Another cheat cheats his way into a marathon.

A trans-identified male who previously sued a spa for not allowing him to bathe with women has announced that he has been accepted to compete as a “woman” in the 2025 Boston Marathon. Riya Young Suising, born Robert Chien Hwa Young, has placed on the winner’s podium at multiple women’s running competitions.

That’s the fun thing about being a man running in women’s competitions: you get to win!

The Boston Marathon has age and gender qualification categories. Genders include male, female, and “non-binary.” Notably, the “non-binary” category has identical qualifying times as the corresponding female categories.

In Suising’s case, he had to demonstrate a time of 4 hours and 5

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Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Buhbye.

Of course secularism (i.e. separation of church and state) does not imply atheism, and atheism does not imply critical thinking. I still think the consistent application of critical thinking leads to “atheism”, but that doesn’t mean atheism leads to critical thinking. Atheism is just a specific conclusion. There is no shortage of people who arrived at this conclusion for reasons that have nothing to do with critical thinking, whether it’s in protest of the historical crimes of the church, a reaction to the horrific misogyny, homophobia, or general nastiness of the Bible, being offended by self-appointed representatives of God telling others what to do, a fallout with their religious community, or … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Imprisonment by dogma.

Having a “trans child” in the family is like having a psychic child, a reincarnated child, a child with Multiple Personality Disorder, or a child who’s been to Heaven and returned to tell us about it. If you’re in a milieu which values their acceptance or which insists that it’s important to always believe and support your children, then a child’s insistence, sincerity, and suffering will be considered good evidence. You were skeptical, but swayed. You listened. You checked things out thoroughly from all sides, your evaluations are fair and your recollections reliable. So are theirs.

Being close gives you an advantage. Having “skin in the game” gives you … Read the rest

The punchline of the now notorious “What is a woman?” by Kat Grant that has caused all this marching up and down is one of the silliest punchlines ever punched, and the need to say why has been bugging me for a couple of days now.

Remember it? Short, and absurd. “A woman is whoever she says she is.”

And by “she” Kat Grant means anyone who says she is, by which she means anyone who says she is, by which…

Infinite regress, but also, infinite nonsense. Is that a special privilege granted to women? Do men have to stick to the truth while women get to claim to be anything and everything and it will be true because it’s … Read the rest

The third musketeer slaps the glove across the face (very gently). Jerry Coyne tells us:

Well, that makes three of us. Steve Pinker, I, and now Richard Dawkins, have all decided independently to resign from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).  The organization’s ideological capture, as instantiated in throwing in their lot with extreme gender activism and censoring any objection to their views—as well as in the increasing tendency of the FFRF to add Critical Social Justice to their mission alongside their original and admirable goal of keeping church and state separate, has motivated us in different degrees to part ways with the group. I emphasize again that the FFRF did and still does engage

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Steven Pinker follows suit. Jerry Coyne reports:

Like me, Steve Pinker has resigned from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).  His resignation was sent yesterday. Steve is an even bigger macher than I am both intellectually and, in this case, because he was Honorary President of that Board. I put below his two emails, reproduced with permission.

The core of what Pinker told them:

With sadness, I resign from my positions as Honorary President and member of the Honorary Board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The reason is obvious: your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.

My

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Jerry Coyne leaves FFRF:

Dear Annie Laurie and Dan,

As you probably expected, I am going resign my position on the honorary board of the FFRF.  I do this with great sadness, for you know that I have been a big supporter of your organization for years, and was honored to receive not only your Emperor Has No Clothes Award, but also that position on your honorary board.

But because you took down my article that critiqued Kat Grant’s piece, which amounts to quashing discussion of a perfectly discuss-able issue, and in fact had previously agreed that I could publish that piece—not a small amount of work—and then put it up after a bit of editing, well, that is

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Over here men make better women than women do.

Over there……….

https://twitter.com/NiohBerg/status/1873123435737747796 No windows. No fresh air, no sun or rain or moon, no ability to breathe freely outside, no singing, no talking, no laughing, no poetry…and now no windows.

Over here it’s men stealing everything we have, over there it’s men forbidding women to have anything.… Read the rest

Trump and bird flu converge. What could go wrong?

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Well, thanks for that, US government.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t

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Kat Grant – FFR’s women-explainer – has a long post responding to Jerry Coyne’s. It’s quite remarkably sloppy and badly written/reasoned.

Originally, I had planned on launching this blog in the New Year. It seemed like a good, solid time to launch a new project, allowing everyone to get through the holidays with minimal issue.

Wat? Everyone? Because the whole world is agog waiting for this blog?

If you are in the state-church space you may have seen that the Freedom From Religion Foundation recently posted a column by biologist and old guard atheist thinker Jerry Coyne, “rebutting” my “What is a Woman” blog, also written for Freethought Now. 

Oof. Terrible writing. Only the third sentence and … Read the rest

Musk turning up the volume. So to speak.

The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.

Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2024

…the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.

Why doesn’t FFRF send him a rude letter instead?… Read the rest

Sastra makes an interesting point on Jerry Coyne’s post about FFRF’s cowardly stab in the front.

