Religion is a Mental Illness

"First, I've said repeatedly that [religions] cannot be taken away from people, it is their favorite toy and it will remain so, as Freud said, as long as we're afraid of death.

Second, I hope I've made it clear that I'm perfectly happy for people to have these toys, and to play with them at home, and hug them to themselves and so on, and share them with other people who come around and play with the toys. So, that's absolutely fine.

They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don't bring the toys to my house. Don't say my children must play with these toys."

-- Christopher Hitchens

When we were butches

Between 1995-2006 I was a part of the butch lesbian community. During those years, despite my life-long and sometimes intense gender dysphor

GD Alliance

Between 1995-2006 I was a part of the butch lesbian community. During those years, despite my life-long and sometimes intense gender dysphoria, I hadn’t given any serious thought to medically transitioning. It wasn’t even on my radar as a possibility until after 2000. The idea of medically transitioning seemed fringe, far-fetched, and risky.

Most of the butches I knew also had gender dysphoria (GD) or rather, Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as it was called then. Many butches I knew in Winnipeg, Halifax, Toronto, and later Vancouver, were strong, stoic people. I admired many of them. I know that their lives weren’t always easy, but they carried themselves with dignity. They had butch “brotherhood” and femmes who adored them. Many were “stone” which meant that their GID made it difficult for them to relate to their female anatomy so didn’t allow themselves to be touched by anyone, or rarely. They were often harassed and abused for being masculine women, as I was. It was often stressful using female public washrooms, because our gender ambiguity made people so uncomfortable. There was a term “butch bladder” to reference the ways we’d avoid using bathrooms in public.

In the early-mid 2000s, more and more FTMs were appearing in the community, alongside the butches. Many lesbian spaces welcomed them, some didn’t. It seemed to me at the time that butches were presented with two options: we could choose to be butches, or we could choose to be FTM “trans guys”. Why people chose one or the other...that was very individual and personal. It really came down to which option solved a problem and made life easier. The problem could be homophobic parents, fatigue from being harassed, differing degrees of dysphoria and bodily discomfort, not understanding what GID is, poor social or occupational functioning, trauma, other mental health challenges like depression or the anxiety that seemed inevitable for us. Some transitioned but still identified as butch women. They chose medical interventions to look more masculine, not to identify as men. Some trans guys said they never had GID at all. I don’t know what their motivations for transitioning were. Some said “political reasons”. There were some who were big fans of Queer Theory icons like Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam. Those women adopted male personas - intentional “female masculinity” - as an expression of Queer Theory, not to be men/male. I chose to transition soon after a gay man was beaten to death in a nearby park.

If kids with gender dysphoria today are anything like who we were 20 years ago, I feel saddened by their trajectory. Others see benefits: Access to medical interventions has been made easier. They no longer have to do a “real-life test” (live their life as the opposite sex for 2 years without medical assistance). They don’t have to go through months or years of therapy and assessment. More is now known about the effects and risks of hormones. The surgeries have improved, are easier to access and now paid for by insurance. (I paid for my own mastectomy out of pocket, and was on the SRS surgery waitlist for 10 years.)

But, what have we done? Have we eliminated all of the conditions for why a butch girl would find their innate masculinity hard to live with? Have we made the lives of butch women better and safer? Have we eliminated homophobic families, communities, employers, clinicians and policies? Are we educating young people what gender dysphoria is, in evidence-based terms, supporting them to integrate that into a healthy identity and self-image? Do we tell masculine girls how attractive they are? Do they have an abundance of healthy role models? Are they fully embraced and integrated into their workforces, educational settings, faith communities… or, are butches still getting weird looks from strangers? Are they still getting yelled at in public bathrooms? Are young, obnoxious young men still yelling slurs out their car windows as they drive by a butch woman? Do gender non-conforming women still fear for their lives in some places? Can they get Brandon Teena out of their heads? Can they travel the world freely? Can they find clothing they like that fits their bodies well?

I’m not convinced we’ve made any real progress at all. I think we’ve just made it easier for people to jump ship, younger and faster, and gave it a different spin. We now call that “self-actualization”. We’ve facilitated a better illusion. We’ve convinced more and more people that the illusion is real. We continue to push for better surgeries. Penile and uterine transplants are on the horizon. Young people are flooding into clinics. They can’t keep up with the demand. Activists have pushed Queer Theory as an explanation for our difference, displacing evidence-based clinical definitions of GID/GD. It’s no longer talked about as a condition that requires treatment but a natural human variation that requires affirmation in whatever form we demand (often life-long medicalization). I’ve travelled that road to its end, and its hurt just as much as it’s helped.

