In the domain of trans activism, I think that the rationalisations offered by academics tend to support immersion in fiction rather than full-blooded belief. After all, when deciding who to bully first, the trans activists still seem to know who the women and who the men are. But otherwise the process is similar to that described by Williams.
The game for some academics is to provide convincing-looking backgrounds for predetermined fictional conclusions such as “transwomen are women”, “transmen are men”, and “nonbinary people are neither women nor men”. Since the system currently rewards them for doing this, I think their unconscious motive is often career advancement and social recognition from peers, though it’s inevitably dressed up as something moral.
In the area I’m most familiar with, academic Philosophy, a dedicated band of thinkers seeks to provide complex and technical post-hoc rationalisations for mantras first expressed by adolescents on Tumblr in 2011. The fact that truth in its traditional sense is not their object of inquiry could not be made plainer. See, for instance, philosopher Katharine Jenkins, who starts her 2016 article on the nature of womanhood, published in prestigious philosophy journal Ethics, by declaring: “The proposition that trans gender identities are entirely valid — that trans women are women and trans men are men — is a foundational premise of my argument, which I will not discuss further.” (It’s telling that “valid” is used here in the Tumblr sense of identities being validated like passports or parking tickets, and not in the sense of logical validity more traditional for academic philosophy). The conclusion of Jenkins’s paper, not enormously surprisingly under the circumstances, is that we should use the term “woman” to refer to all and only people who have a female gender identity, whether they are actually female or male.
Another example of this peculiar genre is a 2020 article by Elizabeth Barnes, who like Jenkins, makes explicit that her reasoning has been constrained in advance by a desire to fit with the conclusion that anyone who wants to be classified as a woman should be counted as a woman, and anyone who doesn’t want to be classified as a woman should not be. Barnes then advances a hilariously tortured rationalisation for claims like “transwomen are women”, arguing that there aren’t any “deep, language-independent facts about which people are women, which people are genderqueer, etc”.
She justifies this partly by making an extremely involved analogy with metaphysical discussions of tables. In a nutshell: she argues that in metaphysical terms, there aren’t any tables, strictly speaking, though perhaps there are “simples arranged table-wise”. Nonetheless we can still utter the true sentence “there are tables”. Similarly, though for somewhat different reasons, the metaphysical facts about womanhood and other “gendered” groups come apart from the truth conditions of sentences involving … oh I give up, I don’t have to pretend to take this stuff seriously anymore. (I confess, though, that I remain disappointed Barnes didn’t try to argue that women are “simples arranged woman-wise”.)
In the social sciences, meanwhile, things don’t seem much better. Here the aim of research often seems to be to rationalise certain background beliefs. These beliefs are designed to make immersion in the original fictions appear beneficial or at least cost-free; or else to make refusal look costly in moral and social terms. For instance: “there is an extremely low prevalence of regret in transgender patients after surgery” (i.e. medically-assisted immersion is harmless); “administering cross-sex hormones to gender dysphoric adolescence lowers suicidal ideation” (i.e. medically-assisted immersion is beneficial); “questioning the ‘ontological reality’ of transgender identities leads to transphobic harassment” (i.e. as a non-trans person, refusing to immerse yourself in the fictions of trans people causes trans people to be harassed); “non-suicidal self-injury is common in trans youth and emphasises the need for interventions that reduce transphobia” (i.e. as a non-trans person, refusing to immerse yourself in the fictions of trans people causes trans youth to self-harm); and so on.
The main point of such articles seems to be to operate as a giant guilt-trip for the reader. As with the philosophers earlier, the ultimate aim here isn’t a relatively neutral pursuit of truth but rather a simulacrum of academic discourse which will bring the reader to accept certain predetermined conclusions. This is suggested, partly by the fact that many of the people who produce these sorts of articles seem to have vested interests, economic or personal, for keeping the whole fiction on the road; but also partly because what they produce is so often full of sloppy mistakes, and failures to observe even basic methodological norms. Others are more qualified to illustrate these flaws but, with respect to the research articles I linked to just now, this piece, this one, this one, this one, and this one seem revealing.
A charitable explanation of this unusual level of incompetence is that the goal was never truth in the first place. If motivating others to become immersed in fictions is your aim, then the actual use of reliable truth-tracking methodologies is bound to be less important than the superficially convincing appearance of their use.
2) Exploring a parallel universe
A compelling fiction can give us a snapshot of what life might be like if our starting point was different to the world we know: what else might be true, say, if British people lived under a totalitarian dictatorship with powers of mass surveillance (1984); or if there was a species of otherwise human-like beings that had no fixed sex (The Left Hand of Darkness); or if Germany and Japan had won WWII (The Man in the High Castle), and so on. Filling in the fictional consequences of an initial made-up scenario is another way that authors make certain stories vivid and interesting.