One of the things about the transgender topic which has really stood out to me is the huge emphasis its advocates place on victimhood. While that may be a major component of all the areas of critical social justice, when it comes to the transgender it’s turned up to 11.

Trans people are the most marginalized, the most oppressed, the most vulnerable, the most fragile, sensitive, and easily offended. Suicide is seen as a likely and not unreasonable reaction to gender dysphoria. Meltdowns over misgendering are understandable. There is apparently no pain so great, no sense of alienation so cutting, as other people thinking

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Jerry Coyne has written a post on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s extraordinary behavior and explanation of said behavior.

When I wrote yesterday about my critique of Kat Grant’s “What is a woman?” piece, a critique published on the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) website, I had no idea that what I wrote was being removed by the FFRF at that moment! 

Jolting, isn’t it. It seems they no sooner published it than they depublished it. Why bother? Why not just say no in the first place? But of course that would not be an improvement, just an avoidance of public absurdity. (That part really is a mystery.)

It gets worse, because of course it does.

When some readers

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Freedom From Religion Foundation has found religion.

Religious interference often seeks to erode protections for LGBTQIA-plus individuals in areas such as marriage equality, health care, education and workplace rights. FFRF opposes these efforts, as they threaten not only individual freedoms but also the integrity of our secular democracy. FFRF recognizes the right of bodily autonomy for LGBTQIA-plus individuals, just as we consider that the government or outside individuals have no right to dictate or interfere with such intimate matters as abortion or contraception.

By “bodily autonomy” I suppose they mean puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, removal of healthy breasts, genital mutilation and so on. Yes, the right to “bodily autonomy” is important, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that people should … Read the rest

Touchy-feely bestselling author goes the extra mile.

Joanne Harris, author of the bestselling novel Chocolat, has begun adding content warnings to her books after comparing them to “wheelchair ramps”.

Mm. Yeah no. Wheelchair ramps are necessary because people in wheelchairs cannot use stairs: it’s physically impossible. It’s not the case that it’s physically impossible to read a novel because there’s something shocking or painful in it.

Readers are now told that Harris’s 1999 hit novel contains “spousal abuse, mild violence, death of parent, cancer, hostility and outdated terms for travelling community and religious intolerance”.

Leaving readers feeling there’s no point in reading it now.

At least she’s kind enough to explain the ramp analogy.

“It makes a lot

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Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on If they hold a certificate.

What does gender identity have to do with strip-searches?

Because trans ideology is a fundamentally moral enterprise and as such has minimal concerns for any facts or indeed any actual human reality. And as a moral enterprise it is fundamentally social and thus ultimately always resolves its conflicts not by reference to actual human needs (even if it sometimes claims to do so) but by deference to (some understanding of) social status. And men in dresses, however much they are identified as women, and as having always been women, retain their male status. (Apparently a male infant gets an irrevocable certificate of male status at some point … Read the rest

Ructions.

Freethought Now, the blog or online magazine of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, posted an article last month by someone named Kat Grant titled “What is a woman?”

The content, I’m sorry to say, is tediously predictable and indeed already familiar, not to say stale. Usual stuff. Vagina can’t be the answer because trans women can have them, missionaries and colonizers, blah blah. Mind you there is one quite startling lie:

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, also known as TERFs, claim that transgender women are rapists who are attempting to take away opportunities from “real” women.

The hell we do. Claim that all “transgender women” are rapists? I don’t know of any gender critic who has ever said that, … Read the rest

Speaking of plagues and anti-vaxxers and doom…

Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is making a comeback that no one asked for. Recent federal data shows that cases of the vaccine-preventable disease this year have reached the highest levels in a decade.

As of December 14, there have been 32,085 cases of pertussis reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year. That’s a fivefold increase from the tally recorded in 2023, which only saw around 6,500 cases. There are several factors to blame for the surge, experts say, including declining vaccination rates.

Well great. We’re stupid and getting stupider.

Since 2000, the U.S. had tens of thousands of annually reported pertussis cases. But as with

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The director of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa in the NY Times last month:

The World Is Watching the U.S. Deal With Bird Flu, and It’s Scary

As a virus scientist in South Africa, I’ve been watching with dread as H5N1 bird flu spreads among animals in the United States. The pathogen poses a serious pandemic threat and has been detected in over 500 dairy herds in 15 states — which is probably an undercount. And yet the U.S. response appears inadequate and slow, with too few genomic sequences of H5N1 cases in farm animals made publicly available for scientific review.

Failure to control H5N1 among American livestock could have global consequences, and this demands

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How sad, they’re fighting already.

A multi-day firestorm has erupted over comments made by two incoming advisers to President-elect Donald Trump about H-1B temporary worker visas, a carve-out for high-skilled workers that some in MAGA world say are taking American jobs.  

It’s so sad when racism and nativism can’t get along with greed and self-dealing.

Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” attributing this as one reason for the influx of foreign tech workers. Ramaswamy, who is Indian American, went on to say he hopes Trump’s presidency can start an American culture that prioritizes “hard work over laziness.” Tech executives have called for greater access to

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