SDP Talk with Professor Kathleen Stock, Why Reality Matters

something that biological women can be men and that biological men can be lesbians until a few years ago these claims would have sounded quite odd but today they're widely asserted and widely accepted in our institutions indeed if you challenge them in a modern University you can expect some sort of backlash journalists and others have had their say but to properly scrutinize these ideas you need a philosopher so I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr Kathleen stock a philosopher in the western analytic tradition and the author of an important book Material Girls why reality matters for feminine uh so Kathleen welcome to thanks swtalk um so there's a lot in this there's lots of talk about I want to talk about the job of philosophy first um so Brewers make beer Bakers make bread what do philosophers do um I'm gonna make mistakes or learn from their own mistakes um philosophers make theories but they're not scientific theories they're not designed to um predict or explain empirical evidence in quite the same way as scientists make theories um they're more theories about deep abstract issues for which there probably isn't any certainly isn't any um overwhelming empirical evidence one way or the other like what is meaning what is truth often in analytic tradition their their questions about Concepts the limits of Concepts um and how to define happiness or Justice or art um or what a scientific law is so um it's quite difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't do it and I think that the best way of learning is probably just reading some philosophy and then you're sort of doing it or doing or yeah or trying to do it I think I mean it's certainly something it asks questions that are of interest to many people but not everybody has the capacity to answer them I think that's okay I mean pretty narrow skill set what I was looking for was really sort of looking at distinctions because I think that's what philosophers do make distinguishes being one thing and another and types and organize things into categories they definitely do a lot of that um maybe the distinctions they make are not ones that ordinary language makes and then they usually need an argument about why their distinctions are more important or sometimes they're just kind of looking at the way language works and saying actually this shows us that this isn't quite like that I mean it sounds when you in your introduction I mean most people don't need philosophy to tell them men can't be lesbians it's pretty much well it's still into the concepts yeah yeah no it should yeah you know unfortunately some some philosophers have monkeyed about with uh people's ideas there and therefore another philosopher needs to come in and tell them that uh don't believe the first lot yeah but it's what you ain't you in the analytic tradition you're aiming at rigor and you're trying to get your thoughts ordered and you're trying to get things in the right place aren't you so uh classification of if we're going to do some work on this table it's it's got four sides uh you know and it's got four legs it can be a member of entities with four legs like cats and dogs but it's not a cat and dog so yeah you're just making mistake I mean those yes a lot of this is going to sound like stating the bleeding obvious but the the question um the more the more sort of traditional philosophical question about table would be like is there you know is this table uh a real independently existing object in the world or is it a product of a mind the yeah um in some way like maybe it's secondary what we call secondary properties like the green cover um in some sense that's produced that sensitive station of green is produced in in um uh with cooperation from our nervous system and our Optical systems and um well that's therefore there's some kind of mind-dependent quality about it you know so there's a lot of stuff about the mind and the world and the interface that's that's a good one to bring up actually because I am actually colorblind yes so yes there you go it's plastic example yeah so it is yes it's John Locker so he his primary qualities are the tables the table tops solidity or squareness or whatever it is and that doesn't matter what you think it doesn't matter what I see it still is there that's that's it and the greenness is perceiver dependent so yeah like theoretically can't see it you can I guess yeah and that you know animals have different kind of social systems yeah so it's about yeah so the important thing there is to in terms of where we're going to go in this discussion is that things to defend the realistic view you know uh to defend truth something has to correspond with facts and on your realistic view it can it can exist independently of you and it doesn't matter what you think it doesn't certainly doesn't matter what your opinion is um I don't know about what doesn't matter what you think it certainly doesn't matter what an individual thinks yeah that's what I mean um but I mean in order to get a sense of where I'm going in that book you need a sense of the opposition as it were and in philosophy you often need to be to know who your enemy is argumentatively in order to give the thing some kind of drama so the opposition are people who think that everything um including the table and atoms and anything you can think of um is socially constructed by through human intellectual behavior and I'm saying well no no there are you know there is I don't I'm not I'm not naive about it obviously the Mind contributes quite a lot to our understanding on our perception of the world as we've just demonstrated um but there are still things that exist before us and will exist after us that our minds are kind of latching on to um and we either get those things right or sort of right or we get them very wrong but rightness and wrongness are determined part by the fit partly between their thoughts and it's a sense of fit yes so social constructivists they do have some I mean some meaning uh is is formed that way isn't it you know the sort of tennis ball example if you introduce the tennis ball to someone that know anything about tennis it wouldn't have very much meaning but if to us it does have a sort of socially constructed thing the the tennis ball is a tennis ball right yeah I mean I'm not denying the existence of of social meaning in the sense of resonance connotations um communicative ideas that can be can communicate about the things but social constructionism as I just introduced is much much more radical yeah you know we can't there's nothing there's nothing intelligible um that's mind independent yeah so I mean there's there's more there's some sophisticated articulations of that and then there's some very unsophisticated articulations of that so I'm not I'm not saying it's all uninteresting or terrible but the way it comes into the sex and gender debate is suddenly people get very specific about Womanhood and they and manhood to some extent but more Womanhood you know and they say that and and indeed being female or male there is no such thing as biological sex sex is just a social construction ignoring the fact that throughout the natural world there's this you know enormously important division between the male uh species male uh exemplars of a species and the female it just seems yeah it's not even it's not even a rebellious position that is to me it's um just wrong it's it's pretty um I find it odd because it as I say in the book fair enough be a social constructionist if you want but most socialist constructivists um are still sort of happy to acknowledge the reality of the things they think are socially constructed but what's really peculiar about this move about femaleness and Womanhood is that they not only say it's socially constructed but they want to say it doesn't really exist and that's and they're going to find it and actually as an intellect there's a distinction isn't it between an intellectual exercise of being it's like being an ultimate um skeptic about everything which philosophers