Ep 448 ｜ Gay, Feminist, and Against Trans Activism (Part 2) ｜ Guest： Dr. Kathleen Stock
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Summary
In Part 2 of my conversation with author Kathleen Stock, we talk about gender identity in children and how it has changed over the years. Kathleen shares her own experience of growing up with a gender identity disorder and how she dealt with it.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. You guys loved part
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one of my conversation with author Kathleen Stock. And so this is part two. I'm really
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excited for you guys to hear it. Without further ado, here again is Kathleen Stock.
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When it comes to children, I just cannot believe that the psychological and psychiatric profession
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have, I don't know what has happened to them. I really don't know what has happened to them
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because these are not stupid people and they're not, you would think, particularly conservative.
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But when it comes to this issue, I've got books which say, you know, a child's gender identity
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emerges around the age of three. And I've seen videos of gender identity therapists,
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talking about looking for evidence in children. And like, maybe the boy picks up a hair clip or,
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you know, the girl moves towards the action man. And these are signs of something inside them. It's
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just, it's just incredible. It's strange. And I'm not totally sure to answer your question,
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why in this segment of science, it seems like many academics and doctors and scientists are so
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anti-scientific. Um, but I, I don't know why we can't allow just kids to be kids. I think about
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when I was, um, when I was in preschool, the only thing that I would allow my mom to put me in was
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jeans and a white t-shirt. I did not want to wear a dress. I didn't want to wear bows. That embarrassed
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me. Um, and I, you know, I bought, I, my parents were a little concerned there for a while because
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I only wanted to read books about snakes and I really liked worms. I mean, it was just me being
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a kid. I had two older brothers at the same time. I had a boyfriend from the time that I was in
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preschool. I was just being who I was. And there was never a thought in my parents' mind or in my
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mind that maybe she should be the other gender. And I just wonder if I had been the same way in this
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era, would there have been teachers and administrators and social workers and pediatricians
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in my life pushing me into starting a plan of, of hormone blockers and how drastically that would
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have changed my life for the worst. And you just have to think about how many victims of that, um,
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are there right now? Yeah. I mean, I agree. And one of the kind of powerful aspects of the, um,
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pushback in Britain has been lesbians in particular and gay men, um, who as children strongly identified
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with the opposite sex, maybe called themselves boys' names, um, insisted. I mean, I know several
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of my friends as children insisted on being called boys' names. They didn't want to like
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pee sitting down, you know, they really, really identified with boys and, um, they were,
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they played with boys and that's, you know, was all at the time considered so unworrying. So,
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you know, just fine. Um, and it would just be very different for some families, not every family,
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like we need an exaggerate. This is not like going on everywhere, but it is going on. And, um,
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the worrying thing is that, like I say, parents who feel a bit uncomfortable with that can have now
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have a narrative that they can just quickly turn to. They have internet chat groups that can help them
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buy, you know, like packers for, um, trans-identified girls. So, you know, there's just a whole bunch
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of paraphernalia now you can buy or, um, books you can read to kind of support this fantasy that you're
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going to get a daughter at the end of it when you started with a son or vice versa. Yeah. I mean,
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I think parents are scared too, because there's been cases in America and Canada and the UK of
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parents refusing to affirm the gender identity of their child and their child being, um, taken away
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from them temporarily. Sometimes, um, you know, there, there are worst cases of that and parents
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are scared because they love their child and they want to do what's best for their child.
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And some parents just don't know any better. And there's some, in some cases scared of the state.
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And so I understand an awful situation. It is. I mean, really we have to go to the powerful people
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in this. We have to go to the LGBT lobby groups, which have lots of money. We have to go to educators.
