There Is No Valid Proof of Gender Identity, And There Never Will Be (03/25/2023)

Review: 'Irreversible Damage' (10/11/2022)

'What Is a Woman?' Answered (09/07/2022)

It's Gender-Obscuring, Not Gender-Affirming (08/18/2022)

Review: "What is a Woman?" (06/09/2022)

There Can Be No Demigods in Secularism (03/24/2022)

The Freedom to Not Believe (07/17/2021)

Freedom From Super-Religion (03/24/2021)

A Non-Religious Theocracy (01/09/2021)

Real-Gender vs Woke-Gender (12/05/2020)

If Gender Identity Isn't a Religious Belief, Then It's Really, Really Stupid (11/07/2020)

The End of a Common "Family-Friendly" (12/21/2019)

How to Talk to Progressives about Gender Identity (11/26/2019)

The Competition to Define the Words 'Man' and 'Woman' (08/24/2019)

The Religious Evangelism of the Rainbow Flag (06/15/2019)

Gender Identity Is a Religious Belief That I Don't Believe In (08/21/2018)

Dear College Students (08/27/2016)

How Anti-Discrimination Laws Are Used to Discriminate Against Religion (05/21/2016)

Divine Authority and "Gender Identity" (05/18/2016)

Opposition to "Gender Identity" Is Driven by Logic, Not Religion (04/29/2016)

A Modest Proposal for the Replacement of Our Outdated Gender Binary Classification System with One More Suited for Our Progressive Age (03/10/2016)

Some Connected Thoughts about Gender (01/28/2016)

Identity Shells and How They Are Used Against You (12/03/2015)

Gender Identify Is a Self-Defeating Ideology (10/05/2015)

Our Halfway State of Absurdity (09/21/2015)

Some Connected Thoughts about Religion (09/18/2015)

The World Does Not Revolve Around You (07/19/2023)

Expecting your “identity” or “self-expression” to be treated by others as reality is incredibly arrogant and self-centered.

The world does not revolve around you.

Identities Are Not Innate (07/17/2023)

Identity is neither innate nor immutable. It is a personal belief and is capable of change.

Identities can only legitimately be granted protected class status if they are claimed as religious because religious freedom is the only protection available for unprovable beliefs.

A De Facto Sin (04/29/2023)

Misgendering is a de facto religious sin.

But a sin is only a sin to those who belong to a religion that claims it’s a sin.

For nonbelievers in gender identity, misgendering is not a sin. It’s just describing reality accurately.

My Self-Identity (03/14/2023)

I self-identify as a human with the sufficient wisdom to determine whether or not someone else’s identity is part of provable reality. This identity of mine is based on an internal sense of who I am as a person and is critically important to me.

And using this wisdom, which I identify as having, I have determined that gender identity is not part of provable reality.

Gender identity believers therefore have two legitimate choices:

1. Affirm my identity and agree that gender identity is not part of provable reality.
2. Agree with me that “identity” isn’t a magic backdoor around the burden of proof and they can therefore demand I provide proof of my truth claims.

Alternatively, they could take the illegitimate route of claiming that it’s only possible to use identity to prove truth claims that they believe in, but that would only demonstrate that they are not engaging in this discussion in good faith and instead are trying to use deceit and flawed arguments to force their beliefs onto others.

Psychology and Its Limitations (03/10/2023)

If there actually is a transcendental realm of identity that exists, in the same sense that physical reality exists, then it will not be psychology that discovers it because they lack the means to do so.

Psychology deals with humans and how they interact with reality. A patient’s discomfort about reality is not proof of the supernatural, nor is it proof that reality is not what it seems. It is simply an indication that that particular patient is uncomfortable with reality. If a psychologist is doing their job, they will help their patient come to terms with reality instead of trying to convince the entire world to pretend that reality is something that it isn’t. The entire world is not their patient, nor are we obligated to take part in their patient’s therapy.

Within Secularism, Unprovable Defaults to False (03/06/2023)

The statement “I am transgender” includes unprovable truth claims about reality. Within secularism, unprovable truth claims about reality default to false; therefore, within secularism, the statement “I am transgender” has to be false.

This means that within secularism there are no people who actually are transgender. There are only people who wrongly believe they are.

If those who believe they are transgender wish to remove the adverb “wrongly”, they should claim their belief is religious because religious beliefs are exempt from secularism’s requirement for proof. But religious freedom is a two-way agreement. When you exercise it, you agree that others don’t have to treat your belief as true.

Provable Reality, Cold and Indifferent (02/17/2023)

Provable reality is cold and indifferent. It doesn’t care about your happiness, your mental health, or what makes you more or less likely to commit suicide. Provable reality simply is. It doesn’t care about you at all, or about me, or about anyone else. As content to rule over a barren rock drifting silently in the void of space as it is to reign over a warm planet teeming with life and intelligence, provable reality simply doesn’t care.

Warmth, love, mercy; purpose and meaning—seek those elsewhere. But if you want that which holds sway in our secular neutrality, that which all can be compelled to accept, then you have met your cold mistress; acquaint yourself with her indifferent grip.

