#140 Kathleen Stock: When “Gender Identity” Meets Material Reality
Professor Kathleen Stock © Sonali Fernando
In this episode of the FiLiA Podcast, Raquel Rosario Sanchez interviews Professor Kathleen Stock about her new book ‘Material Girls’, a timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex.
In Material Girls, Professor Kathleen Stock surveys the philosophical ideas that led to this point, and closely interrogates each one, from De Beauvoir’s statement that, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (an assertion she contends has been misinterpreted and repurposed), to Judith Butler’s claim that language creates biological reality, rather than describing it. She looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection.
The book makes a clear, humane and feminist case for our retaining the ability to discuss reality, and concludes with a positive vision for the future, in which trans rights activists and feminists can collaborate to achieve some of their political aims.
Listen Here (transcript below):
Kathleen Stock is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex. She has published on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, and sexual objectification. She has been the vice-president of the British Society of Aesthetics. In her monograph Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination (2017) she examines the nature of fictional content.
Professor Stock edited Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work (first edition 2007) and together with Katherine Thomson-Jones she edited New Waves in Aesthetics (2008). She has given lectures at the University of York, the Aristotelian Society, the London Aesthetics Forum, the University of Wolverhampton, the American Society for Aesthetics, and other places.
She has expressed critical views on the UK Gender Recognition Act and trans self-identification. In January 2021, Stock was awarded an OBE for services to higher education and, specifically, to academic freedom.
Material Girls goes on sale on 6th May 2021. Find more information at the Little Brown website. You can read the “Trans policies in UK Universities: some highlights” list mentioned during this podcast on Kathleen’s website and follow her on social media.
Transcript:
Raquel Rosario Sanchez from FiLiA in conversation with Kathleen Stock
Raquel: Hello everyone. Welcome to the FiLiA podcast. My name is Raquel Rosario Sanchez and I am the spokeswoman for FiLiA.
Today we are speaking with Professor Kathleen Stock about her new book Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. Professor Kathleen Stock is an analytic philosopher at the University of Sussex.
She has published widely on the philosophy of fiction and imagination. She was born in Aberdeen and studied French and philosophy at Oxford completed a study in philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Leeds. She taught at the University of Lancaster and the University of East Anglia before her appointment at Sussex in 2003. Earlier this year, Kathleen was awarded an OBE for services to higher education.
Kathleen, first of all, congratulations. How are you?
Kathleen Stock: Hi, Raquel. And thank you very much. I'm fine. I'm very good. I'm doing well.
Raquel: Are you overwhelmed with all the frenzy regarding the book?
Kathleen Stock: No, I'm keeping my head on my shoulders and I think it's going well so far, but obviously it hasn't been released yet, so it's quite an exciting time, but I'm quite looking forward to it actually getting out there and it being published properly.
Raquel: I want to begin by going back to what a lot of people in the public who are aware of your scholarship would regard as sort of like the very beginning. So back to that talk that you gave for the campaigning organisation, Woman’s Place UK it was called The Woman's Place is Turning the Tide and on 16th July 2018 so take us back and tell us what what's going through your mind, because what we could see was a scholar that was very, very determined, but also, so we saw an academic that seemed a little bit hesitant, or like you were a little nervous to step into this topic. So take us back to the day.
Kathleen Stock: Well, yes, that talk was a big moment in my life, although I didn't know it really at the time.
So, Helen Saxby was a local organiser for this Women's Place UK meeting in Brighton. And that was in itself quite a big deal, really, because at that point Women's Place meetings were getting very hostile receptions wherever they were held. In fact, I think, I can't remember exactly if it was the previous one immediately before Brighton, but the one in Hastings got a bomb threat and there was a long history of just crap, basically being hurled at organisers for trying to organise in various cities.
So to have it in Brighton at the heart of queer life in Britain, LGBT life, was quite intimidating.
I wrote a blog post about academic philosophy and why it wasn't getting involved in gender recognition reform discussions. And Helen sought me out and we met in a cafe and it felt like I was entering a completely different world.
We were sitting in The Lanes in Brighton keeping our voices down and trying to plan my participation in this event. Obviously we couldn't tell anyone where it was going to be. We had to announce the venue very late. In fact, the venue that they had booked the Quaker Centre in Brighton got so many complaints that they cancelled at the last minute. And then the organisers had to find another venue.
So, you know, it was that sort of environment. So if I looked a bit nervous or hesitant, I can sort of understand why particularly because by the time we got to the venue, we got there early, but very shortly afterwards, the protesters started arriving and they were at both entrances back and front of making a lot of noise.
It wasn't the worst. it wasn't the most intimidating meeting I've ever been at because that was the second Women's Place meeting in Brighton that I went to, but it was nerve wracking and intense, exceptionally intense and a full house, I can remember every bit of it really vividly.
That was the first time I'd ever spoken out about any of it. So a lot of feelings were being negotiated at the same time, I think.
Raquel: And now you're back with Woman’s Place UK, you will be hosting an event with WPUK in a Material World, which is the book launch of Material Girls and you will be in conversation with Suzanne Moore.
But, I mentioned this because of like the nervousness and the hesitation a little bit, not because you weren't clear in your speaking, but because it's so emblematic of what a lot of women have gone through on this issue, like it started like, ‘oh, I don't know if I should say this. I don't know if I can speak out about this.’ And now these women are feeling emboldened, like actually I will speak about it.
And now you have a book just published or are about to publish, but I just said it is very in the span of this past three years. A lot has happened.
Kathleen Stock: Yes. And I mean, I'm so pleased and grateful that Women's Place UK are hosting my launch, it is entirely fitting and amazing that Suzanne Moore is going to have a chat with me about it.
But I think when I started, I'm an academic, I'm a philosopher and I'm supposed to think about things and I do. So when I started, I knew what I thought about quite a lot of the issues, like the main issues about female only spaces and, self- ID but there was other stuff I wasn't sure about and I wanted to read about it and think about it. Now I have, that's what I've spent the last three years doing.
So now I’m really very sure about what I think. And I'm just glad I've had an opportunity to get it all down on paper in a way that I hope is clear and readable, because I think a lot of the hesitance of people around this issue, you’re so right, women in particular feel very hesitant. It’s because they think there must be some complex intellectual background that they're not really getting. That must justify some of the wilder things that are being said by trans activists.
And I just want to kind of explain as best I can that as far as I can see, there is none. There is no intellectual justification for these extreme claims that are being made by Stonewall or other activist groups.
Raquel: Yes. And speaking of Stonewall, we're going to get to sort of the meat of the book in a second, but if you don't really address in depth, the personal journey, your own personal journey. I hope you don't mind if we ask you, but what happened that night of the 16th of July, 2018?