do a lot and you know but then they're not skeptical about their their dinner later on at night or or is he in hacking so who wrote one of the books on exactly yeah you're not you still get on the airplane you still get on the airplane because you're fairly yeah and it's going to be yeah and it's not social socially constructed it's physics I mean yeah so in that sense these people who really the Die Hard zealots who say sex is a spectrum or a signed at Birth or whatever they mean they're in really bad faith because they still know which people get pregnant yes and they still might even take precautions you know of course just stop those people getting pregnant yeah or want those people to get pregnant you know so that's a little bit like because in economics economists talk about uh in a stated stated preference don't they and then reveal preference which is often different and then politics you get well exactly middle class liberals profess liberalism and their stated preference in terms of where they want to live is quite different so they we get the truth we get the reality through the behavior through behaviorist about belief then you can say they don't really be believe um what they're saying and in fact you can see that in a different way because they always know which sex to pick on yeah yeah yeah that's right um I want to get into some of the ideas in the book in a sec but I just want to before we finish on philosophy itself um how you appear to sort of be you are the most prominent figure in philosophy making this point I think well there's not that many of us no yeah but also why I mean you know because I how well or badly as as British philosophy done in this uh a lot of people hiding that yes um I think the thing is to try and be charitable too a lot of the British philosophers who stay away from this stuff the philosophy involved in the enemy camp is so bad that it would almost be beneath them to get involved with it at an abstract level I mean she's getting their hands dirty yeah I mean like why would you unless the political context demanded it why would you spend a book explaining to people that there's females and males and you know you can't change sex we're not clownfish you know that sort of thing I mean it just seems a very uh uninteresting work to the average philosopher but there's also the fact that there's a very vocal small group of um they would call themselves feminist philosophers um who are big on social media and will immediately identify anyone who says the things I say as transphobic and that's not very pleasant and philosophers don't like conflict in that sense so um is there some job protection here as well I mean you know literally if people yeah well I mean there are likely to be made yes at a junior level there's definitely job protection because I know I personally know quite a few young philosophers who think this is all absolute nonsense but I'm very nervous of engaging with it publicly because they think that it means they won't get a job and you know there's hardly any jobs in philosophy anyway um and once you do get in on the ladder then you've got promotions coming up and you've got colleagues that you want to get on with and because this is such a hot button issue and and in other departments it can be you know the whole department could be rabidly trans activist particularly if you've got gender studies Department nearby it just makes your life difficult and most people don't want their lives to be difficult yeah I can see that I I it's it's disappointing I mean there's one other sort of charge a much broader one which which people have made which is that you know philosophy at any age just um represents the going political view of going social View and you know so there's no on that okay there's no there's no real progress man there's no real uh attempt to to get at the truth Innovative Commons you just it changes like the fashion in hats well it's very it's true of some philosophers and particularly um given the system which encourages you to well forces you to publish every year um and you've got to always do something original so you've got to look at sort of uh logical space as it were or conceptual space and say okay there's this bit here that nobody's argued for okay right I'll give this a go but it's very close to this position so you know it's sort of in this safe ballpark you're not off here you know so let's bring down the whole edifice so you're tinkering around yeah with existing views and you can get an article out of it in a good Journal well that's a tick for your CV I mean it's very it's not we're not talking yeah sitting around in the in the uh Agora yes yeah anymore we're talking about being forced to publish there is actually I mean I mentioned before we picked off that I'm kind of curious but the there isn't anything new in a sense in this you get I think epicurisk over a speech of colophon uh third Century BC where he doubted the existence of gods the gods there was I think some people were killed now he nearly lost his life he's very young never did that again went off to Athens formulated different formulation which was that the gods existed they didn't do anything there so that's perfect that's a perfect formulation never they're not interested in us yeah so I don't genuinely believe he believed that well there's bits in David Hume where you can see that he's he's definitely trying to temper his atheism for the audience we see all the time but what you see these days I mean maybe this is always thus is people basically especially in I see it specifically in political philosophy and specifically in gender studies and feminist and philosophy they're basically taking the conclusion that Tumblr has produced or you know or their students have produced um I.E trans women are women for instance taking that and it was their starting point and going okay now what complicated metaphysical apparatus can I bring in to show this is true but the met the the impetus is just nakedly to get the right answer the socially acceptable obviously that will get them some Kudos but then it's not yes they're not just in this academic discipline all academic Edition disciplines dredging P hacking happens people you know so yeah yeah it's a bit disappointing it is disappointing but it is the world we live in yeah yeah I know so let's let's crack on and uh and go into some of the claims of the book so I mean obviously people are aware of this this sort of Central uh thing in in Upper device to some extent is you know what is a woman what makes a woman what is a clincher in there you know some people take a very economical view which is basically mine which is it's chromosomes it's the easiest most economic you've taken even more economical view if not chromosomes yeah because um you know there are males and females plants that don't have our chromosomes it's uh it's being on a developmental Pathway to produce large gametes Yeah in our cases you have trees yeah you could you could you have you you outline them in the book three different approaches to that but anyway oh it is an ultra economical way and then I realize you've got intersex people as well but that's one way and then the another way that is popular now is to say that it's all about gender identity whatever that is and I find it for a start I I genuinely find it hard to get across the concept many people wouldn't have it wouldn't have occurred to them where they have a gender identity so you you set out the basic claims of trans ideology in the book and you've got four so the first one is that everyone has a gender identity a second one sometimes gender identity doesn't match biological sex well I would say that's probably true I mean isn't it isn't that yeah that is true yeah but not but not the first one not everyone has one that you obviously have to Define what you mean by gender identity but there are some people who don't feel you know strongly feel in some sense they're more identified with the opposite sex and their own sex and that's the difficulty so you while you know biological sex is concrete and material