Kids immersed in make-believe stories do something more basic but still similar, using toys and other household props they have around them. So for instance, a kid’s make-believe game might go: if this doll is a “explorer”, and this chair is an “elephant”, then, if I put the doll on top of the chair, “an explorer is riding an elephant”.
So too does trans activism, with the help of the media and the academy, work to fill in the consequences of the original fiction that transwomen are “women”. Partly this is a matter of working out what would follow logically, given the way the concepts “woman” and “man” usually work. For instance, if transwomen are “women”, then transwomen are a sub-set of women generally, so we also need a special word for the sub-set of women that aren’t trans: “cis women”. If transwomen are “women”, then, since women before the age of sexual maturity are “girls”, transwomen before the age of sexual maturity are “girls” too. Since women who have children are “mothers”, transwomen with children are also “mothers”. Since women exclusively sexually attracted to other women are “lesbians”, transwomen exclusively sexually attracted to other women are “lesbians” as well (and so on and so on).
And then there’s the practice of extending the entitlements and resources of women to transwomen, because transwomen are “women”, so they are imagined to share precisely those entitlements and need exactly those resources too. As we now know to women’s cost, being immersed in the fiction that transwomen are “women” has led to the dismantling of single-sex services and resources built painstakingly over years, largely in the pursuit of aesthetic verisimilitude for males.
Meanwhile, if transwomen are “women”, and certain events and experiences characteristically happen to women, then the logic of the fiction dictates that transwomen must undergo these too. So for instance, transwomen are supposed to suffer from “misogyny”, because women suffer from misogyny (a fiction given further oomph by the fact that experiencing misogyny or even sexual violence is a common sexual fantasy of autogynephilic males). Transwomen have period symptoms, menopause symptoms, and so on.
This working out of fictional consequences goes on at the particular as well as the general level. Martine Rothblatt is a transwoman, and transwomen are female; Martine Rothblatt is paid more than any woman CEO in America; so this makes Rothblatt the “the highest paid female executive in America” according to New York magazine. Lia Thomas is a transwoman, and transwomen are women; Lia Thomas is a faster swimmer than any woman at the University of Pennsylvania; this means Lia Thomas has broken “women’s records” for swimming. Novelist Torrey Peters is a transwoman, and transwomen are women: this means Peters’ novel Detransition Baby is eligible for longlisting in the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.
In this story-world, women’s achievements are gradually reduced, to be replaced with altogether grimmer kinds of headline involving “women” engaged in characteristically male crimes such as paedophilia, violent assault, and indecent exposure. Last week, the Scottish Daily Record reported that Shay Sims, “a female” in court who had “pleaded guilty to three charges of assault by beating, criminal damage and outraging public decency”, had “raised her dress up and lowered her pants to reveal a penis and continued to walk 40 feet with the penis exposed”. And last Wednesday, the New York Times reported that an “83-year-old woman”, already guilty of killing two other women, had been discovered carrying the torso of a dismembered woman out of an apartment building.
What, meanwhile, of the consequences of the original fictions that transmen are “men”? In the contrasting case of the fiction that transmen are “men”, given the centrality of the concept “man” to so many discourses, in theory there should be ample material for campaigners to get stuck into. To some extent they have: for instance, in the ongoing campaign in the UK to have a transman registered as a legal “father” on a birth certificate. But curiously, in most other areas men’s spaces, resources, entitlements, and achievements are being left untouched.
3) Retconning the past
Some story-makers engage in “retconning” — making new stories continuous with old ones by changing elements of the old one retrospectively. Famously — at least, for people my age and older — in the soap opera Dallas, the character Bobby, previously killed off, was brought back a whole series later, alive, with the explanation that it had all been a dream while he was in the shower.
In trans activism, a form of retconning takes place all the time, as a further means of producing convincing back stories for current fictions. So much of the trans activist story-world depends on trans people having been a permanent feature of human life throughout history, no matter what the surrounding cultural or historical context. And so we find the retrospective fictional transing of notable sex-non-conforming figures from history: for instance, Marsha P. Johnson; Ewan Forbes; James Barry; Joan of Arc; Queen Hatshepsut; Kurt Cobain. We also get the creative reinterpretation of other cultural traditions, with the Hijra, Fa’afafine, Fakaleitī, and Kathoey people all anomalously represented under the essentially Western, relatively modern concept of “trans”.
And then, of course, we also get the fiction of the “trans” child — the most audacious retcon of them all. Transwomen who are “women” must once have been “girls”, and transmen who are “men” must once have been “boys” — which, by extrapolation, means that there must be “girls” in the population of male children, and “boys” in the population of female children, right now. “Trans” children (so often female, but never mind about that) “know who they are”, and should have the “freedom to be themselves”, we are told. Yet this “freedom” may well involve a child’s taking drugs that will make her infertile; or give her premature osteoporosis; or bring about the surgical removal of her breasts, ovaries, and womb before she’s had any chance to reflect on the implications.