What was the aftermath for you personally and also professionally?
Kathleen Stock: It's hard for me to remember exactly the chronology, but I think that shortly after that talk, I got interviewed by the local paper, which is the Brighton Argus. And if it wasn't shortly after, as it was just before and a combination of those two things.
So in the Brighton Argus, I said, what I still think is true and is a statement of fact that Trans women are male, and many of them retain male genitalia. And those are facts of relevance to policy discussions about single-sex changing rooms and women's spaces generally. And I think the public needs to know those facts and they're relevant to the discussion.
So they took that sentence and made up the headline, which just opened me up to enormous fuss to say the least. It was kind of overwhelming at the time, it came in different waves, but there was a really very angry response from some people, some quite well-known people online.
Obviously there's also been a very angry response from some colleagues of mine and from those within the philosophy profession. So I've been fighting battles on various fronts for three years now, basically. Some of it, I've talked about and some of it I haven't, but I think the trouble with talking about it and making it personal is that people, especially critics, tend to hear that as a bid for sympathy or some kind of victim playing.
The point in me telling and explaining how I have been harassed basically on many occasions and had faced a very unusually hostile environment for my views. The point of me saying that is not really about me. It's about explaining what's happening in the academic sector. And the cost is knowledge and understanding because lots and lots of people are looking at what's happening to me and to you and they're intimidated so in a sense, the intimidation is working.
Raquel: Did you ever feel like quitting?
Kathleen Stock: Feel like quitting? no, I really don't think I have. I mean, quitting depends what you mean by quitting. There are various things I could quit. I would never quit saying what I was saying and I would never renounce my views because people were leaning on me to do so or apologise for them.
I've got the energy to keep going on that because I think it's really important and it's true. And also even if it's false, you know, if it turns out by some miracle that I'm wrong and there aren't two sexes and sex doesn't have important social impacts that we should track and describe. Well, I certainly should have the right to say it.
I mean, no one ever said you should only have the right to say something if you're right. So the reason people want to shut us down is presumably because on some level they know we're right. So no, I don't feel like quitting, but I have felt like lying on the floor, crying my eyes out, drinking lots of gin at various points because I mean, social ostracism hurts that that's why they do it. Shunning being pushed out of an in-crowd into an out-group is very painful if you're a socially minded creature.
Raquel: What has been your support network of family and friends? You know, you hear horror stories like relationships with their mothers and their sisters and their daughters, and you hear the very personal impact in those very close knit relationships. And, and I just sort of hope every time you see a woman stepping out in public, I just hope that she has a very strong support network.
Kathleen Stock: I do. I couldn't have done it without them. I mean, personally speaking, I have no big dramas like that or tensions in my life from people around me that I'm closest to. They’re committed to my wellbeing and believe in me. On the level of friends, I think actually I've sort of congratulated myself over the years that with a few exceptions, all of my friends are absolutely the people I thought they would be about this. And I'm not saying they necessarily agree with me. I don't talk about this with some of my friends very much, but they've never for a second let it affect their friendship with me. So that tells me something, which I feel like I must be a good judge of character. I have lost some people more in the sort of professional realm and that's been upsetting at various points, but you know, I've survived.
Raquel: I was just telling Maya, you know, so today there is the tribunal appeal for her.
Kathleen Stock: I know it seems to be going well, touch wood. Yeah.
Raquel: I texted her yesterday and I was just like, listen, whatever happens, the only good thing to come from her case back in December 2019, is that now she knows that she can survive.
You know, there's this sort of presumption of like, if you don't say these mantras if you don't alter these articles of faith, your life will sort of crumble and what every single one of these women, Allison Bailey, Kiera Bell, Maya Forstater, what they've demonstrated is like, not only is your life not going to end, but you could potentially thrive, you know, and sort of get new friends.
Kathleen Stock: Yes, that's it. I meant to say that actually. You've reminded me that the other thing that I have acquired is new friends. Really great new friends. So people that I now feel exceptionally close to and talk to almost every day. and then there's this wider movement, I sort of hesitate to call it a movement because I think it encourages sort of group think, but you know, there's a bunch of women out there, that I don't know, who have my back.
I may not even know their names because they might fear professional repercussions if they tweeted under their real names, but they just are out there. And men. picking up the defence of me when I feel too exhausted to do it. So, I'm just incredibly grateful, really, really, really grateful for all of them.
I'm sure that other people prominently in the eye of various storms would say the same, but they couldn't do it without that sort of support.
Raquel: Yes, that's lovely. So you start the book by, and this is a very academic sentence, by situating yourself in the literature, you talk about how you don't come from a background in sort of gender studies, you're a philosopher at this time.
Some criticism of you is the fact that this is not your area, therefore you're not to speak about it. But the other side of that coin is well Judith Butler doesn't come from women and gender studies. And now she's considered some sort of patron saint of gender studies.
I wanted to ask you about whose voice is the legitimate voice then, and I'm sorry to sort of like interrupt with my own personal experience with a bachelor's degree and a minor in women's studies. Then I did a master's degree in women in gender and sexuality studies and now I'm at the Centre for Gender Studies doing a PhD and my voice is not considered a legitimate enough to speak about it too. So it appears that regardless of your academic background, that there is no legitimate voice other than the voice that repeats approved texts.
Kathleen Stock: Yeah. I mean, that's true, isn't it?
There's nothing principled about the moves that get made against us. It's just strategic. So for me, it will be ‘you're an outsider. You don't understand you haven't read the literature’ for you. It will be something else. But, you know, I find all of these attacks boil down to be pretty similar is just sort of, you should feel ashamed of something and we'll try and find out what it is.
So in my case, it was said to me by all sorts of people, including in philosophy, that I didn't understand, I hadn't read the literature. I had no credentials in this area, apart from the fact that I have actually published three articles on sexual objectification. I consider those to be feminist philosophy articles, but, anyway, they're ignored.
Then I started to realise that, first of all, people don't apply this criterion to philosophers in other areas, like you said, I mean, they just don't. Nobody minded when I wrote a paper about a painting once having never written about a painting before. But the other thing is that being an outsider is beneficial when the group is highly regulated by group-think or whatever you call it.
I mean, it's actually quite good to be an outsider. I'm not in those networks. I don't have to pay my dues to whoever's at the top of the tree. I didn't have to get where I am by like reviewing my elders positively and by hanging out at conferences with the right people, I just didn't have to do any of that thank God.
So I think it gives me an opportunity to really say what I think. I mean, the other thing to say is that I'm a philosopher of fiction and that is my expertise. I've written a massive book for Oxford University Press on the relationship between imagination and fiction, pretence, role-play, I think those things are relevant to this area.
