A funny thing happened on Twitter the other day. Scrolling through my feed, a post caught my eye from a fellow philosopher, whom I like and respect, sharing with wholehearted endorsement an alleged takedown of J. K. Rowling’s ‘problematic stances on the politics of gender categories’ as a hegemonic power move rooted in European colonial history. For the record, what Rowling had said to prompt this reply (and to prompt much worse replies than this, it has to be said), was the following series of tweets:
“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women — ie, to male violence — ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences — is a nonsense.
I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
Hard to see quite what in those sentiments could warrant the reaction my friend had endorsed.
So far, so ordinary, in the world of Twitter. It’s of course not uncommon to find that people whose views one respects and appreciates in other contexts can think so differently when it comes to the particularly contentious topic of sex and gender. Normally I would have scrolled on. Except that, on this occasion, I was particularly taken aback. Because the individual in question is someone I’d discussed this topic with before, in relation to a piece I’d once written outlining what I take to be the key philosophical commitments of gender critical feminism. And my memory of our constructive discussion then was that, while we didn’t agree on everything, we shared a good deal of common ground, including agreeing that there are contexts in which sex matters politically, a point which I took to be the essence of Rowling’s ‘problematic’ claim to which she was now objecting.
So instead of scrolling on I stopped and asked my colleague directly, but wait, haven’t we discussed these issues before, and “didn’t you concede that biological sex was sometimes politically relevant and it wasn’t hateful to recognise that?”. To which she responded, “I probably did not concede anything in these very terms”.
A discussion followed, strangely reminiscent of our previous round on this topic, where I explained that I still took sex to be politically important as, so long as sexism exists, being female, or even merely being perceived as female, is going to result in poor treatment along a number of dimensions. For example, if we don’t record sex of live births, we will not have the information we need to recognise contexts where sex selective abortion may be occurring, let alone to tackle this issue. If employers collect and report pay statistics classified according to the gender identity of their staff rather than their sex, we will not have the information we need to recognise, and tackle, the gender pay gap as it currently exists (i.e., as a sex pay gap). (Neither, for that matter, will we know whether transgender people are subject to pay discrimination, since recording only gender identity without also recording sex will not show in the statistics who is transgender.) And my interlocutor agreed that yes, these and others may well be “examples of domains where sex categories may be the relevant ones”. Which again is much as I had remembered our previous conversation as going.
But here is where I was confused, because I took this as my interlocutor “agreeing that biological sex is at least sometimes politically relevant, and that it’s not hateful to recognise that”. And yet this, I thought, is precisely what she had denied conceding when I challenged her on it earlier. So I asked again for clarification, and received this surprising answer:
“The part I’m resisting regards the qualification ‘hateful’: I haven’t said anything about that at all, in either direction.”
So there we have it: apparently what had prompted my colleague’s enthusiastic denunciation of J. K. Rowling’s statement of the political importance of the concept of sex was not so much any disagreement with the essence of what was said, but the thought that it may or may not be hateful to say so.
Unfortunately the realities of home schooling while working from home during a lockdown meant I had to leave the conversation there. But in a way I’m glad that I did, because stepping away from the screen gave me a chance to think about this sentiment a bit more. And what, on reflection, I took to be interesting about my colleague’s take is that the move she was making was one that, while not often so clearly stated, seems to me to be very common in the approach to these issues taken by very many feminist philosophers in relation to public proclamations of the political importance of the category of sex. The move is one I have come to think of as the Reverse Voltaire, and its essence can be expressed as follows:
“I agree completely with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to prevent you from saying it.”
To be fair, on this occasion it might not have been the case that my interlocutor agreed completely with Rowling’s comments. She intimated elsewhere in the conversation that she was unsure of Rowling’s comments on the importance of sex in understanding the notion of same-sex attraction. But others in the world of feminist philosophy, including those who have also spoken out about Rowling’s ‘problematic’ tweets, are much more clearly on the record about their agreement with the substance of what Rowling said. Take, for example, the following passage, in the “Summary of the Argument” from the excellent Amicus Brief co-authored by philosopher Robin Dembroff and signed by several other prominent feminist philosophers, which was used to argue that discrimination on grounds of sexuality and gender identity both fall under the category of ‘sex discrimination’ in US law (a position with which the Supreme Court, thankfully, agreed):
“The concept of “sex” is inextricably tied to the categories of same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity. Both categories are partially defined by sex and cannot logically be applied to any individual without reference to that individual’s sex. It is simply not possible to identify an individual as being attracted to the same sex without knowing or presuming that person’s sex.”