Thousands of children and teens worldwide have been encouraged by adults to thoroughly immerse themselves in this fiction – indeed, to start believing in it, full stop — instead of treating it as one make-believe game among many, as part of a healthy development. Children’s bodies are being used as props in adult dramas they have no way of properly understanding until it’s too late for them.
4) Remembering to turn off your phone
When you go to the cinema, you’re sometimes reminded to switch off your phone. Annoying ringtones can grab the attention of someone immersed in a fiction and return them unpleasantly to consciousness of the real world.
Reminders of reality are also lurking out there, ready to distract those currently immersed in trans activist fictions. There’s the annoying fact that biological sex in humans is immutable. Remembering this can be a real buzzkill when you’re trying to persuade yourself that Lia Thomas is just an ordinary woman unusually good at swimming. This, I think, is why trans activists systematically object to statements that biological sex in humans can’t be transcended.
In a recent case, several student editors of the academic journal Law and Contemporary Problems publicly resigned when they found out their journal would be publishing an article of mine entitled: “The Importance of Referring to Human Sex in Language”. (Please do read it to annoy them.) There are several precedents for this, of course — most obviously, the anomalously severe treatment of Lisa Littman’s paper on rapid onset gender dysphoria a few years back.
A fear of breaking the fourth wall is also, I think, what makes trans activists panic so much about J.K. Rowling’s forthright interventions on the harms of modern trans activism to women and girls. Rowling has the courage to describe the reality of male behaviours that harm women and girls, regardless of the identities of either. Perhaps precisely because she understands so well the difference between fiction and reality, the creator of “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” is both willing and able to name things that others dare not. She also has the communicative power and cultural clout to get her message out to millions. To those emotionally or indeed financially invested in trans fictions, and who desire others to remain immersed too, this must be terrifying.
And then there’s the Detrans Subreddit. It has 27K members, mostly young, and many of whom talk frankly about the harms to their bodies and minds caused by premature transition. Some of those who post on this subreddit are desperate for help, and their testimonies are truly shocking. You might well wonder: why don’t those in the progressive media report on the phenomenon more unambiguously? For this is a medical scandal unfolding in plain sight.
The answer is that the existence of detransitioners reminds people that psychological identifications can be temporary, especially in adolescence, and that there’s no inevitability about transitioning on the basis of feelings of dysphoria. The idea that someone is “born trans” or has no choice but to transition, given “who they really are inside”, is a myth. Detransitioners establish this. Now, not all trans people are committed to ignoring this fact — far from it. But many do seem to be, as do large numbers of self-styled trans allies. And collectively they seem motivated to exert pressure on others to ignore it too, no matter what the public cost.
Even more painfully, perhaps, the phenomenon of detransitioners reminds parents of transitioned children that they might well be making a terrible mistake in allowing their child to be medicated — a mistake that may later cause grave and irrevocable problems for their child’s well-being. I hear that some of the prominent figures publicly engaged in trying to shut down balanced discussion about the welfare of trans children in the UK are privately in this position, and often wonder how it can be that such vested interests go undeclared.
These people remind me of Christof, the Creator-character in The Truman Show — desperate to stop their child from reaching the artificial horizon of the little world that has, unbeknown, been shaped just for them.
This is adapted from a post originally published on Kathleen Stock’s Substack.
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Subscribe“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.”
How fortunate we are that we have the likes of Professor Stock and J. K. Rowling who are willing to embody Solzhenitsyn’s words and yet how depressing, that in the West, in the 21st century, speaking the truth should be an act of courage at all.
We’ve learned how easily totalitarianism can win, even without concentration camps.
Kathleen Stock touches on the harm done by the fiction that trans women are women on women and those who regret their transition but the most deep seated harm is to the authority of the state and state organs that endorse this fictional belief.
In as far as the fiction receives support it weakens all other statements made by them. If the NHS can support such an obvious fiction that trans women should be treated as women and placed on wards for women and that therefor there can have been no rape in the case cited by Baroness Nicholson why should we believe other pronouncements by them.
If the state and its organs support obvious fictions why should we not believe any conspiracy theory that fits our predilections. We know we are being lied to and potentially punished for disbelieving one fiction so perhaps other things that don’t fit the official narrative are in fact true. Is it irrational to believe that Trump won the last US election or anti-covid vaccines are injecting microchips. Take your pick of ideas that run counter to the official version are they more irrational than that men can change their sex by declaring they are women.
I think you raise a very important point. The failure of the Labour leadership to take a clear stand against the fiction described here will (or at least should) have disastrous consequences for its electability. After all, how can a voter not conclude that Starmer, Cooper, Dodds et al. are either ignoramuses who don’t understand basic biology, OR craven cowards who are susceptible to bullying and will say almost anything under duress? There really are no other options.
A few decades ago we used to incarcerate child groomers and give pills to those suffering from delusions of perception. Now we give them awards and soothe their egos with baby talk about how ‘valid’ their perception is, even as the vision is shattered as they gradually fail to pass. An adam’s apple and premature balding tend to shatter such delusions very quickly. The medical malpractice lawsuits in the next few decades are going to be something to behold.
