This is a controversial topic, even amongst skeptics, so buckle up. It is also a very important topic.
Most have very strong opinions on this. When expressed, both sides will assure you that they have both evidence and science on their side and yet very obviously that can’t be true.
So why am I writing about this now?
It concerns both FFRF, and some well-recognised names within the skeptical community.
Our little play today comes in various acts, so permit me to lay it all out step by step.
Act 1 – Kat Grant of FFRF publishes an Essay
Titled “What is a woman?” and published on Nov 7, 2024, Kat opens with a Plato story that involves the knowledgable-one attempting to define what a man is …
According to the tale, Plato had proffered the definition of “a featherless biped.” Upon hearing this, Diogenes, absolute chaos gremlin that he was, plucked a chicken, and took it to one of Plato’s lectures on the topic. When Plato gave his definition to the audience, Diogenes stood up, lifted the featherless chicken for the crowd to see, and shouted “Behold! A man!” Plato then amended his definition to “a featherless biped with broad, flat nails.”
Her opening point is well made and you can perhaps see now where her article is going. Many centuries later we are still having this conversation and are asking “What is a Women?”.
It sounds like an easy question to answer but …
Some people define a “woman” as someone with a vagina. This presents problems, as transgender women who receive bottom surgery have vaginas. So, then, perhaps it is someone born with a vagina? Well, what does that mean for intersex people, who are often given genital surgery at birth when their anatomy does not firmly meet criteria for a penis or vagina? It can’t be based on whether or not the person has a uterus, because not only does that present issues for intersex people, but also women who have hysterectomies. Even more issues arise if you attempt to define womanhood based on the ability to conceive children, or have a period, as it would also exclude women who have any number of medical conditions, or who have gone through menopause.
Kat goes on to discuss genetics and points out that this also is not binary.
Then there is an excellent and not all that well-known point – “Many cultures have historically recognized gender diversity and complexity throughout history.“, and that is followed by some good examples.
So how do people decide?
The point she is building up to is the insight that religion has been asserting claims that demonise the trans community and that these are views that disregard both medical science and lived experience. In the context of an article by FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) that’s a wholly appropriate point to make.
It’s an excellent read and I can recommend it.
You can perhaps guess what happens next. For some anti-trans activists, reading such articles is also catnip.
Act 2 – Jerry Coyne enters the conversation
Prof Jerry Coyne is on the FFRF honorary board, so he feels the need to write a rebuttal. He published a piece via FFRF that was titled “Biology is not Bigotry“.
It was published via FFRF with the following disclaimer …
Disclaimer: FFRF Honorary Board Member Jerry A. Coyne requested that this column be written as a guest blog. The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
It caused a huge shitstorm and so has since publication been taken down by FFRF, but you can still find it here via the waybackmachine.
He takes the stance that he has empirical reality on his side and that the stance taken by Kat is just wrong, and so he builds up to this … “a woman can be simply defined in four words: “An adult human female.”.
There is a problem here, his claim that Human Sex is clear and binary is not scientific …
There are those, politicians, pundits and even a few scientists, who maintain that whether our bodies make ova or sperm are all we need to know about sex. They assert that men and women are defined by their production of these gamete cells, making them a distinct biological binary pair, and that our legal rights and social possibilities should flow from this divide. Men are men. Women are women. Simple.
…when someone states that “An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing” and argues that legal and social policy should be “rooted in properties of bodies,” they are not really talking about gametes and sex biology. They are arguing for a specific political, and discriminatory, definition of what is “natural” and “right” for humans based on a false representation of biology. …
It gets worse. Mr Coyne then proceeds to dip into some deeply dubious statistics to claim that 41% of transgender people are sexual predators. The statistics are specific to trans women in prison in the UK. As one commentator on all this points out …
There are only a small number of trans women in prisons. (It’s a very tiny, very select sample size.) There are actually fewer trans women in prison relative to their existence in the general population, an argument that suggests trans women as a whole are more law-abiding than cisgender people. It’s also possible some of the “sex offenses” include getting arrested for consensual sex work. (The 41% claim has been debunked here and here.)
If you keep reading his essay after that then you will be wading into a murky pool of rather a lot of unwarranted and unjustifiable trans bigotry.
Act3 – After the Fallout
Freedom From Religion Foundation supports LGBTQIA-plus rights
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is dedicated to protecting the constitutional principle of state/church separation, which ensures religious beliefs do not dictate public policy. While advocating for LGBTQIA-plus rights is an indirect component of our mission, we recognize that many attacks on these rights are rooted in attempts to impose religious doctrines on our secular government.
We are acutely aware that Christian nationalists have cynically manipulated the LGBTQIA-plus issues just as they have cynically done so with abortion rights. We are proud to have a diverse staff and membership, 13 percent of whom identify as LGBTQIA and 97 percent support civil rights for the LGBTQ community — far more than the general population.
…
We stand firmly with the LGBTQIA-plus community and their allies in advocating for equality, dignity and the freedom to live without fear of religiously motivated discrimination. Our mission to keep religion out of government is inextricably linked to preserving and advancing these fundamental rights.
