Andrew Sullivan headlined his April 9, 2021 article on Substack: “A Truce Proposal In The Trans Wars”. As if living as a trans person is like taking a side in Star Wars. As if trans people want to be in a war rather than just have their gender. And as if the solution, when enemies attack your right to exist, is to propose a truce. He subtitled it: “There is a compromise available. Here’s one version.” The purpose of his article is to propose how he, a cis man, would compromise away trans people’s rights. He seems to think that…

In April 2021, a humanist organization revoked an award it had given to the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins 25 years earlier. The reason — at least, the immediate one that prompted their final call — was that Dawkins had made an offensive comment online.

I heard from some people who say they do not understand why Dawkins’ comment was offensive or harmful. It was indeed offensive and harmful, and it is important that this be made clear, so I have written this article to explain it from my perspective.

From What Perspective Is This Written?

I am a transgender man over 40. I have been living…

A tweet by the famous biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins on April 10, 2021 made headlines for its comparison between the identity claims of transgender people and those of Rachel Dolezal.

Because some people are not aware of the details of the 2015 scandal in which Dolezal was outed, specifically in the discourse that tried to make an analogy with transgender identity, I will revisit those details here as background information. Then, in my next article, I go on to discuss the controversy over Richard Dawkins’ comments.

The Dolezal Scandal in 2015

Rachel Dolezal is a white American woman who posed as Black. She attended…

Steven Connor’s The Madness of Knowledge: On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowing (2019) proposes a new word for the feeling of knowing. Here are some insights from the introduction to the book.

A relatively recent word: ‘Epistemology’

Though the question of knowledge itself goes back at least to ancient Greek philosophy, the word to describe that intellectual concern is a relatively recent arrival to English. Ralph Cudworth’s treatise (written c. 1688, published 1731) suggested the related word “epistemonical, meaning something like ‘capable of being known’.” In Connor’s interpretation, a word like “epistemonical” begins to gesture toward our fantasy that something’s existence depends on our…

Are you a poet, artist, or musician? Have you described yourself that way to others? Then maybe these situations sound familiar.

Here’s How It Goes

Scenario #1: Someone Asks: ‘What Do You Do?’

This is common. Someone asks what you “do.” They want to know how you pay your bills.

It isn’t their business what bills you have or how you pay them, but they ask this question anyway to make conversation. Probably your bills are inoffensive, right? And, to pay them, you might need to spend all day at a job. The job would be a recognizable occupation. You don’t mind discussing your job, right? (So they assume.)

And you can…

I read Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal (2017) shortly after it was published, and since then I have contemplated the argument against so-called “identity politics.” I think the 2017 round of this argument has successfully been put to bed by the election of Joe Biden, but, for the record, here’s what I thought of the book.

The Book Is Against ‘Identity Politics’

Lilla criticizes the invocation of “identity politics,” which is basically marginalized groups pointing out the fact that they exist and demanding equal rights. …

From the early days of Trumpism, before and after the man was elected, I took a lot of notes. Many of the details have resolved themselves and are no longer actionable items of political protest, but the broader-brush issues are still important to think about.

Now that the administration is history, each of us who lived through the administration should contemplate how history should be told. I am certainly not the only one who should tell it— others surely have more important and interesting perspectives than mine — but, at the same time, it is my responsibility to do some…

“This is a book about us,” Steve Volk says, about believers and unbelievers alike. It’s a book about the people who we are, more than it is a book about that which we do or don’t believe. Ideologues of either type — believers and unbelievers — often behave “as mean, petty bullies.” Often, we don’t have the true answer, but we are “neurologically uncomfortable with ambiguity” and we gravitate to “false certainty.”

The book is Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable — And Couldn’t (2011).

People who report paranormal experiences are often “ordinary people who didn’t ask…