The medical malpractice lawsuits in the next few decades are going to be something to behold.
You can say that again. The medical profession must have lost its mind. They must all be conscious of medical negligence and this has claim and BMA investigation written all over it, particularly when the fantasists realise what a money spinner it is.
I wouldn’t mind, except the taxpayer, who is required to fund this transition nonsense in the first place, will be expected to pick up the malpractice compensation claims later. A lose-lose for normal people.
Absolutely correct
I wouldn’t mind, except the taxpayer, who is required to fund this non-sense in the first place, will be expected to pick up the malpractice compensation claims later. A lose-lose for normal people.
Edit. An almost-identical earlier post, in which i used the “t-word” before the word non-sense, is “awaiting moderation”.
“After all, when deciding who to bully first, the trans activists still seem to know who the women and who the men are”
So true!
May I suggest two more elements which are prominent in trans-activism:
(1) The spiteful enjoyment of power; the sheer visceral pleasure of making a row and shouting down your opponents. How they must have hugged themselves with delight when the author was finally prevailed upon to quit her post.
(2) The third-rate calibre of many university professors and lecturers. They are the creatures of fashion because they are strangers to rigorous thought and, quite simply, not up to the job.
Insightful comment.
For anyone who has previously campaigned for equality, the Self-ID issue does seem a very strange hill to choose to die on – and wholly self-defeating.
If gender is merely a case of self-identification then, at a stroke, the concept of Feminism is dead. The Gender pay-gap argument, already on very thin ice, entirely falls through into the freezing waters below and women’s sport – that has made such advances in the last few years – ceases to be fairly competitive, and thus comes to an end.
The contradictory nature of the whole argument means it cannot survive scrutiny. It exists and perpetuates because anyone who dares gainsay it can be shouted down by activists as a mere bigot and thus does not have to be reasoned with. But if sensible, sober people try to man the barricades (person the barricades??) to defend and legitimise the concept of self-identification, then they have to be able to square all the various contradictory circles that dwell within the argument.
It cannot be done.
My (30 year old) dictionary defines ‘Gender’ as “The quality of being Male or Female”. More recent online dictionaries have broadened the definition to include this idea of gender being on a spectrum. Can we not have a different word to describe this spectrum other than “Gender”?
This re-definition, surely, is where much of the argument derives from. Most people can, quite correctly, define gender in the way it has been used for all of our lifetimes, until its meaning was expanded-upon and changed very recently. They are now being told to deny that truth – or be denounced as a bigot.
If I meet a trans person and they ask me to call them a different name, or even by different pronouns, I will acquiesce simply out of courtesy. They are entitled to their lifestyle choices, their sense of self, they can do whatever makes them happy, and who am I to judge?
However, when activists that I haven’t met INSIST that I must fall into line with the new dogma – one that flies in the face of long-established meaning – then I don’t see why I should be forced, why anyone should be forced, to play along.
It doesn’t matter by what name you call yourself, or the life you choose to lead, even what you add or subtract from your body, you don’t change chromosomes. Individuals having two X chromosomes (XX) are female; individuals having one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY) are male.
Must we now twist the language, as well as deny science, to accommodate the new activist orthodoxy?
As I say, on an individual basis, I am perfectly willing to accept someone for who they are, however they choose to define themselves – to do otherwise seems unnecessarily rude or intolerant. But no one should be forced, on pain of public shaming and “cancellation”, to believe things that are not factually true.
The definition of gender goes back a little longer than our lifetimes. It appears in the first chapter of the first book of the bible: Genesis 1:27.
Individuals having two X chromosomes (XX) are female; individuals having one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY) are male.
Sex is not defined by chromosomes. That would be a category error. Chromosomes are the sex determination mechanisms but they are not the defining feature male and female sex.
In plant and animal reproductive systems involving the fusion of a large gamete and a smaller gamete, the organism that has the adult phenotype that develops and supports the production of large immotile gametes (eggs) is female, and the organism that has the adult phenotype that develops and supports the production of small motile gametes (sperm) is male.
This is because there are a small minority of human individuals, for example, that have genetic errors – such as the unequal distribution of chromosomes, but still go on to produce either male or female.
XX – Female
XY – Male
YYY – Delilah
Thanks, v helpful and clear.
Are you saying that these exceptions to the general rule negate that general rule entirely? For the vast majority of individuals, XX means female, and XY means male. I’m sorry, but I can’t see the difference between defining sex and determining it.
And yes, I knew that the single egg was much larger than any sperm. But I fail to see the relevance of that fact to this discussion.
Would I be right in saying that trans people are people who find that there is a mismatch between their body and their personality? English is a rich language, which people can use to describe how it for them. There are nouns such as ‘woman’ that describe the body. There are adjectives like ‘womanly’ that describe the personality. Kathleen Stock in this article uses words to describe a wide range of thought processes and personality types.
