Can anyone summarise main points of Kathleen Stock’s views on gender?

In fact, @Pinesinthedunes, I'd liken it to something like rugby initiation.

Drinking a dirty pint that every member of the senior squad has dipped their penis into is not something anyone in their right mind would do. They come up with these completely crazy things and make people do them to prove their loyalty.

Saying men can become women is the intellectual equivalent of that.

I was chatting to DH about this last night, because I find it so baffling that this ideology has taken such a grip on academia. He said just what you have said here.

Agree with this, (as the mother of a student there who agrees with Dr Stock).

Truth.

It's such a dumb idea that not one of these students would have come up with it on their own, with a bit of rational thinking.

Saying you believe it is signalling that you agree to be part of the religion.

I will add to that, that going along with the notion that men can become women is the ultimate declaration of loyalty to the regime. Precisely because it is such an obvious and absurd lie. We can't discuss our way out of this.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand these students. They are not oriented towards a search for truth and therefore arguments are entirely wasted effort. They are completely absorbed in signalling their in-group credentials to fellow tribe members. I'm not sure what a better approach might be however...

I mean, if they really don't have time to read her book, they could, you know, actually go to the debate they are trying to have cancelled and find out more about her views that way? And then make their minds up after they have some relevant information, rather than before?

Sorry but if they are calling for someone not to be hosted by the debating society because they think her views are so terrible but they don't actually know what her views are then they fully deserve to be called out as the intellectual vacuums they are, and I don't care if they did get into Oxford. What a fucking waste of one of the world's most coveted university places.

I doff my hat to Wee Bisom who has condensed the whole book into two paras for you OP. Superb summary.

Exactly this.
But as an aside, I think the students are being given a bit of a hard time for outsourcing their thinking on this. Surely we all do this on many issues that we don't ourselves know a great deal about.
if you could pique their interest sufficiently that they want to learn more, they might start to form their own opinions...

This is absolutely key.

I would ask those students whether they think we need a word to describe all adult human females, regardless of any identity they might have, and if so, what that word should be.

Because all the words we used to have for that have been appropriated by transgender males to describe their identities. And if we invent a new word they will start identifying as that, too.

If they don't think we need a word for that, I'd ask why they think we don't need a word for the biological sex class which bears children and has been exploited for its reproductive labour since the beginning of human history (leading to, among other things, forced marriage, FGM and the raging debate over abortion rights), but that we do need a word for a group of people which includes most adult human females except those who believe they identify as something other than a woman, plus some adult males who believe they identify as women. What does this latter group have in common? What is the point of this group? If the only thing they all have in common is that they call themselves women, but they don't all agree about what a woman is, that is a completely non existent group which does not exist and which does not need its own word, single sex spaces or sporting categories.

Apart from anything else, why are they assuming that the people they like and respect who disagree with Stock have actually read her books, and that they aren't just playing a big game of Chinese whispers started by some bellend like Katy Montgomerie?

I am absolutely not surprised they knew nothing of her views but wanted her cancelled.

I met someone from Cambridge yesterday - knew about Judith Butler but nothing about anyone else, her top priorities were not to speak to a TERF or a SWERF. DH suggested she read some Julie Bindel but he is a man and can get away with such provocation

If I remember rightly, she has a good part of the book discussing why we still need the word woman to describe the sex class for adult human females. I found that to be a bit of an ‘aha!’ moment for me.

God! 😂😂

Ffs, if Oxford students are the brightest in the country, then Hod help us all.

Dr Stock believes there are two sexes, and that humans can't change sex. Her book is really good - well argued, factual, not transphobic in any way.

As should the notion that if you like and respect someone you will automatically agree with them.

I thought the whole point of university was debating ideas in a respectful environment. The suggestion that having different views to someone is incompatible with respecting and liking them is really quite shocking.

I used to think that standards at Oxford couldn't really be all that high if people like Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab went there. But they seem like intellectual heavyweights next to this generation of terrified yes-men/women/non-binary people who need safe spaces to protect them from ideas. Especially if the idea in question is more of a fact, such as humans not being able to change sex.

None of them knew any details about KS’s views but, as one of them said “people we like and respect disagree with her so we assume we would disagree, too.”

Outsourcing your thinking like this should be grounds for expulsion from Oxford University.

If you can't parse the words on a page, maybe go into you tube and find one of the videos she has made which explains the basics.

Which is that there are two sexes and nobody can change from one to the other as previously mentioned. And that when sex matters, it matters.

“people we like and respect disagree with her so we assume we would disagree, too.

Anyone subcontracting their thinking to others and ‘assuming’ they’ll agree is ridiculous. Especially is they are then going to take action against something on the basis that someone, somewhere disagrees with it and ripples of people have all just assumed that the people they ‘respect’ actually even know what they’re objecting to.

Works the other way round too. Fools blindly following others who are blindly following others and none of them actually know anyone who has engaged with the substance of the issue directly. Or at all.

Stock even.

It's very disappointing. I disliked the OU when I was at Oxford because it was a bit of a Tory playground, and I wasn't a Tory. I remember a similar controversy when they invited some BNP bloke to speak. The big difference was that OUSU made no comment at all, iirc. I don't have to agree with everything, but if debate dies then we might as well be China. And Kathleen Stick is a serious academic with far more chops than Helen Joyce.

My understanding is that the idea that we all have an innate gender identity, that no one can ever prove or question, should be questioned especially if it is used to decide policy and law. It sounds pretty sensible to me.

You’re very brave OP! Kudos.

She thinks there are two sexes, these are biological and objective scientific facts. You cannot change your sex. Interestingly, she has no problem referring to males who identify as women as “transwomen” because in certain contexts it’s fine to play along with the fiction that they are women. It’s similar to when you go to the theatre and you play along that the actor is hamlet.

The fiction that men are women is benign/ permissible in some contexts, but in others it makes no sense and may be harmful to actual women (like if men are in rape counselling ). So a good compromise for a long time was having boundaries to the fiction, much like when you no longer accept the actor is hamlet when the show is over. The problem is that modern trans activism never wants the show to be over so to speak. Transwomen want to be treated as women for all intents and purposes in every context , and for stock this makes no sense because in some contexts sex must take precedence over gender identity.