Here we have a 55-minute on-on-one conversation between Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Stock conducted during the “Dissident Dialogues” conference in NYC last May. Here’s a précis of Stock’s background from Wikipedia:
Kathleen Mary Linn Stock OBE is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic work on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, sexual objectification, and sexual orientation.
Her views on transgender rights and gender identity have become a contentious issue. In December 2020, she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of services to higher education, a decision which was subsequently criticised by a group of over 600 academic philosophers who argued that Stock’s “harmful rhetoric” contributed to the marginalisation of transgender people. In October 2021, she resigned from the University of Sussex. This came after a student campaign took place calling for her dismissal and the university trade union accused the university of “institutional transphobia.” A group of over 200 academic philosophers from the UK signed an open letter in support of Stock’s academic freedom.
After tons of opprobrium and threats, Stock resigned from Sussex in 2021. The book that caused a lot of the trouble is Stock’s Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. I haven’t read it, but it’s a work of gender-critical feminism, and the topic itself ensured that Stock would be ostracized and deplatformed. I suspect that it’s not a work of “transphobia,” but, like Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which I have read, a defense of preserving some spaces for biological women but a work that doesn’t demonize trans people themselves.
I won’t go into the details, but the discussion is largely about sex (she accepts the biological definition based on gametes, which produces a binary) as well as gender. (She also considers a “cluster definition”, in which one combinse secondary sex characteristics, chromosomes, gametes, and other traits to come up with a multivariate definition of “sex”, but properly concludes that it doesn’t work.)
They go on to discussing gender, and Stock dissects the many meanings of that elusive word. As far as “trans” people go, she says (referring to Jan Morris), Stock says that Morris’s account of what it’s like being a woman was unconvincing (I agree; as it’s based largely on stereotypes). Stock does agree that females transition because they’re unhappy as males, but doesn’t agree that a transwoman is “a woman inside.” She adds that “she has no ambition to stop adults who’ve been through a proper period of reflection” to transition from one gender identity to another; but doesn’t agree that someone who has not medically transitioned should be allowed to define themselves as a member of their non-natal sex.
Stock discusses the “suicide myth”: the idea that girls not allowed to transition have a higher risk of suicide than those who do transition. This is a “myth” because the cohort of adolescent females who want to transition do indeed have a higher rate of suicide, but it could be because of other mental issues and, in fact, there’s no evidence that actual transitioning reduces that risk.
I’ll let you listen to the rest, which includes puberty blockers, the Cass Review, transracialism and so on.
My one disagreement with Stock is that she seems to equate almost all trans women as those who have a “male fetish”: autogynephilia. I am not an expert, but I suspect that male-to-female transitioning can be caused by a variety of reasons, only one of which is autogynephilia.
In the end, Stock doesn’t seem to be a “transphobe”—someone who hates trans people—but, like others tarred with that slur, she seems pretty reasonable. She is opposed to the prevalence of affirmative care and to the premature dispensation of hormones and surgery to children or adolescents, as well as to social acceptance of someone who identifies as a member of their non-natal sex as identical to members of that non-natal sex. The latter allows trans females, for example, to compete against biological women in athletics, to occupy cells in women’s prisons, and to display their penises in locker rooms. In other words, I see her as not hateful, but reasonable and anxious to prevent harm to young people who don’t fully understand the consequences of premature decisions. And she largely blames adults for this harm.
I read Stock’s excellent, clear book back when I just thought this stuff was reaching ridiculous proportions and was looking to get my head above the muddy water.
It’s been a while, and I’ve followed up on some of her points and, well, Material Girls – and Joyce’s book too – are – I guess I’ll say – essential, great places to start to find a footing to climb into the Byzantine literature behind these topics.
Should “Joyce” read “Stock” in the last two paragraphs?
Indeed; I screwed up. It’s fixed now, thanks.
