Once again, the secular community has been split by Deep Rifts. In a pattern we should all be familiar with by now, the clash is between a younger generation that’s more enlightened than the past, versus an ossified old guard, blind to their own prejudices, that joins hands with the religious right to oppose moral progress.
The story began when the Freedom from Religion Foundation published a column by legal fellow Kat Grant, “What is a woman?“, pointing out that society’s views on gender have been shaped by Christian dogma:
In much of the modern United States, gender is viewed through the lens of the religious traditions that were brought by European colonizers. Missionaries often viewed gender systems outside of the strict sexual binary to be a mark of a “less civilized” nation, and imposed views of both gender and presentation (such as forcing boys in residential schools to cut their hair) onto the indigenous communities. Catholic explorer Jacques Marquette wrote in 1674:
I do not know by what superstition some Illiniwek, as well as some Sioux, take on women’s clothing while still young, and keep it all their lives: there is some mystery, as they never get married, and lower themselves by doing everything that women do… they are called to the council, where nothing may be decided without their advice; finally, their claim of living an extraordinary life lets them pass for manitous, that is to say great spirits, or important people. (Translation by Hamish Copley)
In response, Jerry Coyne, a member of the FFRF’s honorary board, asked and received permission to publish a rebuttal. In it, he argues that sex isn’t a spectrum but a binary (not true). He acknowledges the existence of intersex people, but insists they don’t count:
Nowhere else in biology would deviations this rare undermine a fundamental concept. To illustrate, as many as 1 in 300 people are born with some form of polydactyly — without the normal number of ten fingers. Nevertheless, nobody talks about a “spectrum of digit number.”
Can Coyne really not see why sex and gender are of concern to progressives but digit number isn’t?
If the religious right was claiming that only people with ten fingers are normal, and that anyone with a different number of fingers is a freak who shouldn’t be allowed to teach children (“it will confuse them!”) or get married, or hold elected office… then yes, we’d be justified in pointing out that digit number is a spectrum and not a fixed value! Until then, we’re arguing against the harmful beliefs that people really hold, not merely hypothetical forms of prejudice.
Most shocking, Coyne argues that transgender people are more criminal than cisgender people:
Transgender [sic], then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders.
This is Bigotry 101. It’s exactly the same as racists saying that Black people are all criminals because more of them are imprisoned than white people, or Trumpist tabloids shrieking about every crime committed by an immigrant, or Christian conservatives demanding that every mosque be put under police surveillance because fundamentalist Muslims have committed acts of terrorism.
Coyne makes this argument without considering confounding factors – like the fact that minorities tend to get singled out for biased enforcement and unjust prosecution. For example, transgender people have been arrested for prostitution just for carrying condoms.
Publishing this article was a mistake on FFRF’s part. However, they realized this quickly and made it right by taking down Coyne’s article and publishing an unequivocal statement of support for LGBTQ rights.
In a snit, Coyne, as well as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, quit the FFRF’s honorary board. So be it. If they want to consign themselves to crankery and irrelevance, that’s their choice.
Dawkins and Coyne are biologists, and perhaps they think that gives them special authority in this area, but it doesn’t. This isn’t a debate about biology, but about the social roles we assign to gender and the way we should treat people who don’t conform to stereotypes. Should your chromosomes, or gametes, or genitals be the determining factor for what careers you’re encouraged to pursue, or how you’re expected to dress, or what your role is in the household? I say no.
As I’ve written before, you’d think these big-name atheists would feel disquiet that their view on sex and gender is exactly the same as the religious right’s. But they don’t. In fact, Coyne airily dismisses the idea – “the FFRF has a remarkable ability to place any kind of antiwoke ideology under the rubric of ‘Christian nationalism'” – which demonstrates willful blindness to the fact that this is a crusade by Christian nationalists.
Anti-transgender bathroom bills and bans on gender-affirming therapy are top agenda items for the religious right. Coyne can’t admit that obvious fact, because then he’d have to recognize whose side he’s on.
In fact, Coyne and others aren’t just echoing the opinions of the religious right, but their priorities. Whatever you think about transgender people, a fair assessment would have to conclude that they’re not a threat to anyone, certainly not the way that religious fundamentalism is. Yet by making opposition to transgender rights their shibboleth, Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker are signaling that they consider it a cause more important even than atheism or church-state separation.
As any freethinker should know, religious conservatives have a long record of whipping up mob panic against minorities to advance their own agenda. It used to be gay people. It used to be atheists. But both those groups have won greater social acceptance, so bigots have moved on to the next disfavored group they can sow prejudice against. The FFRF recognizes this, but Coyne and others don’t. Instead, they’re adding their voices in support of this regressive and hateful brand of fundamentalism.
Thanks for saying all of this so clearly and well. You are certainly right.
“Sex offender” is a careful bit of misdirection.
As you say, “minorities tend to get singled out for biased enforcement and unjust prosecution.” But also, “sex offender” elides the distinction between different offences. Rapists are dangerous, sex workers are not! And sometimes people who can’t get regular jobs are driven to survival sex work.
