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Copyright © Kathleen Stock 2021

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To Laura
 Contents

Copyright
Dedication
Introduction

1 A Brief History of Gender Identity

2 What is Sex?
3 Why Does Sex Matter?
4 What is Gender Identity?
5 What Makes a Woman?
6 Immersed in a Fiction
7 How Did We Get Here?
8 A Better Activism in Future

Acknowledgements
Notes
 Introduction

This book is about sex, and about the mysterious thing known as
‘gender’. It is about how, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century
– quite unexpectedly – a philosophical theory about something called
‘gender identity’ gripped public consciousness, strongly influencing
UK and international institutions, and causing protests and even
violence.
In 2004, the UK government introduced a new law called the
Gender Recognition Act. This allowed trans people to get a Gender
Recognition Certificate, giving them what the official legal wording
called an ‘acquired gender’ in line with their preferences. In 2004, it
was estimated there were about 2,000–5,000 trans people in the
UK.1 Back then, the popular image of a trans person was mainly of a
‘medically transitioned’ adult trans woman, or ‘male-to-female
transsexual’: an adult person of the male sex who had taken
hormones over a long period of time to change many aspects of
appearance, and who had also had ‘sex reassignment’ surgery to
refashion natal genitalia. The Gender Recognition Act was brought in
so that, among other things, transsexuals could get their birth
certificates reissued to record their preferred sex instead of their
natal one. In this way, they could protect themselves from
accusations of fraud, and avoid being forced to disclose their sex in
contexts where it might feel embarrassing or humiliating to do so. To
get a Gender Recognition Certificate, applicants did not have to have
undergone surgery or hormone treatment, but had to demonstrate
they were serious about transition, having lived in their preferred
gender for two years. They would also need official diagnosis of a
profound and debilitating sense of unease about their sexed body, a
psychological condition known as ‘gender dysphoria’.
 Six years later, in 2010, gender reassignment was officially made
a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. This made it illegal
to discriminate against someone because of gender reassignment.
To count as eligible for protection, a Gender Recognition Certificate
was not officially required. Instead, a person was protected under the
terms of the Act if they were ‘proposing to undergo … [were]
undergoing or [had] … undergone a process (or part of a process)
for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing
physiological or other attributes of sex’. In the Explanatory Notes,
this rather opaque definition was further described as a situation
‘where a person has proposed, started or completed a process to
change his or her sex’.2
As I write this in 2020, sixteen years after the introduction of the
Gender Recognition Act and ten years after the Equality Act, the
situation on the ground has changed in several big respects. Most
obviously, the number of trans people in the UK has rocketed.
According to the LGBT charity Stonewall, their ‘best estimate’ is
‘about 600,000’.3 In 2018, the Government put the figure slightly
lower and more cautiously, at ‘200,000– 500,000’, noting that only
around 5,000 of these have received a Gender Recognition
Certificate since 2004.4
Along with this increase, there has been a radical change to the
public image of a trans person. For one thing – though we still don’t
know the actual proportions – the trans population now contains
significant numbers of people of the female sex identifying as trans
men or as non-binary (that is, as neither male nor female, or as
both). For another, the trans population is no longer exclusively
adult. Both of these changes are reflected in the fact the female sex
has overtaken the male sex as the largest group of patients in
gender clinics for children. In 2010, forty male and thirty-two female
children were referred to the national NHS Gender Identity
Development Service for children (GIDS); by 2019 that had risen to
624 males and 1,740 females. In 2018/19 the youngest patient seen
by GIDS was three.5
In 2011, doctors at GIDS started to administer drugs called
‘puberty blockers’ to some patients at their clinic, in order to delay
puberty and the physical changes it normally brings.6 Though
clinicians are licensed to prescribe these drugs for other conditions,
they have not been licensed for use for children and adolescents
with gender dysphoria. (According to the Health Research Authority,
particularly in paediatric medicine it is ‘common to use unlicensed
medicine based on learning from clinical practice’.7)
Evidence shows that many young patients who receive puberty
blockers later proceed to cross-sex hormones when they reach the
age of majority, and sometimes to surgery too. But these days not
everyone in the trans community medically transitions – another way
in which the 2004 stereotype of a trans person is now outdated. A
2019 study from the US notes that genital surgery has ‘prevalence
rates of about 25–50% for transgender men [i.e. females] and 5–
10% for transgender women’ [i.e. males].8 Although we don’t know
the UK figures, it is clear that many trans people are not seeking
surgery. Anecdotally it seems a significant proportion of trans people
do not take hormones either. While medical practitioners often still
think of being trans as a disorder, associating it with the condition of
gender dysphoria and conceiving of it as something to be treated by
drugs and surgery, many trans people now reject this idea, and with
it the implication that any medical diagnosis or intervention is
necessary for being trans.
As the size of the trans population has increased, its political voice
has got stronger. Trans political interests are for the first time at the
forefront of public consciousness. Prominent UK trans activist
organisations such as Stonewall, Mermaids, the Scottish Trans
Alliance, Gendered Intelligence, GIRES, Press For Change and All
About Trans have made coordinated and effective pushes for a
number of new measures, and have met with some success. Since
2015, as a direct result of lobbying, the main English and Scottish
political parties have all supported proposed changes to the 2004
Gender Recognition Act that would make getting a Gender
Recognition Certificate a matter of ‘self-identification’ or ‘self-ID’,
withdrawing the requirements of a medical diagnosis of gender
dysphoria and of evidence of having lived in the acquired gender for
two years beforehand. On the proposed new terms, getting a GRC,
and so also changing one’s birth certificate, would be a purely
administrative and relatively instantaneous matter. The
Conservatives, initially enthusiastic, have now rowed back on the
proposal, but apparently the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish
National Parties all still officially support it, and it was included in
each of their 2019 general election manifestos. Were Labour to get
back into power, it is reasonable to assume they would seek to
implement this change. As I write, the Women and Equalities Select
Committee is again examining the question of gender recognition
reform from an apparently sympathetic perspective.
The focused lobbying for gender recognition reform has sprung
from the newly perceived importance of something called ‘gender
identity’ in trans activist thinking. According to this theory, it is not the
process of gender reassignment that makes you trans but, as
Stonewall puts it: ‘A person’s innate sense of their own gender,
whether male, female or something else … which may or may not
correspond to the sex assigned at birth.’9 That is, it’s an inner
feeling. It is your gender identity rather than your sex that is
considered to be what makes you man, woman or non-binary. It also
determines your preferred pronouns: that is, whether you wish to be
referred to as ‘she’, ‘he’ or (in the case of non-binary people) ‘they’.
Some supportive academics add that binary sex does not materially
exist for humans in nature anyway. Educators in schools and
universities are now advised by trans activist organisations to teach
pupils and students about innate gender identity, and that sex is
‘assigned at birth’.
For at least five years, alongside proposed changes to the issuing
of Gender Recognition Certificates, trans activist groups have been
lobbying the Government to change the protected characteristic of
‘gender reassignment’ in the Equality Act to ‘gender identity’. They
have also pressed to have exemptions removed from the Equality
Act that allow discrimination on the basis of sex in certain
circumstances – exemptions that might exclude trans people from
single-sex spaces belonging to the opposite sex.10 At the same time,
some of these activist groups – most notably Stonewall – have been
advising institutions and organisations that existing Equality Act
exemptions do not go far enough, and that if they want to be
inclusive they should not apply the exemptions in most ordinary
cases of public facility and resource provision. Many of those in
charge of facilities and resources across the country have listened.
So right now, within multiple national organisations, the policies that
govern women-only facilities – for instance, changing rooms, hostel
dormitories, public toilets, sleeper carriages, school facilities, student
accommodation, rape crisis centres and domestic violence refuges –
have been explicitly changed to include anyone, male or female, who
self-identifies as a woman. Similar policies, citing self-identification
as a man, now apply to many men-only facilities. There has also
been a big rise in ‘gender neutral’ facilities (in older terminology,
unisex).
One striking consequence of this change is that since 2016, trans
women – some without GRCs – have been housed alongside female
inmates in the female prison estate. Also strikingly, in some amateur
and professional sporting competitions, trans women now compete
alongside females. Meanwhile, resources originally set up to try to
establish equal opportunities for women in the workplace and public
life – for instance, all-women training and mentoring events,
shortlists or prizes – are now often explicitly open to anyone who
identifies as a woman. Even in data collection, gender identity is
replacing sex. For instance, despite protests from some academics
and some hesitation over a similar plan in England, at the time of
writing Census authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland still plan
to instruct respondents to their 2021 Census survey that they may
answer the question about their sex as a question about their gender
identity11. By common consent of many powerful national bodies, it is
gender identity that now determines what public spaces you may
enter, what resources should be available to you, and how you
should be categorised for the purposes of data collection.
Simultaneously there has been a widespread reduction of public
references to biological sex. It has become commonplace to hear
from politicians, officials and other public figures that ‘trans women
are women, and trans men are men’, and that there should be ‘no
debate’ about it. It has become unexceptional for non-trans and trans
people alike to announce their pronouns, indicative of gender
identity, in email signatures or social media bios. In some
workplaces, asking about or commenting upon the sex of a fellow
trans employee risks your being classed as ‘transphobic’ by official
HR policies. The trend in favour of gender identity and away from
sex has reached public health communication, with some national
health bodies starting to talk about ‘menstruators’ and ‘cervix-havers’
rather than women and girls.
These changes in social organisation and public language have
been rapid and have caused enormous disquiet among some
sections of the public. A generational divide has opened up. Many
younger people cheer on the changes in the name of progress and
see dissent as a measure of societal hatred of trans people. Many
older women feel concerned or even outright panicked by what
seems rapidly to be disappearing, without their having had any real
say in the process. While mainstream feminist groups have either
kept out of it or straightforwardly supported trans activist demands,
grassroots women’s organisations have sprung up to discuss how
best to fight the proposed changes. Young activists have protested
at these meetings with megaphones, smoke bombs, graffiti and, at
one point, a bomb threat.12 Women attendees have been screamed
at from close quarters, had water thrown at them, been shoved and
blocked from entering. I know, because I am one of them.
As I write this in 2020, the public row has just gone global. After J.
K. Rowling wrote a blog post in defence of attending to women and
girls’ interests during any discussion of trans activist demands, the
backlash was intense.13 Accusations of ‘transphobia’ flooded in from
around the world, often accompanied by threats and insults. Stars
such as Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, whose reputations
were made in the films of Rowling’s books, scrambled to distance
themselves from her and to repeat the mantra that ‘trans women are
women’.14 Employees of Rowling’s own publishing house asserted
that they would not work on her latest book.15 Public attention is on
the conflict as never before.

The thinking behind the rise of gender identity originally came from
academia. I’m an academic too, employed in a philosophy
department in a UK university. For most of my professional life, I
have focused on exploring questions to do with fiction and
imagination, and I have occasionally published in feminist philosophy
too. Both of these areas of expertise – fiction and feminism – are
highly relevant to the discussion of trans activist claims. Still, it’s
worth noting that, despite my recent professional turn towards sex
and gender, I’m still mostly considered an outsider to the area.
Although I have been writing and speaking on the topic in public for a
couple of years now, and have authored academic papers about it, I
don’t work in a Gender Studies department, or in the field of queer
theory, or in Trans Studies. I’m not trans myself. I’m not even a
proper feminist philosopher; at least, I didn’t used to think I was.
This means that academics already working in these fields often
consider me unqualified. When I write opinion pieces for magazines
or speak on TV, I can almost feel the eye rolls. I am characterised as
a clumsy, intellectually unsophisticated rube, making old mistakes in
my thinking that they have long since put behind them. ‘Hasn’t she
read the literature?’ they ask. ‘How can she be so naïve?’ Another
common response is to say that I must be arguing with strawmen:
academics don’t really think what I think they think. ‘Nobody thinks
there isn’t a distinction between sex and gender, Kathleen,’ I am told,
often by the very same academics who are telling me that referring
to trans women generally as biologically male, for the purposes of
discussing the impacts of sex, is transphobic. Or, even more
basically, it’s complained that – whether I mean to be or not – I am a
transphobe who shouldn’t be listened to.
Yet my outsider status in this area has many benefits. As far as I
can see, standard academic norms for the production of knowledge
are not often observed in fields that deal with matters of sex and
gender. The whole area has become unacceptably politicised.
Particular articles and books are treated like sacred texts rather than
the opinionated, potentially fallible or myopic arguments they actually
are. As one trans author, Andrea Long Chu, puts it, the result is
‘warmed-over pieties’ and ‘something like church’.16 There are small
things you may question or criticise, and then there are the
fundamental orthodoxies it is considered transphobic to deny.
Evidence or facts are considered relevant only when they help what
is perceived to be the political cause of trans people. Any
philosophical critiques that do sometimes (rarely) emerge –
especially by non-trans academics – are regularly treated as
equivalent to actual attacks on trans people rather than as critiques
of views about trans people, or of trans activist commitments. It’s
assumed these critiques are not worthy of rational engagement but
should be met only with strong moral disapproval and suppression.
This sort of judgement floats down from on high, via academic
managers, journal editors and referees, to make sure that, on the
ground, no dissenting voice gets into ‘the literature’ without a huge
struggle. Even worse, it helps ensure that hardly any seriously
dissenting voices get into the discipline areas in the first place.
In this suffocating context, I definitely count as a heretic. And that
suits me fine. I didn’t become a professional philosopher to go to
church. In the article I just quoted from, Andrea Long Chu also
describes a lot of academics in Trans Studies as secretly ‘itching for
a fight’. I’m more than happy to provide an intellectual one here. I do
so partly in the name of academic rigour, and partly on behalf of the
women and girls whose lives – as I will document – are adversely
affected by policies based on gender identity. I also do so on behalf
of the many trans people whose objections to political demands
made in the name of gender identity, and also in their name, are
routinely ignored. Trans people deserve lives free from fear. They
deserve laws and policies that properly protect them from
discrimination and violence. But as I will argue, laws and policies
based around gender identity are not the right route.

A note on pronouns: In this book I’ve made the decision to use

preferred pronouns for trans people in a way that tracks their gender
identity and not their sex. I will discuss my route to this choice, and
its implications, in Chapter 6. I’ll also defend the right of others to
choose differently.
 1

A Brief History of Gender Identity

Here are four axioms of modern trans activism, which I’ll be

examining from different angles in this book.
1. You and I, and everyone else, have an important inner state
called a gender identity.
2. For some people, inner gender identity fails to match the
biological sex – male or female – originally assigned to them at birth
by medics. These are trans people.
3. Gender identity, not biological sex, is what makes you a man or
a woman (or neither).
4. The existence of trans people generates a moral obligation
upon all of us to recognise and legally to protect gender identity and
not biological sex.
Though it might seem surprising, these count as philosophical
claims. Philosophy is popularly imagined as involving a lot of dry
reading, incomprehensible words and chin-stroking. In its academic
guise, this isn’t far wrong. But most of us have philosophical
thoughts every day. When you wonder what makes you the same
person you were ten years ago, or whether your cat has a mind and
what that is like, or whether you’re technically responsible for what
you did last night after eight beers, or how you really know you’re not
in The Matrix right now, you’re doing philosophy. You’re also doing
philosophy when you try to work out what sort of organisational
structure is best for society, and what rights and protections should
be granted to people in it.
As an easy way of identifying them, I am calling these four axioms
‘gender identity theory’. I am critical of gender identity theory – but
not of trans people, for whom I have friendly sympathy and respect.
When criticising a philosophical position, it’s a good idea to start with
a fairly neutral presentation of it. You should try to describe the
position as its supporters would, without aspersions. That way, you
aren’t lazily setting yourself up for cheap wins later. So here are eight
key moments in the rapid intellectual onset of gender identity theory,
which give a brief but instructive history of the popular and influential
cultural phenomenon we encounter today.

Moment 1: Simone de Beauvoir says, ‘One is not

born, but rather becomes a woman’
Early in her 1949 book The Second Sex, the French existentialist
and feminist Simone de Beauvoir wrote this resonant phrase. As de
Beauvoir scholar Céline Leboeuf puts it: ‘to intone this sentence at
the beginning of a work of feminist theory is tantamount to
genuflecting at the family pew’.1 From the last quarter of the
twentieth century onwards, de Beauvoir’s famous phrase has been
taken up enthusiastically to convey the idea that being a woman is
not the same as being born biologically female.
De Beauvoir devoted a lot of The Second Sex to pointing out the
different ways in which women and men are treated by society,
describing how, as the female infant turns into the girl turns into the
woman, she’s increasingly exposed to images and stereotypes
concerning how she should behave, think and feel. In other words,
girls and women are exposed to something called ‘femininity’. De
Beauvoir argued that cultural representations of femininity are mostly
formed by, and largely in the interests of, men. A woman is expected
to be whatever a man wants, needs, subconsciously fears, craves or
hates. Woman is ‘the Other’ in relation to the central figure in the
human universe, Man. In building her case, de Beauvoir described
perennial images and myths of womanhood throughout history,
constructed through the consciousnesses of men: the fertile Earth
Mother, the chaste Madonna, the lustful Whore, the beguiling Nymph
and the terrifying Crone. She wrote: ‘There is … no feminine figure –
virgin, mother, wife, sister, servant, lover, fierce virtue, smiling
odalisque – capable of encapsulating the inconstant yearnings of
men.’2 In other words, the expectations around femininity are
inconsistent. Women are expected to be kind, domesticated,
submissive, modest, selfless and responsible, but also exciting,
sexually available, ‘frivolous, infantile, irresponsible’, and other
contradictory things too.3
In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, partly taking a lead from de Beauvoir,
so-called ‘Second Wave’ feminists – some of them in newly formed
Women’s Studies departments in universities – became particularly
interested in femininity and masculinity, understood as the different
bundles of expectations, stereotypes and norms faced by men and
women respectively. They gave femininity and masculinity,
understood in this way, a special name: ‘gender’. For many
feminists, it was important to think of gender (in this sense) as purely
social, without foundation in biological generalisations about women
and men. The conceptual distinction between ‘sex and gender’ was
born. Here is British feminist sociologist Ann Oakley writing in 1972:
‘“Sex” is a word that refers to the biological differences between
male and female: the visible difference in genitalia, the related
difference in procreative function. “Gender” however is a matter of
culture: it refers to the social classification into “masculine” and
“feminine.”’4
In the decades that followed, some feminist commentators moved
beyond this distinction to a much more radical position. They started
approvingly to interpret de Beauvoir as having meant that
womanhood itself is essentially social not biological: not a matter of
being female but rather a matter of having projected on to you, and
perhaps also internalising, the restrictive social expectations,
stereotypes and norms of femininity. They took women and girls to
be, by definition, the set of people who have a feminine ‘social role’
projected upon them. And perhaps tellingly, though it isn’t really
mentioned much, it followed that men and boys must be the set of
people who have a masculine ‘social role’, understood as the
distinctive expectations of masculinity – being tough, brainy,
decisive, competitive, unemotional, boisterous or whatever –
projected by society upon them.
It looks like a consequence of this view that – at least potentially –
being a woman doesn’t require being female, nor being a man, being
male. A male can be a woman, as long as he has systematically
projected upon him – or rather, perhaps, upon her – a feminine
social role. So this apparently opens up the possibility of a trans
woman counting as a woman – quite literally – as long as she
occupies a feminine social role just as other women do.
Whether or not de Beauvoir actually intended the conceptual
separation of being female from womanhood is moot. I don’t think
she did. Nonetheless, the idea of womanhood as occupation of a
feminine social role was received like manna from heaven by many
feminists. This was not because their direct goal was to produce a
theory that accommodated trans women as women. Rather more
self-interestedly, it was to get away from the spectre of what is
known as ‘biological determinism’. Feminists wanted to escape the
historically persistent idea that a woman’s personality, behaviour and
life options are determined by her female biology, making her
naturally suited for home life rather than professional work or
intellectual life. The idea of biological determinism was and is used
by some traditionalists to justify a relatively limited role for females:
domestic, maternal, submissive, and so on. An apparently neat way
to defeat the constricting idea of biological determinism seemed to
be to argue that women, as such, weren’t necessarily female after all
– so how could their biology determine anything significant about
them as women? As French feminist theorist Monique Wittig put it in
1981: ‘by admitting that there is a “natural” division between women
and men, we … naturalize the social phenomena which express our
oppression, making change impossible’.5 Best then get rid of the
natural division altogether, it was thought. As philosopher and later
Gender Studies guru Judith Butler wrote in 1986: ‘The distinction
between sex and gender has been crucial to the long-standing
feminist effort to debunk the claim that anatomy is destiny … With
the distinction intact, it is no longer possible to attribute the values or
social functions of women to biological necessity.’6
As argumentative gambits go, this is a bold one, a bit like arguing
that an asteroid isn’t about to hit Earth by redefining the word ‘Earth’
as ‘thing incapable of being hit by an asteroid’. Whether or not
arguing this way persuaded traditionalists to stop justifying the
exclusion of women from workplaces, universities and private
members’ clubs, what it certainly did do was start to open up
conceptual space for the idea that some trans women could literally
count as women too.

Moment 2: John Money and Robert Stoller introduce

the concept of ‘gender identity’
While feminists in the 1960s were starting to insist sex was separate
from ‘gender’, medical clinicians were bringing about changes in the
way people thought about the relation between biological sex and
identity. The New Zealand psychologist and paediatrician John
Money is perhaps most well known for his involvement in an ethically
dubious clinical case: the involuntary medical ‘sex reassignment’ of
male child David Reimer after a severely botched circumcision,
whose tragic story ended in his suicide as an adult. What is less well
known about Money is how influential his clinical work has been in
shaping later discourse about trans people. In the course of this
work, Money emphasised two important interlinked theoretical
concepts: gender role and gender identity.
A ‘gender role’, Money wrote, ‘is … all those things that a person
says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of
boy or man, girl or woman, respectively’. They include ‘general
mannerisms, deportment and demeanor’.7 So a gender role is
behavioural. It isn’t quite the same thing as having a set of ‘feminine’
or ‘masculine’ expectations projected upon you by society, as
described by de Beauvoir. It’s more like the feminised or
masculinised set of behaviours a developing child and adult comes
to adopt, perhaps at least partly in response to such projections.
Your gender role is supposed to be whatever it is you do to act in the
world ‘like a man’ or ‘like a woman’.
Though, according to Money, we all adopt gender roles, he first
developed this concept to apply to so-called intersex people with
whom he worked – known today as people with Disorders (or
Differences) of Sexual Development (DSDs). In some individuals,
chromosomes don’t line up neatly with expected bodily
characteristics. Money worked with children like this. As he saw it,
the outward ‘gender roles’ of some people with DSDs – whether they
behaved ‘as girls’ or ‘as boys’ – are sometimes misaligned with
relatively hidden facts about their biological status.
A second concept, gender identity, then emerged from that of
gender role. As Money tells it: ‘Gender identity is the private
experience of gender role, and gender role is the public
manifestation of gender identity.’8 A gender identity was thought of
as a psychologically internalised gender role. It was assumed that
during early development, we each come to psychologically relate to
ourselves in a wholesale ‘gendered’ way, which may or may not
match facts about our sex. Money thought that gender identities
could be male, female or neither, in which case they were
‘androgynous’.9 Another influential American clinician working in this
area, Robert Stoller, talked of ‘hermaphroditic’ gender identities –
‘not male nor female, but both (or neither)’.10
For both Money and Stoller, the idea of gender identity first
emerged from working with people with DSDs. They assumed that
people with DSDs often have ‘inner’ gender identities that don’t
match the relatively complicated ‘outer’ facts about their sex.
However, this idea of an inner gender identity misaligned with
outward sex also seemed to them to apply to chromosomally and
morphologically standard people, whose gender identities strongly
clashed with facts about their sexed bodies: that is, in modern
terminology, to trans people. And they explicitly made room for an
‘androgynous’ or ‘hermaphroditic’ gender identity: neither male nor
female or perhaps both. Money and Stoller recognised that,
untethered to biology, the number of available gender identities
needn’t be confined to two. In this, their ideas prefigured the
emergence of an explicitly ‘non-binary’ gender identity decades later.

Moment 3: Anne Fausto-Sterling argues biological

sex is a ‘continuum’
For centuries the assumption was that there are only two possible
states for human beings, male and female, and all humans are born
cleanly and clearly belonging to either one or the other. By common
consent these days, that isn’t right. Since the late 1980s, Anne
Fausto-Sterling, a Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown
University in the US, has been influential in convincing the public that
biological sex is not a natural binary division.
Largely thanks to Fausto-Sterling, general public understanding of
people with DSDs has increased vastly over the last fifty years,
challenging conventional wisdom about relations between
chromosomes and bodies. In most human bodies, chromosomal
configuration is either XX or XY, and each of these lines up with one
of two sets of primary and secondary sex characteristics. For
instance, possession of XY chromosomes normally lines up with
possession of penis and testicles; and possession of XX
chromosomes normally lines up with possession of labia, vagina,
ovaries and post-pubescent breasts. Yet a DSD baby with XY
chromosomes might also have Complete Androgen Insensitivity
Syndrome (CAIS), so that external genitalia consist of labia, clitoris
and vagina rather than penis and descended testicles. A child with
XX chromosomes might have Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia
(CAH), resulting in genitalia with a highly ‘virilised’ appearance
resembling a penis and testicles. Those born with ovotesticular
disorders might have both ova and testicular material in their bodies.
There are many varieties of DSD, and the numbers of babies born
with DSDs are much higher than you would think, Fausto-Sterling
tells us: even as high as 1.7 per cent of the population.11
On the basis of DSDs, Fausto-Sterling proposes an intellectual
position on biological sex. She suggests there are at least five sexes
rather than only two. Alongside standard-issue males and females,
there are also ‘hermaphrodites’ (e.g. those with ovotesticular
disorder), ‘male pseudohermaphrodites’ (those who possess XY
chromosomes and ‘feminised’ bodies), and ‘female
pseudohermaphrodites’ (those who possess XX chromosomes and
‘virilised’ bodies).12 She also seems to suggest that every way that
humans try to carve sexed variety up into groups – including her own
– is relatively arbitrary. In an oped for the New York Times she
endorses an earlier distinction of John Money’s between different
stages or ‘layers’ of sexed development, consecutively occurring at
different points from conception onward: ‘chromosomal’, ‘fetal
gonadal’, ‘fetal hormonal’, ‘internal reproductive’, ‘external genital’,
‘pubertal hormonal’ and ‘pubertal morphological’. Her suggestion
seems to be that we should abandon talking about sex as a
homogenous, overall state, and instead talk about how someone is
sexed in terms of these various layers. The same person may be
sexed ‘M’ according to one layer and ‘F’ according to another.13 Sex,
she tells us, is ‘a vast, infinitely malleable continuum’.14
If Fausto-Sterling is right, we should be much more cautious about
talking about sex being ‘recorded’ at birth. A practical point is that
midwives and doctors might get it wrong. A more thoroughgoing
conceptual point is that simply writing down ‘male’ or ‘female’ for a
baby might not reflect any genuinely pre-existing single homogenous
state. In that case, we had better say binary birth sex is a fiction,
‘assigned’ by a doctor rather than recorded, or at the very least,
massively oversimplified.

Moment 4: Judith Butler tells us gender is a

performance
In 1990, the American academic Judith Butler published her book
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. The book
had a huge impact both on the emerging academic fields of queer
theory, Gender Studies and Trans Studies and on the liberal
intelligentsia generally. Broadly speaking, Butler took tenets from
French post-structuralist and deconstructionist philosophy and
applied them to the notions of ‘female’, ‘woman’, ‘male’ and ‘man’.
Butler makes the general assumption that anything at all humans
can meaningfully think about is socially constructed, ‘all the way
down’ as it were. This means she thinks there are no material facts
before language – that is, prior to culturally specific linguistic and
social constructions of them. Linguistic categories, including
scientific and biological ones, aren’t a means of reflecting existing
divisions in the world, but a means of creating things that otherwise
wouldn’t have existed. According to Butler, scientific language in
particular creates ‘hierarchies’ of dominance and subordination,
entrenching power relations between social groups. And this also
applies to the categories of male and female: they are arbitrary,
artificial and do not reflect any prior material division. What they do
reflect is ‘exclusionary’ power relations, dictating who gets to count
as a ‘real’ woman or man, and who does not (for instance, gay or
feminine-looking males don’t, nor do lesbian or masculine-looking
females).
What is left of notions like ‘female’, ‘woman’, ‘male’ and ‘man’
once the radical weapon of post-structuralism has been applied to
them? For Butler, the answer is ‘gender as performance’: being a
woman or female, for instance, is not a materially stable state, but
rather, a kind of repeatable social performance. A drag queen, a
trans woman and a traditional housewife are all performing the
‘gender’ of woman in their own ways. No single kind of performance
is more authentic or appropriate than any other.
This radical and transgressive line of thought sent thrilled
shockwaves through humanities departments in universities at the
time of publication, and the aftershocks have been felt ever since. In
the 1990s, the academic discipline of queer theory was forged: a
branch of critical theory applied to sex, gender and sexuality, with
Gender Trouble a foundational text. One by one, Women’s Studies
departments founded in the 1970s and ’80s started to rename
themselves as Gender Studies departments, interested in all gender
performances and not just the narrow, heterosexual, white and
Eurocentric performances of womanhood with which many feminists
had mostly concerned themselves to date. In many quarters,
feminism became thought of as a political project aimed at critiquing
‘exclusionary’ gender practices generally, rather than at the liberation
of the female sex in particular – or even at all. After all, if the female
sex is merely a social construct propping up hierarchical power
relations, then to make it a focus of political activity is to give that
social construct apparent validity and so further to entrench it. Better
then to try, positively, to ‘queer’ sex subversively, via transgressive,
unexpected performances of masculinity and femininity such as drag
and trans; or, if you can’t do that, then ignore it altogether.
Moment 5: Julia Serano says gender identity is what
makes you a woman or man
The 2000s was a crucial decade for the modern trans movement, in
which apparently separate theoretical concepts from previous
decades were synthesised into more cohesive bodies of ideas and
disseminated into popular culture. This is when gender identity
theory really got going. It is worth remembering that, at least
according to some, the word ‘transgender’ received its contemporary
meaning only in 1992, while ‘trans’ person reportedly first came into
formal usage only in 1998.15 Prior to both, the term ‘transsexual’ was
much more familiar. The first decade of the 2000s is where modern
trans activism – political activism in favour of trans people – got off
the ground in a significant, organised way. A newly rejuvenated
concept of gender identity was now a crucial component of the trans
activist narrative.
Gender identity, we know from earlier discussion, is – roughly – an
internalised psychological representation of oneself, consciously
conceptualised as female or male or as something else altogether.
From the 2000s on, it started to be a relatively commonly held belief
in progressive circles that it is not your biological sex nor even your
‘social role’ that makes you a woman or man – it is having a female
or male gender identity that does it.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly when this idea took hold in popular
imagination, but one influential text was the 2007 book Whipping Girl
by American biologist and trans woman Julia Serano. A notable
contribution of Whipping Girl to popular culture is the idea that trans
women are a kind of woman like any other. The term ‘trans’, Serano
argues, should be treated as an adjective like ‘Catholic’ or ‘Asian’,
rather than ‘trans woman’ being thought of as a compound noun.16
Relatedly, Whipping Girl did much to popularise an adjective for
people who are not trans: ‘cisgender’, later shortened to ‘cis’, and
standing for those people whose gender identity and sex are
‘aligned’.17
For Serano, the general category of women is composed of trans
women and cis women. Both are kinds of women. The category of
men is composed of trans men and cis men. Both are kinds of men.
Serano makes clear she thinks trans women are defined, as such, in
virtue of their possession of a female gender identity, and not by any
medical or legal process, or physical features or behaviour. When
you put all this together – that trans women, as such, are those with
female gender identities; that cis women also have female gender
identities; and that cis and trans women are both different kinds of
women, on equal taxonomical footing – you get the clear implication
that possession of a female gender identity is what makes you a
woman, whether cis or trans.
This idea is deeply radical. When some twentieth-century
feminists talked in de Beauvoir-esque vein about ‘becoming a
woman’, they meant having a set of social norms or expectations
about femininity imposed upon you, not having an ‘inner’ identity of a
certain kind. And when John Money and Robert Stoller talked about
gender identity, they didn’t think having a gender identity was what
made you a woman or a man. Twenty-first-century trans activists like
Serano effectively took from Money and Stoller the idea of gender
identity, and from feminism the thought that something other than
(just) being ‘born female’ made you a woman, put these together and
decided that the thing that made you a woman was an inner female
gender identity; and that correspondingly, the thing that made you a
man was an inner male gender identity. Fausto-Sterling and Butler
helped, insofar as it was assumed they had jointly debunked the idea
that anyone was ‘really’ biologically female or male anyway.
Another influential feature of Serano’s Whipping Girl relates to a
significant change in cultural understanding of what sexual
orientation is: what counts as being gay or lesbian, bisexual or
straight. Your sexual orientation used to be categorised fairly
straightforwardly as whatever relation existed between your own
biological sex and the biological sex(es) of the people to whom
you’re attracted. This gave us either: same-sex (homosexual, gay,
lesbian) orientations, opposite-sex (heterosexual, straight)
orientations and bisexual orientations. Yet in Whipping Girl, trans
woman Serano – by traditional accounts a male, attracted to females
– self-describes as a ‘lesbian’. This implication follows from the logic
of gender identity. If having a female gender identity is what makes
you a woman, and you, with a female gender identity, are habitually
sexually attracted to other people with female gender identities, then
– since lesbians by definition are women attracted to women – you
must be a lesbian. A gay man, meanwhile, is now understood as
someone with a male gender identity attracted to others with a male
gender identity, irrespective of the assigned sex of either. A straight
man is someone with a male gender identity attracted to those with a
female gender identity, and so on. As trans man Max Wolf Valerio
wrote in his autobiography The Testosterone Files, published the
year before Serano’s book: ‘As a woman, my sexual orientation was
ostensibly lesbian. As a man, it is heterosexual.’18
This departure from a traditional understanding of sexual
orientation has – perhaps surprisingly – since been enthusiastically
taken up by organisations whose original mission was to lobby for
the rights of gay people. For self-styled progressive organisations,
thinking of sexual orientations in terms of attraction between
members of given biological sexes – same-sex or opposite-sex or
both – is now considered old fashioned. For instance, the US
organisation GLAAD writes on its website, ‘a person who transitions
from male to female and is attracted solely to men would typically
identify as a straight woman. A person who transitions from female
to male and is attracted solely to men would typically identify as a
gay man.’19 In the UK, campaigning group Stonewall’s website now
asks (my italics), ‘So, could a lesbian have a trans woman as a
lesbian partner, or a gay man be with a trans man?’ The reply then
comes: ‘Of course.’20 Stonewall’s current definition of sexual
orientation is: ‘A person’s sexual attraction to other people, or lack
thereof. Along with romantic orientation, this forms a person’s
orientation identity.’21 Sexual orientations are ‘identities’ now. They
follow from, and depend upon, a prior and more fundamental one:
gender identity.

Moment 6: The Yogyakarta Principles recommend

recognition of gender identity as a human right
It is now a dictum of modern trans activism that we each have a
gender identity. Gender identity is treated as a basic and even
supremely important determinant of who we are; a fundamental
aspect of the individual, generating distinctive human rights.
Nowhere is this conception of gender identity more obvious than in
the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, published in the same year as
Serano’s Whipping Girl.
In 2006, an international group of experts in law, health and
human rights met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and produced what have
become known as the ‘Yogyakarta Principles’: an influential set of
recommendations about human rights in relation to sexual
orientation and gender identity, heavily cited in international
legislation since.22 As philosopher and sociologist Heather Brunskell-
Evans has put it: ‘Though not legally binding, the Yogyakarta
Principles have been understood as an authoritative interpretation of
international law and provide a definitional point for academic
papers, bills, resolutions and other documents. They are not
incorporated into any UN convention or declaration, yet they are
regularly cited and used as a reference point in the UN.’23 For
instance, when the UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Select
Committee delivered their Report on Transgender Equality to the
Government in 2015, they recommended that ‘the Government must
also make a clear commitment to abide by the Yogyakarta Principles
… This would provide trans equality policy with a clear set of overall
guiding principles which are in keeping with current international best
practice.’24
People whom Serano defines as ‘cisgender’ can talk about and
otherwise express their gender identities casually to others without
stigma or fear. Trans activists argue that this privilege isn’t available
to trans people, who, if they decide to come out to others about their
non-standard gender identities, may face shaming, hostility and
abuse. Equally, governments officially recognise standard binary
gender identities in laws and administrative policies – for instance, in
issuing passports, or in asking questions about sex in data collection
– because it’s assumed, wrongly according to trans activists, that
outward biologically-influenced appearances are a good guide to
inner gender identity. This is considered discriminatory to those with
misaligned gender identities, who effectively aren’t officially
recognised for who they are.
Early on in the Yogyakarta Principles, this stirring sentence sets
the scene: ‘Sexual orientation and gender identity are integral to
every person’s dignity and humanity.’ The document goes on to
propose twenty-eight human rights for those with non-standard
sexual orientations or gender identities. Many of these, completely
unproblematically, are versions of familiar general human rights,
tailored to specify gay and trans people and their particular needs in
an often hostile world: rights to life, equality and non-discrimination;
freedom from torture; rights to education, social security and
housing, and so on. One right in particular stands out as a bit
different, though. This is Principle 3: ‘The right to recognition before
the law’.
Principle 3 starts by reiterating the fundamental nature of gender
identity, describing both gender identity and sexual orientation as
‘integral to … personality’ and ‘one of the most basic aspects of self-
determination, dignity and freedom’. It recommends that ‘no one
shall be forced to undergo medical procedures, including sex
reassignment surgery, sterilisation or hormonal therapy, as a
requirement for legal recognition of their gender identity’ – an echo of
Serano’s assumption that it is gender identity and not any outward
bodily modification that makes you trans or cis. The Principles
continue: ‘No one shall be subjected to pressure to conceal,
suppress or deny their … gender identity’. Moreover: ‘all State-
issued identity papers which indicate a person’s gender/sex –
including birth certificates, passports, electoral records and other
documents – [should] reflect the person’s profound self-defined
gender identity.’ Each of these recommendations apparently aims to
create a world in which those with misaligned gender identities feel
they can express this fundamental part of the self and be officially
recognised for it rather than ignored.
Since publication of the Principles, this vision of gender identity as
a fundamental part of the self, not under any circumstances to be
suppressed, has filtered down into legislation and policymaking in
numerous countries and states. In the UK, it has influenced the
campaign to have the Gender Recognition Act altered in favour of
‘self-ID’, removing medical gatekeeping or any other substantive
prerequisite for the acquisition of a Gender Recognition Certificate.
In the background here is the assumption that it is inner gender
identity and nothing else that determines being trans. This vision is
also behind attempts in various countries including the UK to have
equality law altered to protect gender identity. And it is behind
concerted attempts of trans activist organisations to remove what is
colloquially known as the ‘spousal veto’ from the GRA: the clause in
the legislation that specifies that the spouse of a transitioning person
must formally declare their consent to the marriage or civil
partnership continuing, in order for a GRC to be issued to the
partner. In practice, this clause mainly applies to the wives of late-
transitioning trans women. Activists want it removed because it is
viewed as potentially stopping a trans person from fully realising their
gender identity. Speaking at the Liberal Democrat conference in
2019, MP Layla Moran proposed, on behalf of both her own party
and trans activist organisations, that the condition be abolished,
saying, ‘You should not be defined by anyone else other than you,
and that’s what makes the spousal veto such an injustice … the fact
is your identity has nothing to do with anyone else. This is deeply
personal and no one, no government, no spouse, should be able to
veto who you are.’25 In Scotland, activists have succeeded in getting
the condition removed.26
The thinking behind Principle 3 has also had an apparent
influence on clinical medical and psychological settings, and,
specifically, the prohibition of ‘conversion therapy’ of those with non-
standard gender identities, including children and teens. In 2017
several professional therapeutic bodies, including the British
Psychological Society and the Royal College of General
Practitioners, signed off a Memorandum of Understanding prohibiting
conversion therapy, understood as ‘any model or individual viewpoint
that demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or
gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which
attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender
identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual
orientation or gender identity on that basis’.27 The memorandum
describes such therapy, whether for sexual orientation or gender
identity, as ‘unethical and potentially harmful’. The thinking seems to
be that if gender identity is a fundamental part of identity, it would be
destructive for a medical practitioner to try to undermine it. Instead,
the gold-standard clinical approach is now considered to be ‘gender-
affirmative’ or ‘trans-affirmative’ care, defined by the American
Psychological Association as ‘the provision of care that is respectful,
aware, and supportive of the identities and life experiences of [trans
and gender nonconforming] people’.28 In affirmative care, you simply
‘affirm’ and so nurture what was always within. You allow the ‘real’
and fundamental identity to come to the surface, unimpeded.

Moment 7: The concept of a TERF was invented

Since the late 2000s, it has become increasingly common to see
intellectual criticism of gender identity theory dismissed on the
grounds that it inevitably comes from a bigoted place. In Whipping
Girl, Julia Serano variously dismisses possible objections to her
ideas as products of ‘transphobia’, ‘homophobia’, ‘trans-misogyny’,
‘oppositional sexism’ and ‘gender anxiety’. In a 2009 interview, Judith
Butler talked of ‘the feminist police force who rejects the lived
embodiment of transwomen’, calling their claims ‘transphobic
discourse’ and a form of ‘mutilation’.29 UK charity Stonewall’s online
glossary currently defines transphobia as (my italics): ‘The fear or
dislike of someone based on the fact they are trans, including
denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it.’ To spell this
out: Stonewall’s definition explicitly places ‘denying’ someone’s
gender identity, or ‘refusing to accept it’, as inevitably issuing from
fear or dislike, no matter what the grounds. Even if you have
reflected on the intellectual background for gender identity theory,
find it lacking, and for that reason ‘refuse to accept’ gender identity,
the real reason must be a deeper fear or dislike.
In 2008, denigrating the motives of critics of gender identity theory
was given a big boost with the invention of a ‘TERF’. TERF stands
for ‘Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist’. It was reportedly coined by
American Viv Smythe.30 In 2008 Smythe was running a feminist
blog. In a post, she promoted the Michigan Womyn’s Musical
Festival, also known as Michfest. When founded in 1976, Michfest
had been conceived by its radical feminist organisers as for females
only – or, as organisers named them, ‘Womyn-born-womyn’. There
was a heavy lesbian presence, in the traditional same-sex sense,
amongst attendees. Latterly, the festival had become controversial
for its explicit exclusion of trans women from the event. (Indeed,
eventually Michfest closed in 2015, partly due to this controversy.)
Smythe was quickly taken to task by blog readers for her promotion
of Michfest, and in the course of her subsequent public apology,
coined the acronym TERF. She wrote, of her promise not to promote
any ‘trans-exclusionary feminist event’ in future: ‘I am aware that this
decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists
(TERFs).’31 The term TERF rapidly took off, as memorable
acronyms often do – perhaps helped by its ugly phonetics and
capacity to be easily barked out as an insult or threat. Though in
Smythe’s original construction, TERFs were, by definition, feminists,
later popular usage of the term widened to refer to any person at all
who had, for whatever reason, an even mildly critical perspective on
the bundle of ideas that constitutes gender identity theory. Indeed,
trans women and trans men themselves came to be called TERFs,
whenever they worried that gender identity alone was not what made
you a woman or man.
What explains the generally aggressive approach to criticism on
the part of defenders of gender identity theory? At least part of the
answer seems to lie in the intellectual priors of gender identity
theory, and specifically with the philosophical worldview of Butler.
Butler thinks the categories of man and male, woman and female,
are inevitably ‘exclusionary’; i.e. they prioritise certain restrictive
ideals or stereotypes about what is natural and ‘right’ for men and
women. So effectively on this view, whenever you try to assert that
there’s such a thing as females or women, as a natural and pre-
given category – for whatever reason – you are effectively
‘excluding’ socially marginalised people who don’t meet the implicit
ideal and you should be criticised accordingly.
A further influence in the background here is what is known in
philosophy as ‘standpoint epistemology’. This is the idea that some
forms of knowledge are socially situated, so that only if you are in a
particular social situation are you able to easily acquire that kind of
knowledge. The term originally comes from Marxism and the idea
that oppressed people can have insight into two perspectives or
‘standpoints’ at once – their own and their oppressors’ – whereas
oppressors can have only one perspective (their own). Since the
workers are subject to bourgeois rules and a bourgeois worldview,
they get insight into the bourgeoisie’s standpoint. Additionally,
though, workers have intimate knowledge of their own socially
situated standpoint, which the bourgeoisie lacks.
This idea has been adopted by several social justice movements,
including feminism, critical race theory and trans activism. As
developed by trans activists, standpoint epistemology says there are
special forms of standpoint-related knowledge about trans
experience available only to trans people, not cis people. For
instance, only trans people can properly understand the pernicious
effects of ‘cis privilege’, and how it intersects with other forms of
oppression to produce certain kinds of lived experience. As with
some versions of feminism and critical race theory, when transmuted
through popular culture this has quickly become the idea that only
trans people can legitimately say anything about their own nature
and interests including on philosophical matters of gender identity.
Cis people, including feminists and lesbians, have nothing useful to
contribute here. Their assumption that they do have something
useful to contribute is a further manifestation of their unmerited
privilege. In the words of trans philosopher Veronica Ivy, ‘cis folks’ –
including TERFs – just need to ‘sit down and shut up’.32

Moment 8: An explosion of identities

Two decades into the twenty-first century, an outdated stereotype of
a trans person still lingers in the popular Western imagination. This
represents her as a glamorous post-operative trans woman,
otherwise known as a transsexual male-tofemale (MTF): someone
who – the stereotype goes – started life as a man, but later had
operations to remove natal genitalia and create a synthetic vagina.
She ‘passes’ – that is, she is visually indiscernible from a woman.
She’s committed to the lifelong taking of oestrogen to suppress
male-associated physical traits and enhance female-associated ones
such as breasts. She dresses in women’s clothes and wears make-
up. Alongside this physical stereotype, there’s a psychosexual one:
she’s very likely sexually oriented towards males. Had she not
transitioned, she would have been considered a gay man. Prior to
transition, in light of her obvious misalignment with masculine bodily
norms and heterosexual ideals, she suffered from gender dysphoria,
a condition that caused her unbearable psychological distress.
Yet once inner gender identity, misaligned with ‘outer’ assigned
sex, is taken to be the determining factor in being trans rather than
any medical or legal or behavioural fact, this stereotype is revealed
to be wholly inadequate as a complete picture of contemporary trans
life. Not only does the stereotype fail to accommodate trans men, it
also ignores how being trans comes in a rich variety of cultural,
behavioural, physical and psychosexual manifestations, and under
many different further sub-headings. As trans academic Stephen
Whittle summed it up in 2006, the same year he was involved in the
writing of the Yogyakarta Principles: ‘A trans person might be a butch
or a camp, a transgender or a transsexual, an MTF or FTM or a
cross-dresser; they might, in some parts of the world, consider
themselves a lady boy, katoey, or even the reclaimed Maori identities
whakawahine or whakatane.’33 What used to look like historically
and culturally disparate phenomena are now bundled up together
under the heading ‘trans’, and understood as unified in relation to the
central idea of having a misaligned gender identity. ‘Passing’ is no
longer seen as a necessarily desirable state for a trans person
either. Instead, broadly in line with Judith Butler’s ideas about gender
as performance, failure to pass is now represented as productively
disrupting and subverting – in the words of influential trans scholar
Sandy Stone – ‘the old binary discourses of gender’.34
In 2020, the number of gender identities has exploded. A
particularly popular one is being non-binary: having a gender identity
that is neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, neither
masculine nor feminine, but either switches fluidly between these or
rejects both. Since gender identity determines womanhood and
manhood, it follows that if you are non-binary, you are neither a
woman nor a man, or perhaps you are a bit of both. There is more to
gender identity than male, female or non-binary, however.
Stonewall’s online glossary describes ‘trans’ as an ‘umbrella’ term,
‘including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer
(GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser,
genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man,
trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois’.35
Facebook offers the user a choice of seventy-one ‘gender options’.36
For a grasp on what the really cutting-edge gender identities
currently are, it’s always worth looking at official university trans
policies. For instance, University of Kent policy currently officially
recognises and protects the gender identity ‘demifluid’ – that is, the
policy states, people ‘whose gender identity is partially fluid whilst
the other part(s) are static’. Kent also recognises the ‘demiflux’ – that
is, people ‘whose gender identity is partially fluid, with the other
part(s) being static’. Though the unwary might confuse demiflux with
demifluid, these are not the same, we are told, for ‘flux indicates that
one of the genders is non-binary’.37 University of Essex policy,
meanwhile, recognises the ‘pan-gender’, understood as people who
identify ‘with a multitude, and perhaps infinite (going beyond the
current knowledge of genders) number of genders either
simultaneously, to varying degrees, or over the course of time’.38
Perhaps not surprisingly in light of all this, the University of
Roehampton notes in its trans policy that ‘Terminology is continually
evolving and by the time this policy is published, some definitions
may be out of date’.39
A further source of non-standard gender identities is thought to be
non-Western cultures. In the quote I used just now, Stephen Whittle
mentioned the Thai katoey and the Maori whakawahine or
whakatane. In recently published educational material for schools,
Stonewall highlights ‘the Hijra community in India; the Calabi, Calalai
and Bissu genders in Indonesia; the Mashoga of Kenya; and two-
spirit people from Native American cultures’.40 Increasingly we are
told by academics that the idea of a natural binary division between
females and males is a pernicious product of Eurocentrism,
colonialism or even white supremacy.41 It has also become possible
to speculate that famous cross-dressing or otherwise ambiguous
figures from the past were actually trans, with inner gender identities
misaligned with assigned sex. Dr James Barry, Anne Lister, Joan of
Arc and Queen Hatshepsut are just a few of those names offered.42
Children, too, are considered as potentially having nonstandard
gender identities that require external recognition and affirmation
from society, and which should not be repressed. Between 2009 and
2019 the number of male children treated at the NHS Tavistock
Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) rose by 1,460 per cent
from 40 to 624, and the number of female children by 5,337 per cent
from 32 to 1740.43 From 2011 to 2020, forty-four UK children
between the ages of ten and fifteen diagnosed as having misaligned
gender identities were prescribed ‘puberty blockers’ – gonadotropin-
releasing hormone agonists, licensed for prostate cancer,
endometriosis, uterine fibroids and central precocious puberty, but
not for children with gender dysphoria. Following a Judicial Review in
2020, a report revealed that for forty-three of these patients, cross-
sex hormone treatments followed.44 In the US, female children as
young as thirteen are having radical double mastectomies, known as
‘top’ surgery.45 In many countries, including the US and UK, trans
teenagers reaching the age of majority have major reconstructive
surgery on genitalia.46 In line with gender identity theory, these
events are celebrated by some as allowing the children and teens
concerned to be who they ‘really’ are.47 At the same time, it’s
assumed that adults with currently misaligned gender identities must
have always had them, even in childhood and even if undetected; so
that where for example a trans woman used to be, ostensibly, a boy
child, all the while she was ‘really’ a girl.
The ever-expanding list of kinds of trans people can seem
incomprehensible to outsiders, but it needn’t be, as long as we
understand that they all have something in common: namely, gender
identities misaligned with assigned sex. Gender identity is expressed
through many possible ways of dressing, acting and modifying one’s
body, from having surgery to doing nothing at all. As Stephen Whittle
writes, being trans can involve ‘occasional or more frequent cross-
dressing, permanent cross-dressing and cross-gender living, through
to accessing major health interventions such as hormonal therapy
and surgical reassignment procedures. It can take up as little of your
life as five minutes a week or as much as a life-long commitment to
reconfiguring the body to match the inner self.’48 Equally, being trans
may not involve any outward behavioural change at all. Just as you
can be gay before you ever come out and start to tell people, you are
also trans even if you haven’t started to change your outward
presentation in any way whatsoever. And in fact, you might never
start. Some trans people reject alteration of their bodies or
appearances as reinforcing stereotypical expectations about
femininity and masculinity in a pernicious way.49 Nonetheless, they
are still trans. Their gender identities make them so.
So concludes my whistle-stop tour of big moments in the history of
gender identity theory. I turn now to some housekeeping matters for
what is to come.

The many meanings of ‘gender’

Readers may have spotted that, even at this early stage in the book,
the word ‘gender’ has already appeared in several different guises.
In Moment 1 alone, it popped up twice with two different meanings. It
is a standing feature of almost any argument between feminists and
trans activists that the word ‘gender’ will appear there in several
different senses, often unnoticed and in a way that increases
confusion and toxicity exponentially. Cultural historian Bernice
Hausman captures the confusion well when she writes how, at a
certain point, she began to realise that: ‘although most people
adhered to a distinction between “sex” and “gender” that relegates
the first term to nature and the second to culture, some were
beginning to use “gender” to refer to both realms. Instead of “sex
discrimination” people used the term “gender discrimination”; on
some affirmative action forms, applicants were asked to enter their
gender – male or female. Thus, although “gender” originally was
used by researchers to refer to social attributes of sexed identity, it
was beginning to dominate popular discourses to such an extent that
its older usage – as a direct substitute for the word “sex” – was being
revived.’50
I will disambiguate four senses of ‘gender’ now. Readers should
return to this section if they later come across a use that confuses
them. Just as the English word ‘bank’ can refer to the land beside
the river, or the institution that looks after your money, the following
are four different meanings of the English word ‘gender’ –
etymologically related, no doubt, and overlapping in terms of people
they apply to, but standing for different things. Here they are.
GENDER1: A polite-sounding word for the division between men
and women, understood as a traditional alternative word for
biological sex/the division between biological males and females.
This word is thought to have the benefit of an absence of
embarrassing connotations of sexiness in the copulatory sense.
When a passport application, say, asks for ‘gender’, it’s intended in
this sense. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, a character refers to the
‘masculine gender’, meaning males/men.
GENDER2: A word for social stereotypes, expectations and norms
of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, originally directed towards biological
males and females respectively. These can and do differ from culture
to culture, though there are many overlaps too.
GENDER3: A word for the division between men and women,
understood, by definition, as a division between two sets of people:
those who have the social role of masculinity projected on to them,
and those who have the social role of femininity projected on to
them. This is the view of womanhood and manhood, as such,
discussed in Moment 1 above. As mentioned, in the late twentieth
century it was enthusiastically endorsed by some feminists as a
putative shield against accusations of ‘biological determinism’: the
idea that female anatomy is domestic destiny. It will be examined
critically in Chapter 5.
GENDER4: A shortened version of the term ‘gender identity’.
What exactly a gender identity is will be investigated in Chapter 4,
but a common idea is that it is the ‘private experience of gender role’
– roughly, whether you relate to yourself psychologically as a boy or
man, girl or woman, or neither, in a way that has nothing directly to
do with your sex.
 Keeping these different senses in mind is crucial when trying to
decipher various claims made by feminists and trans activists. Even
though Yogyakarta Principle 3, discussed just now, is mostly
concerned with the primacy of gender identity, when it refers to ‘all
State-issued identity papers that indicate a person’s gender/sex’,
confusingly it means GENDER1 not GENDER4. Presumably when
therapists talk about ‘gender dysphoria’, strictly speaking they mean
GENDER1: feeling distressingly dysphoric about your sex, i.e. being
male or female. When feminists say there’s a difference between
‘sex and gender’, they can’t possibly mean GENDER1, and they
definitely at least mean GENDER2. They quite possibly also mean
GENDER3, though you can coherently talk about GENDER2 without
implying GENDER3. When parents say they are raising their children
‘gender-free’, they seem to mean GENDER2. When the term
‘transgender’ was originally introduced, meaning ‘across’ or ‘on the
other side of’ gender, users presumably meant GENDER2 or
GENDER3 and not GENDER1, or, at least, should have done (for, as
I’ll argue in the next chapter, you can’t actually change or ‘trans’ sex,
literally speaking). Similarly, as I’ll discuss in Chapter 6, when the
law talks about ‘gender recognition’ or ‘gender reassignment’, it
presumably doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, mean GENDER1. When
Butler talks about ‘gender performance’ it’s harder to classify her, but
she probably means something close to GENDER3. When therapists
talk about ‘gender-affirmative care’ they mean GENDER4, as does
Stonewall when it says on its website that ‘If you aren’t recognised
as being the gender you know you are, it’s extremely damaging’ and
‘you can use the bathroom that fits your gender’. Equally, when
people talk about being ‘gender-fluid’, or the University of Essex
talks about ‘a multitude, and perhaps infinite … number of genders’
they mean GENDER4.
Because of all this confusion, it will be policy in this book to avoid
the word ‘gender’ wherever possible, and in each case substitute
more concrete, clearer terms that do whatever job I want them to at
the time. So, for instance, I’ll always say ‘sex’ for GENDER1. Rather
than say GENDER2, I’ll talk about ‘sex-based’ or ‘sex-associated’
stereotypes, making clear when I mean purely social ones, and
when I don’t. I’ll also talk about ‘sex conforming’ or ‘sex
nonconforming’, rather than ‘gender conforming’ or ‘gender
nonconforming’ behaviour. I won’t use GENDER3 at all, except to
explicitly criticise the ideas behind it. And for GENDER4, I’ll always
use ‘gender identity’.
A final, related caveat. Quite apart from the trans-activist-versus-
feminist wars, there’s another culture war raging simultaneously that
sometimes gets in the way. Its forerunner was the battle between
feminists and biological determinists described in Moment 1. These
days, skirmishes tend to be between ‘blank slate’ feminists, who
think all sex-associated stereotypes of femininity and masculinity
must be social, so that in effect there are no natural or innate
behavioural or psychological differences between males and females
at all, and those ‘innatist’ evolutionary psychologists who think at
least some behavioural and psychological stereotypes accurately
represent pre-existing average biological differences between the
sexes.51 In this book, I want to steer clear of this second front in the
gender wars where possible. Usually, when I say ‘sex-associated
stereotypes’ I want to leave room for the idea that at least some of
those are grounded in biological reality. Equally, though, it seems
obvious that some are not. Part of my argument will depend on that.

