 | |
| Author | Kathleen Stock |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Fleet |
Publication date | 2021 |
| ISBN | 978-0-349-72659-5 |
Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism is a 2021 book by Kathleen Stock which explores issues related to transgender civil rights and feminism. The book reached number 13 on the UK list of bestselling non-fiction charts. [1]
In this book, Stock critiques the theory that individuals have an inner feeling known as a gender identity that is more socially significant than an individual's biological sex. Stock surveys and critiques the philosophical ideas underpinning this theory and argues that that biological sex performs an important social role in the contexts of exclusive spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection for non-trans women. [2] [3]
Stock argues that biological sex is material (physical) and has social relevance. [4] She proposes that biological sex is binary in nature, [4] which is in opposition to the current Scientific understanding of it as a spectrum. [5] Stock argues for a narrower definition of intersex and that it does not negate that sex is binary, as "difficulty about borderline cases is absolutely standard for biological categories". [4] Stock argues that entry to "women's only spaces" (e.g. toilets) ought to be based on the individual's biological sex as opposed to their gender identity, and that they should be provided legal protection on a separate basis.
Reviewing in The Times, Emma Duncan called the book an easy read and said it helped her understand trans issues better. [6] In The Telegraph, Jane O'Grady describes the book as brave, enligtening and closely argued. [7]
Gaby Hinsliff reviewed the book in The Guardian together with Helen Joyce's book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality . Hinsliff said that Stock's book used a cooler lens than Joyce's and is focused on abstract concepts rather than personal stories. [8]
Reviewing in The Philosophers' Magazine , Julian Baggini comments that Stock's work is not the last word on the debate but a legitimate contribution, arguing that it is far from obvious that gender self-identification is the only legitimate criterion for identifying as a sex or gender and that those who do not accept this position should be taken seriously. [4]
Julie Bindel, author of Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation and one of the people thanked by Stock in the book, wrote in The Spectator that Material Girls was meticulously researched and carefully argued. [9] However, Bindel also said that Stock incorrectly conflates feminists with gender critical activists, and that Stock's critique of standpoint epistemology, while valid in Bindel's opinion, does not distinguish the second wave feminist idea of the personal is political which focuses on connecting individual experiences to social forces rather than privileging these experiences epistemically. [9]
Philosopher Adam Briggle, himself the parent of a transgender son in Texas, argued in the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective that Stock's framing choices, policy recommendations, and conclusions are not "logical consequence of her or anyone else’s theory" but her own pre-established positions. Briggle felt that Stock had only considered "the handful" of transgender people who could be used as examples to support these positions, while ignoring the experiences and concerns of transgender people in general. [10]
Professor Alex Sharpe found the book fell short of the claims made on its behalf and contributed to "the toxicity surrounding trans people and they make it more difficult for us to live our lives." [11] as the book contained many errors such as Stock's definition of sex being binary or how individual cases of violence committed by trans women are used to form spurious conclusions on trans women inclusion in women's prisons despite evidence to the contrary being available. [12]
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in The Transfeminist Manifesto.
Postgenderism is a social, political and cultural movement which arose from the eroding of the cultural, psychological, and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory.
The gender binary is the classification of gender into two distinct forms of masculine and feminine, whether by social system, cultural belief, or both simultaneously. Most cultures use a gender binary, having two genders.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Julie Bindel is an English radical feminist writer. She is also co-founder of the law reform group Justice for Women, which has aimed to help women who have been prosecuted for assaulting or killing violent male partners.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
The social construction of gender is a theory in the humanities and social sciences about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity is a 2007 book by the gender theorist, biologist, and writer Julia Serano. The book is a transfeminist manifesto that makes the case that transphobia is rooted in sexism and that transgender activism is a feminist movement. The second edition of the book was published in March 2016.
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely.
Feminist metaphysics aims to question how inquiries and answers in the field of metaphysics have supported sexism. Feminist metaphysics overlaps with fields such as the philosophy of mind and philosophy of self. Feminist metaphysicians such as Sally Haslanger, Ásta, and Judith Butler have sought to explain the nature of gender in the interest of advancing feminist goals.
Kathleen Mary Linn Stock is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic work on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, sexual objectification, and sexual orientation.
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality is a 2021 nonfiction book by journalist and gender critical activist Helen Joyce that criticizes the transgender rights movement and transgender activism. It is published by Oneworld Publications, their fifth book in the Sunday Times bestseller list. Reviews of the book ranged from positive to critical. In 2023 it was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize.
Helen Joyce is an Irish journalist and gender critical activist. She studied as a mathematician and worked in academia before becoming a journalist. Joyce began working for The Economist as education correspondent for its Britain section in 2005 and has since held several senior positions, including finance editor and international editor. She published her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality in 2021.
The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice is a 2021 non-fiction book by Shon Faye on the subject of transgender liberation in the United Kingdom. Faye explores how issues of social class, employment and housing insecurity, police violence and prisons, and sex work affect transgender people. She aims to make a left-wing argument for how transgender liberation would improve society more widely. Faye, a professional journalist, wrote the book largely in the first English COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. She drew from Revolting Prostitutes and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race in her writing, while reviews frequently contrasted it with Helen Joyce's Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which was published in the same year. It became a bestseller in The Sunday Times.
Alison Phipps is a British political sociologist, gender studies scholar and feminist theorist, who is a professor of sociology at Newcastle University's School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.
Gender-critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or TERFism, is an ideology or movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology", the concept of gender identity and transgender rights, especially gender self-identification. Gender-critical feminists believe that sex is biological and immutable, while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, to be inherently oppressive. They reject the concept of transgender identities.
Finn Mackay is a British sociologist and radical trans feminist campaigner.
Histories of the Transgender Child is a 2018 transgender studies book by the transgender author and academic Jules Gill-Peterson. The book is an exploration of transgender childhood in the United States throughout the twentieth century. It received the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the 2018 Children's Literature Association Book Award.
Cisnormativity or cissexual assumption is the assumption that everyone is, or ought to be, cisgender. The term can further refer to a wider range of presumptions about gender assignment, such as the presumption of a gender binary, or expectations of conformity to gender roles even when transgender identities are otherwise acknowledged. Cisnormativity is a form of cisgenderism, an ideology which promotes various normative ideas about gender, to the invalidation of individuals' own gender identities, analogous to heterosexism or ableism.