Apart from reading her very fine book, I spent several hours watching long form interviews of Philosopher Kathleen Stock where she describes her gender critical views, views which I largely share. And why Gender Identity must not be confused with Sex.
So I wanted to make two of those interviews available here.
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Stock was interviewed by another gender critical feminist, Julie Bindel. Both of these are worth your time if you care about this issue. Bindel and Stock are Lesbians who are committed to the commonsense proposition that biology matters!
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Here are the links for her book, “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism” (paid links)
Kathleen Stock is out. Who is she, you ask? Stock was professor of philosophy at Sussex University in the U.K. But not anymore.
A self described woman of the left, Trans-activists derisively labeled her a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminist) and have targeted her as a public enemy, an unwanted academic who must be “sacked.” Stock also happens to be Lesbian.
A few weeks ago Trans-Activists descended upon her campus with a vengeance. When the Sussex branch of the British Trade Union for Educators failed to support her and instead put out a statement calling for an investigation of “institutional transphobia” at Sussex, with Stock as the obvious target of that investigation, she wrote that the statement had “effectively ended” her 18 year career at Sussex University.
Here’s a two minute snippet of Professor Stock explaining what happened.
From the activists point of view, her recent best selling book was the last straw. This past year Stock published “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters For Feminism.” (paid links, Kindle & Hardcopy)
Link Disclaimer :1 Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything you’ll find there. But as adults we should embrace viewpoint diversity. And make alliances where we can.
The Kindle version of this book is only $9.99. If you are looking for a thoughtful and thorough guide through the Gender Identity maze you should get this UK bestseller.
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After the publication of that book and public comments defending her gender critical position, the Trans-activists ratcheted up their pressure and finally achieved their goal, although they would have preferred that Sussex had sacked her first before she resigned.
Stock received her undergraduate at Oxford, her Masters at St. Andrews and her PhD at Leeds University. She taught ethics and aesthetics at Sussex. Her background is fiction. She’s been writing for years on the philosophy of fiction and imagination. For the last few years she has focused on feminist theory and gender issues. She has written on sexual orientation and what sexual orientation means in today’s “new world’ of Gender Identity and Expression. She refers to herself as Lesbian, but not Queer.
Stock attracted vituperative outbursts on social media from Trans-Activists when she publicly opposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA). In 2020 her testimony before parliament against the change was not appreciated at all by Trans-activists. Most recently dozens of masked activists with raised “STOCK OUT” placards descended upon the Sussex campus. Poster boards and walls on campus were plastered with similar messages. Death threats soon followed. Stock was advised by campus security to teach her classes via Zoom, something she had been doing because of the pandemic, and install security cameras at her residence.
Many academics piled on as well.
Some History
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allows people who have gender dysphoria to change their legal gender. The GRA requires that you show proof of your intention to “transition” in order to be legally recognized as a gender other than your biological sex. You do so by living two years in your preferred gender. This means medicalized sex reassignment through cross-hormone therapy and surgery. A medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria is required to start the two year process after which legal recognition is granted. This provides tangible proof of your internal desire to transition to the opposite sex. Legal rights recognizing cross-sex change is then obtained.
Stock says she “would never argue for a rolling back of the current Gender Recognition Act, and the legal recognition of transgender people.” She is arguing against Self-ID as the medium or means to gender recognition because it gives you access to a range of resources and spaces that should not be given lightly because women are in these spaces and are sexually vulnerable.”
[Obviously, as a Classic Christian, I would have reasons to argue against Self-ID & bodily alterations. See comments below.]
In 2010 the UK passed a law called the Equality Act. Sex-based legal protection is built into that act. Many legal scholars are concerned that the proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act will undercut sex-based legal protections for women. How can you protect sex based rights if male body people can just Self-ID into the legal category of female? Which is what the language “gender identity and expression” would allow if adopted.
In the US a version of the UK Equality Act is currently winding it’s way through Congress. But unlike the UK where they are still debating whether to add “gender identity and expression” to the legal language, in the US version that language is already there. Which is why I hope it doesn’t pass.
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I’ve tried to argue on this blog that adopting this language in an effort to reach out to the marginalized is “a bridge too far.” Philosophers and legal analysts like Stock are right to be worried about the impact on hard-won sex based rights for women in such a legal climate. Women’s Spaces and Women’s Sport will be adversely effected if the fiction of Self-ID gets encoded into law.
Real-World Examples
In 2017 at the Connecticut State High School Track and Field Championship Andraya Yearwood won the women’s 100 meter and 200 meter races. Bully for her. Right? But here’s the problem. Andraya is a biological male. In Connecticut, students are allowed to play sports in accordance with their gender identity regardless of medical transition status. Andraya underwent no medical interventions prior to winning. No puberty blockers. No cross-sex hormones, in this case estrogen. “She” simply identified as “female” and proceeded to crush the competition.
Yearwood Crushing the Competition in “Her” First HS Race
This was allowed because the Connecticut Athletic Association along with several other state athletic associations has been captured by Gender Ideology. If you think the increased length of bone, muscle mass, heart and lung size of post pubescent males doesn’t confer a male advantage in a sport where speed and strength matter then you need a basic biology lesson. And a serious reality check.