Raquel: And aside from that, it's sort of a very famous criticism of academia. Sometimes if you don't have a certain background, then it's almost as if you're not allowed to have an opinion on things, but as you demonstrate in the book, the reforms, particularly the political reforms and policy implementation that are sought by gender identity theories, everyone, therefore, why should only certain academics have a voice, but not the person who are impacted by these policies?
Kathleen Stock: Exactly. I mean, it's completely anti-democratic to say that, as some people do, that only trans people can pronounce on policies, which actually in practice are affecting nearly everybody now. It depends which sort of organisation you're in, but, that's just another strategic move to get the right result.
Raquel: Then you also mentioned you go through the basic tenants of what you call gender identity theory. And there's one that I thought would be like the contentious one, which is that you talk about how the creation of gender identity as a concept relates to the separation of sex and gender.
And you talk about how some of it could be the result of feminist thinking in itself because some feminists, a couple of decades ago, they wanted to separate and distance themselves from biological determinism. Feminism wanted to escape the historical persistent idea that 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.
Kathleen Stock: It’s not all the feminists fault, it's just one aspect of the story. what I argue is that the original distinction between sex and gender, I mean, it started off as a perfectly reasonable distinction between biology and then the social meanings of being female, the social meanings of being male and those can vary from culture to culture. So that was gender.
But then at a certain point, you start to see some radical feminists and others arguing that womanhood itself is something social. Now they're not doing that because they have any kind of trans inclusive ambitions for their definitions. So it's nothing to do with trans. They're doing it because this was like back in the eighties. They're doing it because they think that they can get rid of the threat of biological determiners and this sort of view that women's biology makes them suited to certain kinds of domestic activities. They think they can get rid of that threat by saying, oh, but women aren't biological, you know, a woman isn't a biological state. So if we make women at something social, then we'll have seen off the threat of biological determinism.
And as I say in the book, I think that's a really terrible move, argumentatively. It just doesn't work. It's like trying to stop an asteroid hitting the earth by redefining the earth as something that cannot be hit by an asteroid.
Just changing the definition of womanhood is not going to stop sexists and misogynists saying women should stay in the kitchen. But secondly, it's either true that women's biology taken on average across the population, gives them certain kinds of psychological characteristics or isn't. I don't pronounce on that issue at all in the book I try and steer well clear of it, but my point is redefining womanhood is not going to change those empirical facts. So it's either true or it isn't true. And trying to try to make womanhood something social, not biological just leaves all that in place.
So my argument was okay, so it was a really kind of dumb, philosophical move. It didn't work and it opened up the possibility because then people started to believe that womanhood was something social and they would always quote, de Beauvoir, you must've had de Beauvoir quoted at you as has proof:
‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. A woman is not born, but made’ that does not mean what people think it means in my view.
Raquel: Yes. And I agree that it's not all feminist organisations, of course, because at FiLiA we were very critical of this idea that women are concepts or feelings.
Kathleen Stock: It's gone out of control. You see, of course, now we can see the cost of it. Then it may be, looked like a nifty, nifty move. But the cost of it is that we can no longer talk about Womanhood.
Also in between, I mean, I don't want to get too into the weeds, but between then and now there's been these interminable academic feminist discussions, because once you say womanhood is something social, then you start having to argue about whose social life is relevant.
And then quite rightly you get lesbian feminists coming in or, Afro-American feminists coming in and saying ‘well, you're not talking about my social experience, so you're not talking about my kind of womanhood’ and that point is well taken, but it's led some people, some academic feminists who conclude that there's no such thing as a woman because we can't find a single account of the social experience of womanhood that fits for everybody. And that's an absolutely crazy conclusion to draw.
We should have just stuck with the idea that womanhood is something biological. And then of course it has many different social manifestations.
Raquel: Yes. But the argument could be put to you that, it's not all feminist organisations, but why are so many, particularly prominent women's organisations, that are supportive of what, as you call it, gender identity theory.
Why do you think of that?
Kathleen Stock: Now I think the combination of many things, I think it's partly, the legacy, bad theorising. People don't really understand why they're doing it, but they think de Beauvoir said it, so it must be true or something. There's also just a real pressure, isn't there, on women, as we know to be kind and I mean women as in females, to be kind and inclusive in a way that people are not making those demands on men. Women make those demands of each other, I'm not saying that the demands come inevitably from men.
I find them just as often coming from women to other women, but you know, it is difficult to maintain your boundaries, it takes a certain amount of strength and resilience to just say, no, I'm talking about women. I think it's socially becoming increasingly difficult to do that. So organisations are just capitulating.
Raquel: And it's a conscious effort, to assert boundaries is a conscious effort. assuming this default in which everything is fine, as long as a woman doesn't really put up a fight against it.
So you talk about how a lot of lobbying has been going on not coming from feminist organisations and you mentioned something called the Yogyakarta Principles. And I would like if you could explain too our audience, what the Yogyakarta Principles are.
Kathleen Stock: They are a set of principles that a group of academics came up with in Indonesia in I think 2006. They were brought together to come up with a kind of set of recommendations, basically, which they call the Yogyakarta Principles.
They are mentioned in academic papers and in various national contexts they are used. Now a lot of those principles, you can look it up, look them up online. A lot of them make perfect sense. And I think they're just sort of versions of standard human rights demands for things like housing and freedom from violence and things that nobody could disagree with.
But there's this one aspect of the Yogyakarta Principles that I focus on.
Raquel: So I wanted to mention to you Principle 3 in particular which states:
‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities shall enjoy legal capacity in all aspects of life. Each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom’.
And as you mentioned so much of it is sort of like it could be perceived as universally accepted. But there's an aspect of it, of self-determination that I think it just gave me pause because as Professor Rosa Friedman mentioned, when you two gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee on reform of the Gender Recognition Act, peoples, as in populations, have a right to a self-determination in the democratic process or any other system of governance of their nation, but individual people do not have that, it reads as if they have created a document that has generally well intentioned concepts and ideas, but then you add in this little other ideas that are more contentious -
Kathleen Stock: Yeah, yeah. This is the one, this is the Principle that, for me sets the alarm bells ringing because although of course, as you say, it sounds stirring and desirable, it's sort of hitting all these liberal notes, like freedom, dignity self-determination but the consequences it draws from this Principle is that gender identity is something that should never be concealed, suppressed or denied in any context.
So it's sort of presupposes a theory about gender identity as something absolutely fundamental to personality, it's just there waiting to burst out. And once it is out, it would be a human rights violation to deny it or to conceal it or to make someone suppress it. I just don't think that is a coherent view of gender identity. There's no evidence that it is that fundamental to personality. Although for some people, of course it can be a lifelong phenomenon in their lives.
Raquel: What would be a coherent view of gender identity?