The surgeries available to FTMs right now are awful. A double mastectomy and phalloplasty or metoidioplasty are gruesome procedures to go through. The US surgeon I went to for metoidioplasty boasts low complication rates, but the anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed (myself and everyone I know who had the procedure there and elsewhere) is close to a 100% complication rate. One guy at the surgical recovery centre I stayed at started to hemorrhage and was laying on the floor unable to reach the call bell when another FTM patient found him and advocated for him to be rushed to hospital. Fistulas and strictures are the most common problem. I chose metoidioplasty because it’s thought to be the less risky of the two options. I immediately developed two large fistulas (meaning that my urethra burst open in two places) that needed additional surgery to repair. I couldn’t bathe or go swimming for a year until those openings were repaired. I have chronic perineum pain, altered bowel function due to changes in my pelvic muscles, and no sensation in most of my chest. When we have complications, local physicians and surgeons don’t know what to do. So we have to wait, and travel to whoever can help.

Listen, I don’t doubt that sometimes medical transition is helpful for people. It’s not my place to say they can’t or shouldn’t. But let’s not sell this like it’s a Disney park ride. The marketing of everything trans is ridiculously misleading. Don’t put sparkles and rainbows over real pain as though that helps at all. It’s insulting.

If we really want to help these kids, we need to make it easier for lesbian kids. Butch kids. All gender non-conforming kids. The quirky and awkward kids. Kids who feel they don’t fit it. Let’s get better at working with parents and preserving families. Be honest about what medical transition is really about. No one really changes biological sex and these procedures are really hard to go through. Why are we putting all of our resources into escaping brutality rather than eliminating brutality? We’re cutting up our bodies because our lived reality is worse. Why do we celebrate that?

Medical transition is but one option for those with GD. We need to reclaim our understanding of GD as a condition so that we can have reality based-conversations and solve real personal and social problems. “Trans” as a concept, masks many underlying issues. A queer theory-based understanding of myself worsened my GD. Medical transition became an addiction. The illusion only works if we’re lucky enough to pass and everyone else plays along perfectly. It’s an exhausting game of whack-a-mole to dodge the reminders of my female past and female biology. How is that kind of dissociation desirable? Some people may benefit from medically transitioning, but we still need a reality-based understanding of ourselves, to keep our feet on the ground.

Our children deserve better. If this sounds transphobic to you, you’re a part of the problem. Owning our reality for what it is isn’t self-hatred. It’s self-acceptance. Having different ideas and a different vision of how to move forward isn't hatred. Hatred was the skinheads who circled around us at the small 1992 Winnipeg gay and lesbian march, long before Pride was a parade. Hatred was the men who drove from the suburbs into Vancouver with the intent to "kill a fag" and murdered Aaron Webster in Stanley Park. I’m well acquainted with phobia. This isn't phobia. This is love.

"Why is it that every believer decides for themselves what's a metaphor, but when I say that it's all fiction, I'm out of line?"

"Unlike religious people, we atheists really have a good reason to make the most of life. To make the most of the present moment. Cause even if you live to be a hundred, there are just not that many days in life.

So, what is the point of life? Is anything sacred? Does such a question even make sense? This is what religious people are worried about. And I think that these questions do make sense and there are answers to them.

But the answers are not the matter of getting more information. The answer is a change in attitude. There are ways of experiencing life as sacred without believing anything, and certainly without believing anything on insufficient evidence.

There are ways to really live in the present moment. Okay? What’s the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now."

-- Sam Harris

Gender Ideology’s Shaky Twin Pillars

A Washington Post essay provides a case study in the substitution of dogma for biology.

City Journal

Another reason for the medical professionals’ insistence is that “brain sex” resonates with a legal culture shaped by the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court has long recognized that a trait’s immutability is relevant to its eligibility for constitutional protection. In the final stages of the Gloucester litigation, the Fourth Circuit based its equal protection analysis on the claim that gender identity is, like race, an “immutable characteristic.”

What does it mean, to respond to the world in this way? For me, it has meant having a sense of myself as a woman, a sense that no matter how comfortable I was with the fact of being feminine, I was never at ease with not being female. When I was young, I tried to talk myself out of it, telling myself, in short, to “get over it.”

“Some victims of domestic abuse are not identified as regularly,” reads a line several pages into a new report from a UK domestic violence charity. “Particular groups of victims may be less visible to services or be given less priority.”

Along with people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds, “male victims” form one of these neglected groups, according to the SafeLives study, which was published on Wednesday.

Perhaps this is unsurprising, given that the vast majority of SafeLives’ 35,000-strong database of survivors is female. When we think of domestic abuse it is generally as a women’s issue, while most high profile awareness drives, such as The White Ribbon Campaign, are aimed at reducing male violence against women.

But domestic violence against men is far from a niche concern. The most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that around 800,000 men – five per cent of the male population – had experienced domestic abuse in 2011-12, compared to 1.2 million women – or seven per cent of the female population. Since about 2005, around 40 per cent of domestic violence victims have been male.

