Hello, nice to see this here. I wouldn't want to be so presumptuous as to offer any opinions before you have advanced any thesis, so I'll leave it at that! Looking forward to it.
I’m so thrilled that you’re doing this! I stumbled across you around the time you received your OBE and Biden signed the executive order to allow male bodied athletes to compete in women’s sports. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and have followed closely ever since. X
I'm absolutely delighted to find your substack, Kathleen. I enjoy your writing very much. Thank you for everything you are doing for women and for promoting thought, discussion, sanity, and intelligence.
Look forward to your views esp on how formerly solid academic methodologies failed. Is ‘standpoint theory’ (‘standpoint epistemology’) an explicitly ‘feminist’ theory? It appears to draw on post-structuralism. I’m not aware that it influenced (or was influenced by) Judith But*er. But it, or something like it, seems to have taken hold in many ppl & places that were once more or less ‘Liberal-enlightenment’ (and coping with post-enlightenment) and turned them into self-appointed arbiters and agents of ‘social justice’, with apparent consequences for their exercise of judgement (and everyone else’s judgement). I understand Prof Sandra Harding is one of the movers of Standpoint Theory. In one of Harding’s talks / lectures on YouTube she self-describes as a ‘recovering logical positivist’. If mid-20th century furore over Positivism (‘Methodenstreit’ etc) had such energy because science had such prestige, then I think there is a ‘prestige’ issue going on. Science doesn’t confer prestige as it did, but there is the prestige of ‘being just’ and ‘progressive’ (which apparently is equated now with ‘advancing human rights’ with some notion of ‘human’ and some notion of ‘right’).
Hooray! I'm very excited to read more of your writing, and thrilled that you've started a substack.
As a distant-future endeavor, I'd love to see some investigation into how other Stupid Stories (and there are several in circulation in the US at the moment) wriggled their way into academia, primary schooling, and public policy, and perhaps what underlying themes they share.
I'm absolutely here for the questions you'll be asking in this substack about the rise of the stupid story and how it has infected feminism and our institutions. It's the question I keep asking myself too. Understanding and unravelling it is vital for the future. I want to do some proper academic research on this area too, at PhD level - so any tips from Kathleen or anyone else here about how to pin it down would be welcome. First thoughts are to conduct oral histories of feminist leaders in a particular small city and try to draw out the factors that led them down either the TRA or GC route. Age obviously, so perhaps more interesting to focus on second wave feminists. Alternative suggestions / directions that I could focus on to contribute to those questions are very welcome.
I'm probably a bit jaundiced and don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I really wonder if this sort of research can be done in the context of most UK universities at the moment. If you want to do it, it will be essential to find a supervisor who will support it properly. The Open University has a gender-critical research network, so that's a good place to start, perhaps https://www.open.ac.uk/health-wellbeing/research-themes/gender-critical-research-network
"Understanding and unravelling it is vital for the future."
Amen to that. I wish Kathleen well in those "unravellings", in tracking down the "seeds of that fiasco", in "rebooting a female-focused political movement". Though it seems something of a Herculean task – cleaning out the Augean stables in particular – and not something to complete in a fortnight.
However, I'm not entirely sure that she's really up to the task as she seems to have a number of "untenable prior commitments" of her own that may well preclude an honest run at it. Somewhat apropos of which, see this essay by Amia Srinivasan, something of a feminist philosopher herself, which may speak to the roots of that problem:
"Does feminist philosophy rest on a mistake?
The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy. ...."
No doubt there's some justification for that "project", even if, as one of the flies in the ointment of that "reboot", "the Patriarchy" is less a tangible reality with causative effect and more a reification than not.
But the problem there is the tendency – typical of such "social engineering projects" – to twist facts all out of shape to comport with "prior commitments", with ideological dogma. The paradigmatic case of that being Lysenkoism, the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable."
For a fairly comprehensive survey of that problem, see this essay by Marco Del Giudice, of the University of New Mexico, on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
"Thus, egalitarianism and desire for social change toward equality go hand in hand with a social constructionist, 'blank slate' perspective on human nature .... The problem is that psychological traits arise from the interplay between social and biological processes .... Unfortunately, this [sex/gender] terminological fusion may end up deepening the conceptual confusion ...."