Kathleen Stock: Well, I spent a whole chapter sort of going through various theories of gender identity. And the one I think makes no sense is that it's a kind of strong psychological identification with an ideal of the opposite sex or with androgyny, if it's a non-binary gender identity. Not everybody has a strong psychological identification either with their own sex or with the opposite sex.
But some people do and that's something that is understandable and may even be a really valuable part of someone's life. It's not innate. I don't think there's any evidence that this arrives innately and there's no evidence that everyone has one.
So it's not going to be basic to human identity generally or fundamental to autonomy or dignity generally. And of course we know from the phenomenon of de-transitioners that it can be temporary. You can strongly psychologically identify with an ideal of the opposite sex for a while, and then you can stop.
So I'm not saying you should stop. I'm just saying that it is clearly not permanent for everyone. So that just does not fit with this model of something in the words of the Yogyakarta Principles: ‘gender identity, being one of the most basic aspects of self-determination dignity and freedom’. I just don't think that's right.
And it's this principle that's underlying a lot of the legislation we see around, therapy, for instance, you know, the prohibition of what they call conversion therapy. But what they really mean is just talking therapy for people with gender identity disorders. That's being prohibited because the idea is that your gender identity is so fundamental to you that a therapist talking critically about it would be a human rights violation, I just don't think that makes any sense.
Raquel: Did you deliberately steer clear from making the analogy of the Christian concept of souls? You know, there are so many people, they don't necessarily have to identify themselves as Christians or Catholics, but I was reading the book and thought, well, this is the concept of souls. You know, a lot of people around the world believe that when you die, what happens is that your soul leaves your body. Not everyone believes that, but a lot of people believe that and a number of people believe that very passionately.
So you talk about how sometimes gender identity is considered to be some sort of inner essence, but sort of the closer analogy that I thought about was, well, this is about, it's very similar to how people conceptualise souls.
Kathleen Stock: Yes. I mean, I didn't deliberately leave that out. I think it's a very good analogy. I think a lot the frameworks around gender identity tap into very old symbolism and unconscious drives. I'm a philosopher and I'm an analytic philosopher and we don't tend to talk about unconscious drives very much or about symbolism for that matter. So maybe that's why I left out.
But I do think there's something very deeply familiar in the rhetoric of trans activism. There's kind of a dualism, there's a mind-body dualism there. There's a kind of religiosity and reverence for mystical ideas about your true self, your real self, your authentic self, and all the other things that get said about gender identity.
Raquel: So I hope you don't mind if I turn now to your favourite topic and my favourite topic, which is trans activism in academia.
Kathleen Stock: Oh, I don't mind.
Raquel: So you talked about policies, you know, policies that are being shaped and legitimised within UK academic institutions. So my first question to you would be:
Why did UK academic institutions decide to take this role as the legitimisers of theories that are so contentious? You know, if you look at everything going on in academia, there are so many theories that are constantly evolving. There's no settled sort of consensus, which is what is happening when it comes to the topic of gender identity. Yet you have academic institutions that are deciding to create policies very rapidly on concepts that are contentious.
For example, I'm probably going to mess this up because it's just confusing. But for example, the University of Kent has a policy that recognises and protects the gender identity ‘demi-fluid’, people whose gender identity is partially fluid whilst the other parts are static and also recognises the ‘demi-flux’ with an X at the end, that is people whose gender identity is partially fluid with the other parts being static.
I might confuse demi-flux with an X and then demi-fluid. These are not the same because we are told that for flux with an X indicates that one of the genders is non binary.
Kathleen Stock: It's amazing. Isn't it? I had a lot of fun looking through well fun in some sort of messed up idea of fun, looking through all these policies. There's also the University of Essex.
Raquel: And the University of Essex say it is understood as people with a multitude and perhaps ‘infinite’ parentheses going beyond the current knowledge of ‘genders.’ In parentheses number of genders, either simultaneously to various degrees or over the course of time.
So there is other gender that has not been invented yet, or is too difficult for us to comprehend, but it is also protected by the policy. This is the academia. This is intellectual people.
Kathleen Stock: Exactly. I mean, I hope, I really do hope that in a few years’ time, when the dust has settled, people will be able to look back and realise what has happened.
You could not satirise this in the wildest of campus novels, people would think it was too over the top.
Raquel: Who are these academics creating this policy?
Kathleen Stock: I don't know that they are academics, you'd hope not. I mean, the thing is. I think a lot of things are happening, one of the salient points is that universities started accepting student fees. And at that point, they, the students became clients as it were or customers. And simultaneously universities started to become much more actively in competition with each other. So they're seeking competitive edges. And so they're trying to this is all broad brush explanation, but I think it's true that universities want to seem very attractive to young idealist, middle class students who are mostly still the demographic for universities, younger people usually on the left or see themselves as progressive. so, you know, they want to talk their language and that's why they've really got very excited about Stonewall. They could join the diversity champion scheme. And you know, they're not alone in this, like every institution's going crazy for it, but, you know, they joined the diversity champions scheme and at that point they then get all this instruction from Stonewall, it is amazing, Stonewall is being paid by universities to be instructed on how to produce policies, which protect these various genders. And say that residences on campus and showers and changing rooms should all be accessed by a policy of self-ID and the universities are just doing it.
I think academics are having a role, but the role is relatively in-direct and that they're probably writing things that are influencing the activist campaigning groups who are then instructing universities to incorporate this material into their EDI policies.
EDI being Equality Diversity and Inclusion policies.
Raquel: The buck stops with you, you know, if you're an academic and this has been implemented in your name, then you don't get to delegate critical thinking.
Kathleen Stock: Oh, I know I'm not letting academics off the hook for this. Believe me. I think it's a lamentable dereliction of duty, but I think that a lot of them are don't even read these policies properly. And of course, if they do read them and think, well, hang on a minute, like, you know, the policy that says, I go through I've in other things I've written, I've gone through these policies in some detail and there's policies that say things university policies that say, ‘think of a person as the gender they identify as,’ so they're not even trying to control your speech. They're trying to control your thought. or, ‘if a trans person tells you that you your language is incorrect, you must apologise.’ I mean, on anything, they don't even re limit the scope. You know, ‘you must apologise and defer to their usage’ So there's just sort of crazy liberal policies popping up all over the place.
I think that the other thing is it's getting its own momentum. Like the sectors, probably, I imagine there's all these in-house EDI newsletters where people talk about best practice and then everyone else looks and thinks, oh, they've got a policy that says this I'd better get a policy. We'd better get a policy that says this. You know, it's crazy.
Raquel: If you could explain to our audience, what is the Stonewall Diversity Champion Scheme? My question to you is: Do you think that it is a Ponzi scheme?
