Philosophical Problems With the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument Against Trans Inclusion

Abstract

The Reform of the Gender Recognition Act: Government Consultation (2018) catalyzed a heated debate on transgender rights and trans inclusion in the United Kingdom. I start by explaining what the reforms to the U.K. system of gender recognition propose, why gender-critical feminists oppose them, and how other feminist academics have responded to their arguments. I then offer a more detailed philosophical critique of gender-critical trans-exclusionary feminist arguments. I argue that the gender-critical feminist case against trans women’s access to women-only (or sex-segregated, or single-sex) spaces suffers from a number of fallacies, and introduces modes of argument that are at odds with well-established and sound uses of practical reason. I try to make sense of these problems with gender-critical feminist thought by appealing to the idea of presupposed paranoid structuralism. I also argue that gender-critical feminists’ enthusiastic use of social media and allied online platforms may be implicated in generating some of these problems.

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“…Parte del colectivo feminista cree desproporcionado que se pueda cambiar de sexo solo a voluntad. En 2018, la Reforma de la Ley de Reconocimiento de Género del Reino Unido generó un debate similar al de España sobre los derechos de las personas transexuales y la inclusión trans (Zanghellini, 2020).…”

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“…In contrast to the traditional, internal, academic debates typical to the discipline of gender studies, contemporary discussions are not predominantly taking place in peer reviewed academic journals, or at academic conferences, but instead in rapidly distributed tweets and popular opinion blogposts ( Zanghellini, 2020 ). Often, the debate between for instance so called “gender critical” feminists and intersectional feminists, is non-constructive and non-productive.Whereas dialogue and debate between academics, activists, artists and the general public is a welcome and central part of how new ideas and concepts develop, the current debate on social media increasingly involves arguments that do not engage with the scholarly ideas of an author or a even a scholarly paradigm, but instead centre on targeting personal dimensions, such as a person's gender identity or religious affiliation.…”

“…The problem is not that these debates are deeply affective—after all, almost all political debate is. Rather, the problem is that they are often ethically unfair (see also Zanghellini, 2020 ). Neither do they in fact aim to construct a space for democratic dialogue, discussion and debate, despite the fact that scholars such as Stock repeatedly claim that she merely wants to have a dialogue.…”

“…Whereas scholars such as Zanghellini (2020) have pointed out the use of informal fallacies in the rhetoric and argumentative strategies of “gender critical feminists” on social media, other scholars, such as Blassnig et al (2019) have shown that populist right wing campaigns often deliberately use informal fallacies as a strategy for driving across political goals. Consequently, any defense that is dependent on sound argumentation is likely to be inefficient because the intention of the attacks is not a fair debate to begin with.…”

“…As right-wing activists distribute political messages also through hybrid cyber attacks, such as the use of bots (fake profiles) and trolls, informal fallacies become normalized as part of populist rhetoric, which has erosive and destructive consequences for democratic debate. Based on the research of Zanghellini (2020) , I argue that this seems to be the case also with “gender critical feminists”: their ideas are staretegically developed and disseminated through public blogs and Tweets (not scholarly writing) in order to influence a broad, public audience.…”