In defence of debate
In this book, I take on gender identity theory. I argue that much of it
is intellectually confused and concretely harmful.
First, though, I tackle the charge that any criticism whatsoever of
gender identity theory or trans activism must be ‘transphobic’.
Obviously I need to get this out of the way.
A first thing to note, in case it’s unclear, is that I am not arguing
against legal protections for trans people against violence,
discrimination or coercive surgeries. I enthusiastically support these
protections.
A second thing to note is that, in their own ways, not just
professional philosophers de Beauvoir and Butler, but also Money,
Stoller, Fausto-Sterling, Serano and Whittle are each endorsing
sometimes complicated and abstract philosophical theories, despite
sometimes presenting them with a gloss of straightforward scientific
observation. Take Fausto-Sterling: she speculates both that there
are at least five sexes and that sex is a ‘continuum’. Now, she
certainly didn’t read these conclusions straightforwardly from data in
a lab. Other people can and do look at the very same data and come
up with different rational conclusions. Equally, when John Money
hypothesised about the existence of ‘gender identity’, he was
hypothesising a new, contestable theoretical concept to try to better
explain what he and others observed. Ditto for Serano’s proposal of
the concept of ‘cis’. As such, then, all of these theoretical postulates
should be available for robust critical examination, just as theoretical
postulates in general should be.
It’s standard practice in philosophy and academia more generally
to subject theories and their postulates to trenchant critique. Does a
given theory explain the evidence well? Are there rival theories that
might explain the evidence better? Does the theory help us explain
and predict what people care about? Does it have other explanatory
virtues such as simplicity, and is it a good fit with other existing
productive theories? To rule these questions out as automatically
‘transphobic’ is potentially to give a free pass to bad theorising. As
an academic I can’t responsibly do that, and others shouldn’t either.
It is standard for academics to subject their work to rigorous critique
by peers: papers get torn to shreds in seminars and referee reports,
and experiments pored over to look for potentially confounding
variables. And for good reason: history is littered with bad theories
and empty theoretical concepts, from inner demons to bodily
humours to phlogiston. There’s no reason to think there isn’t room
for similar error here – in fact, there is extra reason to think there is,
inasmuch as some (though not all) trans people so clearly
desperately want gender identity theory to work, which might be
affecting their neutrality. Many trans people assume – wrongly, as I
will eventually argue – that the existence and recognition of their
political and legal rights depends upon gender identity theory’s
correctness.
To critics who would say that, as a cis person, I am unacceptably
encroaching on trans people’s accounts of their own lived
experience by arguing about gender identity, I would first say: do
they not assume that I, as a cis person, have a gender identity too?
More importantly, I would add that I don’t believe the insights of
standpoint epistemology, rehearsed earlier, take us anything like that
far. It’s plausible to say, as standpoint epistemology does, that the
workers can understand the concrete impact of bourgeois rules upon
them better than the bourgeoisie do; and that by extrapolation, only
trans people can really understand what it’s like to live as a trans
person in a mostly cis world. But it’s a wild leap from there to saying
that only trans people can legitimately comment on the philosophical
nature and practical consequences – for everybody – of gender
identity. As a lesbian and as a sex-nonconforming woman I too have
skin in this game – not to mention as an academic who cares about
ideas, and as a feminist who cares about other women. In any case,
trans people reasonably disagree among themselves about gender
identity. Trans people aren’t an intellectual monolith, and misaligned
gender identity, understood as a general concept, is not something
lived experience delivers straight to trans brains in a transparent and
uninterpreted way.
A final objection to all this might be: in the end, what does it really
matter? Can’t we just give trans people a free pass on gender
identity theory if it makes them happy? Am I not just playing abstract
philosophical games with real people’s lives? Shouldn’t I try to be
more kind? It will be the argument of much of this book that,
unfortunately, the relatively uncontested prominence of gender
identity theory in many circles matters very much, for trans and non-
trans people alike. Its consequences are far from ‘abstract’. They do
material harm to many, including to some trans people themselves.
Trans people, and future trans activism, are better off without it.
Gender identity theory doesn’t just say that gender identity exists,
is fundamental to human beings, and should be legally and politically
protected. It also says that biological sex is irrelevant and needs no
such legal protection. In a straight fight between gender identity and
sex, as it were, gender identity should win. So, I need to talk about
sex.
 2

What is Sex?

In the past five years, UK campaigning charities such as Stonewall,

the Scottish Trans Alliance and Gendered Intelligence have lobbied
politicians both to change the law to recognise gender identity and to
remove political protections for the female sex from the Equality
Act.1 Why do trans activists think we must choose between gender
identity and sex? Partly, it’s assumed to be psychologically important
to trans people that others don’t refer to sex at all. This thought,
pushed hard by lobbying groups, has led to the development of a
cultural taboo around mentioning it. But another important
contributory factor has been academics arguing that there are not in
fact two distinct biological sexes after all. If this were true, it would
indeed be a good reason to think legal protections should focus only
on gender identity. So there’s an immediate need to scrutinise such
claims.
The topic of this chapter is, directly, being female or male, and not
(directly) being a woman or man. As we have seen, for some
theorists, being a woman is not the same as being female: according
to them, some males can be women, and some females, men. I will
discuss these views later, but for the moment I don’t want us to get
distracted, so: whatever you now think about whether you have to be
female to count as a woman, or be male to count as a man, bracket
those thoughts. We are talking only about being female or male,
which is to say, about sex – and, to be clear, not the fun kind. For
now, concentrate only on the claim that humans are divided into
females and males, and that this binary division is a natural state of
affairs rooted in stable biological fact.
 For many readers, it might seem surreal that I’m bothering to
spend a whole chapter on establishing that binary sex exists. They
will take this to be blatantly obvious. For others, my arguments will
seem outrageous and heretical. Such is the strange intellectual
climate we now live in. Even for those falling into the former camp, it
is worth finding out how the other half lives, and what background
intellectual commitments are fuelling current disputes.
Before we get to claims that binary sex doesn’t exist, we need to
find the best available positive account of what sex is. There are
three candidates on the table. Each of them holds that males and
females are naturally found in the world and always have been, for
as long as there have been humans. I find all three equally plausible;
each has some drawbacks, but no drawback seems devastating,
and I won’t choose between them. In any case, the common
objections made to the idea of two sexes do not threaten any of
them.

What are the sexes?

The gamete account

A first account of the sexes, recently spelled out by philosopher Alex

Byrne, aims to account for females and males in every species
where they occur: human, animal or plant.2 Let’s call this the ‘gamete
account’. An organism’s reproductive cells are called its gametes.
The gamete account says males, by definition, are those organisms
on a developmental pathway to produce small gametes for the
purposes of sexual reproduction. Females, meanwhile, are those
organisms on a developmental pathway to produce larger gametes
for the purposes of sexual reproduction. ‘Larger’ here is relative to
the small gametes produced by males in the same species. Females
produce relatively few, static, large gametes. Males produce
relatively many, mobile, small gametes. In some organisms, male
parts and female parts are present simultaneously: for instance, in
flowers that produce both pollen and ova. In most species, though,
males and females are separate organisms. Equally, in species such
as clownfish – sometimes cited as a species of relevance to whether
humans can change sex – organisms can change from male to
female, given exposure to the right external circumstances
interacting with internal mechanisms. But here, too, what makes a
clownfish at a given point in its development male or female is
whether it is on a developmental pathway (immediately, next) to
produce smaller or larger gametes.
Why insist on the wording ‘on a developmental pathway’ (etc.)
rather than simply make actual possession of small or larger
gametes the criterion of being female or male? The answer, as
Byrne recognises, is that developmental pathways can go awry.
Gametes are not always produced. Disease and variation can
interfere, as can environmental influences and old age. Yet we do
not normally say organisms subject to such interference are no
longer female or male. When we talk about females and males, we
are talking about a capacity that a given organism either actually has
or at least would have had under certain given circumstances (e.g.
had that particular variation not occurred; had that particular
environmental factor not interfered, etc.). We can reasonably say:
had it not been for this interfering factor, large gamete production
would have occurred for this organism given the rest of its internal
workings. So it is still a female, even if it doesn’t actually produce
large gametes now.
This account of sex has nothing to say about chromosomes. It
doesn’t mention XY or XX at all. Nor does it specify primary or
secondary sex characteristics or other morphological features
(roughly: physical characteristics). Its aim is to cover any biological
species whatsoever that has a division between males and females
for the purposes of sexual reproduction. Such species vary in
chromosomes and morphologies. But what they all share, in this
view, is two separate developmental pathways, each producing a
certain relative size of gamete at the end of it, if all goes according to
plan.
The chromosome account

A different account of the sexes takes as its focus human males and
females. This view seeks to classify human males and females, as
such, in terms of whatever physical factor(s), specifically, send them
down one gamete-producing pathway or other. This factor, it turns
out, is possession or lack of a Y chromosome in cells. It’s the SRY
gene on the Y chromosome that, in a seven-week-old human
embryo, normally triggers development of a small-gamete-producing
body rather than a large-gamete-producing one. A human male is a
human with a Y chromosome. A human female is a human without a
Y chromosome. I’ll call this account of the two sexes the
‘chromosome account’. The chromosome account doesn’t say
females necessarily have XX sex chromosomes and males XY. That
is the standard distribution, but rare Disorders of Sexual
Development (DSDs) mean some females are X, XXX, XXXX or
XXXXX, and some males are XXY, XXXY or XXXXY. It is rather the
presence or absence of a Y chromosome in cells that is counted as
defining the two groups.
On both gamete and chromosome accounts, there are occasional
cases of DSDs not easily characterised as either male or female.
One such case is individuals produced by the early merging of non-
identical twin embryos in the womb. They have some cells that
express XX and others that express XY. This condition is called
46,XX/46,XY. Some, though not all, of these people have
ovotesticular disorder – that is, both ovarian and testicular tissue in
their bodies. The gamete account would struggle to classify such
people as definitively male or female since it is unclear precisely
which gamete-producing developmental pathway they are on. And
the chromosome account would struggle too, as there seems no
particular reason to favour possession of a Y chromosome in some
cells but not others as definitive for classification.
Both gamete and chromosome accounts characterise human
males and females from a narrow range of explanatory interests –
mainly, the interest in locating them in biological and medical
explanations. Both are also ‘essentialist’ accounts – that is, each
prioritises one particular feature (respectively: developmental
pathway; Y chromosome or lack of one) as essential to, and also
sufficient for, membership of a given sex. The lines of these
accounts are not completely clean, but still, for the majority of
humans, there will be a clear answer as to whether someone is male
or female.
 Yet that answer may seem counterintuitive, relative to what an
ordinary non-scientific person might say. Take the case of people
with XY chromosomes who also have a DSD called Androgen
Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). They have testicles, sometimes partly
or fully undescended, and are ‘male’ according to both the gamete
and the chromosome accounts. Yet they are also partly or wholly
unable to respond to testosterone, and so can develop either an
‘undervirilised’ or even a thoroughly ‘feminised’ external morphology
(in plain terms: breasts, vulva and clitoris, as well as post-pubescent
muscle and fat distribution and facial structure within female-
associated ranges). Some people with the extreme form, Complete
AIS, grow up thinking of themselves as female, as do those around
them – yet wrongly so, according to the gamete and chromosome
accounts. Alternatively, there are people with XX chromosomes and
ovaries, identified as female on both the gamete and chromosome
accounts, yet who have a condition, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia,
resulting in some cases in a highly ‘virilised’ external morphology,
including a phallic-like clitoris, and the appearance of an empty
scrotum.
Another case that apparently produces counterintuitive
identification concerns individuals with a condition called 45,X/46,XY
mosaicism. Embryos with this condition start with an XY
chromosome, and so technically are on a small-gamete-producing
pathway, at least at the beginning. Hence they count as male on the
gamete account, and – though it is less clear – perhaps also on the
chromosome account too, depending upon what stage of Y
chromosome possession is judged most relevant to classification.
However, early on in the cell division process, a Y chromosome is
lost from a cell leaving only an X. This cell is then copied and
recopied, reproducing exponentially. The result is a foetus with both
X and XY cells. Here, as with 46,XX/46,XY there’s a possibility of
having both ovarian and testicular tissue in the body. Yet the gamete
and perhaps also the chromosome account would classify people in
this group as male.
The cluster account
This third model of the sexes contains resources for a different
answer to some of these cases. I will call this the ‘cluster account’.
The cluster account takes its inspiration from a particular account of
what a species is.
It used to be an article of faith that all members of a given species
must share a common trait or ‘essence’, guaranteeing membership
of that species. It was assumed that what makes, say, tigers all
members of one species is that they, and only they, share some
particular features in common. Though the features differ in each
case, the same was assumed to go for common earthworms, oyster
mushrooms, Scots pine trees and so on, for all species. In practice,
however, scientists were often unable to find any features that might
count as the ‘essential’ ones shared by all and only members of a
given species. Natural selection tends to generate species with
genetic diversity, through processes such as recombination,
mutation and random drift. Morphological characteristics – physical
characteristics of an organism like a tiger’s stripes or dense, short fur
– can vary profoundly within a species, given both genetic variation
and differences in how particular genes are expressed in particular
environments. Some tigers are born without stripes, for instance.
Making things more complicated, different species can share genetic
material and/ or morphological characteristics.
In response to such facts, the philosopher Richard Boyd proposed
a ‘Homeostatic Property Cluster’ account of biological species
(HPC).3 According to HPC, species are defined in terms of relatively
stable clusters of morphological characteristics plus underlying
mechanisms producing those characteristics.4 Morphological
characteristics tend to cluster together in a species either because of
certain underpinning mechanisms – genetic or environmental or
developmental – or because some of the characteristics are made
more likely by the presence of other characteristics in the cluster; or
both. But crucially, according to HPC, no particular characteristic in
the cluster, nor underpinning mechanism, is counted as essential for
an individual’s membership of the species.5 That is, particular
members of species can lack particular characteristics and/or
particular mechanisms (remember the example of some tigers
having no stripes). Nonetheless, as long as the individual possesses
enough of the important properties in the cluster, and those
properties are caused by enough of the relevant mechanisms, it still
counts as a member of the species in question. Hence there is room
for genetic and morphological variation within a species,
unproblematically.
What counts as having ‘enough’ of the ‘important’ properties in a
cluster is in some sense a practical decision, relative to wider
collective theoretical goals. Although Boyd doesn’t to my knowledge
say this, presumably our collective goals in categorising entities in
the natural world might sometimes be other than strictly scientific or
medical. If so, perhaps we can adapt the HPC account to explain the
basis of two naturally occurring categories, male and female, in
which humans have interests from a number of perspectives that
aren’t just medical and scientific ones.
The ‘cluster account’ of sex first identifies a cluster of
morphological characteristics relevant to identifying people as male
or female in ordinary life. From birth to old age, females and males
respectively tend to have certain distinctive general physical
features, relative to each other and within certain ranges. They have
distinctive reproductive organs and genitalia at birth (primary sex
characteristics), and also, after puberty, a certain distinctive kind of
facial structure, skeletal structure, muscle and fat distribution,
breasts or lack of them, body hair or lack of it, vocal tone, and so on.
These are called secondary sex characteristics.
So effectively, there’s one cluster of morphological characteristics
relevant to counting as male, and another cluster relevant to
counting as female. It’s important to note the ‘relative to each other
and within certain ranges’ in my formulation just now. I am not, of
course, saying all or even most females, say, have exactly the same
face and body. The claim is about features within a range, where
features within this range are more statistically likely for one kind of
people than the other kind. Each cluster of features is
characteristically associated with a set of underlying causal
mechanisms: distinctive kinds of gene expression, levels of hormone
production, and other developmental mechanisms. Unlike on the
gamete or chromosome account, though, on the cluster account, no
individual characteristic is treated as essential for being female or
male. Equally, there’s no requirement that an individual exhibit all of
the features in a given cluster. So the possibility of variation is
anticipated and dealt with. Rather, what’s required for being female
is that one exhibits enough of the important features in the female-
associated cluster, underpinned by enough of the right sort of
mechanisms. The same goes for being male, in relation to the male-
associated cluster. Most people will exhibit all of the characteristics
in a particular cluster, but not everyone will. Still, this won’t make
them any less male or female, because on the cluster account, there
was never any requirement that they have the full set, as it were.
What counts as ‘enough’ of the ‘important’ features in a cluster, as
with the HPC account, is in a sense a practical decision, to be made
in relation to wider theoretical goals. And as mooted in relation to
HPC, perhaps these goals need not be exclusively
medical/biological, and so might conceivably place heavier emphasis
on the ‘outer’ observable features of a person in the everyday than
on chromosomes or inner reproductive organs. This might seem
reasonable, given that ‘outer’ features are the ones people are
directly acquainted with most often, used in everyday identification of
sex, including self-identification. If this is right, it might leave the door
open for a person with CAIS – a person with XY chromosome but
who was born with a vulva and clitoris and who in puberty develops
breasts and other female-associated physical features – to count as
female, in at least one coherent sense: if, say, we collectively
decided to weight external bodily characteristics as more important
than internal ones. After all, the external morphology associated with
Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is at least partly due to
an underlying causal mechanism shared with females generally.6
Perhaps, for similar reasons, there’s also room on the cluster
account for a person with XX chromosomes but with Congenital
Adrenal Hyperplasia and a resulting extremely virilised external
morphology to count as male, given at least one underlying
mechanism shared with males: exposure to high levels of
androgens. And in the case of 45,X/46,XY mosaicism, what
classification we eventually make might be tailored to best fit
particular aspects of the individual morphology. These classifications
would not necessarily be suitable for medical or biological contexts,
but there are other important human contexts too.
I don’t pretend establishing what to say in such cases is easy.
Some DSDs and resulting morphologies push us to the limits of our
concepts. But in any case, we now have our three contenders for
defining what being female or male is. So are there, as the critics
would have it, any good reasons to think that, in fact, the belief that
there are (only) two naturally given sexes is a mistake or a fiction?
Let’s look at the reasons given most often and see if any of them are
a threat. I will start with an easy one.

We normally don’t know what people’s chromosomes

are or what their genitals look like
This objection proceeds from the fact we don’t know what someone’s
chromosomes/gametes/genitals are to the claim that these can’t be
counted as conditions relevant to their membership of one sex or
other. Biologist Julia Serano, encountered in Chapter 1, makes this
argument in Whipping Girl. She seems to argue that there is no such
thing as a ‘genetic’ male or female because ‘we are unable to readily
see other people’s sex chromosomes’.7 She is similarly scathing
about the idea that being a ‘biological’ male or female could have
anything to do with genital possession because we don’t typically
see strangers’ genitals and yet we usually still know what sex they
are. She apparently concludes that, because we usually identify the
sex of strangers only on the basis of observable secondary sex
characteristics like breasts and facial hair, or their absence, they
must be what make you one sex or other.8
This argument confuses how you usually infer something is in a
particular category with what makes it belong to that category.
Compare: I see you’re wearing a wedding ring and infer you are
married – correctly as it happens, because you are married.
However, wearing a wedding ring is not what makes you married.
You could wear one and be single. As this demonstrates, there can
be a distinction between the evidence used, usually reliably but not
infallibly, to assess membership of a particular category, and actual
conditions of membership. When people go through a marriage
ceremony, they often though not always get a wedding ring. So it’s
not crazy to use a wedding ring as reasonable evidence of someone
being married. Similarly: females usually gain breasts but not facial
hair in puberty. So usually we can use the appearance of breasts
and the non-appearance of facial hair to help assess someone’s sex.
Still, though, it’s not having an appearance of breasts or a lack of
visible facial hair that makes you female, just as it’s not the wedding
ring that makes you married. You could have acquired each of these
things by other means. There’s no real threat here to any of the three
models of sex I have offered.

Some people exhibit Differences of Sexual

Development
As described in Chapter 1, Anne Fausto-Sterling has been influential
in promoting the view that sex isn’t a binary but, in her words, ‘a vast,
infinitely malleable continuum’.9 Her books are best-sellers, and her
opinion pieces make the New York Times. Her reasoning to this
conclusion mostly derives from discussions of people with DSDs.
This is a slightly harder challenge.
Following others before her, Fausto-Sterling tends to call people
with DSDs ‘intersex’. She is fond of saying that 1.7 per cent of the
population is intersex.10 If she is right, that would be a huge number
– nearly one in every fifty people. But in fact, this figure of 1.7 per
cent includes the 1.5 per cent of the population who have a condition
called late-onset (non-classical) Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.
This is different from the classical CAH discussed just now, and
involves an enzyme deficiency that potentially affects both sexes and
is accompanied by no ambiguity in genitalia or in reproductive
organs. It’s even compatible in females with carrying a baby to
term.11 This condition easily can be accommodated on any of the
three models of the sexes we’ve looked at.
Other DSDs easily accommodated on those models include:
Klinefelter’s, where individuals with a Y chromosome, on the small-
gamete pathway, and with a virilised morphology (i.e. males) have
two or more X chromosomes rather than one; Turner syndrome,
where individuals without a Y chromosome, on the large-gamete
pathway, and with a feminised morphology (i.e. females) only have
one X chromosome in some or all cells, rather than two; and MRKH,
which produces an underdeveloped or absent vagina in people
without a Y chromosome, on the large-gamete pathway, and with a
feminised morphology (i.e. females). Once these conditions are
subtracted from Fausto-Sterling’s 1.7 per cent, we’re left with the
rather less eye-catching figure of 0.018 per cent – that is, 1.8 people
in 10,000.12 And this is important to note, because the inflated figure
of 1.7 per cent has done a lot of rhetorical work on its own to
persuade people that sex isn’t binary but a continuum or ‘spectrum’.
On further investigation, it turns out that what Fausto-Sterling
means by ‘intersex’ is ‘an individual who deviates from the Platonic
ideal of physical dimorphism at the chromosomal, genital, gonadal,
or hormonal levels’.13 This implies that what it is to count as male or
female must be to meet a chromosomal and genital and
gonadal/gametal and hormonal Platonic ideal, and that if one fails in
any of these essential respects, one is therefore intersex. This
places preposterously over-demanding conditions on sex category
membership. (I lost an ovary in my early twenties, so it would make
me intersex, for a start.) The gamete account focuses only on
gonadal/ gametal developmental pathways – not even actual gamete
or gonad possession – and makes no other requirements for sex
classification. The chromosome account focuses on the presence or
absence of the Y chromosome and makes no other requirements.
The cluster account focuses on primary and secondary sex
characteristics but crucially, makes no particular configuration of
these essential to being female or male, for it isn’t an essentialist
account.
Despite statements that 1.7 per cent of people are intersex, in fact
Fausto-Sterling’s explicit arguments that sex is an ‘infinitely
malleable continuum’ focus mostly on what are, by her own
admission, a very rare subset of DSDs. Although she later described
it as written with tongue in cheek, in her 1993 article ‘The Five
Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough’ Fausto-Sterling
suggests that alongside males and females, there are three more
human sex categories.14 I described these in Chapter 1 but it’s worth
revisiting them. First, there are ‘true hermaphrodites’: those with both
ovarian and testicular material in their bodies as described earlier.
Second, there are ‘male pseudohermaphrodites’: those with a Y
chromosome on a small-gamete-producing path, but also with a
feminised external morphology, as with CAIS. Third and finally, there
are ‘female pseudohermaphrodites’: those without a Y chromosome
on a large-gamete-producing path, but also with a virilised external
morphology, as with classical CAH.
Positing five discrete categories hardly establishes an ‘infinitely
malleable continuum’. A ‘continuum’ suggests adjacent entities that
are only subtly distinguishable from one another, which is not the
case here. But more to the point, there is no need to call Fausto-
Sterling’s last three categories ‘sexes’ at all because they are all
accounted for on all three models of the sexes canvassed above.
On both the chromosome and gamete accounts, ‘male
pseudohermaphrodites’ are still male because they have a Y
chromosome and are on a small-gamete-producing pathway, albeit
disrupted and with a non-standard sexed body shape, relative to the
norm. Equally, ‘female pseudohermaphrodites’ are female because
they lack a Y chromosome and are on a large-gamete-producing
pathway, again with the caveat above. It’s true these results are at
odds with what some people with CAIS and CAH would say about
themselves, but that is not necessarily a reason to reject the
conclusions. On the cluster account, meanwhile, ‘male
pseudohermaphrodites’ and ‘female pseudohermaphrodites’ can
potentially count as male or female, depending on how we
collectively decide to weight the importance of external morphology
over other characteristics in the female and male clusters.
This leaves us only with ‘true hermaphrodites’, comprising an
exceptionally rare 1.2 people in 100,000.15 For instance, people with
46,XX/46,XY are difficult to classify on both the gamete and
chromosome accounts, and perhaps for the cluster account as well.
But it is unclear why such difficulties should lead us to think of sex as
non-binary, let alone a ‘continuum’. Fausto-Sterling, crucially, seems
to ignore the fact that difficulty about borderline cases is absolutely
standard for biological categories. At the metaphorical edge of every
biological category there are so-called hard cases. For instance:
where is the precise boundary between one existing biological
species and another new species, evolving out of the former? There
will obviously be cases that don’t clearly belong to either, or seem to
belong to both. Similar ambiguity occurs in species that split along
geographical lines. Hybridisation between species poses another
challenge. Are tigons and ligers members of the species tiger or lion,
or both, or neither? Our existing biological categories struggle to
provide a definitive answer.
Arguably, though, this issue isn’t even limited to biological kinds.
According to some philosophers, many or even all of our concepts
are ‘underdetermined’ when it comes to outlying hard cases and
what we should say about them. Take ‘planet’, as discussed by the
philosopher Peter Ludlow.16 ‘Planet or non-planet?’ looks like a
binary question. But is Pluto a planet or not? Some say yes (on
grounds that it’s massive enough to form a ball and orbit the sun),
some say no (on grounds that it’s made of ice and not on the same
plane as other planets). Or, more mundanely, take Jaffa Cakes: are
they a cake (after all, they are sponge-like) or a biscuit (after all, they
are small and biscuit-shaped)? The UK courts once found that Jaffa
Cakes were cake, but it is easy to imagine the judgment being later
reversed. Our ordinary concepts of cake and biscuit just aren’t set up
to cover that sort of case.
So, hard cases are not a special fact about the categories male
and female. Many categories are bound, eventually, to run into hard
cases that can’t be automatically settled one way or the other on
present understandings of the category. We mostly form our
categories as conceptual tools to help us negotiate the everyday
world and the sort of cases we encounter most. So it’s not surprising
that, when an unusual case turns up, we don’t always know how to
classify it.
So do what Fausto-Sterling calls ‘true hermaphrodites’ show that
sex isn’t a binary? Only if ‘binary’ means that every entity in the
world must clearly fall into one state or the other. Properly
understood, the ‘sex binary’ requires only that the vast majority of
people fall into one category or the other. And on the three
understandings of sex offered above, they do.
 In a recent opinion piece for the New York Times, ‘Why Sex Is Not
Binary’, Fausto-Sterling has one more go. This time, following John
Money, she distinguishes between different stages or ‘layers’ of
sexed development, consecutively developing at different points of
life, from conception on: ‘chromosomal’, ‘fetal gonadal’, ‘fetal
hormonal’, ‘internal reproductive’, ‘external genital’, ‘pubertal
hormonal’ and ‘pubertal morphological’.17 She implies one layer can
be ‘female’, and a different layer ‘male’, in the very same person.
One immediate question is what exactly ‘male’ and ‘female’ mean
here, if we’re no longer talking about whole sexed individuals. But
leaving that aside: given the three models of the sexes we’ve looked
at, there’s no good reason to think that talk about ‘sexed’ layers must
replace any overall judgements about whether a given individual is
male or female. Once again, Fausto-Sterling seems to have as her
imagined antagonist someone who thinks of a female or a male as
embodying a comprehensive ‘Platonic Ideal’, essentially involving
perfect configurations of chromosomes and gonads, gametes and
hormones and reproductive organs and genitals and pubescent
features too. But to repeat: none of the above accounts are anything
like this demanding.

The sexes are socially constructed (part 1)

Another intellectual behemoth in the world of sex denial is the
American philosopher and Professor of Comparative Literature at
Berkeley, Judith Butler. Mostly via her 1990s books Gender Trouble
and Bodies that Matter, Butler has had a huge influence on the fields
of queer theory, Gender Studies and Trans Studies. She is endlessly
cited by modern trans activists as having ‘shown’ that biological sex
is a ‘social construct’.
Straight away we need to distinguish this statement from a less
radical one with which it might easily be confused. Hers isn’t just the
familiar observation that the categories of males and females
respectively each have a whole load of cultural and social meanings,
expectations and norms contingently attached to them. In some
Western cultures, for instance, males are culturally expected to be
more powerful, active, loud, aggressive, otherwise emotionally
repressed explorers of the world (and so on); females are culturally
expected to be more caring, submissive, reconciliatory, emotionally
open, domestic (and so on). We can argue about whether some of
the meanings taken to be socially produced are in fact biologically
determined, but surely we can agree that not all of them are, as
shown by their significant cross-cultural and historical variation.
She’s saying something much more radical and subversive: that the
categories of male and female are nothing but social meaning, as it
were. There is no natural division in the world underneath,
corresponding to the sexes. There are just two sets of social
meanings that humans have contingently and arbitrarily assigned to
two groups of people. If cultures and societies had ascribed social
meanings differently, we could have a different configuration of
sexes, or even no sexes. Sex is wholly socially constructed.
How does Butler arrive at this startling conclusion? As indicated in
Chapter 1, an important assumption of hers is that any binary theory
of the sexes must inevitably be ‘normative’ and therefore
‘exclusionary’ in a way that props up power imbalances between
groups. It must appeal to two ‘heteronormative’ paradigms of ideal
male and female bodies, minds and sexualities. As such, she thinks
such a theory must perniciously ‘exclude’ people – for instance, gay
people – who don’t fit neatly with either respective set of norms.
In fact, no such norms are built into any of the three models of the
sexes described above. It is not an exclusionary norm to insist that
males, as such, possess a Y chromosome or be on a small-gamete-
producing pathway. Rather, it is a way of conceptually differentiating
between two kinds of entity, assumed to be naturally found in the
world. Simply noting that some people fulfil such facts and others
don’t is not a value judgement about superiority or inferiority, or any
other positive or negative connotations. Meanwhile, the cluster
account is explicit that not all characteristics associated with
maleness and femaleness need be possessed by an individual to
count as one or other, and is clear that male and female
characteristics are expressed across a range. Again, this is hardly
obviously ‘normative’ in any sense that presupposes or entrenches
pernicious power relations. Nor are there implications from any of the
models we have looked at for the value of heterosexuality or
otherwise. True, the gamete view is tied to thinking of females and
males in terms of their evolutionarily-bestowed reproductive function,
but this is not a claim about individual psychologies or sexual
orientations, and so is compatible with perfect relaxation about
various individual sexualities including homosexuality.
Butler’s conclusion is embedded in a much wider philosophical
worldview from which it cannot really be unmoored.18 Intellectual
commitments include the idea outlined in Chapter 1 that there is
nothing intelligible in the world before it is referred to in language.
Linguistic categorisation doesn’t refer to prior reality, but is rather
‘productive’ or ‘constitutive’ of it. Because languages differ in their
concepts, so too do ‘constructions’ of reality vary socioculturally and
historically. Language doesn’t reflect what was already there.19
There are no pre-existing human kinds or types whose natures are
to be discovered via philosophical or scientific analysis. Biology is
itself just a ‘medico-legal alliance emerging in 19th century Europe
[that] has spawned categorial fictions’ – i.e., the two sexes – ‘that
could not be anticipated in advance’.20 Concepts such as the self or
human nature or the ‘natural’ human body are also fictions, shifting
in their details from society to society. There’s nothing ‘underneath’
or ‘before’ language that would secure linguistic reference to
something ‘outside’ of it.
To academic philosophers like me, keen to connect philosophy
with working science in fruitful ways and to make appropriately
nuanced distinctions between what is discovered by humans in the
world as opposed to what is put there by them, Butler’s worldview
looks adolescently, simplistically monotonic. In short: she thinks it’s
all put there. Yet long experience tells me that, to some students and
lecturers – mostly, it has to be said, in fields other than academic
philosophy itself – Butler’s worldview is hugely seductive. For those
of a certain mindset, Butler is the Harry Potter of philosophy,
transforming boring old truisms about the material world into
something alchemical, shifting and sexily impermanent. This effect is
heightened by the famous opacity of Butler’s prose style, which can
make people think they must be accessing really deep truths, and by
the fact Butler rarely spells out the consequences of her view, coyly
offering with one sentence what she then seems to take away with
another. On a single page, she can imply both that there are no
human bodies prior to various contingent sociocultural constructions
of them, and that, somehow, there is such a thing as ‘materiality’
after all.21
To debunk the general social-constructionist worldview presented
by Butler would take me very far from the central concern of this
book – and besides, others have already done so.22 What I can do is
spell out in stark terms the consequences of Butler’s worldview in a
way she never does, and no doubt would at least half-heartedly
disclaim.
So: it follows from the logic of Butler’s worldview not only that
there are not two naturally pre-given, stable biological sexes, but
also that there are no pre-given facts about natural selection. There
is no sexual reproduction. There are no pre-given chemical elements
or biological species. There is no climate change, at least not as
commonly understood. There are no molecules, atoms or quarks.
There are no viruses and no bacteria; no successful drugs nor
placebos. Talking about oxygen as a cause of combustion is
ultimately no more rationally justified than talking about the
eighteenth-century concept of phlogiston (which was thought to
reside in every flammable substance and be released as it burned).
Talking about neurons as causes of behaviour is neither more nor
less accurate, ultimately, than talking about bodily ‘humours’.
Creationism is neither worse nor better a theory than Darwinism.
There is no ahistorical, non-relative truth, in fact, nor ‘accurate’
scientific theory or representation.
I might be told, in response to the above précis, that I’ve got it
wrong: in fact, there is still some coherent way in which, within the
Butlerian picture, all of these things can be said ‘really’ to exist,
whilst also understood as ‘socially’ and ‘linguistically’ constructed. In
which case: phew, what a relief; in that case can we have the sexes
back too, please?
The most plausible versions of social constructionism about
science are not sceptical about the existence, full stop, of the things
they conclude are socially constructed. As philosopher Ian Hacking
says of those who claim airplanes are ‘socially constructed’: they still
‘expect airplanes to get you there, and know that science,
technology, and enterprise are essential for air travel’.23 But even
arch social constructionists about science, Bruno Latour and Steve
Woolgar, say they do ‘not wish to say that facts do not exist nor that
there is no such thing as reality’.24 Butler’s social constructionism
about sex is not like this. She apparently supposes she has
debunked the concepts of binary sex, specifically. And yet she does
so on general grounds that would logically extend this scepticism,
completely implausibly, to any scientific grouping whatsoever.

The sexes are socially constructed (part 2)

Butler published Gender Trouble in 1990. Also in 1990, cultural
historian Thomas Laqueur published his influential book Making Sex:
Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, in which he argues that
nearly all claims about the differences between the two sexes are
culturally and historically relative, including our own. If true, this
would clearly be good reason to deny the ahistorical reality of two
sexes, or the accuracy of any of the three models of the sexes I have
described above. So it’s worth taking a look, not least because,
apparently on the basis of reading Laqueur, UK Gender Studies
professor Sally Hines tweeted in 2019 that ‘Before the Enlightenment
the female skeleton didn’t exist’.25
In his book, Laqueur argues that, prior to the eighteenth century,
most people had a ‘one sex’ rather than a ‘two sex’ model of the
sexes. Females were conceptualised as imperfect, only slightly
different versions of males, rather than as fundamentally different
kinds of human. The ‘boundaries between male and female’ were
taken to be of ‘degree and not kind’.26 After the eighteenth century, a
rival ‘two sex’ model emerged, according to which the sexes display
prominent differences.27 But either way, Laqueur argues, ‘there is no
“correct” representation of women in relation to men and … the
whole science of difference is thus misconceived’.28 Whether the
female body is conceived as very like the male body or very unlike it,
both conceptions have equal validity in their context, and neither
possesses ahistorical truth.29 Indeed, Laqueur would see the
gamete, chromosome and cluster models of the sexes as, at most,
only relatively true to a post-Enlightenment way of thinking, and
ultimately no more ahistorically accurate than the ‘one sex’ model of
pre-Enlightenment times.30 In the eighteenth century, ‘two sexes
were invented’ largely to service narratives about social
differences.31 He thinks the idea of two pre-given sexes fitted
dominant cultural narratives at the time which favoured the ‘natural’
for political and strategic reasons: mainly, to prop up unequal power
relations between two groups of people (the powerful ones called
‘male’ and the less powerful ones called ‘female’).
Like Butler, Laqueur does a delicate dance from such radical
conclusions back to safer, more commonsensical ground, sometimes
on the very same page. For instance, he says he has ‘no interest in
denying the reality of sex or of sexual dimorphism as an evolutionary
process’.32 At the same time, though: ‘Science does not simply
investigate, but itself constitutes, the difference … of woman from
man.’33 And he talks of ‘the fundamental incoherence of stable, fixed
categories of sexual dimorphism, of male and/or female’.34
For our purposes, his most interesting claims are that post-
Enlightenment two-sex models – such as the gamete and
chromosome and cluster accounts – are ultimately no more or less
accurate than pre-Enlightenment models, and that eighteenth-
century thinkers created two sexes rather than found them. To my
mind, Laqueur doesn’t establish that increasing scientific attention in
the eighteenth century to two functionally and morphologically
different sexes must have been an ‘invention’ out of nothing, rather
than, at most, the strategically useful emphasis of newly discovered,
newly interesting, but already existent facts. It is certainly true that, at
a given point in history, prevalent cultural and political
preoccupations make the discovery of certain facts newly possible,
while the discovery of other facts will be effectively impossible or at
least very hard. For instance – apparently easily using the language
of ‘discovery’ in at least some contexts – Laqueur relates how the
clitoris was only discovered as such by anatomists in the
Renaissance. It also seems true that dominant cultural and political
preoccupations in a given period can make certain facts seem more
interesting, more germane to certain preferred narratives, and hence
riper for uptake. Perhaps then, it is true, as Laqueur says, that in the
eighteenth century there were politically strategic reasons for
emphasising the distinctness of the male and female forms. But all
this is compatible with the existence of predictable, observable and
ultimately scientifically explicable differences in human bodies – long
before humans started to notice them, show interest in them, or to
represent them in various ways.
What about the female skeleton? Does Laqueur show that before
the Enlightenment, it ‘did not exist’? No. What he shows, at most, is
that when the female skeleton was represented for the first time as
such in eighteenth-century textbooks, models and imagery – that is,
when it was (allegedly) first depicted as an obviously different form to
the male skeleton – artists and model-makers were influenced by
aesthetic ideals of canonical femininity and beauty in the concrete
forms they chose.35 But this is a claim about human imagery that
has no implications for prior facts about skeletons themselves.
At various points, Laqueur reveals his own philosophical
background, partly explaining the radical conclusions he draws. For
instance, at one point he says we can’t assess the accuracy of
modern theories of the sexes, or otherwise compare them with
earlier theories, because, in fact, there are no shared, stable terms
to refer to what both theories have in common, and so nothing in
practice to compare. He says that without ‘modern terms’ like
‘vagina, uterus, vulva, labia, Fallopian tubes, clitoris’ there was, in
pre-Renaissance times, ‘in an important sense no female
reproductive anatomy’, and such terms ‘cannot quite find their
Renaissance equivalents’.36
What Laqueur apparently assumes here is that the identity and
meaning of a word or phrase is holistic not atomistic: it depends
fundamentally on its connection to the wider background theory in
which it is embedded.37 So because pre-and post-Renaissance
thinkers had very different theories of the nature and function of the
vagina, they could not in principle share a term for that organ with a
single meaning. As Laqueur says of pre-Renaissance thinkers
supposedly tied to the one-sex model, ‘[T]he fact that [they] saw only
one sex made even words for female parts ultimately refer to male
organs.’38 Laqueur’s apparent belief in the holism of meaning also
entails we can’t easily translate a sentence containing a single pre-
Renaissance term (e.g. ‘cunt’) into a sentence employing a post-
Enlightenment word like ‘vagina’ – he apparently thinks extraction
from the original background theoretical context, in each case, is
impossible. This means we can’t say either that the post-
Enlightenment sentence is non-contextually, ahistorically true. At
most, we can say each sentence, post-or pre-Enlightenment, is true
or false only relative to its own respective set of commitments.
This all takes us into deep waters philosophically, but we can at
least say three things in response. The first is that other, more
plausible accounts of word meaning are available.39 These allow
terms with stable meanings to be shared or translated between
different background theories, opening up the possibility of
comparative judgements about the truth or falsity of different
sentences from different theoretical paradigms. Secondly, even if
meaning did turn out to be holistically tied to a given background
theory, ways of judging whether a new theory was better than an old
one would still be available. For instance, a new theory can count as
better than an old one if it is better at solving problems and puzzles
people care about, or at explaining and predicting phenomena we’re
interested in. Clearly this is true of modern theories of the sexes, as
compared to their primitive pre-Enlightenment counterparts.
Finally, if Laqueur is right, like Butler, he would seem to be making
a point that generalises way beyond theories of the two sexes. Do
big differences between ancient and modern conceptions of cancer
mean present-day cancer was invented by scientists rather than
discovered by them? Did Copernicus ‘invent’ the modern Earth and
Sun when he first theorised the former went round the latter, and not
vice versa? Were there no black holes before Einstein’s theory of
general relativity predicted them? If you baulk at these conclusions,
as I do, you might also baulk at the related conclusion about the
sexes and so seek alternative theories of meaning and truth to the
ones relied upon by Laqueur.

The sexes are socially constructed (part 3)

I turn now to a third influential attempt to convince the world that the
sexes are not natural but social. For some Second Wave and radical
feminists in the 80s, the two sexes were an entirely artificial social
division created by ‘oppression’ or ‘dominance’. French feminist
Monique Wittig writes: ‘[T]here is no sex. There is but sex that is
oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex
and not the contrary.’40 And US legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon
writes: ‘Male and female are created through the erotization of
dominance and submission.’41
Like Butler and Laqueur, these thinkers apparently conceived of
males and females as socially constructed, all the way down, with
nothing pre-given corresponding to the division. Had we a different
sort of social structure, we would have no males and females. But
they add a twist. The division was instigated and then artificially
maintained purely in the services of propping up the power of the
people called ‘males’. As Wittig puts it: ‘Every system of domination
establishes divisions at the material and economic level … The
masters explain and justify the established divisions as a result of
natural differences.’42 According to this so-called ‘dominance’ model
of the sexes, it is as if, long ago, there was only a blooming, buzzing
confusion of flesh, and perhaps also of sexual parts of different
shapes. Then one day, a group of people came along and artificially
moulded this proliferation into two categories for their own nefarious
purposes, calling it ‘natural’: the dominant males and the dominated
females.
One immediate problem with this model is one of origins: how
exactly was the oppressive pattern supposed to start? Or perhaps
more to the point, who, exactly, was supposed to have started it? Did
a random group of people start oppressing random others? Or was it
rather that there was one group better able, on average, to dominate
the second group, due to genetics and associated tendencies to
relatively superior physical strength? And if that, then how could the
oppression or dominance itself have ‘created’ such characteristics?
Not much of this makes sense.
One motive for embracing the dominance model is connected to
the feminist desire to rescue females from the spectre of ‘biological
determinism’ – the idea that behavioural and psychological traits
such as submissiveness, modesty and domesticity are determined
by female biology or otherwise natural to females. This view was and
still sometimes is used to justify the promotion of certain restricted
social roles for females, usually associated with home and family.
Assuming they rejected this, some 70s feminists then seemed to
reason in a couple of defective ways about biological determinism
and sex. On the one hand, some assumed all binary theories of sex
must imply determinism: that is, that these theories must be saying
something about the fundamental individual ‘natures’ of males and
females in terms of dominance for males, and passivity and
submission for females. Working backwards, they therefore
concluded that, since biological determinism isn’t true, binary sex
must be a myth. Meanwhile, an alternative feminist response from
some seemed to go roughly: ‘If there were no natural differences at
all between males and females, biological determinism would
obviously be false. We all want biological determinism to be false.
Hence there are no natural differences between males and females.’
Compare: Jed really wants it to be false that he’s got cancer. If there
were no such thing as cancer, it would be false that he’s got it.
Hence, Jed concludes, there’s no such thing as cancer.
In fact, a binary model of two natural sexes could be accurate, and
biological determinism still utterly false. These feminists overlooked
the fact that definitions of the sexes can be relatively minimal and
refer only to a few structural and/ or physical aspects of the body as
defining conditions, as all of the models I’ve looked at do. They don’t
have to build in any particular behavioural or psychological traits –
active or passive, dominant or oppressed, or otherwise – as
essentially connected to maleness and femaleness. Whether some
given behavioural or psychological traits are actually biologically
rooted in sex continues to be a bitter dispute, and one I’m mostly
trying to steer clear of. But we don’t need to take any stance on that
issue, either way, to be able to assert simply that there are two
naturally pre-given sexes.

There’s no such thing as ‘natural’ vs ‘artificial’

This attack on the binary existence of biological sex says that any
distinction between ‘natural’ sex and ‘artificial’ sex is arbitrary, and
that there’s no real distinction between them.
As most people do, philosophers often distinguish between natural
kinds of thing and artificial kinds of thing, known as ‘artefacts’.
Artefacts, unlike natural objects, tend to be thought of as existing
only as a result of human intentions. Think of spears, knives, bowls,
chairs, computers, robotic arms, and so on. They can’t be made
accidentally, as it were: they are made only intentionally for particular
human purposes. Production of an artefact usually also involves
intentional modification of existing natural materials, so the resulting
product has characteristics it wouldn’t otherwise have had: as when
clay is fired, or stone is chiselled. These conditions seem to
differentiate artefacts, as such, from the products of natural
processes merely initiated by humans but not otherwise interfered
with: wheat grown from seed, or babies grown from procreative sex,
for instance. Though in a certain sense these also exist as a result of
human intentions, they could equally well have been produced
accidentally without deliberate intention (lots of babies are
accidental); and the resulting ‘product’ in each case involves no
intentional modification of existing characteristics.
Some philosophers have questioned this distinction. They point
out there are many entities which in some sense seem ‘natural’ but
which also involve human intentional manipulation, significantly
changing the resulting product. So, although these are ‘natural’ they
also seem like ‘artefacts’ too. Examples include seedless grapes,
dog breeds, genetically engineered wheat, circulation systems
involving artificial hearts, and artificial skin grafts. As feminist
academic Donna Haraway concludes in her famous essay ‘A Cyborg
Manifesto’, ‘Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly
ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and
body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other
distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines.’43 Similar
thoughts have encouraged some, including Haraway herself, to
argue that there’s no clear distinction between male and female.
Injected or orally-administrated oestrogen can produce breasts and
hip fat, and reduce upper-body musculature; testosterone can
enhance biceps, cause beards to grow and make jaws squarer. Sex
reassignment surgery can turn a vagina into a penis or vice versa,
we are told. Does any of this present a problem for the models of the
sexes we have looked at?
The short answer is ‘no’. Sometimes the rhetoric of Haraway-
influenced academics make it sound as though these days, humans
are like chihuahuas or seedless grapes or genetically engineered
wheat ears: so saturated with intentional manipulation at every stage
of development that it is impossible to differentiate discrete ‘natural’
parts from discrete ‘artificial’ parts of the organism. But this isn’t right.
Humans can have artificial parts added via various medical means,
but we can still coherently categorise the difference between them
and the natural parts, by thinking about what would have been there
instead, had medics not intervened. The natural parts are all, as
Haraway puts it, ‘self-developing’, or in other words ‘endogenous’,
meaning roughly: naturally established in the organism and not
artificially put there. This point has nothing to do with health or
disease. Disordered bodily aspects such as tumours can be
endogenous and so natural in this sense, and artificial bodily aspects
can be healthy. A surgically constructed ‘neovagina’ or ‘neophallus’
may be healthy for the individual that has it, in the sense of enriching
well-being, but since it doesn’t originate from within the organism
unaided, it still doesn’t count as endogenous.
So the distinction between natural and artificial parts of the human
body remains a live one: in fact none of the features cited as
essential to or otherwise relevant for sex category membership in the
gamete, chromosome or cluster accounts can be artificially produced
through hormone treatment or surgery or anything else. Both
possession of a gamete-producing pathway and possession of a
given chromosomal configuration can only be endogenous, at least
given the current state of technology. Though technology allows
sperm sorting and gene editing, neither technique changes sex
chromosomes or alters gamete-pathway development within a single
continuous human individual. The features specified as relevant to
category membership in the cluster account are all endogenous too:
primary sex characteristics present in the womb and at birth, and
secondary sex characteristics naturally emerging at puberty, given
certain internal, naturally-occurring developmental triggers.
As it happens, there are also significant qualitative differences
between the characteristics added medically in the context of what is
called ‘sex reassignment’ surgery and endogenous ones. Surgically
constructed penises and vaginas look and function differently from
endogenous ones in a number of ways. Breasts acquired by trans
women through hormone treatment are on average very modestly
sized (one study reported changes ‘mainly resulting in less than an
AAA cup size’44) and usually require silicon augmentation to reach
desired proportions, making them compositionally and functionally
different from endogenous ones. It’s true that hormone treatment can
occasionally produce qualitatively identical secondary sex
characteristics of the opposite sex in a person (e.g. in the arm fat of
trans women, which is reported as ‘almost the same as seen in
women’ after twelve months), but in other cases desired changes
tend to be ‘approached but not achieved’.45
I can imagine a critic insisting: but why should only endogenous
features count in ‘natural’ sex classification? Isn’t that just arbitrary?
The answer is that it’s not arbitrary, because making a distinction
between endogenous and artificial parts of a sexed body serves
various legitimate explanatory purposes we can’t do without. I’ll look
at some of these in the next chapter.

Conclusion
This chapter has established no serious challenge to the idea of two
natural, pre-given sexes. There is a naturally occurrent division of
humans into males and females. Over 99 per cent of humans fall
unambiguously into one category or the other, including most people
with DSDs. As binaries in nature go, the sex division is one of the
most stable and predictable there is. In the vast majority of cases,
sex is not ‘assigned at birth’ but detected – in most cases via
observation at birth, and in a few cases later on. Despite wording of
UK laws such as the Gender Recognition and Equality Acts, sex
cannot be ‘reassigned’ through surgery or a change in legal status,
nor ‘changed’.46
Still, someone might respond: why does this distinction matter?
After all, there are lots of pointless distinctions we can make
between things. We could, say, divide all lawns up into two kinds:
those that have over a million blades of grass and those that don’t. It
would be completely boring. So why is it important to acknowledge
the distinction between males and females? What exactly does it do
for us? In fact, we couldn’t possibly do without it.
 3

Why Does Sex Matter?

The most basic and obvious reason why the sexes matters is: our
species would die out without them. For any species that reproduces
sexually, in a way that necessarily involves one male and one
female, the capacity for recognition of the opposite sex has
presumably been present in most individuals for as long as the
species has existed. As you would expect then, most people start
reliably to differentiate the sexes early on in life, learning that, within
certain ranges, distinct facial and bodily characteristics are typical for
each sex, including voice and gait.1
Advocates of gender identity theory sometimes suggest that
identifying what they call the ‘assigned’ sex of other people is a
fraught, unreliable affair. Most of the time, this isn’t true. Each sex
tends to be associated with distinct ranges of observable physical
characteristics, and none of the three accounts of sex looked at in
Chapter 2 treat any of these characteristics as essential – still less
sufficient – for being male or female. It isn’t a ‘gotcha’ to point out
that some males or females don’t have a particular characteristic; or
that some have characteristics typically associated with the opposite
sex. Still, for most people, the generalisations are true and can be
made use of in everyday identification.
To say someone can ‘reliably differentiate’ means only that most of
the time, they get it right. Mistakes can still be made. Autistic adults
sometimes struggle to reach the aptitude shown by non-autistic
children in this respect.2 Some people look markedly atypical for
their sex. But even here, identification for many gets easier when a
full range of information is considered: movement rather than a still
photograph; vocal tone, height, musculature, extremity size, and so
on. Though there are exceptions, for most people past puberty, a
period of taking hormones or having surgery is required in order to
look significantly unlike one’s actual sex. (And even then, and
especially for males, certain physical aspects strongly suggestive of
one’s actual sex can persist. Artificial oestrogen cannot undo jaw
and hand size, for instance.)
But still, even if it’s important to recognise sex for procreation, why
do we need to talk about it in other contexts so much? For many like
me, growing up in a culture influenced by 70s feminists, it is orthodox
to think we should. There seem to be a host of obvious differences
between males and females potentially affecting their respective
trajectories through life. For one, females are viewed through, and so
shaped by, restrictive and sometimes contradictory stereotypes of
femininity (‘Be pretty!’, ‘Be quiet!’, ‘Be maternal!’, etc.), and males,
stereotypes of masculinity (‘Be tough!’, ‘Be loud!’, ‘Be self-sufficient!’,
etc.). These seem an uncomfortable fit for many. And apart from the
direct influence of such stereotypes, there seem to be hundreds of
other sex-associated trends too. Suicide is much more common in
males, self-harm in females.3 Males are more likely to have an
alcohol problem.4 Females are more likely to suffer eating disorders
and depression.5 Females outperform males in school and at
university, but are less likely to be promoted in the workplace – partly
because they’re less likely to self-promote.6 Females are less likely
to do sport than males but more likely to do yoga.7 Females buy 80
per cent of novels, males 20 per cent.8 And so on.
Unfortunately, though, the listing of such trends isn’t enough to
demonstrate to everyone that sex should be discussed. This is partly
because these days it’s assumed by many – including by many
feminists – that these differences are mostly or even wholly socially
produced, rather than the inevitable legacy of biology. In other
words, this is the reemergence of the battleground mentioned in
Chapter 1, fought between ‘blank-slate’ feminists and ‘innatists’. In
the minds of some blank-slate feminists, a belief in the social
provenance of sex-associated differences provides a reason to
ignore and downplay such differences, especially when they are
thought to produce inequalities between the sexes. The background
assumption seems to be that, paradoxically, by identifying and
discussing socially produced inequalities, we further entrench them;
whereas if we ignore them, perhaps they will go away. We see this
assumption in practice on both sides of the political spectrum, from
right-wing women who say they don’t want any ‘special treatment’ as
women, to left-wing parents trying to raise their children ‘gender-
free’. This approach finds its high point – or low point, depending on
how you look at it – in academic Chloë Taylor’s argument – in a
feminist journal – that rape-crisis centres for women serve only to
‘reinscribe gendered constructions of male sexuality as dangerous
and of women’s bodies as sexually vulnerable’, and are ‘the cause of
rape’, perpetuating the problem they seek to avoid.9
Frankly, this is mad. Attempting to alleviate a socially produced
phenomenon doesn’t normally ‘cause’ it in any way the empirically
informed social sciences would recognise. But partly to bypass this
stuff, in this chapter I’ll focus on four areas where biology
unambiguously makes at least a partial contribution to important sex-
associated difference. This is not to endorse biological determinism.
But what it should do, at least, is lessen any feeling in some readers
that we could somehow get rid of these differences by ignoring them.
Focusing on biologically informed sex differences serves another
function too, for as a rule of thumb, the heavier the role biology
seems to play in a given difference, the more strongly will advocates
of gender identity theory seek to suppress special mention of it.
Doing things this way provides an opportunity to examine the costs
of this suppression.
Here, then, are four areas of human life in which sex-associated
difference clearly matters (and in which advocates of gender identity
theory say it doesn’t).

The difference sex makes to medicine

I’ll start with an easy one. The domain of medicine is the promotion
of health and the curing of disease. Since health and disease can be
directly affected by sex characteristics, sex is highly relevant to
medicine. This is obviously true of reproductive medicine, but that is
far from the only medical area in which sex is relevant. In childhood,
girls are more susceptible than boys to neural tube defects, scoliosis
and congenital dislocation of the hip. Boys are more susceptible to
asthma, autism, stuttering and pyloric stenosis.10 Later in life,
females have greater susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, while males
who get it have worse disease progression.11 More males than
females have cardiovascular disease in their lifetimes, but females
get it at a higher rate than males after menopause.12 Males are more
likely than females to have haemophilia, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s
disease and colour-blindness. Females are more likely to have
autoimmune diseases, migraines, osteoporosis, cataracts,
depression, eating disorders and Alzheimer’s. At the time of writing,
during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, twice as many males as
females are reported to have died.13 In short, sex can affect disease
susceptibility, progression and outcomes.
Pain sensitivity also varies between the sexes. Pain tends to be
more prevalent in females than males, and females tend to display
greater sensitivity to experimentally induced pain than males.14
There are also predictable sex-based differences in responses to
drugs. Some drugs are absorbed and excreted at different rates by
females and males and/or require different dosages. Some drugs are
more effective for one sex than another in tackling a particular
disease, or have more significant side effects.15
None of this has anything to do with gender identity or social role.
Evidence suggests most of the differences just listed are causally
linked to lifelong sex chromosomes, the protective effect of
endogenous sex hormones or lack of them, and other physiological
factors stemming from biological fact.16 In saying this, I don’t wish to
downplay the way social factors can skew the way we think of these
sex-based medical differences, or the interest shown in them. As
Caroline Criado Perez describes in her book Invisible Women, males
have tended to be systematically treated as the default kind of body
in drug trials and experimental medical studies.17 Female-associated
diseases have tended to be dismissed by some doctors as ‘women’s
problems’ associated with hysteria and neuroticism. These are social
problems requiring social solutions, but they don’t establish that sex
itself is wholly social.
In Chapter 2 I said that characteristics relevant to maleness and
femaleness are ‘endogenous’: i.e., self-developed within the
organism and not artificially put there. In the context of medicine, we
see the importance of this condition. Endogenous features count as
an important baseline in specifications of human health. It’s not the
only baseline; as noted earlier, disease can be endogenous too. But
still, by considering what features tend to self-develop in an
organism at various stages and averaging them, we get one useful
source of information about what’s statistically ‘normal’ at each
stage. This is then used as a source of information in working out
what health for that sort of organism looks like. For instance, healthy
bone density levels for twenty-year-old females can be calculated
partly by appealing to the average natural (i.e. endogenous) bone
density for that age group, other things being equal. What counts as
cardiac health for a seventy-year-old male will differ from cardiac
health for a twenty-year-old male, and these standards too can be
established partly by averaging natural cardiac levels for each group.
Equally, a distinction between natural and artificial bodily features is
crucial to consideration of what would be reasonable or efficient to
try to change in the body, and what the risks might be. Artificially
altering some natural feature in an organism comes with knock-on
effects for other features, bad as well as good.
In sum: sex matters in medicine. Advocates of gender identity
theory cannot change that fact, but they can change how we talk
about it. Efforts have mostly been focused on reframing the
presentation of certain bodily parts and diseases in supposedly
‘trans-friendly’ ways that no longer refer directly to sex. For instance,
a 2017 Teen Vogue article, ‘Anal Sex: What you need to know’,
refers to females as ‘non-prostate owners’.18 A 2018 Cancer
Research UK campaign urged ‘everyone aged 25–64 with a cervix’
to get regular smear tests.19 Also in 2018, the word ‘menstruators’
was used by Planned Parenthood and the Guardian.20 Interestingly,
these attempts to change language seem mainly confined to female
health. The American website Healthline’s 2018 ‘LGBTQIA Safe Sex
Guide’ refers to vaginas as ‘front holes’ throughout, yet terminology
for penises in the document remains mostly unaltered.21
These language changes are supposed to protect trans people
from psychological discomfort. Sometimes, though, that rationale is
combined with the idea that references to biology are
‘dehumanising’. In 2016, the period tracker app Clue put out a
discussion piece noting that, ‘Using the word “female” or “female-
bodied” is offensive to some. It’s seen as dehumanizing or still too
gendered.’22 But why should it seem dehumanising to refer to our
sex or to our biological basis more generally? We should not confuse
this with saying humans are only biological organisms – that is, with
the idea that humans are wholly enslaved to deterministic natural
instincts and drives, with no free will or ‘higher’ cognitive aspects.
There is a philosophical tradition stretching back at least to Aristotle
at pains to deny this. The most popular philosophical answer to the
question of what makes humans different from (other) animal
species is relatively advanced rationality. But philosophers who take
this line don’t deny humans are also biological organisms. (In any
case, talking about ‘non-prostate-owners’ and ‘menstruators’, etc., is
scarcely less dehumanising than talking about ‘females’.)
There is no harm in naming sex in medical contexts; more
importantly, there is harm in not doing so. For one thing, children will
stop learning about it and this will cause them confusion, both in the
present and later on. Equally, if you make it culturally taboo for
doctors to talk about sex, they won’t be as quick to see its relevance
in disease, pain management and drug administration. And if you
use unfamiliar words in public communications, some people won’t
understand you, at a potential cost to their health. ‘Female’ and
‘male’ are well-understood words for the sexes. ‘Non-prostate-
owner’, ‘cervix-haver’ and ‘menstruator’ are not.
So: we might as well stick with ‘female’ and ‘male’. It turns out,
when you get the cervix-havers and menstruators and non-prostate
owners and front-hole owners all together, there’s at least one
English term that applies perfectly efficiently to them, and only to
them. That word is ‘female’. Of course, an arguably even more
accessible, familiar and useful English word is ‘woman’. As intimated
in Chapter 1, it has become relatively commonplace to say that
‘woman’ is characterised in terms of ‘female gender identity’ and not
sex. So, for now, I’m avoiding the word ‘woman’, but it is worth noting
here that some healthcare providers are under pressure to remove
references to women from their communications. One of these is the
British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK’s largest independent
abortion provider. Former Chief Executive Ann Furedi tells me,
‘Trans activists seem to want an abortion-care environment that
takes all reference to women out of the frame. They want literature
rewritten so as not to refer to women, they want us to not describe
BPAS as a women’s healthcare service, or abortion as an issue that
relates to women’s rights and reproductive freedom.’ Here too there
are potentially detrimental consequences for people’s understanding.
Furedi goes on: ‘[I]t’s tempting to not make it an issue and comply,
until you consider the vast majority of BPAS patients are women who
don’t share the social, educationally privileged background of the
activists … Many patients struggle with English, and so our priority is
to make communications as clear and simple as possible – gender-
neutral language does not always help this.’23 This disregard for the
interests of people of lower socio-economic status or education is
not unusual within modern trans activism.