Kathleen Stock: I'm not sure I fully understand what Ponzi scheme is, but it's definitely a bit of a racket in that, they've persuaded universities to pay them thousands and thousands of pounds in cash strapped times to then be instructed, almost to the letter about what's to put in their policies, how inclusive to be. Stonewall tells universities, things like, speakers that come to campus and are critical of gender identity, make trans students feel unsafe and universities just apparently lap this up. Not really noticing that it's in direct conflict with their own academic mission and which is partly involves a duty to test controversial opinions.
It gives the universities branding and they can say we're a Stonewall Diversity Champion. And then it also allows them then to enter into this competition, the top employers, the top 100 employers network, which means they have to jump through even more hoops. They have to show that they have a really inclusive environment, which means churning out communications explaining exactly how inclusive they are for trans people in particular.
Of course, in theory, Stonewall should be demanding that all the groups, LG and B and T are treated equally, but that doesn't seem to be how it goes, trans stuff dominates in Stonewall's remit, it seems to be almost exclusively trans and their material that they produce is very much focused on gender identity and self-ID and related matters. So, you know, you don't mention the word lesbian very often.
Raquel: Yes. And there's an element of class in all of this, I was reading that bit and I've read the document that you produce called Trans Policies in UK Universities, some highlights, and you've been collecting all of this policies. so you read it and you have such an urge to just think this is just too bizarre to be real. Then I thought about, well, where are the policies for students who are working class and are on benefits?
You know, where are the policies on single mothers who are trying to get a degree? My mom is a university professor at the state university in the Dominican Republic and she was doing that. She was raising us. She was trying to get a PhD at another university.
You have so many women who are just in this state of perpetual exhaustion, going through these systems, and it's like, where are the policies for women like that? Where are the policies for women who have this material conditions that make her life so difficult? Meanwhile, you have policy after policy, after policy that is dedicated to these very small section of the population and that when you compare how those issues are invisibilised, then it becomes infuriating.
Kathleen Stock: Completely infuriating.
I don't think universities even know how many trans students they have so that they certainly should know how many women's students they have. Of course. you're right that those policies don't exist in most universities that I know of. And in fact, there are no equivalent policies for any minority.
So, you know, in many, many trans policies across a UK university sector, it says something like, trans people will be represented positively in the curriculum. Now there is no such clause for black people or gay people or single mothers. You know, there's no clause that says single mothers will be represented positively in the curriculum. Nor should there be, to be honest, there shouldn't be any clause that says tells you in advance how to represent a particular group because of course that just chills the possibility of having difficult conversations about for instance, where to put trans women who are convicted criminals in prison or, there's lots of different conversations that aren't a simple matter of representing people positively.
It's just so irritating. And then when you add in the purely performative element of things like trans day of remembrance, where across campuses, vice chancellors light candles, and read out the names of south American sex workers who have died in the last year, which is a terrible, terrible thing, of course, but is not immediately relevant to the UK context where in the last two years that thankfully there have been no trans murders at all.
So I go into that in the book, you know, that you just wouldn't know if you listened to the average commemoration of trans day of remembrance in a UK university that all of the victims are overseas. You might think, well, you know, what's the harm, it's drawing attention to a really horrible phenomenon. And of course it is, but when you think about the demands on the vice chancellor's time, the fact that they are there commemorating trans day of remembrance, but you know, one woman dies every three days in the UK through domestic violence. And there's absolutely no ceremony for them on British campuses.
So it's performative as far as I'm concerned, it's frankly it's frivolous and performative and just designed to make them look virtuous.
Raquel: Yes. And then we get into some sort of the UK aspects of it, because when you were talking about the Yogyakarta Principles, you tackle this as a group of experts. And I yelled at the book and I said, self-defined experts, Kathleen.
Kathleen Stock: Where I'm taking everything at face value.
Raquel: I know this is all sort of, I am the expert on it therefore I draft this Principle. So when you read those Principles, you're like, yes, of course, why wouldn't people do that? But then you talk about the effects on women's sports and how you have these policies that go to the top of the Olympics Committee that says that, oh, as long as the International Olympic Committee says that trans women with a misaligned gender identity can compete in women's sports only if their testosterone levels have been suppressed via hormonal treatment, or other means to 10 nanomoles per litre or under for at least 12 months.
And then you say that testosterone level is still fixed to 12 times higher than the average level in females. And so confers an advantage. But the people who created that policy should know that, right?
Kathleen Stock: Yes. They should know that and they should know that going through a male puberty leaves you with on average longer limb length, faster twitch muscles, bigger lungs and so on. And so there's a range of benefits that do not get suppressed when you suppress testosterone and yes, they should know that. That's the less extreme version of the sporting policy.
The more extreme sporting policy which occurs in many amateur contexts is just that gender identity is enough. Like you don't have to have any testosterone suppression, you just have to have a female gender identity as a male to be able to compete against females and that's the policy in some university sports teams, and in various amateur contact sports.
I don't know what to say, except that people are under some sort of spell or they don't care or both because, you know, size and strength makes a difference in the context of sports. It makes a difference to women's safety and size and strength makes a difference to athletic performance. It's just absolutely blindingly obvious.
Raquel: There’s an element of this that is uncaring for women.
You know, there's an element of it that is just about not caring about the effects that these policies can have on women. So I remember a conversation that I had. We did a podcast with Linda Blade, who is a coach, a sports performance professional with a PhD in kinesiology in Canada. And she made a very important point. That is, you know, athletes, they have a very reduced time in which they can achieve sort of elite levels or they can achieve the top of their profession. So in an alternative universe, I am an early career academics and you are a professor, a full professor, but I have my whole life to be an academic if I wanted to. You, yourself can be an academic for as long as you want.
However, when you're an athlete, you have those peak years where you can achieve excellence. And that woman who lost a contest because her testosterone levels are not as high as someone else who is male competing against her, she will never get those years back. She will never get those very crucial moments of her career back. And there's a cruelty to it.
Kathleen Stock: Yeah, it's one of the things that makes me most enraged. I don't understand the thinking behind those people I know who look on and say, ‘well, you know, it's complicated,’ I think I cite someone who says this in the book.’ Maybe we should just give trans people this, you know, their lives are hard’ because it is just so callous.
The obvious assumption that these people must be making is that women's sports don't matter. And women aren't as good as men anyways so, you know, there's nothing really enjoyable about watching women's sports. They must think so. You know, what does it matter if we're watching faster, stronger bodies competing against them? I mean, genetically foster and stronger. It’s really, really enraging.
Part of the background here is too that some academics, a small group of academics giving this stuff its air of credential, making it look as if the science is there. And science has shown that there's no performance gap or whatever.
And most of them have never been near a sports track in their lives because their academics, we are not known for our athletic performance, me included. So it's even more annoying when you find people ruining women's sport who have never been interested in sport themselves.
