“There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives”
Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, is very impressed with Michael Shermer. His upcoming book is titled Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, and according to its description, it “explores why truth deserves our attention, how falsehoods take hold in the public’s imagination, and how we can resist manipulation through reason, evidence, and open inquiry.”
However, despite that grandiose title and haughty description, Shermer has a long history of fearing fake foes. He always sees danger in the same, wrong places and in the process, always enables the real, obvious threat. Put another way, this famous “skeptic” routinely hallucinates imaginary demons in order to empower actual villains.
In 2013, for example, Shermer wrote an article titled The Liberals’ War on Science that warned of “Orwellian-named far-left groups as Science for the People.” Shermer wrote:
There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives, documented in the 2012 book Science Left Behind (PublicAffairs) by science journalists Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell, who note that “if it is true that conservatives have declared a war on science, then progressives have declared Armageddon.”
While “Armageddon” from “far-left progressives” sounds spooky, others recognized that there were more credible threats to science at the time. Law professor Jonathan Zasloff wrote a rebuttal titled False Equivalence Watch: Michael Shermer that said:
This is really quite pathetic. The argument is not so much false (which much of it is: liberals overwhelmingly support wind power subsidies, for example), as it completely misses the point. You can find nutcases on all parts of the political spectrum: but only on the Right can you find that these nutcases dominate politically.
Even Shermer must concede that the people he is talking about are “far-left progressives.” What power do they have? Whom do they influence? Who listens to them? Well, no one, really.
On the Right, however, not only have the nutcases taken over the GOP, they essentially are the GOP. Climate denial is the sine qua non of GOP leadership. In the 2010 election cycle, for example, not a single Republican nominee for a Congressional seat was willing to accept the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Did any Democratic candidate listen to “Science for the People”? Had any of them ever heard of Science for the People? The website listed for them is inoperative. This is evidence of the liberal war on science?
Enough time has passed to judge who was right. Were far-left progressives the grave threat Shermer made them out to be, or have the nutcases taken over the GOP? This is not a hard question. While it’s not clear that Science for the People has harmed a soul, the right-wing attacks on science have filled cemeteries, not that Shermer experienced any of this of course. Like all useless pundits, famous for their “heterodox” opinions not their accomplishments, Shermer was entirely sheltered from the consequences of his misguided warnings.
“Biological men cannot get pregnant. But biological women who identify as men can get pregnant. Are they actual men? No. They’re women. But I want to be tolerant and accepting of everyone however they identify, so I go along to get along.”
However, rather than retreat from public commentary and quietly try to learn from his fear of harmless adversaries, as an actual skeptic or really anyone with integrity would do, Shermer continues to publicly fret about imagined bogeymen. Today, Shermer has moved on from Science for the People and instead is deeply concerned about which set of gonads entitles people to say which things.
That’s right. With all that’s going on in the world today, Shermer feels semantic issues regarding trans people are a significant problem. Someone out there said men can get pregnant and Shermer, who claims to be tolerant and accepting of everyone however they identify, can’t let that linguistic travesty go unexposed. He simply cannot keep his thoughts- and allegedly other things– private.
“Both Hawley’s question itself and Shermer’s response to it are less objections to the quality of American political discourse and more a wholesale rejection of legitimizing transgender people in any way, shape, or form.”
I am very different from Shermer in this regard. Unlike him, I am unconcerned with strangers’ genitals, and I recognize I have no unique insights on trans issues. As such, I’ve not written on this topic previously and will only do so again if I have something worth saying. That may be a while. I want to be a role model for Shermer and demonstrate to him that it’s actually possible for men like us to not talk about trans people constantly. If I can do it, so can he.
