Material girls

I was reading two books at the same time. I had started ‘material girls’ by Kathleen Stock, which Miles had given to me, but I found it unsuitable for bedtime reading. It is basically a philosophical polemic about feminism and trans activism. So I read a different book as bedtime reading, and I read this book during the day. It was almost an equal finish!

I am aware, by the way, that only reading the book by this author can get you ostracised by some. But so be it! I've read it.

So what is it about? The author argues that trans-activism these days strays into territories where it doesn't belong. She thinks that the excesses thereof are getting in the way of feminism and gay rights. And you can probably see most of her arguments coming; I'm sure most of us have talked about trans people in professional sport, and in single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms and prisons. She is all in favour of trans activism, but she is not so keen on mission creep. And there are no easy answers!

I suppose sport is just a simplification of life, and not all the complexities of life fit in it. If I run a race these days, there tend to be two categories you can register in: the open category, and the female category. This allows anyone to register, whether they identify as male or female, or not. And for anyone who is cisgender this is easy: males in the open category, females in the female category. But what if you are a trans woman? You would be totally welcome in the open category; it is open, after all. But would you? If you consider yourself a woman, you might very well register in the female category. Would that get you into trouble? I don't know! But registering in the open category comes with its own problems. Most people will equate it with the male category. You might not want to be associated with that. And if you had any artificial lowering of your testosterone levels, you probably wouldn’t do very well in it. But what can you expect an organisation to do otherwise? And this is a summary of my view than Stock’s, but I think it is relevant in this context.

Decision-making on trans rights and obligations in sport is clearly difficult, but Stock strongly argues for keeping the female category for cisgender females. And she argues that. And I see her arguments, but I'm not convinced by the introduction of third category. It would be so small, yet populated by such a wide variety of people! 

It's not all this practical, of course. Stock is a philosopher, and it shows. She discusses the concepts of sex and gender and suchlike in detail.

She also argues against letting people declare their sex themselves. As soon as you allow that, you would let basically anyone into single-sex spaces. A lot of trans women present as rather feminine, but if anyone can legally be a woman just by declaring themselves to be, the problem is you can't really have single-sex spaces anymore. Self-declared trans women who present as male would look indistinguishable from cisgender men. So if you have a single-sex changing room, for instance, you can't tell anymore who belongs there and who doesn't. And that's scary. And the chance of anything going wrong is small; most people, be they cis or trans, are of good faith, but I think all woman are aware that you always have to keep an eye out for those rare people who are not, and might not be able to resist a loophole if they spot one.

In this example I focus on trans women basically because men are on average so much stronger than women, and have such higher occurrences of an inclination to engage in sexual violence, it makes sense to be more nervous about men having access to women-only changing rooms than the other way around. But the argument does go both ways, of course.

In daily life I am fine with people just declaring their sex themselves, but I agree with Stock that as soon as you are talking about protecting vulnerable people, protection trumps identity. If you have a woman prison, you have a very high concentration of vulnerable people, and a lot of them will have suffered sexual violence. So I would agree with the Scottish decision to not let trans women with a history of violence awards other women serve in a female prison. The safety of all the other inmates then trumps the right of the perpetrator to serve in the prison that aligns with their gender identity.

And where do the gay people come in? She basically argues that being gay and being trans are too different things, and of course you can be both, but she just thinks that gay issues and trans issues are not the same. I can’t remember an example off the top of my head. And I'm not going to reread the whole book to find one.

There was one detail in the book that particularly struck me. And that was the suicide rate, and incidence of violence towards trans people. Stock mentioned an often heard statistic of almost half young transgender people having attempted suicide, and traces it back to its root. And it turns out to be the rate of a non-random selection of young people of which a big majority is not trans at all. It is still a shocking statistic, but it doesn’t say anything about young trans people at all. 

The violence statistic she digs out is presented as hate crimes, but it turns out it actually concerns self-reported incidents, and that could just be someone purposefully misgendering someone. And that is hurtful, but not the same as crime. She also deals with the murder rates of thans people versus the total population in the particular time period, and concludes according to these official figures, you have a decidedly lower risk of being murdered if you are trans in the UK, but I am not sure whether the police would necessarily know if a murder victim would be trans, so I'm a bit sceptical about these numbers. But anyway; Stock says there is no good reason to make anyone think they are at a lot more risk of suicide or assault than they are. The nocebo effect is real! 

And she says that she hopes that activism in the future comes with less philosophy, and with more data, and acknowledges that that might be a bit of an odd declaration for a philosopher, but this is an example of what she means. And I fully agree with the power of data!

So now what? I think the philosophical bit of this book is going to quickly gather dust in my brain. And the more practical parts of the book haven't really changed my opinions. But it was interesting to read someone really going into detail on a topic that is so hot at the moment. So I am glad I read it! Maybe especially because she ended up in such hot water for her opinions. The best way of finding your feet in heated debate is to make sure you have actually looked at the evidence, after all…