I kinda like Quakers…but not all of them

Quakers are just one step removed from humanists, but with an even greater commitment to social justice. I like that, although I could never join a group with any vestige of god-belief. Still, I appreciate them.

The Quakers in Britain have been promoting equality and tolerance for a long, long time, to the point where one subgroup has split off and formed their own little sect, Sex Matters to Quakers, which is associated with a broader group called LGB Christians. Notice the missing “T” — they’re one of those groups that makes a special point of not recognizing trans people. It’s like supporting Black Lives Matter except for the Senegalese (I have no problem with Senegal, I just picked a random African nation), which really just says you’re bigoted against one group. You’re still a bigot. I don’t like these Quakers.

We reached a point about three years ago when there were enough of us to attempt to become a ‘Quaker recognised body’. Our primary aims were to bring Quaker members and attenders together: to speak truth to power, that is, biological truth to gender-ideological power; and to state that women are adult human females and men are adult human males.

SMtQ fired off a letter to their parent organization protesting the existence of trans-inclusive restrooms, which is another signal that they are not good people. The Quakers in Britain got the letter, which was also broadcast all over the place, and so the Quakers responded with a long letter rejecting their request. It’s a good letter, maybe a bit over-long, but thorough in shutting down the protest. I’ll pull out a few points that I thought were particularly clear.

• Deliberate misgendering of a person is transphobia.
• Referring to trans women as men is transphobia.
• Assuming a trans person poses a risk simply for being trans is transphobic.
• Stating that trans men are vulnerable and “groomed” into transition is a
transphobic trope.
• References to “trans activism” as anything other than the legitimate effort to
protect and advocate for the rights of people who are trans or non-binary is
transphobic.
• Alleging that Quakers have been “infiltrated” by trans activists is a transphobic
conspiracy theory and we are particularly offended by it.
• The notion that supporting and advocating for the safety, wellbeing, and
inclusion of trans people could be damaging to the Religious Society’s
reputation, or even “might be the thing that finally destroys them” is shocking
and dangerous. It is fearmongering, threatening, and extreme.

It concludes with a statement of principle that I can agree with.

“As Britain Yearly Meeting, we have minuted commitments in recent years: to care for our planet, to become an anti-racist church, to make reparations for historical injustices, to welcome and affirm those who are transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse. Much work has been done on all these by some individual Friends and Quaker meetings, as well as by our yearly meeting staff and committees. However, some have disagreed with the actions and approaches of others. This has been a cause of pain and anguish. We have heard in ministry that the strength of a church lies in how it is able to disagree with itself. In Quaker discernment, unity is not the same as unanimity. Minority views may well continue to exist. Among ourselves, we need to find kinder ground for our disagreements.
Can we find joy? Can we bring joy?”

You go, Quakers! Excepting those weirdos among you.

Laws be damned

I am relieved that I am not a gay or trans person, since this country is getting worse and worse at dealing with its raging homophobia/transphobia. Even in Minnesota we’ve got self-righteous busybodies harassing people on mere suspicion that they aren’t straight and cis. You can’t even go to a restaurant without someone demanding to inspect your breasts.

According to Gender Justice attorneys, Gerika Mudra went out for dinner with a friend at a Buffalo Wild Wings location in Owatonna. She went to the restroom, and a server allegedly followed her and banged on the door, calling her a man and yelling at her to leave.

Attorneys say Mudra unzipped her sweatshirt to show the server her chest.

In a statement, Mudra said she was shocked by the server’s behavior.

I’m wondering what grounds the server had for pounding on the door if she had been a trans woman? What cause does anyone have for interrupting someone who is peeing? Is that a crime?

It’s not just trans folk who are under attack. Remember Kim Davis, the awful religious kook who refused to do her job as a county clerk and would not issue marriage licenses to gay couples? She’s back. She is petitioning the Supreme Court to overthrow the Obergefell v Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage.

Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision.

Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees.

This is preliminary. The court could review the petition in the fall and decide not to take up the case…but come on. This court? It’s packed with conservative kooks who are slavering at the thought of overturning gay rights. They want to roll back everything, and they’ve shown willingness. Brown v. Board of Education? Loving v. Virginia? They don’t feel secure anymore.

It’s not just court cases. This administration is willing to deny people they don’t like their rightfully earned rewards.

The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits. One Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.

I have no confidence in anything gained in citizen’s rights in this country since the Civil War.

What happened to Transtifa?

