“Transphobia”, Slurs, and the Rights of Women II

The “Transphobic” Fallacy

[H]e was totally lacking in depth of imagination, in that inner capacity owing to which the notions evoked by the imagination become so real that they demand to be brought into correspondence with other notions and with reality.

—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

1. Levelling the Playing-field

In Part I of ‘“Transphobia, Slurs, and the Rights of Women”’ I used my recent exposure to workplace accusations of “transphobia” to highlight the lack of a level playing-field with respect to how such accusations are conceived of and how as a consequence they are responded to. As I went on to point out, because of the way that workplace protections have been established under the Equalities Act the belief has become widespread that gender-critical (G-C) beliefs about the immutability of sex are not part of commonsense-empirical understanding but rather are indicative of some sort of optional “philosophical” worldview that is on same footing as, and thus somehow rivals, the gender-absolutist (G-A) hypothesis that self-authenticating “gender-identities” are the legitimate descriptors. As a consequence, many if not all gender-absolutists feel empowered to regard assertions (or even suspicions) of G-C beliefs as contradicting “gender-identity”-theory and thus as “transphobic” in their very nature. As my own experience and that of countless others testifies, this has led to a situation where accusations of “transphobia” are left unchallenged not because they are seen as ill-founded or mischievously-motivated, or even as meaningless but because they are unchallengeable! That is to say, the accusation is regarded as straightforwardly true given the purported nature of the accused’s (“gender-critical”) beliefs. And since those beliefs are “protected” the implication is that the accused’s “transphobia” is somehow also… protected! This is clearly an intolerable position for someone accused of hateful views to be in, not least because such denunciations can be used to support others that are far more consequential (“he’s transphobic, so he’s probably also homophobic”). In a subsequent piece I’m going to look at how we ended up in a position where straightforwardly commonsense-empirical beliefs came to be seen as standing in need of legal “protection”. However, the itch that I want to scratch in this essay concerns the shiftiness that has led to such beliefs being seen as “philosophical” in the first place and the way that that supports the contention that someone can be described rightly as a “transphobe” on the grounds that they are judged to hold “gender-critical” beliefs. Highlighting that shiftiness will hopefully take us some way towards levelling the playing-field with respect to how accusations of “transphobia” should be dealt with.

2. Changing the Subject

In general, those classified as “transphobic” might be said to fall into two basic camps. On the one hand there are the haters, those who feel empowered to express (often violently) their disgust and contempt for anyone who doesn’t fit in with their understanding of how people should look and/or behave. As I’ve noted before, it would be very difficult to determine whether such people are transphobic as opposed to homophobic, or sexist, or whatever label we give to those who’re just intolerant of difference of any sort. I don’t believe that anyone who thinks I’m “transphobic” think that I’m “transphobic” in this sense; rather, they think that I’m “transphobic” because I’m assumed to hold “gender critical” views. People who hold such views might be haters as well of course, but insofar as their G-C views find expression in their relevant engagements with people who identify as “trans” it’s likely they are being judged on account of their refusal to acknowledge the “reality” of the “trans experience”. Such refusals might be direct or indirect and might be described—unhelpfully, I think—as “doing violence” to those involved. But it seems obvious that this is what “gender-absolutists” have in mind when they describe those with G-C views as “transphobic” and on that basis refuse to engage further with them.

The assumption that denunciations of “transphobia” require no more evidence than the suspicion that the person accused has “gender-critical” beliefs and therefore have a sort of “default” legitimacy that puts them beyond criticism is unacceptable. However, its seemingly widespread acceptance is a measure of the success that gender-absolutists have had in getting people to believe that there is something “philosophical”—and therefore something theoretically contestable—about the claim that (for example) sex is immutable. Viewed in the light of the “eliminativist” understanding of conceptual change we’ve been considering, this circumstance is not surprising. Consider the following successful eliminations (going back to Rorty’s early pieces):

1. What people used to call “unicorn horns” are really narwhal horns (therefore, unicorns don’t exist)

2. What people used to call “Zeus’ thunderbolts” are really electrostatic discharges (therefore, Zeus’ thunderbolts don’t exist)

(1) and (2) articulate the shift from an object or event characterised in supernatural terms to one specified in naturalistic terms. In affirming each we first acknowledge the authority of the standpoint that identifies the second item as the sort of thing that is really real and then infer that the first item cannot meet the associated criteria. But what are the options for someone who wants to reject (1) and/or (2)? On the face of it appears that one would have to establish the existence of—say—unicorns according to those (implicitly acknowledged) “naturalistic” standards. And being unable to find any real unicorns we conclude that the supposed horns must be from another animal (a narwhal).