The difference sex makes to sport

Sport is a second area where sex unambiguously makes a
difference, and where trans activists say that it does not. It’s common
enough to say sporting competitors should not have an ‘unfair
advantage’ – but what makes an advantage ‘unfair’? If I were to
compete at tennis against Martina Navratilova, since I’m a novice
and she’s a champion, she would obviously have the advantage, but
it wouldn’t seem unfair, or at least not intolerably so.
But another kind of advantage does seem intolerable. Two
competitors would be unfairly pitted against each other if each
naturally or otherwise involuntarily belongs to a particular group (e.g.
juniors and seniors; visually impaired and sighted; wheelchair-users
and able-bodied), and there are large systematic, statistically
significant differences – e.g. on average and at peak – between
relevant physical performances of members in each of those two
groups. Where such differences are found, those groups are usually
treated as separate categories in sport, and members of each group
won’t usually meet in competition.24 Alternatively, there could be
some other difference between performances justifying separate
categories – for instance, a small but still potentially dangerous
difference between performance levels. This sort of difference
justifies distinct weight categories in boxing.
Occasionally, where a member of a group associated with lower
performance levels does well enough to match or exceed
performances in a group typically associated with higher levels, that
person may fairly compete at the higher level. So, for instance, a
junior may occasionally run and do well in a senior race without it
automatically counting as unfair. But it doesn’t work the other way
around. Normally, a member of a group associated with higher
performance levels (e.g. seniors) cannot compete fairly only against
members of a group associated with significantly lower performance
levels (e.g. juniors), even if some individual member(s) of the second
group can beat some members of the first.
According to these criteria, for most sports, males and females
should be in different competitive categories for at least two reasons.
First: for most sports there are large, statistically significant
differences between relevant physical performance levels for males
and females. Second: in contact sports, there are also potentially
dangerous differences between the two. Exceptions to these rules
are either where there isn’t any significant difference in performance
levels, or where there is, but a female manages to meet relevant
performance levels in the male group, in which case she may
perhaps fairly compete against them, but not vice versa.
The superior athletic performance levels of males are accounted
for by possession of a Y chromosome, associated natural
differences in testosterone levels, and the irrevocable post-
pubescent effects these leave on the body.25 In terms of speed,
there is a consistent 10 per cent performance gap between elite
males and elite females in track and field, which also extends to
swimming, cycling and rowing.26 Research biologist Dr Emma Hilton
has done a lot of work to publicise these differences. She notes that
the women’s world record for 100m sprinting was broken by 744
senior males in 2017 alone. In terms of strength, males are 20–25
per cent stronger than females in Olympic weightlifting.27 Wherever
speed and strength are important indicators of success in a given
sport, that sport should have separate male and female categories.
In contact sports, this is yet more pressing because differences in
average weight combined with speed and strength make contact
with male bodies particularly dangerous for female ones.
For years, none of this has looked remotely controversial. As the
2010 Equality Act says (as usual, with a confusing use of ‘gender’
meaning GENDER1, or sex): ‘A gender-affected activity is a sport,
game or other activity of a competitive nature in circumstances in
which the physical strength, stamina or physique of average persons
of one sex would put them at a disadvantage compared to average
persons of the other sex as competitors in events involving the
activity.’ Lately, though, trans activism has succeeded in convincing
at least some professional bodies that sex is not relevant to sporting
categories.
The most extreme version of this position says that gender identity
alone, not sex or even medical transition, should determine whether
one competes in men’s or women’s categories. At the 2017
Connecticut State Championships, where athletes are explicitly
allowed to compete in categories aligning with gender identity not
sex, trans woman sprinter Andraya Yearwood won the women’s 100-
and 200-metre races without hormonal treatment or surgery.28 Her
legal right to do so is currently being supported by the American Civil
Liberties Union.29 In the UK, the current policy of Durham University
states that trans students and staff are ‘welcome’ to train ‘with the
squad which best fits their gender identity, without requiring evidence
of medical transition or hormone levels’ – seemingly without
recognising the potential effects of this on female athletes, should
males start to take them up on it in serious numbers.30
A different and only marginally less unfair policy currently
employed by the International Olympic Committee says that trans
women with a misaligned gender identity can compete in women’s
sport, though only if their testosterone levels have been suppressed,
via hormonal treatment or other means, to 10 nanomoles per litre or
under for at least twelve months. This testosterone level is still six to
twelve times higher than the average level observed in females, and
so confers an advantage.31 Suppression also has no effect on male
features permanently and advantageously acquired at puberty, such
as, on average: greater height; longer limbs; larger heart, lungs and
extremities; narrower pelvis size, and advantageous cellular muscle
memory.32
Some bad arguments have been launched to support such
policies. Some have come from trans woman philosopher and
amateur cyclist Veronica Ivy (who formerly raced and published
under the name Rachel McKinnon). One is plainly wrong – that Ivy
and other trans woman athletes are, after all, ‘female’.33 Another is
that ‘sport is a human right’. If so, though, it’s a right for females too,
without their being pushed out of qualifying, humiliated on the field or
– as the BBC casually reported of one female rugby player recently –
‘folded like a deckchair’ during a game by a six-foot trans woman
playing on the opposite team.34 In any case, no one is stopping trans
women athletes from competing in the appropriate category with
fellow males. Some already do. Another strawman of which Ivy is
fond is that sometimes females beat her. Yet the principle isn’t ‘if a
few females at the top end of the female category can beat a few
males in the male category, the categories are unfair and should be
merged or reformed’. It’s about comparing average performance
levels across groups as a whole.
Sometimes comparisons are made with the situation of people
with DSDs like Caster Semenya – reported as having XY
chromosomes – to argue that trans women should compete with
females.35 Whatever we say about the case of competitors with
DSDs and Y chromosomes, it’s an important difference that their sex
is (perhaps) complicated to classify, whereas the sex of trans women
typically is not. And if the point is pressed that we must treat both
alike, then so be it. In that case, neither should compete in female
categories. For otherwise, we face nothing less than the destruction
of female sport.
There is also a tendency to attribute ludicrous motives to critics.
Take Australian Rules Football player Hannah Mouncey, who
transitioned age twenty-six, is 6ft 2in and weighs 220lb. She
complained in a Guardian op-ed that weight restrictions in female
categories, presumably designed to exclude trans women like
herself from pulverising female players on the field, could only
possibly be motivated by sexist, body-shaming restrictions on what
count as acceptable female shapes. ‘Think about the message it
sends to women and girls about their bodies,’ Mouncey intoned. ‘[I]f
you’re too big, you can’t play. That is incredibly dangerous and
backward.’36 Meanwhile, the Independent’s chief sportswriter
Jonathan Liew, writing in 2019, seemed to think that any critic of
trans sport policies must be worried, needlessly and neurotically,
about males transitioning in great numbers in order to cheat. But
that’s not the worry here at all. The worry is about the intrinsic
injustice of pitting one sort of sexed body, with significantly different
physical capabilities, against another of a very different sort.
Personal motives are irrelevant – just as they are in, for instance,
doping offences.
Liew also wrote, ‘Let’s say transgender athletes pour into women’s
sport, and let’s say … they dominate everything they touch … Why
would that be bad? Really? Imagine the power of a trans child or
teenager seeing a trans athlete on the top step of the Olympic
podium. In a way, it would be inspiring. Sometimes we forget that
there are bigger things than sport.’37 It seems rather that sometimes
Liew forgets that females have ambitions or feelings. Leaving aside
what exactly is supposed to be ‘inspiring’ about males outperforming
females in ways they couldn’t hope to match, as I read this I think of
Jennifer Wagner, placed 3rd to Veronica Ivy’s 1st in the 2018 UCI
Masters Track World Championship, tweeting afterwards that this
‘definitely wasn’t fair’ after months of training and sacrifice. I think of
Samoan female weightlifters Feagaiga Stowers and Iuniana Sipaia,
beaten into silver and bronze by forty-one-year-old late-transitioning
trans woman Laurel Hubbard in the 2019 Pacific Games. I think of
college athlete Selina Soule, edged out of qualifying for the finals in
the 2019 Indoor Track & Field State Championships 55-metre dash
by two trans women athletes, including Andraya Yearwood. I think
about Mixed Martial Arts fighter Tamikka Brents, who, in a fight with
trans woman Fallon Fox, suffered concussion and an orbital bone
fracture in the first round. Said Brents afterwards, ‘I’ve fought a lot of
women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did
that night.’38 I think of injuries gained, and scholarships, places and
prizes lost. And all this in a context in which women’s sport struggles
to survive as it is. I don’t see much here that’s inspiring.

The difference sex makes to sexual orientation

A third area in which sex makes a difference is sexual orientation.
There is commonly held to be a difference between a sexual
preference and a sexual orientation. Sexual preferences include
preferences for blondes over brunettes, or macho men over pretty
boys. At the more exotic end, they can include predilections for cars,
chandeliers and dalliances with farm animals. None of these are
sexual orientations, though. Opinions differ on what makes an
orientation an orientation, but my preferred explanation says that for
a preference to count as an orientation, it has to be stable in
individuals, widespread among the human population, and have a
range of relatively important social consequences.39
Two such orientations are heterosexuality and homosexuality.
They are defined in terms of specific patterns of attraction. You are
heterosexual if you, a member of one sex, are stably sexually
attracted only to members of the opposite sex to you. Alternatively, if
you’re stably attracted only to members of the same sex as you, then
you’re homosexual. If you’re stably attracted to both sexes, you’re
bisexual. In addition to these terms, equally applicable to both males
and females, the English language has words to describe
homosexual orientations disaggregated by sex. ‘Lesbians’ are same-
sex-attracted females. There are other sex-disaggregated words too,
often pretty negative: ‘faggots’, ‘dykes’, etc.
Putting things this way will, I predict, raise the hackles of readers
schooled in queer theory, and in particular fans of French post-
structuralist Michel Foucault. It is a commonplace there that
orientations are – just as biological sex categories are for Butler –
socially constructed, historically contingent and culturally located. As
trans scholar Jack (then non-trans Judith) Halberstam summarises
approvingly: ‘within a Foucauldian history of sexuality, “lesbian”
constitutes a term for same-sex desire produced in the mid-to-late
twentieth century within the highly politicized context of the rise of
feminism …; if this is so, then “lesbian” cannot be the transhistorical
label for all same-sex activity between women’.40 My short answer is
that, while obviously we need to acknowledge the interesting fact
that throughout the ages, same-sex activity has had many different
relatively local sociocultural meanings and names, it wasn’t invented
in the twentieth century.41 I’m talking about distinctive, relatively
ahistorical patterns of sexual relationship in individuals, and not
particular cultural representations of that pattern. That’s a coherent
distinction to make.
Saying a sexual orientation must be ‘stable’ for an individual
doesn’t mean you can’t have voluntary and even pleasurable sexual
experiences at variance with it. It’s fairly typical for young people to
take a while to figure out what their orientation is, and sometimes it
takes older people a while too. This is more likely for gay people in a
culture in which heterosexuality predominates.42 A gay person might
be less willing or even able to notice relevant clues as to where the
real patterns of attraction lie. Or a person can just get drunk and
have opportunistic sex with whoever happens to be there, against
their normal grain. They can have sex with one kind of person,
fantasising wildly about another. Or they can be romantically
attached to someone in a way that temporarily causes them to seem
attractive but wouldn’t otherwise. Strictly speaking, a sexual
orientation should be understood in terms of the sex(es) you would
be sexually attracted to under relatively self-aware, uncoerced,
uninhibited circumstances, and not necessarily who you actually are
attracted to right now. A sexual orientation is for life, not just for
Christmas parties.
On most plausible models, sexual orientations develop due to
factors beyond individual control. Controversy reigns about whether
these are genetic or environmental or both,43 but either way,
heterosexuality and homosexuality are not conscious choices. You
like sex with the sex(es) you like, and it seems to start quite early on
in life.44 On that basis, it can only be pointless and psychologically
damaging to try to change someone’s orientation through what is
known as ‘conversion therapy’. These days it is accepted by UK
professional therapeutic bodies that attempting the conversion of gay
people is ethically fraught.
Let’s pause and look at how many times the word ‘sex’ occurred in
the characterisations just given of heterosexuality and
homosexuality, and remind ourselves, because it can get confusing
with so much sex around, that this is ‘sex’ as in male or female and
not the copulatory sense. In order to know the sexual orientation –
hetero-, homo-or bi – of person A, you need to know both A’s sex
and the sex of the kind of person to whom A is stably attracted. In
explaining why someone has the sexual orientation they have, the
concept of biological sex is bound to come into the explanation.
Perhaps predictably, then – though still surprisingly, given that
they started out fighting for gay rights – this conception of sexual
orientation has been rejected by trans activist organisations such as
Stonewall and GLAAD. In their view, it’s gender identity, not sex, that
makes you a woman or man. This is assumed to have
consequences for sexual orientation concepts such as gay, straight,
lesbian, and so on. A ‘lesbian’ is now understood as anyone with a
female gender identity attracted to others with female gender
identities. This can include biological males as lesbians, as long as
they have a female gender identity. Equally, a gay man is understood
as anyone with a male gender identity attracted to others with male
gender identities. Being straight, meanwhile, is defined as a person
with a given gender identity being attracted to someone with an
opposite gender identity (albeit that talk of ‘opposite’ doesn’t make
much sense in a context in which gender identities are supposed to
be multiple and non-binary). The upshot is that sex is irrelevant to
sexual orientation.
There seems to me at least one glaring problem with all this: if
heterosexual attraction were directed primarily towards gender
identity not sex, it would be pretty inefficient in terms of the
continuation of the species. If we had to work out someone’s inner
gender identity before we knew who to fancy, we would die out fairly
quickly. In practice, people tend to insist, not that they’re attracted to
gender identity but simply to ‘gender’ not sex. (That is, they mean
something like GENDER2.) They say they have a sexual attraction
to ‘Femme’ people, or ‘Masc’ people, meaning: to people of either
sex who have a stereotypically feminine presentation or masculine
presentation. It is implied that assumptions about a person’s sex are
irrelevant to such attractions.
But for most, that can’t actually be true, because what counts as a
person’s presenting ‘Femme’ or ‘Masc’ changes depending on
whether that person is thought of as male or female. For instance:
the female model Erika Linder looks very like a young Leonardo
DiCaprio – so much so that her breakout photo shoot deliberately
depicted her as Leo. But while a young DiCaprio looks relatively
feminine for a male, Linder (at least, in that shoot) looks relatively
masculine for a female. Even though Linder and DiCaprio have
similar-looking features at the physical level, we interpret these
features as differently feminine/masculine, relative to accompanying
assumptions about their owner’s sex. So even when you think you’re
attracted only to someone’s feminine or masculine presentation,
perceptions of sex are still playing a significant underpinning causal
role in your attraction nonetheless.
This point is reinforced by the findings of a recent survey, in which
12.5 per cent of participants indicated they would consider dating a
trans person.45 For nearly half of these respondents, their stated
preferences about whom exactly they would date were described by
the researchers running the survey as ‘incongruent’. For instance,
roughly two-thirds of the self-described lesbians in the group said
they would only date trans men and not trans women, or would at
least date trans men as well as trans women. The researchers had
assumed that, to be consistent with lesbianism understood in terms
of gender identity, lesbians should exclude trans men and include
only trans women. The researchers explained these findings as
demonstrating ‘femmephobia’. A less complicated hypothesis would
be that lesbians are not stably sexually attracted to males.
In arguments about the relevance of sex to sexual orientation,
three objections tend to come up fast. One is the familiar line: ‘You
can’t see someone’s chromosomes!’ That’s like saying you can’t
fancy brunettes because you can’t see the melanocytes that create
pigment in their hair. As we’ve seen, sex tends to be reliably
connected to a variety of observable, potentially arousing physical
features: look, touch, taste, scent and vocal sounds.
A second objection goes: are you really saying that a female in a
relationship with a gorgeous, feminine, post-surgery trans woman
isn’t a lesbian, just because she’s sexually attracted in this case to a
male, technically speaking? Equally: are you saying that a man in
lust with a hot ripped trans man, post-surgery and hormones, isn’t
actually gay? Actually, I’m not. Rather, I’ll say what I’ve already had
cause to say a couple of times: these sorts of relatively unusual
cases stretch existing concepts to their limits. Our concepts weren’t
designed for them, and we just don’t know what to say (and that’s
OK). There are reasons both for and against saying that this is a
lesbian and a gay man, respectively. In the first case, there’s female
sexual attraction to a female-like body, at least on the outside, but
the female-like body is artificially produced and not an endogenous
phenotype. The body is actually male, no matter what it looks like. In
the second, there’s male attraction to a male-like body on the
outside, but again it isn’t endogenously produced and is a female
body nonetheless.
For an objector to focus only on this sort of example is strange,
because their own position would also classify as ‘lesbians’ females
who habitually lust after males with absolutely standard male bodies,
as long as the latter had female gender identities. And it would even
count males with standard male bodies themselves as lesbians – as
long as they too had female gender identities. They would, for
instance, presumably agree that Alex Drummond – a trans woman
on Stonewall’s Advisory Board who has apparently had no surgery,
taken no hormones, looks unambiguously male in terms of
morphology, and even wears a full beard – is a ‘lesbian’ because of
an attraction to women. In a Buzzfeed interview Drummond says, ‘I
identify as lesbian as I’m female and attracted to women … I’ve been
in a long-term committed relationship for a long time now so I’m
spoken for, but certainly I draw out the inner lesbian in women!’46 Yet
this is surely to stretch the concept of lesbian to breaking point. In
old money, Drummond is heterosexual, and so, presumably, are the
females attracted to her.
 A third objection is an accusation: why are you ‘policing’
sexualities? Can’t consenting adults just have sex with whomever
they desire? My answer is: Of course they can (or at least, in an
ideal world, should). This objection confuses accurate categorisation
for the purposes of explanation with prohibition. I’m not setting
myself up as the sex police. You can go to bed with whichever
consenting adult you like. What I am saying is that if you consistently
have enjoyable relations with someone of the opposite sex, you’re
probably heterosexual/ straight. That’s not to stop you doing what
you like. It’s just to accurately describe what you’re doing. No
judgement, positive or negative, is implied either way. (I’m gay
myself, remember.)
The long-term effects of LGBT organisations like Stonewall and
GLAAD treating sexual orientation as based on gender identity have
yet to be properly established, but at least two are emerging, neither
good. First, it’s reported by some whistleblower clinicians that
significant numbers of trans-identifying children and teens are same-
sex attracted.47 Taking a cue from the prominent public messaging of
LGBT organisations, they seem to be interpreting their own patterns
of sexual attraction as a sign that they must have a misaligned
gender identity combined with a ‘straight’ sexual orientation. So, for
instance, same-sex attracted females are interpreting themselves to
be straight boys or men. Identity exploration in children is not in itself
harmful. However, it becomes a lot more serious when well-meaning
parents and teachers uncritically go along with this narrative, seeking
what may well turn out to be life-long medication on the minor’s
behalf to alter his or her body to reflect a ‘real’ identity. Worse, also
thanks to lobbying from LGBT organisations, as we have seen, some
professional therapist bodies now characterise any questioning of
this self-narrative as a prohibited form of ‘conversion therapy’.48
Hence, there are significantly reduced opportunities for a child or
teen to hear alternative interpretations of their sexual desires. As
these children grow up, some are coming to realise that they were
just gay all along. A wave of ‘detransitioners’ is emerging, many of
whom are lesbian and gay, and many of whom now express regret
about the life-altering drugs or surgery they were prescribed in the
past.49
 A second problematic effect relates specifically to young lesbians:
that is, to female-attracted females. Working out your homosexual
orientation in a world in which heterosexuality is the norm can be
difficult. Taking the difficulties on mentally while negotiating society’s
expectations of you as a young female is tough. It’s fairly obvious
that young females tend on average to be less assertive, more
anxious and keener to please than young males. Put these
tendencies into a queer community in which young lesbians have
sought refuge and comradeship, and in which there are also trans
women self-declaring as fellow ‘lesbians’, and you will inevitably find
lesbians – whether themselves trans-identified or not – pressured
into sexual relations with members of the opposite sex, and in some
case succumbing.
Recently, trans activism has given the world the fairly revolting
image of the ‘cotton ceiling’: riffing on the idea of a glass ceiling for
those women in the workplace unsuccessfully seeking promotion,
but replacing glass with knickers to represent the ‘ceiling’ that
female-attracted trans women often cannot get ‘past’. Along similar
lines, in 2016 Veronica Ivy tweeted, in reference to sexual relations
with trans women, that sometimes ‘the cis lesbian gets over her
genital hang-ups and realises that she can cope just fine’. In 2019, a
University of Brighton conference ‘Gayness in Queer Times’ asked,
as part of its official call for papers: ‘How can gay space be made
more trans-inclusive?’ and then suggested ‘bedrooms’ as a potential
site of inclusion.50 Also in 2019, Oxford philosopher Professor Amia
Srinivasan, writing in the London Review of Books, described
‘transphobia’ as an ‘oppressive system that makes its way into the
bedroom through the seemingly innocuous mechanism of “personal
preference”’.51 Some legal theorists have even gone as far as to
argue that the laws around ‘sex by deception’ should be changed, so
that, for instance, a trans man or trans woman initiating a sexual
encounter with someone while actively falsely claiming to be of the
same sex as them cannot be treated as fraudulent.52 Stonewall
apparently agrees, arguing in 2015 that there should ‘be ‘[j]udicial
clarity of “sex by deception” cases to define the legal position on
what constitutes sex by deception based on gender, and to ensure
trans people’s privacy is protected’.53
 The implication of all this is that the main reason for a lesbian
refusing to sleep with trans women, or a gay man with trans men,
could only be bigotry and disgust for trans people. Yet this ignores a
much more obvious explanation: it’s the sexual orientation, stupid.
With such statements coming from what seem like authoritative
liberal and left-leaning voices, we get a sense of what must be the
moral pressure exerted at a more local level upon younger people ill-
equipped to deal with it, and especially young lesbians. A former
attendee of a trans youth group recalls that ‘one day, there were
three MTFs over forty who were hitting on the teen FTMs, very
explicitly. It was obviously making us uncomfortable, but almost no
one ever said anything, only changed the topic or tried to engage
them in a conversation away from us’.54 If only those young FTMs –
that is, trans men, or ‘Female To Male’ people – had felt socially
permitted, within queer culture, confidently to insist upon the fact of
their same-sex attraction. Yet largely thanks to the LGBT
organisations supposed to protect them, they weren’t. And many still
aren’t.

The difference sex makes to the social effects of

heterosexuality
There is a fourth and final way in which biological sex makes a
distinctive contribution to social life. Human reproduction requires
some input, as it were, from one male and one female: sperm plus
egg. There is no way around it. Being heterosexual isn’t essential for
reproduction, but it certainly helps move things along. Being
heterosexual gives you a personal motive to have sex with the
opposite sex. And having sex with the opposite sex tends, if you
aren’t careful, to produce babies. The vast majority of births
worldwide occur non-assisted as a result of sexual intercourse
between males and females, and the vast majority of those
couplings are between heterosexuals. In 2019, the Office for
National Statistics (ONS) estimated that 1,307,000 opposite-sex
cohabiting couples in the UK had dependent children, while only
3,000 same-sex cohabiting couples did.55 Widespread
heterosexuality is an adaptive trait for any sexually reproducing
species, including ours.
Heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation predictably involving
two people with marked physical differences between them. Same-
sex couples are more likely to be evenly physically matched along a
range of dimensions. This fact about heterosexuality – that it is likely
to involve two very physically different humans – has specific
economic and cultural effects that homosexuality doesn’t tend to
share, or shares only derivatively by modelling heterosexual norms.
I’ll focus here on two sorts of effect in particular.
The difference sex plus heterosexuality makes to work

First, the fact that only females and not males are naturally capable
of pregnancy and breastfeeding partly explains, as one factor in a
complicated causal story, why females tend to be less successful, in
terms of pay and promotion, in the workplace. Pregnancy and
breastfeeding take many females out of the workplace, at least
temporarily, and also reduce their capacity to do some kinds of
physical work while in it. Both these things can affect chances of
career progression, either because females get pregnant or because
it is anticipated by employers that they might. Many heterosexual
females have disproportionate responsibility for childcare and
domestic work relative to male partners, partly due to the legacy of
habits and expectations formed as a result of pregnancy and
breastfeeding. These factors are also relevant to why, in
heterosexual couples, the career trajectory of the male tends to be
prioritised over that of the female. Overall, biological differences
between heterosexual males and females are part of a bigger causal
story about why females tend to do more part-time, ‘lower skilled’,
and so lower paid work than males.56
Those locked into culture wars about sex and gender should note
that I’m not saying here that e.g. average differences in male and
female pay are wholly explained by biology (let alone ‘deserved’).
You can deny this and still think that typical physical disparities
between male and female bodies are one explanatory factor among
many. Stable biological facts have contingent social effects in a
given society in conjunction with other social aspects. A society can
always choose to mitigate those effects by instigating different social
arrangements and structures. In fact, that’s obviously what we
already do with health and medicine. So in this arena we could, for
instance, try to make childcare cheaper and more widely accessible
to help females into the workplace full time. Still, whether or not we
choose to do that, the background biological facts about physical
differences between sexes still count as part of the overall
explanation for whatever present effects exist. The social
consequences of sex are, as academics say, ‘multifactorial’, but that
doesn’t negate the input of biology as one explanatory factor
amongst many.
In the past, UK policymakers have tried to mitigate certain social
effects of biology where they have seemed to penalise one sex in
particular. Statutory maternity leave is designed to mitigate some of
the economic impact of late pregnancy and early motherhood.
Equality law makes it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of
pregnancy and maternity. In the past it has also been acknowledged
that, since females typically face more challenges in career
progression and promotion than males, they can be helped by
dedicated resources, support and incentives: career mentoring,
support groups, special award schemes, all-women shortlists, and so
on. And it has been considered a social priority to collect accurate
data on sex-associated differences in the workplace and home, in
order to track any patterns of disadvantage for females or for males.
In recent times, however, trans activism has challenged these
measures with significant success. In the workplace, resources and
support formerly dedicated to females are now usually available to
anyone with a female gender identity. When events at workplaces
are held to protest against what is called, euphemistically, the
‘gender pay gap’ – more accurately described as the sex pay gap –
they’re often promoted as open to anyone with a female gender
identity, male or female. The main governmental instrument for
establishing ‘gender’ equality in Higher Education, the Athena SWAN
Charter, now includes ‘an inner perception of identity’ as ‘a key factor
in the discrimination experienced predominantly by women and
transgender people’ without further differentiating between them.57
Also as indicative, Labour Party all-women candidate shortlists,
originally set up to increase the number of female MPs in a male-
dominated House of Commons, are now explicitly open to ‘all
women, including self-identifying trans women’.58 And when the
Financial Times named its Top 100 Female Executives in 2018,
presumably as a way of incentivising women’s career progression in
the higher echelons of blue-chip companies, the ‘gender fluid’ male
Philip Bunce, who wears dresses and skirts and calls himself Pippa
for only part of each week, was on the list.59
Data collection on sex has also been adversely affected. In the
UK, the Census is considered by many to be the gold standard of
national data collection, feeding into many academic analyses of
socio-economic difference. Yet in the 2011 Census, the ONS
explicitly advised respondents to answer the only question about
their sex in terms of gender identity.60 Though this advice has now
been dropped by the ONS for 2021, replacing ‘sex’ with ‘legal sex’ in
their guidance, at the time of writing Census authorities in Scotland
and Northern Ireland apparently still plan to interpret the question
about ‘sex’ as one about ‘gender identity’. Critics say that this
decision is particularly likely to affect the quality of data about
younger age groups, where misaligned gender identity is more likely
to be reported.61
Clearly, males with a female gender identity don’t share the same
career or socio-economic challenges as females simply by having a
misaligned gender identity, because they don’t share the
reproductive capacity that gave rise to them (and in many cases, no
one is likely even to falsely assume they do). The success of trans
activism in this area has significantly reduced our collective capacity
to address the original problem – which still hasn’t gone away. To
this, it’s sometimes objected: ‘What about infertile women? Are you
saying they should be excluded from any protective measures for
females in the workplace?’ No, on at least two counts. The first is
that females as a whole tend to be disadvantaged in the workplace
in relation to their group-associated reproductive role, irrespective of
whether particular individuals actually fulfil that role. The second is,
in any case: that’s not how protective measures for large numbers of
people work. They are necessarily broad-brush. It’s more efficient, in
aiming a particular measure at a large group, to accept that it might
not apply to a small proportion of that group, than to take the trouble
of working out exactly to whom the measure applies and applying it
selectively.
The difference sex plus heterosexuality makes to assault statistics

Biological differences plus heterosexuality make a social difference

in assault statistics too. There are significant differences in sexual
assault prevalence for males and females. In 2017 it was reported
that an estimated 3.1 per cent of women (510,000) as compared to
0.8 per cent of men (138,000) aged sixteen to fifty-nine had
experienced sexual assault that year.62 Over lifetimes, 20 per cent of
women as compared to 4 per cent of men experienced some type of
sexual assault.63 In 2018, twice as many women as men
experienced domestic abuse at the hands of their partners.64
Generally speaking, males are responsible for the majority of sexual
and domestic assaults committed upon females. These differences
seem at least partly explicable in terms of typical differences
between males and females in strength, size and direct
aggression.65 That’s not to say developmental and other
environmental factors don’t play a role too; it is just to acknowledge
that things wouldn’t be as they are if males were systematically
smaller, weaker and less testosterone-fuelled than females.
Partly in light of these facts, for a long time there’s been a social
norm that spaces where females undress or sleep, and so are
particularly vulnerable to sexual assault – changing rooms,
bathrooms, dormitories, prisons, hostels, etc. – should be male-free.
This is to minimise sexual offences against females in those spaces.
Remember that sexual offences can include not just rape or other
physical attacks but also exhibitionism and voyeurism. Generally,
females are three times more likely than males to encounter one of
these offences.66 For females who have suffered assault by males in
the past, there are rape crisis centres and domestic violence
refuges. These, originally at least, were run by females for females,
both to protect victims from their attackers and to allow traumatised
women space to recover. Though technically all this looks like
‘discrimination’ on the basis of sex (since males are excluded), the
Equality Act allows that it’s permissible if ‘a proportionate means to
achieving a legitimate aim’. Up until recently, it has seemed
uncontroversial that single-sex spaces and services count as such.
Recently, though, thanks to creative public reinterpretation of the
Equality Act by Stonewall and other trans activist organisations,
there’s been an astonishingly fast reconceptualisation of the norms
around such ‘women-only spaces’. Previously they were clearly
understood as dedicated spaces for females. Now we are told that
gender identity is the only criterion for legitimate entry. Stonewall’s
published advice to the many organisations signed up to its paid
Diversity Champions scheme is clear: ‘You should allow anyone to
access facilities, spaces and groups which align with their gender
identity.’67
Diversity Champions scheme members have been quick to
comply. In 2019, the City of London Corporation, responsible for
governance of the financial district of London and also for
maintaining over 40km2 of London’s green spaces and parks,
introduced a Gender Identity Policy according to which trans people
should be able to access single-sex services aligning with their
gender identity. This included Kenwood Ladies Pond on Hampstead
Heath, despite the existence of both a mixed and a men’s pond.
From 2015 onwards, it has been the policy of both HM Prison
Service and the Scottish Prison Service (another Diversity
Champion) to house some male prisoners professing female gender
identities in the female prison estate, whether or not they have
received medical intervention or Gender Recognition Certificates.68
Most UK universities now have policies that explicitly allocate ‘single-
sex’ facilities – bathrooms, changing rooms, showers and residences
– on the basis of ‘self-identification’ or ‘self-ID’. The Cardiff University
policy says, ‘You have a legal right under the Equality Act 2010 to
access facilities – such as changing rooms and toilets – according to
the gender with which you identify.’69 Leeds University policy says:
‘Trans people can use single-sex facilities (such as toilets and
changing rooms) according to their self-identified gender.’70 And in
2019 it was reported that posters had gone up in public toilets in the
University of the West of England asking, ‘Do you feel like someone
is using the wrong bathroom?’ Any respondents in the affirmative
were instructed not to ‘challenge’ the person, but instead to ‘respect
their identity’ and to ‘carry on with your day’.71 Meanwhile, most of
the providers of rape crisis centres and domestic violence shelters
make no distinction between trans women and women, either as
clients or as employees.
These rapid, seismic policy changes are bound to have
detrimental consequences for female safety as they become further
entrenched. Since gender identity is not something anyone can see
directly, and is supposedly potentially detached from behaviour,
dress and physiognomy, practically speaking this means that any
male at all can enter a space and claim, if challenged, that it aligns
with his gender identity. As conveyed by the UWE poster, females
are expected not to challenge but just to ‘carry on’ with their own
business. This obviously puts them at additional risk of assault.
The full consequences of this will take a while to emerge, partly
because well-established social norms take a long time to dismantle.
Humans are social animals who often like to follow the lead of
others. At the moment, even where a policy explicitly permits access
in terms of gender identity not sex, many will be reluctant to make
use of it, assuming they even know about it. Others, unaware of the
policies, will continue to challenge those of the opposite sex entering
a space. Both things help to preserve the genuinely single-sex norm.
But this protective effect won’t last for ever. As more people start to
find out about the policies and to access spaces in line with gender
identity, displacing the old sex-based convention, it’s not hard to see
how it will be easy for badly intentioned males to take advantage and
so expose females to risk. Criminologists know this, as do legal and
medical professionals. In 2015 the President of the British
Association of Gender Identity Specialists told a Government inquiry
that, ‘It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to
pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the
case.’ He goes on to talk of a case in which there was ‘a plethora of
prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was
a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier,
females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard’.72
 Instructive cases come from places where self-ID has been policy
for longer and so where old social norms around sex are less
entrenched. In 2018, it was reported that nine homeless women in a
California shelter were forced to share a shower with a trans woman,
‘who made lewd and sexually inappropriate comments, and leered at
them while they were naked’.73 That same year, in Canada, trans
woman Jessica Yaniv launched lawsuits against several female
beauticians for refusing to provide a genital wax in their own homes
to Yaniv, on the grounds that Yaniv was male. The lawsuits were
eventually lost, although apparently because the motive was
financial gain and racism, not because female beauticians in Canada
are allowed to specialise in intimate care for female bodies if they
choose to.74 In Toronto, Kristi Hanna, a female resident of a woman-
only shelter for recovering addicts, was made to share a room with a
pre-operative trans woman, and though the trans woman did nothing
wrong, still, the experience reportedly caused Hanna and others
there to have ‘stress, anxiety, rape flashbacks, symptoms of post-
traumatic stress disorder and sleep deprivation’.75 The UK also had
its own cases in 2018. Trans woman Katie Dolatowski was jailed for
assaulting a ten-year-old girl in the women’s toilets of Morrisons
supermarket, Dundee, a month after filming another young girl in a
supermarket toilet in Dunfermline.76 After this conviction, Dolatowski
was housed in a female-only unit for homeless offenders.77 And
trans woman Karen White, in receipt of neither surgical nor hormonal
intervention nor a legal Gender Recognition Certificate, was put in a
women’s prison on the basis of gender identity and promptly sexually
assaulted female prisoners there.78
Trans activist objections here tend to be of four main kinds. The
first says that predators such as White and Dolatowski aren’t ‘real’
trans women. But why not? They say they have a misaligned gender
identity, and so fit the only criterion demanded by trans activist
organisations. The second response says, in outrage: Are you
saying all or most trans women are predators? No, obviously not –
just as to say that males generally should be excluded from woman-
only public space isn’t to say all or most males are predators. They
aren’t. To repeat: preventative measures are usually by necessity
broad-brush. They aren’t supposed to be a character reference for a
group as a whole.
A third response is some feverish whataboutery. What about
sexually predatory lesbians in women-only spaces? Aren’t they still
there? Leaving aside the fact that violent lesbians aren’t anything like
as pressing a documented social problem as violent heterosexual
males, this response pretends that, in instigating a genuinely single-
sex norm for spaces, the plan all along was to exclude all of the
possible predators rather than just the majority of them – and that if
that wasn’t the plan, any other plan to reduce predation should be
abandoned because inconsistent. This would be a preposterously
stupid approach, putting logical consistency before effective practical
action. Something is clearly better than nothing, especially since
males continue to be the most significant cause of sexual assault on
females.
A fourth and final response is to emphasise the number of times
single-sex spaces give rise to humiliating episodes of ‘misgendering’
(aka missexing) for ambiguous-looking people. To be clear, this does
happen in single-sex spaces, especially to masculine-looking
women. As trans scholar Jack (then non-trans Judith) Halberstam
writes: ‘For a large part of my life, I have been stigmatized by a
masculinity that marked me as ambiguous and illegible.’79
Halberstam writes informatively about ‘the bathroom problem’ he has
encountered throughout his life, including in one case someone
mistaking him for a male in a public women’s toilet and calling
security.80 Missexing in single-sex spaces happens, and it is a highly
regrettable cost of the current system. However, that cost needs to
be considered alongside the potential costs of effectively allowing
any male at all into places where females are unusually vulnerable to
sexual assault. On balance, I don’t think the former harm outweighs
the latter. The obvious solution seems to be to introduce sex-neutral
‘third spaces’ alongside genuinely single-sex ones for those who feel
more comfortable there, rather than simply abandon the latter
altogether.

It’s not a competition

The four effects of sex I have discussed in this chapter – on
medicine, sport and sexual orientation, and also on things like the
sex pay gap and assault prevalence in combination with
heterosexuality as the most commonly found sexual orientation –
aren’t importantly influenced by gender identities. Though every
effect I discussed potentially manifests in somewhat different ways
depending on cultural context, still a significant effect of some kind
cuts across big differences in race, class and religion. These effects
are influenced by what sex people are, what their bodies are like,
which sex they are aroused by, how all this fits into a culture, and
what further social effects are then produced. Even if it is
successfully argued that we should recognise gender identity, there
should be little doubt that we should also recognise, track and legally
protect sex. Sex and gender identity should not be placed in
competition.
 4

What Is Gender Identity?

As we know, John Money and Robert Stoller first coined the

concept of gender identity in the 1960s. Over fifty years later, what
I’m calling ‘gender identity theory’ has taken off in parts of the
Western popular imagination – the idea that trans people are
defined, not as people who have had surgery, or taken hormones, or
who dress or behave in particular ways, but as people whose gender
identities are misaligned with the sex ‘assigned’ to them at birth. Cis
people are those whose gender identities align with birth-assigned
sex. And either way – whether cis or trans – gender identity is what
makes you man, woman or neither.
Thanks to the advocates of gender identity theory, many
institutions have moved to make gender identity a determinant of
legal and political rights. In some contexts, it is treated as at least as
important as sex. For instance, since 2017 legislation in several US
states makes it possible to obtain new identity documents (male,
female, or non-binary) on the basis of a simple declaration of
misaligned gender identity, replacing any reference to actual sex.1
This is now also true in Malta, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Denmark,
Ireland and two Australian states (Victoria and Tasmania). In the UK,
serious pressure is still being exerted by trans activist organisations
to rewrite the Gender Recognition Act and Equality Act, and to
legally recognise gender identity rather than ‘gender dysphoria’ or
‘gender reassignment’ as the significant factor in each case.
Sometimes, the thinking seems to go: whether you’re a woman or
man has been an important determinant of rights and protections for
over forty years. It’s recognised in UK laws such as the 1975 Sex
Discrimination Act and the 2010 Equality Act. But: if what actually
makes you a woman or man isn’t sex but gender identity, then
gender identity should be the rationale for these protections, not sex.
However, the problem here is that – as we now know from the
previous chapter – recognising, tracking and protecting sex is
nonnegotiable, whatever we end up saying about gender identity. So
the status of gender identity can’t get justification simply by riding on
the coattails of legislation designed to protect sex. It has to earn its
own keep.
I’ll consider arguments that what makes someone a man or
woman is gender identity, not sex, later on. I want to bracket that
issue here, in order I hope to remove a lot of distracting heat from
the discussion. For now, I want to work out what gender identity is.
This should put us in a better position to see if it is as important as
campaigners and some policymakers claim. I’m going to suggest
having a gender identity misaligned with sex is something
comprehensible, to which society should pay respectful attention –
though not the degree of uncritical acceptance we currently see.

Gender identity and non-trans people

What is it, exactly, to have an ‘inner’ ‘psychological’ sense of a
female or male identity? It’s obviously not the same as working out,
on the basis of your own body parts and reproductive processes,
whether you should be characterised by others as female or male.
For many trans people – and nearly all of them at first – their bodies
and reproductive processes are clearly characterisable as one or
other, both by others and themselves. As the well-known trans
author Jan Morris writes of her childhood: ‘By every standard of
logic, I was patently a boy.’2
It seems clear that, if we want to understand what having a gender
identity is like, we shouldn’t ask non-trans people, for many report no
particularly strong sense of one. This lack is sometimes said to be
the result of ‘cis privilege’– you really notice your gender identity only
when you suffer as a result of it, and cis people don’t. A 2017 Vox
article suggests a thought experiment to help cis people access their
gender identities. They were asked ‘if a huge sum of money would
get them to physically transition to the opposite gender’. Most said
no. The questioner then asked them to ‘lock onto’ their reasons why.
‘Take that sense and imagine if you had been born in the opposite
body.’3
Yet this isn’t very convincing. It seems true that most non-trans
people don’t have any positive desire to transition. In the above
scenario, perhaps they don’t fancy the thought of painful surgery or
life-long drugs, and are not motivated by money. Whatever the
reason, this demurral need not suggest positive possession of an
inner gender identity aligned with sex.
A further complication is that lots of non-trans people are unhappy
with their sex – but without that making them trans. In particular, lots
of women don’t enjoy being female. Second Wave feminist Iris
Marion Young summed it up when she wrote that attitudes towards
women from society ‘produce in many women a greater or lesser
feeling of incapacity, frustration, and self-consciousness’.4 Less
academically, the internet search term ‘hate being a girl’ brings up
pages such as ‘I hate having boobs, I don’t like them at all’; ‘6 things
I hate about myself as a woman (in science)’; ‘My daughter hates
being a girl, what do I do?’ and ‘101 reasons why I hate being a girl’.
None of these pieces are by trans people.
Let’s ignore that problem for now. What we seem to have gathered
is that there’s doubt about whether non-trans people positively have
something called a gender identity. Maybe, for all we know, there can
only ever be misaligned gender identities, relative to sex, and no
aligned ones. We shouldn’t let a desire for pleasing symmetry get in
the way of actual evidence. So let’s focus on trans people. When we
do this, several different models of gender identity emerge. The first
one I’ll discuss is both the most popular and the worst.

The ‘stick of rock’ model of gender identity

When you bite into a stick of rock you’ve bought for a treat at the
seaside, and look at its pale insides, there’s often the name of the
resort printed through it in darkened sugar. On what I’ll call the ‘stick
of rock’ (SOR) model, gender identity is a persistent stable part of
the self, going through it – or through you – like words in a stick of
rock.
According to the SOR model, gender identity is a fundamental part
of the self, and determines who you ‘really are’. Recall Principle 3 of
the Yogyakarta Principles, described in Chapter 1. This says gender
identity is ‘integral to … personality’ and ‘one of the most basic
aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom’. Trans bioethicist
Simona Giordano writes that gender identity is ‘best understood as a
fundamental element of a broader notion of who each of us is, as a
segment of personal identity’.5 Similarly, mental health counsellor
Dara Hoffman Fox writes that gender identity ‘is a core aspect of
who we are’.6 Says influential US trans woman Mara Keisling: ‘We’re
among the few people who are really approaching things with full
integrity and full transparency … We’re saying, “This is who I really
am.”’7 A 2019 book for kids about gender identity is called It Feels
Good to Be Yourself. And an advertisement for the American
Mariposa Health clinic, which provides ‘gender-affirming hormone
therapy, from anywhere’, exhorts prospective clients to ‘Live your
authentic life’.8
On the SOR model, gender identity is presented as ‘innate’. See,
for instance, Stonewall’s definition of gender identity: ‘A person’s
innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or
something else … which may or may not correspond to the sex
assigned at birth’.9 The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘innate’ as
‘Existing in a person (or organism) from birth; belonging to the
original or essential constitution (of body or mind); inborn, native,
natural’. Correspondingly, many people seem to think gender identity
is ‘in the brain’. Also on the SOR model, the gender identity innately
in you is something you become consciously aware of over time,
perhaps eventually feeling compelled to express it through dress,
make-up, hormones or surgery. Your strong yearning to be of a
different sex, or disaffection for your own sexed body, or attempts to
pass as the opposite sex, and so on, are treated as expressions or
evidence of your innate gender identity. But even when you’re
unaware of it, it’s still there, waiting to be ‘discovered’ or ‘realised’.
Model and trans woman Munroe Bergdorf writes: ‘When I said
“girlhood” I mean just me discovering myself. Truly discovering
myself. Like understanding what it meant to be a girl, what it meant
to be me.’10
Presumably partly because we can normally know about another
person’s gender identity only by asking them, SOR also has it that, if
someone tells you they have a misaligned gender identity, they
should be ‘affirmed’. This is slightly more nuanced than ‘whatever a
trans person says about their gender identity is true’, because it
allows for the fact someone might have good reason to hide their
gender identity. However, if someone says they do have a
misaligned gender identity, we should always believe them, for they
have no good reason to lie, and they can’t otherwise be wrong.
Eminent medic Robert Winston writes: ‘No one else can tell
someone else what their gender identity is.’11 And in their Trans Teen
Survival Guide, trans authors Fox and Owl Fisher say: ‘Gender
identity is … the gender that we know ourselves to be, something no
one else can feel.’12
Some people think children – even small children – who say
they’re boys or girls, in variance with their sex, must be revealing
‘real’ misaligned gender identities. The authors of The Transgender
Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals write: ‘It is
common for children who are transgender to try to let their parents
know this when they are very very young.’ The authors include
testimonies from adult relatives, recounting how, at a very young
age, their child spoke or behaved in a way assumed indicative of
misaligned gender identity. Says one: ‘He has asked how old he can
be before he has his “peepee” cut off.’ Says another: ‘He was a little
baby of about eighteen months and his first formed sentence was
“Me a boy mama” … I knew something was up. He was always
wanting “boyish” type toys and I had a feeling he was different from
my three older daughters.’13 This view also finds apparent support
from medical professionals. In her book for kids called What’s
Gender Identity?, Katie Kawa writes that a ‘leading group of doctors
who work with young people have said children often have a sense
of their gender identity by the time they’re four years old’.14 Other
authors put it even earlier, at between two and three.15
 Another common aspect of SOR is a ‘born in the wrong body’
narrative. Though many trans people reject this narrative,
nonetheless it persists. In one recent survey, 20 out of 51 trans men
used it.16 Medical interventions are sometimes presented as an
attempt to ‘correct’ the body or make it ‘align’ with gender identity. A
trans man told the Guardian, ‘The hormones and surgery is about
aligning my body to what it should have been at birth. Being born
with the correct parts would have made things easier.’17 Jan Morris
writes: ‘I was born with the wrong body, being feminine by gender
but male by sex, and I could achieve completeness only when the
one was adjusted to the other.’18
Taken at face value, the SOR model seems to provide justification
for the increasing legal and political importance of gender identity.
Treating gender identity as innate and potentially emerging into
consciousness early in life suggests it is something persistent and
fundamental in a person, and so deserving of recognition. If your
own gender identity is something only you can really know about,
this would seem to require an ‘affirmative’ approach from
professionals – after all, they are not you. And this point would also
seem to legitimate self-ID for Gender Recognition Certificates, rather
than professional medical gatekeeping.
So let’s look at evidence for the SOR model.
Is gender identity innate?

Trans activists sometimes say that while sex is allegedly about

what’s ‘between your legs’, gender identity is about what’s ‘between
your ears’ – which is to say, in your brain. We have already seen that
the former point is false: sex is about gamete-producing pathways,
chromosomes or a cluster of features involving much more than
genitalia. But is gender identity between the ears? Yes, in the
innocuous sense that everything psychological about you, including
gender identity, is a result of brain processes. This includes features
and capacities acquired after birth partly as a result of exposure to
an environment. However, if the claim is the stronger one, that
gender identity is an innate, permanent, structural fact about the
brain – the lettering inside the stick of rock, if you will – then this is
far less clear.
Sometimes scientific studies make headline-grabbing claims that
look useful for SOR: for instance, that gender identity is
‘programmed into the brain’ and ‘irreversible’.19 In these studies,
scientists start with some assumptions about what ‘female’ and
‘male’ brains, on average, are like. This is so they can try to see if
brains of trans women are more similar, in some aspect of their
structure, to female brains than males; or brains of trans men more
similar to male brains. There’s an important point buried here. In
practice, trying to find the neural correlates of gender identity isn’t
just an attempt to correlate gender identities with structural brain
aspects. It’s also, crucially, to ‘justify’ the identity-attribution of a
person by finding some structural aspect of their brain more like the
opposite sex. To see this, compare these two imaginary findings: a)
‘Males with female gender identities are more likely to be born with
brain feature X!’; b) ‘Males with female gender identities are more
likely to be born with brain feature X, which most females share and
most males don’t!’. The latter would look far more exciting than the
former, as it appears to justify the trans person’s identity in a way the
former doesn’t.
Already, this takes us into contested territory, because it’s
intensely disputed whether there are such things as ‘female brains’
and ‘male brains’, in the sense of having distinctive observable
structural characteristics. Though the matter is controversial, I’ll
assume for the sake of argument there are.20 Even so, the evidence
presented about gender identity doesn’t seem very secure. A 2020
review notes that some researchers claim to have found two areas of
the brain – BNST (the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis) and INAH3
(the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus) – more
similar in trans women and non-trans women than they are in men.
However, the review notes, the sample size for this study was small.
Also problematically, some of the trans women in the study were
long-term recipients of oestrogen, which might have affected
findings. Data on other brain differences is also pronounced ‘limited’
and does not ‘provide a reliable conclusion’.21
 There’s a more fundamental problem, though. On the SOR
account, gender identity is something individuals can become
consciously aware of. They have authoritative self-knowledge about
it, arguably in a way in which those around them cannot. So how is,
say, a male brain having a smaller and so more ‘female-like’ brain
area BNST or INAH3 supposed to result in conscious awareness,
within the individual, of a female identity? There’s no obvious direct
route. The BNST is said to be ‘important in a range of behaviors
such as: the stress response, extended duration fear states and
social behavior’.22 INAH3 is said to be implicated in sexual
behaviour patterns (indeed, there’s a theory that homosexual males
have smaller and more ‘female-like’ INAH3 areas than straight
males).23
This raises an alternative hypothesis. That is: these atypical brain
areas could be producing behaviours that are on average more
female-like than male-like, or, at least, are viewed as ‘female-like’ by
society. The subject becomes conscious of this similarity, and their
self-perception, reinforced perhaps by others, feeds into the
contingent formation of a misaligned gender identity. For instance, if
it’s the case that males with a smaller ‘female-like’ INAH3 are more
likely to be homosexual then, given still-powerful cultural
associations between the stereotype of masculinity and
heterosexuality, perhaps some of these males go on to form female
gender identities. It’s not that structural brain areas have gender
identity ‘programmed’ into them, but rather that they influence a set
of apparently female-like behaviours, the perception of which, in a
given environmental context, feeds into the contingent formation of a
misaligned gender identity. In that case, gender identity wouldn’t be
innate: being influenced by biology isn’t the same as being innate.
The same sort of issue besets a different attempt to naturalise
misaligned gender identity, this time connecting it to hormone
exposure in the womb. In 2013 the current Director of the NHS
Gender Identity Development Service for children (GIDS), Dr Polly
Carmichael, told The Times that ‘there was growing evidence that
hormones in early development could have a permanent influence
on gender identity and behaviour’. So far, so very SOR-friendly. In
practice, as the article makes clear, this conclusion comes from
looking at rare cases: females with the DSD Congenital Adrenal
Hyperplasia (CAH), exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone
in early development. ‘Their behaviour is more boyish in terms of
their choice of playmates and self identity,’ Carmichael said, citing
one study that ‘showed that girls with CAH were more likely to prefer
toys that are usually chosen by boys, such as vehicles and weapons,
and have greater interest in rough-and-tumble play’.24 A different
study in a similar vein describes girls with CAH drawing ‘technical
objects’ like ‘soldiers and fighting’, rather than ‘women, flowers and
butterflies’ more typical of female children’s drawings.25
As discussed, these are children whose bodies are significantly
atypical for the female phenotype, and in several aspects more
typical for the male one. Even leaving aside ambiguous genitalia,
girls with CAH tend to be more muscular than girls on average, more
aggressive in play and more physically active.26 So one possible
explanation of the data is that female children with CAH like being
around male children more than females because of testosterone-
caused physical similarities between them, and the opportunities for
more vigorous play this can give rise to. Given these girls often like
being around boys, it’s not surprising that they then start to share
interests with boys, in terms of toys, drawing or anything else. We
should also note that unusual hormone exposure in the womb
seems, on some studies, to be connected to later homosexual
orientation.27 For all these reasons, girls with CAH are presumably
also more likely to interpret themselves as ‘boyish’ or ‘tomboys’, and
even perhaps to see themselves as boys full stop. But none of this
establishes it was testosterone exposure that directly produced
gender identity in utero.
In sum, what the SOR model seems to ignore is that misaligned
gender identity could be formed in a person, in a developmental
context, partly as a result of their acquired map of the world and of
their own place in it – of what counts as female-like or male-like, and
of how they personally match up, or don’t. Given available evidence,
this looks more likely. When trans people say they ‘know’ their
gender identity or have ‘discovered’ ‘it’, or that their gender identity is
their ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ self, it’s highly unlikely to be because they
somehow gained privileged access to some prior brain fact about
themselves which justifies this attribution directly.

Medical model
Like the SOR model, the medical model of gender identity uses
authoritative-sounding scientific language to give the impression that
gender identity is a relatively permanent feature of a brain and body.
The medical model essentially sees a misaligned gender identity as
a mental illness or disorder, the main symptom of which is a
condition called ‘gender dysphoria’. According to the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5), published by the
American Psychiatric Association, gender dysphoria in an adult is
diagnosed via the exhibition, for at least six months, of ‘clinically
significant distress or impairment’ plus at least two of the following
(bear in mind here that, confusingly, ‘experienced/ expressed
gender’ refers to gender identity, i.e. GENDER4, and ‘other gender’
refers to the opposite sex, i.e. GENDER1):

1. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/ expressed

gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.
2. A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex
characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s
experienced/expressed gender.
3. A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex
characteristics of the other gender.
4. A strong desire to be of the other gender.
5. A strong desire to be treated as the other gender.
6. A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions
of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from
one’s assigned gender).28

In practice, the presence of gender dysphoria is ascertained in

adults through questionnaires such as one called the ‘Gender
Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire’. The ‘male assigned at
birth’ version asks whether, in the past twelve months, a patient has
felt: ‘satisfied being a man’, ‘pressured by others to be a man,
although you don’t really feel like one’, ‘that you have to work at
being a man’, ‘that you were not a real man’ and ‘that it would be
better for you to live as a woman rather than as a man’. It also asks
whether you have ‘had the wish or desire to be a woman’, ‘dressed
and acted as a woman’, ‘presented yourself as a woman’ and ‘had
dreams in which you were a woman’ and whether you have ‘disliked
your body because it is male’, ‘wished to have hormone treatment to
change your body into a woman’s’ or ‘wished to have an operation to
change your body into a woman’s’.29
As you might expect, in the medical model there’s a great
emphasis on ‘treating’ misaligned gender identity, understood as an
impairment. Unusually for a psychiatric diagnosis, sanctioned
treatment aims to change the body first, and not (directly) the mind.
The main forms of treatment are hormones, and perhaps also
surgery, either to remove sex characteristics or create new versions
of them. Though this treatment removes or otherwise inhibits the
function of biologically healthy tissue and reproductive systems, it is
viewed as medically necessary to alleviate distress. There’s often
also emphasis, in medical discussion, on comorbidity with other
psychiatric or psychological conditions alongside gender dysphoria:
anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, paraphilia and personality
disorders, as well as histories of trauma or abuse.
The medical model has some perceived advantages for trans
people. It represents the provision of surgery and hormones as a
medical need (not just ‘cosmetic’ surgery), releasing funding for it
from the NHS and other healthcare systems. It provides a narrative
in which a person isn’t responsible for having a misaligned gender
identity. Some find this comforting in a world in which recrimination
from loved ones for a transition can be high. Though it pathologises
misaligned gender identity, to some extent it also culturally
‘normalises’ it by putting it into the medical realm with which most of
us are familiar. And it presents possession of a misaligned gender
identity as a disability, and as such requires society to accommodate
it.
I think the medical model also has less attractive aspects,
however. As with historical ‘treatments’ for homosexuality, there is a
suspicion that in treating misaligned gender identity as a disorder,
medics are effectively pathologising sex-nonconforming behaviour
because of residual underlying distaste or prurience. Some have
even worried that they are re-pathologising homosexuality, covertly.
This impression is not lessened by the discovery that, as pointed out
by academic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Gender Identity Disorders
were first introduced into the DSM in 1980, just at the moment when,
under pressure from the gay rights movement, ‘homosexuality’
understood as a disorder was removed.30
There is often relatively little interest shown in whether
psychological distress – not to mention comorbid psychiatric
conditions – is connected to prevalent cultural norms about sex-
nonconforming behaviour and desires. In societies where conformity
to sex-based stereotypes is high, and nonconformity socially
punished, it is perhaps unsurprising that trans people feel distress.
But under the medical model, this is often unexplored. As one former
patient of a UK Gender Identity Clinic says: ‘There is a system of
saying, “Okay here’s your hormones, here’s your surgery, off you
go.”’31
Generally, many proponents of the medical model seem relatively
uninterested in the contribution made by personal interpretation of
the world around one, and one’s place in it. The medical model
presents a neat story about a persistent, long-lasting mental
problem, possibly starting in childhood or teenage years, and if not
innate, then at least having an aetiology relatively detached from
local environment. Again atypically for a psychiatric diagnosis, it
treats misaligned gender identity more like a permanent
neurodevelopmental disorder than a potentially temporary mental
disorder such as depression or bulimia. Under the model, misaligned
gender identity is not something relatively fluid that might emerge via
personal interpretation. As Judith Butler says critically about medical
‘diagnosis’ (using ‘gender’ for gender identity, i.e. GENDER4): ‘The
diagnosis … wants to establish that gender is a relatively permanent
phenomenon. It won’t do, for instance, to walk into a clinic and say
that it was only after you read a book … that you realized what it was
you wanted to do, but that it wasn’t really conscious for you til that
time’.32
 Another problem with the medical model, at least as it matches up
to contemporary trans people’s lives, is that some people with
misaligned gender identities are stable and well functioning with
‘social’ transition only (i.e. non-physical behavioural changes).
Equally, the ‘strong desires’ described in DSM-5 diagnostic criteria –
desires to be of the opposite sex or to have a differently sexed body
– don’t necessarily mean clinically significant distress must be an
accompaniment. Indeed, the DSM-5 effectively recognises this by
making clinically significant distress a further separate condition on
gender dysphoria, alongside those sorts of desires. But given the
existence of these well-functioning people, it seems strange to make
clinical levels of distress a condition of having a misaligned gender
identity. Worse: combined with the idea trans people are defined in
terms of having misaligned gender identities, it effectively says only
people with a history of impairment can be trans.
Once clinically significant distress is removed as a condition of
misaligned gender identity – as I think it should be – then it’s no
longer a medical problem. The medical model ceases to apply.
Terrible distress may accompany misaligned gender identity, and
medical intervention may be appropriate as a solution, but neither
has to be there. And it’s not a clinically significant impairment, in
itself, strongly to want to be the opposite sex, or to wish your body
were very different, as I’ll discuss below. But before I do, I want to
look at another influential model of gender identity, featuring a by-
now familiar figure.