If one wanted an even snappier summary of the comments, at least as they apply to sexual orientations, one could hardly do better than Rowling’s opening salvo, “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction.”
So what the devil is going on here, really? Why is J. K. Rowling being denounced as “complete scum” by Twitter blue ticks, and being told to “go fuck herself”, “die in a hole”, and “choke on a bowl of dicks” by anonymous accounts claiming to be LGBT+ allies, for expressing a position that turns out to be the absolute cornerstone of an important, and historic, victory for both gay and transgender rights, i.e., that sex exists, the concept of sex underlies the concept of same-sex attraction, and that a person’s sex makes a difference to the kinds of discrimination they face in a patriarchal society (whether that is plain old sexism as faced by females, or the punishment faced by trans and gender non-conforming individuals who do not perform the gendered expectations associated with their sex)? Indeed, as Robin Dembroff pointed out in a recent video response to J. K. Rowling (which now alas seems not to be publicly available), most trans people agree with Rowling that sex exists and most trans people know all too well how assumptions made about people’s sex and how people of a given sex ought to behave can make people’s lives go less well than they should. (Indeed, the main problem with Rowling’s tweets, according to Dembroff, was her failure to realise extent of transgender people’s agreement with these points, a failing for which she may perhaps be forgiven. After all, one does not generally think of responses such as, “Fuck you, you hateful spiteful ignorant hag” as signalling enthusiastic agreement.)
It is not just Rowling who is facing outrage and vitriol for expressing views that turn out to be commonplace in feminist philosophy. A similar dynamic (albeit slightly less sweary) has been present for a while within the world of academic philosophy. In 2019, for example, a joint statement was released by the UK and US branches of the ‘Minorities and Philosophy’ group expressing their deep concern at “the fact that the Aristotelian Society is offering its valued intellectual platform to a paper that, itself, targets the trans community.” The paper, by lesbian philosopher Kathleen Stock, was in defence of a traditional account of sexual orientation “as a reflexive disposition to be sexually attracted to people of a particular biological Sex or Sexes”, against Robin Dembroff’s proposed redefinition of sexual orientation in terms of the sex or gender presentation of the kinds of people to which one is attracted (an account of which I, as a straight woman, would be classified as having the same sexual orientation as a gay man).
Unfortunately, the Minorities and Philosophy signatories failed to elaborate on what exactly it was in Stock’s paper that targeted the trans community. However, given the prevalence within online trans activist communities of vocal challenges to the idea that it is OK to be attracted solely to people of a given sex, many readers, myself included, assumed that it was this aspect of Stock’s paper that was considered to be hostile. One might have hoped, then, that Dembroff and the others who went on to sign the amicus brief might have put their hands up at this point and pointed out that they too believed that it’s just fine to be attracted to people only of a given sex (and indeed that people who are so attracted should be legally protected against discrimination), and that their disagreement with Stock’s paper lay elsewhere (e.g., in Dembroff’s case, in allowing that for some people, orientation can be towards a particular gender presentation rather than towards people of a particular sex, and in holding that we ought to abandon the practice of classifying sexual orientations by reference to the sex of the individual, classifying them instead solely in terms of the sex or gender presentation of their target). However, not only did Dembroff not mention this point when Stock’s response to Dembroff’s paper was being publicly denounced as ‘trans hostile’, Dembroff also joined in with the condemnation of Stock, including (along with two others) pulling out of an online symposium when they realised that they had been ‘non-consensually co-platformed’ with her.
Now I do not wish to claim that Dembroff and other feminist philosophers who have been vocal in their denouncement of Stock, Rowling, and others expressing ‘gender critical’ views agree with absolutely everything they have to say. Kathleen Stock has been clear on her support for preserving the protections provided in existing British law (via the 2010 Equality Act exemptions) for single sex provisions in changing rooms, prisons, and sports. I take it from what they have said elsewhere that at least in terms of the ‘spaces’ issue, Dembroff and others disagree (though in the retraction statement linked to above, I note that the authors only state that “they consider the right to occupy spaces in which our basic safety is not at risk to be a right that should not be up for debate”, a point with which I would expect Stock and Rowling both to agree enthusiastically — the point at issue as they see it being how to provide such spaces without also trampling on the right of females to single sex provision where this is needed). But what I do wish to suggest is that much of the denunciation and calls for silencing has happened against a backdrop of shared agreement with much of the substance of what Stock and co have been pointing out, i.e. that female people exist, and that in a society that still all too often discriminates on grounds of sex, being female matters. J. K. Rowling has been facing rape- and death threats for saying as much, and it is disappointing that the response from feminist philosophers who agree on these points has been, by and large, to nod along with those doing the denouncing.
