I am gender critical. In other words I accept the biological distinction between the sexes. Does this mean I want to ‘other’, ‘reject’ or that I ‘hate’ the trans community. Of course not. Nor do I accept charges of bigotry. If anyone actually reads the UK Supreme Court judgement affirming the salience of biological sex in law they will be aware that trans rights were also emphasised and underlined. There has long been a ‘tiny minority’ of people who feel they are ‘in the wrong body’ (medicalised as gender dysmorphia). However, for me, in a nutshell, people born male cannot become girls or women; they can however live as – ‘as if they are’ – girls or women. They can, with varying degrees of effectiveness, ‘perform womanhood’. But there will inevitably be clashes between the rights of trans women and women defined by biological sex, whether it be in sport or access to changing rooms, toilets or other spaces hitherto preserved for women.
It should be noted that the vigorous and often toxic debates between advocates of gender critical and gender ideology viewpoints almost invariably features trans women: in other words, males wishing to live as girls or women. This smacks of a patriarchal culture which is incontrovertibly alive and well.
What has long struck me is the heterogeneity of the trans community, which is routinely either ignored or overlooked. I will here focus on trans women, which as I have said, has dominated debates. What follows is a typology that, I suggest, represents the differences of character and circumstance involving trans women. It is explicitly gender critical, for which I make no apology. It is a typology that echoes both a line in Shakespeare (‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players’) and Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy.
- Lead Actors, or those that can effectively ‘pass’ as women – when I worked as an academic I became acquainted with a research officer in his 20s, a hard-drinking northern lad, who took the difficult decision that he should, in my terms, ‘live as’ a woman. He was supported through surgical transitioning and, as far as I was aware, experienced no discrimination, at least at work. On returning to work it was apparent that there was much to be learned around behavioural change, about how to ‘pass’ as a woman. This was comprehensively accomplished in a timely fashion and I later heard that ‘she’ had married a man and was happy.
- Supporting Actors, or those who cannot effectively pass as women and try to ‘cover’; that is, to ‘play down’ any stereotypical male characteristics and ‘play up’ any stereotypical characteristics associated with womanhood. I can refer here to another personal acquaintance, this time a man in his mid-60s, who took the brave and bold, and to him overdue, decision to transition. He received the full support of his local community and remained active in all its activities. He went on to achieve a surgical transition. It was not possible in this case, however, to pass as a woman, perhaps unsurprisingly given his age at the time. So the default option was to cover. ‘She’ remained with ‘her’ spouse and is happy with the decisions that were taken.
- Members of the Cast – in this group I include those who genuinely opt to ‘live as’ women but are reluctant to undergo the radical surgery linked to a full programme of transitioning. Occasionally passing might be accomplished, but even covering typically presents problems.
- Extras – these comprise people who have not taken steps to transition and present as women with little or no prospect of passing or covering. Sometimes they incorporate into their performances a stereotyped and eroticised notion of what it is to be a woman.
- Audition rejects – those who fall into this category show signs of psychological maladaptation or disturbance. Despite making no moves to transition, they insist, for example, that they can and do experience period pains and even, cushions stuffed up their jumpers, pregnancy.
The point of proffering a typology along these lines is to emphasise that there presently exists no ‘one size fits all’ trans woman. It is rather a tiny segment of the population that is marked by considerable heterogeneity. When ‘extras’ and ‘audition rejects’ protest on behalf of trans liberation while some of their number are offended when women won’t accept them as lesbian partners, it is unsurprising that gender critical feminists and their allies reject their case as well as their advances. Trans rights matter but are circumscribed.
Clearly ‘lead’ and ‘supporting actors’ have the strongest claims for being taken seriously, for eliciting understanding and empathy and in relation to the consideration of rights. Of course they possess a range of basic human rights, covering anti-discrimination with reference to education, jobs, housing, welfare and so on. But, and this is a point of concern for gender critical advocates, some of the additional rights they claim infringe upon, even come up against, hard-won women’s rights. This is painfully obvious in relation to multiple sporting competitions, where the advantages of those born male have been comprehensively documented. But there is the issue too of ‘women’s spaces’. It may well be that many ‘lead actors’ were using such spaces before the ‘trans debate’ exploded onto the scene; but now it has exploded (with much hyperbole, bitterness and abuse) there is much to deliberate on.
