First, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker's removal of Coyne’s piece from FFRF's website is NOT advocating for lgbTQIA+ rights. The first letter in the ever-expanding alphabet soup is L. Lesbians are female people. As females, we are oppressed by males who originally claimed all they want is to be accepted (and to pee) but who now invade female showers, female prisons, rape crisis centers, even lesbian dating apps. Heterosexual men who have decided to call themselves women and therefore conclude that they are lesbians because they want to screw women are sadly incorrect. If anything, their claims that actual lesbians are bigots for not wanting to have sex with them have driven us even farther from their cause.
Second, I wouldn't say the ACLU has suffered mission creep. They actively work against women's sex-based rights. That's a reversal, as Biden's “minor rule changes to Title IX” were actually a reversal of the intent and plain reading of the text of that law. Why any woman still gives the ACLU donations is a mystery. If you'd prefer to donate to a group that truly helps women, I suggest LGB or find us in a few weeks at XxFemaleAthletics.com or choose any other group that won't EVER get co-opted by transgender ideology.
You know who is actually advocating for lesbian rights? US Republicans who've written and passed laws keeping males out of female sports and showers. Imagine that. Right wing laws are pro-lesbian. So readers, please don't ever say anti-lgbTQIA2S+ again. When you hear newscasters or your friends or politicians using that expression, ask them to stop. Tell them policies that protect women are NOT anti-LGBT. They are pro-lesbian because we are female. And any policies that help lesbians probably help gay men too. After all, we were the primary blood donors to gay men during the AIDS crisis. Today, men also need the right to privacy and dignity in showers and other sex-segregated spaces.
Finally, lets dig in this year and completely divorce the LGB from the TQ+. They've ridden far too long on the good work we've done over the decades in the fight for gay and lesbian rights. Without the name we built fighting the good fight for same sex marriage, they'd have nothing. The best way to stop them from degrading women's rights even more is to separate ourselves in the minds of the public. Whenever you comment online, if you use the lowercase lgb you'll remind everyone that we are oppressed by the very groups we spent our lives building. We need LGB organizations in every US state and all over Europe. The more we distinguish ourselves from those who tread on our rights, the faster we'll end this travesty of human rights organizations destroying our rights.
I support lg continuing to distinguish ourselves and objecting every time we are dismissively grouped with the alphabet soup.
I don’t think this is enough to stop the degradation of women’s or lgb rights though. IMO, that requires us taking down gender ideology which many of us feel is deeply homophobic and misogynistic. The bigger question is how to we do that?
We know it’s roots and how it came to be indoctrinated into society. It started in academia as a philosophical theory - and a bad one at that as it was filled with contradictions, stereotypes and societal problems that ought to have been foreseeable if anyone was paying attention. But who really read the almost incomprehensible texts of Judith Butler and her predecessors except lesbian academics and anyone enrolled in women’s study programs? Even she struggles to define what she means by “gender” and digresses off topic into academic speak every time she is challenged. This theory was allowed to go uncontested in academia and anyone who dissented was tossed out of academia and shouted down (think Kathleen Stock). We saw women’s study and gay and lesbian study programs shift into being called “gender study departments”, issuing master’s degrees in what was literally junk science and a highly contentious philosophical belief. Major funding went into those programs and entire generations of uni students were indoctrinated into this theory and went on to teach it in the primary school system to little ones. Many of these graduates sought employment in LGBT+ activist groups which became incredibly well funded. Think about it: Human Rights Campaign raises in excess of $80 million per year in ANNUAL donations and they are but one of the LG legacy groups in the US. That’s immense lobby power. In case anyone missed the memo, they appointed to their board was a straight, parent advocate of a trans IDing child.
My vote is that we must take on academia and demand to know how is funding these programs that have indoctrinated junk science into society and caused such harm. We know who many of the funders of these programs are but a considerable amount of funding has come from government.
I think unless we make an concerted effort to take away the funding to gender study programs and to corporations funding legacy LGBTQ+ groups that have bought into gender ideology and have entrenched on lg and women’s rights and failed to safeguard children, we’re fighting an uphill battle.
Transitioning profiteers are a big part of the problem because they do more than just donate. They specify what the lgbT organizations can do with their money, which means they essentially direct the programs that are most destructive such as those that indoctrinate kids in schools.