Psychologists Cannot Expect Mass Delusion (02/11/2023)

An expectation of mass delusion is not a valid mental therapy technique. Psychologists have no right to expect the world to “affirm” the gender identity of their patients. Psychology is supposed to be a secular profession. It must be grounded on provable reality. Religious beliefs can—and should—be accommodated, but only if the patient understands that they are religious beliefs and that no one else is obligated to treat them as true. It’s a psychologists job to help their patients come to terms with that reality. Many psychologists today, far too many, are failing miserably at their job.

Psychology's Unjustifiable Intrusion (02/10/2023)

It is no more possible for a psychological therapy session to prove someone is part of a physical category like biological sex than it is for it to prove that Russell’s teapot is orbiting unseen out in space.

Inventing an incorporeal concept like gender identity and claiming it should override a physical category like biological sex is an unjustifiable intrusion into aspects of reality that psychology has no business making claims about.

Psychology and Provable Reality (02/10/2023)

If psychology is not based on provable reality, then it is indistinguishable from religion.

Gender Identity Is Trying to 'Pass' (02/10/2023)

Gender identity is a religious belief trying to “pass” as secular.

Bypassing Proof Through Artifice (02/01/2023)

Creating an unprovable incorporeal concept like “gender” and claiming it overrides a physical concept like biological sex is an attempt to use artifice to bypass the requirement for proof. This must not be treated as legitimate.

Physical, Mental, Emotional (01/31/2023)

Biological sex is a physical category. People are assigned to physical categories based on physical evidence. There is no possible mental measurement that could assign someone to a physical category.

And trying to assign someone to a physical category based on mental health claims (“It makes him happier!”) is an emotional plea, not a rational argument. It ignores the impact this action would have on others. They matter too.

Proof of Failure (01/21/2023)

A psychological study that reports some psychologists made people “happier” with a fantasy than with reality is not proof that that fantasy is true. It’s proof that the psychologists involved utterly failed at their job.

A Secular Right (12/10/2022)

We have a secular right to not treat unprovable beliefs (like gender identity) as true.

Gender Identity Is Not a Literal Thing (11/12/2022)

If gender identity is a real literal thing, why would you assume everyone would have the gender identity they want to have? Not everyone has the biological sex they want to have. If gender identity is as real as biological sex, why wouldn’t some also have an unwanted gender identity?

But instead, everyone coincidentally has the gender identity they want to have, and that’s because gender identity isn’t a real literal thing—it’s just a wish, a fantasy. It’s just the expression of someone’s deepest desire, a desire which cannot be granted by reality so we are expected to grant it ourselves despite reality.

Self-Identity Is Inherently Unprovable (09/17/2022)

If a truth claim about reality relies on self-identity, then it is inherently unprovable. Believing in it, therefore, is an exercise of faith.

This applies to both gender identity and sexual identity. Both are based on self-identity and therefore are faith-based, not secular.

Progressivism, You Gullible Fool (07/05/2021)

Oh Progressivism, you gullible fool. In 2016 a woman claims she is a lesbian. Then in 2021 she claims she is a man (and therefore “straight”). And there you are in both cases, nodding your head right along like an idiot, demanding no proof, just taking her word for it. And when 2026 rolls around, what will she claim to be then? What truth claims will she demand you blindly accept? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, you’ll believe it, you gullible fool.

Oh Progressivism, you gullible fool. You display such faith in something that doesn’t even bother to call itself a religion, like a girl putting out on a date without even being taken to dinner first. “But he loves me! He said he loves me!”

You gullible fool.

Organized Religion vs a State-Backed Faith-Based Movement (03/09/2021)

The reason why the LGBT movement has proven such a challenge to organized religion is because the conflict has wrongly been interpreted as religion vs secularism when it is actually religion vs religion.

Gender identity is a faith-based belief that contradicts provable reality and as such it has no business being anywhere near secularism. Sexual identity, on the other hand, does not currently contradict provable reality because it is only an interpretation of it, so believers in sexual identity have the right to argue for its usage within secular society*, but organized religion has an equal right to be part of that conversation.

This is not creationism vs evolution in early 20th-century America. This is the Huguenots vs the Catholics in 17th-century France. The Huguenots stood little chance against the state-backed religion in their day, and we stand as little chance today unless we correct our understanding of what is actually going on. Organized religion can coexist with science, no problem; but organized religion cannot coexist with a religious movement that misrepresents itself as science in order to gain the official support of the state and effectively become the state-backed religion. We’ve seen this conflict before. We know how it will end.

* [Update 06/16/2021] I went too far in this prior statement. Yes, sexual identity is less egregious a violation of secularism than gender identity because at least it doesn’t directly contradict provable reality like gender identity does, but sexual identity is still an attempt to create an invisible construct that people are expected to believe in based on nothing more than faith in someone else’s words. Yes, you have the right to try to persuade our culture to treat the presence of same-sex attraction as a meaningful part of someone’s being, just like I, in contrast, argue that its presence should be treated as meaningless (because it is). However, you do not have the right to demand everyone believe a truth-claim about yourself that you cannot prove, and sexual identity therefore can never be legitimately used as a way to categorize people within secularism unless empirical evidence is discovered to prove its existence and thereafter that empirical evidence is used to identify everyone’s sexual identity instead of self-identity. But that will never happen because sexual identity, like vampires and werewolves, doesn’t actually exist in provable reality. It is nothing more than a faith-based interpretation of that reality, and everyone, therefore, is justified to reject it in favor of a better interpretation.