The queer theory model of gender identity

This model is rooted in the work of Judith Butler and other queer
theorists. Before getting into it, I need to set aside a couple of
distractions. We know that Butler thinks most or all categories for
humans, including scientific ones, are wholly socially constructed.
So, for obvious reasons, Butler is unlikely to have much truck with
the idea of a gender identity ‘misaligned’ with sex. I also want to
bracket for now the question of what makes you a ‘woman’ or ‘man’.
Here I am considering only what gender identity is. If we focus on
that question, I think queer theorists have some interesting things to
say about it.
Butler thinks that in the context of social constructionism, ‘gender’
– expansively meaning observable sex, the social stereotypes
around sex, being women and men, and all the rest of it – can only
ever be a ‘performance’. Queer theory’s preferred form of
performance is one that breaks down or ‘queers’ existing power
structures and hierarchies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there’s an
emphasis on the impermanence and fluidity of gender identity. SOR-
like narratives of gender identity as ‘innate’, ‘really in’ someone,
‘fundamental’, ‘authentic’, ‘discovered’, and so on, are all seen as
misguided attempts to naturalise something fundamentally social to
make it seem more legitimate. There is also a move away from the
idea that gender identity must be all-or-nothing, and from a ‘binary’
assumption that gender identities must be male or female, towards
the idea of blurred identities and of their proliferation, understood as
a radical political act. This is why some aspects of current trans
activism emphasise the alleged multiplicity of gender identities that I
described in Chapter 1.
Particularly attractive is the emphasis on the potential influence of
self-interpretation upon gender identity, and the way that attempts to
naturalise gender identity can obscure that. As Butler puts it: ‘Life
histories are histories of becoming, and categories can sometimes
act to freeze that act of becoming.’33 Earlier in this chapter I
hypothesised that a misaligned gender identity might arise as a
result of interpreting a sex-nonconforming body, or sex-
nonconforming behaviour, in a particular environmentally influenced
way. Later on, one might come to interpret those things as indicative
of something different. We see this in the phenomenon of the
‘detransitioner’ – someone who used to think of themselves as trans
but who no longer does. ‘Everybody says that gender is a social
construct, but we also act like it’s somehow an innate part of a
person’s identity,’ one detransitioner told The Stranger magazine. ‘I
started to think the whole concept of transitioning was regressive.’34
Proponents of the SOR model might dismiss detransitioners as a
fundamentally different sort of phenomenon to those who ‘really’
have misaligned gender identity. Detransitioners were never really
trans in the first place, it’s sometimes said. But if identities are
fundamentally attached to personal meaning-making, and if
meaning-making can change over an individual’s life, this can’t be
right.
The queer theory model has drawbacks, however. The presumed
blurring and multiplicity of identities seem to have limits. Once we
move definitively away from any relation – even if it is negative – to
the ideas of male and female or man and woman, we lose a sense of
what certain particularly complicated gender identities are supposed
to be. Let’s return for a moment to some of those officially protected
in UK universities, as listed in Chapter 1. These included ‘demifluid’
(people ‘whose gender identity is partially fluid whilst the other
part(s) are static’) and ‘pangender’ (people who identify ‘with a
multitude, and perhaps infinite … number of genders either
simultaneously, to varying degrees, or over the course of time’).35
Shorn of even an indirect connection with binary sex categories,
these identities are fairly incomprehensible. It’s really not clear how
you would reliably know that you had one, let alone establish
someone else was discriminated against on such a basis. This may
not matter much to queer theorists but it should matter to
policymakers.
Another concern for some is that a queer theory model seems to
trivialise, or at least wholly politicise, what for many is
psychologically important in a way that transcends politics. Trans
woman Joy Ladin writes in her memoir: ‘For me, gender is more than
a performance.’36 And as trans scholar Jay Prosser has objected,
‘there are transsexuals who seek very pointedly to be
nonperformative, to be constative, quite simply, to be’.37 Equally, if
adoption of a misaligned gender identity is thought beneficial only
insofar as it performatively disrupts existing power hierarchies, then
this seems to undermine any rationale for politically protecting it or
entering it into law. On the relativistic terms set out by queer theory,
to do this would just be to substitute one set of damaging power
hierarchies with another.
A further problem with the queer theory model is also connected to
this politicisation of gender identity. We are told insistently that all
gender identities are equally valid. So, as in the SOR model, there
can only be ‘affirmation’ – but this time, not because there really is
some underlying innate fact of the matter that has been discovered,
but rather because affirming these identities is seen as a beneficially
subversive political act. Yet this leaves no critical resources to
analyse particular claims about gender identity as better founded or
more conducive to individual or societal well-being than others.
Where some people are making life-altering medical decisions in its
name, this looks more than a bit cavalier.
This concludes my round-up of what, to my mind, are mostly
unsatisfactory gender identity models. I haven’t attempted to stick
rigidly to the standard presentation of these models, but rather have
tried to make sense of dominant models in my own way. There are
some I haven’t discussed. In particular, some people in Gender
Studies are fond of talking of a ‘Biopsychosocial’ approach. As Alex
Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker put it in their book How to Understand
Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are, ‘For all
of us, gender experience is a complex mix of our biology, our
psychology, and the social world around us.’38 In practice, this isn’t
so much a theory as an initial framework for a programme of
research. Iantaffi and Barker make the plausible but limited point that
physical facts about sexed bodies can causally interact with
individual psychological profiles, and vice versa (as when, for
instance, a female with a male gender identity pursues sport and so
gets a more muscular physique); and that both are influenced by
current sociocultural context and possibilities. I don’t disagree, but
this is hardly specific to gender identity. I turn now to what I hope is a
more helpful and detailed account.

An ‘identification’ model of misaligned gender identity

What I’ll call the identification model is inspired by the British
sociologist Stuart Hall. Hall, himself inspired by post-structuralist
theorists like Butler, argued that cultural identities generally should
be viewed as processes of active ‘identification’ rather than as
settled, stable facts about the self. Unlike him, though, I’m interested
in articulating the psychological more than the political aspects of
identification.
The identification model involves the general idea of someone
subconsciously and consciously ‘identifying’ with another.
Psychoanalysts Heinz Hartmann and Rudolph Loewenstein write
that although there are different ideas about identification in
psychoanalytic theory: ‘We all agree that the result of identification is
that the identifying person behaves in some ways like the person
with whom he has identified himself [my italics]. The likeness may
refer to the characteristics, features and attitudes of the object, or to
the role the object plays in reality (or to the role it plays in reality
according to the fantasy of the person who makes the identification);
it may mean to “take the place” of the other person. Freud …
describes it also as “moulding oneself” after the fashion of the object
that has been taken as a model.’39
Though the talk here is of identifying with another person, you can
also identify with a country (as in nationalism) or a sports team (as in
sports fandom), or with a beloved pet, or even with nature as a
whole. People can identify with pop stars, film stars, teachers,
political and religious leaders, friends or strangers. In most
psychoanalytic schools of thought, identification can be dysfunctional
– especially when the subject gets lost in fantasy or harmful
behaviours – but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a great source of
value and meaning. It is enhanced by the sense of belonging and
acceptance people can find with like-minded others who share their
identifications, and is part of what fuels wider social practices such
as political party rallies, pop concerts, or justice movements like
environmentalism and radical feminism.
Partly, identification involves affect – desire or yearning to be like,
or sometimes even to merge with, another. In the words of
psychiatrist David Olds, this can give rise to ‘imitation, conscious and
unconscious, as well as more practical aspects such as learning
procedures and patterns of behavior that resemble those of the
other’. Identification may also involve assuming ‘the goals and
values of the other’, and steering ‘one’s life in the direction of
achieving those goals’.40 Identification also involves already seeing
yourself as similar to the other. As Olds puts it, there is ‘influence on
perception – apprehending the other as similar to oneself’. Stuart
Hall writes: ‘Identification is constructed on the back of a recognition
of some common origin or shared characteristics with another
person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of
solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation.’ Still,
perceived similarities aren’t enough to make it true that you actually
are identical to the object you identify with. As Hall writes: ‘Once
[identification is] secured, it does not obliterate difference.’41
Applied to gender identity, then, an identification model says that
to have a misaligned female gender identity is to identify strongly, in
this psychological sense, either with a particular female or with
femaleness as a general object or ideal. (You might also say ‘identify
with womanhood’ but I’m leaving womanhood aside for now.) To
have a misaligned male identity is to identify either with a particular
male or with a general object or ideal of maleness (or manhood).
And to have a misaligned non-binary identity is to identify either with
a particular androgynous person or with a general ideal of
androgyny. Strong identification will often involve dysphoria,
understood as an aversive emotional response to perceptions of
one’s own sexed body and to its difference with the body one longs
to see.
An identification model fits well with the yearning, idealised quality
of many first-hand accounts of trans experience. Trans man Lou
Sullivan writes evocatively in his diary, age nineteen, prior to
transition: ‘My heart and soul is with the drag queens. This last week
also I wanted to go and leave everything and join that world but
where do I fit in? I feel so deprived and sad and lost. What can
become of a girl whose real desire and passion is with male
homosexuals? That I want to be one? I still yearn for that world, that
world I know nothing about, a serious, threatening, sad, ferocious,
stormy, lost world.’42 Jan Morris recounts how she prayed ‘Please
God make me a girl’ as a child, and later ‘still made the same wish
whenever I saw a shooting star’.43 Jack Halberstam writes: ‘If I had
known the term “transgender” when I was a teenager in the 1970s,
I’m sure I would have grabbed hold of it like a life jacket on rough
seas, but there were no such words in my world. Changing sex for
me and for many people my age was a fantasy, a dream, and
because it had nothing to do with our realities, we had to work
around this impossibility and create a home for ourselves in bodies
that were not comfortable or right in terms of who we understood
ourselves to be.’44 And Munroe Bergdorf talks of the moment she
thought about transitioning: ‘It was after watching Clueless at a
friend’s house and – it was a group of girls – just seeing how they
were with each other and watching the movie at the same time and
seeing female interaction/ friendship and how it’s not a fictional thing.
I think every now and then people realise that, when you haven’t
been exposed to something, these things actually exist. It’s like a
gay person going to a gay bar for the first time and realising “oh my
God, this is where I fit in, this is me, these are my people”.’45
Seeing misaligned gender identity as identification also explains,
in the words of American medical manual DSM-5, the frequent
presence of a ‘strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and
reactions’ of the opposite sex. For as just described, characteristic to
identification with another person or ideal generally is the
combination of already feeling similar to the other, while desperately
wanting to be still more similar. When we read first-hand accounts of
trans people’s childhoods, it seems that gender identity is often
formed partly in relation to a perception of the body, sexuality or self
as atypically female-like or male-like (often with distressingly
prejudiced responses from those around one). Here’s Munroe
Bergdorf again: ‘Through high school and puberty, I battled with
being told to be a “boy”, and what was expected of me from a male
perspective.’ Paris Lees describes how her father ‘humiliated’ her for
– in his words – ‘walking like a poof’ and for ‘talking like a pansy’.46
Laverne Cox recounts: ‘I was bullied because I didn’t act the way
someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act.’47 Though a
perceived similarity with the opposite sex might be partly based on
being attracted to the same sex as them, equally, other perceived
similarities may be more important. Recent research suggests that
gender identity and sexuality are only weakly correlated in the
contemporary trans population taken as a whole.48 Whatever the
perceived similarities are exactly for an individual, in practice there
need be no clear mental separation between wanting to be like
another and seeing oneself as already partly like them. There is a
reciprocal flow between these two psychological aspects that means
they can’t easily be separated.
The identification model also fits well with first-hand testimonies
about experiences of gender dysphoria. According to some: ‘It’s a
constant effort to align yourself externally with how you feel
internally.’ ‘I would describe it as a disconnect between my mental
self-image/identity and my body’s physicality.’ ‘My gender dysphoria
ignites an intense longing for my body to appear more stereotypically
masculine.’49 These descriptions convey a sense of a painful
mismatch between the ideal one strongly identifies with and a
perception of what one presently is. Dysphoria can fuel gender
identity, and gender identity can fuel dysphoria. Psychiatrist Az
Hakeem describes in his book Trans how he observes in clients who
are developing misaligned gender identities a characteristic
trajectory from ‘an early sign or symptom of something not quite
right’ and a ‘change in mood’ to a ‘period of searching for meaning
behind the experience to change in self’ and eventually an
‘experienced change in self attributed to gender identity’. This is then
followed by an ‘increasing preoccupation with gender identity’, a
‘retrospective attribution of gender as cause of problems in … life’,
and a ‘heightened awareness of gender in everyday life in relation to
self and others’.50
Compared to the SOR model, the identification model doesn’t
posit some separate fact of gender identity lying behind the
emotions, desires, yearnings and convictions of similarity. The
identification is the misaligned gender identity and not a symptom or
‘expression’ of ‘it’. And although there is always a brain explanation
for every psychological phenomenon including this one, there’s no
presumption that misaligned gender identity lies in a single neural
location or particular sex-atypical brain fact. In line with the medical
model, meanwhile, a gender identity isn’t something you’re directly
consciously responsible for. Generally, we don’t choose
identifications, they start subconsciously, though we can have
indirect influence in altering them in certain therapeutic
circumstances (to be explored below). Equally, though, in common
with the queer theory model and unlike the medical model, a role is
allowed for personal meaning-making. Identifications may change
throughout a life. There is room to acknowledge the role of
contingent environmental influences on who or what we identify with.
One of the most attractive aspects of the identification model
concerns its potential for variously evaluating gender identity claims.
A misaligned gender identity isn’t inevitably something to be fought
or struggled with, for on this view, identification needn’t be
maladaptive. It needn’t be distressing for the individual and is often
compatible with a well-functioning life. Existing dysphoria can
apparently lessen over time with the right interventions. Even if it did
originate in childhood trauma, that doesn’t mean having a misaligned
gender identity is wrong for an individual, and indeed, might well be
an adaptive way of coping with past or present. Most of us have
aspects of our personalities forged in non-ideal circumstances, but
that doesn’t make them intrinsically bad for us.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with adults exploring and
expressing identifications with the opposite sex or androgyny in
behaviour, dress and, in some cases, hormones and surgery. If it
sometimes seems that way, it is partly because there’s still such
general disgust and prurience about sex-nonconforming behaviour,
especially in males. My stance on this might appear odd to those
feminist readers who associate misaligned gender identities with
what they see as regressive social stereotypes about masculinity
and femininity, in a blameworthy way. Their reasoning seems to go:
for a male, for example, to say ‘I have a female gender identity’, or
even just to say ‘I feel like a woman’ can only really mean, in
practice, ‘I feel attracted to regressive social stereotypes of
femininity’ – passivity, meekness, ‘sissyness’, and so on. Ditto for
females with male gender identities. ‘They said we were male
chauvinist pigs, they said we were the enemy,’ writes a ‘he-she’
character of his fellow lesbians in Leslie Feinberg’s semi-
autobiographical novel, Stone Butch Blues.51
I think this assumption is a mistake and will explain why further on,
but in the meantime, I agree that identification with the opposite sex
is likely to involve reference to social stereotypes. It’s based on an
ideal or fantasy, after all. But, social stereotypes are not in principle
regressive. Arguably, stereotypes are heuristics, helping us to make
rough-and-ready, fallible generalisations when we need to make
decisions fast. What does seem true is that many female-associated
stereotypes are in practice highly regressive and unhelpful. Even so,
it seems strange to blame trans women for their attraction to
regressive female-associated stereotypes when apparently so many
non-trans women are attracted to them too. And remember, I am not
talking at this point about what makes you a woman – these issues
have become so entwined that it’s easy to keep defaulting to that
assumption.
Equally, the identification model allows that an identification with
the opposite sex isn’t always to be ‘affirmed’ without question, unlike
SOR and queer theory models. Generally, our emotional connections
to ideals, and associated desires and feelings, tend to fit into
narratives of belief that give them sense: I value that because I
believe it’s worthwhile and admirable; I fear that because I believe
it’ll hurt me; I want that because I think it’ll bring me this, etc.
Changing a person’s background beliefs by exposing them to new
evidence can change the associated foregrounded feelings. This is
particularly true with children and teens. Earlier we saw claims that
children ‘know’ their gender identity at a very early age. Completely
crazily, the DSM-5 cites as evidence of gender dysphoria in children,
a tendency to wear clothes or play with toys associated with the
opposite sex.52 But this is nothing like enough to show the presence
of an identification of the right sort. In children who are still forming
basic concepts, there can be no awareness that clothes or toys are
particularly considered as being ‘for’ boys or girls. So a child’s
wearing or playing with them ordinarily reveals nothing more than the
projections of adults looking on. This is even more obviously the
case with pre-verbal or non-verbal children – a fact that hasn’t
stopped Stonewall writing, in its 2020 Schools Guide ‘An Introduction
to Supporting LGBT Children and Young People’ that it’s important,
for ‘pre-or non-verbal children’ to ‘[m]ake sure that each child or
young person has opportunities to express their gender identity …
and feel “heard”’.53
This is in my view incredibly irresponsible. A female child who
says ‘I’m a boy’ and even who wants strongly to be a ‘boy’ could
simply be playing, or just be confused about what being a boy or girl
is, so that this desire doesn’t outlast realisation of her error. It should
concern us all that, in the words of the former Head of Psychology at
GIDS, Bernadette Wren, ‘[a]utistic spectrum profiles are common’
among her patients. In the words of another review, ‘Several studies
suggest that individuals with ASD [Autistic Spectrum Disorder] can
successfully categorize when the task is simple or rule-based, but
have difficulty when categorization is more abstract or complex’.54
Az Hakeem writes, ‘In my opinion, a great deal of gender dysphoria
patients I have assessed with very rigid convictions regarding their
need to pursue gender reassignment have features suggestive of
Asperger Syndrome.’55
Alongside ASD, there are other clinically significant factors
potentially relevant to children who say they are ‘really’ of the
opposite sex, or who desperately want to be. As Wren also notes, ‘a
relatively high level of mental distress and developmental atypicality
is … recorded for this population … chiefly depression, anxiety,
trauma and self-harm.’ She observes: ‘The complex relationship of
these wide-ranging difficulties to gender feelings and broader
aspects of identity development is often very hard to disentangle.’
Trans activist organisations tend to interpret evidence of
accompanying mental health issues as somehow the fault of society
for failing sufficiently to ‘affirm’ a child’s innate gender identity, but
once it’s acknowledged that gender identity involves self-
interpretation, it could just as easily be true that gender identity is a
response to prior mental health difficulties. The founder of GIDS,
Domenico Di Ceglie, has also pointed out significant statistical
associations between ‘atypical gender identity organisation’ and ‘an
experience of psychological catastrophe and chaos in early
infancy’.56 Az Hakeem writes how risk factors for a misaligned
gender identity include being a ‘replacement baby’ or undergoing ‘an
initial period of cross-sex rearing’.57
For these sorts of reasons, in my view there are no circumstances
in which minors should be making fertility-and health-affecting
decisions involving blockers, hormones or surgery, as is now
happening in many countries. No period of therapy prior to the age of
majority could be long enough to untangle all these possibly
contributory strands. Yet unsurprisingly, narratives implying identity-
fluidity are discouraged by groups lobbying for early social and
medical transition for children, such as the UK charity Mermaids.
Instead, these organisations tend to talk as if the SOR model is true.
One parent featured on the Mermaids website until 2020 said of her
child: ‘I feel she was born trans, that it’s something that happens in
the womb and no one has any control over it.’ Even more worryingly,
as I’ll cover later in more detail, these groups often use inflated
statistics to suggest to alarmed parents that suicide is very likely to
follow the alternative strategy of ‘watchful waiting’.58 Says one
detransitioner, who had breasts, womb and ovaries removed at the
age of twenty and now regrets it: ‘There’s a very strong narrative that
if you don’t transition you are going to kill yourself … I genuinely
thought it was the only option.’59
Being a child and teenager often involves intense but fleeting
identifications: with good causes, pop stars, actors, teachers, friends,
and so on. If a child is same-sex attracted, the teenage years are
often an even more confusing time in which a positive, stable self-
image is likely to waver in the face of perceived pressure from family,
friends and wider society. When the stakes are so high, it seems that
an approach of ‘watchful waiting’ to see whether things stay the
same or change is best. Initially intense identification with an
opposite-sexed or androgynous ideal can transform in many cases
into something else. One detransitioner talks of how in her early
twenties she began to meet other detransitioned women, and her
perspective was transformed. ‘Where have these women been all
my life? … It was just so normal to be a lesbian and a masculine
woman and I’ve never felt that, ever.’60 In light of all this, the current
professional prohibition of ‘conversion therapy’ – i.e. prohibition of
anything other than affirmative approaches to gender identity from
medics and psychologists – looks profoundly misguided. What this
obviously ignores is that a therapist’s refusing to automatically
‘affirm’ a teenager’s gender identity, but rather sensitively exploring
her feelings with her instead, may open up space for the patient’s
acceptance of her own homosexuality.

Other consequences of the identification model

One consequence of the identification model is that – at least as I’ve
characterised it – it seems reasonable to think misaligned gender
identity might well have been around for millennia: that is, for as long
as there have been females psychologically identifying strongly with
an ideal of the male, and males psychologically identifying strongly
with an ideal of the female. Different cultural and historical moments
may have provided people with new ways of interpreting and
expressing these feelings, but the feelings themselves look relatively
ahistorical, at least potentially. Cultural historian Bernice Hausman is
surely right to argue that ‘developments in medical technology and
practice were central to … the emergence of the demand for sex
change’, but that doesn’t mean the feelings underpinning it were
invented in the twentieth century.61
Another consequence is that, in contravention of a standard
commitment of gender identity theory, even people with relatively
ambiguous DSDs don’t all have misaligned gender identities. Cases
may vary. A CAIS male who would classify herself as a girl needn’t
be particularly identified with being one. A CAH female who likes
‘boyish’ things may not be particularly intensely identified with them:
she might just like them.
Is it possible for a non-trans person to have an ‘aligned’ gender
identity, as in a strong emotional identification with an ideal of their
own sex? Perhaps so. Some women are strongly and persistently
emotionally attached to stereotypes of femininity. An ideal of
femininity or womanhood has become central to their sense of self
for whatever reason: for instance, women who repeatedly seek
cosmetic surgery to reach feminine cultural ideals. Or think of men
who seem unusually attached to masculinity: body-building Jack
Reacher-loving gun-fanatic types. Maybe there’s a coherent sense in
which these could have ‘aligned’ gender identities in the way I’ve
characterised them here. Still, clearly, most non-trans people don’t
feel this strongly either way, and so don’t have gender identities at
all: that is, most people don’t have a strong psychological
identification with either their own sex or the opposite one, or with
androgyny.
Equally, can some non-trans people have misaligned gender
identities? Again, I think yes.62 For instance, if the term ‘butch’ is
understood, as it is presented by Jack Halberstam in his book
Female Masculinity, as a ‘master signifier of lesbian masculinity’ then
many butch women seem to fit the criteria; as do historical figures
such as the eighteenth-century diarist and landowner Anne Lister,
recently vividly brought to life in the BBC series Gentleman Jack.
Lister had sexual relationships with numerous women throughout her
life, recounted in great detail in her diaries. As described by
Halberstam, in several places in the diaries ‘Anne refers to her
gendered desires, her fantasies of having a penis, her desire to be
… [a] “husband”, and her “sensitiveness of anything which reminded
me of my petticoats”’.63 But equally, Halberstam records that
although ‘Anne is constantly mistaken for a man or treated like one
during her daily life … she sees her gender ambiguity as neither
imitative nor deficient’.64
This last point implies that, for law or policymaking purposes, we
shouldn’t define ‘being trans’ in terms of ‘having a misaligned gender
identity’, because non-trans people can have them too. In light of
this, if legislators want to give trans people (as opposed to say, sex-
nonconforming people generally, which would include trans)
protection in law, then the definition of a trans person should be
someone committed to behaving in a certain way rather than only
feeling a certain way, detached from behavioural expression. For
instance, trans people might be defined for policy purposes as those
who say, seriously and frequently, that they wish to change sex or
have changed sex, and who also deliberately dress or self-adorn or
alter their bodies in ways significantly atypical for their sex, or act in
other culturally coded ways obviously suggestive of transness. This
is broadly in the spirit of the currently protected characteristic in the
Equality Act, ‘gender reassignment’.65 Equally, though, laws to
protect trans people from discrimination could conceivably be
subsumed under strong legislation to protect the sex-nonconforming
generally: butch lesbians, drag queens, ‘camp’ men, cross-dressers
and even, perhaps, a ‘group of men on a stag do who put on fancy
dress as women’ and who are then ‘turned away from a restaurant’.
(According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the latter
are ‘not transsexual so not protected from discrimination’, but if the
sole reason for excluding such men was their sex-nonconforming
outfits, and not, say, the possibility of drunken behaviour, this would
seem unjust.66)
This leaves the thorny question of whether gender identity itself
should also be legally recognised and protected (a question distinct
from whether gender reassignment should be protected, as just
indicated). As we now know, it is frequently argued that gender
identity is a fundamental part of the self, or as the Yogyakarta
Principles say, ‘integral to … personality’, and so requires recognition
in law. For people who have misaligned gender identities –
understood as psychological identifications with the opposite sex or
androgyny – these are indeed aspects both of self and personality,
but only if ‘self’ and ‘personality’ are understood as potentially fluid
and partly constituted by personal interpretation, and not in terms of
innate permanent features. And equally, such identifications, whether
with the opposite sex or with one’s own sex, clearly aren’t present for
all of us. So gender identity can’t also be ‘fundamental’ in a way that
is relevant to identity documents, nor ‘one of the most basic aspects
of self-determination, dignity and freedom’ as we saw Yogyakarta
Principle 3 grandiosely claim in Chapter 1.
Meanwhile, given that possession of a misaligned gender identity
is often accompanied by sex-nonconforming behaviour, and this
tends to be a source of discrimination and sometimes violence, then
it might look as though gender identity should be legally protected in
some form, in the Equality Act or similar. However, whether it should
be protected under that name or rather under the larger umbrella of
sex-nonconforming behaviour needs to be considered carefully by
legislators. A big risk of making an inner psychological state a
ground for someone else’s possible criminal conviction is that it
becomes too easy to say it’s a factor in any given case. Indeed, on
some present formulations, the presence of a particular gender
identity is in danger of looking unverifiable; as when Stonewall tells
young people, ‘Someone else can’t tell you what your gender identity
is – only you know how you feel.’67 If it is legally protected, and
infractions criminalised in its name, then professional guidelines
should be formulated about how to ascertain the presence and
influence of someone’s gender identity in a given situation in a non-
trivial way.
 5

What Makes a Woman?

The question of whether trans women count as women, literally

speaking, has become enormously toxic. A well-known slogan of
Stonewall’s tells us that: ‘Trans women are women. Get over it!’
Trans activist organisations like Stonewall present anything other
than enthusiastic assent to the question as an attempted ‘erasure’ of
trans people, strategically ignoring the fact that the question is not
about trans people’s existence, but about how they are correctly
categorised. The direct question ‘Do you believe trans women are
women?’ – known amongst feminists I know as ‘the witch question’ –
is wielded like a weapon to shut dissenters up, since clearly there is
something highly uncomfortable about having to answer in the
negative, in full knowledge that some people have made permanent
body alterations on the presumption that they can actually change
sex. Non-trans people, concerned to be kind, may concede under
pressure that trans women are not female, but assume, or at least
hope, there is still some coherent sense in which trans women can
count as women, nonetheless. So it is important to see if this is true.
What is a woman? What is a man? What membership conditions
must a human satisfy to count as either? If you have spent time
reading Judith Butler or queer theory more generally, you might hear
these questions in a particular way. As we know, Butler sees
categories like womanhood and manhood as ‘normative’ and
‘exclusionary’. In that context, my questions can sound sinister.
Effectively, they might seem to ask: how unfeasibly perfect do you
have to be to count as a woman or man? What bodily, psychological
or sexual ideal do the normies require you to fit before they let you
into their exclusive club?
 However, this isn’t what the questions inevitably mean. Questions
about what a woman is, or what a man is, are at least in part
questions about the public concepts WOMAN and MAN (capitalised
to indicate I’m talking directly about concepts, rather than the entities
they represent or refer to). Queer theory doesn’t have a monopoly on
accounts of concepts. A request for ‘membership conditions’ of a
concept is a question about the conditions that already govern a
concept (roughly: what an entity has to have, or be like, to count as
covered by the concept), as revealed in people’s use of them. These
aren’t decided arbitrarily by some snooty, perfectionist committee
somewhere; or even by you, when you try to answer ‘What is a
man?’ or ‘What is a woman?’. When asked such questions, you
aren’t being invited to stipulate some arbitrary standard. You are not
that powerful. Anyway, as I’ll explain shortly, that’s not how concepts
work or what they are for. Instead you’re being asked to reflect, at
least partly, on how users actually employ the words ‘woman’ and
‘man’ in a range of contexts and see what presuppositions those
uses have in common. So the right question is more like: what would
you have to explain to a non-English user or a child, so they
understood what the concepts WOMAN and MAN ordinarily refer to?
You aren’t being asked to stipulate what womanhood and manhood
should be but describe what they already are.
And even this isn’t the full story, because when you’re trying to
describe what something is, you might end up criticising the public
concept of it and suggesting some adjustments. Bear in mind that in
trying to answer what makes someone a woman or a man, you’re
more like a spy patiently doing reconnaissance work than a bouncer
at a club.

Conceptual analysis
What are concepts? Philosophers argue about this, but I think of
them as cognitive tools or capacities which – at least when working
well – help us all to negotiate the world we live in more effectively.
Concept possession helps us notice different kinds of thing and
make distinctions between them, relative to interests we might have.
For instance, it’s not surprising most people in every culture have a
concept of FOOD. Once a person has the concept of FOOD and
knows how to apply it, she can distinguish potential food from non-
food and help keep herself alive. Though trans scholar Jack
Halberstam presents a preoccupation with concepts as a ‘mania for
a godlike function of naming’, which ‘began … with colonial
exploration’,1 in fact the capacity to name and conceptualise the
world in interest-relevant ways has been with humans for as long as
their higher cognitive brain functions have. We wouldn’t have got
very far without it.
One sign that an individual has a concept of a particular thing is an
ability to identify that thing reliably using sensory information, with
more hits than misses. However, we also have concepts for lots of
things that can’t directly be sensed at all. Most things we think about
can’t be sensed directly (oxygen, corruption, narratives, values,
anxiety, online transactions, thoughts, energy, numbers, etc.).
Whether perceptually identifiable or not, another sign of concept
possession is an ability to talk coherently about that thing in a range
of contexts, using special words referring to the thing that others can
recognise. Names, whether individual or general, help us do the
latter. If, as a language-user, you have a concept of a thing, very
often you’ll have acquired from others a name to refer to that thing
too. Indeed, the two are linked: for our main way of getting new
concepts is by being told about new kinds of things by others, using
names plus definitions, explanations or examples. Using a name in
the same way as other people do facilitates communication about
the thing in question.
Not every division between things is interesting enough to require
a concept for it. Here’s a concept, albeit clumsily named: BEING
OVER TWO YEARS OLD. We could think up a pithier name for this
kind of thing and start to use it to classify all the objects in the world,
as either satisfying it or not. But there wouldn’t be much point. On
the other hand, if every object in the world over two years old
suddenly became lethal to touch, you can bet we’d get a pithy
handle to refer to it pretty quickly. As philosopher John Dupré points
out, it isn’t a coincidence that most languages have many more
concepts for vertebrate animals than invertebrates. We have
relatively little general interest in invertebrates but many interests in
vertebrates, given the multiple roles they play in human life: pack
animals, pets, predators, food, and so on.2
So we form concepts in response to human interests. We’re more
interested in some things than others, given who we are. But that
doesn’t mean concepts don’t also pick out already existing real
divisions in the world. Concepts, when working well, pick out what’s
already there. Despite what Judith Butler thinks, they don’t, on their
own, create particular kinds of things, though often they help spread
word of those things, and in some cases, increase their popularity
and number via social trends. Sometimes a concept helps us pick
out something purely material: e.g. CARBON. Sometimes it helps us
pick out what’s arguably a purely social kind of thing: e.g. FUNNY
JOKES. But either way, I would argue, the things were there before
the concepts, though admittedly this claim is a harder sell about
funny jokes than carbon.3
Sometimes it becomes clear a concept isn’t working very well. In
the most extreme sort of case, it is discovered that a concept refers
to nothing real. That’s what happened with the old concept of
PHLOGISTON, formerly understood as an element released in
combustion. In the eighteenth century, it became clear to scientists
that there was no such thing, so the concept fell out of scientific use.
Less extremely, but only just, theorists might offer a thoroughly
revised understanding of an existing concept.4 This is what has
happened with the traditional concept of RACE. Theorists have
proposed that the membership conditions of any given racial
category aren’t grounded, as previously understood, in genetics or
other aspects of biology, but rather in social factors.5
In a third, more common case, people might notice (or think they
have noticed) that a particular concept should, given the internal
logic of its membership conditions, be applied to some individuals
previously thought by others to be ineligible. This is what happened
when animal rights activists first argued that the concept of a
PERSON was applicable to higher primates like gorillas and
chimpanzees as well as humans; or when art critics in the late 1990s
argued that Tracey Emin’s messy bed, when transported from her
home into a gallery, fell under the concept ART. A fourth sort of case
is where an entirely new concept is coined to help us pick out some
phenomenon in the world worth paying attention to. We now have
the concept COVID-19. In 2018, we didn’t.
‘Analytic’ philosophers like me spend lots of time investigating
concepts and seeing whether they’re fit for purpose, which is to say,
whether they actually meet the way the world is and the interests we
collectively have in mapping various bits of it. That is exactly what I
was doing in Chapters 2 and 3 when I reviewed the concepts of
BIOLOGICAL SEX, FEMALE and MALE and argued for their
continued coherent application to the world. Following standard
philosopher’s terminology, let’s call this activity ‘conceptual analysis’:
analysis of concepts. It shouldn’t be assumed this means only
recovering and recording how language-users already think of the
world, in a wholly passive and conservative way. This charge is
sometimes levelled at conceptual analysis, but as I mean it, it
involves both attention to concepts and language and attention to the
nature of things. As my examples already show, there’s potentially
an active element, trying to improve concepts where necessary, the
better to fit the world. My conceptual analysis is concerned with how
concepts should be and not just how they are. But – equally and very
importantly – this admission doesn’t immediately turn a conceptual
analyst into the equivalent of the bouncer at the nightclub door,
gatekeeping about who can get ‘in’ to a concept and who can’t, in
order to prop up power hierarchies or meet selfish interests.
Features of the world, and our collective human interests in them,
are not arbitrary, and that’s what we should be trying to make
concepts responsive to. We’re still doing reconnaissance work, not
gatekeeping – or we should be.

The function of WOMAN as a concept

A central pillar of gender identity theory is that what makes you a
woman or a man isn’t your sex but your gender identity. That is
conceptual analysis, whether or not gender identity theorists
recognise it as such. They are proposing radically revised
understandings of the existing concepts WOMAN and MAN. These
concepts were traditionally understood as follows: ‘woman: adult
human female’; ‘man: adult human male’. The proposed new
definitions of the associated concepts, spelled out, are: ‘woman:
adult human with female gender identity (whether “assigned” male or
female)’; ‘man: adult human with male gender identity (whether
“assigned” female or male)’. Since talk of assignation makes no
sense, I’ll remove reference to it in what follows.
Straight away, given the arguments of the last chapter, we can see
significant problems for this account of womanhood and manhood. If
I’m right about the identification model, not everyone has a gender
identity. This would seem to leave us requiring a different
explanation for what makes those other people, without gender
identities, count as men or women too. Whatever conditions we
came up with for them, presumably they would be applicable to
people with gender identities too. In that case, we’d have two
competing sets of conditions for womanhood and manhood. Equally,
I argued in the last chapter that some non-trans people have gender
identities. It seems strange, even by the standards of gender identity
theory, to say, for example, that Anne Lister’s apparently male
gender identity must make her a man when she wouldn’t classify
herself that way.
Still, to be fair to opponents, I’m not going to make my objections
rest on the truth or otherwise of the identification model. Let’s
assume – for this chapter only – gender identity theorists are right
about gender identity, not me. Even so, I’ll now argue, we shouldn’t
define ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in terms of gender identity.
On the face of it, the proposals from gender identity theorists
about the concepts WOMAN and MAN look a bit like the case of the
concept of RACE mentioned earlier, which many now understand as
something social rather than genetic. In that case, too, there was a
proposed big revision of membership conditions. So how can we test
whether a revision like this should be adopted by language-users?
One way is to assess whether the traditional version of the concept,
with membership conditions as originally understood, fits the way the
world is, and the collective interest in mapping various bits of that
world. With RACE, it’s at least arguable that the traditional concept,
whose membership conditions cite biological factors as
determinative of race, does neither. For instance, a 2016 article in
Science, summarised in Scientific American, argued that understood
as ‘a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity’, the concept of
RACE isn’t fit for purpose, and may even be confusing people. In
fact, the article argues, racial categories are ‘weak proxies for
genetic diversity’.6 Hence, it continues, the traditional concept of
RACE needs revising so its membership conditions are understood
to refer to something purely social.
In this sort of case, where big alterations are being proposed to
the common understanding of a concept, we can use a decision tree
as follows (with ‘C’ referring to the traditional version of a concept,
and ‘C2’ referring to the proposed new version):
If the Science article is right, the decision structure with RACE
seems to be: No; Yes.
What about the concepts WOMAN and MAN? For most of the
histories of the English words ‘woman’ and ‘man’, they’ve referred,
and been commonly believed to refer, to ‘adult human female’ and
‘adult human male’ respectively. It’s been commonly understood that
every woman is by definition an adult human female, and every adult
human female a woman; every man by definition an adult human
male, and every adult human male a man. Do these concepts
continue to fit the way the world is? Yes; for in Chapter 2 I argued
that reports of the death of binary sex in humans had been greatly
exaggerated. There are older human males and females, and
younger human males and females, and no new theory has shown
otherwise. So this isn’t like the case of PHLOGISTON.
The next question is: is it useful to have concepts that refer to
these groups? Are these concepts more like the useful concept
FOOD or the currently useless concept BEING OVER 2 YEARS
OLD? The answer is obvious. There’s abiding public interest in
having concepts to distinguish between adult human females and
younger human females; and adult human males and younger
human males. This is what the traditional concepts WOMAN, GIRL,
MAN and BOY do. They respectively distinguish subgroups of
females and males it looks important – even essential – to have
concepts for.
On the gamete account of the sexes, animal species and even
plant species have female and male members. So on that version of
sex, we can’t use the concepts FEMALE and MALE to differentiate
human females and human males when we want to talk and think
about them specifically. For many species that are important to
human interests, we also have concepts for the female and the male
of each: DUCK and DRAKE, HEN and COCK, QUEEN and DRONE,
DOE and BUCK, COW and BULL. It’s entirely predictable that
language-users, in every human language, would develop concepts
for the female and male in our own species as well.7 Meanwhile, on
the chromosome and cluster accounts, FEMALE and MALE (in many
linguistic contexts, anyway) refer only to humans; but still, the
concepts FEMALE and MALE don’t distinguish between adult and
non-adult females, or adult and non-adult males. These too are
useful distinctions to be able to make, for all sorts of reasons.
Though ADULT is itself a vague and historically vexed concept, with
no clear boundary between adulthood and childhood, still, it’s a very
useful concept to have. (As repeatedly emphasised in earlier parts of
the book, vagueness and lack of clear boundaries in a concept is not
a problem per se.) It’s also useful to have concepts that pick out
adulthood intersecting with biological sex, because in our society so
much of importance hangs on relative age: moral responsibility (as
connected to sexual majority, the vote, criminal justice, and so on);
different prepubescent and postpubescent health challenges;
different social challenges facing different sexed age groups, and so
on. If we want to explain why certain things tend to happen more
often to one adult half of the population, we need a concept to refer
to them, and to insert into causal explanations where relevant.
This is especially true if the aims are feminist. As Second Wave
feminist Marilyn Frye put it – referring to ‘woman’ in the traditional
sense – ‘Being a woman is a major factor in my not having a better
job than I do; being a woman selects me as a likely victim of sexual
assault or harassment; it is my being a woman that reduces the
power of my anger to a proof of my insanity. If a woman has little or
no economic or political power, or achieves little of what she wants to
achieve, a major causal factor in this is that she is a woman. For any
woman of any race or economic class, being a woman is significantly
attached to whatever disadvantages and deprivations she suffers, be
they great or small.’8 Getting rid of the concept WOMAN would mean
we couldn’t describe, explain, predict or manage these distinctively
caused phenomena.
In sum: on all three models of sex reviewed in Chapter 2,
alongside the concepts FEMALE and MALE it would seem essential,
given many common purposes, to have further concepts
distinguishing adult human females and adult human males in
particular. This is what the concepts WOMAN and MAN give us,
along with GIRL and BOY for the younger incarnations.
Another important aspect of the traditional concepts WOMAN,
MAN, GIRL and BOY is that they refer to kinds of being who, most of
the time, can be identified as such on the basis of perceptual cues.
For instance, if I were to present you with a crowd of people, and if
your senses were in full working order, normally you’d be able to
make reliable assumptions about who were the adult human females
and adult human males in the crowd, just by looking and listening.
As we saw in Chapter 3, you might not always get it right – because
you missex, mis-age or mis-human – but most of the time, most
people will, and especially for people who are not at the borderline in
terms of age. There are a potentially vast number of reasons why we
might want to be able to perceptually distinguish the adult human
females from the adult human males, and both of those from children
of either sex. A few of these were reviewed in Chapter 3.
In recent years it has become clear to cognitive scientists that
there’s a close relationship between perception and the acquisition
of some concepts. Common sense already tells us this, in fact, since
one of the main ways of acquiring concepts of material entities in the
world is via perception: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and
tasting things. The concepts WOMAN and MAN are ordinarily
acquired partly by sight and sound. Most children get a sense of how
to use these concepts partly by having women and men pointed out
to them in the street, at home or in picture books.
Generally, when sighted humans look at their environment, they
perceive discrete, bounded objects, not vast arrays of
undifferentiated information. This is due to a brain capacity described
as ‘categorical perception’. As one author explains: ‘Categorical
perception allows us to carve up the world into the categories that
are relevant to our behavior, thus allowing us to more efficiently
process the visual features that are relevant to these categories. For
example, when presented with a poisonous snake, it is more useful
to quickly process snake-relevant features for fast categorization
than to attend to the visual features that discriminate this snake from
other snakes.’9 This isn’t to say some people can’t visually
discriminate different snakes, but only that for most people,
differences between snakes and other objects will be more
pronounced, and usually more quickly processed, than differences
between this snake and that snake.
The cognitive process via which a child starts to be able to
perceptually distinguish a particular kind of thing – say, a snake, or a
dog – and so to possess its associated concept, is a pretty amazing
one. The two lead investigators in UCLA’s Human Perception
Laboratory, Philip Kelmann and Christine Massey, write about how a
child might first acquire the concept DOG, for instance. First, the
child’s father might point out a small white poodle, saying ‘dog’ as he
does so. Next, he might point out a large black retriever, saying ‘dog’
here too. Even though each new instance encountered might look
relatively different to the last in terms of things like size, colour, ear
and face shape, and so on, still, relatively quickly the child starts to
be able to identity breeds she has never seen before as dogs. Just
as usefully, she simultaneously gains the capacity to distinguish
dogs from other mammals which look somewhat similar (e.g. cats, or
squirrels). ‘Shape variables are often important, such as the differing
jaw or body structures of dogs and cats’ note Kellman and Massey.
‘Shape variables are highly relational and abstract, rather than tied to
particular colors, sizes, and contexts, which is what allows those who
have undergone this kind of learning to effortlessly recognize a glass
tabletop ornament as a dog versus a cat.’10
It’s reasonable to think this process broadly resembles that by
which children ordinarily acquire perceptual versions of concepts
such as WOMAN and MAN as well. Normally a child becomes able
to recognise, for example, women, by being exposed – directly or
indirectly – to (images of) women with a relatively wide variety of
physical characteristics, within given ranges, still eventually
managing to start to identify only the relevant ones. (It’s therefore an
interesting question what pointing to a trans woman who has had no
surgery or hormones, and telling a child ‘that’s a woman’ and then
pointing to a female and saying the same does to the child’s
emerging conceptual map of the world. I don’t know the answer.)

WOMAN as a gender identity

As we know, gender identity theory proposes huge revisions to
WOMAN and MAN, GIRL and BOY. On the new versions, some
women are not adult human females (they’re males), and some adult
human females are not women (they’re men, or non-binary). Equally,
some men aren’t adult human males (they’re females), and some
adult human males aren’t men (they’re women, or non-binary). Not
just all this, but also: women, men, girls and boys aren’t beings you
can ever directly identify by looking or listening, or by any other
perceptual means. For the thing that supposedly makes you a
woman, man, girl or boy is gender identity, an inner psychological
state that has no reliable correlation with outer appearances.
Fairly obviously, all this radically changes the traditional functions
of the concepts in question. But – unlike the case of RACE, perhaps
– the need for those original functions hasn’t gone away. So, if we
put gender identity theory’s proposal for WOMAN and MAN into the
decision tree earlier, the decision structure seems to me to be: Yes;
No; Yes. That is, we get an argument for retaining the original
versions – how could we do without them? – but also creating new
additional concepts for ‘adult human (male or female) with female
gender identity’ and ‘adult human (female or male) with male gender
identity’, which don’t replace the originals but supplement them.
Ideally, we would call these something different to avoid confusion.
‘Female-identified people’ would be one tentative suggestion: in
which case, both men and women could be ‘female-identified’, where
applicable, but it would be well understood that this made no
difference to their original statuses as men or women either way.
In fact, the importance of retaining the original versions is even
greater than I just suggested. (I’ll focus on WOMAN here as my
example, but similar points can be made for MAN, GIRL and BOY.) A
reference to WOMAN is central to the roles of several other concepts
in which it’s embedded. For instance: MOTHER, which the OED has
as ‘the female parent of a human being; a woman in relation to a
child or children to whom she has given birth; (also, in extended use)
a woman who undertakes the responsibilities of a parent towards a
child, esp. a stepmother’. WOMAN or GIRL is also embedded into
ordinary concepts of GRANDMOTHER, DAUGHTER, SISTER,
AUNT, WIFE and, as we have seen in Chapter 3, LESBIAN; and
many other concepts too. So: if the membership conditions of
WOMAN were about gender identity not sex, this would seem to
mean a radical revision in our understanding of the related concepts
too, to make them about gender identity as well. Some adult human
males would be mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers, daughters,
sisters, aunts and wives; and some adult human females would be
fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and husbands.
Some trans activist organisations recognise these implications and
welcome them. As we’ve seen earlier, Stonewall and GLAAD now
tend to interpret the concept LESBIAN as referring to those with
female gender identities attracted to others with female gender
identities. In the UK courts in 2020, there was an unsuccessful
attempt by trans man Freddy McConnell to be named as ‘father’ on
the birth certificate of the child to which he gave birth, and not
‘mother’, even though he’s an adult human female.11 UK LGBT
organisations backed him in this attempt.
But if we were to start implementing these related linguistic
changes on a grand scale, as trans activists apparently want us to,
we wouldn’t lose our collective need of concepts to represent: the
human females who give birth; or the human males whose sperm is
the genetic contribution to a child; or human female offspring; or
human females attracted to other adult human females; and so on. If
we aren’t supposed to call these ‘mothers’, ‘fathers’, ‘daughters’ and
‘lesbians’ (etc.), we’ll have to come up with other terms to do the job.
That is, we’ll continue to need to identify and talk about these
important groups of people, relative to a wide range of human
interests. It’s not enough for opponents to point out that, were the
concepts to change in the way gender identity theorists propose,
many people who count as, for example, ‘mothers’ now would still
count as mothers under the new proposal. For that would be an
accident. The concept wouldn’t be picking out their femaleness and
its connection to having given birth or raising children.
Still, I can imagine objectors insisting that, despite all this, cis
people should be ‘kinder’, i.e. ‘give up’ the concepts WOMAN and
MAN (as if people who argue as I do were hanging on to the words
out of bitterness, like a spouse’s possessions after divorce). After all,
they might say, language-users collectively could just as easily
develop completely new names for ‘adult human female’ and ‘adult
human male’ instead. Where’s the harm? Yet it seems to me this
would be unlikely to satisfy the aims of gender identity theorists in
the long run. Let’s say we called adult human females and adult
human males something else: anything will do, but as a present
example let’s choose, with an affectionate nod to 70s feminists,
‘womyn’ and ‘myn’. Once bedded down among language-users, in
effect this would look like a pretty superficial switch. In that scenario,
we would still have clearly distinct concepts for adult human females
and adult human males, with new names attached. Given their
multiple important roles in human life, we would be bound to keep
using those new names in all or most of the contexts in which we
traditionally used ‘woman’ and ‘man’. Trans women still would be
myn and wouldn’t be womyn, and trans men still would be womyn
and wouldn’t be myn. There would – or at least, should – still be
distinct healthcare, spaces, resources, data collection and, in some
cases, social arrangements for womyn and myn. That is, there would
still be (as queer theorists see it) ‘normative exclusion’ and (as I see
it) ‘useful classification, and consequent rational attempts to adjust
social organisation, relative to many coherent purposes’.
I conclude that, rather than changing the concepts WOMAN and
MAN (etc.) to incorporate a reference to gender identity and remove
sex, we should keep the original versions and add to our collective
vocabulary further concepts that represent ‘adult human with a
female gender identity’ and ‘adult human with a male gender
identity’. In case it’s not clear, these concepts wouldn’t be either/or.
They would cross-categorise people. Women could be adult humans
with male gender identities, and men could be adult humans with
female gender identities. We each can, and do, fall into many
categories simultaneously.

A hierarchy of interests?
My discussion so far has demonstrated the impracticality of gender
identity theory’s proposal for the concepts WOMAN and MAN. An
important supplementary point is that women – understood as adult
human females – tend as a group to exhibit certain particular social
characteristics, and face certain distinctive social challenges. These
vary from society to society in their precise details, but most women
face certain common aspects and obstacles, broadly construed. As
we know, for instance, women are significantly more likely to be
sexually assaulted than men, and significantly less likely to commit
sexual assaults than men. Men, not women, are also responsible for
the majority of violent crimes.12 This is an international phenomenon.
We also know that, partly as a result of facts about pregnancy,
women are more likely than men to occupy low-paid or part-time
jobs, if they work at all. Relatedly, they are more likely to be
responsible for unpaid childcare and domestic work in the home than
men. For those that also work, this places consequent extra
pressures on their time that men in the same position tend not to
face. This affects women’s capacity to work to the same level as
men in the same job.
These are generalisations not universalisations, and there are
many exceptions. But they don’t occur randomly. They are linked in
various explicable ways to prior facts about biology: women’s
average relative strength in relation to men, and their capacity as a
group to bear children. These fairly immovable biological facts,
averaged across the populations of men and women, have
interacted with contingent social facts to produce the world we
currently have. Many women feel it is an unjust one. They have the
strong impression of living in a world set up for and run in the
interests of men. Recent books like Invisible Women by Caroline
Criado Perez and Pain and Prejudice by Gabrielle Jackson have
emphasised how, even in supposedly progressive countries like the
UK and US, there’s a large data gap when it comes to understanding
– or more accurately, failing properly to understand – multiple areas
of women’s interests, including medicine, the workplace, product
design, taxation and political representation.
In this context, treating males with female gender identities as
women in every possible context is a politically inflammatory act. In
effect it sends a contemptuously dismissive message to women
already conscious of unequal treatment of their interests. This
message says: the interests of males with female gender identities
are more important than yours. I have already described how many
institutions are presently taking gender identity to determine access
to spaces and resources, and to govern the gathering of data. They
are also taking it to determine the reporting of information. An
illustrative example is the way trans women’s crimes are now
reported in the press. Following news regulator IPSO’s publication of
guidelines on media reporting about trans people in 2016, the UK
media started to report the crimes of trans women as ‘women’s’
crimes.13 According to the IPSO guidelines: ‘An individual’s gender
identity … must not be referenced unless genuinely relevant to the
story.’ What this seems to mean in practice is that the sex of a trans
woman perpetrator shouldn’t be mentioned, and instead the crime
should be reported as a woman’s. In a context where men –
understood as adult human males – are responsible for more than
three times as many violent and sexual assaults as women,
headlines such as ‘Woman, 41, pretended to be a boy to groom a
girl’ (Metro website, 1 October 2018),14 ‘Gang of women repeatedly
stamp on man’s head in 2am brawl at Leicester Square underground
station’ (Daily Mirror website, 26 June 2018), ‘Sheffield woman found
with over 1,000 indecent images of children hauled before the court’
(Daily Star website, 19 July 2019), ‘Woman who once shoved
policeman onto Tube tracks jailed for spitting at officer’ (Daily Mirror
website, 17 February 2020) and ‘Woman who “bragged about being
a paedophile” approached boys at Remembrance event’ (Wales
Online, 15 May 2020) seem to demonstrate a flagrant, even
provocative disregard for women’s interests. The underlying
message on the part of media organisations seems to be: we care
more about deferring to the inner gender identities of criminally
convicted males than we do about transmitting the misleading
message to the public that women, as a group, have hitherto
unsuspected capacities for paedophilia, sexual predation and violent
assault. When the crimes in question are then recorded as ‘women’s’
or ‘female’ crimes within the criminal justice system, the affront is
compounded. Data we might otherwise have tried to use to combat
violence against women in the original sense is now significantly
compromised.15 Again, the fact that the powers-that-be don’t seem
to care at all about this is infuriating to many women, me included.
Apart from the relative neglect of women’s interests in relation to
men’s, and the negative political message sent to women about it,
the discussion of this section underlines an earlier point: gender
identity theory’s proposed alternative to the traditional concepts
WOMAN and MAN cannot possibly cover all of the still-pressing
contexts in which we need to use the term ‘woman’, meaningfully, to
refer to adult human females, and ‘man’ to refer to adult human
males. One response to this objection might be gratefully to revert to
the traditional concepts. A rival response, however, is to propose a
different alternative to the traditional concepts, this time identifying
women and men, not in terms of gender identity, but instead in terms
of some kind of shared social role.

WOMAN as a social role

In the first chapter, I introduced an idea with a powerful attraction for
many feminists over the years: the idea that WOMAN refers to those
expected by society to perform a ‘feminine social role’. What this
means, spelled out, is usually a bit vague, but it’s something like: a
woman, by definition, is any adult human expected to occupy or
perform a set of behaviours stereotypically associated with the
female sex, and/ or who is interpreted by society in terms of a set of
female-associated stereotypes and norms. So women, by definition,
are the people expected to look after children, do most of the
housework, take lower paid jobs than their partners, speak more
submissively, be good listeners and be caring. They are, by
definition, the people who tend to be lauded as virginal or as
motherly, or castigated as whores or as witches; who are easily
thought of as bitches, or bossy, or slutty, or frigid, or girly, or bubbly,
or feisty (etc., etc.).
In the twenty-first century this view, which I’ll call ‘WOMAN-as-
social’ or WAS for short, has become associated in some minds with
a justification for the claim that ‘passing’ trans women are women.
Passing trans women are defined as those male people who, as a
result of surgery and taking hormones, eventually cannot be
perceptually distinguished from adult human females by most
people. Sometimes these are distinguished from other trans women
by being called ‘transsexuals’. If a transsexual trans woman passes,
it is assumed by many that she must be subject to the same
expectations and norms of femininity as are typically projected upon
adult human females, and that this is what ‘makes’ her a woman.
Passing trans men are considered to be men for similar reasons.
 This sort of view is often accompanied, with an implied ‘tadaah!’,
by the quote from Simone de Beauvoir we saw in Chapter 1: ‘One is
not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (alternatively: ‘A woman is
not born but made’). The fact that in The Second Sex de Beauvoir
was fairly obviously talking only about females and their involuntary
encounters with a social system subjecting them to impossible ideals
of femininity from birth seems mostly ignored. De Beauvoir wasn’t
talking about males who decide after puberty to radically alter their
bodies artificially, and nor would she have excluded from the purview
of her claims any trans man who did similar. Still, whatever the case,
her quote has found new life in a modern context.
WAS and gender identity theory are competitors. Effectively, each
offers a different conceptual analysis of WOMAN and MAN.
According to contemporary trans activists – or at least, the consistent
ones – WAS is, like the traditional versions of WOMAN and MAN,
‘exclusionary’, since it cannot accommodate the claims of non-
passing trans women to be women, or of non-passing trans men to
be men. WAS is also criticised for having nothing to say about non-
binary people. Still, for many others – and in particular people
familiar with, and sympathetic to, the history of twentieth-century
Western feminism – WAS remains a convincing explanation of why
some trans women count as women, and trans men as men.
Unfortunately, though, WAS is beset with problems. In what
follows, I’ll talk only about WAS as it applies to the concept of
WOMAN, as befits its original historical impetus. However, my points
can be altered to apply to any view arguing that the concept of MAN
refers, by definition, to those expected by society to perform a
masculine role.