And when these victims are not identified in time, the results can be disastrous. In this week’s SafeLives report, titled Getting It Right First Time, the charity claims: “The impact of domestic abuse on the victim and on children – even once they have achieved safety – is severe and long-lasting.”

'I didn't think of it as domestic violence'

Simon* is one man who understands the consequences of abuse better than most. For most of his 17-year marriage, this 47-year-old was subjected to domestic abuse from his wife, from having hot drinks poured over him to dinner plates smashed over his head.

While his wife was never physically violent towards their three children, she would often attack him in front of them.

“I didn’t think of it as domestic violence and I think that’s often true for male victims,” he says now. “You put it down to mood swings. There was also the pressure of thinking that if I walked away, I might get a raw deal when it came to custody of the children.

“One day, though, my youngest child replicated her behaviour. They came into the kitchen and smashed a plate over my head – I got really angry, shouted and I remember them looking so shocked. They didn’t realise it was wrong because this is what they had seen their parents doing. I wondered whether I was really protecting any of them.”

He reached breaking point one night after his wife threw him out of the house – something she had done several times before. Simon, who was then working for the church and had never talked to anyone about the abuse he had suffered, went to speak with a superior in the church hierarchy.

“They said, go back to your wife and nobody will be any the wiser, but I knew I could never do that.”

Since leaving the marriage, Simon has become involved with charities like the Mankind Initiative, which provides support for male survivors of domestic abuse.

“It’s a long battle to change people’s perception,” he says. “People are used to the idea of domestic violence being something men do to women, but when it happens the other way round, they can’t get their heads round it.

“Going for the authorities was never an option for me. I thought, who would believe me – a big, strapping bloke? I can look after myself in that sense.

“But as a boy, growing up, I was always told that boys don’t hit girls. That was the most important thing. It didn’t matter how I was provoked, I would just never do that. So I would let her anger burn out rather than ever retaliate.”

He says that men in similar situations should remember they are not alone and – if they feel unable to talk to anyone about the abuse – keep a journal and read it back, so they can get a more objective view of what is happening to them.

“Start thinking about ways out, too. You might hope that things will change but the reality is they never will.”

'Why would you, as a man, put up with that?'

Ian McNicholl, 52, is another male survivor of domestic abuse. He was subjected to a 14-month ordeal by his ex-partner which saw her pour boiling water over him, put out cigarette butts on his face and genitals and attack him with a hammer.

He still bears the physical and psychological scars from that relationship, and needed his septum replaced after his ex assaulted him with a metal bar. The police became involved after McNicholl confided in a neighbour that suicide was the only way he could see out of the relationship.

His girlfriend was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and assault, and was sentenced to seven years prison time, but is now out on licence.

“When I tell people about what happened, some of them still ask: why would you, as a man, put up with that? It’s because they don’t understand how manipulative some people’s behaviour can be – it takes all you have, until you’ve got nothing left.

“I don’t deny that more females are victims of domestic abuse, but it’s a crime that can affect anyone. The media need to give male victims more coverage and a more balanced view of what domestic abuse is.”

*name has been changed

"End up on a mechanical ventilator and we all know that one true believer who's anxious to preach about God's plan for you, or how this is Allah's will for you.

How believers manage to reconcile 'benevolence' and 'greatness' with human tragedy and catastrophe happens just falls short of a miracle in and of itself."

NSS warns council on free speech after ‘Islamophobia’ allegations

The National Secular Society has warned members of Boston Council against characterising criticism of religion as 'hate speech'. Read More »

National Secular Society

The National Secular Society has warned members of Boston Council against characterising criticism of religion as 'hate speech'.

In a letter, the NSS expressed concern at comments made in relation to Councillor Mike Gilbert at the council's AGM on May 22.

In accordance with the council's tradition, as the longest serving member of the council Cllr Gilbert had been due to be appointed Mayor of Boston.

However, he was denied the role following accusations that a number of Facebook posts made in 2022 constituted 'hateful speech' towards Muslims.

The comments relating to Islam were made during the football World Cup hosted by Qatar, and raised concerns about aspects of Islamic doctrine which criminalise homosexuality and severely restrict the rights of women.

At the council meeting (pictured), Cllr Gilbert said: "I hold no prejudice against anyone on any inappropriate basis, but I do have specific views on politics, ideology, and religion that I am not willing to suppress in my political position".

Councillor Anne Dorrian, who was serving as mayor at the time, said that councillors had a political and moral obligation to "refrain from using hate speech". Failure to condemn such speech, Cllr Dorrian warned, could be interpreted as expressions of "approval or support".