However, even more damning is the fundamental incompatibility of and incogruence between the biological and the sociological definitions for the sexes:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
And, rather unfortunately, Kathleen, and many other feminists and fellow-travelers, has swallowed – hook, line, and sinker – that "patchwork definition" which leads to a "risible absurdity" of her own that "biological sex in humans is immutable".
Can't see that that "reboot" stands much of a chance without some honest effort to address that contradiction.
I just discovered this, via UnHerd. I'm sure I'll comment again when I've read everything you've written here, but for now I just want to say: I think your book was one of the most interesting things I read last year - thank you for writing and publishing it. I'm happy that you have a substack. Your writing is refreshingly clear and forthright.
Also, I think Substack is the best thing to happen to the internet since YouTube. I used to be a Twitter addict, but I quit last year. I'm proud of myself, but I have now developed a Substack addiction instead (which is a lot more expensive!).
I see the Kindle version of Material Girls is currently 99p. I hope a lot of people read it, buy it and think about it. Your other book, Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination looks interesting too (it's not 99p though . . .).
Can I post some links I think you might find interesting?
are both by young women who detransitioned. They have uncannily similar theories about how social media attracts young women with certain personality traits towards identifying as transgender.
Thank you so much for those links. I love Lacroisz, and will look at the others with pleasure. My other book was firmly written for academia not the general public, back when I cared what they thought :D
Good for you Kathleen! It has at this point become important to have a sociological focus on how all this happened apparently so swiftly and devastatingly that most of us hardly even saw it coming before it was suddenly almost too late to stop it or even question it. Most of us who respond to blogs such as these are already long past the "This is a pile of BS" stage and don't really need one another's confirmation on that matter. We need strategy and action to prevent the BS becoming ever more entrenched policy, and to reverse the harms it is doing in our society. Understanding how it all happened will be vital to the effort to put a stop to it.
One of the oft cited elements is the piggy-backing phenomenon, which enabled the transgender ideology to conveniently latch on to the gay rights crusade in true cuckoo style, so that the unsuspecting public in seeing the legitimacy of gay rights automatically extended the welcome to trans "rights" failing to scrutinize these effictively enough to be able to see how essentially different a program it was which was being peddled. The consequent and treacherous back-stabbing the gay and especially lesbian movement has suffered now the transgender ideology has established itself, cannot fail to give politically critical thinking persons food for thought along the lines of a coup d'état.
However this must have been quite consciously and carefully planned - it didn't "just happen" coincidentally, and we know now of the Denton's Law firm's 'secret' document which instructed pressure groups on deployment of this kind of strategy. Still, that wouldn't be enough in itself without some pretty solid financial backing. We need to follow the money in the last analysis if we're going to get to the bottom of "how this all happened so quickly" behind our backs.
When I read you describe yourself as a recovering philosopher I knew yours would be essays I would enjoy. Many years agp when I was an addictions counselor a speaker at a conference introduced himself as a recovering social worker. Not being in addiction recovery myself I had felt a little insecure in the field. His self-introduction helped me understand that most of us, if we are lucky, are recovering from sometning.
I think the "stupid story" is a natural extension of Identity Politics as a whole. The idea that equality and equity can be achieved by universal inclusion based on a person's perceived identity. The dangerous implications of this are easily seen in the Democratic Party in the U.S., the members of which speak in a "feel your pain" language, and "embrace diversity" as evidence that they care about actual equality and equity. In this way, Identity politics obscures the reality of economic inequality and equity. I think Trans Theory is an extension of this obfuscation. At first glance it appears that if we just embrace it all will be well. But just as broader identity politics hides the reality of the economic reality of the working class and the poor, trans theory hides the lived reality of women and girls.
This makes me so happy. Thank you for doing this. Looking forward to your posts and being able to communicate freely x
Hello, nice to see this here. I wouldn't want to be so presumptuous as to offer any opinions before you have advanced any thesis, so I'll leave it at that! Looking forward to it.