You can read about 4 biological female athletes who filed suit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) here.
3 of the 4, Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith
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Hannah Mouncey, who transitioned at age 26, is 6ft 2 in and weighs 220lb. Mouncey is a biological male but participates in a female Australian Rules Football league and pulverizes female players on the field. A picture is worth more than words.
Hannah Mouncey, playing at VFLW level, says she is planning legal action against the AFL in order to play local footy in Canberra. (AAP Image/James Ross)Source: News Corp Australia
Is this fair? Or is there an intrinsic injustice of pitting one sort of sexed body against another very different sort? asks Professor Stock.
I’m with the real girls on this one.
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As you see, the phrase “Gender Identity and Expression” has a multitude of legal and cultural ramifications that most people have yet to think about in their rush to “affirm” confused individual choice for the sake of being, or being seen as, inclusive and/or non-bigoted.
In a different context, Stock would argue for “third-spaces” for trans-women (biological males) who are fearing for their safety. The argument presented by Trans-Activists is that trans-women should be able to come into female spaces because they feel at risk from men (in prison, for example). But Stock sees a failure of imagination when it comes to the female perspective. People today find it much easier to imagine the vulnerability of a trans-woman in a dormitory, or a hostel or a prison than it is to imagine a rape survivor in a context where the law says any male could enter her heretofore female only protected space on the basis of Self-Identification, a totally subjective concept.
Regardless of the legal realities, social institutions, like state interscholastic athletic associations, have already lept ahead. Self-ID is the means by which you can enter a range of spaces already; female only athletic competitions, bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. Surgically intact male people enter female prisons all the time. Most trans-identified females with male bodies will not cause trouble in this context, but some will. Some will have used this loophole for nefarious purposes as we’ve already tragically found out. When you consider the widely recognized statistic that most women in prison have suffered sexual abuse by men, this new Self-ID social twist will only increase their anxiety of abuse happening again, but this time during incarceration.
Yet we don’t seem to mind putting people with penises in these spaces because we seem to be more concerned with the perspective of people with penises than with vulnerable biological females. Stock’s feminist perspective claims this is just another form of misogyny.
I would tend to agree.
In the UK extending legal protections to Transsexuals (the older word for Transgender) was something that would happen for people who were going to make meaningful surgical transition. It was only ever envisaged for male to female transsexuals. They estimated about 5000 people would need these legal protections extended to them. And it was done through the issuance of a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), a legal document issued by the National Health Service. Nobody could have anticipated this sort of social change where being trans now has nothing to do with any intention to have surgery or take hormones. Today only the outer expression of an inner feeling is sufficient. The Gender Identity and Expression movementdemands that the law catch up with social reality and legally recognize inner feeling as the sole criterion of legal rights.
On page 72 of Stock’s book (Kindle edition) we read about a previously convicted male paedophile who was placed in a UK women’s prison.
A custody photo of transgender prisoner Karen White taken in March 2018. Photograph: West Yorkshire Police/PA
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As I said above. We’ve not thought this through. And quite frankly some of this is patently absurd (see above photo!). Yet we are rapidly changing legal standards out of fear of being called bigots by Trans-Activists and Gender Ideologues.
Admittedly, for many, a genuine desire to be loving and inclusive of the marginalized “other” is what motivates them. I have close friends who fall into this category. But, again. They’ve not thought this through. And some of them are Christians who have forgotten, misremembered, misunderstood or, in fact, set aside their Creeds. With regard to Gender Identity our Creeds instruct us to;
First, acknowledge our Creator who made us. In the Gospels Jesus says humans were created male and female.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]
Second, confess our belief in the Incarnation, i.e. the embodiment, of the Divine Son of God. That’s how much God cares about our human bodies.
Third, confess that Jesus’s body was resurrected from the grave. Since it is only the body that dies, death has not been defeated if Jesus’s body remained in the ground. And he is not Lord. Just another failed Messiah.
Fourth, believe Jesus ascended into heaven with his human body. This is how I described the importance of the doctrine of Ascension in an earlier post:
We were given bodies by God, mediated through our parents, because we were meant to have them. We will never transcend that design. No matter how hard we try. And why would we want to?
Classic Christianity, echoed in our Creeds, teaches us that today, sitting at the right hand of the Father, is the second Person of the Trinity with a human body.
Now meditate on that for a moment. If true, what does that say about God’s view of humanity, and our embodied life?
Fifth, believe our bodies will be resurrected at Jesus’s second coming.
Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection valorizes and transforms bodily existence. These acts of God valorize it because God both created and entered bodily existence. But God doesn’t simply enter it, God transforms it. We have here not just an approval of creation, but new creation. And that is Good News indeed.
THE APOSTLES CREED
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell
The third day he rose again from the dead
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead
I believe in the Holy Ghost
I believe a holy catholic church; the communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body
And the life everlasting. Amen.
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The Creeds regard bodily existence as unreservedly significant. Christians dare not diminish the importance of the body. Material girls and boys matter to God, our Creator. They should matter to us as well.
After having read her book and listened to several hours of interviews , I don’t think Kathleen Stock confesses Christ. Christians may not agree with her on everything. I don’t. But she is a brave voice rising above the Gender Identity din.
As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.” Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.
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