Kathleen Stock OBE: Trans Women Aren't Women : A discussion

[Childrenofthestones]

It's a view held by most people, so why has it become so controversial to state that trans women aren't women? On this episode of "So What You're Saying Is..." (#SWYI) we are joined by Prof. Kathleen Stock OBE, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex and author of the best-selling book: "Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism".

Prof. Stock discusses the issues of sex vs. gender and gender identity, and explains how trans activists, arguing that gender is psychological not physical, now claim that womanhood & manhood are genders in a social, rather than biological, sense.

She discusses the possible motives for Stonewall's decision to become so actively involved in trans rights, as well as the vilification of its outspoken critics such as Germaine Greer and Julie Bindell. Prof. Stock has herself been the target of campaigns to silence, cancel and no platform.

Prof. Stock also discusses the negative impact the more extreme trans rights positions are having on women (changing rooms, public toilets, prisons etc.) as well as the young, and gays & lesbians.

@ProudExclu

Didn’t mean to include the screenshot about old timey doctors obviously.

That threw me...not gonna lie

BilindaB you also clearly missed, or deliberately ignored, the hoo-ha over the census there were an awful lot of TW's out there not only saying they are women but also insisting that are female.

Nuts? Not sure we can engage with that!

You are either mistaken or lying, I wonder which. Which makes me doubt some of the other names you list.

Did you mean to be so rude, @BilindaB ?

We've also had transwomen on here who are horrified by the TRA agenda. One spoke movingly on a different thread of her own personal experiences of wanting to transition but made it clear that she is fully aware that her sex is male. Several of their posts were reported and deleted, seemingly for 'generalisations' about the trans community (despite it being their own account of their experiences). There are self appointed monitors of the FWR board who wish not only to police women's opinions on here but also those of transwomen who stray from the 'party line'.

I've seen at least one high profile transwoman say she identified as a cis woman.

"Did you mean to be so rude, @BilindaB"

I did not mean to be rude. So far this discussion has been respectful, and I'd like it to stay that way.

A lot of the trans people I see on YouTube may not say out right that they think they are biological women, but they then invariably go on to spout a lot of nonsense (frankly) about DSDs, about sex not being binary, about 'spectrums' etc, effectively saying that 'male' and 'female' are not biological realities, and that this somehow means there is neither really 'male' nor 'female', and then it's just a hop, skip and a jump to them 'actually' being more female than male, don't you know.
And they ALWAYS misrepresent the actual number of people born with DSDs. And they NEVER say how many of that vanishingly rare group are actually trans.
And I have seen at least one who states that trans women have more in common BIOLOGICALLY with cis women than they do with cis males. Work that one out!

I have seen variously

Cis woman
Female
Female at birth
Grew up as a girl

From what I can remember.

The whole point is to have no differentiator. Any words for female people will be claimed and used.

If women all said ok have all those words we'll be boutiers, then that word would be claimed.

We're only allowed to be referred to by female body parts. Which is dehumanising, and disguises the spectrum of things women and girls experience because they're female.

Even feminism/ women's rights is not supposed to be just for females any more and we've seen the argument that the focus should not be 'gynocentric' which is what our problems are down to (our biology) and also relates directly to a lot of our issues- abortion, treatment by the medical profession eg vaginal mesh and so on.

It really is a wholesale attack on women even though I'm sure many of those who support it don't see that.

Why would a transwoman who knows they're not a woman want to attend a lesbian event or go on a lesbian dating app? Or insist on their right to attend sessions at a women's centre, or become a volunteer at a rape crisis centre that only offers services to women? Why would someone who knows that they are actually male want to try and destroy women's safe spaces and services?

Bilinda B "Natalie Wynn and Abigail Thorne both know that they used to be male-bodied, they are not under some delusion that they were born a fully intact biological women with all eggs inside them; they are women - trans-women to be precise (which is a subset of women).

So here's the problem. Some trans women say that by virtue of having a 'female gender identity' they literally are female. They say that any person with a female gender identity literally is female, and that their bodies (penis, prostrate, and all) are fully female bodies. They say that they experience periods, and PTS. .They deny that they are 'male bodied' even having so called 'male genitalia. And they would say by virtue of taking hormones they have literally changed sex and are no longer male but as female as can be.

On the other hand, you have some trans women who adopt a more postmodernist approach, which is to say that there is no such thing as a biological female at all. The entire concept of biological sex is a socially constructed 'will of the wisp', a fiction, an illusion. They would say that there is no such thing as "biological sex" (the scare quotes are often included) and so the ONLY thing that women have in common are their female gender identities. And because they share the same gender identity as women, they literally are the same as women.

So you have the "we are literally female " (by redefining what 'female' means) crowd, and the "we are the same as women" (because female doesn't exist, and all we have in common is gender identity) crowd. Both claim to be in all ontological regards identical or equivalent to women. It is now deeply unfashionable for trans women to admit that they are male bodied and that they are different from women.That is what I meant when I said that trans women say they are literally the same as biological females. They either claim to have literally changed sex (Julia Serrano says this, for example - by taking hormones they have physically changed biological sex) or they claim that there is no such thing as biological sex, only the category 'woman' of which they are one.

