Scientist and author Richard Dawkins continues to run afoul of left-wing activists, including those in his own atheist camp. Last week, Dawkins resigned from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) after the group unpublished an essay arguing that biological sex was real and binary. Here's the message Dawkins sent to the co-presidents of the organization.

It is with real sadness, because of my personal regard for you both, that I feel obliged to resign from the Honorary Board of FFRF. Publishing the silly and unscientific “What is a Woman” article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgment, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field, namely Biology, Jerry Coyne. But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal. Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own Honorary Board. A Board which I now leave with regret.

As mentioned in his note, the FFRF decided to publish an article by one of their own associates (she's a nonbinary attorney) basically making the usual arguments on behalf of the idea that "trans women are women." Here's a bit of her argument.

Some people define a “woman” as someone with a vagina. This presents problems, as transgender women who receive bottom surgery have vaginas. So, then, perhaps it is someone born with a vagina? Well, what does that mean for intersex people, who are often given genital surgery at birth when their anatomy does not firmly meet criteria for a penis or vagina? It can’t be based on whether or not the person has a uterus, because not only does that present issues for intersex people, but also women who have hysterectomies. Even more issues arise if you attempt to define womanhood based on the ability to conceive children, or have a period, as it would also exclude women who have any number of medical conditions, or who have gone through menopause.

Maybe the issue is that there is simply too much potential variation in macrolevel anatomy. Instead, we should be looking at genetics. Does having two X chromosomes make you a woman? Or is it just that you do not possess a Y chromosome? Even more so, this approach to defining what a woman is does not work the moment that you remember intersex individuals exist. The chromosomal approach is also a deeply impractical one, as people can go their entire lives not knowing their chromosomal makeup.

...any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate...

All of this is to say that there is an answer to the question “what is a woman,” that luckily does not involve plucking a chicken from its feathers. A woman is whoever she says she is.

The FFRF then published a rebuttal by an actual biologist named Jerry Coyne. Here's some of his response. His basic response is that a) biology doesn't care about your feelings and b) a tiny number of exceptions to these universal categories of male and female does not mean the categories are useless or unscientific.

In the Freethought Now article “What is a woman?” author Kat Grant struggles at length to define the word, rejecting one definition after another as flawed or incomplete. Grant finally settles on a definition based on self-identity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” This of course is a tautology, and still leaves open the question of what a woman really is. And the remarkable redefinition of a term with a long biological history can be seen only as an attempt to force ideology onto nature. Because some nonbinary people—or men who identify as women (“transwomen”)—feel that their identity is not adequately recognized by biology, they choose to impose ideology onto biology and concoct a new definition of “woman.”

Further, there are plenty of problems with the claim that self-identification maps directly onto empirical reality. You are not always fat if you feel fat (the problem with anorexia), not a horse if you feel you’re a horse (a class of people called “therians” psychologically identify as animals), and do not become Asian simply become you feel Asian (the issue of “transracialism”). But sex, Grant tells us, is different: It is the one biological feature of humans that can be changed solely by psychology.

But why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality. Instead, in biology “sex” is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells (“gametes”). Males have small, mobile gametes (sperm in animals and pollen in plants); females have large, immobile gametes (ova in plants and eggs in animals). In all animals and vascular plants there are exactly two sexes and no more. Though a fair number of plants and a few species of animals combine both functions in a single individual (“hermaphrodites”), these are not a third sex because they produce the typical two gametes.

It’s important to recognize that, although this gametic idea is called a “definition” of sex, it is really a generalization—and thus a concept—based on a vast number of observations of diverse organisms. We know that, except for a few algae and fungi, all multicellular organisms and vertebrates, including us, adhere to this generalization. It is, then, nearly universal...

Yes, there is a tiny fraction of exceptions, including intersex individuals, who defy classification (estimates range between 1/5,600 and 1/20,000). These exceptions to the gametic view are surely interesting, but do not undermine the generality of the sex binary. Nowhere else in biology would deviations this rare undermine a fundamental concept. To illustrate, as many as 1 in 300 people are born with some form of polydactyly—without the normal number of ten fingers. Nevertheless, nobody talks about a “spectrum of digit number.” (It’s important to recognize that only a very few nonbinary and transgender people are “intersex,” for nearly all are biologically male or female.)

That's not even half of his essay. He closes by saying, "One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights." But apparently the FFRF disagreed. After a backlash, they pulled Coyne's response down. He responded in an email, calling the decision "quasi-religious."

“That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.”

“The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”

Coyne left the group and psychologist and author Steven Pinker also left over it. He wrote a letter saying the FFRP had become the enforcer of a new religion.

With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics. It has turned its back on reason: if your readers “wrongfully perceive” the opposite of a clear statement that you support the expression of contesting opinions, the appropriate response is to stand by your statement, not ratify their error.

Prof. Dawkins, who is also a biologist, was the third person to leave the group. I wonder if the FFRP thinks it was worth losing three high-profile authors and academics in order to placate a nonbinary lawyer no one has ever heard of and her ideological comrades. Seems like a short-sighted decision. More to the point, Coyne clearly had the better argument. It would have been much better to keep the discussion going than to rule one side of it out of bounds.