New article by Michael Biggs that I imagine will be controversial - how feminism paved the way for transgenderism

[AnotherLass]

quillette.com/2019/08/01/how-feminism-paved-the-way-for-transgenderism/

Rough summary: it is largely females who have pushed gender ID ideology and some of the reason for it may be "blank slate" feminism

I think that this is an interesting article, although I am not sure if I agree with him or not. I found it uncomfortable reading and I imagined that it would be controversial here, so I'm interested to hear what people have to say.

He might just as well have written, "Women are responsible for what men do."

Women are not responsible for what men do, but women are responsible for what women do, and it's inarguable that many women are pushing transgender ideology just as hard, if not harder, than men.

Women, especially young women, are rushing to declare themselves 'trans' or 'non-binary'. Female politicians are some of the fiercest advocates of abolishing sex in law and policy. Female academics have provided much of the theory that justifies this. A female lawyer, Michelle Brewer, was behind the push to house males in female prisons in the UK. Two of the most prominent US doctors promoting the sterilisation and mutilation of sex-role non-conforming children are women: Johanna Olsen-Kennedy and Diane Ehrensaft. GIDS is headed by a woman. Mermaids was founded by a woman. A woman invented the term 'TERF'.

Women who believe in transgender ideology promote and enforce it with religious fervour, using the totalitarian tactics of all religious fanatics. They are especially vicious towards other women who question it. Any woman who has publicly challenged gender identity ideology comes up against not only paraphiliac men and sexist wokebros, but a phalanx of female gender warriors, who will stop at nothing to destroy the livelihood and reputation of their heretical sister.

Biggs is right when he says, 'Virtually the entire feminist establishment has embraced transgenderism.' The question is: why? Why do so many women, including most self-proclaimed feminists, aggressively promote an ideology that is manifestly harmful to women and girls?

Biggs thinks it's because the doctrine of 'gender fluidity' grows naturally out of the second-wave feminist idea that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. I think he is partly right, although IMO there are a lot of other complex interacting factors at work.

But even if you don't agree, at the very least we need to take the question seriously, because we cannot stop this disastrous ideology without understanding why it holds such irresistible appeal for so many women.

Second wave feminism did not ever argue that biological sex could be changed. Or that gender = sex, quite the opposite.

The idea that gender was social roles predates second wave feminism to psychiatry in the post war period. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatrists.

This is a bit of a tangent, but think of post-war domesticity - the whole idea that women should leave the workplace and go back to the home. Policy-makers, newspapers, advertisers promoted this narrative. Marriage levels were high, so were fertility levels. The concept of gender identity developed in this period when gender roles were highly stratified. Does anyone say it is women’s fault they were pushed back into the home in the 1950s? Of course some women embraced that role, but were they really the ones in control of the societal factors shaping their decisions?

You find the concept of gender in 1950s and 1960s psychiatry way before you find it in second wave feminism. Crucially, I do not think that second wave feminists ever argued that gender was a societal construct which could be equally taken on by men, rather than gender was oppressive to women.

You need the melting pot of third wave feminism (gender is performative), queer theory, neoliberal capitalism, developments in plastic surgery, endocrinology and a very determined trans lobby group to then get to where we are today. Given that women are 50% of the population, then there will be women involved. Is the movement driven or even started by women - I am not convinced at all by that and I find it kind of victim blaming. Why do female political leaders subscribe to this ideology? Now that is an interesting question but unless there is some detailed qualitative evidence that relates their beliefs to feminist theory, it is not because of feminism. The fact that women can become politicians may be a product of feminism, but it does not make their pronouncements inherently feminist.

The other conclusion of course to draw is that I am stuck in the second wave and I can no longer call myself a feminist as I do not agree TWAW and I do not see it as part of the feminist project.

The types of arguments used in the article are the real essentialist arguments, that there is a male/female behaviour hardwired into the brain, or caused by genes, hormones etc, and only a few escape that

I don't understand the issue with arguing male/female behaviour is influenced by male/female biology. Brains are plastic, genes are complex so it isn't really useful to say behaviour is caused by this or that gene as whatever influence they have would involve complex interactions of multiple genes but hormones absolutely influence behaviour. There are a multitude of studies on hormones but surely it is obvious from ones own experience?