Bad reasons given for WAS

I think WAS appeals to many people on a subconscious level. This is
partly to do with cognitive factors, and partly with social ones about
the way we objectify women generally. But here I’ll deal only with
conscious reasoning for WAS. There are two main sources of
perceived support, both of them fairly underwhelming on closer
inspection.
 The first of these draws upon a feature of ordinary language: the
fact some people tend to say things like ‘she’s not a real woman’,
when talking about certain adult human females. De Beauvoir has a
few examples early on in The Second Sex. She tells us: ‘They
whisper, even in Russia, “women are still very much women”.’ She
goes on: ‘Speaking of certain women, the experts proclaim “They are
not women’” even though they have a uterus like the others.’ And:
‘Everyone agrees there are females in the human species; today, as
in the past, they make about half of humanity; and yet we are …
urged “Be women, stay women, become woman”.’ She concludes:
‘So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must
take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as
femininity.’16
Supporters of WAS take these observations to demonstrate that
the concept of WOMAN refers to an expected feminine social role.
What they don’t apparently notice is that hundreds, if not thousands,
of concepts are subject to similar temporary and rhetorical
constructions in certain contexts, without us needing to propose
radical alterations to those concepts generally. As was pointed out
by philosopher J. L. Austin in the 1960s, whether something is
counted as ‘real’ or not depends on what’s effectively being excluded
as uninteresting by way of the contrast in the current conversational
context.17 Take for instance, the concept DIAMOND, understood as
a crystalline carbon allotrope. When given a huge, clear, sparkly
diamond as a present, the recipient might say, ‘Now, that’s a real
diamond!’ Or a jeweller might say to the would-be seller of a small,
dull diamond, ‘Call that a diamond? That’s not a diamond’, though
both know that it is. In this sort of case, there’s what we might call a
temporary ‘escalation’ or ‘deescalation’, whereby concepts plus
qualifiers such as ‘real’, ‘not real’ (etc.) and/or certain emphases and
tones of voice are used by speakers to draw attention to particular
properties of objects currently of interest, or the lack of them. So for
instance: ‘Now that’s a real castle!’, ‘That’s not a real birthday
present!’, etc. (Try it now with things around you: ‘Call that a sofa?’;
‘If you were a real husband …’) Saying of a diamond you don’t
currently value that it’s not a real diamond doesn’t show that
generally DIAMOND means something other than a crystalline
carbon allotrope. And it definitely doesn’t show that DIAMOND refers
only to the socially expected or valued role of diamonds, such as
being clear, sparkly and large.
Similar points, I think, apply to feminist interpretations of the
activist and former slave Sojourner Truth’s famous 1851 speech
‘Ain’t I a Woman?’. Truth points out that the white middle-class
stereotypes that ‘women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted
over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere’ don’t apply to
her as a former slave; yet she is still, after all, a woman.18 This is
taken by many feminists to implicitly support WAS. Yet historical
statements that black women weren’t women, or real women, were
temporarily de-escalated uses of WOMAN, revelatory of the fact that
racist speakers didn’t value black women as they valued whites. In
other contexts, the same people who made such statements would
unproblematically acknowledge black women as women – not least
because many slave owners instrumentalised black women’s
pregnancies to keep the machinery of slavery going, and were
themselves responsible for some of them.
A second argument supposedly helpful to WAS brings us back,
once again, to the spectre of biological determinism: the idea that
females’ biological status makes it ‘natural’ and so right for them to
be in the kitchen, nursery or bedroom, but not in the boardroom or
parliament. For many Second Wave feminists, WAS seemed
attractive because, on the face of it, it promised to free women from
accusations of biological determinism. In fact, though, as I’ve already
argued, defining WOMAN explicitly in terms of an expected feminine
social role is a truly terrible response to that problem. If – big if – it’s
really true that women are biologically determined to be domestic,
submissive, and so on, redefining WOMAN as something
nonbiological won’t save them from that fate. All it will do is
distractingly change the subject to a different kind of people.
Meanwhile, the adult human females will still be there, working away
in the kitchens and nurseries and bedrooms, subjugated by their
biology. Much better instead for feminists to directly attack the idea
that being female makes one naturally suited to domesticity, using
available scientific evidence plus conceptual analysis to do this; or
alternatively, attack the idea that what’s ‘natural for females’ in the
sense of ‘found on average across the entire population of females’
determines what’s ‘right’ for all or even any of them.
These days, the old adversarial dynamic between determinists
and feminists has morphed into the popular claim that, if you don’t
embrace WAS, but instead argue for the traditional version of
WOMAN, you must be a nasty old biological determinist who wants
to ‘tie’ women ‘to their biology’. Frankly, this is bonkers. The
traditional version of WOMAN whose legitimacy I’m defending says
that a woman is an adult human female. In Chapter 2, I offered three
models of the sexes. Not one of them proposed any personality traits
or behaviours as essential to, or necessary for, femaleness. They
don’t mention personality traits or behaviours at all. They’re
concerned only with endogenous physical characteristics. Whether
or not females are, on average, naturally suited to domesticity or any
other thing is an entirely empirical matter – i.e. to do with what
scientific evidence emerges, either way – and it has nothing to do
with the membership conditions of BEING FEMALE. So by favouring
the traditional version of WOMAN (i.e. adult human female) over
WAS, there’s no inevitable implication you must be committed to
some view of women as naturally suited to domesticity, nor any other
particular behaviour or psychological trait.
Sometimes critics of the traditional version of WOMAN get yet
more confused, this time by the fact that three characteristics are
being proposed as ‘essential’ to the membership conditions of
womanhood: namely, being i) adult, ii) human and iii) female.
Doesn’t this fact make the view perniciously ‘essentialist’ in a
politically suspect way? No. Or if it does, then WAS is ‘essentialist’
too, and so for that matter is gender identity theory! After all, both of
them also propose certain membership conditions as ‘essential’ for
(i.e. necessary to) being a woman. Is it a political problem for a
definition of DIAMOND that it proposes ‘being a crystalline carbon
allotrope’ as ‘essential’ to diamonds? No. Proposing certain
characteristics as essential membership conditions, in this sense, is
a feature of thousands of definitions of categories – that’s arguably
how categories work. (It’s true some philosophers have argued that
sometimes or always, thinking of categories as having essential or
necessary conditions is a mistake. However, they think it’s a
philosophical mistake not a political one; and their point applies to
most or all concepts. I looked at two relevant examples of this
approach in Chapter 2, where I discussed cluster models of
SPECIES and of MALE and FEMALE.)
Yet another strawman offered is that defenders of the traditional
version of the concept WOMAN, understood as adult human female,
are effectively ‘reducing women to their biology’. It’s as if what’s
really being said is that having a female biology is all individual
women can ever be good for. But what’s important to, or about, an
individual can vary from context to context, depending on
background interests. Arguing that the membership conditions of
WOMAN as a general category essentially require being female
doesn’t mean that being female (or adult, or human) is a personally
important feature of any given woman, let alone all she can ever be
good for. Compare: the membership conditions of BANKER
essentially require a person who is a banker, by definition, to be
working in a bank. But that doesn’t mean working in a bank is
personally important to any given banker, let alone that it’s all she or
he can ever be good for. Being a woman doesn’t cover everything
individual women are or could be. It was never reasonably supposed
to.

Additional points against WAS

I’ve just discussed arguments supposedly in favour of WAS. When it
comes to looking for additional arguments against it, it seems even
less promising. We can find at least three. The first applies to WAS,
considered generally as a challenge to the traditional version of the
concept WOMAN. The other two relate to WAS as it supposedly
applies to trans women in particular.
The first challenge relates to whether, in practice, WAS was ever
an adequate replacement version for the traditional version of the
concept WOMAN. A big problem for WAS is that there’s no single
social role expected to be performed by all women that could be
used to define them, practically speaking. Earlier on, I said that
women tend to face similar social challenges, such as susceptibility
to sexual assault, and less comparative success in the workplace
relative to men – but still, this is hardly enough to define the entire
category, and in any case clearly has many exceptions. This problem
emerged early on in the history of WAS within feminist thought. In
practice, concrete articulations of ‘the feminine social role’, when
given by white Western heterosexual women, tended to default –
surprise, surprise – to sociocultural expectations upon white Western
heterosexual women. This was quickly pointed out by black and
Latina feminists as well as by lesbians. Not all women are culturally
expected to be passive – some matriarchal cultures value agency.
Not all women are culturally expected to be refined and delicate –
black feminists have argued that black women aren’t viewed this
way, and nor are lesbians. Incomprehensibly, once this problem was
noticed, rather than concluding there was something wrong with
WAS some academic feminists took the heroically ambitious route of
denying there was such a thing as the unified category of women at
all.19 Others suggested we should pretend there are women for
politically strategic purposes.20
Often missed in the interminable academic discussions that
followed – as with gender identity theory earlier – was that the
traditional concept of WOMAN and the version of the concept
proposed by WAS obviously perform very different functions. Unlike
the concepts WOMAN and GIRL taken together, WAS cannot offer
an account covering 51 per cent of the population, or anything like it.
We have seen that, relative to many important purposes, we
continue to need concepts to distinguish adult and younger human
females from everyone else, as well as from each other. Any
concepts offered by WAS as putative replacements, citing only
expectations of social role, cannot do this job. There is not enough
overlap between the people to whom the traditional version and the
WAS version actually apply. This suggests that, as with gender
identity theory, the decision structure when fed into the decision tree,
should be Yes; No; Yes. That is, we should retain the traditional
version of the concept WOMAN, continuing to use it to refer to adult
human females, and develop separate concepts to identify the
various sociocultural roles women are expected to perform in
different historical and social contexts.
 I tend to think that this objection, like the accompanying similar
one for gender identity theory, thoroughly undermines the rationale
for WAS. Still, I know there will remain devotees. So I’ll assume for
the sake of my next bit of argument that WAS works as a general
theory of womanhood, even though I don’t think it does.
There are two reasons that WAS doesn’t fit well with the idea that
trans women are women. The first point is that women and passing
trans women aren’t always expected to occupy the same social role
– unless you define ‘social role’ very narrowly as something like ‘the
role a stranger might expect you to fulfil, based only on what you
look like to them now’. But expected social roles are much wider
than that. For one thing, what social expectations and norms are
projected upon you partly depend on what others know about you,
and not just what a stranger would think, were they to see you from a
distance in the street. If you’re a passing trans woman who is ‘out’,
then, precisely, people know you’re male and that you have grown
up male. In that case, in some contexts you’re likely to be treated
differently, and be subject to different expectations, than the average
female (sometimes better, sometimes worse, and sometimes no
better or worse, just different). There will be a lot of overlap, but it’s
unlikely to be total.
For another thing, the social role occupied by any individual
extends throughout time, and isn’t reducible to a single year, week or
day, let alone a single moment when a stranger looks at you. Roles
start early on, in childhood, and are affected by experiences. As
novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in an interview in 2017,
seeming to embrace some version of WAS: ‘I think the whole
problem of gender in the world is about our experiences … It’s about
the way the world treats us, and I think if you’ve lived in the world as
a man with the privileges that the world accords to men and then sort
of change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can
equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has
lived from the beginning as a woman and who has not been
accorded those privileges that men are.’21 In similar vein, journalist
and academic Elinor Burkett wrote of trans women: ‘They haven’t
suffered through business meetings with men talking to their breasts
or woken up after sex terrified they’d forgotten to take their birth
control pills the day before. They haven’t had to cope with the onset
of their periods in the middle of a crowded subway, the humiliation of
discovering that their male work partners’ checks were far larger
than theirs, or the fear of being too weak to ward off rapists.’22 Such
points would indeed suggest many passing trans women aren’t
women after all, even by the lights of WAS.
A separate critical point about WAS is this. As you might expect
given its political origins, a frequent accompaniment to the original
feminist argument that WOMAN referred to those expected to
perform a feminine social role was severe criticism of that
expectation and role. Feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon and
Andrea Dworkin, apparently writing in support of something very like
WAS, thought of inequality and suffering as baked into the
expectations projected upon women. They wanted to smash
femininity, and that’s an understatement. On their view, women, as
such, are socially constructed via lifelong exposure to widespread
practices of sexual dominance and objectification, and men, as such,
are socially constructed as sexually objectifying dominators. Wrote
MacKinnon, for instance: ‘To be rapable, a position that is social not
biological, defines what a woman is.’23
So, at least as it was originally practised, thinking of WOMAN in
terms of a social role was not supposed to be a reactionary move in
favour of preserving that social role. Indeed, this is implied by a
modern-day advocate of WAS, American philosopher Sally
Haslanger, who basically argues that we should focus our minds on
the political project of getting rid of women. By this she means not
some bloody massacre of adult human females, but rather the
elimination of restrictive and damaging social expectations upon
them.24
To say the least, it’s a bit odd, then, to see WAS co-opted in a
twenty-first-century campaign to get trans women recognised as
women, as if that’s a progressive victory all round. If MacKinnon and
Dworkin were right, no one should be encouraged to be a woman,
trans or otherwise. And it’s hard to see how the frequent trans
activist caricature of nasty ‘TERFs’ zealously ‘gatekeeping’
womanhood in order unfairly to keep trans women out of it is
compatible with the fact that many MacKinnon-and Dworkin-inspired
‘TERFs’, at least, spend their wider lives fighting the misogynist
social stereotypes which, they believe, constitute womanhood.
If you try to believe simultaneously both that trans women should
be categorised as women as a matter of social justice and that
womanhood involves exposure to a regressive social role essentially
involving domination and sexual objectification, then something’s got
to give. In practice, what seems to be giving these days is
recognition that expected feminine social roles might be in any way
regressive or worth fighting against. Femininity is often now
presented, even by progressives, as either a neutral or a positive,
life-affirming choice. It’s apparently just assumed that when you act
passive and submissive, or emotional, you’re being ‘woman-like’, or
even just being a woman – whatever your sex. For instance, trans
author Kate Bornstein writes in her memoir about a female partner
who would later transition to become a trans man: ‘We had sex
being boys. We had sex being girls. We were boy and girl at random.
He had as much fun on top of me as I had fun on top of her. And we
both enjoyed being on the bottom.’25 In other words, when on top,
the partner is a ‘he’ and when on the bottom, a ‘her’. And trans
woman Joy Ladin writes in her memoir: ‘When my wife and I discuss
the destruction of our life together, she’s the one who cries. If tears
start in my eyes – and they often do – I automatically stifle them.
When my wife and I are together, she’s the woman and I’m the
man.’26 The apotheosis – or possibly, nadir – of this approach is
found in the 2019 book Females by trans scholar Andrea Long Chu,
which – I’m kind of hoping satirically, though I’m not entirely sure –
defines ‘female’ as ‘any psychic operation in which the self is
sacrificed to make room for the desires of another’.27
When combined with WAS, this leaves a reactionary position
diametrically opposed to what radical feminists could possibly have
originally meant – even if these days, they deny this.28 Since
academic intricacies understandably tend to be lost on the general
public, were this toothless version of WAS to become yet more
popular, it would presumably leave even more people with the
impression that women are ‘supposed to be’ feminine (as in:
dominated, sexually submissive, emotional, and there to do the
bidding of the masculine people), and men ‘supposed to be’
masculine (as in: dominant, sexually demanding, unemotional, and
there to have their needs met by the feminine people). It’s not hard
to anticipate how this cues up further agony for all concerned, and
especially for those children, teens and adults who are confused
and/or feel they don’t fit the right mould.
Given these considerations, it’s preferable, as before, to retain the
original concepts of WOMAN and MAN, and then to have separate
concepts for the sex-associated social roles, expectations and norms
– damaging or otherwise – that we collectively have interests in
tracking and critiquing. In this we might emulate a language like
Swedish, in which the word for both ‘woman’ and ‘female’ is ‘kvinna’,
and the word for biological sex is ‘kön’ (a word which, luckily for
Swedish communication purposes, does not also mean the sexual
act). Meanwhile, the word for the social norms and expectations
associated with the sexes is ‘genus’, a word that isn’t applied to
womanhood or manhood as such.
In the service of development of separate concepts for the
distinctive social stereotypes and norms associated with each sex,
English speakers could rescue the concepts MASCULINITY and
FEMININITY from the current murk, and be more explicit about what
they mean. In the former case, masculinity could be exclusively
understood as the sets of social expectations and norms (etc.)
projected upon most men and some women, and femininity those
projected upon most women and some men. If we then wanted to
refine these concepts further into separate sub-categories, to
explicitly cover different kinds of sex-associated social expectations
and norms – appearance-based, behavioural, psychological, and so
on – we could do that too. We could also develop a separate
concept of PEOPLE SUBJECT TO MISOGYNY (or something
pithier), which could apply both to women and to some passing trans
women, in virtue of what is called ‘discrimination by perception’; and
PEOPLE SUBJECT TO MISANDRY, which could apply to men and
to some trans men. In refining existing concepts or coining new
ones, we could easily develop a rich, flexible vocabulary to refer to
whatever sex-associated social phenomenon we wished to describe.
But: there’s no reason to think that any reference to these factors
can, or should be, automatically built into the concepts of WOMAN
and MAN as such. Not only would this make the concepts too
unwieldy, but it would also be incompatible with their original, still
pressing purposes: serving as the nexus of literally thousands of
intersecting discussions, explanations and predictions, of great
collective importance, concerning adult human males and females.
With respect to the main topic of this chapter, then, we’re left with
a stark conclusion. Here’s the least stark articulation of it I can
muster. If trans women are women, they are not ‘women’ in the
same sense in which adult human females are ‘women’. If trans men
are men, they are not ‘men’ in the same sense in which adult human
males are ‘men’. ‘Trans’ isn’t, as we saw Julia Serano claim in
Chapter 1, an adjective attached to ‘woman’. There are wholly
different concepts here. Ideally, we should have phonetically different
terms to refer to each. But if we don’t collectively develop
phonetically different words, we should at least be clear that TRANS
WOMAN, TRANS MAN, WOMAN and MAN are four different
concepts, each with different membership conditions; and that
membership of TRANS WOMAN doesn’t entail membership of
WOMAN or preclude membership of MAN, and nor does
membership of TRANS MAN entail membership of MAN or preclude
membership of WOMAN.
This conclusion may be greeted, at least initially, with shock. I
don’t blame you at all, as a reader – trans or otherwise – if this is
how you feel. It wasn’t you personally who developed the confused
idea that there were no conceivably important differences between
trans women and women, or trans men and men, for which
language-users might rationally want to develop separate public
concepts in order to record and track them. That was the academics,
lawmakers and trans activist organisations, who disseminated this
narrative for various misguided intellectual or political reasons.
People have built their lives around this narrative. Perhaps it feels as
though I’m ripping all that away, and that causes you pain.
So straight away I want to be absolutely clear about what I’m not
saying, before I go on to explain and justify these points in more
detail in the next chapter. (I can anticipate a lot of these
misunderstandings because they’re frequently fired at me by critics,
as assumptions about what I must really be saying.)
I’m not saying that to physically alter oneself to look like the
opposite sex, or unlike one’s own sex, or both, isn’t ever a
reasonable thing for adults to do in response to developing a
misaligned gender identity. I think it can be, and have explained
why in Chapter 4.
More generally, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with
looking or being radically sex nonconforming, either naturally or
artificially. Quite the opposite. Personally speaking, I value and
celebrate sex nonconformity: masculine women, feminine men
and androgyny. Indeed, it’s partly in the service of this evaluation
that I’ve made the arguments I have.
I’m not underplaying the psychological relief it gives many trans
people to think of themselves as members of the opposite sex.
Nor, perhaps surprisingly, am I saying that trans women and
trans men, respectively, shouldn’t ever call themselves ‘women’
and ‘men’ or be referred to that way by those around them. I’ll
explain why in the next chapter.
I’m not saying trans people are ‘deceivers’, nor that they are
‘delusional’ or ‘duped’ – far from it. I’ll explain why in the next
chapter, so there can be no doubt.
 6

Immersed in a Fiction

If, as I have argued, people can’t literally change sex, what exactly
did the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) make available to
people that they didn’t have before? My view is that the GRA, and
the Gender Recognition Certificates that go with it, jointly put in place
what is known as a legal fiction about the possibility of sex change.

A legal fiction
Between 2003 and 2004, the Gender Recognition Bill passed
through several readings in the Houses of Parliament. The transcript
of debates can still be read online.1 Some contributions explored
potential detriment to women’s sport, women-only spaces and
definitions of homosexuality and heterosexuality, should the bill be
passed.2 Others rejected those worries as overblown. The eventual
result was the Gender Recognition Act, making it possible for trans
people to get a Gender Recognition Certificate provided they had an
official diagnosis of gender dysphoria and had ‘lived in the acquired
gender’ for a period of two years.
‘Living in the acquired gender’, in practice, seemed to mean
dressing in stereotypically female or male clothes, wearing make-up,
or having surgery or taking hormones to look more like the opposite
sex. Back then, few accompanying justifications cited gender
identity. The apparent assumption of legislators was that a person’s
decision to alter their sexed appearance cosmetically, hormonally or
surgically to look more like a member of the opposite sex made it a
political requirement that the law in some sense validate or confirm
those choices.
Looking at debate transcripts, it’s a good question what exactly
legislators thought they were doing by seeing this bill into law. At
times, they talked as if granting a GRC would – impossibly, as I
argued in Chapter 2 – literally change its possessor’s sex. For
instance, the speaker in the Lords on behalf of the Government, Lord
Geoffrey Filkin, said at one point that, for GRCs to be granted to
trans women, ‘existing marriages’ to women would have to be
dissolved. This was argued for on the grounds that ‘marriage is an
institution for opposite-sex couples’. So Filkin seemed to be
suggesting that, where a man in a heterosexual couple was to
receive a GRC, this would effectively make the couple a ‘same-sex’
one – and hence the marriage must dissolve. In a later debate he
also argued that if a trans woman previously granted a GRC were to
marry a man afterwards, this wouldn’t be a ‘same-sex’ couple but a
heterosexual one.
Later on, referring to precisely this assumption of Filkin’s, Lord
Norman Tebbit pressed Filkin on whether he regarded ‘the marriage
of two persons each possessing the chromosomes and sexual
organs of the same sex as being a same-sex marriage’. Filkin replied
by citing earlier contributions to the debate from medics Lords
Robert Winston and Leslie Turnberg, described as having shown
that ‘medical science on the issues is incredibly more complicated
than … Lord Tebbit … would have us believe’.3 In fact, Winston’s
contribution turns out to have mostly been about people with DSDs
and not trans people. He referred to a person of his acquaintance,
Janice, describing her as: ‘the most beautiful woman, who came to
my unit some time ago. She was six feet tall and had been brought
up as a woman. She had very well-developed breasts, a perfect
physique, and was actually XY. She did not find that out until she
was twenty.’4 In other words, via this distinctly objectifying
description, Winston invoked people with DSDs from birth – in this
case, presumably, a person with CAIS – to try to show something
about trans people. In his contribution, Turnberg did roughly the
same thing.5 This seems to have been taken by Filkin as at least
somewhat supportive of the possibility of a literal sex change via the
granting of a GRC.
At other times, though, Filkin seemed to say something different.
When asked by Tebbit whether the Government ‘attribute[s] the
same meaning to the word “sex” as to the word “gender”’, Filkin
answered ‘No’. He continued (my italics): ‘It is … a fundamental
proposition of the Gender Recognition Bill that, following legal
recognition in their acquired gender, a transsexual person will be
regarded in UK law as being of the acquired gender for all purposes
and that in law that acquired gender will be the same as any legal
definition of their sex. This means that, following legal recognition, if
the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex in law
becomes that of a man.’6 In this piece of tortured legalese, Filkin
seemed to suggest a GRC would grant an individual only the right to
be treated as the opposite sex is treated in law. This is obviously not
the same thing as literally changing sex.
Given the history of misinformation sketched so far in this book
about what ‘gender’ means and whether binary sex even exists, it’s
not surprising that in 2004 lawmakers were confused about what
having a GRC should entail. But whatever they thought they were
doing at the time, it makes most sense to treat the granting of a GRC
as a ‘legal fiction’, making it ‘as if’ a person has changed sex. This is
certainly the interpretation that fits best with the paragraph I just
quoted, though not the earlier discussion. It also fits with the wording
of explanatory notes to the later 2010 Equality Act, which describe
‘gender reassignment’ as ‘where a person has proposed, started or
completed a process to change his or her sex’.7
A legal fiction is created when the law acts as if something is the
case, for certain defined legal purposes, when in fact it isn’t. In such
cases, a fiction is involved, and not a fact. For instance, when the
law treats a company as a ‘person’, or formally treats biological
parents giving up a child for adoption as ‘strangers’ to the child, it
creates a fiction, to be treated for legal purposes as if it is the case.8
A legal fiction has alternatively been described as ‘a legal
assumption that something is true which is, or may be, false – being
an assumption of an innocent and beneficial character, made to
advance the interests of justice’.9 This seems to fit with how
legislators in 2004 were thinking, at least some of the time. That is,
they saw creating the legal fiction that people can change sex as
potentially benefiting trans people: helping them to avoid accusations
of fraud, and intrusions into their privacy, for instance.10 The final
version of the GRA offered a range of possibilities to GRC
possessors, in line with preservation of the fiction of a sex change.
For instance, it gave possessors the possibility of changing their birth
certificates, tax and pension arrangements in line with ‘acquired
gender’; and to have the fact of GRC possession, and information
about actual sex, classed as ‘protected information’ by employers.11
However, if this is how we see possession of a GRC, we should
also recognise there are potentially occasions in which the legal
status of women and men aren’t respectively also transmitted to
trans women and trans men simply by virtue of possession of a
GRC. Indeed, the eventual published wording of the GRA
acknowledges this. Despite explicitly saying that where ‘a full gender
recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender
becomes for all purposes the acquired gender’ (my italics), it almost
immediately specifies contexts in which it doesn’t: including
parenting definitions, hereditary succession, peerages, sport and
‘gender-specific’ sexual offences.12 If it were believed that
possession of a GRC really did change one’s sex, these
qualifications would surely seem arbitrary and unjust.

Fiction and reality

As it is with the law, so it is with many in ordinary life, I suggest.
That’s to say: a significant number of people, whether trans or non-
trans, who would endorse – perhaps even very enthusiastically –
claims that trans men are ‘men’ or ‘male’, and trans women ‘women’
or ‘female’ (etc.) are immersed in a fiction when they do so. They
have consciously or unconsciously committed themselves to thinking
– and even temporarily feeling and acting – as if these things are
true, some or most of the time. However, I would argue that they
don’t believe the statements are literally true.
 This hypothesis has its limitations. In relation to the discussion of
the last chapter, I’m treating having a misaligned gender identity, and
being immersed in a fiction about sex change, as separable things.
You can have a misaligned gender identity and not be immersed in a
fiction about sex change. You can immerse yourself in a fiction about
sex change for whatever reason, and not because you have a
misaligned gender identity. My hypothesis is that the two often go
together, but not always. Some trans people don’t believe they have
changed sex, nor become ‘women’ or ‘men’ (or ‘non-binary’) in any
coherent sense, and they don’t seem immersed in a fiction either.
For instance, trans woman Debbie Hayton, married to a woman, has
written: ‘I am not a woman nor am I LGB.’13 Trans woman Miranda
Yardley says, ‘I now disavow use of the word “woman” for myself
and other transgender males, preferring to use the term
“transsexual” or “transsexual male”.’14 Trans woman Fionne
Orlander says, ‘I am a trans woman, I am a man, I can’t be one
without the other.’15
Meanwhile, some of those who make public statements like ‘trans
men are men’ and ‘trans women are women’ (etc.) believe such
statements are true, and their saying them out loud is a
straightforward sign of that inner conviction. No fiction is involved. As
we saw in Chapter 2, some people believe there isn’t such a material
thing as binary sex. Many of these people also believe it’s arbitrary
to which sex you’re originally ‘assigned at birth’. Though the interim
reasoning is often hazy, they seem to think that since sex
assignation is arbitrary to start with, it can’t have any bearing on
manhood or womanhood, so gender identity must be doing the job
instead. As we saw in the last chapter, others make a distinction
between sex and ‘gender’ understood as a masculine or feminine
social role, and reason from there to the conclusion that trans men
are men, and trans women are women. And then, of course, there
are those who don’t have any particularly complicated reasons to
think these things are true, but simply accept them at face value,
based on what they assume is authoritative testimony from experts.
Generally, humans take on a lot of true beliefs this way,
unproblematically. The only reason I believe that E=MC2 or that La
Paz is the capital of Bolivia is because someone told me. I’ve never
run the proof or taken the flight. It would be far too inefficient for us to
have to investigate everything for ourselves. But this also means,
unfortunately, that there’s plenty of room for people to accept false
beliefs on this sort of basis.
Still, though, I don’t think these cases cover all possible ones.
Only relatively rarely will you find someone publicly denying that
trans men are men and that trans women are women (etc.). On the
contrary: politicians, celebrities, journalists, officials from major
charities and NGOs, senior figures in the police and judiciary, and
many ordinary members of the public all tend enthusiastically to
repeat the same mantras that trans women are women and trans
men are men, either when prompted by others or off their own bat.
For many of these, it seems unlikely that they’ve read Judith Butler
or 70s radical feminism. I don’t think all of them really believe that
sex is ‘assigned’ or that there are literally hundreds of genders. Yet
neither do they seem to be going through the motions. Perhaps
some are just being polite. Perhaps others are (quite reasonably, as
we’ll shortly see) wary of deviating from a socially sanctioned script.
But still, it seems that a significant number of people who repeat
these mantras – both trans and non-trans – are more emotionally
involved than this, yet in a way that stops short of full belief. My
hypothesis is that many are immersed in a fiction. I think this
hypothesis can explain some interesting features of the current state
of public discourse.

What is immersion?
Generally speaking, being immersed in a fiction is a familiar, benign
and rational human behaviour. The fiction in question can be of your
own or another’s making. It can take years to construct – as in a
great novel, film or play – or seconds, as in a self-generated
daydream or a child’s game of make-believe. Individuals don’t
always deliberately decide to get immersed in a fiction; it can just
happen, given the right sort of prompt. We get immersed in a fiction
of others’ making every time we switch on the television and become
gripped by a drama; when we laugh, cry or hide our eyes, imagining
actors are the characters they play, or when we talk about them
afterwards to friends, as if they were real. Immersion is also a
characteristic state for many who go to the theatre and enter the
‘world’ of a play. Temporarily it can really seem to you as if you are
watching events in New York, or the countryside, or on the Moon, all
the while actually looking at a stage.
Novels and stories can be immersive too, as can video and role-
playing games. Actors can get immersed to an even greater extent
than spectators do, when they plunge themselves in a particular role.
They don’t just think and feel as if the fiction were real, as spectators
might, but for certain periods on stage or on set they outwardly
behave as if it were real, in a relatively wholesale and committed
way. When immersed comprehensively in a fiction like this, you can
feel things too: sadness, joy, fear or hope for yourself, or for other
characters in the fiction.16 Method actors like Daniel Day-Lewis or
Christian Bale go further, sometimes immersing themselves in
preparation for a particular role for weeks or months, whether on-or
offstage. Police working undercover also become immersed in roles
for long periods of time. And for some, religious experiences can be
immersive. During the Catholic mass, for instance, some
worshippers immerse themselves in the fiction of transubstantiation.
Immersion is a mental state of interest to philosophers and
psychologists, who tend to think of it as an intermediate state
between ‘bare’ imaginative entertaining and full, committed belief. A
key defining feature of immersion seems to be that, when you’re
properly immersed in a fictional scenario, you don’t think consciously
about the fact the scenario is merely fictional or that it’s not real –
because this would, precisely, break your immersive state. To
consciously dwell on the fact that a character in a play is ‘really’ an
actor you’ve seen a hundred times before would be to destroy the
effect. To tell yourself the film set of a thriller in LA is actually located
in Shepperton can suddenly make the action seem mundane. For as
long as you’re immersed, you’re consciously unaware of the fact that
you don’t believe what you’re thinking about is true or real. This
feature on its own can explain a lot about the public face of trans
activism.
Immersion can be individual, but it can also be collective, as for
actors and audience at the theatre or cinema, or participants in a
multiplayer video game. Collectively, you can passively receive the
details of a fiction (as at the cinema), or actively make it up as you
go along (as during a children’s game). Either way, when you’re
immersed collectively in a scenario, normally you are incentivised to
prevent others from drawing attention to its fictional nature. Both
actors and audience-members tend to stare disapprovingly at people
who take mobile phone calls during a performance.
Still, though, despite similarities, being immersed in a fictional
scenario is not the same as simply believing it’s true or real. This is
because, typically in immersion, you still mentally retain potential
cognitive access to facts about what’s really the case. Though
normally you aren’t immediately conscious of what’s really true or
accurate during an episode of immersion, still, you could easily call
the facts up where needed – for instance, if someone suddenly
asked you, ‘Who’s that actor again?’ You may be mentally lost in a
play but you still know how to find the theatre loos when needed.
The undercover policeman might spend most of every day thinking,
acting and feeling as if he’s somebody else, but he still reports to his
bosses intermittently. Even the method actor immersed in a role still
has contracts to sign and agents to talk to. Relatedly, in immersion,
any action you take on that basis is usually guided only selectively
by the fiction you have in mind, in a relatively controlled way, and
needn’t completely resemble the action you’d take if you actually
believed it. When watching Shakespeare’s Hamlet and feeling great
pity – even crying – for Ophelia as she goes mad, you don’t run on to
the stage and try to book her into a psychiatric hospital.
As the fact that people can shed tears suggests, being immersed
in a fiction – while not the same as believing it’s real or true – is not
simply dry or robotic. It isn’t just entertaining some possibility,
laboriously working out what other people watching you would
expect from you given that possibility, and then deliberately acting on
that basis. It’s more seamless than this. Immersion involves
‘throwing yourself into’ or ‘inhabiting’ a scenario with commitment
and feeling, so that your thought and even behaviour then proceeds
without much conscious deliberation. As philosopher Samuel Kampa
puts it, there’s little ‘explicit metacognition’ about what to think or do
next.17
 My hypothesis is that at least some of the time many trans and
non-trans people alike are immersed in a fiction: the fiction that they
themselves, or others around them, have literally changed sex (to
become either the opposite sex or non-binary). Apart from general
behavioural indications, this is suggested by evidence that in a
private, anonymous context, it seems that a majority of people would
deny gender identity made any difference to whether one is a man or
a woman. In a 2018 Populus survey in the UK involving 2,074
respondents (49 per cent male, 51 per cent female, weighted across
a range of age groups), participants were asked ‘to think about a
person who was born male and has male genitalia but who identifies
as a woman’. They were then asked: ‘In your own personal view
would you consider this person to be a woman or a man?’ 19 per
cent answered ‘woman’; 52 per cent of respondents answered ‘man’,
7 per cent said ‘not a man or a woman’, 20 per cent said ‘don’t
know’, and 3 per cent preferred not to say.18 One possible
explanation of the fact that over half answered ‘man’ is that the
relatively anonymous, private context of the survey, in conjunction
with the question’s emphasis on ‘your own personal view’,
encouraged people to drop out of whatever immersive state they
might publicly tend to be in.
Immersion in a fiction can be enhanced by props: by the
movements of actors on stage or the images on screen, for instance.
In the case of those immersed in a fiction about sex change, social
media seems to act as a highly effective prop. It’s a virtual
environment where you can curate your own image day by day,
throwing yourself psychically – at least for a while – into whatever
stance or identity you wish to project to the world. Followers rarely
get a chance to cross-check your statements in relation to other real-
time information about you. It’s now recognised that the rising
popularity of gender identity among the young in the early twenty-
first century was at least partly connected to internet culture and,
specifically, to microblogging social sites like Tumblr, whose strapline
tells users: ‘you can express yourself, discover yourself, and bond
over the stuff you love’. Parents of dysphoric teens often report that
their offspring would spend hours and hours on Tumblr, absorbing
and then recycling aspirational stories and memes about magical
transformations that made a person seem special and cool.
From 2018 onwards, the hashtag #adulthumanfemale started
circulating on Twitter, used by feminists trying to combat trans
activist demands.19 Almost immediately, though, the hashtag started
to be used by trans women to refer to themselves. Saying such
things with such apparent conviction initially looks hard to explain;
but they are in fact what you’d expect if immersion was involved. For
when you’re immersed in a fiction, you needn’t be constrained in
what you say or do by what seems to be supported by evidence, or
by what it would otherwise be rational to conclude. Accuracy isn’t the
point of the exercise – just as it isn’t in a film drama or role play,
either.
If, as I’m suggesting, many are immersed in fiction like this, what
are some consequences? It’s important to note right away that
saying this does not entail such people are also ‘deluded’ or ‘duped’,
or even just ‘deceived’. Precisely: they’re immersed, and immersion
is not the same as belief. They don’t actually believe trans men are
men, or trans women, women. So they can’t count as ‘deceived’ into
thinking this. Theatregoers moved at the fate of the character
Ophelia onstage aren’t ‘deluded’, ‘duped’ or ‘deceived’ by the actors
either.
Relatedly, it’s important to stress that, on this interpretation, trans
people are not automatically counted as – in the words of trans
philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher – ‘evil deceivers’.20 Bettcher
apparently frames any challenge to a literally true reading of ‘trans
women are women’ as entailing this unpleasant commitment, but
that’s inaccurate. Ordinary trans people aren’t deliberately trying to
get people to believe falsehoods about their sex, just as actors
onstage or in films aren’t deliberately trying to get people to believe
falsehoods about who they are either. Though very different from
each other in other ways, that’s what makes both actors and trans
people different from undercover cops, who by definition are out to
deceive others. To be immersed in a fiction is not to lie to or to
deceive others. Language shouldn’t be forced into a binary of ‘truth’
versus ‘lies’; it’s potentially much richer than that. Some trans people
enter immersively into a fiction on the assumption it will be implicitly
understood by others as a fiction. Others do so with no particular
thoughts about what others will believe or imagine, but only the
understandable and immediate desire to find relief from feelings of
dysphoria. Either way, there’s no automatic deceptive intent, nor
eventual deceptive fact.

The benefits of immersion in a fiction

Generally speaking, immersing yourself in a fiction allows mental
alleviation from whatever current mundane or stressful reality faces
you. Most people already know this from their own experiences of
reading novels, watching films or gaming. In Chapter 4 I
characterised a misaligned gender identity as involving a strong
psychological identification with an ideal of the opposite sex or
androgyny. For many people with misaligned gender identities,
immersing the self in a fiction of sex change is a way of managing
the intense feelings of dysphoria this produces. That’s valuable in its
own right. But there are a range of perhaps more hidden benefits
too.
Immersion can also help you experience alternative perspectives
and emotions otherwise closed to you, potentially increasing
empathy for others as well as better understanding of yourself. As
philosopher Susanna Schellenberg writes, ‘immersion allows us to
occupy alter-ego points of view and practice new strategies by
accessing possible spaces of action and affective responses’.21 In
light of its capacity to help people occupy alternative perspectives,
counsellors often use immersive role-playing strategies with clients
in a therapeutic setting.22 In this regard, it’s interesting how
transitioning is frequently cited as a way of opening up a person’s
mind to the different ways in which the sexes tend to be treated
socially. For instance, a 2016 Time article interviews several trans
men and reports that ‘Over and over again’ they ‘described all the
ways they were treated differently as soon as the world perceived
them as male’.23
Equally, immersion offers you beneficial opportunities for self-
exploration, including aspects of yourself not prioritised or realised in
everyday life. We can see this phenomenon in recreational gaming
in particular. One study of immersion in video games notes that
‘[G]ames provide children with opportunities to experiment with
different identities … Children can choose whether to play as males
or as females and can take on alternative social roles, including
leadership and teaching roles.’ 24 Though the context is very
different, there are clear parallels here with immersion in a fiction of
sex change. Also potentially relevantly, the same study notes that
video games can allow individuals to immerse themselves in
idealised fictions of the self, and ‘experience abilities and
satisfactions that are difficult to access in everyday life’.
So immersion in a fiction can be personally helpful, at least for a
while, and for some people longer-term. In this regard, I think
particularly of some young trans men and non-binary people.
Therapists working with young women with male or non-binary
gender identities report that often the onset of gender dysphoria is
puberty. Everyone knows puberty can be hellish, and for young
women today it can be particularly so: suddenly confronted with
highly sexualised role models in the media, complicated and intense
social hierarchies round about you, the onset of often aggressive
male sexual attention, and a familiar body that’s changing fast in
ways one can’t control. In her book Irreversible Damage, about the
recent rapid rise of trans-identification among young women in the
US (mirroring a simultaneous trend in the UK), author Abigail Shrier
interviews Sasha Ayad, a therapist whose practice is mostly with
trans adolescents. Says Ayad, ‘A common response I get from
female clients is something along these lines: “I don’t know exactly
that I want to be a guy. I just know that I don’t want to be a girl.”’25
Puberty is particularly punishing on so-called ‘tomboy’ girls. As
trans scholar Jack (then Judith) Halberstam wrote in 1998: ‘Female
adolescence represents the crisis of coming of age as a girl in a
male-dominated society. If adolescence for boys represents a rite of
passage … and an ascension to some version (however attenuated)
of social power, for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint,
punishment, and repression. It is in the context of female
adolescence that the tomboy instincts of millions of girls are
remodeled into compliant forms of femininity.’26 Faced with
remodelling as the only apparent choice, it’s not surprising that some
tomboys choose to mentally opt out. Although opting out isn’t
confined to tomboys. As Shrier reports, these days many trans men
or non-binary adolescent females don’t want to ‘pass’ and, she
writes, ‘make little effort to adopt the stereotypical habits of men:
They rarely buy a weight-set, watch football, or ogle girls. If they
cover themselves with tattoos, they prefer feminine ones – flowers or
cartoon animals, the kind that mark them as something besides
stereotypically male: “queer” and definitely not “cis men”. They flee
womanhood like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on
any particular destination.’27
In this context, immersing yourself in a fiction that you’re male or
non-binary can be understood as a useful mental refuge for a
younger woman from social pressures, a creative reframing of a
dissatisfying reality, and an attempted shield from the kinds of
attention that young women characteristically attract. It can also
bring social recognition from peers, membership of a supportive
community, and a growing sense of autonomy and individuation from
one’s family of origin, all of which can be beneficial too.
Getting immersed in a fiction about sex change isn’t just of
potential benefit to individual trans people, though. Those around
them can also get immersed in the same fiction at least some of the
time, and many do. This can help establish immersion for the trans
person, which can be good for the reasons just stated. And it can
reduce potentially distressing mismatches between how the trans
person is seeing things and how those around them are seeing
things, so facilitating interpersonal relations. Generally, being able to
get immersed in the fictions of others is a socially productive skill,
allowing individuals to integrate well into different social worlds, and
to smooth over potential cognitive and emotional differences
between the self and others.
In sum: from the perspectives of trans people and those who care
about them, there’s often a rational point to immersing yourself in a
fiction that people can change sex. That said, we also need to name,
recognise and try to manage a range of risks associated with the
practice. Some of these risks occur at the personal level. The main
ones, however, emerge at the institutional level, once powerful
figures become immersed in a fiction and seek to compel the same
attitude in others.

Personal risks of immersion

At a personal level, one risk of immersion for trans people is losing
your capacity to admit, even completely privately to yourself, the
facts about your sex in some relevant contexts. In that case, what
starts as therapeutic can end up as harmful denial. This is a
particular risk where the immersed subject strongly desires that the
fictional scenario in which they’re immersed be true or real. As a
result of misaligned gender identity, a lot of trans people really do
wish they were of the opposite sex or androgynous, and/or feel
strongly averse to the sexed reality that faces them.
A useful – though of course only partial – comparison is the
relation some researchers have found between problematic and
disordered video-gaming habits, sometimes known as Internet
Gaming Disorder (IGD), and professed motives for gaming like
‘escape’ and ‘fantasy’.28 IGD can involve, for instance, compulsive
preoccupation with gaming, withdrawal symptoms when not gaming,
depression, interruption of other ordinary activities, and disturbances
of relationships with others. Other cases of immersion aren’t usually
like this. When you see a film, read a novel, watch a play, usually
you aren’t that mentally invested in the fictional scenario
represented, and it’s easy enough to ‘come out’ of the immersive
state and remind yourself of what’s really true.
Earlier I mentioned social media, and its potential as a prop:
you’re the playwright, controlling what you disclose about yourself,
while your favoured audience is there to uncritically support and
applaud. A general risk of supplementing your personal fiction with
social media use is that doing so can detach you from reality in
maladaptive ways. One way is that the experienced relative reward
of virtual life can enhance aversion to the actual facts about your
body, increasing your dysphoria. You can become averse to any
evidence of sexed facts about yourself, or even of any reference to
sex whatsoever, for fear of breaking the immersive state. It’s widely
acknowledged by psychologists that avoidance of an unpleasant
thought often makes feelings worse. Says one detransitioner: ‘Don’t
get me wrong, I still love Tumblr, but spending too much time online
and not moving enough makes me feel more disconnected from my
body.’29 Again, an instructive partial parallel can be made with
gaming; this time, with psychological identification with a game
avatar, and how positive feedback from the virtual world increases
psychological reliance on the game. Researcher Sasha Sioni
describes how ‘Vicarious interactions through a gaming avatar may
fulfill … needs [for social connection and approval], reinforcing
stronger self-identification with the avatar, which in turn can offer
players a stronger and more positive sense of self. Such influences
may work synergistically to motivate increasing intensity of and
preoccupation with gameplay.’30
A related risk is starting to try to control the speech and thoughts
of those around you so they too never refer to or think of your sex, in
any context. These attempts might include your parents, your
spouse and your children, and can be very destructive of
interpersonal relationships. Shrier’s Irreversible Damage contains
testimonies of parents, describing how newly adult children have cut
them off for alleged ‘toxic’ or ‘problematic’ comments referencing
their sex. Yet it isn’t reasonable to expect the person who gave birth
to you, or the person who married you, or your own children, to
permanently relate to you mentally as of a different sex when they
know that you are not. If relatives and friends successfully manage
to immerse themselves in this fiction quasi-permanently for your
sake, then that’s great; but not everyone has the capacity to do it,
and it’s not a moral failing on their part.31 A differently damaging
attempt to control your environment might involve isolating yourself
from others, and so becoming avoidant of many ordinary
interpersonal situations. This too can be destructive, both of current
family relationships and of the possibility of a resilient, fulfilled self
with lots of different experiences under your belt in the future.
With or without the help of props, being in complete denial about
the facts about your sex is a problem, not least because there will be
times when you need to come out of the fiction and disclose it to
others, as discussed earlier. One obvious one is seeking medical
care. Another is playing fairly in sport. If your sex isn’t already
obvious to others, you will also need to disclose it whenever you
enter into sexual encounters with other people. Despite what’s now
argued by some trans activists, a person’s right to privacy doesn’t
beat another person’s right to choose sexual partners in line with
their basic sexual orientation.32 And when it comes to data collection
explicitly about the sexes, data robustness is compromised when
answers are in line with gender identity not sex.
Getting ‘lost’ in immersion is potentially problematic where it
closes off valuable future possibilities, whether as a child or as an
adult. In Chapter 4 I talked about how a misaligned gender identity
emerges in response to personal meaning-making. For some people
it’s permanent, and for others it’s relatively temporary. If, despite your
membership of the female sex, you mentally lose yourself in the
fiction that you are really a boy or man, or really non-binary (etc.),
you can easily calcify this particular narrative about yourself into a
fixed story, at the expense of other possible ones. Depending on
your particular situation, this story might not ultimately be right for
you. The risk is particularly acute in early youth. As Bernadette
Wren, former Head of Psychology at the NHS Gender Identity
Development Service for children, writes: ‘Although it may be argued
that the confident and sure knowledge of the lasting value of physical
transition can be established unequivocally in early or mid-childhood,
there is as yet little or no research evidence to underpin this claim.’33
In this regard, we need to bear in mind that immersion in a fiction
about sex change can be later accompanied by permanent
alterations to the body. In turn, these physical alterations can
foreclose other possibilities later. For instance, for both sexes they
can remove the possibility of having children, and for women, make
breastfeeding impossible. It should also be recognised that surgically
or hormonally altering your body to resemble the opposite sex, or to
resemble your own sex less strongly, exposes you to a range of
permanent, non-negligible and sometimes painful accompanying
side effects.34 This needs to be seriously considered. It’s
conceivable that being totally immersed in a fiction interferes with
this serious consideration.
 We can see, then, that though there can be genuine personal
benefits to immersion, there can also be costs. Many of the most
pressing dangers around immersion are wider ranging than this,
however. Individual histories remain just that – individual. Large-
scale problems also emerge when institutions coercively make it a
social norm that everyone immerses themselves in the fiction that
certain people have changed sex, or are non-binary, on pain of
social sanction if not.

Coercing people into immersion

In early parts of this book, I described how, within many UK
organisations, gender identity is being prioritised as a significant
element of life, and reference to sex suppressed. Actually, it’s worse
than this: in my opinion, immersion in a fiction about sex change is
being coercively required of people. To give a flavour of the sort of
coercive institutional environment I have in mind, I’ll now quote some
extracts from Stonewall literature aimed at organisations applying for
paid membership in its Diversity Champions scheme. Several other
LGBT organisations have similar ambitions to Stonewall, in terms of
changing public language around gender identity and sex. However,
given its progressive history, wealth, influential connections to
politicians and public reach, it’s a good one to focus on.
The Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme gives organisations
access to PR-friendly branding in exchange for their instigating – to
put it frankly – certain measures of social control. Current members
of the scheme include blue-chip companies, political parties, local
authorities, government departments such as the Department for
Education, schools, most universities, newspapers and
broadcasters, police and armed forces, arts organisations, the
Crown Prosecution Service, the Equality and Human Rights
Commission, and many other major national bodies. Effectively,
Stonewall seems to be aiming at the removal from member
organisations of any public reference whatsoever to sex that might
offend a trans person, by anyone. For instance, as already
described, it explicitly advises: ‘You should allow anyone to access
facilities, spaces and groups which align with their gender identity.’35
More generally, though, there’s a heavy emphasis on controlling
language and behaviour even when it comes to issues that have
nothing to do with space allocation.
Stonewall defines ‘transphobia’ as (my italics): ‘The fear or dislike
of someone based on the fact they are trans, including denying their
gender identity or refusing to accept it.’36 And of course, Stonewall
also famously says that trans women are women, and trans men are
men. The implication is that if you ‘refuse to accept’ that, say, having
a female gender identity makes you a woman, or make any other
difference in your speech or behaviour because of the sex of a trans
person, you’re ‘transphobic’. Examples listed in Stonewall’s 2017
report ‘LGBT in Britain: Hate Crime and Discrimination’ include,
alongside genuinely distressing anecdotal accounts of violence and
bullying, the following rather more mundane example: ‘I was asked if
I was a boy or girl in a clothing shop as I wanted to try on male
clothes. The woman said “you know they’re boy’s clothes. Are you a
girl or boy?”’ Also included: ‘A female security guard refused to
search me when I was waiting in line to get into an event. She made
a fool of me in front of the entire line. She said I wasn’t a female and
made me stand in the men’s line.’37 Note that neither of these
incidents involves violence or intentional disrespect, nor even a
plausible indication of dislike on the part of the speakers. They
simply involve a reference to sex, and a difference in behaviour on
the basis of it.
Elsewhere, Stonewall offers as ‘examples of transphobia to
include within your policies’: ‘Speculating about someone’s gender
“Is that a man or a woman?”’; and ‘Purposefully ignoring someone’s
preferred pronoun’.38 It’s implied there are few circumstances in
which it would be appropriate to refer to, or even ask about,
someone’s sex. On pronouns, meanwhile – which, we’re told, should
represent gender identity not sex – Stonewall’s stated advice, for
everyone and not just trans people, is: ‘When you introduce yourself,
also introduce your pronoun … Put your pronouns in your email
signature and/or social media profile. Try to avoid addressing groups
or people with gendered language … If you’re not sure what
someone’s pronouns are, ask them. If you accidentally misgender
someone, just apologise to them and then move on using their
correct pronoun.’39
In a different Stonewall document, universities specifically are
advised to ‘review your course curriculum’ to equip ‘lecturers and
teachers to use inclusive language, avoid gender stereotyping, and
cover LGBT topics sensitively and accurately’.40 With respect to
academic events, they advise: ‘Speakers who hold strongly anti-
LGBT views, such as … denying that trans people exist as the
gender they say they are, cause LGBT people to feel deeply unsafe.’
(This misleading use of ‘exist’ is ubiquitous in trans activist literature,
suggesting to the unwary, usually falsely, that critics of gender
identity must be saying trans people don’t ‘exist’ – or even that they
shouldn’t.) The document continues: ‘When assessing the risks
associated with hosting external guest speakers at events, we
encourage you to think of … gender identity in the same way you
would other key aspects of someone’s identity, such as race or faith.’
On student enrolment, Stonewall suggests: ‘Students should have
the ability to change their personal details, including their name, title
and gender, at any time on your systems.’ University sports clubs are
told: ‘Where clubs and opportunities are already inclusive of all
genders, consider renaming them as explicitly mixed (for example,
changing “judo” to “‘mixed judo”).’ And as with other policies, there is
a heavily punitive flavour to any perceived infractions. The same
document tells universities to: ‘Ensure your discrimination, bullying
and harassment policies are explicitly inclusive of … gender identity’,
and to: ‘Proactively encourage and communicate routes for reporting
discrimination, bullying and harassment’. It goes on: ‘Ensure that
each point of contact for reporting discrimination, bullying and
harassment is also equipped to identify hate incidents and crimes, so
they can provide students with support in reporting these to the
police.’
Effectively, Stonewall’s objective seems to be to incentivise
organisations, either via rewards (branding, prizes, public approval)
or punishment (accusations of transphobia, public disapproval) to get
its members immersed in the fiction that those with female gender
identities are women and those with male gender identities are men.
This completely immersive ‘institutionalisation’ of a fiction that people
can change sex is profoundly dangerous for several reasons. The
first and most obvious one is that, as I argued in Chapters 3 and 5,
sex continues to exist, as do the many circumstances in which it’s
appropriate to mention or respond to it, either with regard to specific
individuals or as a general fact. Indeed, one such circumstance was
cited just now in the 2017 Stonewall ‘hate crime’ report. Despite what
this report suggests, it might be perfectly appropriate for a female
security guard to refuse to search a male person and to ask a male
to do it instead.
A second problem is the cost to freedom of speech. An individual’s
choice to get immersed in a fiction or not is precisely that: a choice,
falling into the realm of autonomy and individual conscience. Even if
we sometimes automatically get immersed in fictions given exposure
to the right sort of prompts or props, we can usually choose to pull
ourselves out of them. Non-hateful speech shouldn’t be compelled.
It’s not hateful in itself to refuse to immerse yourself in a given fiction
and to choose instead to refer to facts. It is perhaps considered rude
to refuse in some cases, just as it can be rude to point out facts
about someone’s weight, or that they’ve gone grey, or look aged –
but ‘hateful’ it is not. And when trans women like Debbie Hayton,
Miranda Yardley and Fionne Orlander refuse to enter into the fiction
that they are women, and state that they are men, they are not being
‘self-hating’.
In recent years, there have been several notable cases of UK
institutions compelling people to adopt the language of gender
identity. I’ve talked about one of them, involving guidelines for media
crime reporting, in the last chapter. Another example was during the
2018 criminal trial of trans woman Tara Wolf, for the assault on a
sixty-year-old radical feminist Maria MacLachlan. Wolf did not have a
Gender Recognition Certificate at the time of the trial. Prior to the
assault, Wolf had written on social media of the wish to ‘fuck some
terfs up’. The traumatic assault upon MacLachlan was captured on
video, and the trial resulted in a conviction for Wolf. Yet despite this,
and despite MacLachlan being there as a victim to testify about her
assault, in the course of the trial District Judge Kenneth Grant told
MacLachan, ‘The defendant wished to be referred to as a woman, so
perhaps you could refer to her as “she” for the purpose of the
proceedings.’41
In a different case from 2019, tax researcher Maya Forstater lost
her position at the Centre for Global Development think tank on the
grounds of using alleged ‘offensive and exclusionary’ language in
tweets. Her tweets were in opposition to the Government’s move to
reform the Gender Recognition Act in favour of gender identity. In
her tweets, Forstater stated her belief in binary sex, and her belief
that ‘men cannot change into women’. When she later took the
Centre to an employment tribunal, the judge found in the Centre’s
favour, ruling that Forstater’s stated belief that there are two sexes
could not count as a protected philosophical belief under the terms of
the 2010 Equality Act. The judge’s incredible ruling was that
Forstater’s refusal to – as I would call it – immerse herself in a fiction
about sex change, and instead to state facts, was ‘not worthy of
respect in a democratic society’.42
In these cases, the judges’ pronouncements didn’t come from
nowhere. The Crown Prosecution Service – as already mentioned,
another Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme member – currently
advises that gender identity should determine the naming and
pronouns of defendants.43 The Equal Treatment Bench Book, issued
to the judiciary by the Judicial College in 2018 and heavily citing
Stonewall throughout, states: ‘It is important to respect a person’s
gender identity by using appropriate terms of address, names and
pronouns. Everyone is entitled to respect for their gender identity,
private life and personal dignity.’44 The personal dignity of women
who have been assaulted, or who wish to freely speak their mind on
matters of political importance to them, apparently doesn’t figure as
a consideration.
A third risk to society of compelled immersion is to knowledge
production. As noted earlier, when people are collectively coerced
into immersing themselves in a fiction, it simultaneously becomes
important not to make any second-order reference to the presence of
the fiction. Any such reference will tend to destroy first-order
immersion, just as an actor saying ‘I’m an actor!’ or ‘This gun isn’t
real!’ on stage will destroy an audience’s immersion in a play. A
taboo then arises around naming reality. This is particularly bad in
contexts such as universities, whose main point is to produce and
disseminate socially useful knowledge, broadly speaking.
I find it particularly telling that academics who are strongly critical
of views like mine, as expressed in this book, tend not to address
them with argument or evidence – as would be expected, given
disciplinary norms – but often instead resort, relatively unusually for
such norms, to complaints about my presumed motives or personal
failings. They also tend rhetorically to collapse criticism of the
intellectual tenets of trans activism into moral criticism of trans
people. Here’s a particularly good example from the preface of Helga
Varden’s 2020 book Sex, Gender and Love. Varden writes (my
italics): ‘I want clearly to distance myself and my theory from those
who, in the name of feminism, write to undermine the reality of
and/or to criticize people who are trans … it greatly saddens me to
see what I consider to be the thoughtlessness with which many
feminist (and other) philosophers relate to trans lives.’45 Such
moralising rhetoric upfront is a clue that truth-pursuit is not the aim
here, but something more like the propping up of a fiction. Another
interesting academic phenomenon that looks like grist to my mill is
what philosopher Mary Leng has called the ‘Reverse Voltaire’: ‘I
agree with what you have to say, but will fight to the death to prevent
you from saying it.’46 That is, some academics will admit, when
pressed, that sex exists, and is distinct from ‘gender’, but will insist
that it shouldn’t be mentioned wherever it conceivably might offend
trans people. This makes it look as though immersion is in play for
them too, a lot of the time.
In 2019, having experienced unusually virulent and personalised
attempts to smother my public writing on sex and gender, I put out a
call to fellow academics to send me accounts of any similar
experiences. I was inundated. Correspondents told me of their
journal submissions and grant applications being rejected on the
grounds of ‘transphobia’; of editorial positions withdrawn on similar
grounds; of academic publishers bullied into delays or retractions; of
official university complaints of harassment and bullying against
them; of informal chats from departmental heads indicating the
likelihood of threat to promotion prospects, and so on.47 The result is
that academics have largely been cowed into silence. The social
effects of recent changes in favour of gender identity within UK
institutions cannot properly be explored, precisely because UK
universities have instigated similar policies themselves. Interesting
phenomena such as the recent rapid rise in the numbers of younger
girls and women with misaligned gender identities cannot be
properly analysed. When one researcher at Brown University in
Rhode Island, Lisa Littman, tried to investigate this academically,
publishing an article on ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’, trans
activists immediately pronounced it ‘deeply flawed’ (presumably
because it counteracted the popular SOR model discussed in
Chapter 4), after which both the publisher and her own institution
disassociated themselves from the work.48 In 2016 an entire Gender
Identity Service in Canada was closed at the behest of trans
activists, for alleged ‘conversion therapy’ of young people with
misaligned gender identities – that is, of actively questioning their
origins rather than ‘affirming’ them.49 Such close and overtly
politicised policing of academic and therapeutic work around trans
children and teens in particular means that potential relations
between factors such as autism, homosexuality, a history of trauma
and the possession of a misaligned gender identity in that population
are arguably not being properly explored.50 Perhaps most worryingly
of all, it seems an adequate medical understanding of the long-term
effects of drugs such as puberty blockers and hormone courses,
dispensed to many young people with misaligned gender identities,
might also have been hampered.51 None of this is in the genuine
interests of trans people – in fact, it positively works against them.
When you show a child a film, sometimes they don’t understand
it’s a fiction and think it’s real. Yet another risk in the currently
coercive environment many find themselves in is of onlookers – of
whatever age – failing to fully understand what the true facts about
biological sex are. For, as is predictable, some are taking others’
unacknowledged immersion in a fiction that trans women are
women, and trans men are men, etc., to indicate that these things
are literally true. As described earlier, humans take on a lot of beliefs
on trust, simply by listening to others and copying them. This is a
reasonable general practice – indispensable, in fact. However, where
someone has taken on beliefs in this way, having unwittingly gained
them from watching others immersed in a fiction rather than reality,
the result can be a kind of dogmatic faith-based stance: ‘It must be
true, but I can’t say why – all I know is it would be very bad to deny
it.’ (Not for nothing have commentators noticed that the mantra
‘Trans women are women! Trans men are men!’ can sound like a
religious incantation.) In effect, the psychological effect captured so
well in the fairy tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ seems to be
present. The tale’s famous denouement details how ‘Everyone in the
streets and the windows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new
clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!”
Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would
prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool.’52