I find that particularly infuriating.
Raquel: You mentioned in the book, how a lot of the scholars whose work are considered to be tenants of gender studies and gender theory, how a lot of them present very little data or evidence for the claims that they're making that are having a very drastic impact on policies.
You mentioned Butler, you say argues from a lofty height, metaphorically speaking from grand claims about concepts, language, reality, and thought generally and hardly ever any specific data about sex. But when you think about sex and the material reality of sex for women's health, for example, when it comes to taking into account sex as a biological variable, so that we can research diseases and illnesses, and the way that health issues manifest in female bodies versus male bodies there's a real issue going on there, but that is ignored by so much of the humanities.
And I remember from my experience going through the whole women and gender studies field, that there was this sort of criticism that the hard sciences ignored women and ignore the realities of marginalised people, but then it was a hard left then to say, well, therefore we will ignore science. And I think that may have been where the mistake was made.
Kathleen Stock: Yes, I mean, there's various philosophical critiques of science or the understanding of science. And some of them are really well taken obviously, but as in everything, you get extremes and I have never found the kind of feminist critiques of science that suggests that science is a sort of male constructed project in a way that means it has no benefit or sort of no objectivity or no success conditions independent of our constructions. I've never found that remotely convincing as a position.
Someone like Butler, as I say in the book, she's just not interested in the kind of low level detail of life issues. She's coming from a massive height, very abstract height. She's starting with premises that refer to the whole of language and the whole of reality, so that's not a detail or a view.
Back in the nineties, I was doing French literature at university and I used to go to seminars in French literature and literary theory and comparative literature. And they're fascinating. It's sort of a mixture of creative writing and psychoanalysis and philosophy, and it can sound really sexy and different, and there's all these great reversals and you think, maybe, you know, maybe upside down is the right way up. You know, they can really mess with your frameworks as it were, but the trouble is that somebody took them seriously and put it in real world policies that affect women. And I don't think a lot of it was ever supposed to get that far.
I don't know why people; the relevant people can't admit that it was never supposed to get that for.
Raquel: And you write in the book about the pressure within academia for novelty and how if you write how ‘simply repeat through an interesting points made by others,’ isn't enough to get a journal publication, or to make yourself a reputation you have to appear to do something new and original often, irrespective of whether that thing is ultimately worth doing.
And then when you tie that sort of pressure for novelty to just plain old misogyny you know, like I heard sometimes in my study, is the idea that, oh, you know, yes, women are trafficked, yes there's violence against women, yes, it's the same old, same old, a sort of idea that the issues that are affecting conditions for women are just kind of boring. Meanwhile, if I said, well, women can be cats, that's novel, you know, even though it's complete nonsense, but that's different, you know, and I think that a part of me just felt like reading your book, Material Girls, is this sort of an academic experience that has gone too far?
Kathleen Stock: Yes it definitely is. Academic feminists, I mean, you give me hope because you are working in gender studies and you clearly have your head screwed on and see what's going on, but most, maybe I should be more circumspect, many academic feminists have ruined, I wouldn't say ruined women's lives yet, but they have really not helped. And they are obsessed with issues that are frivolous, it's not just that they don't have the right answers. They stop other people from coming up with the right answers because they insist that the language has to be a certain way. And that you can't talk about this. You have to talk about that and you have to talk about it this way, the obsession with language is in itself decadent as hell, because most working class women and women in precarious economic situations, don't care that much about how things are called, they're more interested in conditions for survival and getting away from physical violence, real problems.
So academic feminism is just a middle-class kind of vanity project for many careerists and it shows.
Raquel: I meant to say that is such a shame, you know, because the purpose of women's studies, how it started, it was about, you know what, let's create a space in academia where we can talk and centre women, centre the issues relating to women that are affecting women.
Oh, you don't want to hear about women who are working class and experiencing all of this horrible discrimination in your little science departments. And we're going to create the departments where we talk lucidly about it. And obviously there's a criticism of that because some people are arguing, well, you just need that analysis to be transferred to be occupied in all departments within academia.
But in any case, the Yogyakarta Principles, and perhaps the Stonewall Diversity Scheme, it comes from a well-intended place, but now you look at everything that is happening and you ask yourself like, how did we get to this point? Because you end your book by saying: in order for us to fix this problem then we need to look at the causes of the problem.
In the UK we have women who are being assaulted, you have women who are being bullied or harassed. There's this climate of intimidation and fear. How did the UK get to this point?
Kathleen Stock: Again I think it's, it's going to be multi factorial and its background has lots of different causes partly, I know is my hobby horse, but you know, I can't under underestimate how deeply embedded trans activism is in UK institutions through the Stonewall schemes. EDI departments absolutely defer to Stonewall's conception of gender identity and its importance. And the fact it should be prioritised over sex at all costs.
So, that makes it very difficult for dissenting or definitely makes it more difficult for dissenting views to get purchased as it were, although we're obviously having some success now. So that's one thing.
I think within the universities, I think the project of women's studies departments was a really bold and noble one. It is just very sad to me that that project got derailed.
And I don't know, I feel, I would like to know what people working within women's studies would say if they were being honest and they felt they could talk, like, I would like to know what they said was the changes.
Partly it was a cultural shift, I think, in the nineties.
So, you know, universities don’t exist in a vacuum. If there's a worldwide cultural shift or a Western cultural shift, they will experience it too. So maybe there was a backlash against second wave feminism and maybe that manifests itself through the new theories that were then emerging and grabbed onto.
But you know, I'm not a historian. That's the thing. So what I want to see is more books about this and more analysis and a really healthy intellectual culture examining what has happened without oversimplifying or making it like good versus evil or some adolescent crap like that.
Raquel: A lot of what you mentioned in your book regarding gender identity theory and policy, it comes across as a rehashing of arguments made by Women's rights campaigners and within feminism and sort of repackaging it in a way that benefits the opposite of what those original theories were meant to be about.
For example, you talk about how women have gone through the history books and said, oh, well, if you talk about the founding fathers and you're not talking about how so many women also gave their lives fighting for the country, or if you talk about literature in X century, but you're not talking about the work of women, instead of pointing out where the gaps have been when it comes to women.
And you also talk about the example of how trans activists have also gone through the history books and said, well, you know, Joan of Arc, the famous warrior, well maybe she wasn't a woman after all, you know, she was a child a trans I don't know, non-binary? Well, okay. But she was not a woman.
Kathleen Stock: And Ann Lister
Raquel: Exactly a very famous lesbian woman in history as well. And when it comes to, for example, you mentioned the trans day of remembrance, you know, you have now International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. You have International Women's Day, but it's almost as if anything, that women have established and created for themselves, there has to be a counter to that. And queer theory feels a little bit like when you make a great meal and you put it in the table and you save some for later, it feels a little bit like you microwave those theories. it comes across as a little bit like that.
