Re-posting blogpost on 24th October 2021
Below, I have reproduced my March 2020 blogpost, now as a
continuous piece of text (whereas I previously had screenshots of a transcript
of an on-line exchange of messages).
_______________________________________________________________
Between 3rd and 7th March 2020, I was in a long online
exchange with someone in response to Suzanne Moore’s Guardian article ‘Women
must have the right to organise’ (2nd March 2020)
I was (am) on side of upholding sex-based protections in UK
Equality Act 2010.
‘Abi’ (name changed), a self-described ‘intersectional
feminist’*, took the view that sex is thoroughly socially constructed, and that
the business of classification of individuals by sex is patriarchy** (and
patriarchy is misogyny).
Our exchange began when I quoted Suzanne Moore from her
article: “The latest silencing of women is a warning. You either protect
women’s rights as sex-based or you don’t protect them at all“, to which ‘Abi’
replied: ““Sex based rights” is silly.”
What developed was as in-depth a conversation I have had
with someone of opposing views, extending over 200+ replies.
I am posting because some readers might find interesting.
It’s a 20-minute read.
(Acknowledgement: I quote below from writing by Dr Jane Clare Jones)
*The link at ‘intersectional’ is to an academic paper by US
social theorist Dr Kimberle Crenshaw from 1991. Crenshaw is credited with
having introduced ‘intersectionality’ as a tool or technique of social analysis,
in which attention is drawn to individuals’ circumstances and the
‘intersections’ of ‘axes’ of their social existence through which the
individual can experience discrimination and oppression. The ‘axes’ are sex,
race, class.
**For many, ‘Patriarchy’ is synonymous with Misogyny. If ‘Patriarchy’
is regarded as a ‘dominance hierarchy’, then this is already saying the same
thing. I don’t see that it must be regarded this way.
Guardian 2nd March 2020 carries an article by
Suzanne Moore, ‘Women must have the right to organise.We will not be silenced.’
DIALOGUE:
AverageProtestant: <Thumbs Up> “The latest silencing
of women is a warning. You either protect women’s rights as sex-based or you don’t
protect them at all.”
Abi: “Sex
based rights” is silly. There are no sex-based rights beyond the right NOT to
be limited from full participation in society on the basis of sex. There are no
Mullerian Duct based rights. There are no gametic rights. No gene-based rights.
You’re talking eugenics.
AP: Protections are already afforded on grounds of a person’s sex,
yes. Full participation in society; no discrimination on grounds of a person’s
sex. Quite right. Protections won’t survive elimination of ‘sex’ as a political
category. Not silly.
Abi:
How does this follow? Once you stop centring reproduction as the seat of
identity, you stop motivating society to organize itself around reproductive
roles. It’s be the single most destabilizing blow against patriarchy we could
ever land.
AP: Sex is given and a condition of identity; if that is
what you mean by ‘seat’, then I find the proposal that we ‘stop centring’ it
(sex) unintelligible.
Abi:
That “given” is precisely the bioessentialism that keeps us trapped in a patriarchal
framework. We could choose to organize society where reproductive configuration
was incidental to personhood, not definitional. Patriarchal society merely
*appears* inevitable. It’s not.
AP: I do not reduce identity to biology (if that’s what you
mean by ‘bioessentialism’), but I do say that sex is a condition of identity.
Another condition is other people, e.g. one’s primary care-givers. Perhaps
write a book to help us imagine the society you wish to bring about?
Abi: Or
perhaps I can share my ideas here. (1) Yours, and 99.9% of the world’s problem,
is the foundational patriarchal belief Sex MUST be a condition of identity. (2)
Til you can fathom how this may NOT be so for all ppl, you will only ever
perceive sex nonconformity as a threat.
[There followed an exchange with a third person, in which
Abi drew a distinction between ‘sex nonconformity’ and ‘gender nonconformity’.]
Abi:
Refusing to accept sex as the condition of identity IS sex nonconformity,
regardless of masculinity or femininity. Insisting reproductive configuration
dictates identity is not just sex conformity, it’s conformity to patriarchy
itself.
AP: (Your first sentence) I see the distinction you draw,
but again, ‘refusing to accept’ what *conditions* the refusing Agent I find
un-intelligible.
