{"id":152665,"date":"2024-06-11T01:56:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T05:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/?p=152665"},"modified":"2024-06-10T10:50:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T14:50:09","slug":"atheist-transphobia-superstition-over-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152665","title":{"rendered":"Atheist transphobia: Superstition over science"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Atheist transphobia: Superstition over science\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h3agg9AwnB8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nI’m going to Women in Secularism 3 this weekend,\r\nand I feel like this is a good time to get into something relevant: my experiences as\r\na woman in the secular community. Particularly, my experiences as a woman whose\r\ngender is often considered debatable. When Dave Silverman went to this year’s Conservative\r\nPolitical Action Conference, the secular community raised a lot of questions about some of the\r\nstatements he made: Why, exactly, would the president of American Atheists suggest that\r\nabortion is the one human right that there’s a secular argument against? But during the much-needed uproar over this,\r\nSilverman’s other statements were largely ignored.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nYes, he implied that opposing reproductive\r\nrights can be a valid difference of opinion within the atheist movement. And that’s not okay. But he also gave the impression that, unlike\r\nabortion, the issue of gay marriage was a settled and “clean-cut” question for atheists. Silverman later defended this on Twitter,\r\nsaying: “How many anti-gay atheists do you know? I can’t name any off the top of my head. I know a few anti-choice atheists.” He continued: “School prayer, Death with Dignity,\r\nLGBT equality is 100% religious. That was my contrast.” There weren’t quite so many secular voices\r\npushing back against the idea that opposition to LGBT equality is “100% religious”. Chris Stedman, a Humanist chaplain at Harvard,\r\nwas one of the few to respond to this, saying: “I’ve heard from atheists who say that I’m\r\ntoo “effeminate,” that my being gay makes atheists seem “like freaks,” or that my “obvious\r\nhomosexuality” makes me an ineffectual voice for atheists.” It would be easy to think that support for\r\nthe LGBT community is nearly universal among atheists.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWhat reason would they have to dislike us,\r\nwhen they’re free of any religious dogma marking us as an abomination? And polling data would seem to confirm this. A 2012 Gallup poll found that 88% of those\r\nwith “no religious identity” supported the legality of same-sex marriage. A 2014 poll by the Public Religion Research\r\nThe Institute similarly found that 73% of the “religiously unaffiliated” were in favor of\r\nlegalizing gay marriage. The internet-based Secular Census, consisting\r\nof a self-selected convenience sample of secular Americans who volunteered to respond, found\r\neven higher rates of support: 97.3% of those who participated said that gay couples should\r\nbe allowed to marry. It does look pretty open-and-shut: support\r\nfor marriage equality is apparently the norm among non-religious people, and most of that\r\ndemographic has indeed settled on this as their answer.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThere’s just one little problem. “Marriage equality” and “LGBT equality” are\r\nnot synonyms. Believe it or not, equality for LGBT people\r\ndoes not begin and end with marriage. And a person’s support for marriage equality\r\ntells us nothing about their views on employment nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people,\r\nhousing nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, LGBT inclusion in the armed forces,\r\nthe competence of LGBT people as parents, the parental rights of LGBT people, the reproductive\r\nrights of LGBT people, the adoption rights of LGBT people, so-called “reparative therapy”\r\nfor LGBT people, hate crime laws protecting LGBT people, anti-bullying policies protecting\r\nLGBT students, public accommodations protections for transgender people, the right of trans\r\npeople to have their identity documents updated without undergoing invasive surgeries, the\r\ncoverage of transition-related procedures under healthcare plans, the right of trans\r\nstudents to present and be recognized as their gender in schools, the right of trans people\r\nto be free from police harassment and profiling, the right of trans people to be treated as\r\ntheir gender in homeless and domestic violence shelters, the right of trans people to be\r\nhoused according to their gender in prisons, the right of trans people to receive appropriate\r\nmedical treatment in prisons, or gender norms and gender variance in general.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nWhile there are plenty of polls focusing on\r\nmarriage equality and the opinions of different demographics on that issue, far less attention\r\nis given to these other areas. And that’s a pretty serious gap because many\r\nof these issues are of far more immediate importance to us than marriage. Certainly, marriage does matter – my partner\r\nand I are getting married this summer. But living in this society as a trans woman\r\nis something I have to deal with every day. One thing I’ve often had to deal with is the\r\nopinions of other atheists on just about every aspect of my existence. Chris Stedman is far from the only one who’s\r\nfaced hostility from atheists for what they perceive as a deviation from gender norms. Long before I came out before I transitioned\r\n– before I ever talked about trans issues at all – just about the only thing I covered\r\nwas atheism, and atheists comprised most of my audience.