Together, we will continue to champion a society where all people — no matter their sexual orientation, gender identity, beliefs or nonbeliefs — are treated equally under the law.
In response to all this, Mr Coyne resigned from the FFRF honorary board and so also did several other notable names who are infamous for being trans bigots – Steven Pinker, and also Richard Dawkins. So yes, the full anti-trans trifecta quit, and that perhaps makes FFRF and far better place now.
“We are being censored and removed because they don’t like our scientifically based views“, they might yell.
The only problem there is that the anti-trans stance these famous names have adopted is deeply flawed and not scientific. Also, nobody tossed them out of FFRF, they made the decision to walk away.
It’s also a cue for the usual right-wing accounts to leap in with claims that since going woke FFRF have lost a lot of their membership …
If you actually fact-check such claims, then you find it is just not a true statement …
Beware of generic Experts
Being an expert who strays outside a distinct field of expertise is setting yourself up for a fall.
Biology only answers questions in biology. Individuals such as Dawkins and Coyne do indeed own that lane.
Human sexuality and gender are not studied by biologists, they are not subject matter experts on the topic. Being smart and deeply knowledgable on one topic does not in any way make you an expert or a reliable source on other topics.
Another rather famous and well-known example of this is Nobel prize winning chemist Linus Pauling. He very much owned the chemistry lane and so he received the well-deserved Nobel prize … “for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances“. He also rather famously descended into pure pseudoscientific crackpottery with the belief that mega-doses of Vitamin C could prevent colds and cure cancer.
Perhaps the most famous example is Isaac Newton.
His contributions to maths, physics, and astronomy are immense, hence he is generally recognised as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. He was also deeply into Alchemy hence some argue that he was not the first of the age of reason, but instead was the last of the magicians. He also spent rather a lot of time looking for secret codes within the bible.
My point is this – people are complicated, and that observation holds true for smart people. For notable contributions and the advancement of science they deserve recognition, but when they promote stuff that is wrong, then their existing fame and recognition should not in any way be a shield for valid fact-based criticism.
But what about Biological Sex?
Dr Steven Novella gave a talk at CSICON last Oct, as did Jerry Coyne. If you know them both then you can probably guess that they took completely opposite views.
After sitting through Steve’s talk, Jerry Coyne wrote about it and totally misrepresented it. Steve responded to that here …
Here is my actual position, as articulated (quite clearly, if the overwhelming feedback I got was any indication) in the talk. Biological sex in humans is multifactorial and complicated, pretty much like all of biology. While there are two pathways of sexual development (we are a sexually dimorphic species), humanity is not “strictly” binary because not everyone fits cleanly or unambiguously into one of two sexes. Pretty much every aspect of biological sex has variations, or “differences in sexual development”, or ambiguous features in some individuals. These are the facts, and you cannot meaningfully disagree about this. So how do skeptics disagree? Largely due to semantics (or I guess making the other side into a one-dimensional strawman).
…
I then gave as an example of biological sex in humans those with CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome). These are people who are XY, produce male levels of testosterone, have undescended testes, produce sperm, and do not develop a uterus, but they do not respond to testosterone so they develop otherwise along the female body plan. They have vaginas, a complete (and often even more so than average) suite of female secondary sexual characteristics, and typical female neurological development. So they have male genetics, hormones, and gametes, but female genitalia, body and brain. So – are they male or female? Do some men have vaginas, or do some women have XY chromosomes? You see the parallel?
…
To me it is an unavoidable and simple fact that biological sex in humans is not strictly binary. I always use the modifier “strictly” to be as clear as possible. Even critics of this position admit humans are only “mostly” binary when it comes to sex. But they say – “mostly” binary equals binary. But this is nonsensical – it is a purely semantic argument.
What they are saying (pretty directly) is that biological sex in humans is binary, and anyone who does not fit into this binary simply doesn’t count. They also say that some features of sexual dimorphism in humans don’t count. Coyne’s position is that we should categorize biological sex by gametes and gametes only. Why? He only said during his talk that this is how it is done, so an appeal to tradition, I guess. He seems to be engaged in a bit of circular logic – biological sex is binary because of gametes, and we use gametes to define biological sex because they are essentially binary (with rare exceptions). I have also seen him make the justification (which I find ironic coming from an evolutionary biologist) that biological sex is about reproduction, and reproduction is all about gametes. But biological features, even if they evolved mainly for a specific purpose, often take on other purposes and aspects. I would argue that people are more than their gametes. Again – context matters. Should we have sperm and egg leagues in competitive sports? Should we just have pictures of sperms and eggs on signs outside public bathrooms?
Steve gets into a lot more detail.
If time permits, it is well worth a read, because it really is an excellent insightful article, and truly will open your eyes to the real scientific reality of just how complex it actually is.
What can I say but the obvious one, life is complicated. To adopt strict binary criteria does not work because there are exceptions.
As individuals we either come to terms with this reality, or we carry on closing our eyes to it and blindly blunder on.
The things that are scientifically true remain true, even in a world where many don’t believe it. Reality is what it is, we don’t get to vote on what we want it to be.