Secularism Needs to Protect Us From Faith-Based Non-Religion (02/27/2021)

Secularism, as it is commonly understood today, is only capable of protecting us from control by organized religion. It isn’t capable of protecting us from control by faith-based non-religion.

This is very troublesome given that we live in a world where an increasing amount of people are abandoning organized religion yet obviously not abandoning faith-based beliefs entirely (Exhibit A: gender identity). Our society, clearly, must reconsider what it understands secularism to be.

Secularism is not non-religion. Secularism is proof. It’s time for society to drop any expectation of antagonism between secularism and organized religion specifically and replace that expectation with a general preference within secularism for proof over faith. Only that principle can protect us from control both by organized religion and also by faith-based non-religion. Only that principle can allow secularism to truly be secularism.

Nature Doesn't Care If It Offends You (03/07/2020)

Nature doesn't care if it offends you. Nature doesn't care if you wish it were different. Nature simply is. It has been such since long before you were here, and it will continue being such long after you are gone. You can shout, you can cry, you can scream your entire life away, and then, when your end comes, nature will assimilate your body back into itself, completely oblivious to a single complaint. Or, alternatively, you can accept the reality of nature as it is, even if it isn't exactly the way you wish it were, and you can find the beauty, the peace, and the joy it contains for you in the finite time you have here.

It's your choice.

Suicide Is a Tragic Mistake, Not a Weapon (02/01/2020)

Suicide is a tragic mistake, not a weapon.

We should never use someone's suicide as a weapon in the fight for our point of view because doing so creates an incentive for others to repeat that same tragic mistake.

Suicide is a tragic mistake, not a weapon, never a weapon.

Magical Words (05/19/2016)

You can prove a man's height. You can prove his weight, his blood type, his skin color, his biological sex. But you can't prove a man is a woman, not without the mystical power of "Gender Identity", not without the magical words "I am a woman".

And what if I don't believe those words are magic?

Related essay:
Divine Authority and "Gender Identity"

Psychologists and Biology (05/12/2016)

Psychologists do not hold precedence over biology. The fact that a man feels more comfortable while pretending to be a woman doesn't mean he is a woman. It just means he is a man in need of a better psychologist.

Related essay:
Some Connected Thoughts about Gender

"Transgender" Is a Religious Term (05/11/2016)

"Transgender" is a religious term used by a religion I don't believe in.

Related essay:
Opposition to "Gender Identity" Is Driven by Logic, Not Religion

The Cognitive Dissonance of "Gender Identity" (04/20/2016)

Gender, if divorced from biological sex, is pointless. That's the true core of our society's conflict over "gender identity" today. It's the cognitive dissonance. We're expected to believe that gender actually matters (and therefore we should bother paying attention to it) and to simultaneously believe that gender doesn't matter (and therefore people can claim to be whatever gender they want, despite their biology). It's us staring up at a bright blue sky while activist bullies are screaming in our ears that it's green, and the whole time Darwin is watching from afar, snickering.

Gender Is Not a Religious Concept (03/03/2016)

Religion is about the unseen. Gender is not. When gender-identity missionaries knock on Mother Nature's door, she unleashes Darwin to chase them off her lawn.

Behavior Identities (02/20/2016)

Behavior identities (also referred to as identity shells) are manipulative, artificial labels placed around behaviors to force us to accept what we otherwise wouldn't. When you see a behavior identity being used, replace the false label with the behavior it is hiding and notice how much clearer the situation becomes.

You are being manipulated. Doesn't that bother you? Because, frankly, it pisses me off.

The Discouragement of Wrong Behavior (02/06/2016)

Everyone treats wrong behavior differently from right behavior. There's nothing remarkable about that. All of us do it, each following our own definition of right and wrong. Whether the personal disapproval of individuals or the legal consequences of government, the effect is the same: a discouragement of behavior we consider to be wrong.

There are, unfortunately, some who try to hide certain behaviors behind a facade of identity in an attempt to place those behaviors out-of-bounds for disapproval; but that manipulative tactic is a topic for another day.

Anti-Discrimination Laws (01/12/2016)

Anti-discrimination laws, which in the past were used to protect the equality of people, are now being used to impose the acceptance of ideology. "Thou shalt not discourage this behavior"—that is the message of anti-discrimination laws today. It's time for such laws to be relegated to the past. As long as we allow them to remain, they will continue to become more and more corrupted.

Society's Roles (01/06/2015)

If a society wants to survive, then one of the most important roles of its men must be that of a father, and one of the most important roles of its women must be that of a mother. If a society recognizes this and has any common sense, then the most important role of its men will be that of a husband, and the most important role of its women will be that of a wife.