Daily Archive

  Jonathan Best takes a shot at framing some of the key issues in this debate.  From first hand experience, I have to agree with what Mr.Best has to say.  There is very little oxygen available to question, and even less to argue the trans-interpretation of sex and gender.

The philosopher Kathleen Stock has written extensively on these issues. Here’s her explanation of what is usually termed a ‘gender critical’ view:

Here is one position held by many radical feminists. It holds that what it is to be a woman is to have a certain biological and reproductive nature, involving female sex organs and a female reproductive system, and to be economically, socially, politically, and sexually oppressed on that basis. This view therefore concludes… that transwomen, though fully in possession of all basic human rights (obviously!), and also deserving of respectful treatment as if they are women in many social contexts, are not in fact women. Simply put: they don’t have the required biology, nor do they have the required history of oppression on the basis of that biology.

And, on the other hand, the transgender view:

In contrast, there are those metaphysical positions which argue that transwomen are women. These usually argue that women’s biologies and reproductive capacities are not essential to their nature as women. People with penises and testicles and no female reproductive characteristics can be women.

Gender critical views argue that biological sex is of primary importance. The opposing view, central to transgenderism, argues that biological sex is irrelevant. This question was at the heart of the QUN dispute: Michigan Womyn’s Festival took the view that biological sex was central, whereas the activists who protested QUN took the opposing view.

This question has taken on a fresh urgency with the planned reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. This proposes writing into law the concept of ‘gender identity’ — one of the newer ideas in transgender ideology, and one which is strongly resisted by those holding gender critical views.

Stonewall defines gender identity as follows:

A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth.

But not everyone agrees that gender is innate. Many people — me included — prefer to see gender as a social construction, a hierarchy, which disadvantages women (and, in some ways, men too) and against which we should struggle. Rather than identify with it, we want to fight it.

You may or may not have an innate sense of your own gender. It isn’t for me — or anyone else — to tell you how you should feel or think on the subject. Likewise, those of us who wish to resist or deny the concept are deeply unhappy at the prospect of it being written into law.

When new ideas emerge in society there is usually discussion about them. It’s a sound general principle — the best way to evaluate new ideas is to explore them critically and freely. These issues of sex and gender are of importance to society as a whole. Women especially will want to debate all of this. Surely we can agree that women should have the right to discuss it?

But that is not how this is playing out.

Instead of open, respectful discussion, today’s trans activism too often seeks to prevent women from discussing the issues in trans ideology which directly affect their lives.

Exactly.  Preventing discussion and persecuting women for objecting to their linguistic and biological erasure from society isn’t a good policy to follow and thankfully, everyday, the opposition grows against this misogynistic strand of Transactivism.