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nBut even back then, plenty of people were\r\nalready under the impression that I was trans. Here’s what some atheists had to say about\r\nmy earlier work: “Stop lying to yourself and admit you’re a man.” “Why are you dressed like a girl?” “Denying your gender is called being delusional.” “You’re a transexual? Now you make atheists look bad.” “Zinnia Jones creeps me out too. … Flamers creep me out. A lot. I could never take a guy seriously if he wore\r\nmakeup and had a girly voice, etc.” “I honestly think he makes an ugly woman.” “This guy is brilliant and always very well-spoken, but I can never use him as a reference for helping me make a point.” “This chick has the golden voice of Ted Williams.” “Why can’t say out loud that someone looks\r\nlike a freak if he\/she does?” “all he needs is boobs now and I’d hit it…\r\nnot” You can see that these atheists have very positive attitudes toward the LGBT\r\ncommunity – assuming the T stands for Thunderf00t.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nReally, what is going on here? From what I’ve been told, atheists should\r\nhave no reason to treat us this way. And yet, here they are. So, does this mean that their transphobia\r\nis due to some failure to let go of religious views on trans people? Is it just a Judeo-Christian cultural value\r\nthat they’ve absorbed, and haven’t yet overcome? I don’t think so. When you look at what these atheists are\r\nsaying, their claims have nothing to do with religion. If you’re wondering how they can be transphobic\r\ndespite being atheists, you’re asking precisely the wrong question. They aren’t transphobic despite their\r\natheism. They’re transphobic because of their atheism. And I don’t mean that their atheism has made\r\nthem merely indifferent. No – it’s actively made their transphobia\r\nworse.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAs unlikely as that might sound, it’s pretty\r\nobvious from the way they structure their arguments. It’s not an appeal to faith – far from it. They appeal to the values of science, observation,\r\nand reality because they feel that these values support their transphobia. In many cases, they compare being\r\ntrans to believing in God. They’re not speaking the language of religion,\r\nthey’re speaking the language of secularism. Here’s a really good example of this – from\r\nmy YouTube comments, naturally: “The odd thing about having a transgender identity is that\r\nyour mind does not match your biology. If you think you’re a dolphin but you’re not,\r\nyour belief does not match reality and you’re delusional. If you think you’re a man and you have XY\r\nchromosomes, testes, and a penis, then your identity matches reality. How can you have disdain for the religious\r\nhaving no proof of the Divine and yet defend those with no evidence that their gender doesn’t\r\nmatch their genitals?” And another one: “I understand that people\r\ncan perceive gender and sex to be different.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nBut like an anorexic’s self-image vs. her\r\nactual body, one is merely in the mind with no empirical evidence to back it up. When your belief crosses the line where you\r\nare willing to mutilate yourself because of it, it’s usually called a disease.” And then there’s this person: “THERE ARE TWO\r\nSEXES; MALE AND FEMALE. SOMEONE WHO THINKS THEY ARE THE OPPOSITE SEX\r\nIS CALLED MENTALLY ILL.” Notice how this is closely related to the\r\ntendency to conflate religious belief with “delusion” or “mental illness”. That itself is a problem – do these people\r\nnot realize that atheists can have mental illnesses too, and that this isn’t anything\r\nlike being religious? It’s not like I can just pick up a Dawkins\r\nbook and decide to deconvert from having depression and anxiety.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThis alone shows that these people don’t have\r\na very good grasp of what mental illness even is. So it’s not surprising that they’re prepared\r\nto dismiss just about anything that they label a “mental illness” – in this case, being trans. But when they go on and on about this, it\r\ncomes off as more of an expression of a stigmatizing attitude, not an articulation of some uncomfortable\r\ntruth. They’re not rocking the boat here. They’re not being edgy, they’re not upsetting\r\nthe status quo.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.pexels.com\/photos\/7203956\/pexels-photo-7203956.jpeg?auto=compress&amp;cs=tinysrgb&amp;h=650&amp;w=940\" \/>\r\n\r\nInstead, the sheer redundancy of such a declaration\r\nexposes their total unfamiliarity with the medical consensus. Since 1980, three editions of the Diagnostic\r\nand Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have included some kind of diagnosis related\r\nto being trans, under names like transsexualism, gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria. “What the hell is the diagnostic manual of\r\nwhatever?”, my bewildered atheist YouTube commenters might ask. Oh, it’s just a little book by the American\r\nPsychiatric Association. It’s generally considered authoritative by\r\ndoctors, researchers, insurance companies, and other delusional folks like that. So, let’s say you’ve been diagnosed with gender\r\ndysphoria. What happens now that you’ve been diagnosed\r\nwith this “mental illness”, as my friends in the comments put it? Well, I already know what happens, because\r\nI’ve been diagnosed with this! Spoiler alert: I transitioned.