14 May 2022

Kathleen Stock: the professor who lost her career amid toxic gender debate

From Saturday Morning, 9:05 am on 14 May 2022

Kathleen Stock Photo: Sonali Fernando

"I don't think even if you have radical surgical measures you can change your sex. I don't think you can change your sex. We're not that powerful, we don't have that sort of control over nature."

British philosopher Kathleen Stock resigned as a professor last October after a student-led campaign accused her of transphobia.

She tells Kim Hill her argument is not against people but against miscategorisation.

Stock, who describes herself as a gender non-conforming lesbian, first started commenting on the philosophical complexities of gender identification four years ago.

"In 2018, I started writing about my concerns with [gender self-identification] in relation to the [UK's] Gender Recognition Act because there was a big push at the time to get that in place… and my concerns about premature child transition and calling trans women 'lesbians' and all sorts of things I thought were problematic about gender identity as a kind of motivating legal force.

"Almost immediately that got me some attention - not good attention. People thought that I was being very cruel and couldn't understand why I was saying things like 'trans women are male' … They thought it was transphobic to say that."

Stock argues it's an untrue and harmful idea that gender identity is an aspect of a person's "inner state" and "as soon as it expresses itself it cannot be denied and must be attended to and must override any discussion of your actual sex".

Listen to Let's be TRANSparent: an RNZ series about the ups and downs of gender transition (2021)

We're still learning about the health hazards of gender reassignment, Stock says.

As of last year, a Swedish hospital specialising in transgender healthcare stopped prescribing puberty-blocking drugs due to concerns over medical harm.

"They're now discovering that [puberty-blockers] can cause physical harm - bone density problems, kidney problems… basically they stop puberty and puberty serves a function in a healthy body. When you stop puberty you stop all the things that are happening, including normal growth and sexual function, too.

"I don't agree at all that [puberty blockers provide a] harmless 'pause' button [on sexual development] because children aren't video recorders."

When a woman identifies as a man the social consequences for men are minor, Stock says, but not so for women when men to self-identify as female, especially in relation to sexual abuse and sport.

Trans women who've had surgery retain many biological differences from people born female, Stock says.

"[People born male] retain upper body strength, limb length, twitch muscles, all sorts of physical advantages, and that's because they went through a puberty where testosterone was the most dominant hormone.'"

Although Stock has been "de-platformed" for transphobia, she says she supports laws that disallow discrimination against trans people and their human rights.

Gender self-identification rights are not necessarily human rights, though, she says.

"What we're arguing about is whether it is a human right for a male who rocks up and says 'I'm a woman' to get into a women's changing room. I don't think that is a right."

Stock claims she is not a "free speech absolutist", nor does she accept the label of TERF – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

"[The word 'TERF'] sets people like me up as exclusionary in some kind of moral sense, in a mean sense, where actually what I'm arguing about is categories. I don't think I'm being mean in doing that."

She argues a healthy society is one that allows discussion about the social impact of biological sex.

"It would be great if in New Zealand people could discuss these things without being called transphobic 'cause I absolutely guarantee there are quite a lot of people in New Zealand who are uncomfortable with the status quo."

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