Dr. Lynch, you asked whether there was any longer a need for the concept of free thought. Your inquiry is motivated by the inclusion of gender critical views here, in a space dedicated to free thought. Yes, gender critical views are sometimes (often?) part of a traditional belief system. I wouldn’t characterize either as being inherently alt-right: There are many Muslims and Jews who are gender critical so to speak, but are by no means alt-right.

You raised an interesting point:

“My view is that it [freethought] made sense as a concept in the past when atheists, secularists and humanists struggled against religious oppression to assert their belief in a world without the supernatural.”

Yet now that most humanists, atheists and secularists have been raised without religion, and live as adults without the confines and restrictions that usually accompany organized religion, you question if there is any justification for a dedicated freethought movement.

I find this interesting because it suggests that you feel the battle has been won, i.e. secularists, humanists, and atheists are no longer oppressed as they were in the past. Given that, why should freethinking, especially if it is critical of gender affirmation, be tolerated? I live in the U.S.; we have our 1st Amendment. I perceive the byline of this publication as essentially the same: “Culturally liberal, politically unaligned”. To me, that means that non-secular, non-atheist expression is also protected by the liberal ideology of freethought. The same is true for gender critical views, whatever their motivation may be. There aren’t restrictions on what freethought is the correct sort. Society informs ethical (if not strictly legal) guidelines for what is outside the pale, e.g. neo-Nazism. Acknowledgement of the immutability of human sexual dimorphism is NOT outside the pale, nor does it exclude lesbian and gay sexuality and culture.

I believe that we still need freethinking, as much as ever.

To declare that male is the default, one would have to be so fanatical as to ignore men being 92% of workplace deaths, 90% of homeless, 75-80% of suicides, “women and children first” still being a rule, “bring back our girls” when Boko Haram kidnapped 300 girls while the 10,000 boys killed or weaponized goes unmentioned, that “equity” programs target male-dominated disciplines while female dominated disciplines are seen as admirable or at least unremarkable and unworthy of comparable programs, the fact that more high school and college graduates are women than men. Oh, and there are few, if any, programs to help with man with any of this, and dozens or hundreds or programs to help women. If “man” is the default, then “woman” is the ideal.

Or you can knock that obvious nonsense off altogether.

Feminists never mention that all of this deranged Intersectional mess originated from feminist theory. It’s literally just applying Patriarchy Theory to *everything*. “White supremacy,” the Woke kind that operates as an invisible “system” without people in white hoods is just the race version of The Patriarchy. “Cisnormativity” and “transphobia” is just the Queer Theory version of The Patriarchy. Feminists started this. What’s most remarkable is that feminists want to “win” the Intersectional wars, not end them. If all of this went away, feminists would go back to pretending to be the most marginalized, most oppressed instead of reflecting on what they started, and what happens when paranoid people see demons around every corner, instead of recognizing what they have, having gratitude for it, and using their privilege to help people who don’t have it, like women (and men) in Iran, Afghanistan and other countries who are *actually* oppressed.

The feminist fight against trans ideology isn’t about women’s rights, it’s about who gets to win, and stand central in the victim wars. There Can Be Only One. Feminists claimed the right to be the eternal victims, but then there was competition. Feminists created this hierarchy in the first place, made victimhood a valuable commodity, and then act surprised when there’s a gold rush to capitalize on it. Trans fanatics have now put women where feminists put men. And feminist narcissism and hypocrisy is okay with the latter, but not the former, even though they’re exactly the same and based on exactly the same deranged “power” theories. And they wonder why so many men would rather cut off their balls than live as the evil, oppressive men, when female privilege is just a scalpel away.

The equation between believing in God and believing one is a particular gender doesn’t quite hold up. The former is about believing in something outside oneself, and is therefore subject to scrutiny. The latter is about something internal. So, in the latter case, one could not believe the person that they are the gender that they say they are. But it is an objective fact that they do feel that way.

In short, it’s pretty clear that trans people do indeed exist. And they’ve existed, it seems, in all times and places, though how society treats them has varied. So this isn’t a phenomenon that has just happened in the past five years or something because of social media. Trans people really do believe they are the gender they say they are, despite overwhelming pressure and danger of doing so. I think their decision needs to be respected and treated with understanding.

The way Helen Joyce portrays trans people in this interview is that they are mistaken, they have been brainwashed, or they have nefarious motives. This doesn’t seem at all like an approach based in empathy and respect. I think one could have respectful conversations about the really difficult issues like how to ensure sports are fair for everyone, or how to ensure sensitive spaces are accessible and safe for everyone, but the approach adopted here doesn’t seem to me like the way to begin these conversations.