There is another possibility of course. Someone could reject (1) on the grounds that unicorn horns are different from narwhal horns because unicorns are magical creatures. In other words, they could refuse to accept that the natural-historical standpoint is the appropriate one for accounting for the phenomenon in question. One reason at least why we wouldn’t take this route to rejection and instead accept that the criteria of the real are exemplified by the right-hand terms is that the existence of narwhals and of electrostatic discharge are well-established as part of a general understanding of nature and we don’t wish to impugn the authority of that way in which objects are made intelligible to us. Of course, there are such people, just as there are people who claim to have been abducted by aliens (a parallel I’ll return to), but we are under no obligation to take their claims at face-value. Now recall one version of the G-A’s “eliminativist” proposal for concept change:

3. What people used to call “sex” is really gender-identity (therefore, sex doesn’t exist)

When we contemplate this proposed elimination then—as with (1)—we consider the status of the left-hand term in the light of what the right-hand term exemplifies as “real”. Since gender-identity talk is “philosophical” in character (because “gender identity” states are non-empirical posits¹), the implication is that (3) can be rejected legitimately only if the defence of “sex”-talk likewise proceeds in “philosophical” terms. As we noted in Section 1, however, for the “gender-absolutist” any attempt to confute the authority of gender-identity talk through “philosophical” disagreement is by stipulation “transphobic”. Indeed, for the gender-absolutist there is as a consequence not only a simple moral case for refusing to engage with anyone who is assumed to have the sort of (“gender-critical”) views that would elicit such opposition, but adequate grounds for denouncing them publicly as a “transphobe”!

The real moral to be drawn from this is that it is only from a standpoint that acknowledges the philosophical bona fides of G-A beliefs that one could come to consider G-C beliefs as controversially non-empirical and thus as standing in need of “protection”. However, unlike (1) and (2) the standpoint (3) strives for does not articulate a form of understanding that is expressive of an enlightened rejection of the supernatural. Indeed, not only are we under no obligation to accept the reality-determining authority of the right-hand term, to do so—as I’ve repeatedly argued— is to sanction a form of authority that is largely unintelligible to us from the perspective of that broadly naturalistic standpoint. I’m going to say a little more about the “reasonableness” or otherwise of (3) and associated proposals for elimination in Section 4, but it’s worth noting that the “eliminations” given in (1) and (2) are examples of where “metaphysical” beliefs are replaced by naturalistic or empirical beliefs, and my contention is that something akin to the reverse is proposed under the gender-absolutist’s proposal. So I want to say a little more about the process whereby a “commonsense” view can be transformed into a “philosophical” view, and why we might consider such a shift… shifty!

3. It’s Just Not Cricket!

Unsurprisingly, the classic example of this sort of “shiftiness” comes from philosophy itself. I type away at my keyboard, editing the text as I go. I don’t doubt the existence of the computer, keyboard and screen, but then it occurs to me that I might be dreaming or in the Matrix or tormented by an evil demon (etc.). Once these possibilities have been considered it appears that my commonsense view involved philosophical commitments that I had been unaware of; namely, to the existence of material objects and to my knowledge of that existence. And that in turn seems to indicate not only that I actually have such commitments but they have rivals implied by the various sceptical scenarios. A great deal of effort has gone into showing that there is indeed something “shifty” about this particular shift², but we can well imagine an idealist (someone who denies that there are material objects) denouncing the person who insists that they are typing away at a keyboard as an “idealophobe” who holds contentious and indeed conservative “materialist” views.

Here’s a non-philosophical thought-experiment to highlight the same sort of shift. May is pregnant, but various factors mean that it will be humiliating for her family and resultingly dangerous for her to explain how it came about. So she explains how a supernatural being announced that she had been chosen to “deliver” into the world a manifestation of a divine being. The commonsense view is that pregnancy and birth follow from impregnation, but hers is an “immaculate” conception. The idea catches on and provides women with a much-needed way of escaping patriarchal control. So now conception itself has nothing essentially to do with impregnation, even though most women who give birth initially think that that was due to—in the majority of cases—having had sex. With time, perhaps women start to think of sex as being inessential to pregnancy and that it’s really down to God’s fecundity. And perhaps with more time still the actual child-bearing becomes irrelevant, and merely announcing that one has been “impregnated” by God becomes all that matters. Regarding pregnancy as a “self-ascribed” state in this way means that men too can be pregnant, but there are dissenters. These insist on the biological basis of pregnancy and are generally seen as maintaining reactionary “philosophical” views about the nature of procreation.