Following the meeting, Cllr Dorrian said that Cllr Gilbert had been denied the mayoralty due to social media posts that people "just couldn't accept" with phrases that people found "offensive."

Other councillors spoke out in support of Cllr Gilbert.

The NSS said that by characterising this "legitimate criticism of Islamic doctrine" as hate speech the councillors had "unfairly smeared" Cllr Gilbert, whilst simultaneously undermining efforts to challenge religiously-based suppression of women's and LGBT rights.

It said that whilst individuals should be afforded respect and protection, ideas must be "open to scrutiny and debate", including "religious beliefs and practices".

NSS: Public debate must include ability to criticise religious doctrine

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society said: "Holding a critical view of Islam, or any other ideology, is not in itself 'hateful'.

"In a free and open society, religious beliefs and practices must remain open to scrutiny and debate. By characterising Councillor Gilbert's legitimate criticism of Islamic doctrine as 'hate speech', councillors have unfairly smeared a fellow councillor – and at the same time, made it more difficult to challenge the religiously motivated suppression of women's rights and LGBT equality.

"Councillor Gilbert has merely expressed an unfavourable view of religious doctrine he disagrees with. Free speech and social cohesion are harmed if this is considered beyond the bounds of reasonable public debate."

"In all recorded religious history the greatest disasters suffered by humanity, involved a 'loving god' raining fire and brimstone down on humanity, drowning all of humanity in floods, and killing a bunch of babies.

Then it ends with most of us in a burning lake of fire!

Not only is your 'loving god' a monster, but he needs some anger management classes.

You need some better make believe friends."

Wokeness, Public Safety, BLM & Antifa

A new series by Matt Thornton

boghossian.substack.com

A poll conducted in 2020 by the Skeptic Research Center asked a nationally representative sample of Americans the following question:

 “If you had to guess, how many unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019?”

The survey offered answer choices ranging from “about 10” to “more than 10,000.” Roughly 31 percent of survey respondents who identified as “very liberal” estimated that police had killed about 1,000 or more unarmed black men the previous year, with another 22 percent overall believing the number to be at least 10,000.

In summary, 53% of Americans who identified as “very liberal” believe police murder somewhere between 1000-10,000 unarmed black men a year.

What is the actual number? Twelve.

According to the Washington Post’s comprehensive database of police killings, police shot and killed 54 unarmed people in 2019, 26 were listed as white, 12 black, 11 Hispanic, and 5 “other.”

It’s also important to note that the majority of the twelve shot were actively trying to hurt or kill the officer. For example, in at least two of the twelve cases involving black men, the perpetrators were killed while trying to run over an officer with a car. In another, an individual took and used the officer’s taser on him. In another, a female officer was being physically beaten by a suspect when she fired. All those cases were classified as “unarmed.”

“Unarmed” never means “not deadly.” There is always a gun involved—the officer’s. In many encounters, the suspect is fighting to get ahold of it. In the Ferguson case, it was claimed that Michael Brown had his hands up when Officer Darren Wilson shot him, in cold blood, in the middle of the street. Upon investigation, the forensic evidence as well as a half-dozen black witnesses confirmed Officer Wilson’s account. Michael Brown tried to take Officer Wilson’s gun and was charging at him when shot. The “Hands up, don’t shoot!’ slogan was a lie.

When you set aside cases where the suspect was actively threatening an officer’s life with physical force, you are left with one or two cases a year. In 2019, officers involved in two shootings were found at fault and sentenced accordingly. 

What is the net result of so many people being so misinformed?

After the George Floyd incident in June 2020, in cities across the country, regressive anti-policing policies were rushed in. In Chicago, this meant the department was down 1000 officers. New restrictions on the police were put in place that inhibited proactive/community policing, and several thousand violent offenders were put back on the street thanks to far left District Attorneys and activist judges. The net result was a 25 year high in murder for the city and hundreds more dead bodies, many of them young kids.

In 2021, more than 12 American cities saw record breaking levels of murder. Without evidence, ideologically-driven reporters parrot back to each other that this increase must be related to lockdowns. A closer look shows clearly that the constant attacks on law enforcement, budget cuts, and a climate of hatred fueled by that same irresponsible media have effectively halted proactive policing. Whenever that happens, violence skyrockets and thousands more needlessly die. The blood that covers media personalities, policy makers, and activists who’ve pushed the “defund the police” narrative will never wash off.

Because homicides within the black community occur at more than four times the national average, the people who will suffer most from these changes won’t be the upper-middle-class urban elites who foolishly push them through or the politicians and media personalities who have their own armed security. It will be poor, black Americans who live in the kinds of areas where 3-year-old Mekhi James was murdered, along with 197 other Chicago youth since 2020. It’s no wonder that black Americans consistently poll higher than whites in wanting increased police presence. The citizens in those high crime neighborhoods know better than anyone that cutting police funding doesn’t solve our violence problem—it increases it.

