#DrStock
#MaterialGirls
#transphobia
#antitransactivism
Given Kathleen Stock has recently spoken at the Cambridge Union and her former colleague Arif Ahmed took this opportunity to state that Dr Stock's views were widely unknown and she has been unfairly victimised being in no way transphobic or a sentiment to that effect.
I thought it would be a good time to reread "Material Girls" and see what stands out to me.
The introduction sets out how Kathleen views herself on this topic and tries to make herself more relatable to the reader.
She describes herself as the wrong type of academic, speaking about a topic outside of her expertise and as a heretic. Emphasising that older women who haven't been involved in feminism feel "concerned and outright panicked" by trans rights.
The intro has several running themes.
1) trans people are more prevalent than they used to be and that is a problem.
2) trans men are over medicalised and should be protected from themselves.
3) trans women aren't medicalised enough (and that is getting worse) to warrant having the rights and protections they have and we all should be protected from them.
4) why do I keep being called transphobic.
I would like to draw particular attention to reference 8 in the introduction.
Stock uses this reference to try and argue that trans men have higher incidence rate of genital surgery, when the numbers referenced appear to be talking about trans men having mastectomy's and trans women having breast augmentation.
Chapter 1 - Gender identity
In this chapter Dr Stock explains her understanding of the notion of gender identity and her issues with it.
She argues that gender identity doesn't exist.
This, Stock alludes to has two notable side effects.
1) Conversion therapy of trans individuals should be permitted.
2) Trans youth don't exist.
She doesn't elaborate at what age it is permissible to understand ones self as trans. But is certain that trans youth is a product of "gender ideology".
I've focused quite narrowly on the consequences on her views. The chapter talks generally about gender, redefining it to be strictly around notions of sex defining every aspect of gender, language, roles, expectations and stereotypes.
We have the duality of gender critical ideology coming though that acknowledges that is it out of step with mainstream feminist thinking while trying to frame their views as a feminist position, rather than an anti-trans ideology.
Again stock claims that she isn't transphobic for stating these thing.
Interestingly in one of those statements she states that she wants to protect trans individuals from "coercive surgeries" which, sounds great however she never mentions supporting trans individuals bodily autonomy, so this in the context of the rest of the book suggests that she opposed medical transition.
Given it's been over 100 years since the first sex change operation and 60 years since April Ashley's high profile famous ill-fated marriage. To make out trans is a recent invention and trans individuals were not attempting to live in society as their acquired sex/gender, regardless of the labels used or how it's been generally conceptualise and rationalised as to why people do that, seems a little odd.
It's very much a "love the sinner not the sin" argument.
Lucy