They may well think that, I think you’re probably right about that point. But the question then arises: is there any personality trait exclusive to one gender or the other? I’m fairly certain that there is not. General tendencies, yes, but nothing even coming close to being the sole possession of one gender.
Now, that notion may well have made sense to, say, our Victorian ancestors, with their rigid sex roles. But there simply doesn’t seem to be much of anything that one sex does that the other doesn’t these days, except for childbirth. And that’s physical not psychological. Also physical rather than mental are such things as having a p***s or a vagina, a s*****m or vulva, two ovaries or two testicles. So, there is too much overlap for trans people on the psychological divides among the sexes, and none at all on the physical (a few anomalies perhaps aside) for their claims to make sense, at least to me.
I recommend readers click on the link to a photo in the last sentence of paragraph seven (New York State Democratic Party). Kathleen advises us to look at the image carefully. It makes an important point about a certain phenomenon that I’m not allowed to name.
I looked. He is obviously enjoying himself.
Quite. It ‘shows’ rather than tells us about the phenomenon Kathleen and Julie Bindel have written about in Unherd. A recent comment of mine naming this phenomenon in the context of self-ID and its dangers was deleted, despite being mentioned in the article.
Like Lia Thomas…
Looking carefully is not necessary. The point, or something beginning with “p”, is immediately obvious. Quite bizarre.
Ah yes, the Battle of the Bulge.
Is that a banana in my pocket, or am I just happy to wearing a dress?
Or, as Tammy Wynette once sang:
‘Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman…’
You’ve made your point.
What a brilliant analysis of this phenomenon. It certainly demonstrates how powerful in society have become the twin enforcers of self- righteousness posturing and guilt-tripping of those who question. Of course, Debbie Hayton has been very clear here on UnHerd about AGP and its role in this. All forms of gnosticism, where people claim secret inward knowledge, lead to abuse whether the burning of heretics, the drowning of witches, the persecution of minorities, erroneous claims of child abuse (eg the Cleveland fiasco in the 80s) or the physical mutilation of teenagers.
Someone in authority needs to take a stand here. The RFU is not prohibiting male bodies competing in female rugby, I believe, which is patently dangerous. I don’t think the Government’s proposed Conversion Therapy Bill is going to help; perhaps it will even make addressing the problem even worse by criminalising advice. Maybe it will only be solved when there are multi-million pound lawsuits for damages in years to come.
If you have time, this heart-rending account of the effect of Tumblr on a girl who has now detranistioned explains the problem emphatically: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name?s=r
PS I hate implying criticism of such an excellent article, but does anyone know why this is happening: “looks compelling to the average reader, and is distracting enough that she doesn’t question any plot holes.” Why is the generic pronoun ‘he’ being replaced with the female form? I am just reading a book which uses the same convention. I once read an article on psychopathic behaviours which did the same. It was strange reading that ‘shes’ were behaving so reprehensibly when life tells you that it’s mostly men that behave in that way.
I saw the she. But honestly I didn’t care. It reminded me of my uni days, several decades ago, where we had to alternate to achieve balance. Using he is just a convention. Authors should use what they feel is right.
Tom, I am trying to see the point of changing the convention; is there a purpose in it? I recall a time when ‘s/he’ as a compromise was trending.
The relevant excerpt from my heroic couplet satire, The Wokeiad by Richard Craven:-
……….
This tribe’s succeeded by the tribe of Pride:
Cowboy in leather chaps who sits astride
Pup masked in black and shiny neoprene;
Bear and his twink, waxed smooth and epicene;
The buzzcut butch with stubble on her chin,
The connoisseur of methamphetamine, 1320
The dominatrix and her cringing simp,
The exhibitionist and hog-tied gimp.
As these march past, a bitter fight breaks out,
Trans sophist brawny against sapphist stout.
Speak not of saintly Nozick nor good Rawls:
Instead prop forwards scrum for shrunken bawls.
Transwomen weaponise ‘they/them’ pronouns,
And Logos in the muddied waters drowns.
The fighting spreads, engulfs the whole parade,
The trans castrated and the cuckold spayed. 1330
Here Lived Experience vanquishes Truth,
Boomer decrepit yields to coxcomb Youth.
Alarum and the screams of the erased,
My Lady mansplained and My Gaylord tazed,
The rampant T batters the LGB,
And gender activists shriek “Me! Me! Me!”
Their personalities stripped of pretence:
Just narcissism of small difference;
No more shall superego restrain id
Upon the apex of woke’s pyramid.
Is the full work available in book form at all? I always get a good giggle when I see one of these snippets.
