My ongoing quest to understand why the issue of trans rights has become so divisive and bitter continues with no end in sight. However, I think I have gathered a few more clues after interviewing the UK’s first trans philosopher, Sophie Grace Chappell for Prospect.
The published profile is short and allows Chappell to speak for herself with no criticism and minimal eyebrow-raising from me. The source interview, however, left me worried that mutual comprehension between the main actors this fight (for that is what is has become) is now almost impossible. (Supporters can listen to the entire interview here.)
In crude but not inaccurate terms, the main fault line in this debate runs between gender critical feminists who assert that biological sex is extremely important for what it means to be a woman, and the most vocal and numerous trans rights activists who assert that gender identity is more important than biology, expressed unequivocally in their mantra “trans women are women, trans men are men, period.”
For people on Chappell’s side, however, this is not a debate at all. “It’s also a problem that a lot of the time people see this as a debate with two sides in a way that they wouldn’t see debates that are comparable about race or being gay,” she says. It’s a fight between justice and prejudice, rights and bigotry. Listening to Chappell, you would think that the gender critical feminists – derogatorily called TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminist) – are almost always malign, denigrating and misrepresenting trans people, while their opponents are overwhelmingly reasonable and moderate. So if you’ve been told trans activists are pushing for anything silly or extreme, that’s just misinformation.
For example, Chappell argues that trans activism is not captured by any ideology. She said that she didn’t even have a gender theory or ideology and that neither is central to the fight for trans rights.
I wish that were true but it seems pretty clear that the most vocal activists are making quite strong and dogmatic claims about sex and gender. The terrific Nolan Investigates podcast series on trans rights came up against this time and again. (And remember Nolan had to navigate the BBC’s strict impartiality rules.) In particular, the campaigning group Stonewall promotes the primacy of gender identity over sex, arguing that legal documents should recognise self-perceived gender, not sex, which it defines as something that is “assigned to a person on the basis of primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and reproductive functions.” The language here is bizarre: sex is no more “assigned” than species, height or weight.
Chappell also rejected as ludicrous the idea that lesbians who refuse to date trans women are transphobic, which indeed it is. But she insisted she had never heard anyone seriously criticise such lesbians. However, there are plenty of credible stories of this, including several in this pretty serious BBC report. If the accusation of sexual preference as transphobia is ludicrous, then there are lots of ludicrous activists out there. When in a review of Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls I pointed out that sexual orientation is generally towards people of a certain sex rather than gender, plenty of people on Twitter told me I was weirdly obsessed with genitals, when I was simply reporting an empirical fact. They were very much of the view that, as Stock described it “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.” Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall, has said as much. (See below)
I was left feeling that Chappell just wasn’t acknowledging the reality of what a lot of trans activists are saying. Her own views are generally measured and moderate and it is as though she can’t believe her brothers and sisters in arms aren’t equally sensible.
However, there were also moments when I wondered if she was a reasonable and moderate as she presented herself. She said she was open to debate, denying that she is unwilling to discuss contentious issues with people who disagree with here. She says that there are no questions that are off the table but certain questioners are beyond the pale. But having failed to get Chappell to agree to take part in a discussion with any gender critical feminist I’ve suggested, and not had any suggestions of suitable interlocutors from her, this doesn’t seem to me to be entirely honest. The logical consequence of “I will discuss x, but every person who believes x is not a worthy interlocutor” is that you won’t discuss x, at least not with anyone who disagrees with you about it.
Chappell also took back with one hand what she offered in another when I summarised a remark she had made in another interview as: “being trans but having male genitalia is a reason such people could legitimately be excluded from a rape shelters.”
“No, not entirely right,” she replied, “because it’s not as far as I’m aware very normal for people in rape shelters to see each other’s genitalia at all.” Her grounds for exclusion were much more limited. In essence, her argument is that sometimes someone is in such trauma that you have to tolerate their intolerance. “If someone is being treated post-traumatically and if that person has a problem with people who are trans, then you should apply the same kind of tact and discretion to the situation that you would apply if you had someone who was a rape survivor who was manifestly racist. That’s about the level of it. … Although you don’t want to pander to their prejudices this isn’t the time for thinking about that.” So people who object to person with penises in rape shelters and other all-women spaces are bigots, it’s just sometimes bigotry has to be tolerated.