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We have to go to academics who are thus waving this through. And we have to go to the, um, psychiatric
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and psychological professional associations who have all signed. Well, in Britain, they've signed a
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memorandum of understanding that they will only affirm gender identity. And there's a similar
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kind of understanding, I think, in place in America. So it's very hard to find a therapist
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who could talk you through this stuff, say, hang on a minute, maybe, maybe you just, maybe there's
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another narrative here. You know, maybe we should wait and see what happens because there is evidence
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that, um, if you wait, most kids will desist from thinking that they're the opposite sex, but you have
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to give it time. You can't leap into anything. Now, of course, for some very small number of
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people, being trans might be the right thing to do, but I think it's got to be an adult decision
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after, uh, quite a lot of talking and thinking rather than something that we would let a nine
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Yeah. But you can kind of see the logic behind some trans activists. If you truly believe that
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gender identity is just as real, or if not more real than biological sex, if you believe that it's
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the same as sexual orientation and that sexual orientation is something that you're born with,
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um, then you could see the logic of someone saying, well, why shouldn't we allow 11 year
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old or 12 year old to be who they really are? And I know that you would disagree with that
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conflation, but you could see how someone who conflates those, you know, gender identity
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and sexual orientation, they, if they think that, okay, any kind of therapy is quote conversion
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therapy. And if they oppose conversion therapy for gay kids, then that means that they oppose
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any kind of quote conversion therapy for trans kids. And so that conflation, I think also is part
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of the issue is that they lump it all together and they say, well, no, we just have to affirm.
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Um, and that's the most healthy path that we can take.
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Yeah. I mean, that conflation that happens in the Equality Act, your Equality Act, it happens, um,
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in the Yoga Kiata principles, which were in 2003 and which have influenced all sorts of international
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bodies legislation. They put sexual orientation and gender identity together in the same sentence,
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in the same breath. And they say, both are fundamental aspects of your, um, of you and, uh,
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no one should be forced to suppress them or pressure to change them, but they're very different
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things. I mean, gender, in my view, gender identity is not what makes you trans or not make what makes
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you trans is, is a behavior or a choice to modify your body or to take hormones or to dress a certain
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way or to start even just announcing to the world or a certain way. It's not a thing inside you. That's
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like always been there bursting to come out just in the same way, actually, sexual orientation is
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expressed through behavior, like who you're attracted to and who you date and who you marry and who you
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sleep with and so on. So, um, I, it's not that I don't think, I do think trans people should be
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protected in law. They certainly shouldn't be fired for being trans. They certainly shouldn't
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face any kind of discrimination or harassment for being trans, but that's not to say that gender
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identity is what makes them trans or what makes it worth protecting them. So it's, I would like to
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separate out these two issues and say, let's think about what, um, protections, legal protections and
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social protections we need for trans people. Let's get gender identity as this concept, which is just
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a very bad concept out, out of the discussion and do it some other way.
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You mentioned about separating out and then you talked about discrimination and trans people
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shouldn't be discriminated against. I also think it's important to kind of delineate,
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certain kinds of discrimination because I think we would probably both agree that biological males,
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I don't like that phrase, but it seems like we have to, for the sake of clarity,
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should be discriminated against when it comes to who we put in women's prisons and who we let into
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women's shelters and who we let into women's bathrooms and who we let into women's locker rooms.
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So that's where it kind of, the language kind of gets tricky because the fact of the matter is,
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is that some of us are advocating for, quote, discrimination. We're not advocating for,
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um, you know, mistreatment or to not have, you know, basic human rights, but we are talking about,
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okay, the right of a woman to be able to have a sex protected space should trump any sort of so-called
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right of a biological man to enter those spaces. And so it is a kind of discrimination that we're
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advocating for. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I, I use the word discrimination, um, in a different sense
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there. And I agree that we need better, more flexible, more fine grained concept because
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there's different kinds of discrimination and some are permissible in some contexts. So in the British
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legal system, we have a law which says that discrimination of the kind you mentioned
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is permissible where it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim. And it seems, it used to seem
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obvious to everyone that it was a legitimate aim to protect women from sexual, potential sexual
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predators when they got undressed in changing rooms or when they were sleeping in dormitories or halls of
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residence or where they were seeking refuge from violent males in domestic violence shelters. So that
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used to be like absolutely uncontroversial, that that was a good place to do sex discrimination and sports
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teams is another one. Like if that's built into our equality act too. Unfortunately, like in America too,
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trans activism in the UK has been very successful in convincing people that really the important grounds for
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these discriminations is gender identity. So now it should be that anyone with a female gender identity gets
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into the changing room or the prison or the, I mean, in the right circumstances or, um, the sports team.