The reverse Voltaire may seem like a particularly cowardly move (not only staying quiet when someone is being denounced for saying things that you too believe, but actively joining in with the denunciations). But context is everything, and perhaps there are contexts where such a move could be honourable. For, as my colleague reminded me in our Twitter discussion recalled above, there are plenty of contexts where simple assertions of truths can be indicative of hateful intent. We can all agree that all lives matter, but in a context where apparent indifference to the deaths of black people mean that we need to be reminded that it follows from this truth that black lives matter too, responding to a reminder that black lives matter by asserting the truth that all lives matter may rightly be taken as indicative of hostile intent — its implicature being “I don’t buy your claim that black people’s lives have been systematically devalued, and I don’t care about the violence that black people face in our society”. When a true claim is uttered in order to express such an implicature, condemnation of the speaker may well be the appropriate response, not because one does not agree with the literal content of what’s said, but because one disagrees strongly with the sentiment it is being used to express. Sometimes the right response to someone saying something that you take to be true is not “Yes I agree”, but “Why on earth would you say that?”
I take it, then, that this is what is going on when feminists denounce Rowling — and Stock — for asserting the reality and political importance of their experiences as females. They do not actually disagree with what’s asserted, but in a context where trans people — and trans women in particular — are feeling constantly under attack, they take the act of assertion itself as a hostile one, a reminder of difference in a world where trans women are fighting to be recognised as women. And they have a point. In the UK, at least since the start of the Gender Recognition Act consultation process in 2018, trans people have been a focus of media attention and could certainly be forgiven for feeling as though their rights to exist as trans people have been under attack. Against this context, many may feel that this is not the time to emphasize the realities of the experiences of female people under patriarchy, even if they agree that those experiences are real and do matter. So what follows is my attempt to explain why so many of us do still feel the need to speak up.
“Why on earth would you say that?”
So why do it? Why in this context, with trans people — and trans women in particular — feeling besieged, go around shouting about the differences between female people and trans women? Sexism and patriarchal oppression has been around a long, long time — but why are so many women choosing this moment to speak up about it? Now believe me, I understand the concern. Of course I realise, when I speak about the importance of recognising and recording facts about sex so as to be able to recognise and respond to the consequences of sexism, that this will be uncomfortable for my trans friends, colleagues, and students, and of course it gives me pause. Given that, mightn’t it be preferable simply to ditch the language of sex completely and speak instead when we need to about the specific source of a specific harm (e.g. harms caused to menstruators insofar as they lack adequate provision for managing menstruation; harms caused to pregnant people when discriminated against in the workplace or forced to undergo unwanted pregnancies; or harms caused to people with uteruses insofar as they are perceived as being liable to undergo pregnancy and thus seen as liabilities by potential employers)?
One difficulty with this approach is that the ways in which female people are discriminated against are multifaceted and, while rooted in society’s negative evaluation of people with particular biological features, only make sense when tied to the social meaning of these features rather than those features themselves. (Is it my status as a person with a uterus that means people listen to me less and talk over me more? Well, only insofar as the ‘uterus people’ are part of the class of people who are conventionally thought of as less worthy of listening to, due to their sex.) As the philosopher Sally Haslanger (2000, p. 46) has pointed out, people who are perceived as female — the vast majority of whom are female — occupy a particular social position under patriarchy, that of “sexually marked subordinates”, sharing the common feature that “their (assumed) sex has socially disadvantaged them”. These disadvantages are sometimes directly related to particular consequences of their having particular biological features (e.g. as concerns access to female specific healthcare), but more often they arise simply because we belong to a society that sees those who are presumed to have those features as lesser.
To advocate for the needs of this disadvantaged group, it would be good to have words. I have been using ‘female’ in this piece, allowing here that there is room for a gender-identity based sense of the word ‘woman’ according to which ‘woman’ includes most females (while excluding trans men and non-binary females), and includes trans women.[1]
In UK law as things currently stand, however, the terms ‘woman’ and ‘female’ (as applied to adult humans) are used interchangeably. If the proposal to allow self-identification of gender in the UK were to be accepted, there would be some wisdom in disentangling these two categories into a gender-identity based notion, ‘woman’, and a sex-based notion, ‘female’. Current UK law is slippery in this regard: the 2004 Gender Recognition Act says that, on acquisition of a gender recognition certificate, someone’s acquired gender becomes for all purposes their legal sex. Yet the 2010 Equality act clarifies that sex-based exemptions that allow for female only provision can be applied to exclude trans women even if they have a gender recognition certificate, so long as this can be shown to be a proportionate means to a legitimate end. (The 2004 GRA also clarifies that, although a trans man with a gender recognition certificate counts as male for all purposes, in fact the range of ‘all purposes’ does not extend to some areas where one might assume becoming recognised as male would bring with it all of the usual male privileges. Obtaining recognition as male does not secure for trans men the right to inherit titles that traditionally pass through the male line, for example.)