AP (continuing): (Your second sentence) As my earlier tweet,
I believe sex is a condition of identity but does not ‘dictate’ identity (what
I think you mean by ‘bioessentialism’) and is not the only condition of
identity (another being other people).
Abi: Do
you accept there is a difference between knowing patriarchy centers around our
reproductive function and believing that it is objectively correct and natural
to do so? If so, there is hope for continued discussion.
AP: I accept there may be such a difference for someone who
has this knowledge. However, I dispute any claim to such knowledge, not least because it is such a stupendous claim (it is mythic), but also, as above, I don't
believe identity is reducible to sex, but is conditioned by sex.
AP (continuing): Even if someone did have this knowledge, if
they then concluded that ‘It is natural and correct’ would be a value judgement,
in favour of a certain vision or form of life. What other vision or form of
life would show this judgement to be faulty?
Abi: “These
body parts exist therefore the people who have them must constitute a specific
class of person who is conditioned by having those parts in the universally
predictable ways”. That is an extraordinary claim to knowledge.
AP: “These body parts”… group in stable combinations in
individuals. That is not an extraordinary claim, but an empirical claim. As
individuals how can it fail to affect us (even condition us) if the combination
we have means we are capable of gestating young.
Abi: You
think it is impossible to know that patriarchy centres our identities around
sex?
AP: I believe sex is a condition of human life, individually
and societally, and not a construct of it. As above, I don't believe sex determines
identity but is a condition of identity, another being other people. I believe
identity is neither fixed no single, but changeable and plural.
Abi: And
I believe we have all internalised deeply patriarchal ways of thinking about
sex, especially its boundaries, its limits, and its universality and primacy on
the formation of identity. That you believe identity is not fixed or singular gives
you common cause with trans people. Good.
AP: ‘… ways of thinking’… . If Patriarchy is the Christian
cultural inheritance, I agree, categories of thought are shaped by it. I can't
dispense with them anymore than I can my culture. I am not atheist, where an
atheist might feel themselves to have escaped these categories.
Abi: Nobody
escapes learning cultural biases. It is all internalised on some level and must
be actively unlearned before anyone can claim to have achieved any distance
from it. US atheists may not be religious but will still have acquired a lot of
cultural Christianity.
AP: Indeed, though I would distinguish between ‘cultural
bias’ and ‘categories of thought’. ‘… must be actively unlearned …’. Yes, and to be replaced with what? (Did you
mean ‘us’ or ‘US’ (United States)?)
Abi: United
States, by way of example, sorry. The replacement is up to us. It behoves us
first to look, in our own culture, and across known civilizations. We begin to
see a lot of variation in embodied identification when we do.
AP: ‘The replacement is up to us’. In the UK a concrete
proposal to replace what has been ‘unlearned’ is to instantiate ‘gender
identity’ in law, e.g. as a ‘protected characteristic’. Proponents of ‘gender self-identification’
pose gender identity as innate, such that it can be possible for this ‘identity’
to be in conflict with the person’s sex, thus ‘trans people’. I don't believe
in innate gender identity. As my earlier tweet, I believe identity is
changeable and plural.
AP: If
you agree with my stance on identity as changeable and plural, then I expect
you also agree there is no innate ‘gender identity’?
Abi: I
think the innateness of gender identity, whether it exists or not, is
irrelevant and I do not believe the laws will constitute that it must be so.
Abi: Do
people have the right to claim ownership of their own bodies, lives and identities?
Do people have a right to alter, reclaim or outright reject sex-based identities
conferred at birth? Is defining other people’s bodies by their most private
body parts, and enforcing their public identities accordingly, morally or
ethically defensible? These I believe are the relevant areas of the law. Not
people’s inner beliefs. Not people’s collective comfort with the idea of trans
people. As for my own beliefs about gender identity, I have no strong opinion
about its truth or fiction. The self-knowledge of others is not knowable. My ex-husband
gave me no reason to believe his identity as a man was a fiction for himself, in
spite of his female designation at birth. Neither did the material reality of
our life together lead me to believe our life as husband and wife was
illegitimate. We lived as man and wife because that's what we were. Your
feelings about us claiming that are entirely your own to deal with.