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Now that's something that anyone could say they had that you don't, as I keep stressing, it's doesn't
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have to be, you don't have to have had any surgery on your genitalia or anywhere else. You don't have to
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take in any hormones. You just, it's, so it's written into policies across the UK that the legitimate
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permissible criteria of entry into the shower or the changing room or the facility is gender identity,
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not sex. Now that arguably is illegal, but it has yet to be tested. Um, and we have a strong lobbying
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group saying, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. That's what it always was. Right. There was a story out of,
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um, California here about, um, a group of girls at a, at a public sports facility who walked in
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to a locker room where there were kind of these open showers and there was a man and they're taking
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a shower and they were obviously traumatized. There were 17 year old girls. They told their
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parents, the parents complained. Well, the, the, uh, local officials said that they couldn't do
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anything because this grown man, just like, like we were saying earlier, just a man, no kind of changes
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whatsoever said that he identifies as a woman. And so you can already kind of see the tangible
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consequences of this kind of thing. What we would have considered even five years ago,
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sexual harassment or sexual assault of young girls is now being normalized as something that we just
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all need to accept. And my bit of optimism is that ultimately people won't stand for that kind of
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thing that they will risk being called a quote, transphobe or a turf or a bigot for the sake of
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their daughters and for the sake of protection of their wives and friends and sisters. Um, that's,
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that's my hope. Maybe I'm, I'm too hopeful in these crazy times, but I do think that this issue is tipping
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people over the edge. Well, I mean, there's been quite a few cases in the UK. There's been a notorious
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case of, um, a convicted rapist and pedophile being put in a female prison and then sexually assaulting
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female prisoners. Now, female prisoners are some of the most vulnerable population. Most of them
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are in there for petty crime. A large proportion have been in the social care system, um, were
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homeless at the time they went in. And, um, the thought that we are putting sexual offenders
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in female prisons because they say they are female, just again, it's one of those ones where you just
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kind of spin out. But, um, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe that sort of case will push people over
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the edge, but one for that to happen, there's two things. One for that to happen, it has to be
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talked about in bigger circles than the conservative ones in which it's being talked about, right?
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Because, um, we all need to hear about this. We all have an interest in it. But the other thing I'm
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really worried about is some kind of backlash because I don't think, I think trans people should
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be protected in law as, as in they shouldn't be fired for being trans. I think that gay people
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should also be protected in law, um, in various ways. And I'm worried that this, um, overreach
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on behalf of LGBT organizations, this crazy overreach is going to result in some kind of
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backlash against the, um, gay people too, and trans people who are just wanting to get on with
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their lives. You know, transsexuals who've been, um, living as the other sex for years without any
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problem and without making any huge demands on people around them. You know, that's, those are the
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people that are going to suffer as well. Well, I think that the fact that you and I,
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and I've talked to many other people who identify as gay or identify as feminist or identify on the
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left, that a lot of people who identify as those categories on my podcast, I am a conservative,
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traditional Christian. The fact that we find these kind of strange bedfellows, we find ourselves
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linking arms with people who on other subjects, we might not link arms with, we might not agree with.
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I think that that actually bodes very well. That's not to say there isn't a concern of some
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kind of backlash, of course, but I do see, you know, not just when it comes to this, but when it
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comes to a lot of the, um, what people feel like is a totalitarian movement coming from the left.
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And I know that's not exclusive to leftism, but a lot of people feel that way. I see atheists and,
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and Christians and agnostics and gay people and straight people and conservatives and some liberals
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coming together and kind of pushing back against what we see as insanity. And so I think that the
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fact that there is kind of this, uh, there's a, an alliance of a variety of backgrounds and political
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stripes, I think actually could hopefully push back against any sort of, you know, unintended consequence
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to say no to the, you know, uh, insane parts of the trans activist movement.
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Well, I hope you're right. I mean, I certainly see that that is bound to happen. It's not,
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it's, it's completely predictable that a vast range of people from a vast range of backgrounds
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and interests and religious commitments or atheist commitments or whatever,
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will have an interest in maintaining that there are males and females in the world. You know,
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I mean, who wouldn't, it's, it's crazy that this ever happened. So, um, yeah, there's going to be
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very unusual alliances. I mean, personally speaking, I am tired of, uh, the purity spirals
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that happen on the left and I'm tired of identity politics. So I can identify myself
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as, you know, economically left, but not necessarily culturally left. I think there's
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another interesting feature of this, that there's like a range, I think the left and the right are
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becoming, um, no, not everyone fits so cleanly between those two things now, because there's,
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um, I mean, this is different conversation, but obviously there's sort of cultural left and then
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there's economic left and you don't have to be on, on the same side in both those cases.