The narrative that police officers are looking to kill black Americans is a pernicious lie. Understanding this is the first step in making our cities safer for everyone.

"There is no such thing as a Catholic child. There's only a child of Catholic parents.

There's no such thing as a Protestant child, only a child of Protestant parents.

There's no such thing as a Muslim child, only a child of Muslim parents."

-- Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins: ‘It’s upsetting when your own side turns against you’

archive.vn

In his bestseller The God Delusion, published in 2006, author Richard Dawkins famously wrote that the god of the Old Testament is “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” and “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal … capriciously malevolent bully’’.

Not for nothing has Dawkins been described as “a poster boy for militant atheism”.

The former Oxford University professor and evolutionary biologist is also regarded as a brilliant and passionate science communicator: His 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, reframed our understanding of evolution and has been named by the Royal Society as the most inspiring science book of all time, while his latest volume, Flights of Fancy – a surprisingly lyrical work aimed at the over 12s – looks at how animals and humans have “learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies’’.

In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in a Prospect magazine poll. Yet in recent years, his controversial tweets and remarks about everything from aborting Down’s syndrome foetuses to Islamic fundamentalism have provoked sharp criticism and threats of cancellation.

Now aged 81, the career controversialist will conduct a national speaking tour in Australia in February, addressing topics including the wonders of science, the importance of reason and his scepticism about religion. Ahead of his tour, which starts in Melbourne, the British author gave a typically forthright, sometimes combative interview to Review.

During this encounter, conducted over Zoom from his Oxford home, Dawkins oscillates between donnish erudition and a kind of pugnacious rationalism, as he argues that parents should not have the right to “indoctrinate” their children with their chosen religion; that human foetuses are “no more a person” than animal foetuses; that anti-vaxxers are selfish; and that transgenderism has become “a mimetic epidemic” among schoolchildren. He also warns that human beings could one day be obliterated by the same kind of meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.

You have been called a militant atheist, and you’ve argued that religion causes wars and entrenches bigotry. Yet you use the borrowed phrase “tooth fairy agnostic” to describe yourself. Tooth fairy agnostic – that’s right. We are all actually agnostic about anything you can’t actually disprove. You can’t disprove the tooth fairy; it’s trivial to bother about it, so that’s the way I am about gods.

Why do you oppose faith schools? I am not against education in religion. I think that’s important and that children should be taught about religion because it’s such an important part of history, politics, art and music. I’m against educating in a particular religion – I’m against a child being told, “You are a member of this church and therefore this is what you believe”. I like the child to be told, “There are people who call themselves Catholics and they believe this, and there are people who call themselves Muslims and they believe that” and so on. That’s important, but children should not be told what to believe.

Would banning faith schools amount to erosion of parental choice and authority? I think children have rights, and the right of a child not to be indoctrinated is important.

You get hate mail from evangelical Christians and you are also a trenchant critic of Islamic fundamentalism. As an outspoken public intellectual, what did you think of the recent attack on The Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie? It’s horrible. It’s irrational. It’s vicious. It was allegedly perpetrated by a very foolish person who doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has been indoctrinated by his Islamic upbringing and that’s one kind of reason why I find indoctrination so bad. (The suspect, Hadi Matar, has said that Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa against Rushdie, is, “a great person”. Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges brought against him in the US.)

Many Christian fundamentalists in the US oppose abortion. What is your view of the US Supreme Court ruling that overturned the historic Roe v Wade decision? I deplore that.

You maintain that pro-choice activists in America are using the wrong tactics. Why? I think the pro-abortion lobby is tactically unsound when they say something like, “A woman’s body is her own to do what she likes with”. I happen to think that’s right, but that’s not going to cut any ice with somebody who thinks that an embryo is a baby, and they think therefore that abortion is murder. They’ll say, “Ah, but she contains another body which is not her own.” I think we should tackle that assumption. We should say, “A foetus is no more a person than, and no more has personal feelings … than the foetus of a cow or a pig, let alone an adult cow or pig.”

You dedicate your latest book, Flights of Fancy, to the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Why does he impress you? He certainly is a high flyer and he certainly is a hero of our times. I do admire him and I think that he’s an appropriate dedicatee for a book about flight. He’s a man with immense imagination and he is a genius as an engineer, a genius as an entrepreneur.

In Flights of Fancy, you note how, just decades after the Wright brothers’ historic flight, we were in the era of supersonic and space flight. Does this constitute an extraordinary burst of progress within a short time? It is rather remarkable, isn’t it? I think it’s a very good century to have lived in for that reason. In a way it’s rather sad that things (to do with space flight) are only just taking off now after the 1960s, when men first stepped on the moon, and nothing much has happened since then, until quite recently. I’m glad things are getting going again.