We have some ideas that will make a dent in their manipulations. Do you want to talk offline?
Thank you also for pointing out a big part of the problem (which most of us know) is the vast sums of money being made off “gender affirming care”. We fight some mighty forces to try to take down gender ideology just as we did to get gay civil rights passed and to stop the open persecution of LG in Western nations.
I remain optimistic that we can change things if enough heads get together because LG wrote the playbook on effective activism.
I also wish to, again, thank the very brave leadership of Bev Jackson, Kate Harris and everyone at LGB Alliance UK. We will indeed build a monument to them someday. Personally I wish to also build a monument to Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce. What fine minds they possess 👏. What cohesive writing skills 👏. Lol, I plan on starting a letter writing campaign to Berkley in Guerilla Girls style. “Dear Berkley, we know you feel terrible about giving Judith Butler a tenured position and ought to appoint Kathleen Stock to take over your humanities department. Please pay her an exorbitant amount of money and make all of your students buy these books …”. In case people didn’t know because they don’t follow art or artists, the Guerilla Girls have allegedly thrown the feminist gauntlet that anyone can be a Guerilla Girl. Just dawn the mask and let’s go girls.
Feel free to DM me and we can set up a time to talk.
Trusting you aware of Jennifer Sey’s company, XX-XY Athletics which has risen to take on males being allowed to compete in female sports and branded themselves accordingly. Ex C suite for Levi Strauss and a retired US national gymnast. Her company sells high quality sports wear online and recently started shipping internationally so I think it’s important for people to support her company if they are opposed to trans women being allowed to compete in female sports as she attempts to take on sports wear giants. She also writes in Substack and is doing good activism to promote some of the female detransitioners and women in sports who have launched lawsuits. While I don’t agree with some of her positions, she appears to be making headway on the sports front.
I’m so glad you wrote about this, and so incisively, as always. As I watched this play out, I was struck by a couple things: first, that the original article was written by an intern, and second, how Dawkins responded to that in his resignation letter:
“Publishing the silly and unscientific “What is a Woman” article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgment, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field, namely Biology, Jerry Coyne. But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal.”
I recently witnessed something similar from a US magazine that is particularly good at economic analysis from a progressive (in the old-time, non-extreme-identitarian sense) perspective. In the midst of a number of excellent articles in its most recent issue, one article laid a great, big rotten egg. The subtitle was “After Donald Trump’s transphobic campaign, will Democrats continue to support transgender people?” All the unevidenced tropes were there, starting early on with a quote from Chase Strangio. The two writers were young interns, likely left to their own devices in writing this.
Much as you pithily describe the co-presidents of FFRF, the senior editors of the magazine appear to be wholly “unaware of having been co-opted into an intolerant ideology” in offering such an article. Also, much the same as it is astounding to see FFRF fail to recognize that it is in thrall to a belief system, these editors fail to recognize that their interns turned in a completely unevidenced, advocacy driven article in a magazine that prides itself on deep-dive research. (As an aside, I did not leave this lie, but wrote to them about the problems with the article.)
I think it comes down, in both cases, to exactly what you note:
> “First, American liberals constantly fall into the logical fallacy of assuming that if Christian nationalists oppose something, anyone who opposes it is a Christian nationalist.” (I would only add that many who style themselves “progressives” fall into this trap as well, and some, like AOC, are among the worst offenders.)
Your second point is also spot-on, and allied to the first.
> “organizations such as the FFRF see only one flank: the attack from religious fanatics.”
I thought Coyne’s point, that FFRF has strayed far from its core mission with this, important, too. (The same holds for the magazine I describe.) It is mind-boggling that organizations like these fail to grasp how much they are undermining their credibility. Good on Coyne, Pinker, and the ever gracious Dawkins, for resigning.
Goodness, I hope you will forgive the length of this comment! Your excellent article just got me thinking about all this more.
A trenchant analysis of the downfall of the FRRF. The story is indicative of just how much work there is still to do to remove the blinkers from the eyes of so many of those who consider themselves liberal-minded and well-intentioned. Such people are dangerously ill-informed and unaware of the consequences of their complicity.
Good summary, though I think it is too generous to say of Gaylor and Barker that 'they appear unaware of having been co-opted into an intolerant ideology.' Anybody who goes along with a lie as blatant as 'transwomen are women' has cynically calculated what they stand to gain by it and what they stand to lose by opposing it. TWAW is not a statement of belief but rather a shibboleth among professing libs.
