Am I a Humanist?

Am I a Humanist?
HUMANISM ESTABLISHED ITSELF in the late 19^th century as an umbrella term for any disposition of thought stressing the centrality of the human species in the order of nature.  Today, in the Western world, humanism is more or less synonymous with atheism or secular rationalism.  The subordination of individuals to ideologies of economic structures, religious codes, or regulating forces is antithetical to Humanism since it reduces human agency to a subset of pre-ordained dogma.  Being an anti-ideological materialistic atheist, I am a Humanist.

Are Humanists Humanist?
OPINIONS EXPRESSED RECENTLY, and appear to be a consensus, impact negatively on the question.  Most critically is the recent issue of Humanists NZ opposing the rights of free speech, to hear and to be heard.  This is a form of censorship, cultural regulation and control of discourse.  Humanists’ concern for Mubarak Bala should apply to Kelly-Jean Minshull for offending popular beliefs.   There is an increasing distance between the Humanists and public intellectuals who, if not atheist, adhere to the concept of eschewing determinism or external agency, and if no longer on the Left, certainly once were, including Douglas Murray, Frank Furedi, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and particularly Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptics, who describes Humanists as having gone “full woke”.  ‘Woke’ ideology is utopian and concerned with the primacy of individual feelings over dispassionate rationality. 

HUMANISM CAN ENCOMPASS NOMINALLY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE who eschew supernatural interventions in human life.  But there is an irony here.  While Christians and Jews can describe themselves as Humanists on that basis, Muslims, by the essence of their faith, cannot.  This is because an expressed belief in Allah and his agency in human affairs is an essential component of the religion.  Furthermore, Islam’s rules oblige Muslims to bring about the dominance of Islam throughout the world.  Humanists represent a form of apostasy, which is punishable by death.  Thus, Islam is definitively anti-Humanist and vice-versa.  The naivety and neutrality, even sympathy, towards Islam I detect in this Humanist branch is dangerously misplaced. 

WHILE SARAH BAKEWELL IS NOT HERSELF A HUMANIST, in an interview about her latest book, Humanly Possible, she describes Humanism as “anything that puts individual human experience at the centre of things, rather than, say, an ideology like communism...a utopian ideology where present well-being would be sacrificed to the grand ideas of the future.”   I would suggest that ‘individual’ would not have been a factor in times past; it is a preoccupation of the present.  Further, the Marxist-derived ‘woke’ ideology, which appears to have significant sympathy within NZ Humanists, is utopian.

THE CONSENSUS I PERCEIVE OF HUMANISTS is that they consider themselves to be on the Left.  The Left is more likely than the Right to be captured by ideology because it wants change rather than stasis and ideology is perhaps the major agent of change.  Once in place, of course, an ideology will change laws and institutions to suit the ideology, as we saw in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1932, China in 1949, Vietnam in 1972, Cambodia in 1973, and Iran in 1979.  A return to a more liberal era takes generations.  I remain wary of the educated on the Left for their susceptibility to arrogance of the intellect (Richard West), chronological snobbery (C S Lewis), brahmin caste assumptions (Trevor Philips), the tyranny of merit (Michael Sandel), anachronistic moralising, moral superiority and authoritarianism, and cultural repudiation.

NEW ZEALAND HUMANISTS, in its manifesto, advocates personal responsibility, development and enjoyment, pursuit of positive ideals, and respect for the well-being of others.  It has communitarian ideals and respect for the golden rule.  It supports open societies in which differences of opinion and lifestyle are accepted, and unbiased state institutions.  In practice it appears to support diversity unless it’s that of thought.

Gender and Woke Ideology

The terms ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender roles’ were created by Kiwi sexologist John Money to describe an externally imposed sex identity, but it changed its meaning to an internally-selected sex identity. According to Money, babies are gender neutral at birth, and ultimately, environment determines whether a person is a man or a woman.  However, the Reimer twins debacle is evidence of the falsity of this concept, but it was adopted by Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna in 1978’s Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach and taken further in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, where she stated, “gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.”  Keen-Minshull, not religious herself, thinks “gender is a probably secular notion of a soul”, which I think is a very perceptive comment.[1]

 To quote Michael Biggs in Queer Theory…and Prisons, “Deconstructing the conventional meaning of woman (qua adult human female) requires constructing novel identities — ‘woman’ (qua someone who declares themself to be one, dramaturgical performativity) and ‘transgender’—ultimately derived from illocutionary performance (that is, a verbal assertion). These identities are now rigorously enforced by the formal machinery of law, and in elite social circles, by the informal compulsion of norms.” End quote.  As Alex Byrne said in his paper Are women adult human females?, “One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.”  Byrne[2].

