Adventures in Gender Activism at FFRF

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(By the way, in posting this new topic, the Discourse Software helpfully reminded me that "Your topic is similar to . . . " some topics from 2019 and 2018. Wow. I had completely forgotten that something was posted about FFRF some seven years ago.)

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As usual, Jerry Coyne is right.

I have found developments on this subject in recent years downright bizarre. I didn’t know that I was a “gender-critical” feminist, and didn’t even know what that term meant, until all of a sudden I started seeing people declare that “trans women are women, period.”

People like me, who believe that sex is real while gender (in the non-sex-linked sense in which people increasingly use the word) is a social construct, are very much unliked these days in some circles. “Gender,” which appears to be nothing more than a kind of amalgam of sex stereotypes, is suddenly touted as a core, indispensable aspect of human identity. But by the tests of “gender,” my wife is very bad at being a woman and I am very bad at being a man. Our reaction is not to suppose that we are therefore the other sex, but rather to suppose that cultural norms and expectations are often bullshit.

But I’ve watched with dismay as ACLU and FFRF, among others, have gone pretty hard over to this gender ideology. I don’t and won’t give them money any longer, for this reason.

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No, Jerry Coyne is wrong, and the type of rhetoric he uses is going to get people hurt. One doesn’t have to understand or even agree with ‘trans ideology’ to understand the harm that results from claiming a certain group of people is more likely to commit crimes. Don’t you find it disturbing that Coyne is supporting the same kind of policies that are proposed by far-right politicians?

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Is he?

The article you cite evoked a responding article:

A cross-comparison of statistics from the U.K. Ministry of Justice and the U.K. Census shows that while almost 20 percent of male prisoners and a maximum of 3 percent of female prisoners have committed sex offenses, at least 41 percent of trans-identifying prisoners were convicted of these crimes. Transgender, then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders. While these data are imperfect because they’re based only on those who are caught, or on some who declare their female gender only after conviction, they suggest that transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women and somewhat more predatory than biological men. There are suggestions of similar trends in Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia.

My problem with this is that it under-emphasizes the problems with the data for part of it (based only on those caught and convicted of crimes—see Coyne ’s sentence that I added italics to for emphasis). There are any number of factors (class, income, ethnicity, approach of the legal system in question) that could affect data like this only among convicts and Coyne should have said as much. Imputing malevolence or bigotry to Coyne is, however, not reasonably justified.

In sum, my assessment of Rabinowitz ’s critique of Coyne ’s reply to Grant is that the critique is misleadingly and unfairly harsh. Among other problems, he declares that Coyne is making ethical claims (he is) and pretending he’s an ethics expert (he didn’t)—while not criticizing Grant for making ethical claims. Rabinowitz also insists that Coyne is “anti-trans” without ever defining what that means (beyond just disagreeing with Kat Grant and Rabinowitz.) Disgustingly, Rabinowitz closes with an unwarranted insult:

That is why it is our obligation as moral reasoners to point out when those conclusions are, in fact, bigotry.

No such thing is “in fact.” It bothers me that there does not seem to be what I’ve referred to as “honest disagreement” here—not just in Aaron Rabinowitz ’s essay but in the actions of FFRF. There is no good reason, in my opinion, to even disagree with most of what Coyne wrote. But it’s outrageous to not merely explain why you disagree with someone’s words, but to accuse them flatly of bigotry.

I would, if that were true. But it appears that it isn’t:

Jerry Coyne (and many others—J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, for example) have been roundly condemned as “anti-trans”—but what does that mean? After all, Coyne explicitly does not deny the legitimate existence of transgendered people. He wrote, in the essay he’s now been excoriated over, that

. . . gender, the sex role one assumes in society. To all intents and purposes, sex is binary, but gender is more spectrum-like, though it still has two camel’s-hump modes around “male” and “female.” While most people enact gender roles associated with their biological sex (those camel humps), an appreciable number of people mix both roles or even reject male and female roles altogether.