As I noted above, we often think about “philosophical” beliefs in the way that they are discussed in the Equalities Act as relating to rival “world-views”, the paradigm being religion where the toleration of difference has long been acknowledged as crucial by progressive thinkers. And one reason for this acknowledgement is that world-views bring with them their own conceptions of what are and are not appropriate beliefs. However important they are internal to their respective world-views, I don’t imagine that Christians (as Christians) care very much about whether Ali or Abu Bakr was the Prophet Muhammad’s legitimate successor, nor Buddhists much about the metaphysics of the Eucharist. In this sense world-views are like different games. Someone might prefer cricket to football but it would be odd if they went on to claim that football would be a much better game if it were played with a small hard ball instead.

The lesson learned hopefully learned is that it’s better not to interfere and to let people get on with their own games³. But what if the cricketers don’t see it quite that way? After all, for some sport is an important part of their self-identity: one might say, it makes them who they are! One can imagine two distinct factions emerging, each with its own strategy for changing things. Employing what we might call an “empirical” strategy, the first faction argues that cricket is less socially divisive, better for the environment, less likely to cause head-injuries etc. For our purposes it doesn’t matter if these are good or bad arguments; what matters is that they can be challenged, tested, revised. Perhaps the outcome will be that we need both, and that the empirically-minded faction of cricketers are told to lighten up and embrace pluralism. The second faction is more zealous. Call them the cricket-absolutists. They adopt a “philosophical” strategy for bringing about change. Rather than look for objective criteria that might can be applied to both games in the hopes of establishing the superiority of one, they take up a resolutely subjective or internal stance. They argue that since balls-in-games are by definition small and hard there simply isn’t a ball in football at all! Indeed, they claim that not only is football not a game involving a ball it isn’t actually a game at all because… it’s just not cricket!

In this cricketing parable the final outcome is predictable enough. Rather than a pluralism of games to be enjoyed we get competing “world-views” as to what a “game” is. Perhaps football fans find that their conception of a game comes to require philosophical “protection” since it is one in which a ball is (contestably believed to be) something large and inflatable and kicked from one end of a field to another.

4. The Playing-field Levelled

The foregoing aim to restore at least some understanding of what the view from a level playing field looks like. Initially it means that it is reasonable for those to whom “gender critical” beliefs are ascribed to regard the accusation of “transphobia” as intended as meaningless. One argument here would be that since gender-identity is distinct from sex, the question whether someone’s gender-identity can be compared or contrasted usefully with their sex doesn’t arise. And since it doesn’t arise, no one’s gender identity can differ from or stand in opposition to their sex in a way that might be used to make sense of someone being “trans” in the way required for the charge of transphobia to be other than moot. By way of analogy consider the case of people who have been kidnapped by extraterrestrials and who refer to themselves collectively as “abductees”. The abduction-absolutists denounce as “abducteephobes” anyone who denies the “reality” of their self-ascribed states and the “abduction-critics” counter that they cannot be classified as abducteephobic because there are no abductees. For the gender-sceptic, then, transpeople are like the abductees: one can no more be “transphobic” than one can be abducteephobic because there is no such “reality” to be denied. Of course, those on the G-A side will reject this analogy. Since the 1960s the term “homophobia” has come to mean prejudice or hostility towards homosexual people or the idea of homosexuality. So perhaps they’ll insist instead on associating “transphobia” with homophobia. The problem with this analogy is that someone accused of homophobia might reject the accusation (or they might even embrace it), but even if like Klein in The Psychoanalysis of Children⁴ they offer some ludicrous reductive “explanation” of why homosexual behaviour takes place, they wouldn’t deny that are any homosexual people.

These considerations recall to mind the fact that one side affirm and the other reject two related theses: (i) “gender-identity” is the authoritative concept in this domain, and (ii) one’s “gender-identity” is a state over which one exercises ascriptive authority (epistemic or otherwise). If these were to be established then the situation would change, and here the analogy with the abductees breaks down in a revealing way. Whereas to establish the reality of “abducteephobia” as intended would require demonstrating empirically that aliens have indeed kidnapped a substantial number of those who claim to be “experiencers”, to establish “transreality” in the way required to make sense of “transphobia” in the way intended we’d need to actualise the sort of concept change that I outlined in earlier pieces and which is summarised in the above formulation of the “gender-absolutist” eliminativist proposal:

3. What people used to call “sex” is really gender-identity (therefore, sex doesn’t exist)

In other words, the grounds for claiming that someone is eo ipso a “transphobe” because they hold a philosophical view (“G-C”) that commits them to the non-existence of a “transreality” is dependent on establishing the reasonableness of (i) and (ii). Until that is achieved the future-retrospective standpoint from which one could articulate (3) is not obtainable and the following cannot be articulated:

I. What people used to call “transwomen” are really women*, and

II. What people used to call “transmen” are really men*,

where “men*” and “women*” connote “gender-identity” terms. Since sex-terms do not lose their default empirical status until the test of “reasonableness” has been met it is unreasonable to accuse anyone of being “transphobic” and accusers should be held to account for such slurs.

