Three prominent atheists resigned from FFRF's Honorary Board. Good riddance.
Three prominent atheists resigned from FFRF's Honorary Board. Good riddance.
Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins are big mad that FFRF removed an anti-trans article from their website
Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins are big mad that FFRF removed an anti-trans article from their website
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Got to disagree: this is a purity spiral. Especially for an organization that represents freethought, ending debate by shutting it down is unskilled. Only the weakest thinkers defend ideas that way. It's better to defeat a bad argument with a better argument, prevail truth over falsehoods, & win opponents over. Better to fight bad ideas with better ideas. It's okay to be wrong.
The controversial article begins from the uncontroversial thesis that "sex, a biological feature" differs from "gender, the sex role one assumes in society", and that Grant errs in arguing sex can't be defined. The article as written doesn't vilify transgender people. His argument, however, draws conclusions incorrectly
- Transgender women should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters
- Transgender women should not be placed in a women’s prison.
because they are biological males & biological males have higher rates of sexual violence. He also argued that transgender women commit sexual offences at a greater rate based on prison populations.
Countering the argument should have been easy. I would think any qualified person for the role (including biological males) could perform duties in a battered women’s shelter. I'm not sure placing nonviolent transgender offenders in women's prison would be a problem. (Really, I think the problems inmates suffer in US prisons have more to do with shitty US practices complicit with inmate abuses: other countries have more civilized prisons that stress rehabilitation.) Prison populations are insufficient & unrepresentative of the general population, so that sexual offence rate argument is clearly a fallacy (of incomplete evidence).
His remaining conclusion "Transgender women should not compete athletically against biological women" is harder to deny: sports competitions are separated by sex due to differing advantages of biological sex traits. Transgender athletes who complete transition before puberty mostly lack these advantages, and sports regulations attempt to address this to some extent.
Grant ultimately did raise some good points despite a fatuous argument about biology leading there. Coyne corrected that then drew some wrong conclusions. Healthier debate could have settled differences closer to the truth.
Though I can understand FFRF's fear to lose donor support, their lack of faith that freethought (rejection of authority & dogmatism) will prevail & settle the truth troubles me. Ceding their values without trying is their loss.
Richard Dawkins actively avoids talking to people who don't share his views on this matter. He has taken up an uneducated, dogmatic, and pseudoscientific position on gender, and for years now has refused to engage with new information that might clash with his strongly held but poorly founded convictions.
He has lost the plot and joined the evangelical right-wing on this front in the culture war.
I was struggling to grasp your point's connection to mine until I remembered people read headlines without reading content, assessing arguments, checking primary sources. Friendly Atheist's post is about people leaving FFRF in response to FFRF removing an unpopular article in response to pressure. Were their reasons true & do they justify their response?
They stated their reasons in the quoted excerpts & linked sources. We don't need to know who they are to evaluate those reasons. Their reasons appear to be that
- FFRF removed the article due to disagreement.
- Removing the article suppresses disagreement.
- By suppressing disagreement, the organization fails to defend its foundational value: freethought.
Seem true on all counts.
Do the reasons justify the response? Does an organization's failure to defend freethought justify leaving an organization that claims to defend it? I would think so.
Would this argument justify absolutely anyone (even Dawkins) to leave FFRF? That's the beauty of a sound argument: who you are doesn't matter.
The mere presence of disagreement doesn't make freethought. If someone actively resists engaging with counter-arguments and scientific research because it would undermine their controversial public profile with a certain audience, it doesn't serve any legitimate interest to further platform their deliberate ignorance.
I don't know enough about the other two to speak on their relevant conduct, but the case of Richard Dawkins is quite clear-cut. Hence my comment pointing out how your criticism of the FFRF's decision lacks awareness of the context that it was made in by providing this exact context to you and others.
I hope this helps you to understand my point's connection to your original comment, if you really weren't just playing dumb with me.
Yours is the argument for never ending argument, leaving trans people's existence and rights "up for debate" throughout their entire lives and until the end of time.
Allowing open, eternal debate over people's lives and rights is morally the same as continuing the 'debate' over whether blacks are more or less than 3/5 human.
What is the alternative? Say a matter once proclaimed settled by someone can never be addressed again by anyone?
Wingnuts and haters should not be invited to write for the FFRF website. Does that seem unreasonable to you?
Sure, but they were invited. Once the article was published, removing it was the wrong move IMO.
The three are leaving of their own accord, not being kicked out.