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And I think conservatives in the United States, there was this kind of scatterplot of 2016 voters
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that said where the vast majority of people who identify as conservatives are, is they're conservative
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economically and they're conservative socially, but there are far more people who are conservative
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socially and culturally and are okay with some economic leftism and economic populism.
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Then there are people who are socially liberal and economically conservative. And we are not really
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well represented by the people who are in charge and the elites, because that kind of social liberalism,
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well, I'm just not really going to speak up about this whole gender thing or any of these cultural
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movements, but capitalism, libertarianism, that's actually not in line with the majority of conservative
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Americans. And so I think what you're speaking of is absolutely true. As far as the population goes,
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I just don't think that's represented at least here in the United States by the people who are
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making decisions. And that, you know, that does kind of concern me, obviously.
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Yeah. I mean, I think, um, we've talked a lot about the influence of the left, but we can,
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and I don't know where you would put libertarians actually, but I would, you know, I think of libertarians
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as more on the right than on the left. And, um, there's a strong kind of libertarian influence in
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trans activism. There is a kind of, um, you know, let everybody radically be who they want to be,
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no matter as long as, and then they say, as long as they're not harming anyone else, obviously be,
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then you can downplay all sorts of different kinds of harms, particularly when it comes to women. So,
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um, I think I'd like to see rejection of that. I think that the free market, like I explained,
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I think has a big role to play in this too. It's like monetizing, uh, dysphoria. It's monetizing
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people's uncomfortableness with themselves and particularly teenagers. And, and so that's
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something I think should be reined in by the right. Um, so there's a lot, there's something
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for everyone to work on. Well, yes. And I think the right, a lot of people on the right and the left
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could possibly agree with the growth of corporate power, which has been, um, exacerbated in the United
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States by mostly Republicans giving disproportionate tax breaks and deregulation to these corporations,
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making them grow and grow and grow to where we have the, almost this corporate oligarchy who is
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pushing things like gender identity down our throats. And hopefully the right and the left
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could kind of agree that, okay, we've given these big corporations too much power. There's no need for
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us to continue giving tax cuts to corporations at the expense of the working and middle class.
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And so you do kind of hope that that sort of, I don't know if it's, I don't know if I should say
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populism, but a little bit of economic populism could bring people together in that way. And at
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least say, okay, we've given these entities too much power. And I think the right is only now waking
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up to the dangers of corporate power. Yeah. I mean, it's an elite and, uh, I think there are several
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elites involved in this particular nightmare, you know, there is a kind of LGBT elite that have gained,
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um, enormous status through hard fought, laudable battles on behalf of gay people,
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but are now, you know, looking for new projects. And then there is the sort of, I would say a kind of
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male led indifference to the effect on women's rights, um, because they just don't care as much
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about it. And then there is, um, the money men, and then there's the left, which is a very masculine,
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uh, chauvinist place as well. So yeah, there's all sorts of elites going on here. And I think, um,
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ordinary people, um, oh yeah. And the academic elites, of course, and I speak as an academic,
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you know, a fully prepared member of the academic elites, but I completely recognize their role in
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this and how ordinary people are the people that are going to suffer. Yeah. Um, it's not,
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so it's not the, you know, the middle-class academic, um, who writes books about how we
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should have full surrogacy now, who is going to pay the cost of, um, their, you know, homeless hostel
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being, uh, suddenly, suddenly having to be pushed into the presence of a, of a, of a male in their,
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in a homeless hostel, or, you know, they don't have as much reliance on public services.
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It's there that it's going to affect people most.
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Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. And I do only have one quick question to, to ask you, but,
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um, when you say middle-class, see, I typically think of this as most elite movements, like critical
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theory, like critical race theory, like gender identity, being coming from the upper class and
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being a war on the middle class. I think that's just a British, a British, my, my problem translation.