In 2021, the American Humanist Society withdrew an award they had given you because of an old tweet. In that tweet, you called for a discussion about the vilification of those who deny transgender people “literally are what they identify as”. How did you feel about the award being cancelled? To be honest, I had actually forgotten that I ever had that award, but it is upsetting when your own side turn against you, of course. I’d never worried about religious fundamentalists disliking me, but when it’s your own team, it’s upsetting. It’s a remarkably foolish thing for them to do, because all I did was to raise a subject for discussion.

Has academe changed for the worse in terms of restrictions on freedom of speech since you first worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University in the 1960s and ’70s? It’s not possible to imagine that we’re going to go on with this nonsense where you can’t even discuss something.

Why is the transgender debate so heated, and such a no-go area for many commentators? You’d have to ask a psychologist or a sociologist about that. It (the debate) seems to me to be utter nonsense. Of course, there are people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and one has to be sympathetic to them. But there clearly is a mimetic epidemic, especially among schoolchildren who get persuaded that somehow the cool thing to do is to be trans, and this is a very disturbing by-product of a very genuine phenomenon, which is gender dysphoria. That is quite a rare thing, but it’s being blown up into a kind of false, common thing.

With the recent closure of the Tavistock child gender clinic, it appears the UK is adopting a more cautious approach to hormonal and surgical treatments for trans-identifying children. How do you view this development? I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a very appropriate reversal of this trend.

You have 2.9 million followers on Twitter. Do your more contentious tweets scare your publishers? Possibly, but I’m not here to talk about Twitter.

Even so, why are you drawn to Twitter, given the nasty pile-ons that are a feature of the platform? I suppose, misguidedly, I thought it was rather a good way of raising discussion. That’s why I put “discuss” at the end of so many tweets, (as) a follow-on of the Oxford tutorials. I am afraid I rather over-estimated the intelligence of the Twitter audience.

You’ve said it would be fun to fly like a bird or go hang-gliding. Does your fear of heights hold you back? I certainly wouldn’t want to jump off a cliff.

No bungy-jumping for Richard Dawkins then? I might run down a hill, maybe.

Why do you believe there is merit in people establishing a colony on another planet? This, I think, is one of the motives of Elon Musk wanting to go to Mars. It’s interesting, by the way, that NASA has just succeeded in diverting or changing the orbit of a small asteroid. They need to do it for a much bigger asteroid in order to save us from the sort of catastrophe that hit the dinosaurs. But (the recent NASA diversion) is a very important first step. It’s a magnificent feat of engineering and science and mathematics.

During the Covid lockdowns, you wrote two nonfiction books and failed to complete a novel about bringing back Homo erectus, our ancient ancestor. Have you given up on writing fiction? I abandoned that, at least temporarily. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought.

Why do you argue the Covid pandemic has been good for science? As soon as the genetic code sequence of the virus was decoded, which nowadays can be done very swiftly, several different teams of scientists got to work on making a vaccine, and they did it in double quick time; astonishingly quickly. I think that’s a great tribute to the genius of our species.

What about the rise of the anti-vaxxers? Has that surprised you? Tragically, really stupid opposition to vaccination has been whipped up, mostly in America, but it spread to other countries as well. A lot of people don’t understand that vaccination is not just about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting society as a whole, to get herd immunity so the epidemic doesn’t spread.

Is there a selfishness inherent in the anti-vaccination movement? Yes, they just think it’s a matter of individual liberty. They don’t realise that refraining from vaccination for no very good reason is rather like driving on the wrong side of the road …. We do owe a certain curtailment of individual liberty in the interests of society.

You invented the word “meme” (an idea or behaviour that spreads from person to person within a society.) We’ve seen Donald Trump turn memes into a political art form. Were you dismayed by that? He just lies and lies all the time, and unfortunately, I think it was Goebbels who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Huge numbers of Americans actually believe Trump’s lies and it’s a tragedy.

You live in Oxford and drive a Tesla. Are we all going to be driving electric cars in future? It looks like it, doesn’t it? I think that’s a very good thing.

Some detractors say your reputation as a fierce supporter of atheism is in danger of eclipsing your insights as a visionary evolutionary biologist. I hope not. I’ve only written two books about atheism and about 17 about science, so really science is by far the more important part of my life.

The God Delusion has sold millions of copies, but what do you regard as your most significant book? Probably The Extended Phenotype, which is one book that I wrote for my professional colleagues, although I like to think it’s readable by nonscientists as well. It’s the main book in which I propose something which I suppose is original; something that is all my own.