Abi: I
don't think it is necessary to believe in gender identity or disbelieve in it. I
define gender identity as basic self-awareness of one’s own body, how it is
perceived by others, and how we feel about how it's perceived, tempered by what
our bodies would read as if we had a choice. By that standard everybody has
some sort of gender identity. And it's a standard that is far more common among
transfolx than the ‘gendered soul’ stereotype you hold out as a core belief of
trans politics (it’s not).
AP: Stonewall UK, for example, claim ‘gender identity’ to be
‘innate’. Construe that as a gendered soul if you wish. (Screenshot from Stonewall
UK website, glossary of terms).
Abi: This
is not a universal belief of trans people but Even so, I fail to see why it
matters if some people believe in this. It is neither provable nor disprovable.
Self-knowledge is only knowable to the South. It's not for you to intervene
just because you disagree.
AP: If that is so, then I expect there are ramifications,
for example in terms of medical treatments for gender dysphoria.
Abi: Yes,
there are standards of care and guidelines for treatment, if varying a lot
within and across countries. They’ve evolved from a previous era of gatekeeping
and enforced stereotypes. Trans people fought like hell for the informed
consent model and fight to expand it.
AP: Per my earlier tweets, I don't believe there can be an ‘innate’
‘gender identity’, but prominent UK advocates, for example Stonewall UK, seek
to instantiate it in law as a protected characteristic. I don't understand how ‘identity’
or ‘gender identity’ can be a ‘characteristic’.
(Screenshot, Stonewall
UK submission to UK Parliament Women and Equalities Select Commission on Transgender
Equality)
AP: In UK law presently, provision is made to exclude transgender
persons from single sex spaces in certain circumstances.
Abi: I
think that's shitty and dangerous, but it sounds like you have what you already
want. How does a law that makes it a little less awful administratively for
trans people to get their documents in order affect you in anyway?
AP: I support the campaign to have that legal provision upheld,
yes. Here you present this as a matter of administration, a minor change. But
earlier you referred to this change as ‘the single most destabilising blow against
patriarchy we could ever land’.
Abi: I
referred to the abolition of enforcing sex-based identities in the long term, not
one particular law that is limited in its scope. It's the enforcement of sex
that is the work of patriarchy and the trap for all of us.
AP: Ending this provision, which recognises sex as a
political category, in this particular law is entailed by the wider project to
end what you call the ‘enforcement of sex’. I opposed the smaller project as I
oppose the wider project because sex is given and a condition of human society.
Abi: If
sex is a ‘given’, it is private health information at its most relevant and
none of anybody's business at its least relevant, like in 99.9% of our daily
public interactions.
AP: If ‘gender identity’ is irrelevant then what grounds can
there be for framing a law around ‘gender self-identification’ or that names ‘gender
identity’ a protected characteristic?
Abi: That
people have a right to express, claim and live their beliefs and the non-belief
of others is no reason to stop them from doing so?
AP: But the question is what others are to do in respect of
a persons declared identity. It may be argued that there is an ethical
obligation to recognise a person’s declared identity. I would argue, not if
that recognition is coerced.
Abi: Do
people have the right to claim ownership of their own bodies, lives and identities?
Do people have a right to alter, reclaim and or outright reject sex-based identities
as confirmed at birth?
AP: ‘Ownership’ implies something fixed, which is owned. Per
my earlier tweets, I believe identity is not fixed but changeable and, in some
sense, an ongoing negotiation with other people, i.e., relational.
Abi: So,
your body is not your own to claim and inhabit as you see fit if you apply an
identity to it? Huh?
AP: The issue is now being forced. If gender identity is
written into law as a protected characteristic, as some UK advocacy groups
seek, then it will be necessary to believe it or else risk breaking the law. I
don't think people have a ‘right’ to ‘live their identities’. Per my earlier
tweets, I believe identity is a negotiation between people, as seems to have
been so, from your prior tweet, in your relationship with your ex-husband.
Abi: It
was not a negotiation. It was a lived reality. He was my husband. Legally. Socially.
Factually. In every possible way, well beyond what could ever be anybody else’s
business to know about us. But there are people who would love to strike that
off the books. They don't get to.