I’m so thrilled that you’re doing this! I stumbled across you around the time you received your OBE and Biden signed the executive order to allow male bodied athletes to compete in women’s sports. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and have followed closely ever since. X
I'm absolutely delighted to find your substack, Kathleen. I enjoy your writing very much. Thank you for everything you are doing for women and for promoting thought, discussion, sanity, and intelligence.
Thank you so much for everything you've done and continue to do Kathleen. You are an something else. Delighted to subscribe!
Look forward to your views esp on how formerly solid academic methodologies failed. Is ‘standpoint theory’ (‘standpoint epistemology’) an explicitly ‘feminist’ theory? It appears to draw on post-structuralism. I’m not aware that it influenced (or was influenced by) Judith But*er. But it, or something like it, seems to have taken hold in many ppl & places that were once more or less ‘Liberal-enlightenment’ (and coping with post-enlightenment) and turned them into self-appointed arbiters and agents of ‘social justice’, with apparent consequences for their exercise of judgement (and everyone else’s judgement). I understand Prof Sandra Harding is one of the movers of Standpoint Theory. In one of Harding’s talks / lectures on YouTube she self-describes as a ‘recovering logical positivist’. If mid-20th century furore over Positivism (‘Methodenstreit’ etc) had such energy because science had such prestige, then I think there is a ‘prestige’ issue going on. Science doesn’t confer prestige as it did, but there is the prestige of ‘being just’ and ‘progressive’ (which apparently is equated now with ‘advancing human rights’ with some notion of ‘human’ and some notion of ‘right’).
Loved your book. Love your Substack. More please!
Hooray! I'm very excited to read more of your writing, and thrilled that you've started a substack.
As a distant-future endeavor, I'd love to see some investigation into how other Stupid Stories (and there are several in circulation in the US at the moment) wriggled their way into academia, primary schooling, and public policy, and perhaps what underlying themes they share.
I'm absolutely here for the questions you'll be asking in this substack about the rise of the stupid story and how it has infected feminism and our institutions. It's the question I keep asking myself too. Understanding and unravelling it is vital for the future. I want to do some proper academic research on this area too, at PhD level - so any tips from Kathleen or anyone else here about how to pin it down would be welcome. First thoughts are to conduct oral histories of feminist leaders in a particular small city and try to draw out the factors that led them down either the TRA or GC route. Age obviously, so perhaps more interesting to focus on second wave feminists. Alternative suggestions / directions that I could focus on to contribute to those questions are very welcome.
I'm probably a bit jaundiced and don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I really wonder if this sort of research can be done in the context of most UK universities at the moment. If you want to do it, it will be essential to find a supervisor who will support it properly. The Open University has a gender-critical research network, so that's a good place to start, perhaps https://www.open.ac.uk/health-wellbeing/research-themes/gender-critical-research-network
Liz,
"Understanding and unravelling it is vital for the future."
Amen to that. I wish Kathleen well in those "unravellings", in tracking down the "seeds of that fiasco", in "rebooting a female-focused political movement". Though it seems something of a Herculean task – cleaning out the Augean stables in particular – and not something to complete in a fortnight.
However, I'm not entirely sure that she's really up to the task as she seems to have a number of "untenable prior commitments" of her own that may well preclude an honest run at it. Somewhat apropos of which, see this essay by Amia Srinivasan, something of a feminist philosopher herself, which may speak to the roots of that problem:
"Does feminist philosophy rest on a mistake?
The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy. ...."
https://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1468/Research_files/Does%20Feminist%20Philosophy_KCL%20talk.pdf
No doubt there's some justification for that "project", even if, as one of the flies in the ointment of that "reboot", "the Patriarchy" is less a tangible reality with causative effect and more a reification than not.
But the problem there is the tendency – typical of such "social engineering projects" – to twist facts all out of shape to comport with "prior commitments", with ideological dogma. The paradigmatic case of that being Lysenkoism, the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable."
For a fairly comprehensive survey of that problem, see this essay by Marco Del Giudice, of the University of New Mexico, on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
Of particular note therefrom:
"Thus, egalitarianism and desire for social change toward equality go hand in hand with a social constructionist, 'blank slate' perspective on human nature .... The problem is that psychological traits arise from the interplay between social and biological processes .... Unfortunately, this [sex/gender] terminological fusion may end up deepening the conceptual confusion ...."