The risks of sex-incongruent language

There’s another potential cost to all this which, if eventually
established to be a genuine phenomenon, needs serious
consideration. In a pseudonymous blog post from 2019 called
‘Pronouns are Rohypnol’, ‘Barra Kerr’ argued that measures to
coerce people into calling trans women ‘women’ and trans men
‘men’, and to use sex-incongruent pronouns for them, slow both
speakers and listeners down cognitively, as their brains struggle to
process the relatively unusual sex-incongruent language choices.
Kerr makes a comparison with the Stroop Test, a psychological
experiment in which participants are asked to list the colours of a set
of differently coloured words, but where the words themselves are
names of colours, distributed in an ‘incongruent’ non-matching way
so that, for example, the word ‘RED’ is coloured yellow, and
‘GREEN’ is coloured blue. When psychologists run the Stroop Test,
they find participants’ processing of the colours of the words to be
significantly delayed, compared to when colours and words are
congruent. The Stroop Effect has been explained as a result of what
is called ‘semantic interference’, understood as the result of
competing messages being simultaneously sent to the part of the
brain responsible for the retrieval of declarative facts.53 Similarly,
Kerr argues, trying to use preferred sex-incongruent pronouns for a
person – e.g. ‘woman’ or ‘she’ or ‘her’ for someone whose
appearance strongly suggests they are male – results in Stroop-like
effects of its own.54
To this, we might add a point introduced in the last chapter, when I
observed that WOMAN and MAN are perceptual concepts, usually
first acquired as a child by being shown a number of examples in the
world around the child or in picture books (‘Look, that’s a lady!’,
‘What’s the man in the shop doing?’, and so on), from which the
child’s brain starts to be able to extrapolate the relevant concept and
apply it to new and different cases. Remember also that, in the
vernacular, a ‘passing’ trans woman is defined as someone who has
had sufficient medical intervention to come to look visually
indiscernible from a woman. When a viewer (any viewer, including
trans viewers) who has the perceptual concept WOMAN sees a
‘passing’ trans woman, the very same perceptual systems initially
are recruited as are also recruited in visual recognition of women
generally. That’s implied, precisely, by the fact the trans woman
‘passes’. In the absence of any confounding information about the
trans woman’s sex, the viewer will automatically visually classify the
trans woman ‘as a woman’. And even with simultaneous access to
confounding information about a passing trans woman’s actual sex,
via some other informational route (say, because she has told you
she is trans), there’s a sense in which a viewer will still automatically
see the trans woman ‘as’ a woman, even if that viewer
simultaneously ultimately concludes she isn’t one. This automatic
tendency of human brains to see objects ‘as’ other objects, based on
shared visual or other perceptual profiles, is also employed in going
to the cinema and seeing screen images ‘as’ the things they depict,
or seeing certain shaped clouds in the sky ‘as’ animals or trees, or
the shadow in the corner ‘as’ a ghost. It’s automatic. It’s consistent
with knowing what you are seeing isn’t really there, or not really as
you are seeing it. In that case the brain is, in effect, sending
simultaneously conflicting messages.
This also has consequences for how the visual system deals with
automatically categorising trans people who are not ‘passing’. Based
on available numbers, it seems that these currently greatly
outnumber passing trans people in the UK. This is partly because
surgery is relatively expensive, waiting lists are long, and hormone
courses on their own often can’t remove evidence of post-pubertal
aspects distinctive of sexed anatomy, particularly for males. Where,
for instance, a trans woman is physically unlike a woman in ways
relevant to ordinary recognition, no amount of berating your internal
visual processing system will convince it to start seeing her – in the
relevant sense – ‘as’ a woman. The visual recognition process
precisely precludes this.
One obvious consequence of this is that trans activism’s attempts
to socially sanction or even criminalise what they call ‘misgendering’
and I call ‘accurately sexing’ within institutions look even more
illiberal, especially in environments where young people are only just
getting to grips with the original concepts in the first place (e.g.
schools). People can’t help seeing what they see. With children, we
usually encourage them to say what they see, so it’s bizarre to
change the game and start punishing them for it. Another
consequence is that Barra Kerr’s hypothesis looks supported, at
least with respect to attempts to use sex-incongruent pronouns and
other language for non-passing trans people. Effectively, the brain is
automatically visually classifying as ‘not-a-woman’, while trying to
label as ‘woman’. With passing trans people, presumably, Stroop-like
effects are lower.
Part of Kerr’s thesis seems to be that Stroop-like effects are
deliberately provoked by trans women to lower the defences of
women to their aggressive sexual attention. This seems to me to be
fearmongering. However, that particular disagreement can be left
aside, because if Kerr is right, it doesn’t matter what the particular
intentions of trans women are: either way, the cognitive
disadvantage for those who try to comply with preferred pronouns
will be the same. This certainly seems worth investigating, given
facts discussed in Chapter 3 about how strength and sexual
aggression are differently averaged across male and female
populations respectively, and how men are responsible for the
majority of assaults upon women. In this context, something that
slows down the cognitive processes of women with respect to
potential aggressors may turn out to have very serious personal
ramifications for them.
 A related point concerns how the use of preferred pronouns and
sex-incongruent language can influence public discussion, in the
physical absence of the trans person in question. In Chapter 5, I
described how newspaper articles now tend to refer even to
convicted criminal trans women as ‘women’ and use ‘she’ and ‘her’
pronouns for them. Public commentators often do the same, moving
seamlessly between ‘woman’ and ‘trans woman’, ‘she’ and ‘her’. For
viewers or readers who don’t fully grasp what a trans woman is, this
can be confusing (I can’t be the only person who regularly has to
explain to my parents that a ‘trans woman’ isn’t a female who has
transitioned to live as a man). But even for those who do understand,
the use of sex-incongruent language can send a misleading set of
impressions to a reader’s subconscious. We are set up to have
certain expectations about the people called ‘she’ or ‘her’: for
instance, that they will on average be more physically vulnerable and
less sexually aggressive than the people called ‘he’ or ‘him’. The
psychological effect of these expectations really becomes obvious
only where an exception proves the rule: that is, where, unusually,
expectations are set up and then flagrantly flouted within a single
piece of prose. A good example comes from the reporting of the trial
of trans woman Karen White, eventually convicted for sexual
assaults on female prisoners while placed in a female jail. The
prosecutor was reported in newspapers as having said, of the
defendant: ‘Her penis was erect and sticking out of the top of her
trousers.’55 This memorable sentence spells out in stark detail a fact
often figuratively concealed by the use of ‘woman’, ‘she’ and ‘her’.
More often in the written medium, though, expectations
unconsciously generated in readers by an author’s sex-incongruent
language choices are left intact, to the potential detriment of clear
communication.

My own use of pronouns

In this book, I’ve argued that, when speaking literally and not
immersed in a fiction, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ should be used in line with
sex. Equally, though, so far I’ve been using pronouns in a way that, I
assume, tracks what most individual trans people would prefer. That
is, I normally use ‘he’ and ‘him’ for trans men, ‘she’ and ‘her’ for trans
women, and ‘they’ and ‘them’ for non-binary people, where
preferred. Most of the time, I choose to immerse myself in a fiction
about sex change for trans people, where it seems they would wish
me to. (I choose to make an exception for trans women who assault
or aggress women. So, for instance, I will not call Karen White ‘she’
nor ‘her’.)
The discussion of the last section has revealed this choice is not
an uncomplicated one. Though I’ve made it, I remain genuinely
conflicted by the issue. At the very least, it’s clear the decision to use
sex-incongruent language of any sort should normally be a free
choice. It’s not acceptable on the part of any organisation to
coercively require this on pain of sanction. Trying to encourage
social norms of politeness in a company or institution, including
encouraging people to use preferred pronouns where sex isn’t
relevant, is one thing; having HR departments threaten people with
accusations of ‘transphobia’ and ‘hate speech’ if they don’t is quite
another. As a trans person, having your preferred pronouns or other
sex-incongruent terms used by others is a courtesy on their part and
not a right on yours.
When trying to work out what to do for the best in this area in
everyday interactions, we should probably remember that the
available options for referring to trans women and trans men are not,
as commonly presented, only ‘woman’/ ‘she’/ ‘her’ or ‘man’/ ‘he’/
‘him’. For one thing, if something isn’t relevant it doesn’t need to be
mentioned. There are plenty of potentially awkward facts we don’t
mention in everyday discourse, in order to keep interpersonal
relations ticking along. For another thing, where sex isn’t relevant to
a particular conversation, sex-neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ can be
used for trans women and trans men if ‘she’ and ‘he’ are personally
impossible. That is, we don’t necessarily have to choose either sex-
congruent ones or sex-incongruent ones. This may not seem ideal to
either ‘side’ – not to mention, to some grammarians – but it’s a
compromise, and that’s probably the most we can hope for. For
centuries, the rich resources of the English language have provided
opportunities for the diplomatic finessing of psychologically
uncomfortable facts where possible, without denying them
completely. We should try to use those resources creatively where
we can. Equally, though, we need to remember messages from
earlier chapters as well as parts of this one. In every organisation,
there will be circumstances where glossing isn’t appropriate, and
where those facts need to be referred to – not out of spite or
rudeness, but for the rational and equitable functioning of the
organisation.
You might be wondering: how have we collectively lost sight of the
availability of this sort of compromise? In the next two chapters, I’ll
propose some explanations, both historical and psychological.
 7

How Did We Get Here?

Let’s go back for a moment, to 2014. By then, Stonewall had

arguably won its last major objective for gay rights – bringing same-
sex marriage into law – and was ready to take on a new mission,
thereby finding itself a new income stream in the process. With its
launch of the 2015 ‘A Vision for Change: Acceptance without
Exception for Trans People’ campaign, it found one. Many of the
ambitions expressed in the accompanying ‘A Vision for Change’
document will by now be familiar. Trans people should be able to
access services and resources ‘that align with their gender identity’.
The 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) should be changed
because it ‘denies trans people the ability to determine their own
gender’, and the spousal veto should be removed. The Equality Act
should rename the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’
as ‘gender identity’. Non-binary people should be able to alter their
passports to reflect this allegedly fundamental fact about them.
There should also be ‘[j]udicial clarity of “sex by deception” cases to
define the legal position on what constitutes sex by deception based
on gender, and to ensure trans people’s privacy is protected’.1
Partly as a result of A Vision for Change and the lobbying that
went with it, in 2016 the cross-party Women and Equalities Select
Committee initiated a public inquiry, the ‘Transgender Equality
Inquiry’. In Chapter 1, I mentioned the background influence of an
intellectual position popular in activist academia, ‘standpoint
epistemology’. This says that, as members of an oppressed minority,
the views of trans people should be deferred to when it comes to
anything to do with transness, and those of non-trans people mostly
ignored as irrelevant. Whether those involved noticed it or not, this
certainly seems to have been a guiding principle in the Trans Inquiry.
Twenty people were called as witnesses to the inquiry, excluding
MPs. Eleven of these represented trans activist organisations or
causes, nine of whom were trans themselves and two of whom were
parents of trans people. Nine other witnesses were there as
relatively neutral experts, though some of these were also trans. No
representatives for other interested parties with competing interests
were called as witnesses: no representatives of women-only groups
and services, and no therapists or parents with concerns about
transitioning children, for instance.
Many of the trans representatives made recommendations, then
repeated in the Final Inquiry Report, based only on putative
connections to trans lived experiences rather than any independent
expertise. So for instance, Susie Green, chair of the charity
Mermaids and mother of a trans child, was there as a witness and
was extensively quoted throughout the report. Green is an IT
consultant with no medical expertise. Mermaids’ written submission
was quoted as recommending that ‘pubertal-postponement
treatments should be made available to older children (aged 16 and
17) as well as younger ones’. Anna Lee, a representative of
Lancaster Students Union with a recent degree in Mathematics and
with no obvious connection to sporting matters, was cited as
recommending that national governing bodies for sport should relax
their requirements around trans athletes. Jess Bradley, a young
representative for Edinburgh Action for Trans Health, was heavily
cited throughout the report, making recommendations about the
NHS for reasons that are unclear. Action for Trans Health’s publicly
stated political objectives at the time included the immediate release
and pardon of all trans prisoners, an end to all birth certificates, and
for hormones to be prescribed, free and upon request, by the NHS.
On their website they described the history of trans medicine as ‘a
history of colonial and fascist abuse’.
In the report summarising the Inquiry’s findings, the Women and
Equalities Committee made a host of recommendations that could
have been taken straight from Stonewall’s original Vision for
Change. Many of these were then endorsed in the Conservative
government’s later response to that report.2 For instance: the
Government committed itself to review the GRA ‘to determine
whether changes can be made to improve it in order to streamline
and de-medicalise the gender recognition process’. The very highest
bar was set for single-sex exemptions under the Equality Act, with
the Government noting ‘it is very unlikely that any exceptions will
apply in ordinary “high street” service provision situations’. It further
noted ‘there are likely to be few occasions in sport where exclusions
are justified to ensure fair competition or the safety of competitors’. It
was approvingly reported that, already at that point, ‘equality
guidance provided to the judiciary … provides advice on how to
prevent transgender people from being “outed” in court proceedings’.
(We saw some of the effects of this guidance in Chapter 6.) Later, in
2018, Prime Minister Theresa May was the face of the launch of an
LGBT Action Plan, in which the Conservative government restated
its intention to remove ‘bureaucratic and intrusive’ obstacles to
legally acquiring a Gender Recognition Certificate, and to move to a
‘more streamlined and de-medicalised’ process.3 A public
consultation on GRA reform was eventually delivered, launched with
an apparently confident assumption it would be warmly received by
the public with the minimum of opposition. (As it turns out, they were
wrong about that.)
By any measure, Stonewall’s ‘A Vision for Change’ was
staggeringly successful – at least, until it came up against grassroots
public test. My question for this chapter is: why? More generally: how
did so many prominent figures and public institutions become
receptive to the conclusions of gender identity theory? Why has
ideologically driven policy-capture been, apparently, so easy? Of
course, the explanation is bound to be complex, and I can cover only
part of it. One significant factor is the intellectual story I’ve tried to
trace, disseminated through university departments and beyond.
Another factor concerns various commitments and tensions within
current feminism, which I’ll discuss in my final chapter. But here, in
some detail, are three other salient factors as I see them.

A history of prejudice against gay, trans and other

sex-nonconforming people
One important factor, I think, is public awareness of a history of
prejudice against sex-nonconforming people, plus a commendable
desire to be (seen to be) on the other side of it. Very often, this
prejudice has been directed towards gay people in particular. It still is
in various parts of the world. Gay people are counted by others as
sex nonconforming, in the sense that they occupy what’s perceived
to be a female-associated sexual role (men) or a male-associated
sexual role (women). Heterosexual disgust about same-sex activity
as ‘unnatural’ and ‘deviant’ speaks to an implied relation to the
heterosexual norm.
Sex between men was a capital offence in England and Wales
until 1861– the last men to be hung for ‘buggery’ were executed in
1835 – and was criminalised until 1967.4 The conviction and
sentence of Oscar Wilde to hard labour in Pentonville Prison serves
as salutary reminder of the potential dangers of living even semi-
openly as a gay man in the nineteenth century and for most of the
twentieth. During the post-war period, in line with a general renewed
concern about public morals, there was a repressive public
clampdown on gay sex. As historian Dominic Janes describes, ‘the
police manufactured evidence, intimidated witnesses, entrapped
homosexual men, and ensured that careers and relationships were
ruined’.5 Then, after a period of relative progress for gay people in
the 60s and 70s including decriminalisation, in the 1980s public
attitudes were set back by the advent of HIV AIDS. According to
authors of the British Social Attitudes survey (BSA), this period ‘saw
frequent (and often incorrect) scares about how the HIV virus could
be transmitted … as well as a frequent distinction being made
between those who were “innocent” victims (for example, contracting
the HIV virus through blood transfusions) and those, like gay men or
intravenous drug-users, who were seen to have “chosen” to place
themselves at risk’. As the BSA records, a belief that same-sex
relations are ‘always wrong’ increased during this time.6 Also in the
1980s, the Tory government introduced Section 28 of the Local
Government Act 1988, stating local government ‘shall not
intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the
intention of promoting homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in
state schools of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended
family relationship’. This slur upon gay adults, children, and their
families indirectly prompted the formation of Stonewall, who boldly
and brilliantly fought Section 28 alongside other gay rights lobbying
organisations until an official repeal in the early 2000s.
The more recent trans activist incarnation of Stonewall has been
keen to draw parallels between current attempts to reform the law in
favour of gender identity and the historical campaign it waged in the
1980s against Section 28. It now frames Section 28 as legislation
that banned ‘discussion of identities in schools’.7 Yet Section 28 was
nothing to do with ‘identities’, in the contemporary sense of internal
psychological representations of the self, which may or may not
correspond to reality. It wasn’t a ban on positive representations of
people who ‘identified as gay’. Rather, it was a ban on positive
representations of gay people: gay in the sense they had sexual
orientations towards people of the same sex as them and acted on
them.
As the attempted comparison implies, though, historical events
such as Section 28 have now become touchstones for progressive-
minded people in the twenty-first century. They are recollected with
shame as times when the heterosexual majority failed in its
responsibilities towards the homosexual minority. Feelings are
further heightened by memories of violent attacks on gay people like
the nail-bombing in 1999 of the Admiral Duncan gay pub in Soho,
which killed three and wounded seventy, following previous nail-
bomb attacks on Black and Bangladeshi communities by the same
neo-Nazi perpetrator. In the 2019 version of the British Social
Attitudes survey, two-thirds of those polled said same-sex sexual
activity was ‘not wrong at all’: ‘an increase of almost 50 percentage
points since the question was first asked in 1983’.8 The public’s
journey towards a more understanding and empathic stance in the
twenty-first century is symbolised for some in the apparently heartfelt
personal journey of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron. In
2009 he publicly apologised for having personally supported Section
28, and in 2013 his government introduced the same-sex marriage
bill under his stewardship.9
Alongside concern to do the right thing by gay people, there
continues to be public confusion about the relation between gay and
trans people. This isn’t new. As well as appearing sex
nonconforming in virtue of their perceived sex-incongruent ‘sexual
roles’, many gay people are also genuinely sex nonconforming in
that they fail to match sex-associated physical or behavioural
stereotypes. Many lesbians look or act masculine, and many gay
men feminine, relative to averages or norms for their peers. Either
way, there has long been confusion about whether being gay
somehow changes your sex. In Ancient Greece the passive partner
in sexual activity between men was often referred to as a ‘woman’ or
‘womanly’. In the nineteenth century, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
popularised his ‘third sex’ theory, according to which a gay man is a
‘feminine soul confined by a masculine body’.10 Around the same
time, the idea of gay people as ‘sexual inverts’ was promoted by
authors like Havelock Ellis. Richard von Krafft-Ebing described
lesbianism as ‘the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom’.11
In Radclyffe Hall’s infamous novel about female ‘inversion’, The Well
of Loneliness (1928), the main female character, Stephen, is
described as occupying the ‘no-man’s land of sex’. And in 1952 Alan
Turing, a gay mathematician whose work made an incalculable
contribution to artificial intelligence and code-breaking, was
involuntarily administered female hormones after a conviction for
gross indecency.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there is residual confusion in the
public mind about the precise relationship between being gay and
being trans – perhaps especially for heterosexual onlookers, trying
hard to be sympathetic from the sidelines. Confusion is increased by
the long history of drag queens, drag kings and other forms of
transvestism within gay culture, and by practices such as gay men
calling drag queens ‘she’. As earlier discussion indicates, the mere
fact of being same-sex attracted or otherwise sex nonconforming is
nothing like enough to establish either possession of a misaligned
gender identity or being trans. Equally, many trans people are
heterosexual: stably attracted to members of the opposite sex. Still,
for public figures and organisations wary of being on the wrong side
of history (again), when Stonewall and other prestigious gay rights
organisations started adding a ‘T’ to ‘LGB’, nearly all were happy to
go along with it.
 More recently, an increasingly polarised political climate has
strongly contributed to the desire to be especially sympathetic to
trans people, especially during the time of Trump. Given the degree
of social interplay between American and British left-wing outlets and
commentators, US concerns tend to influence British ones. The fury
and despair felt by many Democrat voters towards Trump produced
a flattening of political discourse, as complex issues came to be
treated as simple ‘good versus bad’ ones. This included trans issues.
In the US, the picture for trans rights is much more mixed than in the
UK, and some reasonable and deserved protections are genuinely
lacking. At federal level, there is no legally protected characteristic of
gender reassignment (or, indeed, sexual orientation), as in the UK
Equality Act. There is also no NHS, which UK trans people are
entitled to use for their healthcare needs, as is everyone else, and
which normally removes the possibility of huge bills.12 In 2020,
Trump’s government removed healthcare protections for pregnant
women, and gay and trans people that had been in place since
2016. The year before, he banned transgender personnel from
serving in the military.13 Even though inapplicable to the UK
situation, genuinely discriminatory actions like these against trans
people produced a reactionary bounce in UK progressive minds
towards support for whatever looked even vaguely like the opposite
approach. They were also leveraged by UK trans activists and
sympathetic journalists as evidence of a generally worsening
situation for trans people, including in the UK, without explicit
consideration of how the background context might relevantly differ.
But capitalising on public sympathy for sex-nonconforming people
is not the only way in which trans activist organisations have exerted
influence. Another relevant factor is the use of propaganda. I’ll look
at three notable examples.

Trans activist propaganda and its effect

Transgender Remembrance Day

In the words of US organisation GLAAD: ‘Transgender Day of

Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender
advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of
Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil
commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita
Hester’s death, and began an important tradition.’ What started as a
spontaneous grassroots commemoration of a violent and senseless
act in the US has in recent years become a corporate fixture for
many UK institutions. On 20 November every year, companies,
public sector organisations and universities hold ceremonies to
commemorate TDOR, often with senior management figures
present. At many of these ceremonies, candles are lit and the names
of all the trans people murdered in the previous year are read out,
one by one. As John Lucy Muir writes on the Stonewall website,
‘Each year we pause in memory of those murdered or who’ve taken
their own life as a result of transphobia. Sometimes we gather with
friends and attend services, reflecting on those lost to hatred and
bigotry. We read through the list of names and the horrifying details
of the manner in which their lives were lost: “Cause of death; throat
cut”; “Cause of death; shot at point-blank range”; “Cause of death;
blunt force trauma, set on fire”. Each year the list continues, on and
on.’14
The list of names for each year is recorded on a dedicated website
with a printable list of names to be read at ceremonies.15 Stonewall
strongly encourages members of its Diversity Champions scheme to
get involved, citing, among other organisations, De Montfort
University’s participation as exemplary. In its ‘Communicating an
Inclusive Service’ document, Stonewall approvingly describes how,
at De Montfort, ‘[m]essaging centres around significant days like
Transgender Day of Remembrance … with rainbow flags flying …
The visible commitment of De Montfort University’s Vice-Chancellor
… is key to its success in this area.’16 High-profile UK politicians are
also keen to show solidarity with the trans community on 20
November, issuing supportive tweets on the day or public
statements, like the one made by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in
2017. On TDOR in 2019, Labour’s Shadow Women and Equalities
Minister Dawn Butler published an emotive public statement in the
LGBT publication Pink News, simultaneously expressing solidarity
with trans people and pledging Labour’s commitment to reforming
the GRA.17 Generally, TDOR is used as a key reference point for the
general picture of transphobic violence and hate crime against trans
people painted by UK LGBT organisations, which is also sometimes
used to back up the claim that trans women should have access to
women-only spaces like changing rooms and bathrooms (the
apparent implication being this will be safer for them, as it will protect
them from violent transphobic men).18
And yet, for a list doing so much political heavy lifting in the UK,
when we examine it we find something odd. Most of the names, by a
large margin, are from the Americas. According to the Trans Murder
Monitoring Project, which also monitors trans murders worldwide, in
2019 there were 331 murders of trans and ‘gender-diverse’ people
overall, with 160 of them (48 per cent) occurring in Brazil, 63 (19 per
cent) in Mexico, 31 (9 per cent) in the US, 14 in Colombia, and 13 in
Argentina. Nine occurred in Europe as a whole, including one in the
UK.19 In 2018 meanwhile, of 369 murders, 167 (45 per cent) were
recorded in Brazil, 71 (19 per cent) in Mexico, 28 in the US, 21 in
Colombia, and 9 in Argentina. Sixteen were recorded in Europe as a
whole, again including one in the UK.20
To put this into some context: in 2017 there were 63,880
homicides in Brazil, and in 2018 this dropped to a still staggering
51,000.21 The 2020 World Population Review classed Brazil as the
seventh most murderous country in the world, with an average of
30.5 murders per 100,000 people.22 Mexico was sixteenth with
19.27.23 Another fact worthy of note is that, according to the Trans
Murder Monitoring Project, 61 per cent of trans people murdered in
2019 were in the sex trade. In 2018 the figure was 62 per cent. Entry
into the sex trade for many trans people might well be an indirect
result of inequality: that is, of career options being discriminatorily
restricted due to being trans. One report on violence against those in
the sex trade details how, for many, ‘choosing sex work is a
reflection of limited livelihood options and limited economic
resources’ especially where the trans person is an economic
migrant.24 Still, as trans scholar Talia Mae Bettcher notes: ‘Not all
acts of violence against trans people need be transphobic in nature.
A trans woman might be targeted not because of her trans status but
because she is simply viewed as a sex worker.’25 It’s well
established that prostitution puts you at unusually high risk of
violence, from clients, co-workers, police and others, especially in
Latin America.26 It also seems relevant that, in the words of one
study, though trans people overall in the US don’t face a higher risk
than average of being murdered, ‘young transgender women of color
almost certainly’ do. This too looks potentially partly connected to the
disproportionate presence of Black and Latina trans women in the
US sex trade.27
This complex context isn’t conveyed by those pushing for the
commemoration of TDOR within UK institutions. Instead, the
murders are presented as produced from a single cause:
‘transphobia’. Let no one misunderstand me – the increased
susceptibility of those in the sex trade to death and violence (and
poverty, and drug misuse) is a horrific fact, to which any society
should pay urgent sympathetic attention. But using the murders of
trans prostitutes overseas to make political points in the UK by
shoehorning them into a formless rhetorical void, in which all such
deaths are treated as the same, explained vaguely as a result of
transphobia, is precisely not to pay attention to the full picture. And
the victims deserve better than being instrumentalised to make
simplistic political points.
When we look at the murder rate of trans people in the UK over a
decade it turns out it is, on average, around one a year as an
absolute value. No trans people have been murdered in the UK in
the last two years. Generally speaking, roughly 1 per 100,000 people
are murdered on average in the UK every year.28 As indicated in my
introduction, according to Stonewall, their ‘best estimate’ of how
many trans people there are in the UK is ‘about 600,000 trans and
non-binary people in Britain, out of a population of over 60 million’.29
If that’s right, this means the murder rate for trans people is lower
than for the general population as a whole. Needless to say, this isn’t
a message you’re ever likely to get from attending a TDOR event in
the UK.
Misrepresentation of suicide statistics
My next example is from Mermaids, the UK organisation that self-
identifies its mission as ‘helping gender-diverse kids, young people
and their families since 1995’. At the time of writing, Stonewall is
partnered with Mermaids and several other trans activist
organisations in a five-year project, funded by the National Lottery
Community Fund, to ‘improve trans people’s access to health and
justice systems’.30 Part of Mermaids’ aim for several years has been
to lobby for increased and earlier access to puberty blockers and
cross-sex hormones for children with misaligned gender identities,
and to lower the age at which Gender Recognition Certificates can
be given to them.
In pursuit of this aim, Mermaids habitually invokes the possible
suicides of trans children. In its ‘Media Guidelines for Reporting
Suicide’, published in 2013, the UK Charity Samaritans warned
against implying a single event could have been the only cause of a
suicide, writing that this can be ‘misleading and is unlikely to reflect
accurately the complexity of suicide’. It also noted: ‘Approximately 90
per cent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosed or
undiagnosed mental health problem at the time of death’; and that
‘Young people are particularly vulnerable to “imitative” suicides.
Research shows they are the group most likely to be influenced by
the media.’31 Undeterred by such considerations, on World Suicide
Prevention Day in 2019, Mermaids published an ‘open letter’ citing
the suicides of trans children as a reason to reform the law to allow
children to acquire Gender Recognition Certificates.
This letter opened dramatically (their bold): ‘Change now to save
transgender children from suicide … We know that there is
nothing more devastating than the loss of a child or young person to
suicide. We see, first hand, the terrible psychological trauma suffered
by some of our service users because they live in a society that
seems unable or unwilling to understand and accept them. Overall,
the number of suicides in the UK fell between 2017–2018 but the
number of under 19’s taking their own lives in that period rose by
15% … Meanwhile, research from the charity Stonewall shows that
nearly half of young trans people have attempted suicide.’ It
continued: ‘We know that by failing to support trans children and
young people, we are losing them to suicide … It is nothing short
of a national scandal that the current system is leading smart,
talented, creative, motivated, kind and loved young people to
consider ending their lives. It is time the Gender Recognition Act
2004 was changed to allow transgender people of all ages to self-
identify. We are at the forefront of one of the greatest civil rights
challenges of our time. Young transgender people are losing
their lives. Our society must stop failing them.’32
Looking more closely, the first statistic cited by Mermaids in this
hyperbolic letter is a general one concerning all UK people under
nineteen, and so of course can show nothing about trans people
specifically. The letter states that in 2017–18, suicides in this age
group rose by 15 per cent. The reference given in the footnotes is to
an Office for National Statistics document for 2017 which in fact
records nothing at all for this age group in particular, but records
decreases in the suicide rate for the age group ten to twenty-four
years.33 Being maximally charitable, perhaps Mermaids intended
instead to reference ONS data from 2018, which indeed records an
upward trend in suicide for this age group of around 36 per cent.
This looks worrying, though, again, nothing to do with being trans –
but it’s surely also important to note that generally, across all age
rages, there was an 11.8 per cent increase in the suicide rate in
2018. The accompanying ONS interpretation warns: ‘Suicide rates
tend to fluctuate on a year-to-year basis. It is therefore too early to
say whether the latest increase represents a change in the recent
trend.’ It also notes that the standard of proof for suicide was
officially lowered halfway through 2018, which may well have
affected results.
Following their next claim up – that ‘research from the charity
Stonewall shows that nearly half of young trans people have
attempted suicide’ – we find a reference to a Stonewall 2017
publication that does indeed say: ‘More than two in five trans young
people (45 per cent) have at some point attempted to take their own
life.’ Looking more closely, we find that these findings were drawn
from an online questionnaire polling 3,713 children aged eleven to
nineteen, 16 per cent (roughly 594) of whom said they were trans.34
A non-probability sampling method was used.35 It’s widely agreed
among statisticians that this is an inadequate method with which to
extrapolate to a population as a whole, because the sample isn’t
random.
When we turn to actual suicide statistics, GIDS themselves report
that ‘suicide is extremely rare’ in patients.36 Oxford sociologist Dr
Michael Biggs has discovered via Freedom of Information requests
that between 2016 and 2018 one patient of GIDS committed suicide
and two attempted it. ‘In addition,’ he writes, ‘two patients on the
waiting list committed suicide (in 2016 and 2017) and two attempted
suicide. This makes a total of three suicides in two and a half years.’
Biggs also notes for comparison that ‘anorexia multiplies the risk of
suicide by 18 or 31 times (depending on the method of estimation),
while depression multiplies it by 20.’37 As we saw in Chapter 4, a
‘high level’ of depression is documented as present in GIDS patients,
as noted by the Head of Psychology working there. Anecdotally,
some detransitioners report they were anorexic before or during
developing a misaligned gender identity.38
In short, there’s little solid evidence to justify Mermaids’ emotive
rhetoric in their open letter, let alone the spurious causal connections
they make with an absence of GRA reform as a relevant factor, or
otherwise with an absence of early access to medical intervention.39
This claim that trans-identifying children are at particular risk of
suicide has been repeated over and over again by Susie Green in
order to lobby for her organisation’s aims. It is hugely irresponsible
given the Samaritans’ guidance. Green told the Daily Mail in 2014:
‘The self-harm and suicide rate among transgender teens is
extremely high, so offering blockers saves lives. It’s quite simple.’
She told the Daily Mirror in 2015: ‘Those who feel they don’t have
their parents’ support are much more likely to self-harm and attempt
suicide.’ She told the Guardian in 2015: ‘If they feel their body is
changing against their will, that’s when we get a lot of suicidality.’40
Time and again Green has used propaganda, based on distortions
and in some cases outright falsehoods, to lobby for faster access to
life-changing drugs and surgery for minors. Slowly the
misrepresentations have spread across the public sector and
become received as truth. For instance, a 2017 education resource
pack produced for teachers by the ‘Schools and Teachers Team’ at
the prestigious Tate art organisation stated, without any reference to
further evidence, that: ‘There is an extremely high rate of suicide
amongst transgender children in schools.’41
Hate crime

My final example of propaganda is the use of rhetoric about hate

crime. In October 2019 the Telegraph reported the apparently
shocking information that ‘Hate crimes double in six years with
transphobic abuse recording biggest rise, police figures show’.42 An
article drawing the same conclusion appeared in the Guardian.43
Apparently keen to draw a link between public discussion of
women’s rights in relation to trans rights and a rise in transphobic
violence, Stonewall’s spokesperson told the Guardian: ‘We have
long been concerned about the impact debates on LGBT-inclusive
education and trans equality in the media, online and in the streets
would have in our community. The significant rise in hate crimes
against trans people shows the consequences of a society where
transphobia is everywhere.’
Yet what these reports crucially failed to explain is that the data
listed referred not to convicted crimes but only to ‘hate crime
incidents’ recorded as such at the scene by attending police officers,
or by other case officers later. The definition of a ‘hate crime incident’
used by the Crown Prosecution Service is ‘any incident/criminal
offence … perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be
motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is
transgender or perceived to be transgender’. In other words, a hate
crime incident isn’t equivalent to a crime; it is equivalent to a
perception of it. College of Police guidelines make clear that: ‘The
victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief for
the purposes of reporting, and police officers or staff should not
directly challenge this perception.’44 The incident is ‘recorded’, in the
sense of being ‘flagged’ in police systems, but as the CPS itself
notes: ‘Flagging is a subjective question … For a conviction to
receive enhanced sentencing in court the police need to provide
sufficient evidence to prove the hostility element, however this is not
required for flagging purposes.’45
 In other words: these reports, and Stonewall’s opportunistic
response to them, are completely misleading. It’s also surely
relevant to note that, as we’ve seen earlier in this book, Stonewall’s
definition of ‘transphobia’, disseminated throughout Diversity
Champions member organisations including many police forces and
the CPS, includes ‘denying’ someone’s gender identity ‘or refusing to
accept it’. With this being the Stonewall line, and given their public
reach, it’s perhaps not surprising that recorded ‘hate crime incidents’
went up in 2019 so significantly. But this shows nothing about levels
of actual hate crime. In fact, in 2019 it was reported that less than
one in ten of ‘reported hate crimes’ were actually being prosecuted,
which suggests that in many cases there wasn’t sufficient evidence
to proceed.46
To be clear, transphobic violence does happen in the UK. In 2018–
19, 1,475 convictions for ‘homophobic and transphobic crime’ were
recorded by the CPS, compared to 8,416 racist convictions in the
same year.47 Assuming – perhaps wrongly – that the courts haven’t
been influenced by Stonewall’s definition of transphobia, this
suggests a genuine social problem of aggression towards trans
people (though it also suggests racism is a much bigger problem, at
least in terms of absolute numbers of crimes). Beyond information
about criminal convictions, to get a true picture of the extent to which
violence towards trans people is a social problem in the UK, what we
really need is data that isn’t produced by trans activist organisations
for the purposes of lobbying. We need data that conforms with (gold)
standard academic norms for knowledge production. Whether we
can get this in a climate in which most universities are also Stonewall
Diversity Champions is another matter.
Such instances of propaganda by trans activist organisations
encourage non-trans and trans people alike to think of trans people
as unusually and extremely vulnerable to being murdered, attacked
or dying by suicide. The propaganda is aimed at non-trans people in
particular, and is designed to get them on board with the activist
agenda. The telling of emotionally compelling stories of violence and
victimhood, easily vividly pictured both during the reading of them
and afterwards, doubtless encourages many of those who take the
stories at face value to throw themselves into a fiction about sex
change in the name of doing good. It presumably also makes people
– as philosophers might say – less ‘epistemically vigilant’ to
intellectual inconsistencies within their own stance. After all, if the
stakes for trans people are this high, we should presumably do
everything in our power to help and support them – including
ignoring any nagging doubts we might have about how it’s all
supposed to add up, or who else might be affected by it.

Objectification and ‘trans women are women’

A different influence upon public opinion that I think should be
implicated in any explanation of the current climate, is the extent to
which women in particular are objectified, sexually or otherwise, in
Western culture. Given this culture, it isn’t surprising that many
people – including many women themselves – relate, consciously or
unconsciously, to womanhood as something like a set of outward
appearances. Though this thought doesn’t rationally fit with gender
identity theory – which after all is concerned with inner life, not
outward bodies – in my view it significantly prepares the ground for a
positive attitude towards gender identity theory’s politicised
conclusions, at least. For it can foster the thought that some men
(because they look like sexualised feminine objects) can be ‘women’.
What is objectification? From Simone de Beauvoir to Martha
Nussbaum to Catharine MacKinnon, feminist philosophers have long
been interested in analysing the concept. Broadly speaking, to
objectify a woman is to treat or represent her as a partly or wholly
dehumanised, de-mentalised object.48 There are various ways to do
that. Fashion and advertising offer several possibilities for doing so
visually. You can represent her as a dazed, passive thing to be
fucked, with a vacant expression and glazed eyes, as in many high-
end fashion advertising campaigns. Extending this, you can
represent her as sexually dominated, with her personal autonomy
diminished or removed: bound or gagged, for instance. You can
dress her up in animal skins or leopard print and represent her as a
kind of wild, highly sexualised animal, something the fashion industry
has been particularly fond of doing to black women over the years.
You can dress and pose her as a stereotype: the Capable Housewife
(in domestic setting, comfortable clothes, tolerant rueful smile), the
Brainy Scientist (white coat, stern expression, glasses on end of
nose), the Little Girl (kneesocks, pigtails, blowing bubblegum), the
Sexy Vamp (cleavage, tongue on front teeth, wink). You can place
her in a row with other similarly shaped, similarly adorned women,
visually emphasising what they all have in common in looks and
dress, so that individuality is rhetorically diminished, and one woman
looks replaceable with any other. You can make her just a pair of
legs, or breasts, or an arse, focusing the camera on body parts and
even omitting the head and face. In all such cases, the thinking
mind, personality, autonomy or particular individuality of the woman
in the image is downplayed, diminished and ignored, to a greater or
lesser extent. She’s ‘objectified’ in the sense she’s made more like
an object and less like a fully individuated human being: less
rational, less individual, less present, less important for who she
actually is. In extreme cases, she can even be used as if or pictured
as an inanimate object: a ‘table’ for men’s feet, or as a ‘plate’ for food
– as in the Japanese practice of Nyotaimori, using a woman’s naked
body as a receptacle for sushi in restaurants.
Throughout various cultures, a similar story can be found. Women
are represented as generic, idealised outward forms, whose mental
life is diminished or irrelevant; or else their bodies are used to
convey archetypal stories, symbols and ideas. Rarely are they
represented as themselves, in their full, particular individuality. The
female nude dominates Western visual culture: female bodies
presented as objects to be studied, lasciviously examined and
displayed for others’ enjoyment. As academic Lynda Nead put it:
‘Within the history of art, the female nude is not simply one subject
among others, one form among many, it is the subject, the form.’49
The way women are habitually objectified in Western visual culture
looks connected to the predominance of men in the art world, and
the relative absence of women. Among other things, the absence of
women painters from galleries has meant far fewer self-portraits,
where self-portraits in painting have traditionally been a medium for
close studies of individual psychology and personality. More
generally, just in terms of sheer numbers, the visual representation
of women is controlled by men at every stage of production, and so
predictably reflects male interests in, and emotions towards, women.
As feminist art activists The Guerrilla Girls pointed out in the 1980s,
in the Metropolitan Museum: ‘Less than 5% of the artists in the
Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are
female.’50 In the National Gallery there are currently ‘around ten’ oil
paintings by women among the 2,300 in the permanent collection.51
In the contemporary art market, women’s paintings comprise around
2 per cent of sales.52 Returning to fashion and advertising we find a
similarly depressing story: in 2017, only 13.7 per cent of US fashion
magazine covers were shot by women photographers, and some
women’s magazines hired no women photographers for cover
shoots at all.53 In the advertising industry, 29 per cent of staff are
women, and only 12 per cent of creative directors are women.54
All this contributes to a world in which, from an early age, girls and
boys alike are confronted with images of women that sexualise,
depersonalise, dehumanise or de-individualise them: on newsagent
shelves, in tabloids, on the television, in galleries and on the internet.
Woman, as a visual ideal, is perpetually represented as a collection
of outward surfaces, exchangeable for any similar-looking set of
surfaces, but whose inner life is of negligible importance. This then
narrows the field of psychological possibilities for women as they
enter the cultural environment. Women start to see themselves as
objects: to ‘self-objectify’, in a way that has demonstrable negative
effects on confidence, happiness and even attention spans.55 As art
critic John Berger famously wrote in Ways of Seeing, echoing points
made by Simone de Beauvoir decades earlier: ‘Men act and women
appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked
at. This determines not only most relations between men and women
but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of
woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus she turns
herself into an object of vision: a sight.’56
No better confirmation of this could be found than on Instagram,
where the selfies of women have been found to outnumber those of
men by a significant margin.57 A 2015 survey found the average
sixteen-to twenty-five-year-old woman spends over five hours a
week taking selfies. A large proportion of women’s Instagram selfies
follow very narrow visual ‘rules’, and in the words of one study
‘replicate normative feminine cues popularised through mass
media’.58 For unconfident beginners, influencers explain how to take
‘the perfect selfie’. Reports the same study: ‘YouTuber Huda Beauty
… endorses a selfie-taking technique that she calls “T-Rex Hands,”
which involves draping a bent hand on one’s hair, chin, or forehead.
She also demonstrates a pose called “the looking down giggle” and
a subtle lip pucker.’
These days, another significant dimension to cultural
representation of women is online pornography. As one recent study
puts it: ‘internet pornography use is a common phenomenon …
Various reports have placed internet pornography as the largest
single category of electronic media both in terms of total bandwidth
and total traffic … In short, the consumption of internet pornography
is a common activity for many adults and adolescents worldwide.’59
Hardcore and violent pornography dominates the output of
pornographic websites, and relentlessly depicts women and girls as
objects to be manipulated, fucked, dominated, humiliated and hurt.
What’s happening in the minds of women during pornographic sex is
of interest to the camera or director only insofar as it will be arousing
to viewers: passivity, pain and humiliation being dominant themes.
It would be the work of several years properly to explore the
effects this sort of culture has on developing minds, and on the way
all of us who come into contact with it tend to mentally represent and
relate to women as a result. I think it reasonable to suppose it also
has a bearing on how we unconsciously think of trans women in
relation to women, especially if trans women draw upon highly
sexualised and objectifying stereotypes of womanhood in
constructing their public images, as they sometimes do. A person
(male or female) who unconsciously relates to women as
dehumanised objects, or as mere sets of sexualised outer
appearances, is presumably less likely to mind when trans women
with the right sexualised look get classed as women by wider
society. I was once personally assured by a trans woman that she
really was a woman because, as she said, ‘men want to have sex
with me’.
Objectification and autogynephilia
Objectifying cultural images of women also seem to play a further,
often unrecognised background role in the current situation. Namely,
it’s reasonable to think they contribute to conditions under which
some men develop misaligned gender identities in the first place.
The phenomenon of men sexually fantasising about wearing
women’s clothes or having a woman’s body is well documented, both
academically and anecdotally. The figure of the ‘transvestite’ or
‘cross-dresser’, a man who dresses in women’s clothing either
privately or publicly for sexual pleasure, was a familiar concept to
most people in the twentieth century. These days it has been
subsumed under what is sometimes called the ‘trans umbrella’ and is
heard about much less. Stonewall’s published definition of
‘transgender’ now includes ‘cross-dresser’ as a possible form.
The male condition of sexually fantasising about dressing as or
being a woman was christened ‘autogynephilia’ by sexologist Ray
Blanchard in 1989. There’s a documented tendency for those who
have autogynephilia to deny it – presumably because of the
associated and, in my view, undeserved social stigma.60
Professional therapists and academics who have studied it, including
Blanchard, have been subjected to intense pushback from trans
activists for doing so.61 Nonetheless, that autogynephilia exists as a
psychosexual phenomenon seems secure, not least from the self-
reports of some trans women themselves. Self-described
autogynephilic trans woman and academic Anne Lawrence
describes it, following Blanchard, as ‘the propensity to be sexually
aroused by the thought or image of oneself as a woman’. In his
controversial 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen,
psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University
sympathetically documents the fact that a number of men, from
teenage years onward, secretly dress up in women’s clothes, look at
themselves in the mirror, and masturbate. Fantasies sometimes
develop of having breasts and a vagina. Often there is intense guilt
and shame attached to autogynephilia, and there is a documented
tendency for sufferers vehemently to deny the ‘erotic component’ of
their cross-dressing.62 Both Bailey and Anne Lawrence note that
autogynephilia can lead to a misaligned gender identity, which can
then lead to transitioning. Those men who have it, Lawrence writes,
‘are sexually aroused by imagining themselves as female but also
idealize the idea of being female, derive feelings of security and
comfort from their autogynephilic fantasies and enactments, and
typically want to embody their feminine identities in an enduring way
(i.e., by undergoing sex reassignment).’63
Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence stress that not all trans women
are autogynephilic: many are not. Autogynephilia seems most
common in heterosexuals or bisexuals, not homosexual males who
transition for different reasons.64 These clinicians also are keen to
promote acceptance and understanding for those who have the
condition. Still, in response to their work in this area, there has been
enormous, furious controversy – controversy also inherited by
historian Alice Dreger when she wrote a book, Galileo’s Little Finger,
which was partly about the pushback Bailey’s book had received.
A relatively common and fairly bizarre protest response to the
hypothesis that autogynephilia exists as a significant or interesting
phenomenon is that ‘women have it too’. This has been argued by,
among others, Julia Serano, trans scholar Andrea Long Chu (who,
never shy of testing a concept to breaking point, goes further and
calls autogynephilia ‘the basic structure of all human sexuality’65)
and sexologist Charles Moser. By adapting Blanchard’s original
questionnaire used to identify autogynephilia in men, Moser
published research purporting to show that 93 per cent of women
respondents to his version of the questionnaire ‘would be classified
as autogynephilic’.66 Bizarrely, though, Moser apparently assumes a
man answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘Have you ever become
sexually aroused while picturing yourself having a nude female
body?’ and a woman answering ‘yes’ to the statement ‘I have been
erotically aroused by contemplating myself in the nude’ are both
providing evidence of the same kind of sexual preference: an
autogynephilic one. This ignores some crucial disanalogies in their
respective mental states. For the autogynephilic man, there is a) an
underlying belief he is male not female and b) a positive fantasy of
being female, both apparently crucial to underpinning the thrilling
transgression of the fantasy. In contrast, for the woman, there is no
underlying belief she is male not female (so no transgression there);
and any positive awareness of her own femaleness doesn’t need to
feature as part of the active content of her sexual fantasy or desire.
Arousal at the thought of being female is certainly not made
inevitable simply by the fact a woman is aroused at the thought of
‘herself’.67 She may also be blonde, but being aroused by ‘herself’
doesn’t necessarily mean she has a thing for blondes.
In contrast, what does seem true is that many women are turned
on by explicit objectification, passivity and humiliation. The popularity
of the erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey among women readers
establishes this beyond doubt. I assume these sexual desires are
inherited from and shaped by an objectifying culture. To this extent
these women share a sexual preference for humiliation with some
males: namely, those autogynephiles with preferences for ‘forced
feminization’ and ‘sissification’. As an article in Vice magazine from
2016 vividly relates: ‘In the BDSM community, “sissies” are men who
cross-dress, often for sexual pleasure. Many of these men engage in
“sissification” or “forced feminization,” where a female dominatrix will
switch her male submissive’s gender role … [T]he common
denominator is usually the forced cross-dressing of the male
submissive – anything from lingerie to evening gowns.’68 Andrea
Long Chu writes in her book Females of ‘sissy porn’ and its ‘central
conceit that the women it depicts (some cis, some trans) are in fact
former men who have been feminized … by being forced to wear
make up, wear lingerie, and perform acts of sexual submission’. Chu
goes on to describe a further component of sissification whose
‘technical term’ is ‘bimbofication’, and involves ‘hypnosis,
brainwashing, brain-melting, dumbing down, and other techniques
for scooping out intelligence’. She relates how, in sissy porn: ‘The
gestures … almost always register the evacuation of will: wilting
faces, trembling legs, eyes rolled back into heads.’ Chu takes these
kinds of represented gestures as a ‘centrifuge for distilling …
femaleness to its barest essentials: an open mouth, an expectant
asshole, blank, blank eyes’.69 This construction of femaleness as
mindlessness, humiliation and passivity, both by Chu and by the
pornographers she describes, exaggerates familiar tropes from a
visual culture that objectifies women generally.
For most sexual desires, including desires to be sexually
humiliated, I don’t think there’s any point stigmatising them when
they are pursued safely in private with consenting adult others;
though there is always room for questioning whether acting out such
desires is in the best interests of the individual, and to what extent.
The lack of point in stigmatising is especially the case given that
many sexual desires are unconsciously inherited from a particular
cultural environment, probably during development. The sexual
desires of a man to be humiliated or forced aren’t ‘worse’ than those
of a woman to experience the very same thing. The fact that our
culture seems to treat the former as abhorrent and the latter as more
‘natural’ is yet more proof of the sexist way we tend to construe
women as sexually submissive in the first place. If we were able to
collectively recognise this, perhaps we could allow more space for
autogynephiles to admit the erotic component of their feelings to
themselves instead of furiously denying it and constructing
alternative narratives involving ‘innate’ gender identity instead.
I also reject the oversimplification of the radical feminist academic
Sheila Jeffreys, when she says autogynephilia and sissification give
us insight into ‘the transgender perspective … on femininity’.70 Apart
from the fact Jeffreys is here apparently ignoring trans men, this
looks like focusing on the wrong causal explanation. Some
autogynephiles don’t transition, and many trans women aren’t
autogynephiles. Being an autogynephile isn’t a ‘worse’ reason to
transition than any other: it’s part of an individual’s history, and may
be, in particular cases, what is needed for them to live a happy life.
Instead, what autogynephilia and associated sissification practices
give us, I suggest, is another source of insight into the general way
our culture reprehensibly objectifies and dehumanises women – with
inadvertent consequences for the sexual development of both girls
and boys growing up within it.
Many radical feminists who have spent the last decade
stigmatising and overemphasising the connections between
autogynephilia and transness will, I assume, be outraged by such
thoughts. Still, I think of these points as wholly compatible with the
evidence-based feminism I prefer. In the next and final chapter, I
continue my feminist line, this time taking issue with modern
activism, and in particular with certain trends within feminism itself.
 8

A Better Activism in Future

In this book, I’ve rejected gender identity theory. Since current trans
activism enthusiastically embraces gender identity theory, it follows
that I don’t believe ordinary trans people are well served by current
trans activism. Trans people are trans people. We should get over it.
They deserve to be safe, to be visible throughout society without
shame or stigma, and to have exactly the life opportunities non-trans
people do. Their transness makes no difference to any of this. What
trans people don’t deserve, however, is to be publicly
misrepresented in philosophical terms that make no sense; nor to
have their everyday struggles instrumentalised in the name of
political initiatives most didn’t ask for, and which alienate other
groups by rigidly encroaching on their hard-won rights. Nor do trans
people deserve to be terrified by activist propaganda into thinking
themselves more vulnerable to violence than they actually are.
Current trans activism needs a different vision and agenda.
Equally, I think, ordinary women haven’t been well served by recent
mainstream feminism. In this chapter, by way of a conclusion, I’ll
outline four opinionated guidelines for a better activism in future.

