A feminist in defence of reality

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

Kathleen Stock

Fleet 

2021 

312 pages

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In the very first line of her Introduction, written with admirable clarity and courage, as is the entire book, Prof. Stock outlines her programme: “This book is about sex, and about the mysterious  thing known as ‘gender’. It is about how, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century … a philosophical theory about something called ‘gender identity’ gripped public consciousness, strongly influencing UK and international institutions….” (p. 1) Prof. Stock is an analytic philosopher, based at the University of Sussex, with a keen interest in language and fiction.* Her philosophical competence is beyond question: it emerges in every line of this book. It is this acute consciousness of the usage of language, and of how the way in which we use language brings us either closer to truth and reality, or else causes us to become increasingly entangled in a dream world of our own making, which makes the analysis in this book so very penetrating.  

The book is divided into eight chapters, each thoroughly researched and supported by end-notes. One caveat is that it does not include an index, which in a work of this kind would be most useful. It is an extremely serious book, containing a great deal of hard, factual information: Prof. Stock’s research into important physical, medical, legal, historical and social matters has been very thorough. It is exceedingly well-written, which helps a lot with the onerous task of reading it. Some of this is very difficult material to read, precisely because of the delicacy of the matters involved: we are talking about people at their most vulnerable here. Chapter One gives us a brief history of the concept of gender identity, emphasising that this is not simply an additional insight into questions of sexual identity for certain individuals, but a very extreme claim that biological sex is irrelevant, indeed does not exist, and that in any case, according to gender identity theory, only trans people would have any right to comment on the matter at all, which, as the author remarks, is a wild leap. 

We are faced with a straight fight between gender identity and sex – which brings us to Chapters Two and Three, “What is Sex?” (Chapter Two), and “Why Does Sex Matter?” (Chapter Three). In these chapters, the author deals first with the physical dimension of the subject, demonstrating that biological sex is not merely a philosophical construct … it seems extraordinary that this has to be demonstrated, but this is where we are now. In Chapter Three, she examines the reasons why this is relevant and cannot be dismissed. She gives a thorough account of same-sex attraction from her own lesbian point of view here. It would be interesting to compare this account with Prof. Paul Vitz’s account of similar matters in his most recent book, an essay written by an expert psychologist from a Catholic perspective. But Prof. Stock’s central point stands in any case: biological sex exists, it is important in the life of any individual whatever their eventual decision about it, and that for a variety of physical, medical and psychological reasons. She is at pains to emphasise throughout the book that she sympathises completely with individual trans people. Her target is not individuals, but the activism that uses them to deny reality and alter legislation in ways that are positively harmful to very vulnerable people – e.g., women prisoners, who have to endure being incarcerated with convicted rapists, because the law must now allow you to serve your sentence in a women’s prison if you identify as female. Why did we decide to have women’s prisons to begin with? Female criminals may not be the most sympathetic group of people, but they are extremely vulnerable.

Chapters Four, “What is Gender Identity?” and Five “What Makes a Woman?” give extensive philosophical and linguistic analysis of the terms and concepts involved in gender identity theory and sexual identity. “Gender identity” was first coined as a term for a particular concept in the 1960s by John Money and Robert Stoller, and it is described by Prof. Stock as follows (p. 109): “… trans people are defined, not as people who have had surgery, or taken hormones, or who dress and behave in particular ways, but as people whose gender identities are misaligned with the sex ‘assigned’ to them at birth. Cis people are those whose gender identities align with birth assigned sex. And either way … gender identity is what make you man, woman, or neither.” Most of us are aware at this point that the term “gender” has replaced the term “sex” in many institutional contexts but it is quite likely that many are not aware that the proponents of such usage intend it to apply in literally all contexts, including the biological. Traditionally, “sex” has a distinct, sharp, biological significance, whereas “gender” is used in contexts where biological sex is not at issue – mostly the assignation of gender to words for inanimate objects in several languages, an assignation which is purely arbitrary. The shift in usage from “sex” to “gender” in the human context implies that human beings are similar; that “male” and “female” in the human context are assignations just as arbitrary as those grammatical assignations of gender given to inanimate objects in languages which use gendered language for the definite article.

The author is writing as a feminist, so her emphasis is on women, but presumably similar analysis could be done on the concept of “Man”. She concludes Chapter Five by stating, as gently as she can, that trans women are not women in the same sense as biological females are women; that these are fundamentally different biological and conceptual realities. She adds straight away that she understands that this statement will come as a shock to many readers, who have been taught that there is no meaningful difference by a very powerful intellectual and cultural  movement, and she is at pains to emphasise that this does not imply any necessary criticism of any particular individual decision, but is simply the establishment of a distinction, which it is very important  to maintain legally for the well-being of all concerned.