and uh gender identity is not it's extremely difficult to Define and if you're going to have 70 different generators it's almost impossible I don't well that's the extra step that you know initially the idea of identity took its context from biological sex so you either had supposedly a gender identity which fitted with your own biological sex or you had one that fitted with the opposite sex or maybe at the limit you had one which fitted with neither those those were the options so you were a bit you're ambiguous you were sort of androgynousy where you felt androgynous or you felt masculine or you felt feminine um then people started to add in extra gender identities um like being um gender fluid like one day of this and the next day you're that or agenda you don't have any gender which is in fact most people so they sort of took the absence of a feeling of gender identity as a positive attribute um and from then on it just spiraled based on this is obviously no no science no scientist in a lab is coming up with this stuff it's basically popular culture it's just like memeing yeah stuff all over the place it comes from Tumblr it comes from teenagers mucking about on the internet but um this very weird moment where people are taking that putting it into University policies yeah yeah and it's it's astonishing how how you know it reinforces the view that uh one of the most important words in the English language is no yes and they don't they you know institutions and other people have seem to be unable to do it but it's still I found it an extremely difficult concept and it partly as you say the the on the biological side is uh it's it's reasonably stable isn't it it's a stable well so it doesn't change yeah so you so that's there and on the other side it can fluctuate and we're very very hard to Define and it's particularly hard to Define without having recourse to quite old-fashioned stereotypes right yes yes because what it is to be safe for me to be identified with the male sex is is to sort of feel that I fit more with certain characteristics um stereotypically attacked um stereotypically attributed to males um they don't all have to be like sexist ones I don't actually totally go along with the sort of idea critical idea you often hear that it's nothing but sort of pernicious social stereotypes but it is true that when a man says he's a woman and then often is asked why he says well I've always liked lipstick or yeah you know I just feel at home in a floral rock yeah it's like the map Matt Walsh film wasn't it I like Santa candles I might be trans myself you know which and you know once you start thinking like that you get you there's a backlash so look at you know you can see the address mostly like a man on a six foot tall and then there's lots of people on the internet saying gosh she's a failed woman you know she doesn't like scented candles or lipsticks but in a way yeah but the court I think the problem is the cause in our thinking and you talk about narrative a lot and obviously legal fictions in the book but the arguably the cause of certainly the expansion massive expansion in this is just a failure to grasp the there are so many different types of men and women yes and include there are types of men that have surgery to give themselves breasts you know there are types of men that cut there and feel get their penises cut off and take hormones that give them uh the appearance of female secondary sex characteristics and there are men who don't do any of those things but have um a fetish that gives them an erection when they put on a dress and you know we're not there's been a big sort of taboo about saying those things but there are many ways to be a man and there are many ways to be a woman but you can't actually change you can't no but it's yeah what I was getting at is that if we had a if we were more liberal in our definitions of of femininity if we accepted the return you know we don't have to accept like extremely harmful no not many Associates Behavior or female associate Behavior but yes absolutely but you can be more relaxed about the ways in which you could be a man um then arguably especially for younger people who are feeling confused about this they wouldn't feel the pressure to put themselves yeah yeah um I mean you you immediately prior to you getting involved with this you were looking at uh legal fictions weren't you sorry uh fictions fiction generally yeah so that was my specialty yeah so one one I've never I've never read this but I uh I'm always interested in metaphor you know because because metaphor is um is is not literally true but it does in terms of meaning it does heavy lifting quite often than literal truth so has anyone has any trans theorists to use that as an example of something that which does provide meaning it's not literally true but it's but metaphor we use metaphor all the time and it does massive uh work on meaning I mean I I'm surprised I haven't to be honest yeah but the thing is that there's not one body of thought on this even from the transactive side so although someone like Judith Butler comes in for some heavy crisis in my book I think it's fair to say that she would not um she thinks things should be more fluid she she you know she's someone who thinks that gender should be more fluid she thinks it should be so fluid that we should get to get rid of the categories of men and women altogether because she thinks of those as constraining but she um I don't think that she would I don't know for sure but this idea you know the very literal idea of a man trapped in a woman's body I don't think that's something that she would think was literally true but the trouble is when you put all these ideas these sort of highfalutin um mystical almost Quasar mystical ideas into popular culture people start to literalize them and concretize them and then they say you know I really am a woman well that's yeah so you get into compelled speech and it becomes yeah so maybe metaphor would help in the book I talk about fiction just we're immersed in a fiction and it we do that all the time humans have the capacity to immerse themselves in fictions that are not literally true so before we go on to some of the consequences of of some of the trans Theory what would you say trans ideology gets right if anything [Music] [Laughter] I mean the most generous um I do honestly find it like difficult to find anything good about it because it's not a philosophically sophisticated and it also has all these terrible real world harms that its proponents are completely blind too and they become very fanatical very quickly so it's not not a good sign of a theory that it turns its proponents into Fanatics however yeah um just to be try and be generous I do think um the the political attempt to push being non-binary um I.E to to say that you can be neither masculine nor feminine or neither particular one or the other or not feel not particularly like a man not particularly like a woman is some kind of Miss definitely misguided attempt to capture the sort of thing I actually think is true which is and that we've just been talking about that we don't fit into boxes of course so the gender really is a spectrum yeah and most of us are not at one pole or the other of it yeah it doesn't you you're just as much a man or woman yeah yeah yeah that's that's that's what I I think that's right yeah so moving on to the consequences um you obviously prefer in the book a lot of there's a lot of good will um I think we often politically and generally uh underestimate Goodwill everywhere actually there's a lot of Goodwill around and a lot of people will just argue that since there are you know gender dysphoria exists uh and we're a liberal Society um why can't we just give trans people a pass and if it makes them happy yeah exactly well that's how Ben Copley would describe on lots of lots of um other areas of you know of um uh radical activism that people are happy and they'll agitate and and they they they're happy when you say okay I'll give in you can just have it but can I just clarify like what we're not even clear