I am certainly aware that I am more inclined to irritability and short temperedness at certain points in my cycle. I could hardly have missed how I cried at the drop of a hat when pregnant despite not generally being given to tearfulness. Absolutely my hormones have an influence. That doesn't make me a slave to my hormones, part of being an adult is learning to keep your emotions in check, but the influence is there.

It is known that testosterone is linked to aggression. Women who take testosterone become more aggressive. Men who take it as HRT become more aggressive. Hell, the UFC once allowed fighters over a certain age (35 I think) to use testosterone as HRT and then quickly ditched the idea in large part because of how aggressive they became.

Given male and female hormones are utterly different it would be a shock if our behaviour, on average, were not. If saying so makes me an 'essentialist' I shall wear the label with pride.

I think the blank state theory took off because people don’t understand maths.

There might be something in this. I have noticed a tendency amongst certain sections of the media to take some sort of warped pride in not understanding maths, in openly declaring 'I'm rubbish at maths me', in a way they never would about literacy.

I have also noticed that many people are incapable of understanding the difference in distribution of attributes between men and women is often not in the average, but the extremes. IQ is well known example of the kind. If you plot men's and women's IQ scores on the same graph you get two bell curves with peaks at the same point. On average men and women score much the same on IQ tests. But the men's curve is flatter, there are more men than women at the extremes. Both extremes, both very high and very low scores. Why this should be I don't know, but it is what it is. So in areas where IQ type intelligence, and IQ is a very limited measure of intelligence, matters you would expect to find more men than women and this applies at both ends of the scale. So you might find more men being maths professors, yay for men, but also more men who are functionally innumerate, sucks to be a bloke.

Women, especially young women, are rushing to declare themselves 'trans' or 'non-binary'.

What is bizarre is that these young women are often lesbians or gender non-conforming. Forty years ago, these women would have been declaring themselves feminists, or fighting back against anyone who told them that there were things they couldn't do because they were women. Now they are declaring that they are not actually women. What caused this reversal?

Why do so many women, including most self-proclaimed feminists, aggressively promote an ideology that is manifestly harmful to women and girls?

Biggs thinks it's because the doctrine of 'gender fluidity' grows naturally out of the second-wave feminist idea that all differences between men and women are socially constructed.

But as I said earlier, the idea that all differences (apart from the obviously biological ones) are socially constructed, so all personality types and behaviours are available to everyone, means that the idea of transgenderism is redundant. If anyone can behave and present in any way they want, there is nothing to transition from and to. The only distinction is biological, and that can't be changed.

Transgenderism only makes sense within a society which has very rigid gender roles, like the hijra in India.

The article resonates with me and argues what I have had thought for a long while.

Males and females are different, including their brains and I've never understood why it is not blatantly obvious to academics. The reason I rejected feminism for so long was because I felt it was built on a lie and I reject transgender ideology for the same reason.

Biggs thinks it's because the doctrine of 'gender fluidity' grows naturally out of the second-wave feminist idea that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. I think he is partly right, although IMO there are a lot of other complex interacting factors at work.

But even if you don't agree, at the very least we need to take the question seriously, because we cannot stop this disastrous ideology without understanding why it holds such irresistible appeal for so many women.

I concur. I think he has also missed an understanding of the second wave aim to dismantle patriarchal structures. We have managed to partially liberate women from patriarchal control on an individual rights basis. But we have achieved little in dismantling overarching patriarchal structures. Career progression still suits bodies that do not bear children. The justice system is still incapable of dealing with intimate crime. Etc etc.

So we have systems that evolved via ownership patriarchy in which individually liberated women must act. Bourgeois women - which includes most of Bigg's feminist establishment - are therefore better able to navigate this partiallly liberated world than under or working class women and shape its limitations to suit themselves. They're under less threat from queer theory and genderism and careers within patriarchal structures can be made from it.