Similar is my response to: 'American liberals constantly fall into the logical fallacy of assuming that if Christian nationalists oppose something, anyone who opposes it is a Christian nationalist.' I don't think most liberals are that dumb. Rather, they are clever enough to know how stigmatizing it is within their circles to be cast as sympathetic to Christian nationalism, how to avoid that stigma and how to cynically leverage it against co-religionists.
I agree. From my observations, many are simply ignorant which is to say they lack of knowledge, understanding, or awareness about the issues. Any attempts to get them to reason fall flat because they lack critical thinking skills. And for that I lay place blame largely on academia and society for our failure to teach critical thinking skills and to silence voices of dissent. We’ve all seen it - “debate closed” and, across most universities campuses, students allowed to shout over lecturers and repeat mindless slogans with no basis of understanding.
Humans and most mammals are genetically programmed to recognize, almost instantly, the sex of those around them. It requires perverse training and conscious effort for them to act as if they don't.
What is more likely then? That grown adults, including trained biologists, genuinely believe that a man can transform into some kind of woman. Or that they have been bullied and/or incentivised into saying and pretending they do?
Nobody buys that Gaylor and Barker are 'unaware' of who has the better argument: their intern Kat Grant or Pinker, Coyne and Dawkins. What Gaylor and Barker are certainly aware of, though, is whose argument is currently more expedient and whose argument they need to censor. Their actions bespeak cowardice not ignorance.
I agree with you both because ignorance quicky turns to malice when cornered.
Let's not forget greed. Whether seeking profit or protecting assets, people have a lot to lose by going against the prevailing tide. Much easier to throw women under the bus, or on the pyre, as history clearly demonstrates.
Spot on. FRFF will get no more money from me until Ron Reagan gets on TV and states that he is no longer afraid of being roasted at the modern-day heretic’s stake.
First, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker's removal of Coyne’s piece from FFRF's website is NOT advocating for lgbTQIA+ rights. The first letter in the ever-expanding alphabet soup is L. Lesbians are female people. As females, we are oppressed by males who originally claimed all they want is to be accepted (and to pee) but who now invade female showers, female prisons, rape crisis centers, even lesbian dating apps. Heterosexual men who have decided to call themselves women and therefore conclude that they are lesbians because they want to screw women are sadly incorrect. If anything, their claims that actual lesbians are bigots for not wanting to have sex with them have driven us even farther from their cause.
Second, I wouldn't say the ACLU has suffered mission creep. They actively work against women's sex-based rights. That's a reversal, as Biden's “minor rule changes to Title IX” were actually a reversal of the intent and plain reading of the text of that law. Why any woman still gives the ACLU donations is a mystery. If you'd prefer to donate to a group that truly helps women, I suggest LGB or find us in a few weeks at XxFemaleAthletics.com or choose any other group that won't EVER get co-opted by transgender ideology.
You know who is actually advocating for lesbian rights? US Republicans who've written and passed laws keeping males out of female sports and showers. Imagine that. Right wing laws are pro-lesbian. So readers, please don't ever say anti-lgbTQIA2S+ again. When you hear newscasters or your friends or politicians using that expression, ask them to stop. Tell them policies that protect women are NOT anti-LGBT. They are pro-lesbian because we are female. And any policies that help lesbians probably help gay men too. After all, we were the primary blood donors to gay men during the AIDS crisis. Today, men also need the right to privacy and dignity in showers and other sex-segregated spaces.
Finally, lets dig in this year and completely divorce the LGB from the TQ+. They've ridden far too long on the good work we've done over the decades in the fight for gay and lesbian rights. Without the name we built fighting the good fight for same sex marriage, they'd have nothing. The best way to stop them from degrading women's rights even more is to separate ourselves in the minds of the public. Whenever you comment online, if you use the lowercase lgb you'll remind everyone that we are oppressed by the very groups we spent our lives building. We need LGB organizations in every US state and all over Europe. The more we distinguish ourselves from those who tread on our rights, the faster we'll end this travesty of human rights organizations destroying our rights.
2025 is going to be a great year!
I support lg continuing to distinguish ourselves and objecting every time we are dismissively grouped with the alphabet soup.