Thanks v much for the kind word. To answer your question: not yet, because I haven’t quite finished it. I’ve written about 1450 lines out of a projected 1600, so it’s definitely getting there and I’m just as definitely going to publish it in book form; 40 lines per page + additional stuff means it’ll probably be about 60 pages long. I’ll almost certainly have to self-publish, because I can’t imagine a traditional poetry publisher being unwoke enough to touch it even with the longest of bargepoles.
Be sure to make ample mention in the comments when it’s released, I’ll be grabbing a copy.
Thanks, I most certainly will.
Come to think of it, a few years ago I published an earlier attempt at heroic couplet satire, The Montpeliad. It’s rather shorter at 620 lines, and is quite a bit looser in its iambic pentametricality than The Wokeiad, which really doesn’t deviate. It’s about a competition to be the biggest tw@t in Bristol, and also features a hustings from the mayoral contest between the incumbent George Ferguson, Marvin Rees the eventual winner, and the malcontents’ candidate Paul Saville:-
Welcome to the wonderful world of Critical Theory, Ms. Stock. A place where there is no objective truth and only narratives, we invent to accrue power. The sad fact is that man has used fictional narratives to justify horrific acts in the past. The fiction that Africans are inferior allowed the South to enslave them long after western civilization realized slavery was wrong, then the narrative of the lost cause to describe the Civil War helped the South impose apartheid, and worst of all the lies that Jews were evil moneychangers allowed the Germans to systematically slaughter six million of them.
Sadly, when the post-modernist philosophers identified this tendency, instead of using it to strive closer to the truth, progressives decided seeking truth was a waste of time and it was better to jump on the band wagon and create narratives of their own to accrue power. They became very good at it and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in academia and the media and now they are using the power gained to do things like defund the police and allow men into safe spaces for women. They may be incompetent, but they think they are doing good, often a dangerous thing.
The truth has become fungible, a matter of opinion. Maybe it always was. Or maybe there have always been people ready to stand up and fight nonsense. Welcome to the human condition.
I suspect the idea that there are only narratives invented to accrue power is itself a narrative invented to accrue power and in fact there is no objective evidence to support it.
I don’t think a fiction was invented that Africans were inferior to allow them to be enslaved. I think the ability to enslave came first and it then became a common observation that the enslaved were inferior, as after all in their enslaved state so they appeared for the most part. It was not a sudden realisation that the enslaved were not inferior but a Christian and enlightenment moral realisation of the common humanity of the enslaver and slave that fuelled the anti-slavery movement in the late 18th and 19th century. To enslave a fellow man was felt to be wrong irrespective of whether he was culturally or otherwise inferior or not.
It most certainly was a false narrative. You forget there were free blacks running farms and businesses and going to college in ante-bellum America and along with them loads of evidence that blacks were not inferior. There was an entire abolition movement, people ready to stand up and fight the nonsense of their time, dedicated to the proposition that Africans given their freedom were the equal of any white man. You are still using part of the false narrative that since they were in a state of slavery, they were inferior.
I think you mistake my meaning. I referred to the common observation of many regarding the enslaved. As Tom Krehbiel observed Aristotle assumed the white slaves were inferior and the Turks similarly regarded their Greek and Caucasian slaves to be inferior.
The view as to the slaves inferiority arose from their condition rather being the reason for their enslavement. As you say there were plenty of examples of successful and manifestly not inferior blacks but many of those who thought the slaves inferior would simply have dismissed these as exceptions that did not invalidate the general rule. In any case there were plenty of the more perceptive who were under no illusion that free blacks were in no way inferior even during the 18th and 19th Century.
My point was that the narrative was not invented to accrue power. Those buying slaves already had power they had no need of a narrative – the perception of slaves being inferior arose from the observation of the conditions of the slaves. Contempt for the enslaved of whatever origin was a pretty universal perception until a mixture of enlightenment and a particular strand of Christianity began to prevail. Of course, all were not afflicted with this misperception even then.
I appreciate that this does not chime with the more usual analysis that the inferiority of the slave was a narrative invented to justify slavery but it is not one I share unless it is thought all the enslavers in history needed such a narrative to justify their actions. Slavery has been a widespread institution throughout history.
Yes, Aristotle assumed that slaves were inferior to free men, and the former probably included few if any black Africans in his Greece.
When I began to read about trans activism having such a powerful impact, my daughter told me it was a plot manufactured to set two marginalised groups against each other. Plausible possibly but no longer, it has gone on and persisted for too long and the damage of their actions have become all encompassing. I now experience the debate as yet another form of misogyny, and despair for my granddaughters.
Who were the two marginalized groups in your daughter’s mind? I tend to think that such things may be an elite plot to divide the commoners, but that may not have been your daughter’s belief.
It’s actually merely about pharmaceutical companies selling off-brand medication.
https://suedonym.substack.com/p/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq
Very good article but doesn’t address the fact that being forced to accept untruths didn’t start with trans issues. It started with feminists insisting that women were the equal of men in all respects. This was always a false premise when it came to physical strength but we were required to open up all roles in the military, police and firefighters to women. Women are now suffering from a problem caused by feminists who claimed to be acting in the best interests of women.