A lot of concern over recent proposals to amend the GRA to allow for self-identification of gender takes place against the backdrop of this unfortunate lack of terminological clarity, with female people seeking assurances that a move to self-identification of gender will not be accompanied with a removal of the single sex exemptions currently allowed in the Equality Act, as has been advocated for by a number of groups. And so this is one reason why over the past couple of years women in the UK have been vocal in reminding people that they currently have legal rights in the UK qua females, it being recognised in UK law that they should not be discriminated against for being females, and also that in some circumstances services can be appropriately restricted to females. The adoption of self-identification of gender without a clear recognition in law that one’s gender identity is not one’s sex, and that in some special circumstances it is sex that matters, would fundamentally alter these legal protections. Female people who have fought for those protections have a right to challenge the presumption that making such a change would be unequivocally for the good.
If we did move towards a clear separation of sex from gender identity in law and in our language (using ‘female’ when we meant female, and reserving ‘women’ for a gender identity based notion), then it would be important also to note that historically the term ‘woman’ has been used to interchangeably with ‘female’, and that many struggles in the women’s movements for women’s rights have been for the rights of this group of people (females). In some cases, the rights that have been achieved for women qua females make little sense, or are even undermined, when applied to women in the gender identity sense. Women’s sport offers a fairly clear-cut example of such a case. The fight for separate sporting competitions for women has been surprisingly recent. In 1967 the first woman to compete officially in the Boston Marathon, Kathrine Switzer, registered for the race as K.V. Switzer, using only her initials to avoid drawing attention to the fact she was female. When on the day of the race it was realised that K. V. Switzer was a woman, this resulted in fury from B.A.A. officials, who tried to remove her from the race. Women were only allowed to enter the race officially in 1972. Nowadays there are qualifying times to enter the race, with separate qualifying times for male and female athletes to ensure that female athletes, who lack the physical advantages of their male counterparts, can qualify to run. There are also separate prizes for the men’s and women’s races. However, in 2018 the B.A.A. confirmed that athletes could register to qualify as male or female according to their gender identity, and three trans women ran that year having qualified according to the female standard. Now, if there is a right to separate sporting competition for men and women, this is surely grounded in the differences between male and female bodies, and not the difference between masculine and feminine gender identities. Yet the combination of the move towards a gender identity based notion of the term ‘woman’ with the denial that this term might relevantly have been used to mean anything other than this notion has meant that those who question trans women’s inclusion in women’s sport, holding that ‘women’s’ sporting competitions are more accurately thought of as ‘female’ sporting competitions, have been bizarrely decried by the ACLU as anti-feminist bigots, wishing to “police gender on the basis of impermissible sex stereotypes”.
A related concern surrounds all women shortlists. In the UK the 2002 Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act amended the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act to allow political parties to use all-women shortlists to select candidates for election. (The Labour Party first made use of all women shortlists prior to this, but this was subject to legal challenge as against the terms of the 1975 act.) The 2002 Act had a ‘sunset clause’ of 2015, which was extended to 2030 by the 2010 Equality Act. Women only shortlists were introduced to correct for the historic lack of female representation in politics. But this raises the question, if we now agree to reserve the term ‘women’ for those who self-identify as female, whether all women shortlists are still able to serve the purpose for which they were introduced.
The case here is perhaps not so clear cut. Certainly there has been a lack of female representation in politics, but there has also been a lack of trans visibility, with openly transgender people only recently entering the political sphere. Perhaps in light of a lack of representation of trans people in politics the time has come to make a bit more room, and one way of doing this (though by no means the only way) would be by opening up all women shortlists to trans women. As Emily Thornberry put the sentiment, when asked about the move to opening up all women shortlists and women’s officer roles in the Labour party to trans women, “We’re big enough and big-hearted enough, and if someone believes that they were born as a man but they are a woman, we have space.” This move would serve one important aim, of increasing at least some trans visibility in politics (that of trans women), and if there is indeed space, perhaps this could be done without infringing on the other important purpose of all women shortlists, that of increasing female representation.