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAnd this wasn’t some original idea of mine\r\nthat I had to convince anyone to go along with. There are millions of trans people around\r\nthe world – it’s so common that there’s an established treatment protocol for us. It’s called the Standards of Care, published\r\nby the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Here’s what it has to say about our condition:\r\n“Some people experience gender dysphoria at such a level that the distress meets the criteria\r\nfor a formal diagnosis that might be classified as a mental disorder.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nSuch a diagnosis is not a license for stigmatization\r\nor the deprivation of civil and human rights. … Thus, transsexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming\r\nindividuals are not inherently disordered. Rather, the distress of gender dysphoria,\r\nwhen present, is the concern that might be diagnosable and for which various treatment\r\noptions are available.” “Stigmatization” – how about that. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to spout off\r\nabout how we must be “delusional”? I assume that all the decent people out there\r\nalready understand this, but some of you need it spelled out.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAnd what about those various treatment options? Let’s take a look at section VIII: “Medical\r\nNecessity of Hormone Therapy – Feminizing\/masculinizing hormone therapy – the administration of exogenous\r\nendocrine agents to induce feminizing or masculinizing changes – is a medically necessary intervention\r\nfor many transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals with gender dysphoria.” Section XI: “Sex Reassignment Surgery\r\nIs Effective and Medically Necessary – … While many transsexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming\r\nindividuals find comfort with their gender identity, role, and expression without surgery,\r\nfor many others, surgery is essential and medically necessary to alleviate their gender dysphoria. For the latter group, relief from gender dysphoria\r\ncannot be achieved without modification of their primary and\/or secondary sex characteristics\r\nto establish greater congruence with their gender identity.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n… Follow-up studies have shown an undeniable\r\nbeneficial effect of sex reassignment surgery on postoperative outcomes such as subjective\r\nwell-being, cosmesis, and sexual function.” “A medically necessary intervention”. “Effective and medically necessary”. “An undeniable beneficial effect”. And now you know how this particular “mental\r\nillness” is treated. By the way, that’s from version 7 of the Standards\r\nof Care. Six editions came before it,\r\ndating back to 1979. This is not experimental – it’s an everyday\r\nmedical treatment. So I don’t know what these people expect\r\nfrom me when they start yelling about how I’m “mentally ill”. I already saw a therapist about this. And then they referred me to a gynecologist. And pretty soon they’ll refer me to some surgeons. On the one hand, there’s the constellation\r\nof medical professionals who are working with me on this little upgrade and the hundreds\r\nmore who’ve worked to develop protocols for this over several decades.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nOn the other hand, there’s FluffyFeralMarmot,\r\nan esteemed YouTube commenter. Tell me again who I should be taking medical\r\nadvice from. Transphobes call us mentally ill because they\r\nthink it’s an easy way to try and shame us for who we are. The problem is that they didn’t give a moment’s\r\nthought to what would come after that. They didn’t bother spending five minutes learning\r\nabout how this is treated, because they were too busy calling us “delusional”. We don’t need medicine to certify who we already\r\nknow we are, any more than cis people do – but if you’re going to bring science into this,\r\nyou should make sure the science says what you think it does. Again and again, I see this pattern being\r\nrepeated by atheists who think they’re equipped to debate trans issues.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThey assume that science and evidence support\r\ntheir position, when this most often supports the exact opposite of their position. I’ve seen atheists argue that trans women\r\nshouldn’t be allowed in women’s restrooms, public facilities, or other spaces, because\r\nwe’re supposedly going to rape everyone. After all, nothing says “rapist” like testosterone\r\nblockers, suppressed libido, genital atrophy, and erectile dysfunction. In reality, a majority of trans people have\r\nbeen harassed just for trying to use public restrooms. Have a majority of cis people been harassed\r\nby trans people in restrooms? I haven’t seen any studies suggesting that\r\nthis is the case. Do you know of any? 55% of trans people in homeless shelters or\r\ndomestic violence shelters have been harassed while residing there. Have 55% of cis people been harassed by trans\r\nwomen in shelters? I’m not sure if there are any studies on that\r\neither, but feel free to find them, if you can. I’ve seen atheists argue that it’s unfair\r\nfor trans women to be allowed to compete as women in professional sports, or that this\r\ngives them a competitive advantage. The Association of Boxing Commissions,\r\nthe NCAA, USA Track &amp; Field, the UK Football Association, and the International Olympic\r\nCommittee all allow trans people to compete as their declared gender after medically transitioning.