I’ve written a great deal about the “unreasonableness” of (i) and (ii) from a conceptual standpoint, but here’re are two less formal reflections. Firstly, as noted no one is free to adopt critically the future-retrospective standpoint from which alone the accusation of “transphobia” makes sense unless they’ve done the necessary conceptual work. But as Robert Stoller⁵—one of those credited with inventing the term—noted back in the 1960s:

While the work of our research team has been associated with the term gender identity, we are not militantly fixed either on copyrighting the term or on defending the concept as one of the splendors of the scientific world. It is a working term... With gender difficult to define and identity still a challenge to theoreticians, we need hardly insist on the holiness of the term “gender identity.”⁶

That Stoller sees his work in this area developing from ‘those monumental works The Interpretation of Dreams and Three Essays on Sexuality’ (p. vii) might dispose us to the view that the concept “gender identity” should never have been seen as occupying a role of any sort “in the scientific world”, let alone be mistaken for one of its “splendors”. But the point is that whatever its status (scientific; pseudoscientific; cultural) it is a contested concept. Stoller acknowledged this 60 years ago, and the context has hardly become less fraught since then⁷. Those who contend that gender identity “eliminates” biological distinctions should therefore be seen for what they are by themselves as well as by others: revisionists who must argue their case.

Censuring antagonists as “transphobic” does not help establish the legitimacy of the future-retrospective standpoint. But it is also counterproductive, since it encourages those who might be open to dialogue to find common cause with those whose political and other views they might otherwise find despicable. Consider this from Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender?:

“gender-critical” feminists hold many of the same views on sex reassignment as anti-abortion activists, the Vatican, Trump, Orbán, Meloni, and other right-wing conservatives and nationalists. (2024, ch.5)

One reaction to this is that “gender critical” feminists might well hold many of the same views as “right-wing conservatives and nationalists” on whether milk or tea should be poured first, but that presumably doesn’t impugn their status as progressives. Evidently, then, Butler sees a deep conceptual connection between someone’s conservative politics and their stance on the “reassignment issue”. Indeed, the association of “gender critical” feminists with right-wing conservatives and nationalists through an implied connection with the latter’s stance on abortion implies that feminism’s real battle is not against the individual and systemic curtailment of women’s and girls’ life-chances but for ‘self-determination as the basis for sex reassignment’ (ibid.), insinuating that if only anti-abortion activists etc. could be brought to acknowledge the replacement of sex by gender-identity feminists should overlook their views on reproductive rights. Once again, there’s no argument here, no attempt to reach out to feminists who not only can’t see this deep conceptual connection but who are deeply suspicious of what motivates it. It may be depressing, but it’s hardly surprising if those who are constantly being told that the political company they belong in is defined essentially by the stance they take on self-assignment end up seeking out others denounced similarly for their purported “transphobia”.

The second thing I wanted to note takes us back to the abductee analogy. I indicated that there can be no “abducteephobia” if there are no abductees. But we might consider the relevant group of people not as the empty class of those who have been abducted but those who believe they’ve been abducted. That is certainly not an empty class. And even if we cannot meaningfully characterise it as “abducteephobic” we are surely right to denounce any nasty, violent and prejudiced behaviour directed towards the self-styled abductees. Now, although our intellectual attitude to people who believe they’ve been abducted will depend on the particular, we are inclined to explain it on the basis of various endogenous and exogenous factors like the psychological state of “abductees” and the prevalence and acceptability of such beliefs in their cultural setting. Turning to the “trans” case, there are evidently individual and socio-cultural factors in play here too. But if the standoff between the “gender-absolutist” and the “gender-critic” turns on the issue of whether (say) a “transman’s” belief that they are a man is true or false perhaps we can promote dialogue by characterising someone’s self-ascribed “trans” status not as involving a true or a false belief but rather as a non-belief state.

