistani descent.

And why might that be? Is it at all possible that it’s because Islam hates women?

Not wanting to incite racist hatreds is certainly basic decency, but if the result is ignoring large-scale abuse of very young girls, maybe there’s a problem?

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.

A new chapter:

I wonder how much yelling and screaming there is among the staff at CFI.

You have got to be kidding.

The Daily Mail (because the Guardian and the BBC are looking fixedly in the opposite direction):

Police forces are allowing trans officers to carry multiple warrant cards depending on the gender they choose on a given day.

At least 11 forces in England and Wales use the policy, blasted as dangerous by women’s groups.

Trans officers can receive two warrant cards, or more if they are ‘gender fluid’.

Police officers use warrant cards to identify themselves and they must be shown before using powers including stop and search.

Which is, surely, so that people being stopped and searched can be assured it’s a cop interfering with them and not, say, some random guy who has his own reasons for wanting to “search” a woman. So what’s the point of it if it explicitly allows male cops to pretend to be women and show a warrant card to back it up?

Two thirds of forces also allow biological male trans officers and civilian staff to use women’s showers, toilets and changing rooms, according to a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Mail.

MPs and campaigners last night said the policies threaten women’s safety and could breach the rights of police staff, suspects and victims.

“Could” very very easily if you ask me.

Essex’s policy states that during early transition ‘there may be a need… to have two warrant cards, so that any off-duty incidents whilst living in acquired gender, do not result in the staff member having to ‘out’ themselves when proving identity’.

Oh shut up. Men pretending to be women should have to out themselves, especially if they’re cops.

The Telegraph reports:

Almost two thirds of transgender prisoners who identify as female are convicted sex offenders, it has been revealed.

Out of the 245 trans women inmates, who are legally recognised as male, a total of 151, or 62 per cent, had committed at least one sexual offence.

Now…if you were a man who enjoys committing sexual offences against women, would you find trans ideology a generous gift to you and men like you? Wouldn’t you simply race to take advantage of your new “right” to pretend to be a woman in all situations at all times? Wouldn’t you be just thrilled to bits about your new opportunities?

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Well over 90 per cent of transgender women in custody are held in the men’s estate and those who’ve been convicted of sexual or violent offences – and/or who retain male genitalia – cannot be held in a women’s prison unless in truly exceptional circumstances.”

Truly exceptional from whose point of view? I’m guessing not women’s.

Mostly Cloudy alerted us to a piece by “a clickbait-spewing hack called Katherine Alejandra Cross” who disapproves of Jesse Singal. There’s this one bit in the piece…

Your average New York Times subscriber is not Extremely Online but is increasingly being fed opinions and ‘analysis’ from writers who are, and who find themselves increasingly angry at all the annoying people who spoonerise their names and troll them on platforms.

Trans people are a good example of this. Some small group of angry trans people harangues a journalist—rightly or wrongly—for being a bigot, and then this feeds a resentment that others like Jonathan Chait or Matt Yglesias give shape and form with plausible, lib-pleasing moderate language that, in turn, those Extremely Online journalists transcribe into the pages of respectable publications. 

There are few ways of explaining the obsessiveness with which the mainstream press has published stories “critical” or “skeptical” of trans people without recourse to social media and how it makes us loom large in the minds of the terminally online, nor how that overemphasis has been adroitly exploited by provocateurs who’ve long dripped poison in the ears of epistemic movers and shakers. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that Twitter played a leading role in radicalising J.K. Rowling or Elon Musk against trans rights, for instance.

Makes us loom large? So this is a trans woman then? Yes.

Also the obligatory Trans Laydee Pout photo. Push those lips out, babe, they make you look SO womany.

So, of course he goes on to explain what trans rights are, yes? Hahaha no of course not. As always, they go unspecified, because if one spells them out, it becomes too obvious that they’re not rights at all.

Steve v Elon: when ratbags fall out.

Donald Trump’s one-time White House strategist Steve Bannon warned Elon Musk Tuesday that he and other MAGA diehards are going to “rip your face off” unless Musk smartens up and stops pushing visas for skilled foreign workers to take good-paying [well paid] tech industry jobs away from Americans.

He told Musk to sit back and study. That sounds very likely, doesn’t it. Both Musk sitting back, and Musk taking orders from Bannon.

“They’re recent converts,” Bannon said Tuesday on his War Room podcast, referring to Musk and other tech-world Trump supporters.

“We love converts,” Bannon noted. “But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.”

Don’t “come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be,” Bannon added. “If you’re going to do that, we’re going to rip your face off.”