I would love you to answer this question, for me. You accept that biological women (the kind who make babies) are women. You say that trans women are a 'subset' of women. By virtue of what are they a subset? What makes them women as opposed to feminine men?

I would also like to hear your interpretation of Nathalie Wynn's gender identity, because based on the 'gender critical feminists' video and the "JK Rowling' video, Wynn has a postmodern nihilistic view of gender in which the very question' what is a woman' is meaningless (following Wittgenstein), and so the only thing there in terms of womanhood is a bare self-declaration, which means that trans woman are ontologically the same as so-called biological women. But maybe I'm super confused and Nathalie at some point has declared "I'm a male, I'm not LITERALLY a biological woman!" I maybe haven't watched those videos.

If you strip away biology, what 'makes' someone a woman?

I don't think the 'mother' analogy really works. As PP has pointed out, 'mother' is a social role as much as a biological one. It is also a legal role.

If I see a random child on the street and 'identify' as that child's mother, take the child home with me and begin to care for it - I am not that child's mother. I am a kidnapper. If I ignore a random child in distress on the street, I might be lacking in compassion but I won't be taken to court for child neglect.

If I adopt the child, I assume legal responsibility for the child and am responsible for the child's care and upbringing. In that way, there are certain defined roles of a mother. A mother who neglects, abandons or abuses her child from her child's life is said to be a 'bad' mother.

Even if a mtf transitioner is granted a GRC, what does that mean? What legal responsibilities are assumed by virtue of being recognised as 'woman'? What social role do all 'women' play?

What makes someone 'bad at being a woman' or 'good at being a woman'?

I have seen online someone say to a woman about a transwoman "she's more of a woman than you'll ever be!" What is meant by such a statement? To me, I felt the statement was meant to imply that that the mtf transitioner was kinder, sweeter, sexier etc. than the person to whom the comment was addressed.

However, if that was the intention behind the comment, we must therefore assume that woman = kind, sweet, sexy etc. And so an adult human female who is not kind, sweet or sexy is not a woman.

I do not accept this.

Cracking post, weebisom, I would love to see the response to that.

This position seems to me to be a little like the bait-and-switch hooha that followed the DfE guidance that terminology such as “born in the wrong body” should not be used in children’s education. The announcement was then followed by an avalanche of frantic back pedalling from all the organisations and individuals who had been saying this, denying that they had ever said it, despite the mountains of evidence of them saying just that.

If all these legions of trans activists and allies don’t think that trans women are women, are female, and that there are no distinctions, the debate wouldn’t look the way it does, because we wouldn’t have an issue.

''I would love you to answer this question, for me. You accept that biological women (the kind who make babies) are women. You say that trans women are a 'subset' of women. By virtue of what are they a subset? What makes them women as opposed to feminine men?''

Because they have transitioned, or because they always felt the gender 'male' was all wrong, and only living as a woman, identifying as a woman would end the psychological pain of being assigned a gender they felt deeply uncomfortable with. You are never going to agree they deserve the title 'woman' and I won't be able to convince you. But more people accept that if someone feels so strongly they are the wrong gender, and henceforth want to live their life as another gender (or non-binary), it's their life, their business.. more people than not, according to that survey, medical experts around the world and the World Health Organisation accept the best thing to do for their health and happiness is to accept them and treat them as women, not 'feminine men.' This is not indulging a mental condition - the WHO removed gender dysphoria as a mental disorder in 2019. And I would imagine very soon dictionaries will include trans-women under the definition of woman.

“Woman” isn’t a title though. It’s a descriptor, a categorisation. It can’t be earned, or awarded. It just is. Same for “female”.

FWIW, I am entirely on board that people should be enabled as far as possible to live in the way they please. However, there is a clash of rights here, and pretending that there isn’t, or demanding that women simply acquiesce doesn’t help anybody.

@Sophoclesthefox

“Woman” isn’t a title though. It’s a descriptor, a categorisation. It can’t be earned, or awarded. It just is. Same for “female”.

FWIW, I am entirely on board that people should be enabled as far as possible to live in the way they please. However, there is a clash of rights here, and pretending that there isn’t, or demanding that women simply acquiesce doesn’t help anybody.

“Woman” isn’t a title though. It’s a descriptor, a categorisation. It can’t be earned, or awarded. It just is. Same for “female”.

Welcome to the future. Things have changed.

What has changed?

Transwomen remain male. Women are female. Where sex matters, that still matters.

Welcome to the future. Things have changed

Er, what?

I’m trying to imagine what you mean here, and I’m coming up empty handed. Care to expand?

Welcome to the future. Things have changed.

Nope. Everyone still knows who to treat like shit.

This is not indulging a mental condition - the WHO removed gender dysphoria as a mental disorder in 2019

Due to political lobbying by trans groups.