Chapter Six “Immersed in a Fiction” is a very interesting exploration of the conceptual underpinnings of the UK 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and the Gender Recognition Certificates that go with it; Prof. Stock argues that this legislation constitutes an extended legal fiction. Her account of the passage of this legislation makes for grimly entertaining reading. She goes on to note that many people are now making statements about trans women being women and so on, that in fact they wouldn’t believe if they thought about them; they act as if these things are true, i.e., they are immersed in a fiction, but they don’t literally think so. She then goes on to explore the frequently toxic internet culture in which very many young people are involved, and remarks that the rising frequency of claims of gender dysphoria in the young correlate with the rising immersion in virtual worlds. She does not condemn immersion outright, but she remarks that there are very specific risks associated with it, particularly at the institutional level “once powerful figures become immersed in a fiction, and seek to compel the same attitude in others” (p. 193) The remainder of this chapter is a hair-raising account of the various successful attempts to coerce such immersion generally: the Stonewall Diversity Champions campaign comes in for particular criticism here, as do a number of legal judgements and academic publications: the author reverts to the fairy tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes to furnish an image of what is going on here.

Chapter Seven, “How Did We get Here” revisits some of the territory explored by Helen Joyce in her Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality a year ago. Prof. Stock recapitulates the tactics well known to anyone who has studied social change over the past several decades: the appeal to compassion, by comparing the new victims to a previous group of victims whose claims are now recognised to be just, the manipulation of facts and statistics by activists in the field, the sometimes violent suppression of all disagreement. She also notes that the kind of superficial “femininity” adopted by trans activists is facilitated by the representation of women in the surrounding culture, which is increasingly focussed on external appearance, hair, make-up, clothes, an attitude of submissiveness … if these things make a woman, well then anyone who adopts them can claim to be a woman. She notes the particularly damaging effect of the abuse of women in pornography (which some now want introduced into the schools…).

Finally in Chapter Eight, she outlines what she thinks we should do, making a plea for more honesty in confronting the subject (p. 252), the consideration of a wider range of perspectives (p. 261)  and the use of more academic data (empirical evidence) rather than a constant reliance on speculative theory – here she notes the extraordinary career of Judith Butler “who – with relatively few empirical observations in the entirety of her work on gender – has nonetheless managed to convince large number of people that biological sex does not exist.” On pp. 272-74 she list a series of very important questions that need to be addressed by more and better empirical research and statistical enquiry, including the neuralgic questions of the numbers of trans children; the long-term outcomes for children who receive puberty blockers with a view to eventual full transition; the true numbers of detransitioners and their long-term outcomes. Detransitioners, often children who were encouraged by adults to transition early, are pariahs in contemporary gender studies: nobody wants to admit they exist, and, as with post-abortive women, their suffering somehow does not seem to count. 

This is an important book, and notwithstanding disagreements that one may have with individual elements of Prof Stock’s case, it is to be hoped that it reaches a wide audience. Prof. Stock successfully demonstrates that “sex” and “gender” necessarily refer to different concepts because of the limits set by real biology, and she also demonstrates that the confusion of them leads to very serious consequences in the medical and legal fields; that the impact of such confusion on legislation has not been positive; that much of the social activism in this area has become oppressive and indeed violent; that charities are not necessarily charitable and that all of this is serving to stifle debate precisely where it should be liveliest, within the universities. She remarks that she is more than happy to provide an intellectual challenge, and that she is not afraid of a fight, and she certainly got that on the publication of this book. A ferocious campaign was organised to get her fired from her job at the University of Sussex, which led in turn to a petition to the University to retain her, organised by some of the most distinguished names in philosophy – and some of the most unlikely bedfellows. The Oxford Thomist Dr Joseph Shaw wryly remarked that he had never imagined he would see that day when he would sign a petition alongside Prof. Peter Singer of Princeton. Then in September, a number of students of the University tried to have her dismissed; to date the University has stood by her. In her Introduction she had already recounted the violence which groups of older women encountered when they tried to raise these issues amongst themselves, so it is unlikely that any of this furore has come as a surprise to her, and one can only hope that so clear and courageous a voice will continue to contribute to debate on these very important issues.

*At the end of October Kathleen Stock announced that she was quitting her post at the University of Sussex saying on Twitter that “This has been an absolutely horrible time for me and my family. I’m putting it behind me now.”