what giving them a pass means give them what they want yeah well I mean even if we just so that that could be a range of things that could be accept me as the woman I am if it's a man or um let me on the sports team or let me in the bathroom or let me in the in the crisis shelter or the prison or whatever um but even if we just forget about all the that I think pretty obviously predictable real world harms that come in once you get into the spaces argument if we just take it about trans people it's not necessarily and especially young trans identified kids it's not necessarily good for them to give them what they want no totally yeah no I agree I'm actually just saying that the I think one of the causes of the because you could ask the question why any ideology washes over institutions to the extent it has and it has so why has it happened well I think it's good will I think a lot of the time good will count you could say cowardice or whatever but a lot of the time as well you know we want to be nice so let's be nice I think it's definitely Goodwill but we also those people need to scrutinize why they feel this particular Goodwill in this area but not necessarily in other areas or to other people yes yeah um why is this so easy for them to get on board with but not for instance like um really championing the cause of disabled people or really actually championing the cause of anti-racism you know it seems a lot easier for some people to um to well posture about trans people and it is about any other group and I think that they need to psychoanalyze themselves yeah you make you make an interesting uh plea for intersectionality at the end slightly it's like social class because yeah exactly working class being massively Salient it's just embarrassed people find all of those things too difficult especially middle class people too difficult you know and maybe their own interests might end up getting pushed against but they see trans people's interested as so sort of exotic and discreet um plus there's a real element an unspoken element I'm afraid of pity and not in a good way and I mean I'm not talking about me I respect trans people as I take them as I find them but you know there's a real kind of exoticizing going on of oh just give them what they want yeah patronizing it is no I've seen but that you see that in race as well you see that well yes I'm um but one of the I'm just going to run through very quickly some of the consequences as I see them so so the consequences first consequence is actually to truth itself because uh yes we sort of engage in a legal fiction and by and large people I think will accommodate that in most domains not all but they they will but I think say when you get a situation if you're if you're committed to truth and truthfulness you're also committed to accuracy accessibility some other things sincerity um when you read in a newspaper an account of a an assault and it might say you know um it might describe a trans Woman as a woman without saying trans at all yeah and so that's a casualty and I think people you know it's it's the her penis thing you know people that's I think the problem with that is in public discourse in things like newspapers and what the BBC do is sort of it's like a sort of um debasement and it also causes I think demoralization do you think that's fair completely Fair um I mean it it's a casualty to truth but also the truth feeds into a lot obviously is the truth lots of different discourses civil discourses policy discourses I mean you know if you're going to start calling uh rapists male rapists uh women just because they tell you just before they're about to be convicted that they are you'll you know you're going to change the statistics on female rapists and they and and they have they've gone up massively in the last few years you know and it's not I mean it's not even possible it's under law for a woman to rape a man she could be an accessory but you have to have a penis in the first place yeah the whole thing's really you know if the law is supposed ideally to be clear it's adding endless obfuscation and um if you care about getting accurate information about um different behavioral patterns between the Sexes which do exist then you're going to lose them so and it's a massive casualty though because in a point Alice Sullivan's made is that you can't actually do what what she does on quantitative social science cannot be done no it's just if you mess up with the figures it's gone I mean the same issue uh is uh faces research on lesbians I mean there just is no robust heart or hardly any robust datron lesbians anymore because they're always being put into some of the group for a start it's not even a this has got nothing to do trans activism it's like lesbians and gay men are always put together as a group as if there aren't any interesting differences between the behaviors of lesbians and gay men I mean they clearly are or it's lesbians and bisexual women I mean and at the moment the the category of bisexual woman is going up like that because it's a trend at the moment for so you know it's gonna to have tens of percents but most of those women won't sleep with women so actually the category is just becoming well it's a point of meaningless we're back in we're back into stated preferences and revealing yes yes I mean and it is tricky because obviously it's hard for researchers to get at people's real preferences about sexuality particularly when lots of people confuse themselves about their own sexuality or don't want to say but we don't need to make it harder than it already is by including males who say they're lesbians in the group I mean that just makes the nonsense of it so another I know I totally agree with that I another casualty I think is is um which obviously hit the news in Canada in a few a few years ago a compelled speech you know now again Goodwill most people will will want to be friendly and will agree with it but it's it's when it's when it's insisted on and if it's uh yeah a rights violation not to do so I have a problem with that I agree and the atmosphere in in many institutions at the moment and particularly universities but not just universities is it's impossible not uh it's almost impossible not to go along with um what is being demanded of you because the it's it's in so many policy documents it's in websites it's reinforced by these um holy Stonewall days um there's just this massive manipulative attempt to get you to agree that the person in front of you that you know is not a woman is a woman and that you must call her she and you must say woman and you must watch what you say on a range of issues in case you offend them and some of these um university policies have things like um you know if a person tells you you that they are a woman you have to believe them it's not even the same way it's totally Soviet I mean that's all well in totally yeah full or well in there right it says something like there's one in I think it was the University who leaves it says something like think of the person as being the gender they tell you they are so this is not even about what you say it's like telling you how to think yeah we're getting into mind control very worried yeah um so another but a sort of more concrete thing I guess or a very concrete thing is actually the rights that are accrued uh by the legislation which should attach this to some of this stuff and then you're in just proper contestation political contestation I would say economics is about what you can make and politics is about what you get who gets what and the odd thing is that this is you know a lot of interests women's interests in particular have not I don't think the people that originally set out on this journey really thought very carefully about there's a trade-off you know what is going to happen what are the things that's fair yeah yeah and they actually know somebody uh who's vaguely who was at the founding of the yogi Carter principles and he says I didn't think about it at all no it just and then it just went mad but then it has to but then the clash with reality the