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThe International Olympic Committee\r\nhas to ensure that no one has an unfair advantage – but have they consulted that dude on Facebook\r\nwho won’t shut up about trans women’s “bone structure”? And in the midst of all this, it’s practically\r\na clich\u00e9 for them to say “It’s 8th-grade biology!” whenever they’re enlightening us with yet\r\nanother tautology about chromosomes. I guess the American Psychiatric Association\r\njust needs to go back to middle school, right? You’d think that these science enthusiasts\r\nwould realize that early education isn’t a core of foundational truths upon which all\r\nlater knowledge is built. It’s a rough approximation designed to be\r\nunderstandable to grade schoolers, and it becomes progressively more nuanced as students\r\nadvance. Instead, they’re doing the equivalent\r\nof citing “4th-grade science” to claim that plasma isn’t real, the sun is a myth, and\r\nwho are fluorescent bulbs trying to fool, anyway? I’m glad that the surgeon who’s\r\ngoing to cut my balls off decided to stay in school after junior high.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nSo, why would people who engage in this transparent\r\nnonsense claim that they have science behind them? They don’t exhibit any honest interest in\r\nthe process of science and its actual findings about reality. They only seem to have a selective interest\r\nin the idea of something concrete that would back up their preconceived beliefs. If I didn’t know these people were atheists,\r\nI don’t think I would have been able to tell. What else do you call it when someone knows\r\nnothing about science and thinks they can blather on and on about it anyway? What do you call it when someone refuses to\r\nchange their beliefs when faced with evidence? What do you call it when they try to tell\r\nus there’s some nonexistent “controversy” to be debated? What do you call it when they think their\r\nintuition and baseless conjecture are more reliable than any research? And what do you call it when they don’t even\r\ncare that this lack of acceptance makes life so much worse for trans people? I sure wouldn’t call that a secular value. How is believing I’m a woman any different\r\nfrom believing in God? Really? Here’s a question: How is believing that transitioning\r\nis “mutilation” any different from believing that vaccines cause brain damage? How is believing that trans people have an\r\nunfair advantage in sports any different from believing the earth is 6,000 years old? How is believing in an epidemic of transgender\r\nrapists any different from believing in “irreducible complexity”? And how is believing that trans people are\r\n“deluded” any different from believing that atheists are just angry at God? Sorry, but you’re not Neil deGrasse Tyson\r\ngiving a science lesson to middle America.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nYou’re Ken Ham telling an audience of faithfully\r\nignorant sycophants how Adam and Eve rode around on a T. rex. Science observation and reality should\r\nmatter to everyone, and I hope they matter to you. But if you’re leaving out the science, the\r\nobservation, and the reality, you suck at being a skeptic.\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3agg9AwnB8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">As found on YouTube<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=flywait&amp;vendor=slimcrystal&amp;op=vsl&amp;tid=TRACKING\">\ua731\u029f\u026a\u1d0d\u1d04\u0280\u028f\ua731\u1d1b\u1d00\u029f The World’s Only Slimming Crystal Water Bottles! The unique combination of crystals is so powerful that it has been used for decades by crystal healing experts to help thousands of men and women change their lives for the better \u27af\u27b1 \u27ab \u27aa\u27ac \u1d1b\u028f\u1d18\u1d07 \u1d0f\u0280 \u1d18\u1d00\ua731\u1d1b\u1d07 \u028f\u1d0f\u1d1c\u0280 \u1d04\u1d0f\u0274\u1d1b\u1d07\u0274\u1d1b \u029c\u1d07\u0280\u1d07 [Official] \u1d58\u1d56\u1d57\u1d52 \u2077\u2070% \u1d52\u1da0\u1da0 \u1d57\u1d52\u1d48\u1d43\u02b8!<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I’m going to Women in Secularism 3 this weekend, and I feel like this is a good time to get into something relevant: my experiences as a woman in the secular community. Particularly, my experiences as a woman whose gender is often considered debatable. When Dave Silverman went to this year’s Conservative Political Action &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152665\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Atheist transphobia: Superstition over science<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":152664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,132],"tags":[61478,61465,43208,61467,61466,144,38083,61486,61485,61481,61480,61471,61472,636,5176,957,2278,2750,61488,61469,5700,702,517,61482,61483,61487,38059,61464,5785,1351,61475,5786,5787,6260,61474,61477,61460,61458,61459],"class_list":["post-152665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-causes-and-prevention","category-reducing-triggers","category-weird-stuff","tag-anti-gay","tag-atheism-2","tag-atheist","tag-bias","tag-bigotry","tag-community","tag-dsm","tag-gender-dysphoria","tag-gender-identity-disorder","tag-glbt","tag-homophobia-2","tag-irrational","tag-irrationality","tag-lgbt","tag-medicine","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-illness","tag-movement","tag-mutilation","tag-prejudice","tag-psychiatry","tag-psychology","tag-science","tag-secular","tag-secularism","tag-sex-reassignment-surgery","tag-stigma","tag-superstition","tag-trans","tag-transgender","tag-transgenderism","tag-transition","tag-transitioning","tag-transphobia","tag-transsexual","tag-transsexualism","tag-zinnia-jones","tag-zj","tag-zjemptv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/htmlF_IMG_6667064222e4f.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152698,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152665\/revisions\/152698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}