I don’t think this is enough to stop the degradation of women’s or lgb rights though. IMO, that requires us taking down gender ideology which many of us feel is deeply homophobic and misogynistic. The bigger question is how to we do that?
We know it’s roots and how it came to be indoctrinated into society. It started in academia as a philosophical theory - and a bad one at that as it was filled with contradictions, stereotypes and societal problems that ought to have been foreseeable if anyone was paying attention. But who really read the almost incomprehensible texts of Judith Butler and her predecessors except lesbian academics and anyone enrolled in women’s study programs? Even she struggles to define what she means by “gender” and digresses off topic into academic speak every time she is challenged. This theory was allowed to go uncontested in academia and anyone who dissented was tossed out of academia and shouted down (think Kathleen Stock). We saw women’s study and gay and lesbian study programs shift into being called “gender study departments”, issuing master’s degrees in what was literally junk science and a highly contentious philosophical belief. Major funding went into those programs and entire generations of uni students were indoctrinated into this theory and went on to teach it in the primary school system to little ones. Many of these graduates sought employment in LGBT+ activist groups which became incredibly well funded. Think about it: Human Rights Campaign raises in excess of $80 million per year in ANNUAL donations and they are but one of the LG legacy groups in the US. That’s immense lobby power. In case anyone missed the memo, they appointed to their board was a straight, parent advocate of a trans IDing child.
My vote is that we must take on academia and demand to know how is funding these programs that have indoctrinated junk science into society and caused such harm. We know who many of the funders of these programs are but a considerable amount of funding has come from government.
I think unless we make an concerted effort to take away the funding to gender study programs and to corporations funding legacy LGBTQ+ groups that have bought into gender ideology and have entrenched on lg and women’s rights and failed to safeguard children, we’re fighting an uphill battle.
Transitioning profiteers are a big part of the problem because they do more than just donate. They specify what the lgbT organizations can do with their money, which means they essentially direct the programs that are most destructive such as those that indoctrinate kids in schools.
We have some ideas that will make a dent in their manipulations. Do you want to talk offline?
Thank you also for pointing out a big part of the problem (which most of us know) is the vast sums of money being made off “gender affirming care”. We fight some mighty forces to try to take down gender ideology just as we did to get gay civil rights passed and to stop the open persecution of LG in Western nations.
I remain optimistic that we can change things if enough heads get together because LG wrote the playbook on effective activism.
I also wish to, again, thank the very brave leadership of Bev Jackson, Kate Harris and everyone at LGB Alliance UK. We will indeed build a monument to them someday. Personally I wish to also build a monument to Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce. What fine minds they possess 👏. What cohesive writing skills 👏. Lol, I plan on starting a letter writing campaign to Berkley in Guerilla Girls style. “Dear Berkley, we know you feel terrible about giving Judith Butler a tenured position and ought to appoint Kathleen Stock to take over your humanities department. Please pay her an exorbitant amount of money and make all of your students buy these books …”. In case people didn’t know because they don’t follow art or artists, the Guerilla Girls have allegedly thrown the feminist gauntlet that anyone can be a Guerilla Girl. Just dawn the mask and let’s go girls.
Feel free to DM me and we can set up a time to talk.
Trusting you aware of Jennifer Sey’s company, XX-XY Athletics which has risen to take on males being allowed to compete in female sports and branded themselves accordingly. Ex C suite for Levi Strauss and a retired US national gymnast. Her company sells high quality sports wear online and recently started shipping internationally so I think it’s important for people to support her company if they are opposed to trans women being allowed to compete in female sports as she attempts to take on sports wear giants. She also writes in Substack and is doing good activism to promote some of the female detransitioners and women in sports who have launched lawsuits. While I don’t agree with some of her positions, she appears to be making headway on the sports front.
I’m so glad you wrote about this, and so incisively, as always. As I watched this play out, I was struck by a couple things: first, that the original article was written by an intern, and second, how Dawkins responded to that in his resignation letter:
“Publishing the silly and unscientific “What is a Woman” article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgment, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field, namely Biology, Jerry Coyne. But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal.”
I recently witnessed something similar from a US magazine that is particularly good at economic analysis from a progressive (in the old-time, non-extreme-identitarian sense) perspective. In the midst of a number of excellent articles in its most recent issue, one article laid a great, big rotten egg. The subtitle was “After Donald Trump’s transphobic campaign, will Democrats continue to support transgender people?” All the unevidenced tropes were there, starting early on with a quote from Chase Strangio. The two writers were young interns, likely left to their own devices in writing this.
