MATERIAL GIRLS
WHY REALITY MATTERS FOR FEMINISM KATHLEEN STOCK
Fleet, 320pp, £16.99 Few academic philosophers can expect to write a book which garners the kind of attention received by
Material Girls. Kathleen Stock’s gender-critical position on biological sex has sparked calls of transphobia and forced her resignation from her teaching post at Sussex University.
In the Observer, Gaby Hinsliff set the scene for confused onlookers. ‘To gender-critical thinkers, gender is a social construct imposed on women and to be resisted, since it’s driven by what men want them to be (Stock describes herself as a gender non-conforming lesbian). But trans people use the phrase “gender identity” to mean an innate sense of being male or female, which is fundamental to their identity because it explains why they reject the sex others perceive them as. To one side, gender is a terrible trap; to the other, it’s liberation from a trap.’
In Philosophers Magazine, Julian Baggini was ‘baffled’ by the ‘Manichean orthodoxy’ displayed by Stock’s detractors. ‘It is astonishing that Stock’s conclusion “As binaries in nature go, the sex division is one of the most stable and predictable there is” is now considered by many not only to be outrageous but prejudiced. If the argument that the gender critical position is transphobic rests on the denial of biological sex, it must surely collapse.’
In the Evening Standard, Stella O’malley felt an ‘intense relief’ that light had been shed on an issue many find difficult to get their heads round: ‘finally a comprehensive account of gender identity theory was presented and explored with both clarity and depth’. And Sarah Ditum in the Daily Mail pointed out that although the reader ‘will have to grapple with some high level conceptual thinking – and even some diagrams’, the most important revelation to be found in Material
Girls is the ‘curious mind and a generous spirit’ of Kathleen Stock herself.