I am not sure feminists insisted that women were the equal of men in all respects some declared they were superior to men. There are, of course, roles in the military, police and firefighting where women are perfectly capable of filling despite their average inferior physical strength so there is no logical reason why they should not join such services. Where the role requires physical strength as an important element then, of course, selecting a woman who is weaker than the average man to fulfil it would, of course, be perverse.
Women are equal to men in many respects, inferior to men in some and superior to men in others; but the important thing is that men and women are equally worthy of respect for all that they are (I’m speaking generally here, some people are perhaps not worthy of much respect)
I would recommend Pluckrose and Lindsay’s account in their book Cynical Theories. On page 141, for example, they cite an account of the influence of gender studies on feminism in which the categories of “women” and “men” were challenged at their linguistic foundations. By the early 2000s, then, a dominant view within feminism was that – because gender has been constructed differently by dominant discourses at different times and places – to speak of “women” and “men” at all is incoherent. ..,. under Theory, “women” and “men” are regarded as constructions or representations – achieved through discourse, performance and repetition – rather than ‘real’ entities.
Thus “man” and “woman” are social constructions achieved through performance and reputation and not tied or attached to biological reality as Stock mentions.
IMO, this is all theorising, or what I call undemonstrated speculative musings, unmoored from or unconcerned with reality.
Yes, all as useful and grounded in reality as medieval theologians discussing how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.
We should be extremely careful with the term “equity”. It’s a new buzz word of the new woke wave, called to supersede the “outdated” equality, weaponised to be completely contradictory to any concept of meritocracy.
Thank you. Most on this site are very aware of the huge difference in these terms.
I hope so!
I swear I had a Facebook ad pop up recently explaining in a cartoon how great this novel moral objective Equity was (million likes better than the old Equality).
Sadly they forgot to give credit to the man who coined the idea c. 1870s: Jeder nach seinen Fächigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Yours, Karl Marx.
And the definition of marriage.
Feminists have never declared that they are ‘the equal of men in all respects’. Feminists expect equal opportunities and equal pay for work of equal value. It is recognised that most men have greater physical strength than most women, but it is also recognised that very few jobs now require physical strength and that those that do can often benefit from technology that makes them safer and easier for both women and men. Most nurses are women and, for years had to lift immobile patients. Men clearly don’t count that as a job requiring strength but they can be assured that it is. The provision of hoists has made it safer for all concerned. Nurses are paid considerably less than many men. ‘I’m not very bright but I can lift heavy things’ really isn’t a good look.
Women are entirely entitled to equal opportunities and equal pay for the same job. The problem comes with the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. Instead of this being determined by the normal rough and ready mixture of tradition and supply and demand some third party has to be brought in to answer the unanswerable question as to what different types of work are of equal value. Of course there are plenty of people who think they can answer this and on the whole women have benefited from their adjudication.
Heartily concur – as a not very bright thing unable to aspire to my veterinarian dreams, my nursing back went aged 22 whilst performing the ubiquitous ‘Australian lift’ on a grinning hulk whose hands explored my nether regions whilst my unequally yoked lifting partner and I were otherwise engaged. Not the patient’s fault by any means: official NHS lifting policy created many disabled nurses like me. The thanks I received on early retirement in no way makes up for the pain.
“Why do bigots find the concept of gender identity so confusing? It simply means the immutable yet totally fluid feeling that one is male or female or neither or both based on conceptions of masculinity or femininity that are natural and innate but also social constructs that don’t actually exist.
This really isn’t hard. ”
Titiana McGrath
Brilliant article but there is one further motive that may apply here, and it’s simply the Statist motivation itself of desiring citizens to fear speaking what they know to be true at all.
Everything in the above article ably explains why the trans-agenda and its adherents adopt the techniques they do to force their ideology down the throats of everyone else, but we also need to explain why this extreme form of activism appears to possess the sanction of the State itself. This is why, in my opinion: it assists the ongoing establishment of the secular clerisy whose aim is monopoly ownership of the truth itself.
Yes, very much as Orwell’s “1984” had it. The American Conservative published an article some months ago on a Chinese emperor from, IIRC, a couple of millennia ago who practiced something very similar. He brought a deer into the court and had his ministers that it was a horse. Those who did so he saw as malleable enough to be of use to his regime. The others may have met with a far worse fate.
What is so funny is that so many people take this neo Pythonesque debate and activists so seriously!!!!!
When they teach this horse hockey to my grandchildren in 1st grade, it becomes serious to me.
Absolutely agree Warren.
Our grand/children will be unlikely to have the benefit of owning a 30 yo dictionary. First page search results definitions will be forming their worldview together with the conforming education system led by education secretaries, all trying to outdo each other in progressiveness.
“The idea that someone is “born trans” or has no choice but to transition, given “who they really are inside”, is a myth. Detransitioners establish this.” Very well said, and such a conservative ideology at heart.