With the Trans Issue, the superficial hypothesis here is that the word ‘woman’ no longer defines an ‘adult human female’, and that this has consequences. I have delineated nine factors, where for the purposes of definition, the word ‘women’ is used to represent humans with two X chromosomes –

1)        What are the consequences for the loss of the definition of ‘woman’ as a biological category, an ‘adult human female’, one born with the capacity to bear offspring?  A whole new vocabulary, indeed language, has been invented to cater for less than half a percent of the population and their activists, in a reckless attempt to avoid man, woman, boy, or girl.  Pregnant person, person who produces sperm, person who produces eggs, etc.  The misogyny of the men’s rights movement has forced this change of meaning – the erasure of women as a biological category – leaving men unscathed.  Shall this, too, pass?  Surely, it would be better to keep the extremely accurate (>99.9%) definition of woman as an adult human female defined by the XX chromosome, and create another name for anyone not so well defined who nonetheless wishes to be regarded as female? 

2)        Whether or not women should have rights to exclusive use of their own space away from self-evident males who seek unfettered access.  This includes prisons, which Michael Biggs in the latest Journal of Controversial Ideas examines in excellent and readable detail about the complex legal and procedural changes required, and the management of often violent trans-women, often sex offenders, without mentioning what must be a hideous expense. 

3)        Whether or not women are entitled to exclusive rights to competitive sports without having to compete with faster and stronger male-borns who identify as women, but who deprive female-borns to represent their country. 

4)        Whether those who support women’s rights over trans-women’s rights in these matters should have the freedom to express their views.  Sussex University’s Dr Kathleen Stock, for example, or NZ Humanist’s poor judgment and flagrantly false accusations relating to Keen-Minshull’s visit.[3]  Also in consideration should be the thug’s veto, the intense violence expressed with revolutionary zeal against such people.

5)        Whether children have the right and understanding to determine their gender contrary to their sex. 

6)        Whether the medical establishment has the right to over-ride parental authority to supply juveniles with drugs and surgery which can permanently change sexual characteristics and the nominal right to have children. 

7)        What has the trans-rights issue done to women’s rights where biological males can, by mere statement, adopt those rights as their own?  There is a shift in power discourse away from biological women towards trans-women, some with criminal intent, so what are the consequences? 

8)        Whether or not it is appropriate for ‘drag queens’ to read stories to young children, and whether parents should have a choice of their attendance.  (Drag queens are not simply men in women’s clothes; they are identified with the demi-monde and dress in an extremely exaggerated manner, one not used by women under any circumstances.  Biggs’ phrase ‘dramaturgical performativity’ describes this well.  This may in part be because women’s clothes and styles don’t suit men’s physiques.)

9)        Gender identity was once personal and private and appears now to be more than just publicly declarative.  An application for a government job included a question on sexuality and gender, with no opt out and no other identity question.[4]  Should statements of personal pronouns, wanted by under 1% of the population, be legally required and observed, as they are in Canada?

 Delving deeper, I have a hypothesis I call the peace dividend, given the 78-year absence of war and increased prosperity in the West.[5]  This appears to result in the deliberate socially-engineered feminisation of society of which the desexualisation of children’s identity is part.  The consequences of this have yet to be fully realised, but already it is radically affecting adolescent female identity as can be seen with de-transitioning and sterility.  In 2018 Time magazine quoted a report saying there were 700,000 trans people in the United States, but that same report for 2022 said this had risen to 1.6m (0.2% to 0.5%).  Academics and professionals engaged in this pursuit do not have evidence to support desexualisation, but have to resort to ideology.  This is made abundantly clear in Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman; in TV1’s Sunday episode Theybies of 23 April on children raised without discussion of their sex; and a 2018 VUW lecture series Gender and Religion.  Academic and professionals best described as ‘woke’ were concerned with individuals’ feelings as expressed and were unable to enter into rational discussion.  In What is a Woman they were unable to define ‘woman’.  In Gender and Religion similar experts flatly denied evidence before their eyes.

One consequence of the Peace Dividend is a reduction in fecundity, and a consequence of this appears to be antagonism to sex stereotyping instantiated in this discussion.  In contrast, a paper from Vic titled Individuals’ number of children is associated with benevolent sexism[6], concluded that having a greater number of children was associated with stronger endorsement of benevolent sexism, that is, traditional gender roles.

Deeper still, one has to ask what has brought this radical change about, and the only rational argument is ideology, the polity which identifies the problem which thwarts Utopia, provides the solution, and applies it by any and all means possible, which includes control of antithetical speech and thought.  In this case, Social Theory provides a model of the social world, and theory can also become a model for remaking it.[7]  Supporters of trans people are being treated as useful idiots, tearing apart feminism and creating a narrative which distorts reality and deceives in order to convince the public of its inescapable veracity.  It comes from the far Left’s blank slate approach to social engineering and Lysenkoism, the deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.  This is cultural Marxism, which has the same ends as Marxism but with different means, ending in the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions and the collapse of social democratic capitalism.  Disguised as progressive politics.

