More than a year ago, philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) contacted me about the silence from philosophers surrounding a dramatic proposed change to UK law concerning a person's legal gender. I posted a link to one of Professor Stock's essays, others began to weigh in, and one year later, it seems like philosophers can discuss nothing else, albeit "discuss" may be too generous a characterization for the vitriol and abuse directed at Professor Stock and other Gender Critical ("GC") feminists, and periodically, at me.
As even some of the GC feminists have noted, I am not a GC feminist, as would be obvious to anyone who read some of my earlier posts. Although not a GC feminist, I've found much of their writing eye-opening and worth taking seriously.* I think they are plainly right that gender self-ID is ripe for abuse and has consequences for sex-based rights that are important--especially, but not only, to lesbians. (It is astonishing the unwillingness of so many allegedly "progressive" people to take the concerns of lesbians seriously.)
I still think, however, that the piece I agree with most is that by philosopher Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open U) on the analogy between adoptive parents and trans women; I did not find the criticisms of her view by some GC feminist philosophers persuasive.
I have been motivated to call attention to the ideas and arguments of GC feminist philosophers because (a) they are interesting and deserve engagement, and (b) the attempts to shut them down through abuse, no-platforming, harassment, etc. are an affront to academic freedom and the core values of philosophy. I am pleased that their ideas are much better-known now in the philosophical community, and that there are philosophers and others who have seriously engaged the issues the GC feminists have raised. I will continue to call attention to these issues as they implicate academic freedom, but I plan to write less about these debates going forward, in keeping with my generally lighter blogging schedule this summer.
*One of the more annoying rhetorical tropes of those who want to shut down discussion is to allege that the GC feminists fail to engage the existing "philosophical literature" on these topics. I was initially puzzled that instead of hand-waving about the literature these folks could never state clearly what arguments or insights from this literature GC feminists were missing. Having over the last year now read some of this "philosophical literature," I now see why they didn't: there's not much there, and it's plain that much of it is self-serving advocacy, and not philosophically very substantial or rewarding. There are exceptions, of course; among those currently writing, Robin Dembroff (Yale) comes to mind.
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