Females currently make up 34% of MPs in the UK parliament, compared with fewer than 10% in the 1990s prior to Labour’s introduction of all women shortlists, so while there has been improvement, there is some way to go before we achieve equal representation. However, in 2019 for the first time since their introduction of all women shortlists, females account for 51% of Labour MPs. Perhaps, then, Thornberry is right that in the Labour party at least we have space, and perhaps she’s right that making space for trans women on all women’s shortlists won’t significantly harm female representation. But given the historic — and continuing — under-representation of female people in politics, we should at least be open to the thought that if allowing trans women to stand on all women shortlists were to result in a substantial reduction in female political representation, we might need to rethink this policy. Yet, when asked as part of a panel discussion of how to improve women’s representation in politics in 2018 whether the panel would be happy if 50/50 representation was achieved via a parliament of 50% men and 50% trans women, the then Lib Dem president Sal Brinton’s answer: “Absolutely. Trans women are women. And we support them”, was met with cheers. Now it may of course be that Sal Brinton’s interest here was showing solidarity with trans women rather than with sincerely answering a question about female representation. But given that females have been — and still are — underrepresented in politics, one might have hoped that at least one of the women on a panel discussing women’s representation in politics would have felt able to point out that if equal representation for women was achieved in a way that involved zero representation of female people, this would not be an unequivocally good outcome.
It is examples such as these that have led me, and others involved in the debate over gender recognition, to a position where we have felt the need to remind people that female people exist and that female people still suffer the effects of being marked as female in a patriarchal society. It is these circumstances that lead us to think that, while there might well be some good reasons to adopt a concept of ‘woman’ according to which trans women are women, we cannot do so without also retaining the separate concept of ‘female’ and without retaining the ability to talk about — and fight against — the forms of oppression faced by female people under patriarchy. This is not to say that we don’t think that trans people exist, or that they matter, and it is not to say that we don’t believe that trans people also suffer harms under patriarchy. We do see all this. And we would like to work together to dismantle a system that harms us all. But we cannot do this if we are not permitted to acknowledge what is distinctive about the way each group (females and trans people) are harmed by patriarchy. If we are denied the language and resources to recognise, record, and respond to the facts of female oppression, we will not be able to ameliorate these harms. That is why, despite the many efforts made to prevent us from doing so, so many of us continue to speak.
POSTSCRIPT
The ‘Reverse Voltaire’ is of course a nod to its more famous cousin, the quote so-often attributed to Voltaire in defence of free speech:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The words were not actually Voltaire’s, but those of his biographer, one S. G. Tallentyre. Stephen G. Tallentyre was itself a pseudonym, of one Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Writing in 1906, the female Evelyn chose a male pseudonym to increase her chances of being listened to. And her words certainly were heard, though their true attribution is more often forgotten.
S.G., K.V., J.K. Plus ça change.
POST-POSTSCRIPT
Since publishing this piece I’ve been asked a couple of times who the woman in the image is, and answered ‘Evelyn Beatrice Hall, of course’. But a little searching suggests that although this image is widely said to be of her, in fact the portrait was another hidden woman. The true story is reported here by Robert Sharp.
The painting, by Alfred Pierre Agache, is titled ‘l’Epee’, and can be seen in the Art Gallery of Ontario. The painting includes the caption ‘Pro Iustitia Tantum’ — ‘on behalf of justice only’ — presumably alluding to the only proper use of the sword. When asked by Sharp about the woman in the picture, the gallery clarified: “[T]he model for The Sword is not Evelyn Beatrice Hall. It is in fact a woman named Gabrielle Leroy, who was known as mademoiselle Sygne. She was the artists’ model and source of inspiration for many of his works. It is uncertain what their relations were exactly, but she did live with the artist for 20 years, and he left her a generous sum upon his death.”
It’s of course some strange justice that a woman perhaps best known for having had her own words stolen is so often depicted with the stolen image of another. Apologies to Gabrielle Leroy, and if anyone can find me a true image of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, I’d love to see it.
[1] The term ‘female’ of course is not completely coextensive with the class of ‘sexually marked subordinates’ as identified by Haslanger, since some females regularly pass as male and thus at least in some contexts escape their subordination, while some males pass as female in some contexts and suffer sexism as a result. But at least from a legal perspective, even if one wanted to it would be folly to try to base a legal category around who does or does not ‘pass’ as female. UK equality law (via the 2010 Equality Act) has a good solution around this difficulty, identifying sex as a protected characteristic but outlawing discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sex.