It should be factored in that we still inhabit a patriarchy, and that: (i) men have had a long-term near-monopoly of physical and mental abuse (all women know what is meant when it is said that a ‘male gaze’ follows them around, not least at night, even in the absence of an actual male in the vicinity); and (ii) it is a symptom of patriarchy that it is trans women, in other words those born male, and not trans men, who have dominated the debate. It should be painfully apparent that ‘members of the cast’, ‘extras’ and ‘audition rejects’ should not be granted ready access to spaces like women’s refuges or prisons.
There are many other issues arising out of the ‘sex matters’ narrative. The proposal that anyone – from ‘lead actors’ to ‘audition rejects’ – who self-identifies as a trans woman should be accepted as a woman both makes no sense and represents a clear and overt threat to women’s rights. The proposals that: (i) gender self-identification should displace biological sex on people’s birth certificates, and (ii) National Census and other population data sets should cease to collect data on biological sex, are misguided, would pose an additional threat to women’s rights and would make it all but impossible to research material and social inequalities between men and women. It would be useful, however, to collect valid data on the trans community, some of whom have undoubtedly experienced hardship and vulnerability.
Another area of ongoing debate concerns children and young adults. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the publicity around the trans debate, the BMJ found a five-fold increase in UK rates of ‘transgender identity’ since 2000, with the highest rise in 16-29 year olds, followed by the younger group. The rate was more than twice as high in the most socially and economically deprived areas. Overall, however, the BMJ analysis, which included more than seven million people coded for the first time in their medical record as transgender was small: 2462 (0.03%), equivalent to 1 in every 3,000 people. This gives some context. But a new ‘PATHWAYS’ study led by King’s College London and King’s College NHS Foundation Trust has elicited strong reactions. This controversial study into transgender identity involves: (i) a multi-year project focusing primarily on the long-term health and wellbeing of 3,000+ young people with ‘gender incongruence’, and (ii) a ‘TransRIGHTS’ study focusing on blood tests for trans/non-binary individuals. Designed in the wake of the Cass Report, the aim is to evaluate the risks and benefits of puberty blockers, to monitor mental and physical health, and to investigate societal factors like ADHD, autism and social experiences. The goal is to provide a reliable data base for meeting clinical and other health needs. Whence the controversy? Concerns include: (i) the risk of significant and possibly irreversible physical harm via puberty-suppressing hormones (puberty blockers) provided to children and young people; (ii) the impossibility of children giving fully informed consent to procedures that might cause permanent life-altering changes, like sterilisation; (iii) there is an element of ‘coercion’ in that the trial is designed to be one of the only means of accessing puberty blockers via the NHS, forcing families into a research setting to obtain treatment; and (iv) the trial ignores neurodevelopmental, biological and emotional vulnerabilities, violating safety standards in the process. The study seems clearly to risk breaching the Hippocratic injunction ‘to do no harm’. It is unethical and should not proceed in my opinion. There already exists evidence of harm and regret.
The whole trans debate raises complex issues, but I would conclude with the following personal observations: (i) sex matters and it is biological sex that determines whether you are male or female, and in consequence a boy/man or girl/woman; (ii) biological determinism – or the patriarchal myth that biological sex does or even should determine one’s life choices and opportunities (ie men do paid work outside the home and women do the caring at home) has long and rightly been debunked; (iii) what has conventionally been medically ‘diagnosed’ as ‘gender dysmorphia’ has long existed historically and continues to do so, but affecting a tiny proportion of the population; (iv) the trans community is heterogeneous, and should not be treated as homogeneous; (v) the focus in debates and activist interventions on trans women rather than trans men is a predictable function of obdurately patriarchal social structures; (vi) trans rights matter and where appropriate ‘gender-neutral services and facilities’ should be provided for their needs.
The future remains unpredictable. Stephen Hawking in a posthumous volume contended that we might not recognise the human species as such in a hundred years. Maybe ‘we’ shall enter an era of cyborgs.