But he’s Elon Musk. Don’t nobody get to rip Elon Musk’s face off.

Musk and Ramaswamy have suddenly strongly spoken up in recent days on behalf of protecting special H-1B visas for skilled foreigners to fill high-level tech jobs, including in Musk’s businesses because American simply aren’t up to the task. The South African-born Musk last week endorsed a post on X that referred to American workers as “re***ed,” which is widely regarded as an ugly slur (Musk has since deleted his support for the attack post).

Ramaswamy has also complained that Americans are not up to snuff when it comes to competing with brainy foreigners. He blamed the dumbed-down culture of the U.S.

But without the dumbed-down culture of the US, Trump would never have been elected. Not for a second. You can’t have it both ways – getting an ignorant and stupid crook elected to the top job and un-dumbing the culture of the US.

Laurence Krauss joined the people reposting Jerry Coyne’s heretical piece, and a reader named Maria Comninou added a valuable comment:

For me, the asymmetry in the debate about transgender rights, i.e., the fact that it focuses on or originates from transwomen and requires biological women to define their womanhood is indicative of covert misogyny, perpetrated even by those who expound their transgender rights credentials. I do not see articles asking “what is a man?” or answering “I do not know what is a man”. Some of the transactivist language towards biological women conceals an effort to denigrate or erase them and is consistent with male behavior towards females. It betrays the very masculinity they want to deny. 

It’s true – such articles are either very rare or non-existent. And that disparity reveals and underlines the misogyny behind all this almost as if it had been planned that way. “Hey, here’s an idea! Let’s tease and annoy women by some of us claiming to be women and then trolling the shit out of them when they object! Hahahahaha what a great idea, it will drive them nuts!!“

As promised or threatened, continuing with Mister Friendly and his hostility to people who don’t fervently endorse every claim of every branch of trans ideology.

He insisted sex is binary, that trans women are more likely to be sexual predators (using misleading statistics) etc etc…

Along the way, he just ignored the countless ways the trans community is under attack, largely by people making similar arguments.

Notice that trans people are called a “community” while people who interrogate broad claims about what being trans means are not. Mehta might as well talk about the white hat people and the black hat people, or the good people and the bad people, or the angels and the vermin. Or even the healthy people and the sick ones. Oh right, he did that last one.

But the problem wasn’t just that he wrote the piece. It was that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that I believe does excellent work defending church/state separation, published it on their own blog.

Note the absent-minded egotism there – the problem was that the FFRF, a group that all-important I endorse…

It takes real self-admiration, that.

But here’s some welcome news: All three of those men have now resigned from that board. The trash is taking itself out.

Friendly. Friendly friendly friendly.

He quotes Jerry Coyne

I will add one more thing. The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.

and all but bursts into flames of indignation:

That last part is Coyne showing his whole ass to everyone. Apparently acknowledging the humanity of trans people, and defending their civil rights, and not falling for right-wing lies about who they are is a religion unto itself.

No, not apparently at all. That’s not what Coyne said, and there’s no reason to think it’s what he meant. The gender ideology does have a lot in common with religion, absolutely including dogma, blasphemy, belief in nonsensical bullshit, apostasy, and an allergy to science. Mehta is displaying much of that list in this very post of his.

Hemant Mehta, self-declared “friendly” guy, is not as friendly as all that.

“The trash.” Not all that friendly, is it.

Somehow, there are even more updates to the anti-trans controversy I first wrote about on Saturday.

In case you missed it, the short version is that biologist Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, wrote an article trashing transgender people. 

No he didn’t. He did not trash transgender people. He disagreed with some of the claims of trans ideology (without calling it that). Here’s how he summed up at the end:

I close with two points. The first is to insist that it is not “transphobic” to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights. Transgender people should surely enjoy all the moral and legal rights of everyone else. But moral and legal rights do not extend to areas in which the “indelible stamp” of sex results in compromising the legal and moral rights of others. 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. 

That’s not “trashing transgender people.”

Mehta goes on:

He insisted sex is binary, that trans women are more likely to be sexual predators (using misleading statistics), argued that trans women shouldn’t be allowed to counsel women who have been physically abused, rejected even the possibility of trans women playing women’s sports at any age, and said trans women shouldn’t be placed in women’s prisons (even though the alternative is disastrous).

Oh the alternative is disastrous, is it. For whom? For trans women, he means. But what about women if trans women, i.e. men, are placed in their prisons? Isn’t that disastrous? But for women rather than trans women? So Mehta is very protective of trans women and wholly indifferent to the safety of actual women.