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[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kellie-jay-keen-on-protecting-women-and-facing-down/id1441708286?i=1000610128883

[2] Are women adult human females? Alex Byrne. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01408-8

[3] “…hateful message” unsupported by evidence; “far-right neo-nazis…attended in support…” was incorrect, they were there by coincidence with their own agenda – see Quillette interview https://quillette.com/2023/04/21/kellie-jay-keen-on-protecting-women-and-facing-down-aggressive-gender-rights-mobs/ 27’.

[4] https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/citizen-science-rainbow-white-anting

[5] (Pax Europaea, preceded by Pax Britannica 1815-1914.  There are many facets to this – STEM career advocacy for women and the resultant diminishing of career options for men and their importance for male identity; the resulting childlessness of women and the consequences for an aging society, and the loss of male education, goals and identity resulting in an increasing number of dissolute males and concomitant crime.)

[6] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252194.  “We proposed that the role-justification and the mating strategy accounts of benevolent sexism are not rival perspectives but rather complementary explanations of a process in which inequalities in child-rearing practices prompt gender beliefs that justify inequalities, and these beliefs encourage mating strategies that recreate those inequalities.” 

[7] Biggs, M. Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons. Journal of Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 2; doi:10.35995/jci02010002.  Although queer theory was embraced by activists, policy was really changed by the unintended consequences of judicial decisions. Prisoners won the right to healthcare equal to that provided outside prison, while transsexual patients won the right to genital surgery. In combination, these cases established a right for prisoners to obtain genital surgery, which in turn enabled them to move to the women’s estate. When clinicians decreed that the prerequisite for genital surgery—living as a woman—could not be fulfilled in a men’s prison, then it naturally followed that male prisoners desiring genital surgery had to be transferred before surgery. This enabled the first rapist to enter a women’s prison in 2009.  This judgment led to the second phase, where the criterion became legal sex. Queer theory now came into its own. It had shaped the formulation of the Gender Recognition Act, the first law in the world to allow someone to change legal sex without undergoing any physical change. Queer theory motivated activists to launch a social media campaign to transfer a violent male to the women’s estate. This successful campaign was followed by two suicides in prison, sympathetically reported by the mainstream media.  Regulations revised in 2016 ushered in the third phase, where the criterion became gender identity.

The Green Party Bares its Prejudices; Humanists go Full-Woke on Trans-Rights

The Green Party says the government should stop British anti-transgender activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull from visiting New Zealand.

Well, technically she’s a women’s rights activist who takes issue with transgender women’s rights usurping those of biological women, and fair enough given the upsets that transgender women are causing.  But have women’s rights’ chickens have come home to roost?

Women successfully demanded the right to join men’s clubs and pushed female students into STEM careers, issuing mantras like ‘women can do anything’, but now have to contest their new-found liberties with biological males calling themselves women.  Women-only spaces once inviolable - sports, changing rooms, waiting rooms, hospital wards, prisons, body-searches, toilets – have to be shared with people born male and of greater size and strength. The fox is calling himself a chicken and demanding entry into the hen-house. Belatedly, prison services and sports bodies are redrawing the rules, playing catch-up with the power of a tiny proportion of influential activists. 

Support for ‘trans rights’ are so widespread throughout media and with far-Left political commentators, that Keen-Minshull didn’t stand much of a chance, The Green Party warned of violent clashes and they delivered, but instead of opposing any fascist groups supporting her, they attacked her and her moderate message.

This was a success for the Greens’ suppression of free speech, but their reputation is mixed.  They described the Immigration Service’s 2004 refusal to permit the entry of Holocaust-denier David Irving as setting “a bad precedent for free speech in this country.”  So they approve of an anti-Semite’s right to speak, but not those of a women’s rights activist.  It seems, too, that they avoided directly alienating the fascists who supported her.  There’s a deeply unpleasant message there, that the Greens cannot be relied upon to support Western freedoms and democratic socialism, or to antagonise the extreme Right. 

“Really, it’s got even worse now, secular humanists have gone full-woke as far as I can tell and that’s really going to alienate a lot of people.”

Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society

Closer to my head and heart than the Greens, The New Zealand Humanists have written a letter to Minister of Immigration Michael Wood asking him to “consider denying any visa application or revocation of any previously granted visa to Keen-Minshull and anyone associated with organising the Let Women Speak event.” 

One would have thought that the right to speak freely of one’s conscience would be sacrosanct to Humanists, but their concerns were of “risk and threat to public order and the public interest.”  Public interest?  That really didn’t get a look in, and the Humanists and the Greens share a malignant responsibility for its rejection.  The Humanists’ manifesto claims it to be “committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views”, unless, it seems, where women’s rights impinge on the rights of those few born male who wish aggressively to assert their ‘womanhood’.

The letter’s false claims of “her hateful message” and her inadvertent association with neo-nazis belies the reality that the rise of far Right extremism has its roots in the reaction to the rise of far-Left ideology.  Were the far-Left to dial back on its own extremism, the far-Right would disappear back into the shadows.  The Left has a lot to answer for since it left the Left.