Nonetheless, it’s not hard to spot malignant actors who exploit trans people for attention and profit, and I also know whom I trust. One such person is Quinnehtukqut McLamore, an assistant professor of psychology who studies misinformation and has written about anti-trans pseudoscience. Professor McLamore pointed out that Shermer’s comments are more than just a verbal parlor game for many people. They told me:
Both Hawley’s question itself and Shermer’s response to it are less objections to the quality of American political discourse and more a wholesale rejection of legitimizing transgender people in any way, shape, or form. From a legal perspective, the answer to the question “Can Men Get Pregnant?” is an unambiguous, unqualified, “yes.” It has been such for nearly two decades. In 2007, Thomas Beatie, legally adjudicated to be a man under relevant state laws, became pregnant as a surrogate for his wife, who could not conceive. Unless you mean to tell me that the 10th Amendment stops existing when it is politically odious to Josh Hawley, then yes, men can get pregnant. They have been doing so for nearly twenty years. Some of their children thus gestated will be adults themselves this year. It is done so often that the slang term “seahorse” exists to describe it. What Josh Hawley is actually asking is whether we should upend decades of precedent and disrupt countless lives purely for the sake of his personal beliefs that transgender people are delusional and require conversion therapy rather than affirmation. When he asks someone to say “men cannot get pregnant,” he is asking them to tacitly support overturning states’ rights to adjudicate who does or does not qualify as a man (or a woman, or non-binary for that matter) within their jurisdiction. No more, no less.
Professor McLamore continued:
Shermer, for his part, is not being skeptical so much as he is being axiomatic. To him, pregnancy, and the capacity for doing so, is womanhood. If someone can inseminate another, they are a man, if someone can gestate, they are a woman. To him, manhood and womanhood are biological descriptors of reproductive capacity, just as they are for trans-exclusionary radical feminists and conservative Christians alike. Indeed, it is this that aligns them with one another politically in this matter. To them, claiming that a transgender man is a man, and treating him as such, is akin to insisting that the earth is flat; it is an Orwellian assault on reality as a whole. They care about others’ genitals and their functionality because if a transgender man is treated as a man and acknowledged as such legally despite being born with a uterus and vagina, then they are essentially compelled to be on the level of flat-earthers. This is why it matters to them so much. The problem, of course, is that such a view of sex and gender is itself an unfalsifiable personal belief divorced from practicality and policy. The fact that presenting as, living as, being legally acknowledged as, and being a man is not only possible but functional for transgender men is irrelevant to him and those like him specifically because it is their view of reality that is “under attack” if policy allows transgender men to be recognized as such.
“The Epidemic of Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in the United States”
While I freely admit I have no expertise in trans issues, here’s how I’ve come to think about things, as well as those who deliberately imperil trans people to advance their political agenda.
I feel strongly that people have the right to make informed choices about their body with dignity and respect, but without government interference. It’s vital to use the best available evidence and to do rigorous research to make sure trans people receive compassionate care, grounded in science, like everything else in medicine. Though I don’t treat trans patients often, I hope I do so kindly and capably. I know there is deluge of malicious disinformation about trans people, and I know it comes from entirely untrustworthy people.
However, I can’t refute anti-trans talking points with the casual ease I can refute anti-vaxx talking points. So, I am sure Shermer would score many brilliant rhetorical points and devastating witty rejoinders were we to debate whether or not men can get pregnant.
But none of that matters.
Keeping people safe matters, and the question “Can men get pregnant?” puts people in danger. The only thing that matters about it is the malicious intent of the malicious people who ask it.
Perhaps there is an alternate universe where the Woke Mob won and masked government goons are attacking citizens who say pregnant women instead of pregnant people. In that imagined dystopia Shermer is a heroic defender of Science and Truth. But that is not the world in which we live.
The same way Science for the People was not a threat in 2013, trans people are not a threat today, especially to people like Shermer. They make up less than 1% of the population, and Professor Zasloff’s points are as relevant now as when he made them 13 years ago. What power do they have? Whom do they influence? Who listens to them? Well, no one, really. Indeed, if you were to list the top 100,000 problems today, none of them, including those in sports, would be solved by making the world more dangerous for trans people.
As any sentient person knows, not only are trans people not a threat to anyone, they are themselves threatened from all directions, including from the most powerful people in the country. The report The Epidemic of Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in the United States matters infinitely more than the question “Can men get pregnant?”. Along with immigrants, suspected immigrants, and ICE observers, trans people are early on the list of people “they came for” in the 2026 version of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s Holocaust poem. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be a bit further down should only be concerned with supporting these vulnerable people, not exposing them for likes and shares on X, like Shermer.