You need the melting pot of third wave feminism (gender is performative), queer theory, neoliberal capitalism, developments in plastic surgery, endocrinology and a very determined trans lobby group to then get to where we are today. Given that women are 50% of the population, then there will be women involved. Is the movement driven or even started by women - I am not convinced at all by that and I find it kind of victim blaming. Why do female political leaders subscribe to this ideology? Now that is an interesting question but unless there is some detailed qualitative evidence that relates their beliefs to feminist theory, it is not because of feminism. The fact that women can become politicians may be a product of feminism, but it does not make their pronouncements inherently feminist.

I hear you.

They were correct about its objective consequences being bad for females, as set out by the philosopher Kathleen Stock and the journalist Helen Joyce. The end of segregation by sex threatens the dignity and safety of women rather than men, because men are more violent and sexually predatory than women. Men in prison, for example, have a huge incentive to claim a female identity. In sports, the physical advantages of men are so great that their entry into women’s competitions automatically takes places from females. Women who enter men’s competitions, by contrast, are destined to lose. In the realm of sexuality, young lesbians are vulnerable to aggressive pursuit by transwomen, which activists celebrate as “breaking the cotton ceiling.” There is no equivalent pressure on men, whether straight or gay.

I don't agree that feminists' 'denial of biology' has led to genderism, but the quote above is spot on.

Feminism has been distorted in the service of genderism. Specifically, the distinction between sex and gender, and intersectionality. But the gay rights movement seems to be the main driver of genderism, and no liberal wants to be seen as any kind of phobic.

I thought about this more overnight. This is where I've got to:

Transgenderism is contradictory and contains both ideas at once: a) there is no difference between the sexes hence I can be whatever I want and b) the difference is the most important thing in the world.

I think that which one you focus on may depend on other things about how you see the world.

To me, it always seemed that transgenderism hinders the process of reducing gendered socialisation, as it says that if you are gender non-conforming you must be the opposite sex.

However, I can also see the opposite position, particularly as regarding the abolition of single sex spaces. If you make all spaces mixed sex, as some of this is leading towards (mixed sex toilets etc), it reduces the tendency for people to segregate by sex, and thus is likely to reduce the behavioural differences.

I think that a lot of feminists view it like this: while there are still, alas, gender roles in our society, enforced by the bad people, some people will find their role intolerable, so it makes sense that we allow them to switch sex class. And it makes no real difference anyway, as there are no real differences between the sexes, so it doesn't matter how we classify people.

I think that blank slate feminism would struggle to find a justification for TWAW. But it also leads to - it makes zero difference whether they are or not. If you are a practical person who isn't that interested in theory, its as good as true, right? If there is no reason to care.

So basically, I do think that Biggs has a point. But I also feel in my gut that this isn't the full story. I think that there is more to the female support for gender ID ideology than this, and I'm not sure what it is.

So we have systems that evolved via ownership patriarchy in which individually liberated women must act. Bourgeois women - which includes most of Bigg's feminist establishment - are therefore better able to navigate this partiallly liberated world than under or working class women and shape its limitations to suit themselves. They're under less threat from queer theory and genderism and careers within patriarchal structures can be made from it.

Oh, absolutely. Class is a massive factor here. Class also plays a huge part in the promotion of prostitution by many feminists. The academics and media commentators who chant 'sex work is work' and say it's a free choice are highly unlikely to end up in prostitution themselves. These same feminists who think a male stranger asking them out for coffee in an elevator (remember Elevatorgate?) is not something they should have to tolerate in the course of their work also think that enduring unwanted sex with multiple male strangers is suitable work for poor women.

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers interesting you should bring up IQ variances. Although it would premature to declare it as settled science. There have been studies that have shown the effects you described at the tails in IQ.

Why this might be the is the case isn’t clear, ie is it nature vs nurture. However it runs into accusations of sexism to even analyse the question if anyone even sniffs at the notion it may nature may be a component.

If the data proves to be robust enough and repeatable and nature is a factor then it simultaneously does account for why more men commit more crime as criminal behaviour does correlate with low IQ, it also explains why more women will succeed academically, but it also explains why more men will be CEOs, professors etc.

However whatever the case people with colossal IQs can make equally huge contributions to society so we most definitely shouldn’t be taking away from that data that women should in anyway be discouraged from trying to getting to the top in any endeavour.

I don't see how this follows at all. If gender roles are not enforced, and there are no biological differences in behaviour between the sexes, then surely there is no need for transgenderism, because there's nothing to 'trans' from and to.