sort of Reckoning uh does happen eventually and um you know it's like Scotland you know put a double rapist into a women's prison and then it just flips and people say no we're not having that but actually the the probably the mainstream position was against that all along yes but there is still I don't know I I mean these these outrages that that particular outrage the Adam Bryson one um so being a male rapist put in a women's prison and he's not the first I mean that was just the one the public noticed but there's actually lots of others will you make a point actually just on although absolute numbers are very much smaller you make a point I don't know what the exact percentage is but the number the uh the number of uh convicts that are trans women for instance uh that are locked up for sexual effects offenses yeah half isn't it bad half but it's high I can't remember right now but it's it's much higher than the male average yeah yeah um now that could be for a number of reasons one is that you've obviously got interest in identifying as a woman there's a horrific story in the paper today so I was just thinking of this as yeah and you know these these the the women that are victims of this and the children their stories come out regularly now but I don't know there's still this inability for um public bodies or government or policy policy makers to take all of them together and see that's the big thing the big thing that's going on but today it was [Music] um a woman very bravely who's who's identified herself as being abused by her father for years and images of her sold on by him do other pedophiles and he transitioned in prison um has come out as a woman and she now has you know the normal rights that she would have as a victim to know where he was he she doesn't have them anymore because he's changed his identity and then the state's now acting as if they need to protect him not her victim and it's obviously a completely insane um mind-blowing for your your pedophile father to be identifying as a woman in any case so the whole thing's absolutely disgusting but you know these cases are coming out cases like that or the women's sports where where women that have young women have worked trained for years to get somewhere miss out because a man just saunt us in age 45. no I feel like I've debated I've debated people if you debate because I think I mean when we made sdb policy on this I was I was looking forward to doing it I I love categories and you know and so we we you know talk to a lot of people including yourself and and try to get it right I think we've got it right but I think that things like sports is a basic easy one but when I debated with people particularly young people a lot of young women actually will debate it with me yeah yeah and just not see it and say it doesn't matter so you know have safety is the easiest thing I actually spoke to a a student Sports rep at a one of the play glass universities and I said we you know so what what is your policy on trans rugby players she's a role play herself oh we don't we don't have one or they can just play wait are any of them playing well no but when that happens do you realize you know do you have to have someone maimed this is going to happen Okay something magical's gonna happen and they're suddenly going to lose half their body weight yeah and it wasn't and it wasn't it's just like let's pretend it's not there I'm really not engaged this is a you know very intelligent person you don't know in I know it doesn't always go inside the wisdom but it was no it was sort of scary and I thought what will it take I mean my hunch is that unfortunately it'll have to take I mean it's like the tennis has been on now this weekend you know you it'll have to take you know some some man beating Emma radicano in the I think the final and then and then people say well it's not fair you know they can see it's not fair yeah maybe I'm don't know because you can already find those cases you can find them in the Olympics you can find them in the world Paralympics that just happened um but it's the profile it's like it's like the the Scotland thing it's the pretty I mean those things are already yeah and someone breaking their neck yeah suddenly suddenly it happens um I mean I I this is a a side issue I think the again when you I think a lot of these things the people that make the running that have the power effectively because the interest groups and agitators have had the power in this um they have the power but they don't have hegemony in the you know public attitudes out in the hinterland in reality don't correspond with these things and very little akin to stick with it I mean just on definitions I I love TableTop analogies I'm talking about stuff so it just seems to me odd that defining a woman uh what it how we Define a woman the definition has been changed by on the tabletop quite a small group in the corner and yet the majority of people in this country in most countries are women and they weren't really asked and it affects them and they they you know their own definition their own I guess their own identity you know it's a big presumptuous yes it is although you know a lot of the people unfortunately that did that in the corner are women um as you sort of identified earlier when you said it was a woman that was doing this I mean often it's women that are most vociferous cheerleaders person because they are women it gives them some kind of authority to speak you know in the eyes of others for the 51 of the human race yeah but I mean in my view we made a big mistake feminism made a big mistake in making Womanhood an identity at all it's just the wrong way to think about it I mean I understand how in colloquial ways of speaking Yeah we say like how to be a woman um but there is no how-to about being a woman it's something you have no control over whatsoever you either are or you aren't yeah it's not an identity it's not a skill you can Master it's not a standard you can attain all of that normative talk um we should have been philosophers should have been more careful to distinguish like normative discussion about Womanhood from definitional discussion of Womanhood the two are not the same and in fact normative stuff is really just sort of badly expressed about it's really about femininity it's not about Womanhood you're an adult human female you're a woman you know that's it you could you I guess you could trace you could trace a lot of this back to what you know one of my core problems philosophers but anything but there's a proper philosopher I don't think I don't think so so again I don't think Butler is a problem of course I think you know you just it's it's yeah apparently she was getting an interview the other day and she doesn't think I am either so well it's reciprocal we did we differ um the other consequence I want to get into which it has massive political salience is the impact of this on children and obviously I you know I speak to people all over the country and a typical a normal uh response to me as a politician is someone will say uh you know I've got a seven-year-old daughter I don't want her to go to school and be told she's not a girl yeah and I agree with that yeah so what you know policy terms it's everywhere isn't it well how do you how do you do you have a rule you literally have to have a rule that this can't be mentioned or can't be taught what do you do I don't have an easy answer to what goes on in schools to be honest um because it's unfortunately the stable door is now so wide open and on social media yeah yeah so widely available I don't think not talking about it will do unfortunately but that's what irritates parents what I'm saying is that they because when when if you when when your five-year-old goes off to school you you lose uh influence over them that's a big hurl anyway but they parents feel I just I just don't want this I don't want the seeds to be uh no I don't know I mean what needs to happen um at least is um institution needs to work in parallel and there is thank God some movement in the NHS towards sanity now and there is