If the definition of anti-trans is “one who denies that transgender roles are possible or even acceptable,” then Coyne is not anti-trans. By that definition one can make a good case that President-Elect Donald Trump or freshly re-elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Christian Nationalists in general are anti-trans. (My personal speculative opinion is that Trump doesn’t really care—that he sees all “trans issues” as things he can exploit politically, not as actual issues.)

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Very hesitant to comment here, as transgender issues are outside my personal experience. Minorities seem to be more at risk from majorities than vice versa, exacerbated by the spreading political polarisation and media rhetoric. Cynical manipulation of majority against a minority target seems to be effective. Just choose your target. I could add a long list here but I doubt I need to.

I did once have a couple of conversations with an Olympic marathon runner who at one time described how there were two groups of competitor, those who used performance-enhancing drugs and those who didn’t. She was philosophical about it, saying that she understood the pressures athletes were under to succeed.

When the issue of transgender women competing at Olympic level became newsworthy, she was again philosophical, drawing a parallel with the drug-taking saga, only saying it seemed unfair at international and Olympic level where life-time commitment could be outflanked by testosterone levels. She was excoriated for her views after publishing a newspaper article
(and I was surprised at the negative reaction when I mentioned it in an online discussion) and I’ve not seen further public comment from her on the issue.

My surprise is how almost instantly polarised discussion becomes. Indeed, Coyne and Myers, once apparently united in debunking the “Intelligent Design” movement, exemplify how nuance has disappeared and “whose side are you on” overrides informed discussion.

Competitive sport makes no sense between individuals who are unfairly matched but other than that, I see no harm if someone feels happier being transgender and I’m baffled why going out in public in clothing you prefer can result in you being beaten to death.

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I avoided calling it bigotry in my comment because I think discussions of bigotry are mostly pointless. I can’t read anyone else’s mind. Maybe Donald Trump secretly likes illegal immigrants but is just using them as a political tool. So I also don’t really care about whether anyone agrees philosophically with trans people about gender (but it is a matter of philosophy, not of science, despite what many right-wingers and apparently Jerry Coyne claim).

What I do care about is whether rhetoric is likely to help or to harm people. This is especially true of the trans community which has been under assault from the government for years. What the research shows is that trans people consistently view themselves as being the opposite gender than they were assigned at birth, and that preventing them from presenting as that gender can be extremely (mentally) harmful.

I won’t weigh in on any sports issue except to point out that it’s been used by right-wingers to hurt cis women as well (Imane Khelif).

My problem with this is that it under-emphasizes the problems with the data for part of it (based only on those caught and convicted of crimes—see Coyne’s sentence that I added italics to for emphasis). There are any number of factors (class, income, ethnicity, approach of the legal system in question) that could affect data like this only among convicts and Coyne should have said as much. Imputing malevolence or bigotry to Coyne is, however, not reasonably justified.

I didn’t impute malevolence to Coyne, although I guess I linked to an article that did, so that’s on me. Like I said above, I only care about whether his rhetoric is harmful or not. And here it certainly is. It’s tantamount to citing a study on U.S. arrest reports and concluding that “While these data are imperfect because they’re based only on those who are caught, they suggest that Black people are far more likely to commit violent crimes than other races.” That ignores the many confounding factors and targets a marginalized group of people for further state repression.

I was referring to this part of his article:

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.

These are clearly moral and political conclusions to what was supposed to be a biological essay, and furthermore they are the same conclusions that right-wing politicians endorse. This whole affair just reinforces the right’s belief that they have ‘basic biology’ on their side.

If the definition of anti-trans is “one who denies that transgender roles are possible or even acceptable,” then Coyne is not anti-trans. By that definition one can make a good case that President-Elect Donald Trump or freshly re-elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Christian Nationalists in general are anti-trans.
[Coyne: I sincerely hope that the FFRF does not insist on adopting a “progressive” political stance, rationalizing it as part of its battle against “Christian Nationalism.” As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!]

While Coyne isn’t a Christian nationalist and he’s probably not a bigot, he is using his position of influence to attack an already marginalized group that is under fire from Christian nationalists.

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