Scientists don’t know how the universe started. Isn’t that an argument in itself that a god or creator must have kicked things off? That’s a terrible idea! The idea that just because you don’t know what the answer to a question is, therefore god did it. I mean, that’s a ridiculous argument. By all means say we don’t know – that’s true, we don’t know – therefore it’s better to try to find out. We don’t just lie down and say, “Oh, god must have done it”.

Across the globe millions of people, including those without a financial safety net, find comfort in religion. Can you see how rubbishing their spiritual beliefs can be perceived as arrogance? Not arrogance. I mean, if they don’t want to read my books, they don’t have to. My books are about what I believe to be true and what evidence is. I’m not going to refrain from writing books for fear that it might upset people. I write books about what is supported by scientific evidence. That is what I try to do, and if the evidence changes, of course I change my mind. That’s about it, really. I’m a scientist who writes books about science.

"I did not learn the difference between good and evil from a monk, an imam, or a pope."

-- The Beat Fleet (TBF)

The Archetypal FTM: Sensitive, Quirky, Artistic, Weird Girls

How Personality is Confused with Gender Identity

funkypsyche.substack.com

• Intellectual Overexcitability (highly cerebral and living largely in thought and mind vs. body)
• Sensory Processing Issues (physiologically sensitive to stimulus like touch, texture, sound and can become overwhelmed)
• Idealistic (can see many interconnected threads of thought which could create a potential ideal outcome or situation)
• Empathetic and compassionate (feeling the emotions of others and being cognitively understanding to those in distress because they can relate)
• High Neuroticism (sensitivity to negative emotions-shame, sadness, anger, self-doubt)
• Internalizes (retreats into self due to absorbing too much of outside environment)
• Self-Doubt (constant overanalyzing leads to rumination around failings of self)
• Anxiety (general and social)
• Depression (nervous system shut down due to sensory overwhelm and emotional flooding and burnout)
• Learned Helplessness (may underachieve due to overwhelm of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and develop complex of being a failure)
• Resists Change (due to overwhelm of thought and feeling, resists changes and struggles to adapt; requires more patience and time to make decisions or act)
• Sexual/Sensual/Asexual (may be either hypersexual and enjoy self-stimulation/use masturbation to release energy or self-soothe (including fixations with online porn), or become overwhelmed with sexual feelings and shut down and detach from sensual feelings in body)
• Spiritual/Religious/Cult Inclinations (may be interested in alternative spiritual, religious, or lifestyle beliefs or trends that can even manifest as cults. Research indicates that intelligent and vulnerable people may be open to cult-thinking)

• Highly Intelligent/Gifted/Bright (intellectual giftedness can create developmental quirks of deeply developed thought but lacks in experience or deficits in other areas like emotion regulation)
• Witty and Clever (verbose and adept at forming connections verbally and in thought in a unique manner)
• Good Sense of Humor (can be a bit awkward, and offbeat with humor and mannerisms)
• Precocious (may have lopsided maturation processes such as gaining interest in abstract thought, psychology, philosophy, etc. but lack of fundamental executive functioning or social skills)
• Obsessed With Labels (labels, diagnosis, definitions, language, lists, goals, etc. are attempts to understand abstract concepts, order chaos of thoughts and feelings)
• May Be Naïve (due to overwhelm with stimulus, may self-isolate, avoid, or shelter self and become developmentally stunted, or may seek advanced experiences due to intellectual giftedness, but lack the other appropriate skills to navigate situations)
• Has Special Interests (a deep love and obsession with a particular concept, thing, or person going beyond typical levels of regard or fixation)
• Social Justice-Minded (desires radical social change for the less fortunate and possesses an open mind towards social justice ideology and action)
• Passionate (when in a good mood, tends to be enthusiastic about special interests and can become deeply involved in doing them or sharing them with others)
• Relates to Animals/Nature/Objects/Concepts More than People (more easily relates to non-sentient human creatures like animals, characters, objects, or even abstract concepts than other people due to difficulty fitting in and the ability to form unusual connections or find unique meanings. Yes, anime, Disney, and rats are a thing for FTMS…)

• High Openness to Experience (this is the major personality dimension measuring creativity and divergent thought, experience, and behavior, or openness to it)
• Independent Thinkers (due to high openness to experience trait, perspective is often unique, or unique opinions are sought out and adopted from others)
• Divergent Thinking (“A thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-linear" manner…”)
• Self-Expressive (frequently releases thoughts and feelings through journaling, poetry, writing, art, bogging, or through videos or other methods)
• Extraverted Self-Expression (often prioritizes expressing one’s personality through bold or unique clothing, fashion, hairstyle, piercings, tattoos, nicknames, etc. Often will be DYI or handmade, or be more open to alternative forms of aesthetic expression)
• Highly Creative (often does art or creative activities like drawing, painting, crafting, writing, singing, playing music, etc.)
• Has Rich Fantasy Life (known for having a vivid imagination and ability to get lost in thought, daydreams, grandiose plans for future, and combining unique ideas together for imagined projects in a creative way)
• Nonstable Identity (the downside to high openness to experience; having connections to many different things and creating ever-shifting personas or views of self that makes it difficult to maintain a grounded sense of self)
• Jack of All Trades, Master of None (another downside to profound creativity; trouble actually “doing” things or taking action to bring tangible work into completion due to multitude of thought threads at once, or juggling priorities. Can strongly overlap with ADHD traits)