I didn’t know or even know of Transtifa — I’m not a Twin Cities person — but I have to admire the work mentioned in this testimonial:

Been meaning to make this post for a while and putting it off bc idk how to do it right, but here goes: earlier this summer I learned of the passing in April of the legendary Twin Cities tagger Transtifa, who tormented local nextdoor nerds and facebook fascists more than perhaps any single person over the past 5+ years.

Seeing a transtifa tag around town always made me and my homies smile – and you were bound to see them everywhere, because that bitch got AROUND. How did she do so much? I learned how one day after catching a glimpse of her roller skating down a dark street at lightning speed in a crop top and short shorts, bag of spray cans and paint pens slung over her shoulder.

I was hashtag blessed enough to meet her before Transtifa took off, thanks to (and this fits her perfectly) grindr. We didn’t totally hit if off at the time (mostly bc i figured she was totally out of my league, lol) but we did have a nice stroll around town sharing art tips. Later we worked together on some art in advance of an action and damn, her freehand lettering sucked but she blew me away by climbing out to paint the outside of a railroad bridge with zero hesitation. Tbh just the amount of haters she had was admirable.

She was one of the boldest and bravest people I knew, one of the few people I’ve ever remained in awe of after meeting them, and lived far more in her too-few years than most people do in a lifetime. I didn’t know her well but I miss her a lot–just knowing she was around tearing up the streets gave me something vaguely like hope.

I’d say be the transtifa you want to see in the world, but there won’t be another quite like her and I wish I’d told more how much I appreciated her when I could. Rest in power and paint, girl.

She sounds like a good person. I don’t know that I want to know what happened to her — too often the fate of trans women is shocking and depressing.

Sex is a spectrum

Agustín Fuentes has published a new book, Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary. I just started reading it last night — and it’s very good so far — so don’t expect a full review just yet, but El Pais has published an interview with Fuentes in which he discusses the main themes. As you might guess from the title, he’s rejecting the idea that sex is a binary, and further, that the general implications of sex are not reducible. He’s an anti-Coyne. He’s also strongly advocating for a view of organisms that incorporates environmental factors beyond naked genetics.

Q. You assert that sex is a biocultural issue… but many of the people reading this interview will think that sex is about biology, not culture.

A. That depends on how you define “sex.” If you’re speaking only about gametes, everyone understands that [an] egg isn’t a woman and [a] sperm isn’t a man. We have to rethink a little about what we’re talking about. Just think about our feet, which are biological traits. But at the same time, look at your foot and look at the foot of a person who has never worn shoes. The two are almost distinct: the structure of the bones, the muscles and the skin changes. When I discuss sociocultural contexts, we’re talking not only about the embodiment of culture, but the mutual exchanges between experience, perception, bones, muscles, digestive systems, vascular systems… there’s a lot of interconnection between our physical body and the world and the experiences we have. There’s always more intermingling and a bit more complexity.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the Mendelian revelation is that we’ve swung way too far the other way, treating the individual as nothing more than the combinatorial action of a set of genes. Development is a critical and complicated input in generating the information that makes up the individual!

Then he gets into a point I’ve made multiple times before: there are so many distinct criteria that are used to identify a human’s sex, so just the fact that there are multiple independent measures refutes the claim that there is one pure definitive definition.

Q. You write about how the concept of “sex at birth” isn’t very rigorous, because it can mean many different things. You talk about the “three Gs.”

A. In the biological context, we’re talking about typical categorizations based on three factors: genes, gonads and genitals: the three Gs. A 3G woman would be one who has ovaries, clitoris/vagina/labia, and XX chromosomes. And a 3G man would be one who has testicles, penis/scrotum and XY chromosomes.

The importance of using 3G is the range of variation: it’s a spectrum that has standard groupings. We assume that, by looking at the genitals, you’re sure to have the other two Gs. And it’s true that they’re highly correlated, but not absolutely correlated, not 100%. We must understand, biologically, that these categories don’t contain all the variation in human beings; there’s variation beyond that. And, among the 3Gs, there are people – more than we think – in whom one of those Gs is a little different. If we use only the genitals at birth, or the chromosomes or the genes, we’re leaving out a lot of extremely relevant information.

I agree, except I’d suggest that there are more than three factors used. Some people claim that behavior is a factor in defining sex — true women, as we all know, are submissive, while men are dominant and aggressive. We can pile up all sorts of stereotypes and associations and none of them are going to be universal.

Q. This 3G explanation doesn’t reflect the biological reality of 1% of humanity, as you state in the book, which is at least 80 million people. But if it reflects that of the 99%, so isn’t it natural for many people to say, “Well, 99% is almost binary, isn’t it?”