I don’t call that very friendly to women.

To be continued.

Be careful what you believe.

Two men were found dead in a remote forest while searching for Sasquatch, also commonly known as Bigfoot, according to authorities in Washington State.

The two men from Portland, Oregon, were found dead after a three-day search was launched on Christmas Day after a family member reported that the pair had not returned from a trip to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to search for proof of the mythical hairy, forest-dwelling, bi-pedal primates.

See that’s just pointless. Not even a hike in the forest for the sake of a hike in the forest, but a hike in the forest in hypothermia-friendly weather for the sake of “finding evidence” of something that doesn’t exist.

The search involved over 60 volunteers searching with aircrafts and dogs in heavily wooded terrain and brutally-cold weather conditions, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. “Both deaths appear to be due to exposure, based on weather conditions and ill-preparedness,” the statement said.

That’s a lot of people and dogs and resources put to work to search for people who had no good reason to be there in the first place.

Weather conditions in the Cascade mountains had been frigid in the days before and during the search, which included snow, freezing rain and temperatures falling below freezing.

So, if there were a Sasquatch, she would be hidden away somewhere avoiding the freezing rain, and evidence of her existence would be even harder to find than it usually is.

Rescuers also had to battle high water levels in rivers and fallen trees.

To search for two guys who thought it was the perfect time to lose themselves in the woods.

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on A “so” doing a lot of work.

How does failure to believe a claim = erasure of the claimant? There’s no connection. The world would have to be entirely imaginary for that to work.

Person A: “I’m a unicorn.”

Person B: ” There’s no such thing!”

Person A: vanishes without so much as a puff of smoke.

Unfortunately for him, there really is an actual material reality which isn’t affected by his imagination. Unfortunately for the rest of us, if absolutely everyone else suddenly agreed that there’s no such thing as ‘trans’, he would go on stubbornly existing.

You have been warned.

Does the reasoning apply to all possible existences? Will he let [targets] erase the existence of flying horses, talking dogs, red-headed ghosts, pedantic extraterrestrial visitors? Will he claim to be a talking dog or a pedantic extraterrestrial? Will he try to claim that because he is a talking dog therefore [targets] are erasing his existence? Will he refuse to tolerate it? How will his refusal to tolerate it manifest itself?

These are deep questions.

We’re now the vassals of domineering right-wing billionaires. Resistance is futile.

The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election campaign with repeated endorsements of the far-right party AfD.

“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” said the government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann after Musk’s X posts and an opinion piece published at the weekend backing the anti-Muslim, anti-migration Alternative für Deutschland.

People are allowed to express their opinions about elections in other countries, but even so, when the people doing the expressing are billionaires who own popular social media platforms, it becomes more than expressing an opinion.

Musk has often weighed in on German politics, even calling the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a “fool” on his social media platform X last month. However, his more recent open calls for German voters to back the AfD, which federal authorities classify as a suspected extremist party, have sparked outrage and accusations of troubling interference in Europe’s top economy.

The South African-born entrepreneur, who has been named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on X earlier this month: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Now tell us what can save us all from Elon Musk.

He followed up at the weekend with a guest editorial in the broadsheet Welt am Sonntag arguing that Germany was teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse, defending the AfD against accusations of radicalism and praising the party’s approach to the economy, including regulation and tax policy.

The editor of the centre-right newspaper’s opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, posted on X that she had submitted her resignation in protest at the decision to run the article.

Politicians from across the political spectrum criticised Musk’s attempts to put his thumb on the scales of German democracy, with the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD) calling his intervention “undignified and highly problematic” and Merz saying it was “intrusive and presumptuous”.

Merz told the Funke media group: “I cannot recall in the history of western democracies a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country.”

The Welt am Sonntag wouldn’t have published such an editorial by a random teacher or nurse, I’m guessing, and if I’m right then Musk is parlaying his money and notoriety and ownership of social media into influence on the election campaign of a friendly country. It’s not a good look.

Last week, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticised X explicitly and Musk indirectly in a short speech announcing his formal decision to dissolve parliament and call the election on 23 February.

Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, warned of “outside influence” in the campaign, specifically citing recent “open and blatant” attempts on X to sway the vote. The remarks were widely interpreted as an admonishment of Musk.

None of this is healthy.

Another cheat cheats his way into a marathon.

