Transphobia, Slurs, and the Rights of Women I
The Copernican (about) Turn
Recently I discovered that several colleagues had described me or the views I’ve expressed in the work I’ve put out on Substack as “transphobic”. This was perhaps predictable enough: calling someone a transphobe because you assume they disagree with you on issues relating to “trans rights” has become something of a reflex gesture. Nevertheless, it drew my attention to the fact that the gender-absolutist (G-A) accuser sees themselves as free—and, indeed, is apparently regarded by others as free—from any obligation to engage constructively with what the accused has said or written. And presumably they consider (and are considered) unfettered by any such requirement because of the assumption that however detailed, or well-argued, or soundly-motivated the so-called gender-critical (G-C) beliefs in question are, they simply have no more bearing on the self-evident correctness of the right to self-ascribe one’s “gender identity” than Galileo’s astronomical evidence of the Earth’s movement around the Sun had on Cardinal Bellarmine’s “fluid heavens” theory. Accusers, it seems, proceed on the basis that G-A is the default position and G-C the reactionary proposal.
In earlier work I attempted to demonstrate that the reasonableness of G-A as an eliminativist proposal for (in brief) changing the meaning of “sex” is far from evident. Indeed, my gender-sceptical[1] (G-S) evaluation was on the whole negative, and I took myself to have finished with the topic. But experiencing at first hand the G-A’s self-righteous claim to infallibility serves as a reminder that workplace and other accusations of transphobia do not take place on a level playing-field. As a consequence, further work is required both to draw attention to that fact and to outline the implications of acknowledging and indeed addressing it. In Parts II and III of this article I’ll sketch these implications, which will be more fully developed in subsequent projects[2]. But I want to conclude this brief return to the topic by saying something about the gender-absolutist’s presumption of correctness and about how the existing legal situation unwittingly lends credence to it. And that takes us back to the curious case of Bellarmine.
The parallel with the Vatican’s treatment of Galileo might strike one as obtuse for two reasons. Firstly, the gender-absolutist would doubtless insist that it’s their role that should be likened to that of the heroic Galilean figure, and that of the gender-critic to the enforcer of theological orthodoxy! Furthermore, they would add—perhaps resentfully—that however reactionary and disreputable the gender-critic’s views, they do at least enjoy a level of legal protection that was denied to poor Galileo. Let’s take that second point first. Under the Equality Act (2010) (EA) “Religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics”, where belief is taken to mean ‘any religious or philosophical belief’ and a ‘person who has a particular protected characteristic’ is a person who holds a belief of the appropriate sort. Moreover, according to the ruling of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) gender-critical views are protected under the EA. As things stand, then, a G-C belief like “sex is immutable” is protected by law and to call someone a transphobe on the grounds of such a belief is therefore akin to slurring someone for being a Christian or a Muslim or a follower of some other religion[3].
This legal protection is a reassurance for those who (like me) fear that Stonewall exercises more influence over their employer’s EDI policies than the law. However, it also obscures a crucial consideration; namely, that it was what might be regarded as the commonsense-scientific view that came to require legal protection and not the revisionary gender-absolutist view that seeks to supplant it. Indeed, that protection was only accorded when Maya Forstater successfully challenged the ruling of an earlier Tribunal—which had implied that her views were ‘akin to Nazism or totalitarianism’!—by convincing the EAT that G-C beliefs meet the threshold required of “philosophical beliefs”. I’ll say a little more about this in Part II, but the point I want to make now is that what threatens to go missing is recognition of the fact that G-C beliefs are only contested in this way because of the revisionary philosophical alternative G-A. That is to say, the statusof the claim that “sex is immutable” only becomes “philosophical” as opposed to commonsense-scientific if one accepts the legitimacy of the G-A proposal for the elimination of biological classification in favour of self-authorising, gender-identity classification.
This returns us to the first point. For Bellarmine, the only source of evidence for a “theory” is scriptural[4] and so no empirical considerations could have a bearing on the Vatican’s (and therefore the authoritative) understanding of the nature of the cosmos. The victory (eventually celebrated) in Galileo’s name was the elimination of a conception of knowledge grounded in the revelatory power of words whose interpretation was itself in the control of the Catholic clerisy in favour of one proposing that observational evidence is crucial in determining the dynamic relations between bodies. Whereas for the former something is constituted as an object of the worldview in virtue of the authority of a hermetic practice, for the latter it is in virtue of the authority of a method that is open to scrutiny and revision. In likening the G-A stance to Bellarmine’s, then, the aim is to remind us that not all change is for the better. The moral that should have been drawn from the original Employment Tribunal is that so-called G-C views should no more have been presumed to stand in need of legal protection than the belief that the Earth orbits the Sun.
To sharpen this point, imagine if some counterpart of Stonewall etc. were to propose an updated version of the “fluid heavens” theory. Perhaps they gain some sway in popular culture and start to impugn the astronomically-minded as “Fluidophobes”, decrying as irrelevant to cosmology the commonsense-scientific conviction that observation is evidence and insisting on the authority of a “priestly” caste in communion with their divinity. The appropriate response is to insist that it is the revisionary proposal of the “fluiders” that should be scrutinised before anyone starts to worry about whether astronomy is in fact a “philosophical” belief that stands in need of being “protected”. Likewise, the very idea that gender-critical views are controversially “philosophical” and thus require evaluation as such if they are to be protected (or not) should simply never have arisen until the reasonableness of the gender-absolutist proposal that the meaning of “sex” needs revising had been examined thoroughly. Since that proposal turns its back on open and fallible inquiry and instead invests authority in the inviolable domain of the subject’s self-interpretation, it would appear that the “Copernican Turn” against the authority of dogmatic absolutism has found its new Bellarmines.
[1] In contrasting my gender-sceptical (GS) stance with that of the gender-critic (GC) and gender-dogmatist (GD) I’m drawing on the (Ancient Greek) association the word “sceptical” has with openness to inquiry.
[2] I will pursue two interconnected lines of inquiry. The first centres on a genealogy of the concept “gender identity”, the second on the use of puberty blockers as part of what is called by its supporters “gender affirming care”. As we’ll see, both lines of inquiry draw attention to the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychiatry and hence to the scientific (or otherwise) status of the discourse around gender and identity.
[3] Interestingly, although belief in the relevant sense is a protected characteristic, it is only religious belief that the Sentencing Act (2020)recognises as the target of a hate crime.
[4] Bellarmine’s view that the planets moved through liquid was based on the evidence of scripture alone (Cf. Ugo Baldini, U. and Coyne, G. V. Eds. 1984. The Louvain Lectures [Lectiones Lovanienses] of Bellarmine and the Autograph Copy of His 1616 Declaration to Galileo. Studi Galileiani, 1(2). Vatican City: Specola Vaticana.