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So middle class, I mean, upper middle class as opposed to working class. Okay. So we kind of
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use working class and middle class interchangeably here, obviously there's like a wide range. And so
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I just wanted to clarify that for people, uh, for people listening. And it's also interesting how we
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kind of view economic classes in the United States. Like we might see, you know, a New York Times reporter
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who only makes $60,000 a year as part of the elites, but she's not necessarily, she's not making as much
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money as the person who lives in, you know, Middletown, Kansas, who's making a hundred thousand
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dollars a year, but as a plumber, like our view of what is elite and what is not is, um, and what
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is working classes and what is not, is not necessarily tied to income in the United States.
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So it does just seem like it's these elites, whether they're rich or not pushing it down, um,
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on, I don't know if the right word is just regular people, just kind of working people. But I think
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essentially we agree. Um, no, no, no, no. Um, I, I, we agree though, on the premise,
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speaking of people in charge and elites, um, you have been, you've received some pushback or a lot
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of pushback, and I don't know what any of this means. So you might have to clarify for us. Um,
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you were made an officer of the order of the British empire, uh, in the 2021 new year honors
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list for services to higher education. So I don't know what that means, but apparently
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a lot of people were mad that you, uh, earned this accolade.
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Yeah. I didn't know what it mean meant either when I got it. Um, so yeah, that's gonna,
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uh, I very unexpectedly. So I've been talking about this for a while and I've been also talking about
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the impact on academic freedom and freedom of speech. Um, and I've been trying to draw attention
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to the fact that, um, academics who feel like me are not free to discuss this in the same way as
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other academics. We have faced all these extra obstacles. We can't publish our work. We can't
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give talks without them being protested or no platformed. Uh, there's many open letters and
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petitions against me and all sorts of things have happened to me. So I've been trying to draw attention
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to that. Um, then very unexpectedly, I got an honor, um, in our honors list. I don't know if you have a kind
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of presidential honor type thing, but ours is from the queen, although she obviously has nothing to
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do with it really. Um, but there's a kind of committee that looks at nominations and I got this
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honor, um, called an OBE, um, very unexpectedly. And yes, that really enraged people who hate me even
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further. So, uh, at that point, 600 philosophers, um, many of whom were in the, in the U S actually,
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um, wrote an open letter about me, you know, they, what they accuse me of is every time is
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transphobia. This, they assume that I must hate trans people, um, that I must, what do they accuse
00:24:53.620
me of propping up the patriarchy, uh, various other ridiculous things. Oh yeah. Stopping, stopping
00:25:01.300
trans people from having life, life saving surgeries, me personally. Um, and so on, you know,
00:25:07.540
very hyperbolic rhetorical and turns out they didn't even know what I actually thought because
00:25:11.860
they accused me of something in the letter that turns out I didn't think I have actually publicly
00:25:16.580
said, I don't think so, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. You're always told not you personally,
00:25:23.540
but maybe you personally, if you have any objection to this on a philosophical or political level,
00:25:30.420
um, you're told obviously that you hate trans people personally, which is not true for you or for
00:25:34.900
me that you don't think that they should have rights. And I think the most egregious thing
00:25:39.220
that I hear so often from them is that you have blood on your hands. Like the suicides of trans
00:25:45.620
people is on your hands. If you don't agree with trans activism and that scares a lot of people from
00:25:52.020
speaking out, they see pushback that you got and you're in the academic field. You have all of these
00:25:57.220
credentials and obviously you're very thoughtful about how you approach it. And you're progressive in a
00:26:01.700
lot of ways too. And you're even getting that pushback. That makes a lot of people intimidated.
00:26:06.500
Can you give some people some hope and encouragement? They want to speak up,
00:26:09.620
but they don't know what to do. And maybe they're scared.
00:26:12.900
Um, yes. I mean, I just want to say about the suicide rhetoric. Um, it's, it's completely
00:26:19.460
irresponsible. And, um, it's also propaganda because, uh, there isn't particularly good evidence.
