Forcing people to choose between reality and trans rights is a bad idea
Jerry Coyne writes:
When I wrote yesterday about my critique of Kat Grant’s “What is a woman?” piece, a critique published on the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) website, I had no idea that what I wrote was being removed by the FFRF at that moment! …
One part of what Coyne wrote resonated with me:
The first is to insist that it is not “transphobic” to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights. Transgender people should surely enjoy all the moral and legal rights of everyone else. But moral and legal rights do not extend to areas in which the “indelible stamp” of sex results in compromising the legal and moral rights of others. 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.
I regard myself as socially liberal. I have championed and been involved in campaigns for civil unions, same sex marriage, euthanasia etc etc. I can’t think of a group that has done more to damage social liberalism than the radical trans activists who have demanded that there is no such thing as binary sex (as opposed to gender which is a spectrum) and try to shut down debate. The backlash to their extremism has meant that the natural goodwill most people have to allowing people to live their lives as they want has been eroded.
Take what has happened here with the Freedom from Religion Foundation. It is basically the largest atheist organisation in the US. By signing up to censorship, they have lost Coyne as a member. But the damage doesn’t stop there.
Steven Pinker has resigned also, and he is the Honorary President of the Foundation. He points out:
With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics.
And the world’s most well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, has also resigned.
None of this would have happened if they had simply allowed debate. But when you censor, it backfires.
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