A. But what is binary? I’m not saying there aren’t things that are binary in human beings. Gametes are binary: sperm and eggs. But saying that human beings are binary is a failure. It limits us too much when we’re thinking about the full range of variation between human beings. A binary relationship is that of one and zero. They’re completely distinct. This concept is used in computer science, because there’s no overlap in any element: either you have a one, or you have a zero. But human beings – our bodies, our ways of being – aren’t like that. There’s nothing between men and women that makes them totally different, like one and zero, because they come from biological materials that overlap on that spectrum of variation in our bodies.

To say that we’re binary is philosophy. It’s not biology. It’s declaring oneself essentialist: there are [men and women], two types of humans. But our biology doesn’t validate that position. Yes, there are binary things in our biology, but to say that human beings come in two different types is false. And we can prove it. Genitals, hormones, brains, organs… when you understand the range of variation between our bodies, it becomes very clear that human beings don’t come in binary, but in typical sets.

“Almost binary” — how can anyone say that with a straight face? The word “almost” refutes the claim.

Q. Is this an attempt to invoke science to justify a model for people? A model for society and a model for women?

A. Trump isn’t using science; all of his executive orders are a total scientific failure. Science – by pointing out the range of biological variation in human beings – shows us that there are indeed several ways to be human. And that’s the important thing. In any country, in any culture, there’s a range in bodies and sexualities, but our cultures, our governments, diminish the possibilities of expressing [ourselves] and living within that range. We’re always on an average; we’re bits and pieces of the full range of human beings. And the main thing is to at least know what the possibilities of that range are… to understand that this is what being human is all about: variation, not a standard.

Our culture is always controlling where we can express ourselves. We’re biocultural organisms: there’s always a greater range of variation than what’s culturally accepted. And that’s the difficult part. Because many people are certain that “this is a woman and this is a man.” But if they start thinking, “My cousin has a slightly different body,” they then realize that there’s greater variation. We all know people who are outside the typical categorization, be it behaviorally or biologically, of what we think women and men are.

Wait — he didn’t answer the question! Should we have a different model for society, men, and women? I’d say yes, and I can see how Fuentes is addressing an implied point, by bringing up Trump’s anti-scientific attempts to impose a rigid binary structure on America. It is the scientist’s role to explain how our preconceptions about the universe are contradicted by nature, and the narrow perspective of conservatives is flatly wrong, and therefore is a bad foundation for building social policy.

Fuentes for president! He’s American-born, so he qualifies, but he “wants to regain Spanish citizenship for fear of the political degradation in the United States,” so I’d worry that he’s going to be part of the flight of intellectuals from the US.

A proud ally of Morris Pride

I walked to the Morris Pride celebration at Eastside Park this afternoon, wearing my Biology is Bigger than Binaries t-shirt.

I’m not wearing it now, because as soon as I got home I stripped off almost all my clothes. It’s hot! It was not a pleasant walk, but about 70 people braved the heat and were at the park. Right now I’m just sitting with a fan, drinking a lot of iced tea.

I also learned that Brokeback Mountain has been re-released, and is playing at the Morris Theater tomorrow morning at 10am, which means a lot of good Christians are going to have to skip church tomorrow.

I know it looks a bit blotchy, but that’s because I had it in my pocket, I was sweating ferociously, and all my clothes are a bit blotchy now.

Of course I will be attending, but I’d rather you didn’t. Brokeback Mountain always makes me cry, and I don’t want to be seen all red-eyed and teary at the end.

Women’s bodies must be hidden!

The transphobes are experiencing the contradictions inherent in their ideas. In England, which has become Transphobe Central, they set up some rules that competitors in swimming competitions must compete according to their birth sex. A transwoman showed up for the women’s races, and the organizers turned her away…so she showed up for the men’s competition, in men’s swimgear. She swam topless, like a man.

Anne Isabella Coombes protested a policy banning her from female competitions by competing in an ‘open’ category race wearing men’s sports trunks and no bra.

The 67-year-old swimmer said Swim England, the UK’s competitive swimming regulator, told her she wasn’t eligible to compete in female category races, despite having done so in the past.

Good for her, breaking gender norms with the assistance of transphobic rules-givers.

The media have also chosen to blur out her chest. They’re going to have to make up their mind about these rules someday.

Another mammoth resurrected!

David Futrelle has brought back We Hunted the Mammoth! Go read it!