Much as you pithily describe the co-presidents of FFRF, the senior editors of the magazine appear to be wholly “unaware of having been co-opted into an intolerant ideology” in offering such an article. Also, much the same as it is astounding to see FFRF fail to recognize that it is in thrall to a belief system, these editors fail to recognize that their interns turned in a completely unevidenced, advocacy driven article in a magazine that prides itself on deep-dive research. (As an aside, I did not leave this lie, but wrote to them about the problems with the article.)
I think it comes down, in both cases, to exactly what you note:
> “First, American liberals constantly fall into the logical fallacy of assuming that if Christian nationalists oppose something, anyone who opposes it is a Christian nationalist.” (I would only add that many who style themselves “progressives” fall into this trap as well, and some, like AOC, are among the worst offenders.)
Your second point is also spot-on, and allied to the first.
> “organizations such as the FFRF see only one flank: the attack from religious fanatics.”
I thought Coyne’s point, that FFRF has strayed far from its core mission with this, important, too. (The same holds for the magazine I describe.) It is mind-boggling that organizations like these fail to grasp how much they are undermining their credibility. Good on Coyne, Pinker, and the ever gracious Dawkins, for resigning.
Goodness, I hope you will forgive the length of this comment! Your excellent article just got me thinking about all this more.
A trenchant analysis of the downfall of the FRRF. The story is indicative of just how much work there is still to do to remove the blinkers from the eyes of so many of those who consider themselves liberal-minded and well-intentioned. Such people are dangerously ill-informed and unaware of the consequences of their complicity.
Good summary, though I think it is too generous to say of Gaylor and Barker that 'they appear unaware of having been co-opted into an intolerant ideology.' Anybody who goes along with a lie as blatant as 'transwomen are women' has cynically calculated what they stand to gain by it and what they stand to lose by opposing it. TWAW is not a statement of belief but rather a shibboleth among professing libs.
Similar is my response to: 'American liberals constantly fall into the logical fallacy of assuming that if Christian nationalists oppose something, anyone who opposes it is a Christian nationalist.' I don't think most liberals are that dumb. Rather, they are clever enough to know how stigmatizing it is within their circles to be cast as sympathetic to Christian nationalism, how to avoid that stigma and how to cynically leverage it against co-religionists.
Personally I think you underestimate the amount of stupidity, ignorance and indifference in the world and overestimate the amount of malice.
I agree. From my observations, many are simply ignorant which is to say they lack of knowledge, understanding, or awareness about the issues. Any attempts to get them to reason fall flat because they lack critical thinking skills. And for that I lay place blame largely on academia and society for our failure to teach critical thinking skills and to silence voices of dissent. We’ve all seen it - “debate closed” and, across most universities campuses, students allowed to shout over lecturers and repeat mindless slogans with no basis of understanding.
Humans and most mammals are genetically programmed to recognize, almost instantly, the sex of those around them. It requires perverse training and conscious effort for them to act as if they don't.
What is more likely then? That grown adults, including trained biologists, genuinely believe that a man can transform into some kind of woman. Or that they have been bullied and/or incentivised into saying and pretending they do?
Nobody buys that Gaylor and Barker are 'unaware' of who has the better argument: their intern Kat Grant or Pinker, Coyne and Dawkins. What Gaylor and Barker are certainly aware of, though, is whose argument is currently more expedient and whose argument they need to censor. Their actions bespeak cowardice not ignorance.
I agree with you both because ignorance quicky turns to malice when cornered.
Let's not forget greed. Whether seeking profit or protecting assets, people have a lot to lose by going against the prevailing tide. Much easier to throw women under the bus, or on the pyre, as history clearly demonstrates.
Yep
Brilliant, Bev - I do hope you're right, thank you and all the best!
What sort of person becomes "distressed" after reading verifiable facts, that an apology would assuage.
I used to live in a world where distress was caused by evidence of actual harm.
The Age of Cowardess yes, and, The Age of Hurty Feels.
Spot on. FRFF will get no more money from me until Ron Reagan gets on TV and states that he is no longer afraid of being roasted at the modern-day heretic’s stake.