um an attempt to get evidence proper evidence not just cherry-picked um anecdotal evidence which seems to be although anyone was going on about how to treat children with gender dysphoria and how to react to them and it's not obvious that you should try you should affirm them at all in fact it's obvious you shouldn't I'm not at all yeah so once this body of evidence becomes sort of firmed up it needs everyone needs to know about it you know there needs to be no argument about it um then for therefore then they can start saying well on the basis of evidence this is the best way to treat this child who has some confusion do you actually have faith that the evidence could be produced in a in a good faith Manner and published yes yes I think it that is one of the advantages of um there being a methodology a scientific methodology an established one um and there's a whole raft of conceptual tools already existing um which were not being applied because this was somehow gender dysphoria is sort of carved out as totally separate and unrelated to any other mental health problem or physical issue and it was was given to so-called experts who were who took charge of it um and everyone else just thought oh well they know what they're doing they didn't think twice and then when you look what they were actually doing well what they're doing but it's isn't it I don't know if it's rare or is there any case where you know you could argue what was diagnosed as a mental illness uh is is treated by physical interventions yeah physical interventions that were experimental and for which there was no um compelling evidence based for which there were a lot of worries about the the the the medicine that it had all these side effects that were already becoming apparent you know like bone health for instance osteoporo early on say osteoporosis and all that's gonna all that's going to come out of course Well it can't I don't see how it can't come out it was disputed but I mean um lots of gender clinics clinics that have been treating children with gender dysphoria are stopping using puberty blockers in Finland and I think in Sweden um and so and the UK is now on it through this review NHS review by Hillary Cass so yeah um that will filter down and I've noticed doctors from other areas coming in and using terms like iatrogenic harm you know harm that's caused by the the medical treatment itself or basically saying um using quite boltons like child abuse yeah well some do I mean actually someone you know some activists do do I mean Percy Parker probably would say that yeah I mean sometimes you just need to say yeah this is really there is no good way of dressing up what has been happening here I'm really a good fan I'm a big fan of um an internet meme which people tend to stick at the bottom of various trans activists or celebrities and it says start thinking of an excuse why you agreed to sterilizing children yes yeah people should start thinking about their excuses yeah well it is changing I read I think it was last week there was a piece in about Australian Assurance industry right refusing to ensure doctors that practice this right you know and actually that that might be that could be a big liability either way it's it's it's astonishing the uh the incidence of gender dysphoria and children so I've got the figures in your book in 2010 I think this is the UK figure uh uh referred to the NHS 72 in 2010 10 years later 2364. so what's your I mean the lot's been on talked about this what's your what's your view on on the on the cause of that massive explosion of well partly gender dysphoria is very in practice has been very ill-defined very Loosely defined I mean really that would include a child who turns up um to their teacher and says oh um you know I think I'm a boy um as opposed to someone who's profoundly distressed by their own body um and if you read Hannah barnes's book time to think which gives you an overview of the evolution if you want to call it that of the Tavistock gender identity service and it really is a staggering read the early cohort was severely distressed they were severely they had multiple problems you're not going life was like on these not anymore no because back then you know there was I think it's some staggering statistic in that book about how the likelihood of having a parent on the child sex offender register for this cohort is much higher you know there's there's a psychologists must be like thinking should have been thinking yeah there are there is stuff going on and there's obviously a high proportion of autism and then there's also a high proportion of same-sex attracted or Proto same-sex attracted people in this cohort and the Tavistock themselves would people were joking there you know there aren't going to be any gay people left if we carry on well that's the LGB Alliance uh concern isn't it yeah think about the generation of uh gay and lesbian but but what happened I mean yeah so there's all these concerns and there's still concerns but um but then it that was in 2010 but then over that 10 years smartphones happened the internet Happened YouTube influences happened um Tumblr happened and Stonewall in 2015 um following other organizations like gendered intelligence who already had um quite a lot of influence on youth culture as it were um all got on board with this trans train idea and it became cool and so now it is social contagion a large a large amount of its social contagion and teachers will say others those trans identified children in this one classroom and then then there's one and then there's three and then there's seven and then half of them are I can see that I think the I mean what I would say if you step back from the whole thing and you say well I think it's partly the cause of of what particularly what sort of Catholic theorist like Patrick Janine talk about which is the the the current absence or the removal of of boundaries and rootedness and you know it's funny I mentioned Richard as the other party and someone said that's terrible idea you know you must be far right here oh well no just you're talking about Community really you're talking about you know just knowing the point that the name would make um is that you know a long time ago someone would would know that they were working class from the Northeast the Newcastle United fan Roman Catholic and a lot of other things and so their sense of their identity was they were back very very strong boundaries they knew you know to put it really they knew who they were and now the the a lot of the boundaries have been removed and we don't really know who we are and it's and we're saying kid to kids oh you decide it's up to you you know and and the thinking is that if you if you apply some reasonable boundaries like like religion I mean I'm not a religious believer myself but religion used to have the per one of the purposes was to just to to provide a boundary that you can kick against later and it's very healthy people say all right actually I'm deciding on my teeth I'm not that but there is a sense I don't know if you agree there is a sense that that very very young people are just just not given the boundaries they were so they don't know they're a boy or a girl it really is something about that to be honest I mean it's a separate I'm not I'd have to agree with you on two points which is one that they don't have the boundaries they used to and that that was feeding into this phenomenon and I agree with you obviously parenting Styles have changed obviously they have but what my impression is more um well firstly I'm aware for instance that um amongst my lesbian friends of my generation lots and lots of them identified as boys you know it's not it's not a new thing what's new is our response to it so it's the adult response to it that I find is is is producing the phenomenon partly at least partly contributing to it because when my friend um Heidi used to call herself George for three years and really really wanted to be a boy you know um I think her mum did call her George for three years but no but nothing around her confirmed her in this