• Feel “Weird” In Negative Sense (views self as different in a bad way, feels lacking in something others have, may resent “normies”, feel alienated and shameful)
• Individualistic (while this may be a positive trait, this type of person may also suffer by not going along with the crowd, refusing to see other’s perspectives, have rigid thinking and be stubborn to change behavior to coexist with others, and struggle to find connection or community, worsening resilience to mental health issues)
• Can Be Lonely (often isolated from groups, feels alienated from peers, may try out different social tribes but not feel belonging to any, or may fixate on belonging with 1 particular social group or attachment figure which can be harmful to them)
• Very Online (although since the 2020 pandemic and technological shifts many more people are living online, this archetype still is more likely than average to spend time cultivating an online life due to socialization troubles, sensory overwhelm in outside or interpersonal situations, and isolation due to depression, anxiety, and other disorders. The internet use can create further social deficits and mental health struggles due to lack of proper socialization, intimacy, physical movement, exposure to the natural world, and increase sensitivity which manifests these issues cyclically. )
• Insecure Attachments (may feel insecure, anxious, or avoidant about forming close relationships with others, develop more shallow online relationships, belong to unhealthy or abusive online groups or friendship cliques, or have no close attachments to family or friends)
• Rumination (tends to circle over negative thoughts, memories of the past, or fears of the future in repeated cycles which damage rational thinking and positive regard for self and life, often exacerbating into suicidal ideation)
• Obsessional Fixations (when special interests or passions bring disappointment or fail, or there is distress in life, intellectual capacities turn into intense negative rumination over solutions or fantasies of escape. These may manifest as self-harm or destructive behavior such as magical-thinking fantasies)
• Cognitive Distortions (black and white, rigid thinking that cannot be challenged even when unhealthy or destructive, generalizations from one smaller event projected onto all other events/the entire world, catastrophizing thoughts of the worst possible scenario, difficulty maintaining rational sense of orderliness)
• Low Self-Confidence (core belief of shame and unworthiness due to being, or perceived as being, rejected by others, feeling alienated, sensitive, and highly emotional, or reactive to pain)
• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS is an endocrine disorder which affects menstruation, fertility, emotion regulation, etc. and yes, sensitivity. Although the correlation is currently unclear, from my observation, many archetypal FTMS have PCOS, and that PCOS may contribute to high-sensitivity, body image issues, feeling more masculine and less connected to the female body, mood fluctuations, and is correlated with depression, anxiety, and shame.)

1. Are so sensitive (emotionally and sensorially) that the outside world is an intimidating, overwhelming and confusing place they’d rather not participate in.
2. Retreat too heavily into their inner worlds and/or online to escape from the outside chaos.
3. Are both developmentally delayed and advanced in conflicting ways which inhibit typical growth alongside peers.
4. Have social difficulties and struggle with relationships and outer-world integration.
5. Are offbeat, so it’s challenging to find others to connect with at the same wavelength.
6. May be vulnerable to intense group-think or cults once they finally find a community to relate to due prolonged isolation and attachment voids.
7. Are still learning to deal with their heavy emotions and are often depressed, anxious, and ashamed.
8. Are insecure about their place in the world because they are idealistic and want to make a big difference, but feel overwhelmed, and self-doubting.
9. Have not yet embraced their personality strengths, and only focus on perceived flaws or weaknesses (which may be irrationally heightened due to idealism and analytical comparison to others.)
10. Have confusion making decisions, choosing career paths, and activities which work for them due to divergent thought and jack of all trades behaviors.
11. Might have developed mental health issues that are distracting from, and impeding, their gifts from being recognized or grown to fruition.
12. Are too focused on specific labels and diagnosis with a fixed mindset vs. learning about, growing into, and transcending the limitations of their human personalities.
13. Are avoidantly focused on outside issues and social justice concerns, or codependency in relationships as a distraction from their inner problems or fears.
14. May be underdeveloped in resiliency, perfectionistic, and give up easily; lacking motivation and an internal locus of control to overcome fear and develop courage.
15. May lack self-competency to progress in life, and end up feeling stuck in endless loops of intense thoughts, emotions, fears, and self-destructive or suicidal behavior.

• The question is not “why are all these girls identifying as trans/queer/nonbinary?” The question is why wouldn’t they?