Jerry: Stock discusses the “suicide myth”: the idea that girls not allowed to transition have a higher risk of suicide than those who do transition. This is a “myth” because the cohort of adolescent females who want to transition do indeed have a higher rate of suicide, but it could be because of other mental issues and, in fact, there’s no evidence that actual transitioning doesn’t reduce that risk.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but shouldn’t the last sentence end with “… there’s no evidence that actual transitioning reduces that risk.” ?
I see now that the text has been changed to what I suggested.
Kathleen Stock is always a pleasure to listen to. Haven’t read her book, but lots of articles on these sites:
https://thecritic.co.uk/author/kathleen-stock/
and
https://unherd.com/author/kathleen-stock/
She talk as she writes: clearly and reasonable. Compared to the postmodernists like Judith Butler, Stock is a breath of fresh air among academics philosophers
Thanks for covering this.
I know that biologists such as Dawkins and yourself have been “staying in your lane” by carefully pointing out that you’re talking about “biological sex only”.
The problem is, this has allowed trans activists to dismiss your arguments with a condescencing “These old fogies just don’t get it. We’re talking about gender, not sex”.
The bigger issue is that the concept of gender, as used by the trans camp, is *completely incoherent*.
Depending on whom you ask, it could mean social stereotypes, vague inner “vibes and feels” or some incomprehensible postmodernist tripe – and Kathleen Stock points this out very clearly.
THIS is why they are now trying very hard to prove that the concept of sex is also vague and fluid and undefined, so that their vague nonsense about gender starts looking more respectable…
For those that think we should define ‘sex’ by a range of traits, we would do well to remind them that sex evolved purely for reproduction, and that however they re-classify someone they still produce the same gametes (or none at all after sufficient hormonal and surgical manipulation). Maybe instead of ‘biological sex’ we should start using ‘reproductive sex’ which, whilst being a bit of a reduplicative tautology, emphasizes the point of classifying one’s sex?
“Gender’ is used as a stalking horse here, to sneak men into women’s spaces. It is hard to imagine any respectable reasons for these unsuccexuals to want to be there. When we can change the gametes we produce, AND we can undo the developmental changes in brains and bodies that have been bathed in their original sex hormonal milieu, then we might begin to say transwomen are women, but not before. This remains impossible now and for the foreseeable future.
“Stock does agree that females transition because they’re unhappy as males, but doesn’t agree that…”
Unhappy as ‘females’ it should read.
There are people who identify as a different race from the one that they were assigned at birth. I know that trans activists get angry when you bring this up, but I will anyway.
Suppose these people start threatening suicide: “I’m Black/Native American/Hispanic/whatever, and if you don’t let me identify as such, I’ll kill myself and my blood will be on your hands.” Sooner or later this is going to happen. How should society deal with this?
Pretendians are a big deal in Canada. I do understand that people should not get set-asides for natives by pretending they’re one.
CBC—federally funded network—goes after them: they exposed Buffy St Marie as a fraud, for example.
There is zero tolerance for them.
Frau Katze, I agree with you. My point is that a favorite weapon used by trans activists is to claim that if we don’t let children have surgery, or let men compete in women’s sports, then they will kill themselves and it will be our fault. Suppose Pretendians, or similar groups start using the same threat? If we have to give in to suicide threats from transgender people, than others can use the same tactic. And I’m sure others will use the same tactic if they see that it works.
I completely agree on the trans thing.
Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard distinguished between male homosexual transsexuals and male heterosexual transsexuals – although both are referred to nowadays as “trans women”, the motivation, childhood experiences and ages of transition for the two groups are different. “Autogynephilia” is more typical of the latter group, while the former group usually results from rejection of homosexuality.
Jerry, thank you for this introduction (at least for me in the non-academy hinterlands) to kathleen stock. I am in the midst if putting together an argument for our local school board to recognize the issues of many trans-identifying kids in our high schools who are now deprived of any help due to a heavy political hammer from Virginia governor youngkin (and the spineless/religious actions of our local board members in adopting his recommended policies). I look forward to reading her “Material Girls”.