belief and it passed whereas now I'm always you know it's more about question about why are the adults so Keen you know what's going on with the adults and that might also be some oh that's true of liberalism but you know it's kind of like the status attached to it yeah oh I'm so cool that's just again another very crude look at it it's just runaway liberalism is where you have a situation where liberalism it gives you a whole series of Rights but is is it gives you what you want basically to deny me what I want is some sort of breach you know I can have what I want and that includes to Define these things um I want to talk about the the vehemence in this debate because it sort of flippantly the interesting thing about the work you do in the book is which is just which is normal categories normal analystical philosophy uh and I would say they actually say a few years ago I think some someone may have you might have failed the first year knowledge and reality paper or it was certainly a very argue hard just to say please myself on a feeling I can do what I like but anyway the Heat and vehements in this debate is astonishing and obviously you're you're handing out to Sussex in the international news and flippantly you might say well you know philosophers you might have uh you know an essentialist on something or you know a duelist might disagree with materialist or whatever and they're they're probably fine with it but in this space uh you're making a case and suddenly it's it's that's appalling why why I think we know why that is but why why do you think that is why is there so much heat um I know for sure I mean I think there's definitely one element um it possibly even comes from that Goodwill that you were talking about earlier or slightly less charity from the pity that I was talking about because I'm afraid to say I think that there is a kind of attitude if we're talking about um transsexuals I think people you know people sort of it's easier for people to think of a transsexual male as a woman because if they don't think of her as a woman then they've got to think of as a frustrated male and that's really so it's more economical too confusing and yeah brings up too many feelings of disturbance so it's just sort of like and they also there's this thing which happens all the time particularly on the left of worrying what other people are going to think no I'm all right but what about these rabids um you know weeks who are going to like take it too far yeah so there's always a worry about danger and harm not from yourself I mean maybe you're projecting onto others but you know but from this other unwashed mass of people who are going to like attack her as soon as we say she's not a woman so we've got to keep maintaining this fiction so they get there's definitely some of that going on that like if if you say that's a man obviously I don't got people say you're a man but if you say in category you know General categorical terms trans women are men um you'll be raining down all sorts of terrible harm on them so you've so they feel then that they're like justice Fighters they've got to shut me up at the matter of con of urgency I think the reason is my take on it is I think there's there's a lot more at stake for them I mean I think they what you're doing is doing proper work and then just sort of popping their balloon or The Emperor's New Clothes and you do you can do it quite economically and if you if you if you deny you know I mean you know the the phrase that we're encouraged to say in a trans woman I don't think they are I think a trans woman if you if you didn't need the word if they were trans woman you wouldn't need the prefix anyway so it just you know I think there's a lot at stake for them in that you you're able to just they've they've created a narrative and a meaning in their lives and what they this it does explain the the hostility they're desperately upset with people that says don't agree with you and that's why there isn't there isn't tolerance but then I mean you know lots of there's lots of versions of that story Christians that are constantly being mocked but they're not sort of yeah rageful yeah yeah and people say well you're you know you believe in a family all the rest of it but people like they get rageful another element I'm afraid and it's not necessarily so we've always got to distinguish between um different kinds of trans people as it were to people who are attracted to trans identity for different reasons and there is um especially amongst trans women but not all of them by any means but there are some you know raging narcissists so some absolutely off the scale I've noticed that unstable yeah I mean why wouldn't it be unstable it's a category you're telling people anyone can identify into for any reason you will get Total Protection you know you if you go to jail you can choose your prison once you come out of jail your records are expunged and we're surprised that a bunch of unstable raging narcissists join this well that's also no but that is that just to go back to what we were saying before in a few minutes ago that also very much plays into the sort of runaway liberalism thing because because you know some Societies in the world are much more communitarian it's not about you it's not about me it's the eye we balance in the west the eye we balance the me US balances I think are completely out of whack and so if you if you have an ideology or a narrative it's all about me it's great you know about me and that that partly explains it I think um in any case the vehemence is there and and obviously I I if you if you can I'd like to say a few words about what happened at Oxford because the again it goes to the heart of the university and it made made national news again and um and prefixes by by talking about the university in general I think which is which is uh in trouble in the sense that John Gray wrote this see what you think of this it is hard to see why any sensible person would enroll in a Humanities degree at the present time they also learn that disagreement in ethics and politics is illegitimate basically what is I mean he's making I mean he's in a and I love John Gray and but and he's making a point in a typical John Gray way but but there's a lot at stake here if you can't I mean if you can't stop you can't write that book and do normal work you can't do philosophy in this area yeah I mean I love John Gray too poynamically I enjoy reading him but I and I'm I'm wary of doing a John Gray there because I am conscious that as you are influence there are philosophy departments still going where absolutely almost anything is up for grabs almost anything and it'd be crazy to think that just because you couldn't discuss this one thing that there was nothing of value going on oh yeah he's doing what he does great people yeah but I mean I'm just making it clear I mean everything I say is scrutinized and um I I think there's still a lot of value in the humanities but what is certainly true is that um too many departments or academics have decided that they're philosophers you know it's just a term that you can add to to the to the things you're interested in your your research Specialties or your areas of interest and you can just say philosophy or you can specify epistemology or um or some kind of post-structuralism whatever it is and you can have had no formal training in it really and you can understand practically nothing about it you've read a few um introductory books and barely understood those you know and and what I found quite a lot teaching when I was teaching philosophy students who were also doing other subjects like English um that they would come in and say oh My English tutor said that they're you know all truth is relative what grounds and they'd say oh well you know it's raining it's raining can be true here in false there is awful you know so it's it's there's laziness going on a lot of humanities um in in in an attempt to look deep because they got bored with doing what they should what I think is absolutely fascinating which is analyzing literary text you know