So, from what I understand him as saying, this popular form of feminism - and I think he is right about that accepts that there are men and women, almost as a given.
It only accepts a very limited set of differences between them, mainly the reproductive systems and secondary sexual characteristics.

I think it's probably a mistake to think he is saying that there are detailed and developed feminist analysis saying this stuff. (Though IMO feminism, including rad feminism has been very slow, even disinclined, to look at things like effects of hormones. For people who want to talk about material reality they are hesitant to root sex differences in biology, almost like they are worried about the answer. They'd much rather just push Cordelia Fine.)
I understood him to be saying that feminists brought this idea to the public and it's been pretty widely adopted, including by political types and others who see themselves as women's rights activists. The majority of such people are not academics in any way.
Which is very much my experience. Someone upthread mentioned how not long ago it was considered very offensive if a male tennis player mentioned the difference between the male and female game. I remember as a kid learning that the reason that there were not many female firefighters, or women in the infantry, was sexism. No mention of the physical element which I learned was actually pretty significant when I joined the military and actually was doing the work.

Women that come from backgrounds where they tend to see men and women as more different, physically but also in other ways, IME are less likely to think trans theories are plausible.

But the gay rights movement seems to be the main driver of genderism, and no liberal wants to be seen as any kind of phobic.

I don't think there is any doubt that all of this isn't just a matter of feminism. I'm not sure he was even saying that, just that this blank slate idea becoming widely accepted is an important piece of the puzzle. I think it especially accounts for why people just haven't seen things as a threat, like, why do so many young women not just know that men in women's sports will be a problem? That men in private spaces could be a problem? Very practical things.

I think though a lot of the trans stuff borrows very heavily from the gay rights movement and maybe more heavily than from feminism. Something I have noticed is that there is a bit of a mixed message I think many people have picked up there. As is often mentioned here, the idea of homosexuality is somewhat meaningless without sex. But I suspect that is just background in many people's minds. What is more recent is the marriage equality debate, and a lot of people understood that as saying that people's physical bodies don't matter. Because the backdrop of marriage until quite recently was always that it was built around fertility, and so often the discussion centred around whether or not that was any longer relevant, with the marriage equality slogans saying no, only love is relevant, not the body.

What I think this all has made clearer to me is that society at large will pick up on really small parts of larger discussions and mash them all together. It becomes a truism that love is love and so people start to think in those terms, but they don't pick up all the ideas around it, and they don' think about the implications.

Dervel

I have never read a convincing explaination of why it may be the case, but am aware that it is not only in IQ scores that there seems to be a greater tendency to extremes in men.

Not only do I agree that the take away shouldn't be women should not be discouraged because more men does not equal no women but I am also wary of the assumption that such distributions some how make men 'better'. While being a maths professor is undoubtedly nice and all, very few people are ever going to achieve such positions, even if they wanted to. Society just doesn't need that many maths professors. Being functionally numerate by contrast matters to everyone so on average I feel it better to be in a group that is less likely to be functionally innumerate than a group that is more likely to become maths professors if that makes sense.

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers but it’s fallacious to look at just the top end of CEOs, maths professors etc and ignore all criminals and such at the bottom end.

Three scenarios have occurred in recent years of interest. That James Damore fellow at google who was fired from google for questioning the prevailing narrative that believes the solution lies in positive discrimination, a pair of academics who worked on this very question had their paper on IQ variance disappeared down the memory hole, by activist academics and that physicist who came out with comments against women’s competency in the discipline.

On the one hand I think the physicists views need to be challenged. Having someone at the top of a field making such comments may well put off candidates. However people like Damore and the IQ paper academics being just written off as sexists for merely questioning is u helpful.

I do believe there is this bias in academia that is moving more away from genuine academic inquiry and towards activism. Whilst feminism exists under the umbrella of those disciplines (in an academic sense) its a misnomer to blame this one women as 75% of professorships are still held by men.

I’m still nowhere near enough well read enough to have formed a concrete view, and I also do believe sexism exists however how big of factor that plays into results we see are arguable. Now I used to be a bit live and let live about it, but I am now of the view of you
want to solve a problem you have to have a strong grasp of the problem, if you get the causes wrong your prescription to solve them will fail, and do the cause more harm than good in the long run.