As I noted in an early piece, “trans” has become an ambiguous term. Until relatively recently it would have been shorthand for a particular person being a trans- man or woman, where “trans” operated as a prefix to designate the fact that the person in question was a “man” or “woman” by virtue of gender self-identification. And that usage is a continuation of what in fact continues to be the legal situation in the UK today, where to be a trans- man or woman is to have undergone (or be in the process of undergoing) medically sanctioned “reassignment”. For many people now, however, “trans” has come to designate an identity in and of itself. In earlier pieces I argued that we can make no sense of the claimed right to self-identify where that would take over from sex as the right way of determining whether one is or is not a woman (etc.). But since “trans” registers some sort of discordance (internal or external) I went on to suggest that identifying as “trans” should be regarded as signifying a refusal to have one’s hopes, aspirations, fears and desires fixed by what someone says is necessitated by one’s biological sex. As such, the avowals are best thought of not as expressing the possession of a certain “identity” or “mental state” that can be characterised in terms of belief, but rather should be seen expressive of a bearing or attitude. Contra the views of Butler and others, it is this attitude that provide feminism—and indeed, the struggle for gay rights—with their grounding conviction and not some unsupportable thesis about “sex reassignment”. As I have said elsewhere, my predilection is for the term “non-binary,” but if “trans” is preferred that’s all to the good. Of course, if this is plausible—and note that I have offered arguments—then it turns out that transphobia is just another name for sexism. But then the real transphobes in this spat—those who join “anti-abortion activists, the Vatican, Trump, Orbán, Meloni, and other right-wing conservatives and nationalists”—are not “gender-critical” feminists like J. K. Rowling and others. Rather, the term is more aptly applied to those “identity feminists” who want to redescribe the discordance felt by those who would resist a sexist society’s attempts to shape them in ways they reject as akin to the escapist fantasies of “abductees”.

5. The “Transphobic” Fallacy

In The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius notes of Menedemus that ‘when Alexinus asked him whether he had left off beating his father, he said, “I have not beaten him, and I have not left off”’. This registers an early appreciation of “the fallacy of many questions” (fallacia plurimum interrogationum) (or of what is idiomatically called a “loaded question”). Here the questioner institutes a particular context of evaluation—thus restricting what counts as an appropriate response—by assuming something objectionable that the questionee would not accept if it were stated explicitly. As Menedemus recognises, although Alexinus doesn’t state it his question insinuates a context in which it is assumed that Menedemus has been beating his father, and that to respond with either of the two contextually appropriate responses—“yes” and “no”—is to tacitly accept that assumption. To make an accusation of “transphobia” is to institute likewise a context in which the accuser seemingly has only two options: either to deny it or to accept it. And as I have argued above, the unstated but objectionable assumption that operates to limit the possible responses to these two is the gender-absolutist’s conviction that to believe that sex is immutable is to believe something contestably “philosophical” that signifies that one is a “transphobe”.

As Laërtius goes on to record, Menedemus’ response to Alexinus’ claim that ‘he ought to put an end to the doubt by answering explicitly yes or no’ was that ‘“It would be absurd… to comply with your conditions, when I can stop you at the entrance.”’ What Menedemus refers to as the “entrance” is the level playing-field, the standpoint or context that is not shaped by the gender-absolutists views on “gender-identity”. From there workplace denunciations of “transphobia” do nothave “default” legitimacy and so the accusers should be held to account by their employers for the accusations made and not be able to in effect “hide” behind the legal safeguards that were introduced to “protect” beliefs that should never have been considered controversially “philosophical” in the first place. From that standpoint it is reasonable to look at the epistemological picture required of the “gender-identity” view and inquire what sort of social forces and personality types would exploit/manifest its attempt to coordinate authenticity with anti-authoritarianism/denial of social norms. We can start trying to appreciate the differences rather than the similarities between male and female responses to the “freedoms” “gender-absolutism” supposedly represents. It may turn out that understanding the myriad factors that have contributed to the success of “gender-absolutism” is contemporary feminism’s greatest intellectual task.

1. For some of course “gender identity” states are in fact brain states, thus providing “trans” identities with a biological foundation. I’m going to address this claim in a subsequent piece.

2. I have a book about this. The “efforts” mentioned include those of Heidegger, Moore, Wittgenstein and Austin amongst others.

3. I have a book about this too, arguing for this conception of religious belief in defence of the exclusion of religious considerations from public life.

4. ‘[T]he true basis of homosexuality’ is the boy’s deviant—‘closely bound up with paranoic mechanisms’—response to the ‘oral-sucking fixation on his father’s penis’ (1960, p. 346).

5. I’ll be returning to Stoller’s work in a later piece when I discuss the role psychoanalytic theory has played in the evolution of “gender-identity”.

6. Stoller, R.J. 1968. Sex and Gender, p. v. London: Karnac Books.

7. More recently, that contestation has taken place between psychiatrists influenced by Freud et al and those more sympathetic to the G-A standpoint.