Kathleen Stock: I don't really tackle this in the book itself, I think, but it's something that does trouble me is how easy it has been for trans activism to take certain activist strategies within feminism and then subvert them. And as you say, end up with positions, which are anti woman, as far as I'm concerned, but without anyone really noticing, or at least without many people noticing.
So that does make me wonder whether the strategies themselves were good or successful or whether we need new strategies and one of them is for instance:
So I do talk in the book about standpoint epistemology, as it's used in trans activism, it's the idea that only trans people can speak about anything to do with being trans or anything to do with gender identity or what it is to be a trans woman and what it means and what policies should be there. And so on that only trans people can do that because they have the lived experience and that's relevant and other people don't.
That's very familiar to me because it's also made in feminism, men should not pronounce on women's experience and where men should not determine, policies that affect women, you know, so you can see the structural similarities, but it has made it really, really difficult rhetorically anyway, for women to get a foot in the door of those conversations about policies to do with trans people. Because of course they affect all of us.
So I don't know what the answer is there. I'm just noting that it has made me actually wonder about some of the feminist strategies themselves as well.
Raquel: And as always, you can see the good intention between the standpoint epistemology say and well, actually the people who live the realities should have a voice, but then when it applies to gender identity theory, women, well trans people and trans women have a right to speak, not only on the trans experience, but on women's experience, whereas women oftentimes not even allowed to speak about what they perceive to be their experiences as women.
So it's not a generous process for everyone
Kathleen Stock: It hasn't worked very well for women anyway. As usual with these things, there's the extreme position and then there's the more sensible less extreme position. And there's something true in the standpoint epistemology in the sense that we, if you're deciding what happens in policy or law in a way that affects a particular group of people, then you definitely need to listen, properly listen to what they're saying about how these policies and those might affect their lives. But you can't just outsource your brain as a policymaker to a few particular people and think, oh, these people stand for the whole group. That's, another mistake policy makers are making at the moment.
Most trans activists do not speak for all trans people. How could they, and you know, we both know there's lots of trans people out there who are very worried about what trans activists are demanding in their name.
Raquel: Which is something that Stonewall has been able to capitalise on very well.
You know, they say, oh, we are the voice for the trans people. You have voices of trans people who are saying, this has not been done. This is not something that I agree with. And those people tend get bullied and harassed.
I want to mention in January, 2021, you received an OBE for services to higher education. And I want to, I want to ask you about the context of this award. I think it's an award, and I want to ask you also about the response from some people in academia to that award. There were open letters written by philosophers, people in academic philosophy, for example, there were four people from the University of Bristol who signed that letter, denouncing you all four of them were male, and often times very senior males who were a young colleague.
But in any case, I wanted to know about your thought process about this. It came across as a very momentous time in your life. And your response to that?
Kathleen Stock: Well, yes. I mean, obviously I had absolutely no clue I was going to get an OBE and I still find it surreal It's not something you expect it's not something I've ever wanted either positively sort of identified as a life goal or anything like that, but I was pleased to get it because I thought it was symbolically important so I took it for the team as it were.
It was a sign that there are people within the establishment who have, I don't know, if not sympathy for my position or our position at least think, believe very firmly that we should be allowed to explore it intellectually. I think my OBE technically was for what I know it was for services to academic freedom and the way I've just sort of kept hammering on about how we really need to be able to discuss policy and law changes and medical treatments and so on in academic settings without being intimidated.
But, every time something like this happens, well, not that like, that's not that anything like that's ever happened before, but every time there's some kind of breakthrough as it were publicly for our movement, then there's always an even more sustained pushback isn't there.
It wasn't really a surprise to me that the academics would rally against me at that point. But I was a bit surprised the vitriol expressed in this open letter, that 600 of them signed. I found it quite difficult actually. In this open letter signed by all these philosophers, some of whom I know. They accused me of upholding the patriarchy and stopping life-saving medical treatment for people, it's all incredibly hyperbolic and not the way I would do things.
Raquel: I like how the four very senior male academics from the University of Bristol were accusing you of upholding the patriarchy.
Kathleen Stock: Well they would know. Yeah. I mean, I actually didn't go through the list and see everyone who signed it. I don't like finding out that people that I used to respect are witch hunting fools that, you know, it doesn't maybe feel good about the world, but I did see the founder signatures. fact I wrote to some of the founders signatures not that they ever replied, but, just saying, like, what are you on about like, this is just nonsense.
They misconstrued my actual view in the letter. It was just so obvious that many of them had really no idea what I think.
Raquel: They did not respond to you?
Kathleen Stock: One of them did, the others didn't. I may have told them not to. I mean, I may have said, you know, I don't expect your response. I wasn't looking to get into some prolonged discussion with them. I just w anted them to realise that in the heat of the performance, no doubt, they were full of endorphins showing the people around them that they are good people. I wanted them to know that stuff like that has a personal human cost to the person you were doing it to.
Raquel: Interesting. Because it goes to the core of this issue as well. You know, when you talked about those Brighton meetings and how they were activists, trans activists who were knocking on those windows, they have assaulted women, bullied women, harassed women, and it's almost as if in this policy conflict there is an element of dehumanising women to the point in which you don't see them as like ‘that's Kathleen, who is my colleague in philosophy and if I have a disagreement with her, then I should approach her maybe ask her out for coffee. Hey, Kathleen, let's talk about these things that you're saying.’
There's an element of the humanity of people and understanding that you're, you're talking about a person with feelings with family, with a context, with a background, that has completely been obliterated. Kathleen Stock becomes an object of derision. You read that open letter and it's just like they're talking about an object.
Kathleen Stock: I may have my faults, but I really don't feel that that hit home in terms of identifying my flaws. It's absolutely what you say. And I think that's partly because of the social performance development of a lot of this. I was also at the Brighton meeting where there were throwing water and banging on the windows and pushing us. People laid hands on me as I was trying to get into the building. And they're not relating to you at that point as an ordinary human being, but it's partly to show off to those around you, isn't it? And to take a picture, put on Instagram, to show, to demonstrate your virtuous credentials or your radical activist credentials, you know, that the people that signed that letter could gain social capital from those around them.
So in a way you're just a means to an end, I think often. It's really not about you. When I wrote to them and said, look, you didn't even get my view right. I imagine them sort of saying, oh, but that's not the point. Is it? The point is not to get your view, right. That's not why we were doing it. I'm not sure they would admit that to themselves. But I really think that must something like that is going on with all these open letters and filming yourself denouncing somebody for likes on Twitter, wherever.