I think that article is interesting but I think it overemphasis the influence of feminism in what is a bigger problem that exists across the social sciences.

it’s fallacious to look at just the top end of CEOs, maths professors etc and ignore all criminals and such at the bottom end

Indeed, that was the point I was (badly) trying to make.

Over the years I have seen many men gleefully trotting out the IQ distributions as some kind of 'gotcha'. They never, ever concentrate on the bottom end. Funny that.

Such behaviour of course makes any kind of sensible discussion of such findings more difficult. Decent people generally don't want to be associated with aresholes, and that coupled with modern 'call out culture' makes it increasingly hard for those who are trying to study any such findings in a rational manner as they get lumped in with the arseholes.

I am very uncomfortable with the idea that there are things that shouldn't be studied. I am also very aware that there are areas of study that in the past have been used by nefarious people to the most appalling ends. Increasing polarisation of society really isn't helping strike a balance between those two points.

I think the ‘gotcha’ comes from the notion that if greater male variance theory holds up and it is down to nature then we wouldn’t expect to find a simple 50/50 split across women at the top ends of various fields of academia, economics and government.

It would also cast doubt on the narrative of patriarchy as coming from an inherently misogynistic place of men seeking to oppress and keep women down. It also changes the nature of the debate around general male violence as rather than it being “men as a class” being responsible for all male violence. Then it is a subset of men of low intelligence that are the problem. Although vawg I believe follows a different pathology as it takes place across all stratas of status and intellectual capacity.

However it is way too early in the day to speak with certainty, but I can see how many feminists who are invested in the current narrative that it’s good old fashioned misogyny and patriarchy to resist and indeed suppress enquiry that may indicate other factors.

I agree with you that these avenues have been wrestled from those with genuine curiosity and appetite for truth. The whole race/IQ debate is beginning to rear it’s ugly head again which is particularly annoying as even defining race scientifically is thus far proving elusive. I appreciate race is a significant cultural factor but genetically it’s a far more muddier proposition.

Over the years I have seen many men gleefully trotting out the IQ distributions as some kind of 'gotcha'. They never, ever concentrate on the bottom end. Funny that.

Which is the actual feminist question.

Tangentially, evo psych has work to do if it wants to persuade feminists that it will work to use its insights to benefit women, as well as to further entrench patriarchal systems and institutions. Too many of its proponents seem to think this is beneath them - which both tells you a lot and prevents feminism taking some of its undoubtedly useful insights and running with them.

Although vawg I believe follows a different pathology as it takes place across all stratas of status and intellectual capacity.

If violence is linked more straightforwardly to hormones it would make sense that it would manifest regardless of intellect and status. It would be unsurprising that men exhibit greater aggression not just towards women, but amongst themselves which is reflected in crime statistics.

I don't think hormonal differences can explain the greater levels of non-violent criminality in men though.

As for race I think it is a fairly useless concept in the sense of 'skin colour'. It ignores the greater variation amongst white people or black people than between them. 'Populations' seems to me a better word as there are differences between populations which in some areas, especially in medicine, can matter a great deal but I can't think on any off hand that blanketly apply to 'black people' or 'white people'.

Many of this so called evidence is based on very suspect methodologies. Before you can test IQ you must define it (who gets to do that ). IQ isn't fixed. There's for example the Flynn effect - a generational rise in IQ which now seems to have stalled(or fallen of a cliff by the looks of it)
The certainty of differences between the sexes is engrained by centuries of common sense (or cultural bias).
All social sciences have a replication problem. When men point out the supposed male genius evidence they inevitably mean Einstein was male and I'm male so I have more in common with a genius than women. The genius is an outlier. That also presupposes that a genius has other personal attributes to become successful. A genius is perfectly capable of destroying the planet.

IQ tests are heavily flawed though aren't they?

At best they are a measure of a very particular kind of intelligence. Which is fine as long as it is remembered that there are other forms of intelligence that are equally if not more important. If I remember rightly social intelligence is more closely correlated to work-life success than IQ for example.

I'm not familiar with the paper Cordelia Fine refers to, it sounds an interesting study.