A trans-identified male who previously sued a spa for not allowing him to bathe with women has announced that he has been accepted to compete as a “woman” in the 2025 Boston Marathon. Riya Young Suising, born Robert Chien Hwa Young, has placed on the winner’s podium at multiple women’s running competitions.

That’s the fun thing about being a man running in women’s competitions: you get to win!

The Boston Marathon has age and gender qualification categories. Genders include male, female, and “non-binary.” Notably, the “non-binary” category has identical qualifying times as the corresponding female categories.

In Suising’s case, he had to demonstrate a time of 4 hours and 5 minutes or less; Suising qualified with a time of 4 hours, 1 minute, and 27 seconds. Had he been forced to compete with other males he would not have qualified for the marathon, as participants in the men’s category are required to meet a 3 hour and 35 minute performance cutoff. 

So this new trans thing is such a gift for men who are willing to cheat.

You’d think it wouldn’t really work, wouldn’t you? I mean, an aspiring boxer wouldn’t punch toddlers just for the sake of “winning” – what would be the point? You’d think it would work the same way with men competing against women. “Oooh I ‘won’ but everyone knows it wasn’t a fair race so actually I didn’t win plus I look like a complete asshole.” But no, he goes right ahead, and even brags about it. People are weird.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Buhbye.

Of course secularism (i.e. separation of church and state) does not imply atheism, and atheism does not imply critical thinking. I still think the consistent application of critical thinking leads to “atheism”, but that doesn’t mean atheism leads to critical thinking. Atheism is just a specific conclusion. There is no shortage of people who arrived at this conclusion for reasons that have nothing to do with critical thinking, whether it’s in protest of the historical crimes of the church, a reaction to the horrific misogyny, homophobia, or general nastiness of the Bible, being offended by self-appointed representatives of God telling others what to do, a fallout with their religious community, or even feeling “betrayed by God” because of a personal tragedy.

As I may have mentioned earlier, one of my personal favorite entries from my old blog (R.I.P.) was called (the Norwegian equivalent of) “The Right Conclusion for the Wrong Reason”. In it I argued that just because someone happens to reach a correct conclusion doesn’t necessarily mean they arrived at it through sound reasoning and that “skeptics” should be critical of bad reasons, even when they are used to support a conclusion we agree with. The blog post was written out of frustration about Bill Maher receiving the Richard Dawkins award for promoting “science” and “critical thinking”. It was probably one of my least popular posts ever.

Speaking of “skeptics”, at least they claim to care more about epistemology, careful thinking, methodological rigor etc. than specific conclusions (like “atheism”), but of course we have seen what that amounts to in practice (Science-Based Medicine, anyone?). When I was a student back in the 1990s we were still required to take an introductory course in philosophy. According to the (almost certainly grossly oversimplified and caricatured) portrayal of ancient Greece presented to us, there were people (the good guys) who called themselves “philosophers” and saw themselves as seeking wisdom, and there were other people (the bad guys) who called themselves “sophists” and saw themselves has having wisdom (and hence being able to teach it to others for money).

Even if this portrayal is a caricature, I think something similar goes for critical thinking and Movement Skepticism™. Thinking critically is a goal you’re perpetually striving towards, not a destination you ever arrive at. Perhaps more importantly critical thinking is something you do (or try to), a Movement Skeptic™ is something you are, i.e. an “identity”, a tribal affiliation, a brand name etc. Whenever I come across an online source that has “skeptic”, “reason”, “rationality” etc. in its name these days, if anything it makes me trust it less rather than more. Like claiming to have wisdom, claiming “reason” for yourself, is a red flag and a warning sign that this person is even more heavily invested in their ideologically motivated conclusions than the average person, and hence more motivated to defend them to the death.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Imprisonment by dogma.

Having a “trans child” in the family is like having a psychic child, a reincarnated child, a child with Multiple Personality Disorder, or a child who’s been to Heaven and returned to tell us about it. If you’re in a milieu which values their acceptance or which insists that it’s important to always believe and support your children, then a child’s insistence, sincerity, and suffering will be considered good evidence. You were skeptical, but swayed. You listened. You checked things out thoroughly from all sides, your evaluations are fair and your recollections reliable. So are theirs.

Being close gives you an advantage. Having “skin in the game” gives you authority. So does love. Your child’s improvement and smiles mean you must be on the right track. Their tears when they’re rejected or thwarted rightly stirs your protective instincts. Having a loved one or friend who’s trans is supposed to give someone better insight for judging whether the trans-identified are experiencing what they say they’re experiencing for the reasons they say they are.

It’s actually the opposite, if we’re really trying to get to the truth.