Only lately is it remotely plausible to call it conservative. The idea is one of those basic concepts that was regarded as uncontroversial and axiomatic no matter where you were on the political spectrum until a few short years ago.
I’m not leaping to the defence of the Left here by the way, which has espoused lunacy on regular occasions throughout its history, all I’m saying is that trans-activism is an entirely new level of crazy.
Great article. Thank you KS
Perhaps it would be wise to say some religions.
A fantastic essay that clearly discusses the issues around the immoral, abusive, and violent trans movement – and much of it can be applied to all of the LGBTQXXXX.
This is an attack on the family and the foundation of all that is good and true.
We must show all people love – but defend ourselves from these attacks.
Nonsense. Being gay or lesbian, or choosing not to participate in family-type relationships, are real situations for many people. They are not pretending or demanding that others validate their pretence. That is the difference between them and ‘trans’ activists.
The ‘trans’ movement has used the gay and lesbian rights movement as a Trojan horse. That is the only connection between them. Being same-sex attracted is the antithesis of ‘trans’.
No, they are not demanding that others validate their pretense – but LGBT activists at least are demanding that we accept and indeed validate transsexuals’ beliefs.
It is critical that we teach and uphold truth and not give in to the delusions of a minority.
Apart from the biological truths around ‘trans’, the truth is that it is far better for a child to have a mum and a dad than two mums or two dads or be in a single-parent family.
We can have sympathy and give help where a family cannot reach this ideal – but we should not teach that it makes no difference.
LGBTQXXXX is all about trying to make us act as if homosexuality is normal and that a child is safe in their hands – but this is simply not true.
Just look at a gay parade – with the intense, overt, sexual content – as one simple indication. No sense of morals or decency.
Look at what books they are trying to get accepted in schools.
Look at what is happening to children not being allowed to be the sex they are – or being forced to change.
Look at the statistics between traditional heterosexual relationships and homosexual ones.
Truth matters.
This is the first I’ve read of Kathleen Stock – and isn’t she brilliant! The main message I take away is how complex this trans issue is. Like most people – but more so than most people – trans people are liable to be misunderstood if they are expected to conform to a stereotype. English is a rich language, and if we want to be understood we can explain how it is for us.
This entire debate can best be summed up by a few, short words from T.S. Eliot
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Collegiate women’s wrestling is growing sport in the US. What could go wrong?
In Book 3 of my heroic couplet satire The Wokeiad, Owen Jones is taken by Munro Bergdorf in the role of a Teiresian psychopomp to Asphodel, an estate somewhere in South London to which the unwoke are exiled. There, he discovers J.K.Rowling and Professor Stock languishing in a jacuzzi and being fed champagne and bonbons, but not quite in the quantities they would like:-
The three-head pie-dog pacified with treats,
Protesting door on unoiled hinges bleats.
Within’s a spa, hygienic and pristine.
In Charybdis, massaged by jets unseen,
Loll J.K.Rowling and Professor Stock
The latter as yet processing her shock,
And ever and anon woke demons come,
Deaf to entreaty, blind, and stricken dumb, 1010
With tiny little glasses of champagne,
To ask for more entreats favour in vain:
Bonbons delicious but still minuscule,
The eating of which never made you full.
In the lounge Palin, Gilliam, and Cleese
Avail themselves of thin slices of cheese.
Like Dickens I see you intend to publish in serialised form. I look forward to more. It sounds a splendid book entirely suitable as a Christmas present for any woke friends.
Haha, thanks! Yes, if I can get somebody like the Spectator to publish it, it will likely have to be in serial form. 1600 lines would take up several pages I think, and it’s conveniently divided into four books anyway.
Even if I can’t get the Speccy or someone similar to publish it, I’m still going to publish as a book in its own right. Of course no publisher will risk the wrath of the woke kids working for him/her, so I anticipate having to do it through Amazon.
Reading the “academic discussion” confirms the suspicion that philosophic jargon exists to aggrandise the author, not inform the listener. A very Humpty Dumpty language!
Dear Dr Stock,
My sympathy to you for the apalling abuse you suffered at the University of Sussex. Your views on transgender deserve respect.
However, your argument for transgender being a fiction on the basis of people beginning a transition is clearly a fallacy. I am aware of cases where girls whose interests are traditionally “masculine” have felt that they were “really” boys because of their interests, and have begun a transition, then realised it was a mistake. Your fallacy is to assume on the strength of these examples that transgender is always a fiction .
Indeed there is a considerable body of scientific evidence against your claim going back to the work of d**k Swab in the 1990s on brain anatomy. With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging far more information on the distinctive brain anatomy and indeed physiology of trans people has emerged. It strikes me that professional philosophers should attempt to keep abreast of scientific evidence relevant to their areas of enquiry, yet I see no evidence of this in your thinking on this subject . I would be happy for you to persuade me otherwise!