Jerry Coyne slams FFRF for “abandoning science” while repeating anti-trans lies
When the Wall Street Journal is your megaphone, you’re not being silenced
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In an essay published in print yesterday, on the Trans Day of Visibility, biologist Jerry Coyne wrote in the Wall Street Journal (archived link) about his recent self-own against the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He said the atheist organization is no different from “religious fundamentalists” because they’ve “abandoned science,” and that’s why he and Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker resigned from the group’s honorary advisory board.
The article predictably paints Coyne as the arbiter of good science, leaving out all the lies he told along the way.
If you’re wondering what this is all about, you can read the whole backstory here. But in short, Coyne wrote an article in December that briefly appeared on FFRF’s website titled “Biology is not bigotry.” In it, Coyne wrongly insisted that sex is binary, lied about trans women, and pushed for discrimination against trans people. (More on that later.)
Nowhere in the piece did he describe the countless ways the trans community is under attack, largely by people making similar misguided arguments.
The article was so devoid of facts and empathy that FFRF soon took down the piece and posted their own statement explicitly backing LGBTQIA-plus rights and saying that publishing Coyne’s article “was an error of judgment [that] does not reflect our values or principles.”
The bio bros quit FFRF’s honorary board in response, posting their own pieces referring to the group as “censorious” (Coyne), an “imposer of a new religion” (Pinker), and guilty of caving to “hysterical squeals from predictable quarters” (Dawkins).
So with all that in mind, what did Coyne say in this new Wall Street Journal piece?
After rehashing his complaints against FFRF, Coyne gives the Journal’s conservative readers the red meat they want:
In many ways, transgender ideology is no different from the religious dogma the FFRF was founded to oppose. It insists on doctrines that are palpably untrue (“trans women are women”), engages in circular reasoning (“a woman is whoever she says she is”) and affirms mind/body dualism (“your self-concept is more real than your actual sex”).
It also makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as “transphobes”), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics (J.K. Rowling is the best-known example). Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say.
Written like someone who’s still never had a single conversation with a trans person but pretends to be an expert on the subject anyway…
I’m less interested in explaining biology to him—he’s obviously not interested—and more intrigued by his claims of being silenced for merely telling the truth, because he never mentions the specific lies he told in his own essay.
He doesn’t tell readers about his false claim that “transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women,” which he based on a misleading report published by a UK-based hate group.
He doesn’t tell readers that he concluded his attacks on trans people by saying they should be excluded from certain areas of society:
… 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.
He didn’t include any nuance when discussing sports, categorically excluded trained professionals from being able to work as counselors if they’re trans (which is blatant discrimination), and ignored the documented perils of putting trans women in male prisons (including the mental health impact it has on them).
His lies—the same ones propagated by other ignorant transphobes—have fueled the right-wing assault on trans people. Similar arguments have been used by the Trump administration to kick trans people out of the military, deny a trans member of Congress access to the proper bathroom in the Capitol, and made it nearly impossible for trans people to use their passports.
None of that bothers Coyne, though. He thinks guys like him are the real victims, even saying trans people and their allies accept a “hierarchy of victimhood, in which ‘trans’ people hold a position near the top.”
(Notice that “trans” is in quotation marks. Throughout the piece, if he’s not quoting someone else directly, Coyne refers to “transgender ideology” and “transgenderism.” The only time he uses the word trans without quotation marks is when he pits “trans rights” against “scientific reality.”)
His point is that he’s still a bulwark of science but FFRF and everyone who still supports them have abandoned it:
The FFRF has not only abandoned science but suppressed discussion and argument about its decision. Given the organization’s embrace of quasireligious and unscientific dogma, I’m proud to proclaim myself a heretic.
If only we could all be so silenced and suppressed that our whiny rants appear in a national newspaper… As I said before, no one owes him a platform, including FFRF, and someone who claims to care about facts and critical thinking should figure out why he’s so easily duped by right-wing propagandists anytime the topic involves trans people.
Coyne calls himself a “heretic” because it sounds better than “stubbornly ignorant.” That’s what happens when you live in an echo chamber filled with fellow academics who think the real problem in society is never the most powerful people on the Right but rather the most annoying random college students they can find on the Left.
Dawkins, by the way, shared Coyne’s article and insisted that FFRF and “most secular/humanist/atheist orgs (except Center for Inquiry RDF)… were hijacked by a silly juvenile cult.“ To paraphrase Fish Stark, he’s saying everyone’s part of a cult except the one organization that bears his name. (Nothing dogmatic about that at all…) Pinker also shared it while insisting FFRF has surrendered to “hard-left and woke ideology”… as if basic humanity and a nuanced understanding of science are extreme positions.
Instead of weighing evidence—and there’s plenty of it to debunk his lies—Coyne and his buddies are doing exactly what they decry when it comes to fundamentalism: Coming to a conclusion regardless of the facts, then refusing to budge.
(Portions of this article were published earlier because these people keep repeating the same mistakes)
The FFRF has abandoned science? Nope. First of all, they aren't a scientific organization. They are about maintaining the wall of separation between church and state by reminding people that it is impossible to have freedom of religion without having freedom from religion. Second, The science is pretty clear about the existence of transgender people. Sure, there are aspects of policy that can be debated. The only thing I can think that might need more data is at what point in their transition should a transgender athlete be assigned to the men's or women's category for competition. The IOC and other organizations have guidelines that they revisit periodically to ensure that trans women are competing on a level playing field (because the transphobe's complaints seem to be 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 rooted in the lie that trans people are all men pretending to be women to take advantage of women). Based on what data I know about, I am willing to go with the IOC et al.
Coyne is a prime example of the fact, so misunderstood by the religious, that atheism is just the answer to one question: Do you believe there is a god of any kind? No.
ATTENTION TRANSPHOBIC TROLLS: I will not engage. I will report. I suggest you fuck right off before the banhammer falls.
Like their fundamentalist counterparts, these anti-trans members of the free-thought community have a strong tendency to dehumanize those with whom they disagree. The trans community is tiny, and the threat they pose is mostly in the heads of the people opposing them. In spite of the lack of a genuine threat, our culture is driven to try and hammer people into the approved molds, whether they fit or not.