However, even more damning is the fundamental incompatibility of and incogruence between the biological and the sociological definitions for the sexes:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
And, rather unfortunately, Kathleen, and many other feminists and fellow-travelers, has swallowed – hook, line, and sinker – that "patchwork definition" which leads to a "risible absurdity" of her own that "biological sex in humans is immutable".
Can't see that that "reboot" stands much of a chance without some honest effort to address that contradiction.
I just discovered this, via UnHerd. I'm sure I'll comment again when I've read everything you've written here, but for now I just want to say: I think your book was one of the most interesting things I read last year - thank you for writing and publishing it. I'm happy that you have a substack. Your writing is refreshingly clear and forthright.
Also, I think Substack is the best thing to happen to the internet since YouTube. I used to be a Twitter addict, but I quit last year. I'm proud of myself, but I have now developed a Substack addiction instead (which is a lot more expensive!).
Your old personal website - https://kathleenstock.com/ - has a LOT of good stuff.
I see the Kindle version of Material Girls is currently 99p. I hope a lot of people read it, buy it and think about it. Your other book, Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination looks interesting too (it's not 99p though . . .).
Can I post some links I think you might find interesting?
I get a similar feeling from your writing as from this pseudonymous blogger's writing: http://unremediatedgender.space/about/
This substack: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/
and this substack: https://funklife.substack.com/
are both by young women who detransitioned. They have uncannily similar theories about how social media attracts young women with certain personality traits towards identifying as transgender.
Thank you so much for those links. I love Lacroisz, and will look at the others with pleasure. My other book was firmly written for academia not the general public, back when I cared what they thought :D
Good for you Kathleen! It has at this point become important to have a sociological focus on how all this happened apparently so swiftly and devastatingly that most of us hardly even saw it coming before it was suddenly almost too late to stop it or even question it. Most of us who respond to blogs such as these are already long past the "This is a pile of BS" stage and don't really need one another's confirmation on that matter. We need strategy and action to prevent the BS becoming ever more entrenched policy, and to reverse the harms it is doing in our society. Understanding how it all happened will be vital to the effort to put a stop to it.
One of the oft cited elements is the piggy-backing phenomenon, which enabled the transgender ideology to conveniently latch on to the gay rights crusade in true cuckoo style, so that the unsuspecting public in seeing the legitimacy of gay rights automatically extended the welcome to trans "rights" failing to scrutinize these effictively enough to be able to see how essentially different a program it was which was being peddled. The consequent and treacherous back-stabbing the gay and especially lesbian movement has suffered now the transgender ideology has established itself, cannot fail to give politically critical thinking persons food for thought along the lines of a coup d'état.
However this must have been quite consciously and carefully planned - it didn't "just happen" coincidentally, and we know now of the Denton's Law firm's 'secret' document which instructed pressure groups on deployment of this kind of strategy. Still, that wouldn't be enough in itself without some pretty solid financial backing. We need to follow the money in the last analysis if we're going to get to the bottom of "how this all happened so quickly" behind our backs.
When I read you describe yourself as a recovering philosopher I knew yours would be essays I would enjoy. Many years agp when I was an addictions counselor a speaker at a conference introduced himself as a recovering social worker. Not being in addiction recovery myself I had felt a little insecure in the field. His self-introduction helped me understand that most of us, if we are lucky, are recovering from sometning.
I think the "stupid story" is a natural extension of Identity Politics as a whole. The idea that equality and equity can be achieved by universal inclusion based on a person's perceived identity. The dangerous implications of this are easily seen in the Democratic Party in the U.S., the members of which speak in a "feel your pain" language, and "embrace diversity" as evidence that they care about actual equality and equity. In this way, Identity politics obscures the reality of economic inequality and equity. I think Trans Theory is an extension of this obfuscation. At first glance it appears that if we just embrace it all will be well. But just as broader identity politics hides the reality of the economic reality of the working class and the poor, trans theory hides the lived reality of women and girls.