Predators like camoflague so they usually take pains to become upstanding, conventional members of society. It’s not transwomen and drag queens who get busted for pedophilia, it’s priests, pastors and politicians.
my only regret in reading this article is having bigoted words drip poison in my eyes. it’s worth repeating that these regressive atheists are acting as foot soldiers for the religious right, because they find worth repeating any christofash talking point that dribbles out of world-ruining extremist think tanks. fucking zombies.
Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins accidently did something right for once.
Those three resigning was a huge win for FFRF.
They’ve long become irrelevant right wing crackpots and mindless haters.
I heard the news and immediately went to the FFRF website and…donated some money in celebration.
It doesn’t in the least.
The vast majority of biologists and medical personnel working in relevant areas oppose them and support Trans rights on biological, medical, and human rights basises. To cite just one example of this, something called…data.
A lot of professional societies including NIH have made similar public statements in the past.
PInker, Coyne, and Dawkins are just what they say they are. Lunatic fringe crackpots with nothing worthwhile left to say.
From the title: “FFRF and Jerry Coyne: Atheists for human rights, or atheists for the religious right?”
Both are atheists; could be atheists for fascism, atheists for buddhism, atheists for spiritualism, atheists for wicca, atheists tof animism, and so forth. All atheists.
Obs, atheism is a privative term (not theistic).
(And forming atheistic organisations is hardly part of disbelief in gods)
No community, no rifts
No leaders
No movement
Sigh.You are not correct. Also, your link to ‘Jerry Coyne’ goes instead to a post about Dawkins, with Coyne only incidentally mentioned.
You missed his point. He wasn’t talking about digits per se, he used that to illustrate his point: we make general statements to describe the characteristics of some organism or category of organisms (in this case, the presentation of the human hand), and these general statements are accepted despite the existence of congenital abnormalities.
I can give more examples in this vein. Humans are diploid… and this is not falsified by the existence of aneuploidies. Dipterans have two wings… and this is not falsified by the existence of ultrabithorax mutations. The human heart is under the left side of the sternum… and this is not falsified by the existence of dextrocardic people. Mammals feed their young using milk secreted by mammary glands… and this is not falsified by the existence of females with amastia.
Likewise, there are two groups of distinct sex traits called ‘the sexes’, despite the existence of some individuals that have some mixture of traits from each group. Notably, there are still only two groups to pull traits from. Those groups are the sexes, male and female.
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I worry that the reverse may be true: that the FFRF has lost influence by the departure of its three most prominent headliners, including one with more fame and cachet than the rest of the organisation combined.
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But it isn’t. The religious right believes god has plans for people, household and societal roles for them to play, determined by their sex. Coyne et al, to put it very mildly, do not.
Likewise, there are two groups of distinct sex traits called ‘the sexes’…
Note the consistently abstract language here. Those two “groups” are “separate” and “distinct” only in your simplistic categorizing mind. Out here in the real world, as anyone with two eyes and any common sense can tell you, those two “groups” are not separated by any sort of airtight wall; and even among straight cis people, there are different mixes of all those many, complex and interrelated “traits.”
Seriously, Holms, as long as you’re determined to be a pest whenever anyone mentions gender or trans people, why don’t you explain to us EXACTLY how your strict-binary/only-two-groups reasoning is relevant to real people in the real world. What specific ideological or policy conclusions does your reasoning support? Why, EXACTLY, do we need to think of sex as binary, when it is clearly BIMODAL?
I worry that the reverse may be true: that the FFRF has lost influence by the departure of its three most prominent headliners…
What benefit, exactly, is gained by keeping that “influence?” What does the “influence” of those “three most prominent headliners” gain for anyone?
No, it’s an invalid comparison. There is very little variability in digit number, and what variation there is isn’t discriminated against. Sexuality, on the other hand, shows a great deal of variation — not just with intersex people, but a wide spectrum of behaviors and expression and preferences, with huge cultural impact. It requires willful blindness to declare that there are only “two groups of distinct sex traits”.
I find it odd to think now that at one point I’d admired Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker, agreeing with at least some of their views. That seems very distant by now, with their increasingly ugly positions. I am not at all surprised that Coyne takes this line, since Dawkins does already. Good on the FFRF at least for disassociating quite promptly from his view.
One of the defining characteristics of homo sapiens is that they have only one anus, yet Holmes appears to be an individual with at least two anuses since pure shit comes out of the hole in the middle of their face.
Holms, not Holmes
Holms is a notorious transphobe who’s been banned almost everywhere he has shared his opinions and so is overjoyed to find a new outlet. Conspicuous that he ignored the relevant bit:
No one disputes there are two common presentations of sexed traits, or that we can label them.
The dispute is between zealots who thinks intersex people are therefore “disordered”, and the human ascribed label must determine one’s social, legal, behavioral, and psychological identity from cradle to grave with any failure to comply branded unacceptable; and those who recognize the scientific consensus that gender identity has a biological basis and can differ from reproductive organs in 0.6% of the population, and that transgender and intersex people are a completely normal part of human diversity who deserve full recognition in society as equals.
The only difference is the “god” part. Coyne et al, want all humans to be assigned identities and roles on the basis of an opinion of the morphology of their external genitals at (or before) birth, and that to be an irrevocable life sentence.
Secular patriarchy is not inherently better than Theistic patriarchy Holms.