Be more non-binary
We are living through a time of online outrage and increasing
irrationalism, and the combination has not been a happy one for
public discussion. Generally, shallow emotion seems to be in the
driving seat for many keyboard warriors: not the slow burn of
genuine anger that fuels the prolonged, difficult pursuit of a
worthwhile goal, but rather a feel-good performative outrage whose
main expression is typing furious snark on to a computer screen
before switching over to Netflix. In this febrile atmosphere, and
where most interactions take place in front of a virtual audience,
there’s an increased emphasis on ‘winning’ arguments, in the sense
of getting others to back down or look humiliated, rather than in the
sense of getting things right. People often define their own positions
on a given issue in reaction to some other position, mentally treated
as the antagonist it’s important to reject (and be seen to reject) at all
costs. Many then seem psychologically incapable of making
common cause with those at the ‘other’ envisaged pole, partly
because it might be interpreted by onlookers as a defeat or a
climbdown. Critical thinking seems to be receding as the will to (be
seen to) win surges. Things are no different in arguments about how
to arrange society for the mutual benefit of trans people and women.
On the one side are trans activists, whose views have been
discussed throughout this book. On the other are groups of
feminists: some radical, and some of them known as ‘gender-critical’.
Both groups contain trans and non-trans members.
This book is at least partly a feminist one, broadly speaking. At
various points, I’ve made what I hope is a strong case for the
interests of women in particular. So far, though, I haven’t gone into
much detail about the views of feminists who tend to oppose trans
activism. I’ll do so briefly now.
Radical feminism has roots in the Second Wave of feminism, from
roughly the 1960s onwards. Broadly speaking, radical feminists think
that sexism and misogyny – i.e. ingrained contempt for women –
permeate all social and institutional structures, so that a radical
restructuring is ultimately needed for women’s ‘liberation’. Women
and girls’ oppression is thought of as grounded in something called
‘the patriarchy’ – a systematic set of social relations that acts to
disadvantage and immobilise females relative to males, and (on
many accounts) to use them for their reproductive labour. The
patriarchy operates not just in the public sphere (in workplaces, law,
economics and politics) but also in the private one (family, the home,
sexual relations and love). It permeates academia, culture and even
language itself. It’s particularly evident in sexual-assault statistics,
prostitution and sex trafficking, surrogacy tourism in the Global
South, pornography, domestic violence, femicide, sexual
objectification, stalking and other social problems adversely affecting
women in particular, which laws and wider societies seem mostly
incapable of resolving, and to which sometimes they seem
indifferent. The patriarchy also operates in women’s heads,
internalised developmentally as a set of restrictive stereotypes about
what women and girls are permitted to be or do; and the feeling
women and girls are automatically ‘less than’ or ‘other than’ the
central presence in the world: men.
For radical feminists, attempts on the part of trans activist
organisations to change women’s legal rights, and to alter their
spaces, resources and language – while in practice largely leaving
men’s intact – is just the patriarchy doing its business as usual. The
fact that, technically, females with misaligned gender identities are
now explicitly permitted by many institutional policies to enter male
bathrooms, changing rooms, sports teams and clubs, and have
access to male resources, has made negligible difference to men in
practice. It’s still mostly trans women who are pushing for entry into
the opposite sex’s spaces and resources. Given average biological
differences between the sexes discussed in Chapter 3, it’s still
mostly women who are adversely affected by their successes. For
radical feminists, this isn’t a coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that,
for instance, recent changes in law and policy have taken away
female-only facilities and female-only sports but have left, for
instance, the laws of primogeniture and inheritance for a first-born
aristocratic male – trans woman or otherwise – untouched. When
secret fraternal society the Freemasons recently announced they
would henceforth accept trans women and trans men as members,
but continue to exclude ‘cis’ women, this is roughly what radical
feminists would have predicted.1
Alongside the radical feminists fighting trans activist demands are
gender-critical feminists. These tend to be critically focused on
‘gender’ understood as a set of restrictive social stereotypes
(GENDER2 from Chapter 1). They share this preoccupation with
radical feminists but tend to be less focused on patriarchy as an
overarching explanatory factor, and less attracted to the separatism
to which some radical feminists aspire. Many gender-critical
feminists are also blank-slate feminists, holding that all behavioural
and psychological average differences are developmentally
acquired, and that none are structured into sexed brains in the womb
or at puberty. Their utopia is sometimes described as a ‘gender-free’
world. But to be gender critical doesn’t necessitate this extreme a
position; it means just that you hold that many behavioural and
psychological differences between men and women are
developmentally acquired, damaging and could (and should) have
been different. Gender-critical feminists particularly rebel against the
idea, implicit in gender identity theory, that what makes you a woman
or man is a feeling. As far as they are concerned, this feeling could
only be, deep down, about the applicability of restrictive and
damaging sex-associated stereotypes to yourself. To call a boy a
‘girl’ because he says he feels like a girl – where in practice this boils
down to his liking make-up, Barbie dolls and sewing, and not liking
sport or war games – is to capitulate to society’s restrictive
expectation that these are inherently female activities and
preferences.
Not all feminists are against trans activism or gender identity
theory, however. Many ‘Third Wave’ feminists are for it. Third Wave
feminism is defined mostly in reaction to Second Wave feminism,
and its favoured axioms are discussed at various points in this book.
Knowingly or not, Third Wave feminism is strongly influenced by
postmodernism and post-structuralism.2 So, for instance, many Third
Wave feminists seem to think, like Judith Butler and Thomas
Laqueur, both discussed in Chapter 2, that sex is a social construct.
Their political focus is a disparate ‘gender’, understood as a kind of
performance, and untethered to the supposedly illusory idea of
natural biological sex. Third Wave feminists also tend to think, as
mentioned in Chapter 5, that neither ‘females’ nor ‘women’ can
function as a coherent politically relevant category, and so conclude
that feminism needs to recalibrate its political objects (I’ll return to
this in the next section). And in a liberal vein, many are firmly
focused on notions like ‘choice’ and ‘identity’: for if biology is dead, or
more accurately never lived, then who you are as a woman seems to
be up to you. As we have also had cause to notice in this book in
several places, there’s a big emphasis in Third Wave feminism on
‘inclusion’. As academic R. Claire Snyder puts it, Third Wave
feminists ‘depict their version of feminism as more inclusive and
racially diverse than the second wave’, even going so far as to define
Third Wave feminism as ‘a form of inclusiveness’.3 Radical and
gender-critical feminists are often criticised by Third Wave feminists
as ‘exclusionary’: as overly focused on promoting a white, middle-
class perspective, and of excluding women who don’t share this
perspective – including trans women.
These then are the two entrenched ‘sides’ thrashing it out in public
about whether trans women are women and what that means. On
one side are trans activists and Third Wave feminists; on the other,
radical and gender-critical feminists. In the race to (be seen to) ‘win’,
a number of less than ideal argumentative strategies are employed.
One constant is arguments about which group gets to count as the
‘real’ feminists. Rather than actually arguing about substantive
points, energy is strategically diverted into arguments between
feminist factions as to who are the true keepers of the feminist flame,
mirroring a dynamic within other political movements – who is ‘really’
on the Left or on the Right, for instance. Effectively what each is
doing is arguing for their own preferred version of doctrine. When
pursued in a spirit of genuinely curious inquiry, this is an activity that
can help keep a movement invigorated and self-critical. When used
strategically to get another activist to shut up about a substantive
conclusion you disagree with her about, it’s a very different
phenomenon.
In order to be seen to win, there’s also a frequent appeal to
strawmen: that is, the noisy attacking of flimsy positions held by no
serious opponent, rather than critical engagement with the more
complex and nuanced positions opponents actually do hold. The
latter are harder to attack successfully. In the row about whether
trans women are women, and whether women-only spaces should
be open to all those with female gender identities, this shows up in
the presentation by trans activists, as supposed ‘gotchas’, of facile
points like ‘not all women have uteruses’, ‘some women have
beards’, ‘some lesbians are violent too’, and the stunningly casual
‘women will get raped in changing rooms anyway’. These are
observations no one reasonably well informed would disagree with,
but which make no difference either way to the better versions of the
arguments they purport to discredit.
A third destructive presence is the ubiquitous use of ad hominems:
the unsubtle mention of supposed features of a person’s character,
identity or motives in order to try to discredit the conclusions of their
argument. In some limited circumstances these factors are relevant
to the success or otherwise of arguments, I think, but if so, the
relevance has to be carefully – even forensically – established. They
are not automatically relevant, and certainly not when selectively
picked up on the flimsiest evidence, and used as rhetorical cudgels
against some people, but not against identical others. Often the
phenomenon seems particularly marked within fights among
feminists. A case in point is the way Third Wave feminists – often
themselves white, middle class, and ‘cis’ – complain that the
arguments of opponents cannot be sound because their authors are
white, middle class and cis. The concept of privilege is also
weaponised by all sides, used not so much as a serious tool of
analysis but as a playground insult, and often producing the amusing
spectacle of one group of people castigating another group of
identical background, education and financial means for their
‘privilege’. Meanwhile, ‘transphobe!’ and ‘misogynist!’ are chucked
about liberally.
The frequent insult-strewn denigration of the motives, characters
and physical looks of so-called ‘TERFs’ – by trans activists and even
by some Third Wave feminists – tells its own familiar sexist, ageist
story. While professing to stand against restrictive feminine
stereotypes for women generally, certain feminists still apparently
don’t mind very quickly representing women they disagree with – but
somehow not the men – as failing to be ‘kind’, so revealing
themselves to be happy to invoke a restrictive maternal stereotype
when it suits them. Those who dare to argue in public against so-
called kind and inclusive positions are accused of bad faith and even
of dogwhistling to the far right – as if they couldn’t possibly be
addressing the mainstream majority straightforwardly, in good faith,
and for rational purposes.
 But radical and gender-critical feminists bear their share of
responsibility too. From this side, there is frequent casual denigration
of trans women’s characters, and also the commonplace suggestion,
without evidence, that any trans woman’s reasons for transition are
likely to be malign. The phenomenon of autogynephilia is played up,
hyperbolised and stigmatised, and other possible motives for MTF
transition ignored. While many critics of gender identity theory
emphasise – as I have also done in this book – that their points are
not predicated on the idea all or most trans women are potentially
predatory, some radical feminists apparently proceed explicitly on
this inflammatory and unevidenced assumption. Some radical
feminists are apparently so averse to trans women that they would
verbally attack even those trans women arguing against current
trans activism, and against gender identity theory and its
consequences. So, for instance, radical feminist academic Julia
Long has written contemptuously of the trans women who are critical
of gender identity theory, and who ‘ingratiate themselves’ into public
meetings about the GRA through ‘linguistic manoeuvres which
involve making claims to their legitimate and customary
accommodation within the social group “women” whilst
simultaneously acknowledging that they are male’. She writes: ‘This
combination appears to entirely bamboozle audiences, causing them
to lose their critical faculties and instead endorse the men’s
utterances with rapturous applause and approving… comments.’4
This is severe polarisation indeed. A less patronising way of looking
at audience responses might be that those attending these meetings
are not so blinded with animosity towards the male sex that they
can’t recognise a mutually beneficial common cause when they see
it.
There is also, within radical and gender-critical feminism, a
regrettable tendency to talk about trans men and detransitioned
women who have had medical intervention in the past as ‘ruined’,
‘mutilated’ or having ‘wrecked their lives’. If these feminists seriously
want to reach out to younger generations in future, and especially to
the increasing numbers of women detransitioners, talking
dehumanisingly and crudely about them in the instrumental pursuit of
political goals is not the way to do it.
 Some within radical feminism are also responsible for a perversely
literal, selectively uncharitable approach to language choices. Again
according to Long, nobody should use the words ‘transsexual’ or
‘trans woman’ at all, because these words imply it’s possible to
change sex, when actually it’s not. She writes of people like me, who
‘correctly insist that it is not possible to change sex’ but nonetheless
‘breezily continue to use the term “transsexual” or “transwoman” as if
such a change were possible and as if such individuals exist’.5
Presumably, then, Long doesn’t use the term ‘healthy food’ (because
food can’t literally be in good health); never talks about the ‘Overton
Window’ (because after all, it’s not literally a window); and insists
slow worms don’t exist (because they aren’t actually worms). This
line of Long’s and of other radical feminists gives succour to the
otherwise unmerited narrative of trans activists that their critics ‘want
trans people not to exist’. The truth is that, while the surface forms of
wholly unknown words can be misleading to the unwary, good
communication about their meanings can remove lingering
misunderstandings and so make surface forms practically irrelevant.
As long as it’s clearly understood, as I have explained in this book,
that transsexuals and trans women don’t literally change sex, the
words ‘transsexual’ and ‘trans woman’ are powerless to mean
otherwise.
Despite this polarisation, there are areas in which common cause
might still be found. In particular, many people in trans activism are,
like radical and gender-critical feminists, strongly motivated to
reduce the cultural stigma of sex nonconformity. Although there are
robust disagreements about the best means to achieve this, and the
language used and background commitments differ, in a broad
sense all sides want to break down oppressive sex-associated
stereotypes in their own way. That’s a good starting point, at least.
Meanwhile, non-binary and ‘agender’ people in particular could
conceivably unite with gender-critical feminists to try to loosen the
grip of the many stereotypes to do with masculinity and femininity,
which each group tends to see as inapplicable to themselves.
Generally speaking, I think, all sides should be more non-binary,
as it were; each should move away from ‘either with us or against us’
narratives and look for compromise where there is some to be found.
An example was explored in Chapter 5, where I talked about the
limited role for personal immersion in fiction about sex change.
Effectively, trans people are stuck in between those trans activists
who say their sex should never be referred to, and those feminists
who say it always should. The argument of Chapter 5 was that, if
people are conscious and thoughtful about it, they can, if they
choose, find an interim position involving immersion in a fiction at
least some of the time; and if not that, then at least, omit mentioning
sex in interpersonal contexts where it isn’t relevant. And it’s unhelpful
and conceptually inadequate to insist, as Julia Long does, that we
don’t use any word to refer to trans women other than ‘men’. We
clearly need more fine-grained descriptive concepts, in addition to a
completely generic ‘men’, to refer to what is a coherent and
interesting group of people within the wider category. Trans women
and trans men each deserve non-inflammatory vocabulary which
articulates their particular experiences, and which can be fed into
political and legal discussion of their particular needs.
My final example of being more non-binary is in the currently
apparently intractable row about sex-separated spaces such as
bathrooms, changing rooms and hostel dormitories. Until recently,
these were sex-segregated as a social norm for women’s protection,
and the norm was mostly applied on the basis of ordinary visual
inspection from fellow users. People who looked like men in
women’s spaces could be challenged with confidence by women
there. People who looked like women in men’s spaces could be
challenged with confidence there too, if users so wished, though the
need was less urgent. As discussed in Chapter 3, these norms pose
problems for any women in those spaces who look like the opposite
sex. However, they are also a valuable form of protection for most
women, who, after all, are getting undressed or sleeping in these
spaces, and so who – given facts outlined in Chapter 2 – are more
vulnerable to sexual assault, voyeurism and exhibitionism from men
than usual.
These days, trans activist organisations like Stonewall are
attempting to change the social norms for women-only facilities in
many institutions nationally so that men can access them solely on
the basis of an inner feeling of misaligned gender identity. So now,
on the explicit terms of current institutional policies, women in those
spaces cannot reasonably challenge people who look like men in
those spaces, because, for all the women know, they might
permissibly be there (‘respect their identity’, ‘carry on with your day’).
This isn’t directly a problem about ‘passing’ trans women entering
such spaces, because they, precisely, pass, and so – as well as
being practically impossible to control – their presence in the spaces
is unnoticed, so doing nothing to disrupt the social norm. (In this
sense it’s true, as trans activists sometimes say, that ‘trans women
have been using women-only spaces unproblematically for years’.
They mean passing trans women, and in that sense, they are right.)
However, encouraging trans women who are not passing – and
even, potentially, those who have made no real alteration to their
physical appearance whatsoever – to be in a women’s changing
room, by virtue of a misaligned gender identity, is a completely
different matter, for it disrupts the general social norm significantly. It
effectively makes it permissible for any man – trans woman or not,
misaligned gender identity or not – to enter, because the criterion is
an inner, invisible feeling, undetectable to the naked eye, and so
impossible for other users to gainsay.
By exactly the same token, though, the permissible presence of
passing trans men – by definition, women visibly indistinguishable
from men – in women-only bathrooms and changing rooms, also
disrupts the social norms that normally make it reasonable for
women to challenge people who look like men there. It also looks
unreasonable to expect passing trans men to shoulder the
psychological stress of entering such spaces with the
misunderstandings that can then entail. So, insofar as radical and
gender-critical feminists should – by dint of being concerned with
female interests – also be concerned with the political interests of
trans men, the obvious thing for all sides to do is lobby for ‘third’
spaces, where women and men who either look or feel unlike their
own sex can use facilities and feel more comfortable. Effectively,
public discussion has become polarised, into ‘trans people should
always use their own sex’s spaces’ and ‘trans people should always
use the opposite sex’s spaces’ (or the even more extreme: ‘all
spaces should be gender-neutral’), but these are not the only
options. If Stonewall had put its considerable financial resources and
influence into joining with feminists to lobby for third spaces within
institutions, a huge amount of animosity and vitriol could have been
avoided.

Stop changing the subject

It’s a notable feature of recent mainstream feminist and gay activism
that each has expanded its original remit significantly. Third Wave
feminism is now widely conceived of as for ‘all women, including
trans women’. Sometimes it’s even described as ‘for everybody’,
rather than for just those two groups in particular. This isn’t the
reasonable idea that a world free of sexism is better for both women
and men. It’s the idea that feminism as a political project should no
longer just be about sexism. As the website Everyday Feminism puts
it: ‘Feminism strives to end the discrimination, exploitation, and
oppression of people due to their gender, sexual orientation, race,
class, and other differences and supports people in being free to
determine their own lives for themselves.’6 In other words, feminism
is now supposed to be everybody’s mum.
Meanwhile, gay activism has, relatively recently, become ‘LGBT’
activism and so has merged with – and arguably been taken over by
– trans activism. In some parts of the culture, this has expanded yet
further into ‘LGBTQIA+’ activism, standing for ‘Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer, Intersex, Asexual’ ‘plus’ any other
sexual identities not covered explicitly in that abbreviation, like being
polyamorous or ‘aromantic’ (‘having no desire for romantic
relationships’). Either way, LGBT activism double-counts
heterosexual trans people as a new political focus: first for being
trans, and second, for also being ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’, understood in
terms of their gender identities (see Chapter 3).
There are different background reasons for the expansion of the
remit in each case, but the net effect is the same: a dilution of
political focus, increasing vagueness as to what the goals are
supposed to be, and conflict as various new and sometimes
competing interests have to be balanced – or more likely pitted –
against each other. In particular, with the admission of trans women
into the remits of both feminism and LGBT activism, old habits of
male socialisation have apparently died hard. In many cases trans
women are now at the forefront of feminism and LGBT activism
respectively, with dissenting women ignored or demoted to the back.
In the case of mainstream feminism, one effect of this has been
feeble paralysis where there should have been vigorous action.
Energy has been poured into carefully avoiding the word ‘woman’ in
potentially inflammatory contexts, rather than mounting firm
resistance to the multiple encroachments on sex-based rights,
spaces and resources that LGBT activist organisations
simultaneously have been pursuing. The failure of mainstream
feminist organisations to provide effective resistance to these
challenges, on behalf of the women and girls they still purport to
represent, has been marked. For instance, during the Government’s
public consultation in 2018 – about whether ‘self-ID’ should be the
only criterion for granting a Gender Recognition Certificate, and
about whether single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act should be
retained, to allow genuinely women-only services – the official
responses of major feminist organisations like the Fawcett Society,
the Women’s Equality Party and Women’s Aid were, at best,
indecipherably bland and timid, and at worst, missing in action. It
was left to individuals and grassroots organisations like Woman’s
Place UK, Fair Play for Women, Transgender Trend, For Women
Scotland, Scottish Women, Women and Girls Scotland and We Need
To Talk to take up the slack in fighting the proposed changes to the
GRA. These groups held meetings, made websites and wrote blog
posts, marshalling their tiny resources highly effectively against well-
embedded organisations like Stonewall, Mermaids and the Scottish
Trans Alliance, each of which receive hundreds of thousands or
even millions of pounds every year, in some cases from government
bodies themselves. For their pains, organisers and supporters of
these grassroots groups have been repeatedly slandered and
vilified, while many mainstream feminist organisations studiously
look the other way.
In a similar fashion, LGBT activist organisations putatively fighting
on behalf of same-sex attracted people have effectively become
toothless, wherever the interests of same-sex attracted people and
heterosexual trans people have clashed. For instance, Stonewall has
had absolutely nothing critical to say about emerging reports that
there is a disproportionately high presence of same-sex attracted
children and teens in gender identity clinics. Worse, it has actively
forged alliances with Mermaids, the organisation that propagates a
SOR model of gender identity for children, and which as we have
seen apparently weaponises false suicide statistics which may well
frighten parents into acceding to social and medical transition.
Stonewall has also co-sponsored the ‘Memorandum of
Understanding on Conversion Therapy’, which prohibits professional
UK therapists from doing anything other than ‘affirm’ a misaligned
gender identity, whether found in a same-sex-attracted minor or
otherwise. Again, it has been left to grassroots organisations such as
the LGB Alliance to take up the interests of gay people where they
conflict with those of trans people.
In both feminism and LGBT activism, the dilution of energies
brought about by an expansion of political focus has been
exacerbated by the fact that the types of people now assumed to be
able to participate, as central actors speaking ‘for’ those in the
movement generally, has also been expanded. A new phenomenon
has arisen, which I think of as ‘The Emperor’s New Dress’: namely, a
trans woman being asked to participate in some role, for or on behalf
of women, for which they have little relevant expertise other than
being trans. This has produced sometimes breathtakingly surreal
juxtapositions: for one, the platforming of trans woman dominatrix
Hailey Heartless as a speaker at the Vancouver Women’s March in
2018.7 Heartless makes videos, including at least one where she
imagines humiliating a ‘little TERF’ sexually.8 In the UK, trans woman
and journalist Jane Fae – who before her transition at fifty
campaigned extensively against the censorship of extreme
pornography, including sadism, bestiality and necrophilia – now self-
describes as a feminist and writes for the Guardian under that
description. In academic events on feminism, it’s now common to
include, as a platformed speaker, at least one trans woman,
sometimes with no relevant research whatsoever – as in, for
instance, ‘The Future of Feminism’ event run at the LSE in 2016,
whose headline speaker was a trans woman philosophy professor
with no record of feminist publications at the time, and who had
transitioned only the previous year.9 In 2017, a nineteen-year-old
trans woman, Lily Madigan, was voted in as Women’s Officer of the
Rochester and Strood Constituency Labour Party. And at the British
Film Institute in 2018, trans woman Munroe Bergdorf – not a
filmmaker – was invited to be the keynote speaker at ‘Woman With A
Movie Camera’ summit, ostensibly for women in the already
intensely male-dominated movie business.10
As new demographics are brought into the fold, so too are new
interests, unlike the old ones and in some cases directly opposed to
them. A good example of mission creep is found in Stonewall’s
lobbying to alter laws pertaining to ‘sex by deception’, wherever
those laws would criminalise trans people initiating sexual relations
with others but not announcing their biological sex. In their 2015 ‘A
Vision for Change’ document, Stonewall presented this as an
infringement of trans people’s ‘privacy’.11 Changing the laws around
sex by deception is also taken up in several academic articles by
Professor Alex Sharpe, a legal scholar at the University of Warwick
and member of the Trans Equality Legal Initiative (TELI). In a blog
post, Sharpe seems to imply that any person duped into sexual
relations with another person while being positively misled about
their biological sex must still somehow ‘know’, for according to
Sharpe, ‘ignorance is a form of knowledge’. Though Sharpe’s
discussion is directly about the Gayle Newland criminal case – in
which (non-trans) female Newland was convicted for having sex with
a woman while pretending to be man – it’s not hard to see the
potential relevance to trans people (like Sharpe herself, who self-
describes as lesbian). In poetic vein, Sharpe takes us into the mind
of Newland’s victim and asks: do ‘we’ (i.e. does she) ‘not see our
lover’s face, do we not sense her in other ways? Do we not breathe
her in, feel her touch, experience the contours of her body, feel her
breath upon our skin, the timbre of her voice? And are we not
undone in such moments, irrespective of the eyes? Is it right in such
circumstances to disown our desires because we are retrospectively
disappointed?’12 In other words, despite the criminal conviction of
Newland for deception, this law professor is apparently arguing that
Newland’s victim must have wanted sex with Newland all along.
Given the relatively high proportion of self-identified ‘lesbians’ among
trans women, it’s also not hard, from a perhaps less poetic
perspective, to see the potential costs to lesbians, should Sharpe’s
favoured legislative changes go ahead.
With the expansion of LGBT activism, relatively suddenly the
people referred to as ‘intersex’ have also found themselves a
political focus alongside trans people, so explaining their presence in
the extended ‘LGBTQIA+’ grouping. This is seen to further validate
the inclusion of trans people as a political focus. As we’ve seen in
Chapter 4, having a DSD doesn’t entail having a misaligned gender
identity, and nor does it entail any non-standard sexual identity
either. That is, the existence of people with DSDs is used by LGBT
activist organisations instrumentally to argue (as we have seen,
wrongly) that ‘sex is a spectrum’ in a way that benefits public
perception of trans people, because it tends to distract from the fact
nearly all trans people are born with standard chromosomal
configurations and morphologies. The inclusion does not appear to
properly recognise the separate plight of people with DSDs, many of
whom suffer debilitating symptoms, have undergone traumatic
surgeries, and sometimes struggle to come to terms with their
conditions. They deserve better than to be shoehorned into a
narrative that isn’t theirs, and to have their genuine political needs
obscured.
Why have these activist movements expanded recently in this
way? In feminism, the reason is partly ideological. It proceeds from
the true, common-sense observation that women’s experiences and
social situations differ across the world – including differences in
particular challenges or disadvantages faced, and advantages won –
to the bizarre conclusion, encountered in Chapter 5 and popularised
in Third Wave feminism from the 1990s onwards, that women cannot
function as a unit for a coherent political focus at all. The philosopher
Elizabeth Spelman takes this line in her influential 1990 book
Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. In
doing so, she apparently forgets the existence and function of
abstract concepts: or, more strictly, the existence of one abstract
concept in particular – WOMAN – since strangely she doesn’t apply
the same arguments to the concepts of MAN or WORKING-CLASS
PERSON or BLACK PERSON or GAY PERSON, etc., and yet
exactly the same spurious moves could be made there too. For
instance, as legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (of whom more in the
next section) points out, the anti-racism movement is not similarly
affected by the obvious fact not all members of a given racial group
have suffered equally under racism. Crenshaw writes: ‘The fact that
some sectors of a population might have suffered more under a
particular racial regime due to cofactors such as class or age or
disability has generally not been seen as evidence that the initial
frame of group-based harm is itself problematic.’13
Abstract concepts help us pick out general classes or groups of
things, for certain explanatory purposes, independently of local
differences at the level of particulars. The concept of a TREE, for
instance, covers oaks, ashes, rowans, redwoods, etc., as well as
covering differences between particular oaks, ashes, rowans,
redwoods, etc. We need the concept TREE for some important
explanatory purposes: for instance, trees, as opposed to other
plants, are more likely to be hit by lightning, in virtue of their relative
height. So too does WOMAN (understood as adult human female)
feature in many important explanations, as we have seen. For
instance: women, as opposed to men, can get pregnant, and are
more likely to have certain health challenges, attain distinctive
performance levels in sport, face certain distinctive socio-economic
challenges and be vulnerable to sexual assault, and so on. It was
never the claim these things happen to all women, just as the
comparable claim about trees wasn’t that all trees get hit by
lightning. The fact women differ greatly in their local experiences and
social circumstances – as do, of course, men, working-class people,
black people, trans people (and so on, for any human grouping) –
shows only that the concepts WOMAN, MAN, WORKING-CLASS
PERSON, BLACK PERSON, TRANS PERSON (etc.) can’t explain
everything about social situations on their own. As has so often been
the message in this book, we need more concepts to cover the
important sub-groupings and variations. But that doesn’t make the
original concepts worthless.
 The move from ‘feminism is for women’ to ‘feminism is for
everyone’ has other less intellectual origins too, shared by gay
activism’s move from ‘LGB’ to ‘LGBTQIA+’. One of these, I suggest,
is a desire for novelty and reinvention in the public mind. Another is a
kind of unconscious mental capitulation to the social forces which
made feminism and gay activism so important to pursue, in their
original senses, in the first place: the abiding dislike for women and
gay people which still exists as significant oppressive forces in
society, and which causes people to discount their interests or even
positively act against them. If your one job is to fight, fairly
hopelessly, against the persistent tides of denigration, interest-
relegation and mockery faced by women and gays, it’s probably not
surprising you eventually end up altering your own job description.
Another influence, at least in the case of feminism and lesbian
activism – fairly ironically – is that women and girls tend to be
socially valued for qualities associated with the maternal: excessive
kindness, the self-sacrifice of your own needs in relation to others, a
lack of firm boundaries, and an enhanced sense of moral
responsibility for putting things right. This stereotype often informs
women and girls’ own self-conceptions and so makes them more
susceptible to complaints they should be centring the needs of
others who are not ‘themselves’.
Yet another generally salient factor is the current cultural mania for
‘diversity and inclusion’, taken as some kind of mindless mantra
without genuine thought being given to what it actually means or
should be doing. Diversity and inclusion sound good but are not
coherent goals unless located in a wider explanation of why they
bring value. They are best understood as indirect signs that a system
is working fairly; signs that minority groups have unfettered access to
institutions at every level, without their minority group membership
counting against them. A diverse and inclusive organisation is one
where – unfashionable phrase – equal opportunity genuinely
happens. To this extent, our institutions and organisations should be
diverse and inclusive as an indirect sign of their good health. These
days, though, we see diversity and inclusion pursued as vague goals
in their own right, sometimes in areas in which they are completely
inappropriate. So, for instance, earlier in this book we saw the
Butlerian idea that our very concepts should be ‘inclusive’: WOMAN
should ‘include’ trans women, and LESBIAN should ‘include’ trans
women attracted to women, or else ‘marginalise’ them. But, as I
argued in Chapter 5, the whole point of concepts is to be exclusive,
not in an ethically suspect sense, but in the reasonable sense of
providing a working cognitive tool to help us pick out a distinctive
kind of entity in the world, in which we have important explanatory
interests. In contemporary culture, the idea has now taken hold that
our political movements should be diverse and inclusive, not just in
who gets to participate, but also in their political projects. Yet this is
to dilute their point. As many feminists have pointed out, it’s the
equivalent of moving from ‘Black lives matter’ to ‘All lives matter’: it
significantly changes the subject, and so is to the detriment of the
people who were the original political focus, yet without the material
changes in their circumstances that would justify this diversion.
Feminism is only for women and girls, in the sense that women
and girls should be its exclusive political project. Post-structuralist
and Third Wave arguments have provided no convincing reason to
deny this. Similarly, gay and bisexual people should be the exclusive
political project of gay activism, with separate campaigns for lesbians
and gay men where their interests differ. Trans people should be the
exclusive political project of a separate trans activism. If there is
capital to be gained by separate movements sometimes deliberately
uniting for well-defined ends, then that is one thing, but merging
permanently is quite another. Sometimes this simple point is
confused with the claim that feminists, gay activists and trans
activists, as individuals, cannot care about other groups, or organise
in their interests. Of course they can. The claims just made about
feminism, gay and trans activism are claims about coherent political
projects, not about the people that undertake them. Still: with a
professional feminist (pussy) hat on, your job is to argue for women;
what you do in your own time is up to you. When the distinctive
social challenges of being a woman and a girl cease, feminism will
no longer be needed. In the meantime, there is enough to do without
taking on the struggles of others under the guise of feminism. By
exactly the same token, professional gay activism is for – in the
sense of directed towards, by definition – only those people who
have homosexual or bisexual orientations, and who tend to face
distinctive challenges because of this. Trans activism is only for trans
people, who face distinctive challenges because of being trans. The
people in charge of the organisations that purport to represent these
groups need to stop changing the subject.

Be more intersectional
Equally, though, the people in those organisations need to be more
intersectional. For those readers who would place the cause of
intersectionality squarely on the side of current mainstream feminism
and trans activism, this suggestion may come as a surprise. That’s
because current mainstream feminism and trans activism tend to
misrepresent the valuable lessons of intersectionality. These days,
it’s often argued trans women must be women, because feminism
should be ‘intersectional’ and so should be for ‘all women’, including
those kinds of women excluded from consideration as women in the
historical past. ‘People used to think black women weren’t women’
so the argument goes. ‘So trans women must be women.’ In fact,
this argument has nothing to do with intersectionality: you could take
the word ‘intersectional’ out, and you’d still have the basic form. That
form is: ‘if a particular group has been wrongly excluded from a given
category in the past, then, where a completely different group is
presently being excluded from that same category, this exclusion
must be wrong too’. Obviously, though, that a mistaken inference
has been made in the past about category membership doesn’t
mean every similarly structured inference made now about the same
category is a mistake. People used to think whales weren’t
mammals; this doesn’t mean mackerel are mammals now. That this
line has looked even slightly attractive to anyone is presumably
because it implicitly relies upon a Butlerian view of concepts as
‘exclusionary’ weapons of dominance and hierarchy, and not the
view of concepts I argued for in Chapter 5: concepts as cognitive
tools, responding to the world, and to non-arbitrary shared interests
in it, and used in the services of reference, explanation and
prediction.
 Another prominent recent critic of intersectionality is Douglas
Murray. In his popular book The Madness of Crowds, Murray lays
many current ills at the door of intersectionality, describing it as ‘the
invitation to spend the rest of our lives attempting to work out each
and every identity and vulnerability claim in ourselves and others and
then organize along whichever system of justice emerges from the
perpetually moving hierarchy which we uncover’.14 I think Murray is
confusing intersectionality as an analytic tool with its wider popular
subsumption into identity politics. You can be against popular identity
politics – I am – and still think the concept of intersectionality, as
originally presented, is a useful tool for analysing systems of
discrimination. Properly understood, intersectionality is the point that,
in the words of the black feminist Combahee River Collective, writing
in 1977, ‘the major systems of oppression are interlocking’; so that,
for instance, ‘there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which
is neither solely racial nor solely sexual’.15 Or, as the legal scholar
mentioned earlier who coined the term and who has done most to
promote the concept, Kimberlé Crenshaw, puts it: ‘Black women can
experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and
different from those experienced by white women and Black men.
Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to
white women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar
experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-
discrimination – the combined effects of practices which discriminate
on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they
experience discrimination as Black women – not the sum of race and
sex discrimination, but as Black women.’16 Despite the picture
painted by Murray, there is no automatic implication here that being
oppressed as a black woman is the most interesting thing about you
as a black woman; nor that presenting some other arbitrary feature
of yourself as a putative grounds for discrimination would be equally
interesting, as Murray implies. If only traditional grounds for
discrimination against others – race, socio-economic class, sex,
sexual orientation – were ‘perpetually moving’. From where I stand,
they seem depressingly static, even if present culture tries to ignore
them.
 Crenshaw’s work is full of concrete, patiently evidenced examples
of how intersecting discrimination works in practice within legal
systems and employment contexts. Black women are often treated
as the same as white women for the purposes of feminism, and the
same as black men for the purposes of anti-racism. In both cases,
they tend to be treated as subject to exactly the same forms of
discrimination, and it’s assumed their problems are subject to
identical remedies. Yet this unfairly ignores important differences
from both situations, partly because of the double inflection of two
forms of discrimination at once.17 Equally, being subject to two major
forms of discrimination at once makes it hard to use current legal
systems to establish the presence of either in an individual case,
because models are set up to recognise the causal influence of one
form of discrimination at a time.18 This too has discriminatory effects.
Part of what Crenshaw shows in her writing is that feminism
cannot take ‘being a woman or girl’ as the only relevant criterion in
formulating political action in the name of women and girls.
Feminism also needs to get concrete information about how being a
woman or girl causally feeds into patterns of discrimination in
particular social and cultural contexts. This will differ from context to
context. Being an Afghan woman in Afghanistan will differ from being
an Afro-American woman in the US, and both will differ from being a
white woman in the UK. Additionally, between white women in the
UK (for instance) there will be relevant local class-based and socio-
economic differences.
For me, this is what being intersectional essentially demands:
close, patient scrutiny of the multiple background factors
systematically involved in a person’s undeserved plight, and an
examination of how they interact. Feminism needs to be responsive
where necessary to these local differences. It also needs constantly
to monitor its practice for bias towards the interests of a particular
conception of what women and girls need or want, based on an
illegitimately narrow perspective, inapplicable to others. So, for
instance, when some Second Wave white feminists argued in the
70s and 80s that unpaid domestic labour in the home was a source
of oppressive restriction for all women, black radical feminist scholar
bell hooks pointed out that, perhaps unlike white women, being in
the home was a source of safety and affirmation for black women:
‘Historically, black women have identified work in the context of
family as humanizing labor, work that affirms their identity as women,
as human beings showing love and care, the very gestures of
humanity white supremacist ideology claimed black people were
incapable of expressing. In contrast to labor done in a caring
environment inside the home, labor outside the home was most
often seen as stressful, degrading, and dehumanizing.’19
Mainstream feminist organisations in the UK have embraced the
conclusions of gender identity theory enthusiastically. In doing so,
they have failed to properly demonstrate, on behalf of women and
girls, the ethos of intersectionality to which nearly all pay lip service.
They have prioritised too narrow a perspective of (trans) women’s
interests, and have failed to notice when the consequences of their
political choices have impacted disproportionately on women falling
into two or more vulnerable groups simultaneously. Take, for
instance, the demand that trans women should be housed in the
female prison estate, and the failure of mainstream feminist
organisations to object, or apparently even to consider how this
might affect women prisoners. 20 per cent of the UK women’s prison
population is BAME, as compared to 11.9 per cent of the population
generally. In 2018, 3,262 out of 7,745 women entering women’s
prisons were recorded as being of no fixed abode on arrival. Seven
in ten women in prison report being victims of domestic violence in
the past, and 31 per cent have spent time in local authority care as
children. 53 per cent report having experienced emotional, physical
or sexual abuse during childhood. Half of the women entering prison
report needing help with a drug problem. And 80 per cent are in
prison for non-violent offences.20 Yet in 2015 the mainstream
feminist establishment turned a blind eye to the admission of trans
women with convictions for violence, some without any medical
intervention or GRCs, into the female prison estate alongside these
intensely vulnerable women. It continues to turn a blind eye today.
The two women prisoners sexually assaulted in 2018 by trans
woman Karen White, a convicted paedophile on remand in a
woman’s prison for GBH and rape, are examples of the way women
from particularly vulnerable societal groups have been treated as
collateral in the service of nominal ‘inclusivity’. Another instructive
example is the way that, in the rearrangement of general social
space to accommodate the perceived needs of trans people, women
and girls of relatively lower socio-economic means have been almost
completely ignored. One 1999 study looking at data within a decade
suggested that ‘places where women’s average levels of income are
higher also tend to be places with lower levels of rape’. It goes on:
‘Residing in places where incomes are higher apparently enables
women to afford a more safe and secure living environment, that is,
to live in better, more crime-free neighborhoods, rely more on private
versus public transportation, and the like.’21 One might also add: it
also allows them to rely more on private versus public organisations,
such as, for instance, private sports clubs and health spas, instead
of council-owned sports centres, public swimming pools and soft
play areas. The Times in 2018 reported there had been 134
complaints of sexual misconduct in council-owned sports centre and
swimming pool changing rooms the previous year, and of those, ‘120
related to incidents that took place in unisex changing rooms and 14
to incidents in single-sex changing rooms’.22 These relevant facts
seem to be ignored by organisations, including local government
organisations, rushing to instigate self-identification as the official
means of entry into women-only spaces on their premises. They also
seem to be ignored by the often well-off and well-educated people
arguing that organisations are right to do so.
Less well-off women and women in prison – who of course
intersect – are not the only groups of women recently abandoned by
the mainstream feminist establishment in their enthusiastic embrace
of the conclusions of gender identity theory. They have been equally
unconcerned with the potential (or in Scotland, the actual) effects of
removing the so-called ‘spousal veto’ within the GRA upon ‘trans
widows’ – the significant number of women whose husbands or
partners suddenly come out as trans, relatively late-on in life.
Depending on circumstance, this may leave some of them in
marriages in which they don’t wish to stay, unable to pay for a
divorce, or in a religious community that forbids them to seek one.23
Relatedly, mainstream feminists also seem indifferent to the
disproportionate effects that policies making women-only spaces
open to people with female gender identities have on those of strict
religious observance such as orthodox Jewish people or Muslims, for
whom genuine sex-segregation in social settings is particularly
important. In their haste to adopt obscurantist terms like
‘menstruators’ to avoid mentioning the dreaded ‘W’ or ‘F’ words, they
have effectively abandoned women for whom English is a second
language, or those who haven’t been to university and are less
familiar with Gender Studies arcana. In their failure to challenge
school policies that make toilets ‘gender neutral’ (unisex), they have
shown little thought for the girls in tough schools for whom single-sex
spaces used to be a welcome relief from bullying or sexual
harassment by boys. And perhaps most awkwardly, they have been
left unable properly to explain why, internationally, half the population
in a given culture might be disproportionately subject to specific
experiences like rape, sexual slavery, female genital mutilation,
honour killing, female infanticide, banishment to menstrual huts,
surrogacy tourism or death by stoning for the act of adultery. Clue:
it’s not possession of a female gender identity.
Mainstream feminism has also abandoned trans men. As the
cultural paradigm of a trans women has increasingly moved away
from permanent physical alteration – as indicated by the recent
advent into cultural vocabulary of the ‘girldick’ – the paradigm of a
trans man or non-binary female is apparently moving somewhat
towards surgery and bodily modification.24 One study tells us that
trans men self-report what they call ‘gender confirming surgery’ at
much higher rates than trans women: 42–54 per cent versus 28 per
cent. The majority of this is radical mastectomy, known as ‘top
surgery’, but still, the prevalence rates for genital surgery is
estimated at 25–50 per cent for transgender men yet only 5–10 per
cent for transgender women.25 Mainstream feminism – a political
project supposedly aimed, at least some of the time, at women and
girls – has had very little to say about the possible reasons for this
cultural difference, and its potential connections to a more general
culture of self-improvement, purity narratives and masochism, as
traceable more widely in female body modification practices like
dieting and cosmetic surgery.
 Gay and trans activism are also failing their intersectional briefs.
Since adding the ‘T’ to the ‘LGB’, gay activism has apparently
abandoned the political representation of lesbians wherever lesbian
interests vary from, or clash with, those of gay men and trans
women.
Sociologist Michael Biggs has tracked, over fifteen years, the
occurrence of the word ‘lesbian’ in the annual reports of major LGBT
advocacy organisations such as Stonewall, the Equality Network and
the US organisation HRC, and found it shifting from an early position
of relative infrequency to markedly even lower frequency in recent
years, sometimes not appearing in a given year’s report at all.
Meanwhile, the frequency of the word ‘trans’ has leapt ahead,
particularly in the last decade.26 The fact that some LGBT
organisations are fronted by a lesbian CEO is no substitute for the
systematic failure to properly represent lesbian interests on equal
terms, within the organisations’ operations.
As documented in Chapter 3, the insistent demands from
sometimes prominent trans women that lesbians consider them to be
potential sexual partners are studiously ignored by LGBT
organisations, while the critics of such demands are demonised.
When grassroots lesbian organisation Get the L Out protested at the
2018 London Pride parade, carrying banners that said
‘lesbian=female homosexual’ and ‘trans activism erases lesbians’,
mainstream LGBT organisations attacked them hard.27 Stonewall’s
chief executive Ruth Hunt, herself a lesbian, immediately put out a
press release entitled ‘Transphobia at Pride in London’, accusing
Get the L Out of demonstrating ‘hatred towards trans people’ and
condemning the London Pride organisers for letting the peaceful,
brief protest happen ‘unhindered’.28
To add insult to injury, in 2018 the Sunday Times revealed that
Stonewall had recently financially sponsored Canadian trans woman
Morgan Page, as part of their ‘Empowering trans leaders and
organizations in England’ programme.29 It was already on record
that in 2012, Page had organised a workshop for Planned
Parenthood, entitled: ‘Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking
Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Transwomen’. According to the
workshop description, participants would ‘explore the sexual barriers
queer transwomen face within the broader queer women’s
communities’ and ‘work together to identify barriers [and] strategize
ways to overcome them’30. Put in plainer language, the workshop
would strategise about how to get same-sex-attracted lesbians to
sleep with people of the opposite sex. In former times, gay activist
organisations used to criticise those males seeking to erode the
sexual boundaries of lesbians; it didn’t fund them.
LGBT activism also fails on intersectionality for trans people
themselves. It has no interest in acknowledging the somewhat
different political and social situations of trans men and trans women
respectively, but insists on treating both as identical for the purposes
of lobbying. As far as trans activism is apparently concerned, there is
no relevant difference in the situations of a fourteen-year-old trans-
identifying teenage female, attracted to other females, who is
crowdfunding ‘top surgery’ and self-harming in the meantime, and a
forty-one-year-old late-transitioning autogynephilic heterosexual
male with no intention of divorcing the wife. Equally, trans activism
does not appear to attend to the particular needs of the relatively
high proportion of people with autistic spectrum disorder in the trans
community, which surely differ from the neurotypical. As we saw in
the last chapter, it has also failed to seriously investigate the
differences in the way trans women of colour and trans women in the
sex trade are disproportionately affected by violence, treating any
infraction as a result of vague ‘transphobia’ without recognising or
investigating other causal factors.
Finally, modern LGBT activism also ignores the particular interests
of transsexuals, in the sense of trans people who have medically
transitioned. Many transsexuals object to the political demands
ostensibly made in their name, and especially at the idea of gender
identity, which they don’t tend to acknowledge as the thing that
makes them trans. Instead they emphasise the experience of
dysphoria and the often painful and physically demanding personal
journeys they have taken to overcome it. Many are also reasonably
comfortable in acknowledging their sex: after all, if it wasn’t for their
sex, they wouldn’t be trans. Says transsexual trans man Buck Angel:
‘I was born biologically female. I use testosterone to masculinize
myself so I feel more like me. I had a legal sex change and now live
as a male. All male pronouns. I am a transsexual and will never be
biologically male. But I do live as a male.’31 Yet within grassroots
trans activism, transsexuals with views like Angel’s are often derided
as ‘truscum’: ‘scum’ who think of themselves as ‘true’ trans. At
official level, their views tend to be ignored or denigrated.

Use less academic (high) theory, more academic

data
Perhaps surprisingly for a philosopher, my final suggestion can be
summed up as: less theory, more data. The message of the previous
section was that if feminism and LGBT activism want to function
effectively and fairly in future, they need to pay proper attention to
the local experiences of particular groups within the demographics
they purport to speak for. They need to look at the interests and
challenges each face, which may well differ significantly from those
in the wider group. In order to do this, activist organisations need
robust, accurate data. In the area of trans experience, academics
have largely failed to provide this.
Somewhat stunningly given the political demands made in the
name of trans people by trans activists, here are some of the basic
things we still don’t know enough about:

How many trans women, men and non-binary people there are in
the UK, with reliable numbers for each category. At the moment,
by the Government Equalities Office’s own admission, ‘No robust
data on the UK trans population exists’. They ‘tentatively estimate
that there are approximately 200,000–500,000 trans people in the
UK’.32 As I write, the Office for National Statistics is currently
preparing a voluntary ‘gender identity’ question for the 2021
Survey in England and Wales which asks ‘Is your gender the
same as the sex you were registered at birth?’, and then invites
people to put in what their gender identity is, if they wish. Yet, at
the time of writing, the ONS apparently intends that the separate
question ‘What is your sex? Select either “Female” or “Male”’ can
be answered in terms of ‘legal sex’ not actual sex, allowing trans
people with a Gender Recognition Certificate to describe
themselves as of the opposite sex33. Meanwhile, Census
authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland apparently plan to
advise respondents that they may answer in terms of gender
identity, even without a GRC. In practice, this means there will be
no fully robust way of cross-referencing sex information with
other sources of information, including information about gender
identity.
The material and psychological effects on women of making
women-only spaces accessible in terms of female gender
identity, and especially on female victims of sexual assault.
Anecdotal reports include women using public toilets and
changing rooms less, using some venues less and experiencing
heightened anxiety. Since these are some of the very same
conditions alleged on behalf of trans people in order to argue for
‘gender neutral’ spaces and/or increased access of trans women
to women-only spaces, if borne out by data this information would
surely be of relevance to the public conversation.
How vulnerable trans people actually are to assault and violence
in comparison to the general population. This data needs to be
peer-reviewed according to standard academic norms, and not
produced by trans activist organisations for the purposes of
lobbying.
What proportion of UK trans people medically transition, with
separate information for types of surgery (facial, chest, genital)
and for hormonal therapy.
What the numbers of UK trans-identifying children are, who are
not currently in the care of the NHS Gender Identity Development
Service.
What the outcomes are long term for children put on puberty
blockers. It has recently become clear that, despite the NHS
Tavistock GIDS using these drugs on adolescents since 2011,
long-term outcomes are unknown.34 As therapist Lisa Marchiano
writes, generally speaking, ‘there are few studies examining
outcomes for children who are transgender’.35
The true number of detransitioners, and their outcomes. There is
reason to think existing studies don’t show the whole picture: one
 focuses only on transsexuals, and one – quite bizarrely – focuses
only on those who would still identify as transgender.36 Gender
Identity Services do not keep track of those who drop out of their
programmes.
What the experiences of ‘trans widows’ of late-transitioning trans
women are actually like, and what their own political needs are.
How a wide cross-section of trans people actually think about
their own needs and political interests, in relation to those
presented on their behalf by trans activist organisations.
What the material and psychological effects of the political
successes of gender identity theory have been on older
transsexuals, for whom the concept of gender identity has played
little part.
What people in the UK generally understand by the terms ‘trans’,
‘trans woman’, ‘trans man’, ‘non-binary’, ‘gender’ and ‘gender
identity’. It seems that there is still a wide variety of
interpretations of these terms in the general population,
potentially detrimentally affecting public communication.
What proportion of people in the UK believe that ‘trans women
are women’ and ‘trans men are men’, and what exactly they
mean by this. In Chapter 5 I cited one survey, but it would be
good to have others.

While activism and public discussion suffers from the lack of

availability of neutral, peer-reviewed data in these and other areas,
they also suffer from a surfeit of ‘high’ theory, infused into activism
via academics working in feminist theory, queer theory and Trans
Studies. High theory is abstract, totalising, seductively dramatic in its
conclusions, and relatively insulated from any directly observable
empirical consequences – which, of course, makes it harder to
dislodge. We have seen the influence of some of this in Chapter 2 in
discussion of Judith Butler, who – with relatively few empirical
observations in the entirety of her work on gender – has nonetheless
managed to convince large numbers of people that biological sex
doesn’t exist. She argues from a lofty height, metaphorically
speaking: from grand claims about concepts, language, reality and
thought generally, and hardly ever via specific data about sex. Her
claims and their consequences are supposed to be beyond
mundane concepts like ‘evidence’ and ‘empirical justification’:
precisely, she casts such notions, generally, into question. Just now,
and also in Chapter 5, I discussed the influential idea that women,
somehow uniquely of all the possible human groupings, aren’t a fit or
coherent subject for political activism. As with Butler, this conclusion
is reached through a byzantine set of theoretical manoeuvres, few or
none of which have anything to do with low-level empirical
observation.
On the basis of these examples, I suggest a rule of thumb for
activists: the less data provided, and the more complicated abstract
theorising involved in the latest shiny position from academics, the
more caution should be exercised before embracing it. This isn’t the
sweeping conclusion that theory is always bad. Indeed, we can’t do
without theory, since observation is nearly always inflected by
presuppositions: what we see is partly influenced by what we think
will be there. Mine is rather the point that the more dramatic and
sexier the consequences of a new theory (e.g. ‘there are no material
biological sexes!’, ‘there are no women!’) the more caution should be
applied. Equally, the more heavily moralised the terms in which a
theory is presented, the more suspicious readers should be about it
in advance: for moralising language in a theory makes it
psychologically harder for critics to reject it, even where it’s false.
Finally, it should also be remembered that academia, like
everywhere else, is subject to a constant demand for novel hot
takes. There is strong pressure to publish and to have ‘impact’ –
which in practice often means doing things that will grab headlines,
irrespective of whether the work is valuable. Simply repeating true
and interesting points made by others isn’t enough to get a journal
publication or make yourself a reputation: you have to (appear to) do
something new and original, often irrespective of whether that thing
is ultimately worth doing. It should be remembered, too, that many
academics are themselves subject to wider social trends and a
tendency towards broad ideological conformity, especially when their
academic field is infused with a kind of inherent quasi-ethical
purpose, as feminist theory, queer theory, and Trans Studies
undoubtedly are. As trans scholar Emmett Harsin Drager says,
strikingly candidly for someone working in Trans Studies: ‘We are in
the era of the trans child. It would be absolutely unfounded to
imagine a Trans Studies scholar saying that perhaps, actually, trans
children should not be given hormones. As a field we do not allow for
those kinds of disagreements. Everything must be “gender affirming”
(whatever that means).’37
In short: the societal problems to which political activism is (or
should be) oriented – the problems that make material differences to
people’s lives – don’t go away just because some academic wrote a
hot new paper showing us there aren’t women, gay or trans people
as we used to understand them; or because what we used to think
was the problem is really the solution, or what we used to think of as
the solution is really the problem. Always beware the smart-looking
reversal. Instead, social problems will get solved by time-honoured
methods: finding out what exactly the problems are, with a focus on
concrete evidence and listening to all affected parties; and finding
out exactly what causes those problems, and what would practically
help to make a difference. And then doing it.
 Acknowledgements

Enormous thanks are due to my agent Caroline Hardman, for

pushing me to write this book and fighting for it once born; and to my
editor and publicist at Fleet, Ursula Doyle and Zoe Hood, for
believing in it. My first and most brilliant reader was my darling wife,
Laura Gibbon, and I thank her too for the thousands of conversations
about sex and gender identity, as well as for picking me up off the
floor at various points. My second brilliant reader was my father, Guy
Stock. Many thanks to other generous readers of various bits:
Heather Brunskell-Evans, Alex Byrne, Cathy Devine, Emma Hilton,
Holly Lawford-Smith, Fiona Leach, Tony Lycholat, Lisa Marchiano,
Susan Matthews, Jon Pike, Selina Todd and Nicola Williams; and to
Ann Furedi and Brian Magowan for important conversations. All
remaining mistakes are my own. Developing the arguments for this
book has been psychologically punishing at times, and it’s
impossible to list all the wonderful people, known and unknown, who
have encouraged me, supported me or inspired me with their own
courage: there are just too many and I’m incredibly grateful to you
all. But very special thanks go to Sophie Allen, Elizabeth Finneron
Burns, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng and Rebecca Reilly-Cooper,
and to my feminist Queen, Julie Bindel.
 Notes

Introduction

1. Julian Norman, ‘“Shifting sands”: Six legal views on the

transgender debate’, Guardian, 19 October 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/19/gender-
recognition-act-reforms-six-legal-views-transgender-debate
2. Equality Act Explanatory Notes,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/2/1/
4
3. Stonewall, ‘The truth about trans’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/truth-about-trans#trans-people-
britain
4. Government Equality Office, ‘Trans people in the UK’,
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/sys
tem/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-
factsheet.pdf
5. Andrew Gilligan, ‘Tavistock clinic reveals surge in girls switching
gender’, Sunday Times, 30 June 2019,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surge-in-girls-switching-
gender-pwqdtd5vk
6. Michael Biggs (2019), ‘The Tavistock’s Experiment With Puberty
Blockers’
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlock
ers.pdf
7. Health Research Authority, https://www.hra.nhs.uk/about-
us/governance/feedback-raising-concerns/investigation-study-
early-pubertal-suppression-carefully-selected-group-
adolescents-gender-identity-disorders)
8. I. T. Nolan, C. J. Kuhner and G. W. Dy (2019), ‘Demographic
and temporal trends in transgender identities and gender
confirming surgery’, Translational Andrology and Urology, 8 (3),
184–90
9. Stonewall, ‘Glossary of terms’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/faqs-and-
glossary/glossary-terms
10. Woman’s Place UK, ‘Evidence of calls to remove single sex
exemptions from Equality Act’,
https://womansplaceuk.org/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-
exemptions/
11. MBM Policy Analysis, ‘International evidence and the risks of
reframing the sex question in the Census’,
https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2020/11/30/international-
evidence-and-the-risks-of-reframing-the-sex-question-in-the-
census/. At the time of writing, as reported in the Sunday Times,
24 January 2021, the English Census authority (the Office for
National Statistics) will drop its plan to officially interpret ‘sex’ as
‘gender identity’ in its Census, and will instead interpret it as
‘legal sex’.
12. ‘Police investigating bomb threat against Hastings meeting’,
Hastings Observer, 20 June 2018,
https://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/police-investigating-
bomb-threat-against-hastings-meeting-1020623
13. ‘J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on
Sex and Gender Issues’, https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-
rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-
gender-issues/
14. ‘“Trans women are women”: Daniel Radcliffe speaks out after
JK Rowling tweets’, Guardian, 9 June 2020,
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/08/daniel-radcliffe-jk-
rowling-transgender-tweets
15. ‘JK Rowling and the publisher’s staff revolt: Workers at
publishing house Hachette threaten to down tools on her new
children’s book because of her “transphobic” views’, Daily Mail,
16 June 2020, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
 8424029/JK-Rowling-publishers-revolt-Workers-publishing-
house-Hachette-threaten-tools.html
16. Andrea Long Chu and Emmett Harsin Drager (2019), ‘After
Trans Studies’, Transgender Studies, 6 (1), 103–16

Chapter 1: A Brief History of Gender Identity

1. Céline Leboeuf (2016), ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a

woman: the sex-gender distinction and Simone de Beauvoir’s
account of woman’, in K. Smits and S. Bruce (eds.), Feminist
Moments: Reading Feminist Texts, Bloomsbury Academic.
Leboeuf’s image is borrowed from Nancy Bauer.
2. Simone de Beauvoir (2011 [1949]), The Second Sex, trans. C.
Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage, p. 211
3. De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 12
4. Ann Oakley (2016 [1972]), Sex, Gender, and Society,
Routledge, pp. 21–2
5. Monique Wittig (1993), ‘One Is Not Born A Woman’, in H.
Abelove, M. Barale and D. Halperin (eds.), The Lesbian and
Gay Studies Reader, Routledge, p. 104
6. Judith Butler (1986), ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s
Second Sex’, Yale French Studies, No. 72, p. 35
7. John Money (1994), ‘The concept of gender identity disorder in
childhood and adolescence after 39 years’, Journal of Sex &
Marital Therapy, 20 (3), 164–5
8. Money, ‘The concept of gender identity disorder’, p. 169
9. Ibid.
10. Robert J. Stoller (1964), ‘The hermaphroditic identity of
hermaphrodites’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 139,
p. 456
11. M. Blackless et al. (2000), ‘How sexually dimorphic are we?
Review and synthesis’, American Journal of Human Biology:
The official journal of the Human Biology Council, 12 (2), 151–
66
12. Anne Fausto-Sterling (1993), ‘The Five Sexes: Why Male and
Female are not Enough’, Science, 33, 20–24
13. Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Why Sex Is Not Binary’, New York
Times, 25 October 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/sex-biology-
binary.html
14. Fausto-Sterling, ‘The Five Sexes’
15. Susan Stryker (2006), ‘(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An
Introduction to Transgender Studies’, in S. Stryker and S.
Whittle (eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, Routledge, p.
4; Stephen Whittle (2006), Foreword in S. Stryker and S. Whittle
(eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, Routledge, p. xi
16. Julia Serano (2007), Whipping Girl: Transsexual Woman on
Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Seal Press
17. Serano talks mostly about ‘cissexuals’ and ‘transsexuals’ but
makes clear she doesn’t mean by this to identify any particular
relation to medical transition, or the lack of it.
18. Max Valerio Wolf (2006), The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal
and Social Transformation from Female to Male, Seal Press
19. GLAAD, ‘Transgender FAQ’,
https://www.glaad.org/transgender/transfaq
20. Stonewall, ‘The Truth about Trans’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/truth-about-trans#lesbian-trans-
woman-gay-trans-man
21. Stonewall, ‘Glossary’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-
advice/glossary-terms#h
22. For instance, The Council of Europe’s 2009 position paper
‘Human Rights and Gender Identity’, which cites the Yogyakarta
Principles, starts with the claim: ‘Gender identity is one of the
most fundamental aspects of life’, CommDH/IssuePaper (2009)
2, https://rm.coe.int/16806da753,
https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/
23. Heather Brunskell-Evans (2019), ‘The Medico-Legal “Making” of
“The Transgender Child”’, Medical Law Review, 27, 4
24. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwo
meq/390/39010.htm
25. ‘Call to end “spousal veto” on trans people being recognised as
preferred gender’, Metro, 15 September 2019,
 https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/15/call-end-spousal-veto-trans-
people-recognised-preferred-gender-10745012/
26. ‘Our successful Spousal Veto removal – amendments 68, 70 &
72’, Scottish Trans Website, https://www.scottishtrans.org/our-
work/completed-work/equal-marriage/spousal-veto-amendment/
27. Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the
UK, October 2017, https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/UKCP-Memorandum-of-
Understanding-on-Conversion-Therapy-in-the-UK.pdf
28. American Psychological Association, Guidelines for
Psychological Practice With Transgender and Gender
Nonconforming People, American Psychological Association,
Vol. 70, No. 9, 832–64,
https://www.apa.org/practice/guidelines/transgender.pdf
29. Verso Books Blog, ‘Judith Butler on gender and the trans
experience: “One should be free to determine the course of
one’s gendered life”’, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2009-
judith-butler-on-gender-and-the-trans-experience-one-should-
be-free-to-determine-the-course-of-one-sgendered-life
30. Viv Smythe, ‘I’m credited with having coined the word “Terf”.
Here’s how it happened’, Guardian, 28 November 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-
credited-with-having-coined-the-acronym-terf-heres-how-it-
happened
31. Viv Smythe, ‘An apology and a promise’, Finally, a Feminism
101 blog,
https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/an-
apology-and-a-promise/
32. Myisha Cherry (2019), ‘Rachel McKinnon on allies and ally
culture’, in M. Cherry, Unmuted: Conversations on Prejudice,
Oppression, and Social Justice, Oxford University Press
33. Whittle, Foreword in Stryker and Whittle, p. xi
34. Sandy Stone (1992), ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A
Posttranssexual Manifesto’, Camera Obscura, 10 (2 (29))
35. Stonewall, ‘Glossary’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-
advice/glossary-terms#h
36. ‘Facebook’s 71 gender options come to UK users’, Daily
Telegraph, 27 June 2014,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10930654/Fac
ebooks-71-gender-options-come-to-UK-users.html
37. University of Kent, ‘Trans Policy and Student Support
Procedures’,
https://www.kent.ac.uk/studentservices/files/Trans%20Student%
20Support%20Policy%2020%20Feb%202018.pdf
38. University of Essex, ‘Working with Schools and Colleges: Trans
Inclusion Guidance’,
https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/study/outreach/tran
sgender-guidance.pdf
39. University of Roehampton, ‘Trans, Non-Binary and Intersex
Equality: Policy and Guidance’,
https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/globalassets/documents/corporat
e-information/policies/transgender-non-binary-and-intersex-
equality-policy-and-guidance.pdf
40. Stonewall, ‘Creating an LGBT-inclusive primary curriculum’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/creating_an_lgbtinclus
ive_primary_curriculum.pdf
41. Michael Paramo, ‘Transphobia is a white supremacist legacy of
colonialism’,
https://medium.com/@Michael_Paramo/transphobia-is-a-white-
supremacist-legacy-of-colonialism-e50f57240650
42. In a 2019 tweet, Amnesty International’s Rainbow Network
described Hatshepsut as ‘one of the most successful pharaohs
in history: born a woman, used female pronouns but presented
herself as a King’,
https://twitter.com/amnestyuk_lgbti/status/109851448906506649
7?s=21
43. Hannah Barnes and Debora Cohen, ‘Tavistock puberty blocker
study published after nine years’, BBC News website,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55282113
44. Michael Biggs, ‘The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty
Blockers’,
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlock
ers.pdf
45. Helen Joyce, ‘The New Patriarchy: How trans radicalism hurts
women, children and trans people themselves’, Quillette,
https://quillette.com/2018/12/04/the-new-patriarchy-how-trans-
radicalism-hurts-women-children-and-trans-people-themselves/
46. ‘Jazz Jennings Says She Is “Super Happy With The Results” Of
Her 3rd Gender Confirmation Surgery’, Woman’s Health
Magazine, 5 February 2020,
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a23828566/jazz-
jennings-gender-confirmation-surgery-complication/
47. Emrys Travis, ‘Choosing Top Surgery Was Choosing To Trust
Myself To Know Who I Really Am’, Huffington Post, 4 December
2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/non-binary-top-
surgery_uk_5c06396ae4b0cd916faf5ade
48. Whittle, Forword in Stryker and Whittle, p. xi
49. Allison Gallagher, ‘What does it mean to be a woman? It is not
just about femininity’, Guardian, 2 January 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/02/what-
does-it-mean-to-be-a-woman-it-is-not-just-about-femininity
50. Bernice Hausman (1995), Changing Sex: Transsexualism,
Technology and the Idea of Gender, Duke University Press, p. ix
51. Malhar Mali, ‘Gender Trouble: Gender Feminism and the Blank
Slate’, Areo magazine, 16 March 2017,
https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/16/gender-trouble-gender-
feminism-and-the-blank-slate/

Chapter 2: What is Sex?