Raquel: And that is why this is so dangerous. You know, the reason why I stepped up publicly and started speaking out about this issue is because my academic field is male violence against women and girls.
And what I was witnessing is the normalisation of the abuse of women. You know, dehumanising someone is always the first step to escalating the abuse. So there's something very dangerous going on there.
I wanted to ask you so, we started talking about your meeting with Women's Place UK in Brighton on the 16th of July, 2018. And the name of that meeting was A Woman's Place is Turning the Tide. Do you think that the tide is turning in academia?
Kathleen Stock: In academia? I'm not sure. I think in the wider world, turning maybe. Maybe it varies day to day. I don't know. I mean, a sign would be if Maya wins her appeal, that will be great.
If UK institutions declared that they were no longer going to participate in Stonewall schemes, but were going to find another way of implementing their responsibilities for equality, diversity and inclusion, that would be a big sign. And in the university sector, that is the sign I would take to be, to show some health.
If university stopped being trans activist organisations, cause that's what the effect of be they've become and withdrew to become more neutral facilitators of robust, healthy discussions about trans activism from both sides. That would be brilliant, but that's not what we're seeing. So I don't know.
Raquel: Yes. And precisely WPUK originated because they're saying there's a vacuum that had to be created by local city counsellors, by academic institutions. These meetings shouldn't be hosted by grassroots women who have care responsibilities and jobs and children and all these other things that they have to prioritise in their life. These should be conversations hosted within academia and within public spaces like city halls
Kathleen Stock: They should, but they're not, I mean, thank God for Women's Place. And I think the grassroots, I mean, I appreciate that there's a hell of a lot of work and stress and it's not fair, but there's power that comes from the grassroots.
You know, they can talk in a way that members of the Fawcett Society apparently can't, you know, so can FiLiA and they can. I don't know, they're just not in these sort of networks of third sector people who move from position to position within the charity sector and all know each other and, you know, pretty much share a worldview much of the time.
So I do think there's many benefits to the grassroots taking on that, that role. Cause they're just closer to the lives of ordinary women and they understand what's important to them and haven’t had their heads turned by crazy, highfalutin, French influenced theories, nothing wrong with the French obviously, but all theory or French inference there is, but you know what I mean.
Raquel: Yes. And I agree that it gives us a certain closeness and a liberty to speak, but then at the same time, you know, it's like you have all these women and we're just like constantly exhausted because we're doing the job that third sector had to be doing. That charities had to be doing that universities had to be doing, none of us have received a single penny for hosting those meetings.
I have not received a single cent for any article that I have written on this topic. Meanwhile, you have a whole profession that is dedicated to actually doing this job. So there's a class element going on.
Kathleen Stock: Yes, it's not fair. And if you look at the average number of Twitter likes that the official third sector women's organisations get versus women's place, it's they just don't seem to be capturing the public mood at all. So, I mean, I don't know how they're funded. I don't work in that sector, but there's definitely an imbalance. I agree.
Raquel: So, so going back to your book, Material Girls, Why Reality Matters for Feminism. So it reads as an academic, a woman who is making a very determined effort to present the arguments as they are. It's not a campaigner’s voice. It is a woman trying to explain this is what the issues are. And then you state your opinion on all of these sort of the branches of the conflict. So it reads to me as if you're speaking to the, ‘what the hell is going on,’ crowd. So it's an excellent book from my point of view.
What's your pitch to your critics? What would you say to the people who, to all those academics who signed that letter, who may be by some miracle that happened to be listening to this podcast?
How could you sell your book to someone who thinks you’re some sort of horrible bigot?
Kathleen Stock: I don't know if this sounds defensive, but I don't care anymore what most people think about me. They all supposed to be the clever ones. If they can't work it out for themselves, then I can't help them. So I'm not interested in defending myself anymore against the sort of crazy stupid adhominems and mad philosophical moves that people who are paid to think for a living make against me, but, you know, in terms of speaking to the wider public and there's going to be stuff here that radical feminist disagree with too.
There's lots for everyone to disagree with in this book I think.
Raquel: So how would you pitch the book then to a member of the public who is at the library looking at this beautiful book. How would you draw them in?
Kathleen Stock: I would say that if you're confused at all about, and who wouldn't be, about the sudden wealth of references all over the place to gender and people putting pronouns in their email signatures and the row of a self-ID and toilets and TERFs and all the rest of it. If you're confused about what the hell is going on there, then this is an attempt to talk you through it. It’s an opinionated attempt but it gives people a map, I think. So they can then try to make it as clear as possible and as accessible as possible. It just allows people to kind of organise the ideas a bit.
So that next time they see something they don't understand in the newspaper or at their work, next time their HR department tells them that they have to go on some kind of training, they might understand the background a bit more. it is a feminist book. It's not aimed at people who already know what they think very strongly and consider themselves radical feminist because I don't think they're going to learn an awful lot from this book.
Raquel: Yes, and I really appreciate the point about accessibility because as you were mentioning, it is a feminist book, but it is not a feminist book that is trying to convince your ‘I am the smartest person that you've ever met.’
And my arguments are enough to, well, to the general public. And that's how I demonstrate my intellectual prowess, which is something that has been harmful to feminism and to women's rights. You know, we've talked about a lot of philosophers instead of older academics in this conversation, but there has been this tendency of: if I make my arguments sound as complicated and difficult to grasp to the ordinary person, then that demonstrate how important and intelligent I am.
And I hope that your book and others like it that are coming out. I hope that what they do is that they bring back that language that is accessible, that is trying to reach out. I don't know my grandmother, my mom, my sister, my best friends, women who are not in the movement, but who need to know this argument.
Kathleen Stock: Yes, absolutely. I'm so glad you said that, that was exactly what I wanted and I think it's my skillset hopefully without that sounding arrogant. I've always tried in my whole philosophical career to make my ideas clear to myself, which usually means making them clear to other people or trying to.
So, I'm hoping that even though it looks like it's complicated material, it's actually not even that complicated when you break it down. A lot of times academics just making themselves sound self-important.
Raquel: The final question, having spent some years in immersed in this topic, do you miss the philosophy of fiction and imagination?
Kathleen Stock: No, not really actually, because I spent a lot longer than that, but what I do have ambitions to do is to move beyond telling people that sex is binary and lesbians are same sex attracted females. I've got bigger ambitions than that. So I really would like to write an another book. I really think that feminism is a very exciting at the moment and we've got new challenges to face, technology, the environment, all of that stuff.
Other feminists I know are thinking about this too, but we need to not necessarily just take the second wave and run with it. I think there's many aspects of the second wave I disagree with. So I'd like to really get into that stuff and maybe try and contribute to enriched conversation about the future of feminism that isn't just sex and gender.
Raquel: Thank you very, very much, Kathleen.