In 1991, Michael Shermer co-founded Skeptic Magazine and he remains editor-in-chief. It’s purpose, according to Wikipedia, was to explore:

subjects such as creationism, pyramid power, Bigfoot, pseudohistorical claims (as in the examples of Holocaust denial and extreme Afrocentrism), the use or misuse of theory and statistics, conspiracy theories, urban myths, witch-hunts, mass hysterias, genius and intelligence, and cultural influences on science, as well as controversies involving protosciences at the leading edge of established science, and even fads like cryonics and low-carb diets.

“Explore” meant “cast a skeptical eye on,” of course.

Skeptic was associated with such figures as Richard Dawkins and James Randi (the Amazing Randi). At its best, would deflate dangerous nonsense. At its worst, it would target anything to which a fashionable academic could adopt a superior attitude.

Fast forward nearly twenty-five years and we find Skeptic defending the now-controversial observation that humans — like all primate mammals — are by nature sex binary.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the transgender movement is a triumph of private truth over reality-based thinking. In other words, reality-based thinking is itself the target.

Official Science

This is not a war on Official Science but on reality-based thinking. If Official Science organizations can equate private assertions of truth with observed reality, they can continue to hold authoritative positions. And, sensing the cultural momentum, they are starting to play along, casting aside traditional principles.

Image Credit: freshidea - Adobe Stock

Thus, evolutionary biologists, who probably thought themselves immune to the Cancelations they mete out to Darwin-doubters, have themselves become targets of Cancel Culture. Thus, Skeptic offers one of them a platform.

A platform for reality

Robert O. Deaner, a psychology professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, specializing in the study of evolution, sex differences and sports. He offers eight arguments in favor of the proposition that in humans, sex is binary:

Again, there are exactly two kinds of sexual reproducers, male and female, and people in all societies—even societies with third genders—recognize this binary distinction, and they recognize it as consequential.

“Is Sex Binary? Eight Arguments and a Leading Nonbinary Theory Examined,” August 24, 2025

Yes. Partisans comb the world exhaustively for any suggestion that there is a non-binary state of human existence. They eagerly pounce. But it always turns out to be something that some people believe about themselves. Nature, heedless as ever of the human imagination, doesn’t recognize it.

In a polite way, he calls out the manipulation of statistics that transgender partisans often use to exert authority over worried parents and doubtful school boards:

There is debate about the frequency of intersex conditions with some writers claiming that 1 in 60 live births is intersex and others suggesting the true frequency is roughly 1 in 5,000. The debate largely centers on what counts as a true intersex condition. Using a very broad definition, anyone who doesn’t fit their “exacting criteria” for being a typical male or female should be considered intersex, making the prevalence relatively high. In this perspective, a man with a short but functional penis could be called intersex, as could a boy with hypospadias (i.e., their urethra opens on the underside of their penis instead of at the tip) or a woman who bore three children but learned later in life that her androgenic hormones were unusually high…

It’s worth stressing that, as Dawkins has eloquently explained, the binary nature of human reproduction is about as complete a binary distinction as one can find in the natural world. “Is Sex Binary?” [citations omitted]

There. Deaner has now laid down the gauntlet. And it is good to see. But how did that become necessary? How did a mag that used to undermine psychic beliefs end up having to defend human biology?

Madam Rosa, the fortune teller, is not a formidable enemy. But articles in influential journals are.

The high cost of “progress”

Deaner offers, “Nonbinary definitions of sex are popular because they are viewed as being progressive. However, one can hold progressive political views while still retaining the traditional binary view of sex.”

Image Credit: Pixel-Shot - Adobe Stock

Yes, but something more than that underlies the popularity of non-binary definitions of sex. The same time period has hosted the war on math, essentially a war on 2+2=4, which is seen as, you guessed it, equally “oppressive.”

Most subscribers to Skeptic, probably believe that our universe arose accidentally, without meaning or purpose. That we must make our meaning as we find it. And their visionaries have, over many decades, succeeded in making that belief the generally accepted “secular” one.

The transgender movement, like the teacher-driven war on math, has embraced the Skeptics’ own approach to reality and now uses it for ITS purposes. Adherents find their meaning in teaching children that they might have been “born in the wrong body” just as some other progressives find meaning in teaching children that getting right answers in math is a “tool of oppression.” Doors that once stood open are now being shut because even the difference between “open” and “shut” becomes contentious.

A warning

The editors at Skeptic need not go to war to defend reality-based thinking; the war is coming to them. It is good that they are aligning themselves this way. But there will be many more challenges. They will eventually be forced to confront the problem: They posit laws with no lawgiver, principles with no foundation, minds from mud…

Any number can play at that game, change the rules whenever they like, and triumph merely by Canceling their opposition. And the hour is late.