The overall impression I had was that Chappell believed that people on her side of the debate were overwhelmingly moderate, reasonable and fair and that all the extremism and misrepresentation was coming from the gender-critical feminists. (I’d be interested to know if this is how it comes cross to you if you listen to the discussion.) This isn’t how I see it. There is real transphobia out there and there are careless words from people who intend trans people no harm. But many of the things said about gender critical feminists are also cruel, false and sometimes even threatening. If Chappell’s explanation for the heat in this debate is that the other lot are creating it all, I don’t buy it.
So where is the hostility really coming from? An answer was suggested when I asked Chappell for examples of things that gender-critical feminists kept saying which showed they were not engaging in good faith. She said, “I’ll give you three examples. First of all, trans women—they don’t normally talk about trans men in this context—are sexual predators, a threat to women’s safety. Secondly, there’s no such thing as a trans kid, and thirdly, trans people are delusional.”
I don’t think any of the more serious actors in this debate are saying anything as crude as this and when I put that to Chappell she distinguished between “people’s comments on social media and what they put in their books.” This and other comments made me believe that Chappell simply doesn’t believe that most gender critical feminists are honest. They avoid extreme claims in their serious writing but the dog whistles are there, and they become audible when you attend to their more unguarded comments.
I’m left wondering whether the root of the whole problem is our old frenemy social media. People like and share pretty promiscuously, so it can easily look like moderate voices are in bed with more extreme ones. It’s also true that people tend to talk more loosely, so you can also find people saying immoderate or ill-judged things. Social media really does make it look like almost everyone is either baying for TERF blood on one side or mocking trans people for not really being the men or women they say they are on the other. Everyone looks like an advocate of the ugliest version of the view they hold because everyone is connected to the vile by just a few degrees of social media separation.
I don’t see an easy way out of this. I’ve been trying to get two trans people on different sides talking to each other and although I’ve had a trans person with gender critical views (yes, they really do exist) agree, no trans person on the other side will share a platform with them.
The really sad thing is that I think the gender critical feminists are winning the debate among the wider public. The result is that people who are supportive of trans rights are discovering that their views are supposedly transphobic because they take a different view of how those rights should be upheld. Would-be allies are being dismissed as bigots, demonised by the very people they want to support. That is a disaster for the trans cause. Surely it is time the key protagonists saw this.
News
Some of my unscripted remarks at Management Today’s recent Leadership Lessons conference have been written up into a piece. It doesn’t read as well as a proper article would have but I stand by the content, which I fear will fall on deaf ears.
My short interview with Sophie Grace Chappell is in this month’s Prospect and supporters can listen to the full audio here.
Also in Prospect is my latest Philosopher-at-Large column on whether AI should be given rights.
I wrote a short piece on Boris Johnson for the French magazine Philosophie and supporters can exclusively read the English version here.
A decade ago I was writer-in-residence for the White Cliffs of Dover. Someone alerted me that the microsite hosting the results has been taken down so I’ve put up the long essay I wrote about the significance and symbolism of the cliffs as another supporter exclusive here.
One more episode of the Royal Institute of Philosophy podcast Thinking Hard and Slow, which I host, has been put up: The Philosophical Retreat to the Here and Now with Richard Moran. It provides wise things to say when people lecture you about the necessity of living in the present.
Finally, I have received some Lithuanian translations of How the World Thinks. For the price of postage, I’d happily send them to a good home. Any Lithuanians out there?
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On my radar
The first two series of Matthew Syed’s Sideways for BBC Radio Four were terrific and while the third didn’t consistently reach the same heights, the latest is starting strongly with a four-part mini-series on nuclear weapons. In the first two, Syed questions the inevitability of the spread of nuclear weapons and and efficacy of deterrence.
On the World Service, there is a fascinating episode of The Inquiry asking whether the rapid shift to organic food production caused the crisis in Sri Lanka. Spoiler alert: it certainly contributed.
Ian Leslie’s latest Ruffian newsletter contains a typically intriguing discussion of how “being influenced” is, at its best, not a passive thing that happens to you but an active process you can shape.
The blurb for Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World prepares you for some kind of Scandi Bridget Johansen’ Diary with fewer laughs, but it’s actually closely observed, honest and compassionate. Not a feel-good movie but a feel-ok one, which is as good as realism gets.
That’s it for now. There will be just one newsletter in August as I attempt a summer slowdown, reverting to fortnightly from September. So until next time, if nothing prevents, thanks for your interest.