“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” —Christopher Hitchens
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” —Carl Sagan
For me, to adopt words and concepts into my language and use them seriously (I reserve the right to use any word or concept mockingly), I must first be convinced that the system the words and concepts belong to is definable, valid, and verifiable. I am a scientist like that. Gender ideology is not a valid system of definable and verifiable concepts. I am therefore not “cisgendered.” I am a man, an adult male human. Nor is the concept of “transgender” real outside of gender ideology, since the entities this quasi religion may produce are synthetic, not organic to any mammalian species. The prefix “trans” means to stand opposite to one’s gender. In the actual world, no mammal can do that. Since all individuals stand on the side of their gender, the construct cisgender is a redundant and scientifically meaningless concept. (See Sex and Gender are Interchangeable Terms; Denying Reality: The Tyranny of Gender-Inclusive Language; )
“Cisgender” is an invention of gender ideology. It’s no different in quality than the concept of “demon” or “spirit” in religious systems. Above is an image of Buer, a spirit identified in the sixteenth-century grimoire Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Described as a “Great President of Hell,” Buer is said to have command over fifty legions of demons. This grimoire, attributed to Johann Weyer, a Dutch physician and occultist, provides details about Buer’s appearance and abilities. The spirit is depicted as a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human, or sometimes as a lion with five legs. Buer possesses knowledge of herbs, the ability to heal diseases, and offer medical advice and remedies. It’s important to keep in mind that Buer’s characteristics may vary across different occult texts and folklore. But Buer has always existed and is known to different cultures. Weyer and his ilk have asserted the truth of Buer on their authority.
If I subscribed to a religious system where demons are real, then I might identify a person as demonic, perhaps believing him to be inhabited by one of Buer’s legions. I may even accept that I am so possessed, as many doomed individuals did during the Inquisition, where many devout Christians willingly submitted themselves to the cleansing fire of the witchfynder because they accepted the doctrines of the prevailing demonology and wished to be liberated from their corrupted bodies. Perhaps Buer, the great physician himself, was moving the witchfynder to fix the afflicted—not by exercising the demon, but by annihilating the person. Of course, I avoid using such attributions (except mockingly) because I am not a religious person and do not believe in demons. Likewise, I am not cisgender because I do not believe in gender identities. Both demons and gender identities are nonfalsifiable constructs manufactured by religious or quasi religious systems.
I’m an atheist. It is not in me to believe in supernatural or nonfalsifiable entities. It’s fine for you to believe in such things—as long as others are not detrimentally affected by them. I have many religious friends and family who I accept in my life; I tolerate their views as long as they are not harmful to others in practice. But I do not myself subscribe to those views. And the wonderful thing about living in a free and pluralistic society is that I don’t have to accept as true what isn’t. The earth is not flat. The earth does not sit fixed at the center of the solar system. Human beings are primates. And so forth. If you believe otherwise on any or all of these claims, that is your right. My only demand is that a public education teach what is definable, valid, and verifiable. If you wish your children to believe in demons and gender identities, there are alternative educational approaches and paths. I have no desire for the state to be the parent of your children. Or of mine.
To be sure, there is a difference between the way I think and the way the religious think. The difference is that my beliefs are definable, valid, and verifiable, whereas religious and quasi religious beliefs are not. If you ask me what a woman is, I can provide an answer: a woman is an adult female human. That definition is valid by every conceivable standard and empirically verifiable by every conceivable test. If you ask a person who subscribes to queer theory what a woman is, they will likely not be able to provide a definition at all, let alone show how the entity they suppose exists is valid conceptually and verifiable factually. (see Scientific Materialism and the Necessity of Noncircular Conceptual Definitions.)
However, as you read that previous paragraph, it may have occurred to you that a Christian or Muslim will be able to able to provide an accurate definition of a woman. There are many religious people who accept as actual nonfalsifiable constructs who nonetheless continue to believe in actual things, as well. No ideological system completely engulfs every believer all the time—at least once a religion is beyond its initial zealous period. Unfortunately, gender ideology is in its infancy (hopefully it won’t survive childhood), and so its devotees are moved to demand everybody be baptized in the faith that orders their world. Or suffer the fate of the infidel in the inquisitorial lurch.
That I should be an infidel is in itself is manageable, as I will explain in a moment. But this moment we are living through is particularly troubling because that the governments of many western nation-states have put the authority of the legal and policy apparatus behind the new religion. The infidel is not merely the subject of the fanatic’s paranoia; he is subject to inspection by and the disciplinary machinery of the administrative and corporate state. The true believers have even managed to gain command of the profit-generating tools of corporate medicine—and have mobilized them against children and the deluded.
While I tolerate belief in impossible notions such demons and angels, as I must respect freedom of belief (I wish not to make a whip for my own back), I would very much prefer people to come out of irrational belief and reestablished their worldview on the grounds of science, reserving for the appetites of the soul (metaphorically used here) the joys of art and music. And of course I demand that the state remain neutral with respect to doctrine, and so should you—and even more than this: we must insist the state perform its role in safeguarding citizens from the effects of extreme rituals and unscrupulous industries. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.”
So, how do I manage my (if you will) infidelity? By understanding that a system to which I do not belong cannot in a free society force me to belong to it and compel me to define myself by its lights. If anybody from a religious system who believes in demons finds me demonic (and surely they must have in the past), it has no effect on me since I am not part of that system—again, unless either the state or the mob (or both) includes me in the system whether I wish to be included or not. Likewise, I am not a cisgender person because I do not subscribe to the quasi religious system in which cisgender and all those terms related to it have any meaning (which is not to say that they are valid or verifiable, since plainly they are not).
This is also true with the name calling that is associated with religious and quasi religious systems. I am not a Muslim. I not only do not subscribe to Islam, but I have also long argued that Islam is harmful to children, women, and gays (as is gender ideology). This blog is full of such criticisms and condemnation. This of course makes me Islamophobic in the eyes of the faithful I am sure. Many on Facebook, mostly academics and former students, have unfriended me because of my views concerning Islam. Am I Islamophobic? Perhaps it’s not for me to decide since I don’t accept the ideology. I do know that the word Islamophobic was invented by Islamists to smear critics of Islam in order to advance the project of Islamizing the West. So I guess I am by those lights. The same is true with the term “transphobic,” which is the invention of gender ideologues to smear those who do not subscribe to gender ideology (the term was added to dictionaries in 2013). Like the islamization project, gender ideologues pursues a project to, as they put it, “queer” the world. Still, I am neither demonic nor cisgendered and cannot be because the entities of Islam and gender ideology are not real. So can I really be Islamophobic and transphobic or any other propagandistic thing? I certainly don’t appreciate being used in such a manner.
At the top of this essay I quoted Carl Sagan, words he put down in his 1995 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. These words capture the reason my mind is always open and searching. I do deep dives that sometimes change my beliefs. You have read about those changes of mind on Freedom and Reason and you will soon read about more. I avoid existing in a comprehensive ideological bubble. I belong to no tribe. A lot of people around me don’t admit to being bamboozled not only because it’s painful to acknowledge being taken; people also remain in the grip of lies because liberation from them means a change of worldview and loss of tribal membership, and these changes are either too undesirable or too great to attempt. My worldview is rooted in science and reason. All I have to worry about is being punished for heterodox opinions. I am not keen on being a martyr for truth. I just can’t help myself.
When you think about it, declaring that I am cisgendered is a lot like Mormons baptizing people after they’re dead. Except that the gender ideologue can’t even wait for that to happen before trying to pull me underwater.
freedom and reason 