endlessly Rich literary text but people have got bored with that and they want something a bit more kind of groovy and sexy for themselves and they are hollowing out the the philosophical method and disability the train philosophy that's the irritating thing for a trained philosophers they would see you'd see the flaws you know it just doesn't follow what they're seeing and you have to then to to um debate them you have to educate at the same time yeah exactly quite often they turn up to my talks because I talks would be on literatures quite often or fiction and they just sit there they're sort of sneering scowl on their face and then their question would be like are you doing this at all this is an interesting thing it was like oh it's interesting to me mate you know I mean that's not really a question that even in philosophy we we don't ask that sort of question we ask targeted objections but philosophy I mean there's a sense where philosophy in a sense some philosophy don't care do they I mean what what someone says you know this is why you talked earlier about non-engagement with non-philosophy you know some the joke was that the the one of the jokes you know when 1950s Oxford philosophy was very insular and uh like a philosophy tutor from Glasgow came down to speak and they're having a a meal afterwards and the Glasgow philosophy said I hope you don't think bad of us in class no no we don't think it'd be at all and that's the that's the sort of yeah yeah it is very yeah but you know there is I suppose you could do that but Oxford I mean how what was it because how it was reported I was on the front page of a few minutes was it that bigger deal or was could you and do you think Oxford did you well I was surprised obviously to see myself on the front cover of two newspapers but um I think I just went I mean also because because I watched it and you were pretty well received in song yeah I was I didn't know how it's going to be received um that's I'd done one at Cambridge not that long beforehand and that was very tense and unpleasant experience basically and a big protest outside and also lots of hostility in the chamber um and I was expecting that again um and then there was a cheer as I went in yeah I didn't see it at all yeah I heard the noise outside and actually when the protester glued uh herself um I don't know what our parents are uh to the floor um they would there was a quite a lot of hostility towards her I mean they cut it out of the actual filming but there was a lot of like yeah it was interesting it's mostly male audience and I think actually the pushback's going to come from men and uh like I said a lot of women are invested in this and Men seem to be able um for whatever reasons I don't yeah you want to analyze those but to say this is bollocks and actually I'm all for it you know just just say it because well I need to get rid of this I have debated a debated it recently with someone they said I shouldn't be is linked in it um I I had a similar experience not it wasn't quite the scale of yours but it was a bizarre experience at York in September last year I went to speak about to give a talk about trade policy in tariffs you know quite technical talk uh and the LGBT your group had a found out that I was speaking and then I was transfer and a racist apparent because I wanted lower immigration so that's uh a problem so they tried to get that entered to York's credit they made sure that the talk went ahead it did and you could hear people shouting outside but I had to get you know someone to stop people throwing milkshakes at me and nothing happened but it was weird but I wrote to the VC after that because what what was unfair about it was that I was made to agree to a 14 000 I didn't read at all but a 14 000 word pledge of what I would say and I wouldn't say any of this and I wouldn't say that you know in order you know this is their code to two people that are risk assessment yeah yeah so and I agreed to that and you know I don't know if if criticizing a bilateral trade agreement with Japan was transferred no idea but anyway I was so I wasn't gonna even talk about this yeah but they made me agree with that and then I wrote to the VC I said what you but what you allowed the LGBT group to do the union do and they put it on the union was was defamed totally defame you and and I said I wanted them in the room because if they're in the room I could have explained the history of the sdp and and you know the uh sexual offenses act no they don't want to be in the room but they they would have been they would have learned something about that they wouldn't what Rory Jenkins they weren't prepared they would have been listening no no and the whole point is not to listen another thing about this is is about education it's about posturing on the internet to their Pals and also and sometimes it's about avoiding criticism from their Pals I mean in your case I think they really had to go out their way to find that you were coming in but there was no standards the VC was oh no I can see he treated me differently yeah yeah I can see that I mean I don't disagree with you um but in my case it's almost like when I arrived they're like oh we gotta do something you know if we don't do something we're in trouble so there's a sort of extra pressure but yeah I mean it's universities you shouldn't you should be something to sign that thing it's ridiculous I actually have never signed one of those things no one's ever asked me but sometimes if you don't then they say you're not and they had a few members of Staff watching me it was it was it would be interesting to see what the um the new nor happens in the higher education bill is properly in place because I don't know you know if it would just take one speaker to go to ofsted uh sorry what they called office for students um I don't know I don't know what where they stand on that but you know there will be precedents set for universities and practice will spread as it always does quite quickly so it'd be interesting to see how they handle that sort of thing let's hope let's hope um you have a final chapter in the book about Solutions uh and lesser stereotypical view I think I agree with that certainly less dilution because you talk about the dilution of definitions there are so many we we don't know what we're talking about yeah of course this is about people across purposes I mean one of the one of the questions I got Oxford I thought was really telling because it was a woman that clearly had only ever heard about me second hand and heard about this debate second hand and then had listened to us discussing it and said why are you so controversial I don't know I I don't I didn't know much about this beforehand and now I'm really struggling to see why I promise and it's because people don't engage the arguments directly they just hear yeah um very confused Concepts being used and a lot of hyperbole thrown in yeah that's unfortunately that's the level of social media and yeah yeah you also say more intersectionality which on certainly on class I totally agree with you um and the final one is more more data less Theory more data that happening now I mean it's maybe not happening as fast as it should and I think there's still some real structural impediments in Academia because you like you can't do research on women or lesbians um without making it a self-identified category but for instance um uh data um collecting agencies seem to be more aware that they have to look for sex as well as whatever else they want to add well we can't know anything oh you can't know well you can't live I mean having said that I went to my doctor's website the other day and it was like sex male female other it's like okay it's everywhere well listen Kathy it's been wonderful finally to speak to you and um obviously if you haven't got the book I'll urge everyone to read it and uh you you've given us all a service by writing it thank you well thank you thanks for having me

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Length: 65min 53sec (3953 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023