Abi: You
don't need to believe in same-sex marriage to accept that gay people can marry
and have legal rights as married people. You don't need to believe non-whites
are equal to whites to accept that they have the same rights of citizenship.
AP: Okay, I took the term believe from your preceding tweet.
I will replace it with the word acccept I don't accept gender identity as a
human characteristic as I do acccept sex.
Abi: I
don't accept Jesus as my Lord and saviour. And?
AP: I think that’s the correct analogy: gender identity is
in my view an object of faith, a matter of belief, and it could be protected as
such. It is not, in my view, a characteristic.
Abi: Maybe
not, but neither is Sex in society as it functions today. For sex to be as knowable
and relevant and readily apparent as you claim it to be, we'd all have to be
crowning in labour 24 /7.
AP: ‘Sex in society as it functions in society today’… How
is it different to yesterday? (I’m not clear. Are you now referring to ‘sex’ as
in the act?)
Abi: Sex
as a public legal and social identity functions differently in the modern era relative
to history. The entire idea of discrete biological sexes that must be
segregated in all possible categorizations is the function of a particular
societies, not a universal human condition.
Abi: What
about sex is so much more knowable than gender identity in a practical sense? Genitals?
That's only one aspect of sex. Who is my vagina any of your business? How do people
know to call me a woman without confirming my sex first?
AP: ‘What about sex is so much more knowable than gender
identity in a practical sense?’ I find the question unintelligible. I think
only a person could pose it, who already regards sex as a kind of ‘writing on
the body’, as ‘gender’ is linguistic. That is a disputable ontology.
Abi: Nah.
When you see somebody you think to call a woman, it isn't because you saw her
vagina or her ovaries or chromosomes. You got the idea from the way she looks and
presents herself and when that presentation is ambiguous you aren't conducting
medical interventions about it.
AP: ‘You get the idea from the way she looks and presents
herself…’ – implies the presentation conforms to a gender norm (‘woman’).
Abi: Explain how you come to the conclusion the
people you meet and interact with are of a particular sex without relying on
what they appear to your eye (gender presentation).
AP: I don't. Of course, I rely on appearances to reach such a
conclusion.
Abi: That's
all any of us ever use. The question is, how much is it our business to go
around policing other people who don't match up to what we expect to see? My
position is that's none of our business at all.
AP: Equally, how much
is it our business to oblige others to recognise or accept our view of
ourselves, however earnestly we hold it? My position is it's not a right.
Abi: There
are practical, legal and ethical limits to how much your personal opinion on
somebody else’s anatomy can weigh on that person. And those limits are nowhere
near “I should decide on what you call yourself, how you live, where you pee”. Bodily
autonomy means just that. Sorry.
Abi: What
your movement, however, is working towards, is a world where people whose sex
is perceived by others as unambiguous or incongruent, can be compelled to
disclose or outright reveal intimate details about their own bodies for the
sake of the perceiver’s comfort. This would be a world that perforce constructs
strict parameters for what is and is not acceptable for how women are allowed
to look. A world where the perceivers of women's bodies hold all the leverage
in respect to the access rights people classifiable to people are allowed [sic].
And that is just plain old patriarchy.
AP: ‘Perceived by others as ambiguous or incongruent…’ - Like
your earlier tweet, implies a gender norm, in this case not-conformed-to. So
taking you're two preceding tweets together, I find your approach wants both
presentational norms for classification 'woman' and 'man' and that classification 'woman'/'man' is independent of presentation, namely according only to gender self-declaration.
Which is it to be? If the latter, then woman or man is meaningless; if the
former then there is policing of gender presentation.
Abi: I'm
not convinced the categories are terribly meaningful, but as long as we, as a
society, are forcing people to live in public and legal identities as either
men or women, we ought to trust them to know which side they wish to do it on
and what they need to do with themselves to get there.
AP: Evidently, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have had meaning for you.
But how can these terms retain meaning if ‘man’ and ‘woman’ don't have meaning?
I find no consistency in valuing such culturally-inscribed categories (identities,
even) as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, while seeking to abolish the concepts that
comprise their meaning.