00:26:27.300
I mean, there isn't any evidence that the, um, I don't know what the claim would be. The thing is
00:26:32.980
that trans activists use the threat of suicide to say that parents should accept their children's
00:26:40.500
transitions or in a, in Britain, um, a trans activist organization called mermaids, which
00:26:46.740
lobbies on behalf of children used again, this rhetoric about the potential for suicides to say that, um,
00:26:55.700
children should be given puberty blockers quicker. You know, it's just used all the time as a tool to
00:27:00.820
get certain political demands met and, um, it's not evidence-based. So, and also the other thing is
00:27:08.580
it's really, suicide is very contagious. Um, suicide talk tends to produce more suicide. So it's
00:27:14.820
completely irresponsible to talk as if it was a simple causal story. And when, when suicide does occur,
00:27:21.220
tragically, there's numerous factors, usually it's, it's, it's connected to all sorts of
00:27:25.860
complicated background stories. It couldn't just be one thing. Right. Anyway, could I give people hope?
00:27:31.380
Um, well, I've got a lot of solidarity and friendship out of, um, this because I've met many amazing people
00:27:39.780
who are, um, worried about this too. So that's, I think, you know, that was a definite bonus for me.
00:27:46.260
I also feel incredibly relieved. I can say what I think. Um, and people should not underestimate
00:27:53.940
that particularly academics. If anyone's watching, I mean, your job is to do this stuff. And if you
00:28:00.820
can't do it, who can? So you will feel an enormous sense of relief to be able to say what you think.
00:28:06.740
Um, and now I've written a book which, uh, hopefully explains in more detail why there,
00:28:14.580
we don't have to accept the choice that we've been given between you must be transphobic, um,
00:28:21.620
or you must accept trans activism. Those are the two choices made that we're told are available to us,
00:28:27.860
but that's not true. We could think of creative ways to protect trans people through law and maybe
00:28:34.660
even to grant, you know, to develop new spaces where they feel safe. Um, if needs be, you know,
00:28:40.260
there's all sorts of creative stories we can, uh, conversations we can have that don't involve
00:28:45.380
these black and white aggressively asserted binaries, um, that we're being forced to accept.
00:28:52.580
Yes. And I really encourage people to get your book. I think that, you know, knowledge is power and
00:28:57.540
people educating themselves and realizing that there is someone, um, like you who is speaking out
00:29:02.740
against this stuff, even amidst a lot of pushback and a lot of hate. I think that courage begets
00:29:08.100
courage in itself. And people need to realize that about themselves as well, that their own
00:29:14.500
courage and their own willingness to speak up despite pushback gives courage to other people.
00:29:19.140
And that kind of contagion is something that we desperately need. Um, people can get your book.
00:29:24.020
I'm guessing on Amazon, but we try not to direct people towards Amazon quite as much. Is there
00:29:30.500
anywhere else they can get your book? Um, well, the situation in America is a bit complicated
00:29:35.380
because I, um, couldn't get an American deal, funnily enough, because no, no American publisher
00:29:40.340
wants to touch it. So I've got a British publisher, Little Brown, and they are making the ebook available
00:29:45.860
on the launch date, which is May the 6th. And then they hope that hardback will be available later,
00:29:52.180
some at some point later. So you can get it as an ebook. I'm afraid you might have to get that
00:29:57.220
through Amazon. I don't know, to be honest, there's another one. But, um, or you can order
00:30:02.020
it from the UK, um, through any one of multiple, um, outlets. So you just go to Little Brown and look
00:30:10.340
for me and they've got links to all the places you can order it. Okay, great. Well, we'll put that link
00:30:15.540
in the description to this podcast episode. So people can order it. It's called Material Girls,
00:30:21.220
Correct? Mm-hmm. Material Girls, Why Reality Matters for Feminism. But it's not just for
00:30:27.140
feminists. It's basically for humans. Right, right. And it comes out May 5th. Awesome. Well,
00:30:32.180
I know people are going to gain a lot, a lot of insight and a lot of encouragement for that,
00:30:37.380
from that. So thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. I'm sure everyone can follow you
00:30:42.340
on social media. Do you have a website? I do, KathleenStock.com. And I am
00:30:48.500
DocStock with an extra K on the end on Twitter, where you can find me arguing with people.
00:30:55.620
As we all do, as we all do on Twitter. Well, thank you so much for joining us.