Material Girls: Why Reality Matters

Kathleen Stock teaches philosophy at an English university and brings to bear both her academic discipline and her evident competence as a teacher and mentor in this very accessible, readable account of gender identity theory in this country. She strives, courageously, to build a bridge between opponents and advocates of gender identity theory. Where possible, she aims to give a charitable reading of the beliefs that she is trying to understand and evaluate. When specific arguments turn out to be demonstrably unsupportable, her inclination is to make a distinction between the defective ideas, opinions or indeed political tactics on the one hand and the genuine interests and concerns of trans-people on the other. She is impatient with what she perceives as tribal mantras and has sharp words for radical or gender critical feminists, claiming to believe only in “evidence based feminism,” a new category to my mind. If she fails to impress those with strong views on either side of this debate, she may prove very helpful to civilians wishing to be informed without being pressured to take sides. I personally find it hard to imagine how being informed and being neutral can be reconciled and so I find Stock’s stance unconvincing, even rather arrogant, but this remains an excellent discussion of the subject, it included some great material that I value and it is well worth reading.

Ultimately, she argues that there is a large scale political lobby promoting ideas and positions that do not, in reality, serve the interests of transgender people themselves and that it would be desirable if her criticisms were seen as an opportunity for transgender people themselves to demand better and less self-defeating kinds of support. It does not help transgender people of any description to promote bad science or irrational concepts. It certainly does not help them to permit let alone submit themselves to medical malpractice or protect professional service providers from scrutiny. But none of this can be subjected to the types of scientific or philosophical scrutiny required so long as the supposed defenders of transgender people, the professional lobbies, the well-funded charities and the trans rights activists, pursue a vendetta against proper investigation. Cancel culture, which is demonstrably rampant and growing, is harmful to the interests of transgender people themselves; it is certainly not compatible with academic, scientific or clinical standards in a democratic society.

Stock’s selection of topics to review reflects her status as a philosopher. She continually asks what it is that we mean when we use or refuse to use important concepts. She explores and refutes very succinctly and effectively the suggestions that sex is not binary and that biological sex can reasonably be disregarded. She sets out a variety of areas of life in which a proper understanding of sex is indispensable. She evaluates critically the notion of sex being a social construct, puts to rest mistaken readings of Simone de Beauvoir’s iconic remark that women are not born but made, and dissects the ill constructed theory that every human individual has a gender identity.

She also illustrates the way trans lobbies have successfully imposed their objectives in the public domain while pushing aside and silencing alternative voices. Whether the Women and Equalities Committee of Parliament reviewing the Gender Recognition Act in 2016 or the capture of Stonewall as a charity founded to support gays and lesbians by people who directly attack same sex attraction and have used Stonewall funds to promote teaching about the “cotton ceiling,” somehow society has allowed trans activists to set aside the needs of women, children, gays, lesbians and promote instead an ideology that not only lacks proper academic foundations, but lacks political legitimacy and fails to serve the interests even of the transgender people who are supposed to benefit. Her few examples could have been multiplied but perhaps at the expense of her purpose.

Stock works to devise a constructive path forward for transgender people while demanding at the same time respect for the methods of scientific evidence and critical reasoning. She relies especially on the notion of “immersion,” which I think is intended to mean a psychological method of acting as though things were other than they really are. She gives the analogy of immersion in a computer game environment. I think she could usefully have invoked Coleridge’s well known concept of “suspending disbelief” to describe a scenario in which we can accept an invented reality without losing our ability to return to realistic thinking as required. In general, it is feasible and even common to hold two conflicting views of reality in mind when that is socially useful or psychologically comforting. What she argues, though, with vocal support from some older trans people, is that we may not sacrifice the self-evident truth that sex is immutable and we may not set aside our awareness that women, children, gays and lesbians continue to suffer serious disadvantages for which they need protection or remedies.

There is nothing new about the idea that we each construct for ourselves a “self” that depends on narratives and beliefs given to us in our particular culture. I think for instance of Mary Midgely’s book, “The Myths We Live By”. This is a fascinating strand in philosophy, in religion and more recently in psychology that can be traced back for example to the earliest Buddhist teachings, is often speculated upon by psychotherapists and in the psychoanalytic tradition, or examined by experimental psychology in the context of child development, including long term research into attachment theory and other work underpinning educational psychology. The use of a computer game analogy is entirely appropriate to a culture that is increasingly allowing children and young adults to take their guiding myths from social media and the internet, permitting direct influence from the most unexpected and least responsible sources. What I think, and Stock does not pursue, is that there are vulnerable people who can be extremely susceptible to persuasion and that there are people sufficiently malevolent to use the power of persuasion for harmful ends. I don’t think one need read terribly far into Queer Theory to identify a well-funded and influential movement seeking to destabilize conventional notions about sex and gender in ways that are not benign and not properly challenged (see “Queering Schools”). I don’t think it is hard to recognise the impact of the trans industry and the influence of names like the Arcus Foundation drumming up demand for their products in a way that Plato himself would have recognized (and what philosophy book is complete without Plato?):-

My trial will be like that of a doctor prosecuted by a cook before a jury of children. Just consider what kind of defense such a man could offer... children of the jury, this fellow has done all of you abundant harm, ... giving you bitter draughts and compelling you to hunger and thirst, whereas I used to feast you with plenty of sweetmeats of every kind. What do you think a doctor could find to say in such a desperate situation? If he spoke the truth and said, All this I did, children, in the interests of health, what a shout do you think such a jury would utter? Would it not be a loud one?

There is a view that writers who appeal to logic / reason as some higher level platform from which to survey our mortal ponderings are in reality using a rhetorical strategy to silence critical thought; effectively they rely on an appeal to authority which is, of course, a type of fallacy. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I think that Stock’s attempt to be dispassionate is unconvincing and her sharp attacks on radical or gender critical feminists are unacceptable. My concern with gender identity theory is not only that it lacks empirical grounding (which ought to be fatal in itself for pity’s sake) but also that it rests on crass and sexist gender stereotypes and offers young people an impoverished and unhealthy framework on which to construct a meaningful sense of self. It is destructive of all the work invested by feminists and educators generally in raising the aspirations and enriching the imaginations of children and young people, but especially of girls and women, producing [some] boys who write poetry or cook and [some] girls who enjoy maths or football and both treating the other and themselves as unique individuals rather than objects or members of a category. This conflict between the attempt to press us into socially prescribed categories or drawing out the complexity of individual difference, including sex difference, is a theme which feminist philosophers have, again, traced back to the roots of Western philosophy and the values embedded in our culture. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

As long ago as 1979 Janice Raymond explained in detail the sheer sexism of the gender identity concept, anticipated most of the major issues that remain central to today’s debate [including those discussed by Stock in this book] and recognised that the people driving this movement were not acting in good faith and could not be deterred by reasonableness. “Medicalized transsexualism represents only one more aspect of patriarchal hegemony. The best response women can make to this is to see clearly just what is at stake for us with respect to transsexualism and to assert our own power of naming who we are.” https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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