[At this point, and at others, I am aware of some criticisms of Judith Butler, along lines that JB theory - crudely, 'gender is product of power/discourse' - (a) gives no place for an Agent to intentionally disrupt gender norm and (b) provides no basis, once indeterminacy is established, for differentiating between what is subversion and what is conformity - every repetition is equally strange (or normal). Screenshot is extract from Wenjuan XIE (2014) Queer[ing] Performativity, Queer[ing] Subversions: A Critique of Judith Butler’s Theory of Performativity, Comparative Literature: East & West, 20:1, 18-39, DOI: 10.1080/25723618.2014.12015486 ]
Abi: They
meant plenty to us. Doesn't mean they had to mean the exact same thing you mean
when you use them. Why do you require lockstep consensus on the definitions for
socially constructed terminologies?
AP: Even conventionally, there is no ‘exact same thing’, in
terms of what we mean when we use these or any terms, and I don't require it. But
you seem confident to allow that ‘man’ is not meaningful, yet ‘husband’ is (or
will remain so even if ‘man’ does not).
Abi: I
didn't say it wasn't meaningful to individuals. I don't think man woman or sex
is all that usable as an organised in classes but since we have them, we may as
well let people inhabit them in the ways they need rather than enforcing
arbitrary, highly invasive parameters of biology.
AP: But how can anything have meaning, or lack of it, that
is not meaningful to individuals? Individuals is what there are!
Abi: I
said it was meaningful to individuals. I'm saying it's not terribly
meaningful as a discrete principle for organising society by biology, At least
not positively meaningful when enforced in that manner. In other words, it's
great that there are men and women and it's great that people are able to live
as such if they feel that's where they belong. It is not so great when you are
forcing people to identify as such or are actively preventing them from doing
so based on shit that's none of your business.
AP: ‘A discrete principle for organising society’ can have
meaning only for an individual, or else it has no meaning.
Abi:
*sigh* - This is reaching Stock levels of circular nonsense. Unenforceable
criteria based on biology we will never normally access from each other cannot
be a fair standard for organising society. This is too complicated, and need be
belaboured. “Men and women exist”: that's reasonable and fair.
“I am
the arbiter of who gets to be a man and who gets to be a woman”,
not so much.
“I
demand you prove you've met my criteria for womanhood, private citizen!”,
even less so.
AP: I think you ran into a self-. contradiction that has
made things complicated for you.
Abi: I'm
just not articulating myself well at the moment. This isn't the best forum for
discussion this complex. Are you ready to move on yet because life is waiting
and I can either go live it or I can have this endless yet in direct
conversation about other people’s biology.
AP: It is a very difficult topic to discuss. I think we can
agree how central is the need of meaning.
Abi: Beliefs
are not legislatable. Conduct is. You can believe all you like that non-Christians
are going to Hell, but that doesn't give you the right to put to shout “terrorist”
at Muslims. Nor address your Wiccan co-worker
as heathen in the office. Be civil to trans people and you'll be fine.
AP: Agreed. And I am. I am comfortable with gender identity
as a belief. Beliefs are already a protected characteristic in the UK quality
act trouble is, as per earlier tweets, GI advocates say it is innate and
explicitly not a belief.
Abi: 1.
how does this affect your life in any meaningful way? 2. What makes your
situation so much more dire than everywhere else that has seen self ID already,
for years? 3. if gender identity now exists as a political category, so what? If
you didn't believe in homosexuality and think gays are merely confused, you
could still do so. You just can't fire them or discriminate on that basis. How
is this different with trans people and gender identity?
AP: For ‘How does this affect you’, I link you to the Womans Place
UK wesbsite, which explains the potential consequences of GRA 2004 reform
for women and women-only spaces, and other potential impacts. TLDR Because it
impacts on ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic.
Abi: Please
provide a source that is not blatantly involved in distorting basic facts about
trans people’s lives, bodies and challenges to render anti-trans sentiment more
sympathetic.
AP: You ask, ‘If gender identity now exists as a political
category, so what?’ I hope this answers your question. (Equality Act 2010, Protected characteristics, Sex)
Equ. Act 2010, PT. 16: INTERPRETATION, Section
212: General Interpretation.
