Mick Hartley

If you read Jerry Coyne's blog you'll be aware of his recent dispute with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an American atheist organisation.

In brief: the FFRF posted a risible article by the "non-binary" Kat Davis, "What is a Woman?". So: the gender binary is an imposition of European colonisers, Terfs claim that transgender women are rapists, and so on and on. The usual stuff in other words, with the inevitable bit about how the boring old gender binary is not enough to encompass the vast wondrousness of the author's own awesome life. With the final flourish:

All of this is to say that there is an answer to the question “what is a woman,” that luckily does not involve plucking a chicken from its feathers. A woman is whoever she says she is.

Which makes no sense. Presumably that should be: "Whoever says they're a woman, is a woman". 

Anyway, an appalled Jerry Coyne, as an Honorary Board Member, wrote a rebuttal, which FFRF co-editor Annie Laurie agreed to publsh – “Biology is not bigotry“. This was then swiftly removed from the FFRF website, with no apology or even notification to Coyne – as he reveals here. 

Subsequently the FFRF has been notified by Coyne himself, by Steven Pinker, and by Richard Dawkins, of their resignation from the Honorary Board of the FFRF. That's three of the biggest heavyweights in the atheist world.

Will the FFRF reconsider? Will they apologise? We'll see, but I personally doubt it. Like so many US institutions which have succumbed to the gender cult, from Scientific American to the ACLU, once they're taken over there's no easy way back. Goodbye to the old world of scientific rationalists like Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker, welcome to the brave new world of the progressive young gender activists.