1. Woman’s Place UK, ‘Evidence of calls to remove single sex

exemptions from equality act’,
https://womansplaceuk.org/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-
exemptions/
2. Alex Byrne, ‘Is Sex Binary?’, Arc Digital, 2 November 2018,
https://arcdigital.media/is-sex-binary-16bec97d161e
3. Richard Boyd (1991), ‘Realism, Anti-Foundationalism and the
Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds’, Philosophical Studies, 61, 127–
48
4. Boyd talks about ‘phenotypic’ characteristics, but as ‘phenotype’
normally includes an organism’s behaviour, I’m avoiding the
term for purposes of clear explanation here.
5. Richard Boyd (1999), ‘Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa’
in R. Wilson (ed.), Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, pp.
141–86, MIT Press
6. Namely, the promotion in the early foetus of the Müllerian duct
system, rather than the Wolffian one, due to the absence of the
influence of androgens.
7. Julia Serano (2007), Whipping Girl: Transsexual Woman on
Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Seal Press
8. Serano, Whipping Girl
9. Anne Fausto-Sterling (1993), ‘The Five Sexes: Why Male and
Female are not Enough’, Science, 33, 20–4
10. M. Blackless et al. (2000), ‘How sexually dimorphic are we?
Review and synthesis’, American Journal of Human Biology:
The official journal of the Human Biology Council, 12 (2), 151–
66
11. Leonard Sax (2002), ‘How Common is Intersex? A Response to
Anne Fausto-Sterling’, Journal of Sex Research, 39 (3), 174–8
12. Sax, ‘How Common is Intersex?’
13. Blackless et al., ‘How sexually dimorphic are we?’, p. 161
14. Fausto-Sterling, ‘The Five Sexes’
15. Sax, ‘How Common is Intersex?’
16. Peter Ludlow (2014), Living Words, Oxford University Press, pp.
41–6
17. Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Why Sex Is Not Binary’, New York
Times, 25 October 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/sex-biology-
binary.html
18. The key texts here are Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that
Matter (1993), both Routledge
19. In this she’s inspired by French philosopher Michel Foucault,
though she takes the idea in a much more radical direction than
him.
20. Judith Butler (1990), Gender Trouble, Routledge, p. 44
21. Judith Butler (1993), Bodies that Matter, Routledge, p. 30
22. See, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, ‘The Professor of Parody’, New
Republic, 22 February 1999,
https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody
23. Ian Hacking (1999), The Social Construction of What?, Harvard
University Press, p. 67
24. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1986), Laboratory Life: The
Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton University Press, p.
180
25. f/Gender Critical, ‘Before the Enlightenment the female skeleton
didn’t exist’,
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/b6qsmo/befo
re_the_enlightenment_the_female_skeleton/
26. Thomas Laqueur (1990), Making Sex: Body and Gender from
the Greeks to Freud, Harvard University Press, p. 23
27. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 169
28. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 21
29. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 22
30. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 153
31. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 150
32. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 11
33. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 17
34. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 22
35. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 167
36. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 96
37. Laqueur approvingly quotes philosopher W. V. O. Quine, also
known for this view, on p. 68.
38. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 96
39. For more on this see Alexander Bird (2000), Thomas Kuhn,
Princeton University Press
40. Monique Wittig (1982), ‘The Category of Sex’, Feminist Issues
2, 63–8
41. Catharine MacKinnon (1983), ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method, and
the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence’, Signs, 8 (4), 635–58
42. Wittig, ‘The Category of Sex’
43. Donna Haraway (1991), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The
Reinvention of Women, Free Association Books, p. 152
44. J. Christel et al. (2018), ‘Breast Development in Transwomen
After 1 Year of Cross-Sex Hormone Therapy: Results of a
Prospective Multicenter Study’, The Journal of Clinical
Endocrinology & Metabolism, 103 (2), pp. 532–8
45. M. Klaver et al. (2018), ‘Changes in regional body fat, lean body
mass and body shape in trans persons using cross-sex
hormonal therapy: results from a multicenter prospective study’,
European Journal of Endocrinology, 178 (2), 163, 17
46. See the Gender Recognition Act note 78; Equality Act point 7;
Equality Act note 41

Chapter 3: Why Does Sex Matter?

1. C. L. Martin and D. N. Ruble (2010), ‘Patterns of Gender

Development’, Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 353–81; Katie
Alcock, ‘But HOW CAN YOU TELL?’,
https://medium.com/@katieja/but-how-can-you-tell-
7901324d0919
2. M. Strauss et al. (2012), ‘The Development of Facial Gender
Categorization in Individuals with and without Autism: The
Impact of Typicality’, Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders, 42 (9), 1847–55
3. Office for National Statistics, ‘Suicides in the UK: 2018
registrations’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde
athsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/
2018registrations; ‘One in five women have self-harmed, study
reveals’, Guardian, 4 June 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/04/one-in-five-
young-women-have-self-harmed-study-reveals
4. A. F. Ceylan-Isik et al. (2010), ‘Sex difference in Alcoholism:
Who is at a greater risk for development of alcoholic
complication?’, Life Sciences, 87 (5–6), 133–8
5. https://www.womenshealth.gov/mental-health/mental-health-
conditions/eating-disorders
6. ‘The real reason girls are outperforming boys in school’, Daily
Telegraph, 5 November 2019,
 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/05/real-reasons-girls-
outperforming-boys-school/; ‘UK’s university gender gap is a
national scandal, says thinktank’, Guardian, 12 May 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/12/university-
gender-gap-scandalthinktank-men; ‘Women less inclined to self-
promote than men, even for a job’, Harvard Gazette, 7 February
2020, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/men-
better-than-women-at-self-promotion-on-job-leading-to-
inequities/
7. Sport England, ‘Gender’, https://www.sportengland.org/know-
your-audience/demographic-knowledge/gender; ‘2016 Yoga in
America Study’,
https://www.yogajournal.com/page/yogainamericastudy
8. ‘Without women the novel would die: discuss’, Guardian, 7
December 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/why-women-
love-literature-read-fiction-helen-taylor
9. Chloë Taylor (2009), ‘Foucault, Feminism, and Sex Crimes’,
Hypatia, 24 (4), 1–25
10. C. Ober et al. (2008), ‘Sex-specific Genetic Architecture of
Human Disease’, Nature reviews Genetics, 9 (12), 911–22
11. L. C. Golden et al. (2017), ‘The Importance of Studying Sex
Differences in Disease: The example of multiple sclerosis’,
Journal of Neuroscience Research, 95 (1–2), 633–43
12. Choi et al. (2007), ‘Why Men’s Hearts Break: Cardiovascular
effects of sex steroids’, Endocrinology & Metabolism Clinics of
North America, 36, 365–77
13. ‘Why More Men Are Dying From COVID-19 Than Women – A
Geneticist Explains’, Science Alert,
https://www.sciencealert.com/geneticist-explains-why-more-
men-are-dying-from-covid-19-than-women
14. R. B. Fillingim et al. (2009), ‘Sex, Gender, and Pain: A review of
recent clinical and experimental findings’, The Journal of Pain:
Official Journal of the American Pain Society, 10 (5), 447–85
15. H. Whitley et al. (2009), Sex-based Differences in Drug Activity’,
American Family Physician, 80 (11), 1254–8
16. Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous
System Disorders, ‘Sex Differences and Implications for
Translational Neuroscience Research: Workshop Summary’,
National Academies Press (US); 2011. 2, ‘Studying Sex
Differences in Health and Disease’ available from:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53393/
17. Caroline Criado Perez (2019), Invisible Women: Exposing Data
Bias in a World Designed for Men, Chatto and Windus, Chapter
10
18. ‘Anal Sex: What you need to know’, Teen Vogue,
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/anal-sex-what-you-need-to-
know/amp
19. ‘Smear test campaign drops the word “woman”’ to avoid
transgender offence’, The Times, 5 June 2018,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/smear-test-campaign-drops-
the-word-woman-to-avoid-transgender-offence-263mj7f6s
20. Planned Parenthood Action twitter feed,
https://twitter.com/ppact/status/771850195478908928?lang=en;
‘The Guardian called women “menstruators” and these are the
only responses you need’, The Poke,
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2018/10/25/guardian-called-women-
menstruators-people-saw-red-favourite-responses
21. ‘LGBTQIA Safe Sex Guide’, Healthline,
https://www.healthline.com/health/lgbtqia-safe-sex-guide
22. ‘Accessibility and gendered language at Clue’, Medium,
medium.com/clued-in/accessibility-and-gendered-language-
atclue-4b79a1dfc033#.2nublwhqx
23. Ann Furedi, correspondence with the author
24. ‘Guidelines supporting single-sex sport policy development’,
Fair Play For Women,
https://fairplayforwomen.com/sport_policy/
25. A. Wiik et al. (2020), ‘Muscle Strength, Size, and Composition
Following 12 Months of Gender-affirming Treatment in
Transgender Individuals’, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism, 105 (3)
26. D. L. Coleman and W. Shreve, ‘Comparing Athletic
Performances: The Best Elite Women to Boys and Men’,
 https://web.law.duke.edu/sports/sex-sport/comparative-athletic-
performance/
27. Emma Hilton, ‘Harder, better, faster, stronger: why we must
protect female sports’,
https://fondofbeetles.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/harder-better-
faster-stronger-why-we-must-protect-female-sports/
28. ‘CIAC Transgender Policy’,
https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/Principal_Transgender_Discussion
_Quick_Reference_Guide.pdf; ‘The Challenges Ahead for
Transgender Athletes and Title IX Under Trump’, Vice, 28 July
2017, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59px8b/the-
challenges-ahead-for-transgenderathletes-and-title-ix-under-
trump
29. ‘ACLU response to lawsuit attacking transgender student
athletes’, https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-responds-
lawsuit-attacking-transgender-student-athletes
30. ‘Durham University Trans and Intersex Inclusion Policy’,
https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/equality.diversity/DurhamTrans
andIntersexInclusionPolicy.docx
31. D. J. Handelsman et al. (2018), ‘Circulating Testosterone as the
Hormonal Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance’,
Endocrine Reviews, 39, (5), 803–29
32. Dr Antonia Lee, ‘Myonuclei – the male to female sporting
advantage’, https://medium.com/@Antonia_Lee/myonuclei-the-
male-to-female-sporting-advantage-ae205110d4b2
33. Rachel McKinnon, ‘I won a world championship. Some people
aren’t happy’, New York Times, 5 December 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/i-won-a-world-
championship-some-people-arent-happy.html
34. ‘Transgender rugby player playing with “a smile on my face”’,
BBC Website, 22 August 2019,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/amp/rugby-union/49298550
35. Julian Savalescu, ‘Ten ethical flaws in the Caster Semenya
decision on intersex in sport’, The Conversation,
https://theconversation.com/ten-ethical-flaws-in-the-caster-
semenyadecision-on-intersex-in-sport-116448
36. Hannah Mouncey, ‘AFL’s trans participation policy sets a
dangerous precedent for women’, Guardian, 2 September 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/03/afls-trans-
participation-policy-sets-a-dangerous-precedent-for-women
37. Jonathan Liew, ‘Why the arguments against trans, intersex and
DSD athletes are based on prejudice and ignorance’,
Independent, 22 February 2019,
www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/caster-semenya-
news-gender-martina-navratilova-trans-casjonathan-liew-
column-a8792861.html
38. ‘Exclusive: Fallon Fox’s latest opponent opens up to
#WHOATV’, Violent Money, 17 June 2014,
https://whoatv.com/exclusive-fallon-foxs-latest-opponent-opens-
up-to-whoatv/
39. Kathleen Stock (2019), ‘Sexual Orientation: What Is It?’,
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 119, 3, 295–319
40. Judith Halberstam (1998), Female Masculinity, Duke University
Press, p. 52
41. Rictor Norton (1997), The Myth of the Modern Homosexual:
Queer History and The Search For Cultural Unity, Cassell
42. A. J. Martos et al. (2015), ‘Variations in Sexual Identity
Milestones Among Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals’,
Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 12, 24–33
43. Edward Stein (1999), The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science,
Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation, Oxford University
Press
44. K. W. Beard et al. (2015), Childhood and Adolescent Sexual
Behaviors Predict Adult Sexual Orientations, Cogent
Psychology, 2 (1), 1067568
45. K. L. Blair and R. A. Hoskin (2019), ‘Transgender Exclusion
from the World of Dating: Patterns of Acceptance and Rejection
of Hypothetical Trans Dating Partners as a Function of Sexual
and Gender Identity’, Journal of Social and Personal
Relationships, 36 (7), 2074–95
46. ‘This Trans Woman Kept Her Beard And Couldn’t Be Happier’,
Buzzfeed, 6 July 2015,
 https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/this-transgender-
woman-has-a-full-beard-and-she-couldnt-be-h
47. ‘It feels like conversion therapy for gay children, say clinicians’,
The Times, 8 April 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-
feels-like-conversion-therapy-for-gay-children-say-clinicians-
pvsckdvq2
48. ‘Memorandum of understanding on conversion therapy in the
UK’, https://www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-
standards/mou/
49. ‘NHS gender clinic “should have challenged me more” over
transition’, BBC News, 1 March 2020,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51676020
50. ‘CTSG & CAPPE Conference | Gayness In Queer Times’,
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/re/cappe/calendar/ctsg-and-cappe-
conference-gayness-in-queer-times
51. Amia Srinivasan, ‘Does anyone have the right to sex?’, London
Review of Books, 22 March 2018, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-
paper/v40/n06/amia-srinivasan/does-anyone-have-the-right-to-
sex?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
52. A. Sharpe (2016), ‘Expanding Liability for Sexual Fraud Through
the Concept of “Active Deception”: A Flawed Approach’, The
Journal of Criminal Law, 80 (1), 28–44
53. Stonewall, ‘A Vision for Change’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/a_vision_for_change.p
df
54. ‘My Trans Youth Group Experience with Morgan Page’, 4th
Wave Now, https://4thwavenow.com/2019/01/26/my-trans-youth-
group-experience-with-morgan-page/
55. Office for National Statistics, ‘Families and households in the
UK: 2019’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde
athsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/201
9
56. Fawcett Society, ‘The Gender Pay Gap and Pay Discrimination
– Explainer’,
https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?
IDMF=7aed6cd4-5e2e-4542-ad7c-72dbbbe14ee3
57. ‘Gender Equality’ Athena SWAN, http://www.ecu.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/07/Gender-Equality-1.pdf
58. Labour Party NEC, ‘NEC Statement on All Women Shortlists,
women’s officers and minimum quotas for women’,
https://labour.org.uk/about/how-we-work/nec-statement-women-
shortlists-womens-officers-minimum-quotas-women/
59. ‘“Gender fluid” Credit Suisse director named on FT list of Top
100 Women in Business’, Evening Standard, 22 September
2018, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gender-fluid-exec-
named-on-list-of-top-100-women-in-business-a3942896.html
60. Office for National Statistics, ‘Guidance for questions on sex,
gender identity and sexual orientation for the 2019 Census
Rehearsal for the 2021 Census’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramm
e/questiondevelopment/genderidentity/guidanceforquestionsons
exgenderidentityandsexualorientationforthe2019censusrehearsa
lforthe2021census
61. Professor Alice Sullivan, Letter to three Census authorities,
https://www.parliament.scot/S5_European/General%20Docume
nts/CTEEA_2019.12.18_Sullivan.pdf
62. Office for National Statistics, ‘Sexual offences in England and
Wales: year ending March 2017’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimean
djustice/articles/sexualoffencesinenglandandwales/yearendingm
arch2017
63. Rape Crisis, ‘About sexual violence’,
https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-
violence/statistics-sexual-violence/
64. Office for National Statistics, ‘Domestic abuse in England and
Wales: year ending March 2018’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimean
djustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinenglandandwales/yearending
march2018#prevalence-of-domestic-abuse
65. Steve Stewart-Williams, ‘Nurture alone can’t explain male
aggression’, Nautilus, http://nautil.us/blog/nurture-alone-cant-
explain-male-aggression
66. Office for National Statistics, ‘Sexual offences in England and
Wales: year ending March 2017’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimean
djustice/articles/sexualoffencesinenglandandwales/yearendingm
arch2017#which-groups-of-people-are-most-likely-to-be-victims-
of-sexual-assault
67. Stonewall, ‘Trans Inclusive Policies and Benefits: How to ensure
your policies and benefits are trans inclusive’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/trans-inclusive-policies-
and-benefits
68. Prison Reform Trust, ‘Information sheet for transgender people
in prison’,
http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Prison
er%20Information%20Pages/Information%20sheet%20for%20tr
ansgender%20people%20in%20prison.pdf
69. ‘Cardiff University Trans Policy’,
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/966532/Tr
ans-Policy-v2.1-English-Dec-2019.pdf
70. ‘University of Leeds Guidance to Support Trans Staff and
Students’, https://equality.leeds.ac.uk/support-and-
resources/guidance-to-support-trans-staff-and-students/
71. ‘UWE Bristol hits back at online trans toilet criticism’, BBC
News, 12 February 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-bristol-47213433
72. ‘Written evidence submitted by British Association of Gender
Identity Specialists to the Transgender Equality Inquiry’,
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.sv
c/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-
committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.pdf?
fbclid=IwAR3leDByhYXoEKla1nr1k5jJWvkO4qZa_eHIgMHXqS
TCTtSp-iW8CDf-TOo
73. ‘Shelter forced women to shower with person who identified as
a transgender woman and sexually harassed them, lawsuit
says’, ABC30 Action News, 24 May 2018,
https://abc30.com/homeless-women-harassed-in-shower-
lawsuit-says/3514544/
74. ‘Rights centre says trans activist Jessica Yaniv has filed new
complaint against B.C. salon over waxing refusal’, National
Post, 7 January 2020,
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/rights-centre-says-trans-
activist-jessica-yaniv-has-filed-new-suit-against-b-c-salon-over-
waxing-refusal
75. ‘Forced to share a room with transgender woman in Toronto
shelter, sex abuse victim files human rights complaint’, National
Post, 2 August 2018,
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/kristi-hanna-human-
rights-complaint-transgenderwoman-toronto-shelter
76. ‘Mum of supermarket toilet sex assault victim warns freed
attacker could strike again’, Courier, 1 February 2019,
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/fife/819644/mum-of-
supermarket-toilet-sex-assault-victim-warns-freed-attacker-
could-strike-again/
77. ‘Transgender sex offender housed in female-only Fife hostel
sparking furious response from sickened residents’, Scottish
Sun, 26 February 2019,
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/3928585/transgender-
sex-offender-female-only-fife-hostel-katie-dalatowski-furious-
residents/
78. ‘Karen White: how “manipulative” transgender inmate attacked
again’, Guardian, 11 February 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-
how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-
transgender-prison
79. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, p. 19
80. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, p. 21

Chapter 4: What is Gender Identity?

1. California Legislative Information, SB-179 Gender identity:

female, male, or nonbinary,
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?
bill_id=201720180SB179
2. Jan Morris (1974), Conundrum, Faber and Faber, p. 2
3. ‘9 questions about gender identity and being transgender you
were too embarrassed to ask’, Vox, 22 February 2017,
https://www.vox.com/2015/4/24/8483561/transgender-gender-
identity-expression
4. Iris Marion Young (1980), ‘Throwing Like a Girl: A
Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and
Spatiality’, Human Studies, 3, 137–56
5. Simona Giordano (2013), Children with Gender Identity
Disorder: A Clinical, Ethical, and Legal Analysis, Routledge, p.
48
6. D. Hoffman Fox (2017), ‘You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide
To Discovery’, Seahorse
7. ‘9 questions about gender identity’, Vox
8. http://www.getmariposa.com
9. Stonewall, ‘Gender identity’, ‘Glossary of Terms’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/faqs-and-
glossary/glossary-terms#g
10. ‘Growing up, girlhood and transitioning: an interview with
Munroe Bergdorf’, gal-dem, 22 October 2016, https://gal-
dem.com/growing-up-girlhood-and-transitioning-an-interview-
with-munroe-bergdorf/
11. Robert Winston (2017), Help Your Kids With Growing Up: A No-
Nonsense Guide to Puberty and Adolescence, Dorling
Kindersley, p. 24
12. Fox Fisher and Owl Fisher (2019), Trans Teen Survival Guide,
Jessica Kingsley, p. 17
13. Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper (2008), The Transgender
Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, Cleis
Publishing, p. 16
14. Katie Kawa (2020), What’s Gender Identity?, Kidhaven
Publishing, p. 4
15. Brill and Pepper, The Transgender Child, p. 60
16. Baker Rogers (2020), Trans Men in the South, Rowman and
Littlefield, p. 60
17. ‘Transgender stories: “People think we wake up and decide to
be trans”’, Guardian, 10 July 2016,
 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/10/transgender-
stories-people-think-wewake-up-and-decide-to-be-trans
18. Morris, Conundrum, p. 21
19. Bao et al. (2011), ‘Sexual differentiation of the human brain:
Relation to gender identity, sexual orientation and
neuropsychiatric disorders’, Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology,
32, 214–26
20. See for instance, Cordelia Fine and Daphna Joel, ‘Can We
Finally Stop Talking About “Male” and “Female” Brains?’, New
York Times, 3 December 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/opinion/male-female-
brains-mosaic.html; Xin et al. (2019), ‘Brain Differences
Between Men and Women: Evidence From Deep Learning’,
Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8 March 2019,
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00185/full
21. Jiska Ristori et al. (2020), ‘Brain Sex Differences Related to
Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?’,
International Journal of Molecular Science, 21 (6), 2123
22. M. Lebow et al. (2016), ‘Overshadowed by the amygdala: the
bed nucleus of the stria terminalis emerges as key to psychiatric
disorders’, Molecular Psychiatry, 21, 450–63
23. Michelle Worth, ‘Sex on the brain: The biology of sexual
orientation’, Observer, 8 April 2010,
https://ndsmcobserver.com/2010/04/sex-on-the-brain-the-
biology-of-sexual-orientation/
24. ‘The girls who are destined to grow up into tomboys’, The
Times, 6 June 2013, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-girls-
who-are-destined-to-grow-up-into-tomboys-60pgv77cqxm
25. Bao et al., ‘Sexual differentiation of the human brain’
26. C. Rodda et al. (1987), ‘Muscle strength in girls with congenital
adrenal hyperplasia’, Acta paediatrica Scandinavica, 76 (3),
495–9; V. Pasterski et al. (2007), ‘Increased aggression and
activity level in 3-to 11-year-old girls with congenital adrenal
hyperplasia’, Hormones and Behaviour, 52 (3), 368–74
27. Bao et al., ‘Sexual differentiation of the human brain’
28. American Psychiatric Association (2013), Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
29. Ayhan Alman, Gestalt Psychotherapy and Counselling, ‘The
Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire’,
https://www.gestalt-psychotherapy.com/test/gidyq-aa-m/
30. Eva Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991), ‘How to Bring Your Kids up
Gay’, Social Text, (29), 18–27. I’m grateful to Susan Matthews
for the pointer.
31. ‘Hundreds of transgender youths who had gender reassignment
surgery wish they hadn’t and want to transition back, says trans
rights champion’, Daily Mail, 5 October 2019,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7541679/Hundreds-
youths-gender-surgery-wish-hadnt-says-head-advocacy-
network.html. In response to a similar criticism, a spokesperson
for the NHS Tavistock and Portman Gender Identity Service
said: ‘The service is safe and all work we undertake is
commissioned and regulated by NHS England under strict
guidance. The service has a high level of reported satisfaction’
(‘David Bell: Tavistock gender clinic whistleblower faces the
sack’, The Times, 5 December 2020,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-bell-tavistock-gender-
clinic-whistleblower-faces-the-sack-rtkl09907). Meanwhile, in
response to criticism of the continued use of puberty blockers
for children at the Scottish Young People’s Gender Service,
based in Glasgow, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said of the
clinic: ‘Young people can be considered for puberty blockers
only after thorough psychological and endocrine assessment, as
per the clinical guidelines, and anyone who commences them
continues to receive regular psychological review and support
appointments.’ (‘Nicola Sturgeon refuses to stop Scots children
getting puberty blockers’, Glasgow Herald, 10 December 2020,
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18935834.nicolasturgeon-
refuses-stop-scots-children-getting-puberty-blockers/)
32. Judith Butler (2004), Undoing Gender, Routledge, p. 81
33. Butler, Undoing Gender, p. 80
34. Katie Herzog, ‘They were transgender; until they weren’t’, The
Stranger, 28 June 2017,
https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-
detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent
35. University of Kent, ‘Trans Policy and Student Support
Procedures’,
https://www.kent.ac.uk/studentservices/files/Trans%20Student%
20Support%20Policy%2020%20Feb%202018.pdf; University of
Essex, ‘Working with Schools and Colleges: Trans Inclusion
Guidance’,
https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/study/outreach/tran
sgender-guidance.pdf
36. Joy Ladin (2010), Through the Door of Life. A Jewish Journey
Between Genders, University of Wisconsin Press, p. 47
37. Jay Prosser (1998), Second Skins: Body Narratives of
Transsexuality, Columbia University Press, p. 32
38. Alex Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker (2017), How to Understand
Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are,
Jessica Kingsley, p. 46
39. Heinz Hartmann and Rudolph M. Loewenstein (1962), ‘Notes on
the Superego’, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 17 (1),
42–81, p. 49
40. D. D. Olds (2006), ‘Identification: Psychoanalytic and Biological
Perspectives’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association, 54 (1), 17–46
41. Stuart Hall (1996), ‘Who Needs “Identity”?’, in S. Hall and P.
DuGay (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity, Sage, p. 3
42. As quoted in Susan Stryker (2008), Transgender History: The
Roots of Today’s Revolution, Seal Press, p.144
43. Morris, Conundrum, p. 39
44. Jack Halberstam (2018), Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of
Gender Variability, University of California Press, p. 1
45. ‘Growing up, girlhood and transitioning: an interview with
Munroe Bergdorf’
46. Paris Lees, ‘From bullied child to transgender woman: my
coming of age’, Guardian, 15 December 2013,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/15/transgender-
coming-of-age-paris-lees
47. ‘Laverne Cox Opens Up About Childhood Bullying, Suicide
Attempt’, Huffington Post, 19 August 2014,
 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/laverne-cox-
suicide_n_5691515?ri18n=true
48. Roi Jacobsen and Daphna Joel (2019), ‘Self-Reported Gender
Identity and Sexuality in an Online Sample of Cisgender,
Transgender, and Gender-Diverse Individuals: An Exploratory
Study’, The Journal of Sex Research, 56 (2), 249–63
49. ‘What It’s Like to Be Trans and Live With Gender Dysphoria’,
Teen Vogue, 21 September 2018,
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-its-like-to-be-trans-and-
live-with-gender-dysphoria
50. Dr Az Hakeem (2018), Trans: Exploring Gender Identity and
Gender Dysphoria, Trigger Press, p.52
51. Leslie Feinberg (2003), Stone Butch Blues, Allyson, p. 11
52. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM- 5),
p. 284
53. Stonewall, ‘An Introduction to Supporting LGBT Children and
Young People’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/an_intro_to_supportin
g_lgbt_young_people_2020.pdf
54. Bernadette Wren (2019), ‘Ethical issues arising in the provision
of medical interventions for gender diverse children and
adolescents’, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24 (2),
203–22; H. Z. Gastgeb and M. Strauss (2012), ‘Categorization
in ASD: The Role of Typicality and Development’, Perspectives
on Language Learning and Education, 19 (2), 66–74
55. Hakeem, Trans, p. 55
56. Domenico Di Ceglie (1998), ‘Management and therapeutic aims
with children and adolescents with gender identity disorders and
their families’, in D. Di Ceglie and D. Freedman (eds.), A
Stranger in My Own Body: Atypical gender identity development
and mental health, Karnac, p. 14
57. Hakeem, Trans, p. 54
58. ‘Butterfly: Teen transgender drama “inflates suicide risk”’,
Sunday Times, 4 October 2018,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teen-transgender-drama-
butterfly-inflates-suicide-risk-9ng3z22mv
59. Helen Joyce, ‘Speaking up for female eunuchs’, Standpoint,
February 2020, https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/february-
2020/speaking-up-for-female-eunuchs/
60. Helen Joyce, ‘Speaking up for female eunuchs’, Standpoint, 30
January 2020, https://standpointmag.co.uk/speaking-up-for-
female-eunuchs/
61. Bernice Hausman (1995), Changing Sex: Transsexualism,
Technology and the Idea of Gender, Duke University Press, p. 3
62. See Finn Mackay (2019), ‘No woman’s land? Revisiting border
zone denizens’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 23 (3), 397–409
63. Judith Halberstam (1998), Female Masculinity, Duke University
Press, p. 71
64. Halberstam, Female Masculinity, p. 68
65. Equality Act 2010, Section 7,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7
66. Gender reassignment discrimination, EHRC website,
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-
guidance/gender-reassignment-discrimination
67. Stonewall Youth, ‘Gender Identity’,
https://www.youngstonewall.org.uk/lgbtq-info/gender-identity

Chapter 5: What Makes a Woman?

1. Jack Halberstam (2018), Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of

Gender Variability, University of California Press, p. 5
2. John Dupré (1993), The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical
Foundations of the Disunity of Science, Harvard University
Press, p. 19
3. This shouldn’t be confused with the different claim that some
things are dependent on human beings for their existence.
That’s certainly true of funny jokes and arguably also true of
poison, depending on further assumptions too distracting to go
into here.
4. There’s a philosopher’s side issue here, about whether in this
sort of case an old concept is being replaced by a different
concept altogether, or whether a version of the same concept is
being replaced by another version. I will take the latter route.
5. Angela Onwuachi-Willig, ‘Race and Racial Identity Are Social
Constructs’, New York Times, 6 September 2016,
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/how-fluid-
is-racial-identity/race-and-racial-identity-are-social-constructs
6. ‘Race is a social construct, scientists argue’, Scientific
American, 5 February 2016,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-
construct-scientists-argue/
7. Alex Byrne makes this point in his (2020) ‘Are women adult
human females?’, Philosophical Studies
8. Marilyn Frye (1983), The Politics of Reality: Essays in feminist
theory, Crossing Press, p. 16
9. J. A. Collins and I. R. Olson (2014), ‘Knowledge is Power: How
conceptual knowledge transforms visual cognition’,
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 843–60
10. Philip J. Kelmann and Christine M. Massey (2013), ‘Perceptual
Learning, Cognition, and Expertise’, Psychology of Learning and
Motivation, Brian H. Ross (ed.), 58, 117–65
11. Stonewall, ‘Statement on the ruling against Freddy McConnell’,
29 April 2020, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-
us/news/statement-ruling-against-freddy-mcconnell
12. Office for National Statistics, ‘The nature of violent crime in
England and Wales: year ending March 2017’,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimean
djustice/articles/thenatureofviolentcrimeinenglandandwales/year
endingmarch2017
13. IPSO, ‘Guidance on researching and reporting stories involving
transgender individuals’, September 2016,
https://www.ipso.co.uk/media/1275/guidance_transgender-
reporting.pdf
14. In later editions, this was changed to ‘Transgender woman, 41
…’
15. ‘Police forces let rapists record their gender as female’, The
Times, 20 October 2019,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-forces-let-rapists-
record-their-gender-asfemale-d7qtb7953
16. Simone de Beauvoir (2011 [1949]), The Second Sex, trans. C.
Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage, p. 211, p. 3
17. J. L. Austin (1962), Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford University
Press, p. 70
18. C. Brezina (2005), Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ Speech:
A Primary Source Investigation, The Rosen Publishing Group
19. Elizabeth V. Spelman (1998), Inessential Woman: Problems of
Exclusion in Feminist Thought, Beacon Press
20. Diana Fuss (1989), Essentially Speaking, Routledge, p. 36
21. ‘The controversy over Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and trans
women, explained’, Vox, 5 March 2017,
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/15/14910900/chimamand
a-ngozi-adichietransgender-women-comments-apology
22. Elinor Burkett, ‘What makes a woman?’, New York Times, 6
June 2015,
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-
makes-a-woman.html
23. Catharine MacKinnon (1989), Towards a Feminist Theory of the
State, Harvard University Press, p. 178
24. Sally Haslanger (2000), ‘Gender and Race: (What) are they?
(What) do we want them to be?’, Noûs, 34, 31–55. Later on, in a
startling volte-face, Haslanger confessed in relation to earlier
writing: ‘by appropriating the terms “woman” and “man,” I
problematically excluded some women from being counted as
women.’ (‘Going on, not in the same way’, in A. Plunkett, H.
Cappelen, and D. Burgess (eds.) (2020), Conceptual Ethics and
Conceptual Engineering, Oxford University Press
25. Kate Bornstein (2012), A Queer and Pleasant Danger, Beacon
Press, p. 198
26. Joy Ladin (2010), Through the Door of Life. A Jewish Journey
Between Genders, University of Wisconsin Press, p. 38
27. Andrea Long Chu (2019), Females, Verso, p. 11
28. ‘Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: The Trans Advocate interviews
Catharine A. MacKinnon’, Trans Advocate, 7 April 2015,
https://www.transadvocate.com/sex-gender-and-sexuality-the-
transadvocate-interviewscatharine-a-mackinnon_n_15037.htm
Chapter 6: Immersed in a Fiction

1. ‘Gender Recognition Bill’, Hansard,

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/bills/gender-
recognition-bill
2. Ibid.
3. ‘11 Feb 2004: Column 1093’, Hansard,
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldhansrd/vo04021
1/text/40211-01.htm
4. ‘Gender Recognition Bill’, Hansard, 3 February 2004,
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
hansard/lords/2004/feb/03/gender-recognition-bill-
hl#S5LV0656P0_20040203_HOL_411
5. ‘Gender Recognition Bill’, Hansard, 29 January 2004,
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
hansard/lords/2004/jan/29/gender-recognition-bill-
hl#S5LV0656P0_20040129_HOL_228
6. ‘Gender Recognition Bill’, Hansard, 19 January 2004,
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-
answers/2004/jan/19/gender-
recognition#S5LV0657P0_20040119_LWA_42
7. Equality Act Explanatory Notes,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/2/1/
4
8. https://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/blog/legal-english-legal-fiction/
9. Sidney T. Miller (1910), ‘The Reasons for Some Legal Fictions’,
Michigan Law Review, 8 (8), (Jun., 1910), 623–36
10. ‘Gender Recognition Bill’, Hansard, 18 December 2003,
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
hansard/lords/2003/dec/18/gender-recognition-bill-
hl#S5LV0655P0_20031218_HOL_58
11. ‘The General Guide for all Users, Gender Recognition Act 2004’,
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/sys
tem/uploads/attachment_data/file/786910/t455-eng.pdf
12. ‘Gender Recognition Act 2004’,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/pdfs/ukpga_2004000
7_en.pdf
13. Debbie Hayton, ‘Defend Me or Expel Me’,
https://debbiehayton.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/defend-me-or-
expel-me/
14. Miranda Yardley, ‘Why I Disavow “Woman” And Am No Longer
“Gender Critical”’, https://medium.com/@mirandayardley/why-i-
disavow-woman-and-am-no-longer-gender-critical-
8352586e7aab
15. Fionne Orlander, 14 November 2018,
https://twitter.com/FionneOrlander/status/106272890630482739
2
16. I’m not saying that all acting is like this. Denis Diderot denied it
was, as did Bertolt Brecht. My claim is only that it sometimes is.
17. Samuel Kampa (2018), ‘Imaginative Transportation’,
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96 (4), 10
18. 2018 Populus poll, commissioned by ‘Women Ask Questions’,
accessible at https://fairplayforwomen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/gender_recognition_act-1.pdf. These
numbers add up to 101 per cent because they are rounded up.
19. ‘Woman billboard removed after transphobia row’, BBC News,
26 September 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45650462
20. Talia Mae Bettcher (2007), ‘Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers:
On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion’, Hypatia,
22 (3), 43–65
21. Susanna Schellenberg (2013), ‘Belief and Desire in Imagination
and Immersion’, Journal of Philosophy, 110, 508
22. Mark J. Miller (1980), ‘Role-Playing as a Therapeutic Strategy:
A Research Review’, The School Counselor, 27 (3), 217–26
23. ‘Cultural sexism in the world is very real when you’ve lived on
both sides of the coin’, Time, https://time.com/transgender-men-
sexism/
24. A. K. Przybylski et al. (2012), ‘The Ideal Self at Play: The
Appeal of Video Games That Let You Be All You Can Be’,
Psychological Science, 23 (1), 69–76
25. Abigail Shrier (2020), Irreversible Damage, Regnery, p. 7
26. Judith Halberstam (1998), Female Masculinity, Duke University
Press
27. Shrier, Irreversible Damage, p. 7.
28. Stéphanie Laconi et al. (2017), ‘Internet Gaming Disorder,
Motives, Game Genres and Psychopathology’, Computers in
Human Behavior, 75, 652–9
29. Katie Herzog, ‘The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender,
Until They Weren’t’, The Stranger, 28 June 2017,
https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-
detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent
30. Sasha Sioni et al. (2017), ‘Internet gaming Disorder: Social
phobia and identifying with your virtual self’, Computers in
Human Behavior, 71, 11–15
31. See below, in the section on the Stroop Effect, for some relevant
context.
32. See, e.g., Alex Sharpe (2016), ‘Expanding Liability for Sexual
Fraud Through the Concept of “Active Deception”: A Flawed
Approach’, The Journal of Criminal Law, 80 (1), 28–44
33. Bernadette Wren (2019), ‘Ethical issues arising in the provision
of medical interventions for gender diverse children and
adolescents’, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24 (2),
203–22
34. San Francisco Aids Foundation, ‘Q&A: Gynecologic and vaginal
care for trans men’, https://www.sfaf.org/collections/beta/qa-
gynecologic-and-vaginal-care-for-trans-men/
35. Stonewall, ‘Trans Inclusive Policies and Benefits: How to ensure
your policies and benefits are trans inclusive’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/trans-inclusive-policies-
and-benefits
36. Stonewall, ‘Glossary’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-
advice/glossary-terms#t
37. Stonewall, ‘LGBT in Britain: Hate Crime and Discrimination’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/lgbt_in_britain_hate_cr
ime.pdf
38. Stonewall, ‘Trans Inclusive Policies and Benefits: How to ensure
your policies and benefits are trans inclusive’
39. Stonewall blog, ‘It’s International Pronouns Day, and it’s time for
all of us to step up as trans allies’, 16 October 2019,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/blog/it%E2%80%99s-
 international-pronouns-day-and-it%E2%80%99s-time-all-us-
step-trans-allies
40. Stonewall, ‘Delivering LGBT-inclusive Higher Education:
Academic provision, accommodation, catering, facilities,
induction, recruitment, registry, societies, sports and student
services’, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/delivering-
lgbt-inclusive-higher-education
41. ‘Radical feminist warned to refer to transgender defendant as a
“she” during assault case’, Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2018,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/12/radical-feminist-
warned-refer-transgender-defendant-assault/
42. ‘Judge rules against researcher who lost job over transgender
tweets’, Guardian, 18 December 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/18/judge-rules-
against-charity-worker-who-lost-job-over-transgender-tweets
43. Crown Prosecution Service, ‘Trans Equality Statement’,
https://www.cps.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/publications
/Trans-equality-statement-July-2019.pdf
44. Equal Treatment Bench Book, Judicial College,
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/equal-
treatment-bench-book-february-v6-2018.pdf
45. Helga Varden (2020), Sex, Love and Gender: A Kantian Theory,
Oxford University Press, p. xvi
46. Mary Leng, ‘Harry Potter and the Reverse Voltaire’,
https://medium.com/@mary.leng/harry-potter-and-the-reverse-
voltaire-4c7f3a07241
47. ‘Are academics freely able to criticise the idea of “gender
identity” in UK Universities?’, Kathleen Stock, 3 July 2019,
https://medium.com/@kathleenstock/are-academics-freely-able-
to-criticise-the-idea-of-gender-identity-in-uk-universities-
67b97c6e04be
48. ‘Gender Dysphoria Isn’t A “Social Contagion,” According To A
New Study’, Buzzfeed, 22 April 2019,
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/shannonkeating/rapid-
onset-gender-dysphoria-flawed-methods-transgender; ‘New
paper ignites storm over whether teens experience “rapid onset”
of transgender identity’, Science, 30 August 2018,
 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/new-paper-ignites-
storm-over-whether-teens-experience-rapid-onset-transgender-
identity
49. ‘Doctor fired from gender identity clinic says he feels
“vindicated” after CAMH apology, settlement’, The Globe and
Mail, 7 October 2018,
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-doctor-
fired-from-gender-identity-clinic-says-he-feels-vindicated/
50. ‘Staff at trans clinic fear damage to children as activists pile on
pressure’, Sunday Times, 16 February 2019,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/staff-at-trans-clinic-fear-
damage-tochildren-as-activists-pile-on-pressure-c5k655nq9
51. Michael Biggs, ‘The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty
Blockers’,
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlock
ers.pdf
52. https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothe
s_e.html
53. L. van Maanen et al. (2009), ‘Stroop and picture-word
interference are two sides of the same coin’, Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review, 16, 987–99
54. Barra Kerr, ‘Pronouns are Rohypnol’, Fairplay for Women,
https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
55. James Kirkup, ‘Why was a transgender rapist put in a women’s
prison?’, Spectator, 7 September 2018,
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-was-a-transgender-
rapist-put-in-a-women-s-prison-

Chapter 7: How Did We Get Here?

1. Stonewall, ‘A Vision for Change’,

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/a_vision_for_change.p
df
2. ‘Government Response to the Women and Equalities
Committee Report on Transgender Equality’,
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/sys
tem/uploads/attachment_data/file/535764/Government_Respon
 se_to_the_Women_and_Equalities_Committee_Report_on_Tra
nsgender_Equality.pdf
3. ‘Trans people to be able to register new identities more easily’,
Guardian, 3 July 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/03/trans-people-
to-be-able-to-register-new-identities-more-easily
4. ‘A timeline of LGBTQ communities in the UK’, The British
Library, https://www.bl.uk/lgbtq-histories/lgbtq-timeline
5. ‘Against The Law Review: A fitting tribute to gay men whose
persecution in 1950s paved way for new rights’, The
Conversation, 26 July 2017,
https://theconversation.com/against-the-law-review-a-fitting-
tribute-to-gay-men-whose-persecution-in-1950s-paved-way-for-
new-rights-74785
6. ‘Homosexuality’, British Social Attitudes survey,
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-
attitudes-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx
7. Stonewall tweet, ‘It’s been 32 years since the introduction of
Section 28, the devastating legislation banning discussion of
LGBT identities in schools. We’ve come a long way since then
but there is still more to do to ensure acceptance without
exception for everyone in the LGBT community’, 24 May 2020,
https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1264571946236366854
8. ‘British Social Attitudes 36’, Natcen Social Research,
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39363/bsa_36.pdf
9. ‘David Cameron apologises to gay people for section 28’,
Guardian, 2 July 2009,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jul/02/david-
cameron-gay-pride-apology
10. Hubert C. Kennedy (1981), ‘The “Third Sex” Theory of Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs’, Journal of Homosexuality, 6 (1–2), 103–11
11. Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1927), Psychopathia Sexualis: A
medico-forensic study, Heinemann, p. 399
12. Judith Green, ‘Health care is a human right’, Woman’s Place
UK, https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/14/health-care-human-
right/
13. ‘Directive-type Memorandum-19-004’,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tQugAtmmg-
cDrhwQVRPtCGNBA6c7b3x2/view
14. Stonewall, ‘Transgender Day of Remembrance’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/21888
15. Transgender Day of Remembrance, https://tdor.info/
16. Stonewall, ‘Step 4: Communicating an Inclusive Service’,
https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/equalities-
unit/documents/step4Communication.pdf
17. ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s Statement on Transgender Day of
Remembrance’,
https://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/articles/jeremycorbyns-statement-
on-transgender-day-of-remembrance/index.html; ‘Labour’s
Dawn Butler vows to build a world where transphobia is a thing
of the past’, Pink News, 20 November 2019,
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/11/20/dawn-butler-labour-
transgender-gra-reform-women-equalities-minister-exclusive/
18. Woman’s Place UK, ‘Evidence of calls to remove single sex
exemptions from Equality Act’,
https://womansplaceuk.org/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-
exemptions/; Stonewall, ‘Inaccurate reporting’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/79306
19. https://transrespect.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/11/TvT_TMM_TDoR2019_SimpleTable.pd
f
20. ‘TvT TMM UPDATE TRANS DAY OF REMEMBRANCE 2019’,
https://transrespect.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/TvT_TMM_TDoR2018_SimpleTable_E
N.pdf
21. ‘“A devastating scenario”: Brazil sets new record for homicides
at 63,880 deaths’, Guardian, 9 August 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/09/brazil-sets-
new-record-for-homicides-63880-deaths
22. ‘Brazil’s Murder Rate Finally Fell—and by a Lot’, FP, 22 April
2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/22/brazils-murder-rate-
finally-fell-and-by-a-lot/
23. ‘Murder Rate by Country 2020’, World Population Review,
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/murder-rate-by-
country/
24. ‘The vicious circle of violence: Trans and gender-diverse
people, migration, and sex work’, TGEU,
https://transrespect.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TvT-PS-
Vol16-2017.pdf
25. Talia Mae Bettcher (2014), ‘Transphobia’, Transgender Studies
Quarterly, 1 (1–2), 249–51
26. E. Evens et al. (2019), ‘Experiences of gender-based violence
among female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and
transgender women in Latin America and the Caribbean: a
qualitative study to inform HIV programming’, BMC International
Health and Human Rights, 19 (1), 9
27. R. L. Stotzer (2017), ‘Data Sources Hinder Our Understanding
of Transgender Murders’, American Journal of Public Health,
107 (9), 1362–3; A. Dinno (2017), ‘Homicide Rates of
Transgender Individuals in the United States: 2010–2014’,
American Journal of Public Health, 107 (9), 1441–7
28. Macrotrends, ‘U.K. Murder/Homicide Rate 1990-2020’,
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-
kingdom/murder-homicide-rate
29. Stonewall, ‘The truth about trans’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/truth-about-trans#trans-people-
britain
30. Stonewall, ‘Stonewall to work with trans charities to reduce
discrimination in key public services’, 4 July 2019,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-work-
trans-charities-reduce-discrimination-key-public-services
31. Samaritans, ‘Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide’,
https://media.samaritans.org/documents/Samaritans_Media_Gui
delines_UK_Apr17_Final_web.pdf
32. Mermaids, ‘An open letter from Mermaids on World Suicide
Prevention Day’, 10 September 2019,
https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/world-suicide-prevention-day
33. Office for National Statistics, ‘Suicides in the UK: 2017
registrations’,
 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde
athsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/
2017registrations#suicide-patterns-by-age
34. Stonewall, ‘School Report: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bi
and trans young people in Britain’s schools in 2017’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/the_school_report_20
17.pdf
35. Transgender Trend, ‘Stonewall School Report: What Does The
45% Attempted Suicide Rate Really Mean?’,
https://www.transgendertrend.com/stonewall-school-report-
what-does-suicide-rate-mean/
36. GIDS, ‘Evidence base’, https://gids.nhs.uk/evidence-base
37. Michael Biggs, ‘Suicide by trans-identified children in England
and Wales’, Transgender Trend,
https://www.transgendertrend.com/suicide-by-trans-identified-
children-in-england-and-wales/
38. Helen Joyce, ‘Speaking up for female eunuchs’, Standpoint,
February 2020, https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/february-
2020/speaking-up-for-female-eunuchs/
39. In the National Lottery Community Fund’s 2019 review into their
previous £500,000 grant to Mermaids, the allegation that
‘Mermaids promotes questionable statistics in relation to
suicidality in children and young people with gender identity
issues’ was raised. In response, Mermaids were quoted as
saying: ‘This allegation is denied. Mermaids stand by their use
of statistics and have cited a number of other studies including
the Williams Institute Study (2014), the Life in Scotland for
LGBT Young People (2017) and the Canadian Trans Youth
Health Study Alberta which support their expressed view that
transgender young people experience a higher risk of suicide.’
(‘Review into the award of a Reaching Communities Grant to
Mermaids’,
https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/media/documents/Mermai
ds-UK-Review-Report_February-2019.pdf?
mtime=20190219142027&focal=none)
40. Transgender Trend, ‘A Scientist Reviews Transgender Suicide
Stats’, https://www.transgendertrend.com/a-scientist-reviews-
 transgender-suicide-stats/
41. Linda Stupart, ‘I Want To Show You A Body: Thinking Through
Gender, Bodies, and Building Different Worlds’, Tate London,
https://www.tate.org.uk/file/i-want-show-you-body
42. ‘Hate crimes double in six years with transphobic abuse
recording biggest rise, police figures show’, Daily Telegraph, 15
October 2019,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/15/hate-crimes-
double-six-years-transphobicabuse-recording-biggest/
43. ‘Hate crimes double in five years in England and Wales’,
Guardian, 15 October 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/15/hate-crimes-
double-england-wales
44. College of Police, ‘Responding to Hate’,
https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/major-
investigation-and-public-protection/hate-crime/responding-to-
hate/#perception-based-recording
45. Crown Prosecution Service, ‘Homophobic, Biphobic and
Transphobic Hate Crime – Prosecution Guidance’,
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/homophobic-biphobic-
andtransphobic-hate-crime-prosecution-guidance
46. ‘Less than one in 10 hate crimes prosecuted despite record
attacks’, Independent, 27 December 2019,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hate-crime-
attacks-jewsmuslims-gay-prosecutions-police-falling-
a9257256.html
47. Crown Prosecution Service, ‘Hate Crime Data’,
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/hate-crime-data
48. Kathleen Stock, ‘Presence of Mind’, Forum for Philosophy blog,
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/presenceofmind/
49. Lynda Nead (1990), ‘The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and
Sexuality’, Signs, 15 (2), 323–35
50. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met.
Museum?’, National Gallery of Art,
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.139856.html
51. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-eight-women-artists-of-the-
national-gallery
52. Jade King, ‘The eight women artists of The National Gallery’, Art
UK, 11 February 2019, https://news.artnet.com/womens-place-
in-the-art-world/female-artists-represent-just-2-percent-market-
heres-can-change-1654954
53. ‘Fashion Photography Has A Real Gender Equality Problem’,
Fashionista, 5 October 2018,
https://fashionista.com/2018/04/female-fashion-photographers-
2018
54. ‘Sexism in advertising: “They talk about diversity, but they don’t
want to change”’, Guardian, 14 April 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/14/sexism-in-
advertising-industry-gender-pay-gap-diversity
55. D. M. Quinn et al. (2006), ‘The Disruptive Effect of Self-
Objectification on Performance’, Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 30 (1), 59–64
56. John Berger (1972), Ways of Seeing, Penguin, p. 47
57. ‘Selfie City London’, http://www.selfiecity.net/london/
58. C. P. Butkowski et al. (2020), ‘Quantifying the feminine self(ie):
Gender display and social media feedback in young women’s
Instagram selfies’, New Media & Society, 22 (5), 817–37
59. Joshua B. Grubbs et al. (2019), ‘Internet pornography use and
sexual motivation: a systematic review and integration’, Annals
of the International Communication Association, 43 (2), 117–55
60. Anne A. Lawrence (2017), ‘Autogynephilia and the Typology of
Male-to-Female Transsexualism’, European Psychologist, 22
(1), 39–54
61. Alice Dreger (2015), Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists,
and One Scholar’s Search for Justice, Penguin
62. J. Michael Bailey (2003), The Man Who Would Be Queen: The
Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism, Joseph Henry
Press, p. 174
63. Lawrence, ‘Autogynephilia’
64. Ibid.
65. Andrea Long Chu (2019), Females, Verso, p. 74
66. Charles Moser (2009), ‘Autogynephilia in Women’, Journal of
Homosexuality, 56, 539–47
67. Anne A. Lawrence (2009), ‘Something Resembling
Autogynephilia in Women: Comment on Moser (2009)’, Journal
of Homosexuality, 57 (1), 1–4
68. ‘“I Cross-Dress. Do You Still Love Me?”: The Secret Lives of
Sissies’, Vice, 28 July 2016,
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9aeevy/i-cross-dress-do-you-
still-love-me-the-secret-lives-of-sissies
69. Chu, Females, pp. 78–9
70. Sheila Jeffreys (2014), Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the
Politics of Transgenderism, Routledge, p. 95

Chapter 8: A Better Activism in Future

1. ‘English Freemasons Open the Doors to Transgender

Members’, New York Times, 1 August 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/world/europe/uk-
freemasonstransgender.html
2. R. Claire Snyder (2008), ‘What Is Third-Wave Feminism? A New
Directions Essay’, Signs, 34 (1), 175–96
3. Snyder, ‘What is Third-Wave Feminism?’
4. Julia Long, ‘A Meaningful Transition?’, Uncommon Ground, 12
May 2020, https://uncommongroundmedia.com/a-meaningful-
transition-julia-long/
5. Ibid.
6. ‘Why Everyday Feminism Is For Everyone’, Everyday Feminism,
5 July 2012, https://everydayfeminism.com/2012/07/feminism-is-
for-everyone/
7. Meghan Murphy, ‘Vancouver Women’s March becomes
opportunity for misogynist threats against women’, Feminist
Current, 22 January 2018,
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/01/22/vancouver-
womens-march-becomes-opportunity-misogynist-threats-
women/
8. Kitty-It blog https://web.archive.org/save/
https://kittyit.tumblr.com/post/177744771682/kittyit-there-is-
currently-a-video-going-around
9. ‘Ideals of Equality: feminisms in the twenty-first century’, LSE,
27 February 2016, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/from-the-
vaults-feminisms-in-the-twenty-first-century/
10. ‘BFI criticised for naming trans activist Munroe Bergdorf as
speaker at women’s summit’, Guardian, 15 June 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/15/bfi-munroe-
bergdorf-women
11. Stonewall, ‘A Vision for Change’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/a_vision_for_change.p
df
12. Alex Sharpe (2017), ‘Blind desire: the troubling case of Gayle
Newland’, Inherently Human,
https://inherentlyhuman.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/blind-desire-
the-troubling-case-of-gayle-newland/
13. K. W. Crenshaw (2010), ‘Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On
teaching dominance feminism and intersectionality’, Tulsa Law
Review, 46 (1), 162
14. Douglas Murray (2019), The Madness of Crowds: Gender,
Race, and Identity, Bloomsbury
15. Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977,
https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword
%20Coalition_Readings.pdf
16. K. W. Crenshaw (1989), ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of
Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination
Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics’, reprinted in K.
Bartlett and R. Kennedy (eds.) (1992), Feminist Legal Theory:
Readings in law and gender, Routledge
17. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), ‘Mapping the Margins:
Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women
of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43 (6), 1241–99
18. Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing’
19. bell hooks (1984), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, pp.
133–4
20. All statistics are from ‘Women in Prison: Key Facts’,
https://www.womeninprison.org.uk/research/key-facts.php
21. W. Bailey (1999), ‘The Socioeconomic Patterns of Forcible
Rape for Major U.S. Cities’, Sociological Focus, 32 (1), 57–8
22. ‘Unisex changing rooms put women in danger’, The Times, 2
September 2018
23. Woman’s Place UK, ‘Spousal Consent and the Liberal
Democrats’, https://womansplaceuk.org/2019/09/21/spousal-
consent-and-the-liberal-democrats/
24. Rachel Anne Williams, ‘What is girldick?’,
https://medium.com/@transphilosophr/what-is-girldick-
9363515e0bfd
25. I. T. Nolan et al. (2019), ‘Demographic and temporal trends in
transgender identities and gender confirming surgery’,
Translational Andrology and Urology, 8 (3), 184–90
26. Michael Biggs, ‘LGBT facts and figures’,
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/LGBT_figures.shtml
27. Stonewall, ‘Transphobia at Pride in London’,
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/82236
28. Ibid.
29. ‘Lottery thousands pay for former trans stripper to sway public
opinion’, Sunday Times, 23 December 2018,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lottery-thousands-pay-for-
former-trans-stripper-to-sway-public-opinion-6lw9xbwgr
30. Morgan Page (2012), publicity material for the workshop
‘Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers
for Queer Trans Women’, Planned Parenthood Toronto
31. Buck Angel, Twitter, 23 December 2019,
https://twitter.com/BuckAngel/status/1209236297140834304
32. Government Equalities Office, ‘Trans People In the UK’,
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/sys
tem/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-
factsheet.pdf
33. ‘Sex question back on census in blow to trans lobby’, Sunday
Times, 24 January 2021
34. Michael Biggs, ‘The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty
Blockers’,
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlock
ers.pdf
35. Lisa Marchiano, ‘The Ranks of Gender Detransitioners Are
Growing. We Need to Understand Why’, Quillette, 2 January
 2020, https://quillette.com/2020/01/02/the-ranks-of-
genderdetransitioners-are-growing-we-need-to-understand-why/
36. Ibid.
37. Andrea Long Chu and Emmett Harsin Drager (2019), ‘After
Trans Studies’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 6 (1), 103–16