(1)
In this Act
(2)
“man” means a male of any age
(3)
“woman” means a female of any age
(AP continuing): To change the definition of ‘man’ from ‘male
of any age’ to ‘person who identifies as a man’ (or equivalent for the
definition of woman) would impact on this legislation. It would detach the term
‘woman’ from ‘female’ and therefore also from ‘sex’; ‘sex’ would no longer refer
to anything
Abi: Sounds
good to me, though I don't see how this enables employers and what not to discriminate
based on their perception of a subordinate’s sex. Can you explain the logistic
changes to your own life?
AP: What sounds good you seem to be asking, ‘How does anyone
an employer say know what another person’s sex is?’ Is that what you are asking?
AP: And yet we began with recognising that sex is a target
for discrimination, which justifies a law to protect against such
discrimination. Sex matters.
Abi: But
it's the perception of sex that drives the discriminatory behaviour and what
people are protected against. If sex became mere incidental history, like race,
rather than a legally enforced caste, this would make it harder to justify sex-based
discrimination.
AP: It would, I agree. If ‘sex’ is *not*, I can be neither
discriminated against or selected on grounds of my sex. I don't believe ‘sex’
is ‘mere incidental history’. I can't conceive of human relations, which
comprise history, that do not contend with sex- a condition of human life.
Abi: It
doesn't really though, because sex-based discrimination is driven by perception
of sex as much as, if not even more than, the “fact” of it.
AP: How can there be perception of sex without some
background notion of sex so that we can say it is what we perceive? Why use
quote marks around ‘fact’? Does not have to be either/or, as Jane Clare Jones
points out in discussion of Judith Butler's account of sex as constructed.
(Screenshot from Jane Clare Jones online essay, ‘Judith
Butler: How to disappear Patriarchy in Three Easy Steps’)
"As she [Judith Butler] argues in Bodies That Matter, the “moderate critic might concede that some part of ‘sex’ is constructed, but some other is certainly not, and then, of course, find… herself…under some obligation to draw the line between what is and is not constructed.” (11) This is the bit I dispute. There is no obligation to draw a line, either precisely around ‘sex’ or precisely around ‘woman,’ in order for these to be meaningful terms that do work in the world. Thinking that we have to draw lines around concepts for them to be meaningful is exactly the same old essentialist, spatializing, phallic rubbish that we should be critiquing. As Wittgenstein once usefully noted, we do not have to be able to point at the line on the floor where ‘here’ becomes ‘there’ in order to use these words with sense. Because essences and clear delineations and phallic oppositions are not the only – or most important – way that concepts work (if they are actually how they work at all)." (Jane Clare Jones, blog-post ‘Judith Butler: How to disappear Patriarchy in Three Easy Steps’)
Abi: How
can there be perception of Race without some background notion of what Race is?
And yet Race is a biological fiction imposed upon bodies with perceivable traits.
Ending enforced race class is a step forward in anti-racism, not a step back. The
same will be true for sex.
(And to
get it out of the way before you even ask, Rachel Dolezal fails as a comparison
to trans because race “transition” only works in one direction: white to non-white.
Whereas half of all trans people are assigned female at birth so those gender
transitions are also suppressed and surveilled.)
AP: Perhaps too, it is not necessary to be either/or about race?
Abi: Who
is either-or-ing? I'm not the one suggesting we can only have sex or gender
identity but not both.
AP: You are. You are saying ‘sex’ or ‘race’ is either fact
or ‘biological fiction’/’mere incidental history’, and you come down on
the latter. Why not ‘both/and’ (the point I think which is made by JC Jones)?
Abi: It
really isn't that difficult a concept. Yes, biological differences exist. Yes,
those differences often require different medical and practical accommodations.
No, they should not be held against anybody. No way, should we enforce bio
differences as mandated legal identities. In fact, I believe that very
enforcement is what enshrines essential stereotypes against subordinated groups
into law, the culture and all our institutions. Race, Sex, Dis/Ability have all
been legislated and enforced in ways that reify those oppressions.
Abi: As
for the quote, it's been a long time since I read Butler, so I have no way of
knowing the context of the original quote being picked apart. So, pause. The
biological fiction, to clarify, is the way we insist in Culture and in Law
that because bio differences exist, we can infer a different class of person
who is similar in character to others with the same bio traits, and
fundamentally dissimilar to anyone else without them. END
