She saw her own name everywhere. On stickers in the restrooms of the university building, on posters on campus walls. On banners at a demonstration, especially during an open day for new students. Slogans like “fire Kathleen Stock,” “Kathleen Stock is transphobic,” “Stock out,” “Academic freedom doesn’t include transphobia.”
At the end of October, tensions ran so high on the campus of the University of Sussex, in Brighton in the south of England, that philosophy professor Kathleen Stock saw no way out. She got up. This brought an end to her eighteen-year employment, the last three and a half years full of unrest and online attacks. They started when she got involved in the gender identity debate in 2018.
“It all happened behind my back, no one ever came directly to me,” she says in an interview with a group of European journalists. “Professors warned me online or apologized for my presence. They said I hate trans people, they started petitions against me.”
Kathleen Stock has become one of the best-known voices in public discussions of gender identity in the United Kingdom. Her main point is that trans women – those who are born in a male body but identify as female – are biologically not women. “You can’t actually change your sex. We are part of nature, we are a biological species. Not everything is a social construct, I don’t believe in that.”
What about trans women who have undergone a full transition?
“You can call them women, and I go along with that social construct. If a trans woman identifies as a woman, I really don’t go to such a person and say out loud: ‘You are a man’. But the fact is that our sex is biologically determined in our body cells. You can take hormones and have your penis removed, but that doesn’t make you a woman. This sounds rude and incredibly insulting. But we must be able to name this truth.”
Stock mainly makes a point of this because she sees risks in ‘self-identification’ of gender. “Otherwise I would never have started this fight.” With self-identification, citizens can choose for themselves with which gender they are legally registered with the government. “That comes down to filling in a form, nothing more. Not only people in transition who take hormones, no, everyone can identify themselves as male or female. Your own sense of gender identity is then enough to legally change sex.” In both The United Kingdom if in the Netherlands there are – controversial – bills in parliament that make this possible.
What do you think are the dangers of such self-identification?
“There are all kinds of problems. Influenced by Stonewall [de Britse belangenorganisatie voor lhbti’ers] many institutions are now going beyond the current law, saying that gender identity is no longer their starting point. It means that men who claim to identify as women can walk into women’s locker rooms. And it has resulted in us having males with intact genitalia in our women’s prisons. There has already been a case of sexual assault in a prison. In that lawsuit came the famous phrase that ‘her penis stuck out of her pants when she assaulted her co-wife’. It’s a disaster.”
Are these exceptions? Most transgender people will just be happy that they can change their gender in government systems.
“I don’t understand why it matters that the numbers are small. I don’t think it’s possible that men with fully intact penises can just enter women’s changing rooms, or end up in shelters for female victims of domestic violence. Vulnerable, traumatized women reside there. And in prisons, women are usually on non-violent cases, while men who have been convicted of sexual abuse come to them.”
Are transgender people also regularly victims of violence?
“Yeah, just not here in the UK. Fortunately, the murder rate of transgender people is very low here. No trans people have been killed in the past two years. And in the years before that, one a year. A. The idea that transgender people are particularly at high risk, that they are a kind of unique, vulnerable population, as clubs like Stonewall make it seem, is wrong. We are a tolerant society. Which of course does not mean that transgender people do not sometimes suffer. Just like women – three women are murdered every week. And Stonewall believes that women should give up rights to accommodate trans women. That’s not necessary. We can still build extra facilities, such as there is now a separate prison ward for transgenders come.”
The latest UK government estimate is that there are 500,000 transgender people, a number that has grown rapidly in recent years. Where do you think that increase is coming from?
“That number includes the non-binary individuals, who do not identify themselves as female or male. In some schools, ten out of thirty children are non-binary. It’s a trend. I think it was a stupid move by twentieth-century feminists to classify womanhood as a social construct rather than “something biological.” That allowed women to get out of the kitchen, because if that household chore is just a social thing, we can change it. But that change in thinking caused us problems later on, because of course sex matters, and being a woman is something biological. Transgenders were not involved in the discussion at all then.
“If you look at the big picture, capitalism certainly plays a role. It is profitable to divide ourselves into some sort of tradable units. With a hundred different identities, you can sell a hundred different products. And everyone is looking for a label, often online. Everyone who follows me on social media seems to have a hashtag, #neurodivers, #autistic. We give a leading role to our particulars.”
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Is that also the reason why this development is particularly popular among young people?
“If the idea that gender identity is the most important is spreading through the culture, then children will also get it. Many young people are unhappy with their bodies, for example they do not feel very feminine. That’s why we have a 5,000 percent increase in gender clinic registrations in the UK and you’re seeing a similar trend in the United States and other countries.”
Do young people also perhaps more easily accept that there are more gender identities than just men or women?
“If I had been eighteen now, I would have fallen for this completely. In my day, we went for nose piercings and cool clothes. What is non-binary? Look at me, I am non-binary.” She points to her jeans, sneakers and smart jacket. “Being non-binary is not some kind of sacred inner state. These are just labels that people who feel different and want to show that are happy to use. And that’s totally okay. However, many young people from this generation start with puberty inhibitors and then switch to hormones, without even thinking about whether they really want that. There are children in gender clinics who are attracted to the same sex and think they are in the wrong body, when they are just gay. Schools and teachers go along with it, that’s the worrying thing.”
Do we know how many young people regret taking those medicines?
“There is little reliable data on this. On internet forum Reddit, the the-transcommunity 25,000 members. There are often stories of members who are sorry, or at least not sure anymore. And they get social problems because their friends suddenly see them as traitors. There are major medical and psychological problems that we really need to look at.”
Last month it was announced that Stock is joining the University of Austin, an initiative of US academics seeking to promote free debate – in American media the „anti woke university”. Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, among others, also participates.
How serious is this to you?
“I’m not moving to Texas and I never intended to. I’m going to see what classes I can give. For me it is mainly a symbolic project, because it draws attention to academic freedom, which I think is very important.”
How much pressure is that academic freedom in the UK?
“There are huge taboo topics that academics no longer dare to talk about, including gender and gender. I think it has to do with tuition. Posters to me said ‘we don’t pay £9,000 a year to take lessons from that transphobic Kathleen Stock’. This is based on the idea that who pays decides. Unfortunately, I think academic freedom also means sometimes hearing ideas that you don’t like, but are glad you discussed later.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 11 December 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 11, 2021
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