When it comes to transgender thought, even famed atheist Richard Dawkins has questions.
The evolutionary biologist said on a recent episode of his podcast, “The Poetry of Reality,” that it’s “distinctly weird” and an “odd distortion of reality” to believe there are more than two sexes.
“Sex really is binary,” Dawkins said during his conversation with journalist Helen Joyce. “There’s no question about it. You’re either male or female. And it’s absolutely clear.”
“You can do it on gamete size; you can do it on chromosomes,” he continued. “To me, as a biologist, [it’s] distinctly weird. People can simply declare, ‘I am a woman, though I have a penis.’ Helen, what do you think lies behind this odd distortion of reality?”
Joyce, for her part, responded by noting how protected the topic of transgenderism has become — pointing to the fact that asking basic questions is often dismissed as hate speech.
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“[J]ust asking very obvious questions like, ‘Don’t you think that if we allow people to self-identify their sex this will lead to, for example, destroying women’s sports or putting rapists in women’s jails?’ People would turn this back on me and say, ‘You think that trans people are predators? You’re a bigot,'” she said.
Joyce agreed with Dawkins’ assessment, arguing men identifying as women — and vice-versa — is in-name-only and not in any way rooted in science or biological reality.
“There isn’t a sense in which a man can become a woman, except linguistically,” she said. “I guess, OK, he can have operations. Most trans people don’t have any operations, don’t take any medicine, but that doesn’t change your sex.”
J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series, has made similar comments in the past.
In the summer of 2020, Rowling wrote it “isn’t hate speech to speak the truth” about biology and the reality that there are only two sexes: male and female.
“[E]rasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives,” she wrote.
The famed author has also acknowledged the intellectual contradictions that undergird transgender thought, specifically wondering how — according to leftist ideology — the following concepts can both be true: (1) There is no sex and gender binary and (2) someone can be born into the wrong one of two sexes.
“The contradictions drive me crazy,” she said in December. “We’re simultaneously told gender is innate and inborn, and that it’s a choice, a performance. All of these things cannot be true. If it’s a choice, then, clearly, it’s not innate.”
In the spring of this year, Dawkins spoke out in support of Rowling.
“[W]e’ve seen the way J.K. Rowling has been bullied,” he said. “[She] stood up to it, but it’s very upsetting that this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse and to really talk errant nonsense.”
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