Those who absurdly claim the question “Can men get pregnant?” is of vital importance are gleefully pouring fuel on that dangerous fire. Only sheltered, privileged people like Shermer have the luxury of pretending that pregnant men are a problem, and if he was genuinely tolerant and accepting, he would simply exercise his right to remain silent. There is absolutely no reason for him to talk about trans people. He has nothing of value to add and has no skin in the game. I imagine he’s never met a pregnant man, and I imagine they just want him to leave them alone. But Shermer is incapable of doing that. Though he acts like trans people impose on him and won’t leave him in peace, the reverse is obviously the case.
That he mindlessly repeats dronelike “gotchas” as part of a linguistic jousting match reveals he has no desire to be tolerant and accepting at all. That part is just performative virtue-signaling. In reality, Shermer enjoys punching down and is happy to play word games with other people’s lives to signal in-group loyalty. His version of “skepticism” has no room for basic decency or acknowledgement of our current reality. He’d lose too much of his audience if he did that.
Yet Shermer is more than a neutral observer and commentator on these sad events. In addition to being a grand slayer of fantasized threats, he is an eager enabler of actual threats. When science and medicine were under attack from obvious disinformation agents, many of us tried to sound the alarm. In contrast, Shermer used his credentials as a “skeptic” to numb people, writing essays titled Wokeness Poisons Science at the end of 2024, after the rise of MAHA. While that essay warned of “mistaken social policies related to race and gender, suppressed free speech in academia, led to cancel culture and general censoriousness for ideas contrary to the woke agenda,” today the headlines read, U.S. Government Has Lost More Than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s Since Trump Took Office. This is how this famous “skeptic” hallucinates demons in order to empower actual villains.
However, more than crying wolf about fake threats, Shermer rolled out the red carpet to real threats, the people responsible for such headlines. In July 2024, for example, he hosted a friendly discussion with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya titled Thinking Critically About COVID: Conspiracies vs. Nuance and Facts. As SBM readers know, this was mirror-world propaganda that reveals that Shermer can’t think critically about conspiracies, nuance, or facts. Today, Dr. Bhattacharya is a key member of the regime, dutifully embracing not just anti-trans groupthink, but every other anti-science position his tribe and President demands.
This is who Shermer promoted and legitimized and we are all stuck with the consequences.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.“
To me, the core foundation of skepticism is that famous quote by Richard P. Feynman:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Shermer rejects that principle. He has anointed himself as a secular guru – as discussed by the podcast Decoding the Gurus– a force of pure reason who through the brute force of his purely rational mind uniquely sees the world clearly as it really is. He is the Chief Skeptic. He wrote a book titled Why People Believe Weird Things and claims to be a master of ferreting out bias and tribalism in others. Yet it never occurs to him that he’s become a victim of these forces himself, even though it’s obvious to everyone else.
We clearly see that Shermer has traveled a path that is both very familiar and very pathetic. Mimicking countless other “free thinkers”, Shermer’s hysteria about Science for the People seamlessly morphed into a panic about trans people and predictably ended with him obscenely trying to justify ICE executing civilians today, as skeptic legend Rebecca Watson discussed in her recent devastating takedown of Shermer.
As a skeptic myself, I am always open to the possibility I could be wrong. Perhaps the question “Can men get pregnant?” is of profound significance in 2026. Maybe there’s a very good reason why Shermer simply cannot stop talking about pregnant men. Given that Shermer was willing to have a conversation with not just Dr. Bhattacharya, but even Robert Malone and Del Bigtree, I hope he’d be willing to join myself and Wendy Orent on our podcast for some polite dialogue. We will listen patiently so he can explain in exquisite detail why strangers’ genitals matter so much to him at this particular moment.
However, while I predict that Shermer will continue to blithely endanger trans people for social media validation, I doubt he will have the courage to accept our invitation. He knows that we won’t just ask his opinions regarding the MAHA/MAGA attack on trans people and science today, we will also hold him accountable for his role in enabling it all. And something tells me that Shermer, a skeptic in name only, won’t leave his safe space to have a civil debate and discussion with anyone about that.
