The gender identity issue: Kathleen Stock puts her head above the parapet

‘Something is afoot,’ wrote the academic philosopher Kathleen Stock in 2018:

Beyond the academy, there’s a huge and impassioned discussion going on around the apparent conflict between women-who-are-not-transwomen’s rights and interests and transwomen’s rights and interests. And yet nearly all academic philosophers — including, surprisingly, feminist philosophers — are ignoring it.

Material Girls picks up three years after Stock’s initial musings, and feminist philosophers are knee-deep in debate. Or is debate permitted in matters of gender ideology?

During the past two decades there has been a concerted effort by the likes of Stonewall to override women’s sex-based rights in favour of ‘gender identity’. Trans ideology has become embedded within institutions and we are told that sex does not matter, that it is merely a social construct, unlike the ubiquitous ‘gender’, which feminists know is based on sexist stereotypes.

In 2004, the UK introduced the Gender Recognition Act, which provided much-needed legal protection for those living as the opposite sex. Six years later, gender reassignment was made a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Today, the number of transgender people in the UK has skyrocketed and the increase in girls being referred to the NHS Gender Identity Development Service is several thousand times higher than a few years ago.

An entire chapter is devoted to making a case that there actually exists a biological basis to sex — and who would have thought it necessary to ever do this? Unsurprisingly, since speaking out, Stock has been targeted by extremists, including many of her own colleagues, with accusations of ‘transphobic bigot’ thrown around with impunity.

Disingenuous assertions by trans activists are easily dismantled, such as that the existence of intersex conditions proves there are more than two sexes.