The latest post is about JK Rowling and Graham Linehan. OK, maybe you should run away instead — nothing good can come of those two nitwits. There is a healthy dose of schadenfreude here, though. The TERFs have won a victory in the UK Supreme Court, but they’re still miserable and bitter. Futrelle has a long list of various reactions from fervent anti-trans wackaloons, and they’re all whining about how people hate them so much.

Victoria Smith
@glosswitch
But then when there is hope it also hits you just how awful it is, how much open hatred of women has been enabled, how utterly worthless so many professional, paid ‘feminists’ have been, how they will always say nothing no matter how bad it gets.
Julie Bindel
@bindelj
I feel lower than a snake’s armpit the past couple of days – sending love x
10:36 AM · Apr 20, 2025

They don’t get it. Their critics are not expressing “open hatred” of women, they’re disgusted with this small, loud crowd of haters who succeeded at getting legal approval of their bigotry. We’re repelled by you, not women.

And then there’s Glinner.

Graham Linehan 🎗️
@Glinner
“Let it”. It destroyed my family because of the cowardice of my friends, who stood by while a whole generation of gay kids were mutilated and sterilised, and the women who fought it lost their livelihoods. You’re a coward and a fraud
@jonronson
Quote
On a clear day
@ICanSeeForever1
·
Mar 14, 2024
Adam Buxton and Jon Ronson on Graham Linehan
‘I was kind of obsessed with our mutual friend who let it take over his life to the extent that he lost all of his work and his family’

The “it” that destroyed his family is, he thinks, trans people, but really “it” was his pathological obsession with hatred of trans people. Graham Linehan is just a sad pathetic failure of a human being.

Welcome back, David Futrelle. Nothing has changed.

As for Rowling, here’s an accurate assessment from Salon, commenting on her selfie with cigar and liquor.

But no matter how much money you have, you can’t dominate the world if you’re not out in it. In her photo, Rowling is notably posted up on a yacht or some beach resort, enjoying the spoils of her wealth and a strong 5G signal from her cellular provider. She’s not joining the cheering members of For Women Scotland and the other anti-trans voices in person, she’s playing edgelord from the comfort of a life so far removed from reality that the truth is just a speck in the distance. After years spent tarnishing her brand with rampant trans-exclusionary takes, Rowling has assured that her writing won’t define her legacy; her flagrant cowardice will.

Despite what she might say, Rowling isn’t for anyone, especially not women, whom she claims to champion; she’s for herself. The author of a beloved book series about coming together to fight the rise of fascism has written herself into the story as a real-life villain. No matter how much fans try to separate the art from the artist, Rowling and “Harry Potter” are inextricably linked forever. And with the “Hogwarts Legacy” video game and Max’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series trying to breathe new life into the franchise, it’s time for even diehard Potterheads to put their money where their mouths are and leave Rowling’s wizarding world behind for good.

It’s amazing how this group of people who eagerly embraced discrimination and hatred of trans folk have become so wretched, in spite of any wealth and success.

Georgia Purdom explains sex

As everyone knows, it’s all about the size of the palps

The creationists (and a few scientists) are unhappy that there isn’t a simple, single, concrete factor to differentiate the sexes. They looked to the scientists, and were not satisfied with the answer.

at its annual meeting in 2023, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) canceled a session that aimed to explore biological sex as an analytic category in anthropology. The AAA justified its decision by stating that “there is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification.”

That’s not the answer they wanted, so they turned to Georgia Purdom, the ex-molecular biologist working for Answers in Genesis to provide that single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification. The single criterion! What will it be, you may wonder.

From a genetic standpoint, biological sex is determined by our chromosomes. I often say, “No Y, no guy.” Females typically have two X chromosomes, while males have an X and a Y chromosome. This chromosomal distinction provides a clear biological marker for sex.

The creationist has spoken.

Except…

It’s important to note that sexual development disorders do occur, and we must approach these situations with compassion. However, chromosomal analysis remains a reliable method for determining biological sex.

Except when it isn’t. She’s not keeping up with the times; all the cool kids are saying it’s all about gamete size. Or hormone titers. Or the morphology of primary or secondary sexual characteristics. Or pelvic dimensions. Or muscle mass. Or bone density.

At the very least, they ought to admit that the American Anthropological Association was correct: there is no single biological standard. And all the standards have exceptions and gray areas or ambiguities, sometimes contradict each other, or even conflict with each other. People are complicated, and anyone who claims there is a single obvious parameter that defines sexuality in such a way as to create a simple binary categorization is full of shit.

I wonder how Georgia plans to evaluate the chromosomal complement of everyone who wants to use a public restroom?