I’ve tried to resist entering ‘the discourse‘ when it comes to analysing whether famed author JK Rowling is a TERF - a ‘trans exclusionary radical feminist’. For the record, Rowling’s actions suggest those of a TERF. Kat Blaque’s video embedded below addresses this better than I ever could:

Instead, I want to turn a critical eye to one element of Rowling’s now-infamous January tweet about a UK employment discrimination case that can teach us a useful lesson about how propanganda works.

Sex essentialism 101
I’m not going to go over all the myriad ways Rowling’s tweet oversimplifies and misrepresents the details of Maya Forstater’s failed legal challenge - the full text is available here and I recommend everyone take the time to read it. This was clearly a test case intended to set a legal precedent, and it fell over at the very first hurdle. Instead I want to focus on the line ‘sex is real’ because it’s a slick and in my opinion powerful bit of disinformation. The idea that gender critical feminists - and from hereon out I will try to use their preferred terminology - are simply defending the empirical proposition that ‘sex is real’ (and are not just, say, disguising anti-trans bigotry) is likely to become an enduring feature in this little culture war.

The phrasing demonstrates how propaganda can simultaneously set up a straw man about the position of so-called ‘gender theorists’, while obscuring the true position of the sex essentialists. No one of any consequences who supports trans rights says that sex isn’t real. The default position - accepted by academics, activists and, I would dare to add, broadly understood by the lay public - is that sex and gender refer to two separate English-language concepts and that which one to use to depends on the context. Gender typically refers to socially-constructed rules, norms and expectations which attach to categories of people on the basis of their behaviour and appearance. Sex, on the other hand, refers to bimodally distributed clusters of biological traits which are usually - but far from exclusively - linked in some way to reproductive function. It’s not that sex isn’t real, it just that it isn’t meaningful in many social contexts. When I listen to or read the works of trans people, they constantly and repeatedly emphasise that they are keenly aware of the ‘reality’ of biological sex. For many, though not all, trans and non-binary people, this reality is the cause of significant distress and their experiences are to a significant degree shaped by the effort it takes to manage the incongruence between their sex characteristics and gender identity.

Here’s the thing. The true position of gender critical feminists is in fact that gender isn’t real. That’s what they won’t - or can’t - admit, because it’s so extreme. They either believe that a social construction can’t be ‘real’ (at all!); or that any incongruence between sex and gender is the result of mental disorders deserving of sympathy, but not respect; or that the only relevant social category in (almost) all circumstances is sex. Either way, references to a person’s gender in ordinary English usage can refer to their biological sex and only their biological sex. As self-proclaimed critics of gender, they’re attempting to argue that socially constructed categories aren’t or shouldn’t be real, and that therefore attempting to modify or reform them in any way impossible and perverse.

If gender critical folks had their way, it would be linguistically impossible for anyone to identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, and their personal identification and social role would have no consequences. A trans woman would be treated by society for all intents are purposes as a man and a trans man as a woman. The medical, psychological and social evidence is that this position - long the historical default - causes harm to trans individuals, and enforces hierarchical and rigid notions about gender relations that end up also causing low-level anxiety for the vast majority of cis people. In the words of the British judge, it is a belief incompatible with the rights and dignity of other citizens.

By obfuscating their true position, gender critical feminists are attempting to hide the absolutism inherent in their nugatory beliefs. They’re sex essentialists in exactly the same way that self-proclaimed hereditarians are ‘race essentialists’ and the Stalinist/nazbol crowd are ‘class essentialists’. It’s a neat dogwhistle, because the lay reader (perhaps including JK Rowling?) is unlikely to recognise the trick being played on them. And it’s also a perverse bit of psychological projection, because they end up portraying their opponents - not themselves - as the defenders of an indefensible, unscientific position.

When does sex matter?

The essence of any good faith debate over the relevance of sex and gender centres around identifying the contexts in which each system of categorisation is most relevant. The progressive position, which I hold, is that for most social purposes gender is the most relevant categorisation, and that therefore there is wide scope for this system to be critiqued, challenged and reformed - or even abolished if we chose to. The reactionary position - shared by conservatives and gender critical feminists alike - is that sex is the most relevant categorisation more often than not, and that as a result that options of critique, challenge and reform are limited. Instead, (cis-) women must organise on the basis of sex in order to achieve social power and status equal to (cis-)men.

The first, and far and away most significant, context in which sex is the most relevant category is when it comes to health and medical treatment. A trans man may need to see a gynaecologist, and trans women may need to check for prostate cancer. Many diseases and health conditions affect sex characteristics differently, and it is in everyone’s self-interest that trans individuals, though socially and culturally of their chosen gender, receive medical treatment and advice best suited to the biological characteristics they actually possess. A menopausal cis woman, an intersex individual and a trans person may all require hormone treatment. In this way, “Good morning ma’am, have you experienced any discomfort in your penis?” is a perfectly logical English construction.

Secondly, we should recognise that romantic and sexual attraction is built in complicated ways on both sex and gender. Most people describe being attracted to some weighted combination of social performance and sexual characteristics, and some people are highly attracted to combinations of traits that are uncommon or transgressive. Some people may be highly motivated by the opportunity to reproduce and limit their choice of partners to those they can produce viable offspring with - ending relationships with infertile partners who they are otherwise attracted to. Some may be attracted to a person of the opposite gender but draw the line at same-sex genitals. But others may be totally comfortable with a feminine penis or male vagina. Many people will believe that what matters most is chemistry, personality or some other abstract quality. Since every adult human is entitled to full and absolute autonomy in their choice of partner - and to interfere with that choice is a crime - then people for whom some arbitrary sexual characteristic is a deal-breaker will always be able to act on those desires with any adult human who’d have them! Plenty of people have sexual desires that are considered socially questionable in some form or another.

Finally, we come to the vexed issue of sports. Sport is segregated in the interest of an abstract social goal of ‘fairness’. Sex and gender are merely being used as proxy variables for this goal. Defining what does, and does not, constitute an unfair competitive advantage is a complicated sociological question and by a process of trial-and-error most societies with professional athletics have prohibited a variety of chemical interventions while allowing unlimited funds to be spent on training, facilities and athlete development. Whether sex or gender, both or neither, are relevant to fair competition is as yet an open question. One trans athlete may outperform a cis person, but how much of that advantage is due to their biochemistry and how much is due to the social encouragement and development opportunities they might have received pre-transition? The burden of evidence is heavy, given both the statistically tiny number of trans athletes and the general physical exceptionalism of most athletes. Even if trans women were shown to have longer bones and wider shoulders than cis women on average, we would have no statistical reason to believe this difference would also exist among professional athletes. It’s also hard to avoid the impression of racial bias in these discussions, as many of the most exceptional trans- and intersex athletes (including notably Caster Semeya) have been non-caucasian.

The most plausible resolution to me right now seems to be a convergence on testosterone standards (in some sports) under which both trans- and cis- women can compete fairly, while excluding most cis-men, doping (cheating) athletes and athletes with rare medical conditions that might give them an unfair advantage. The widespread availability of hormone treatments also means any excessive innate biochemical advantage can be treated and reversed, if desired. Such tests would be simple for professional sports to apply, while amateur sports (where widespread blood testing might be infeasible) could continue to rely on gender as a low-cost proxy.

Gender rules

Once we accept the proposition that ‘gender is real’, we can subject it to serious criticism and debate. Many people - both cis and trans - are at ease with their gender roles; others think gender hierarchies should be deconstructed and rebuilt in more fluid or egalitarian ways; others are simply gender abolitionists, believing that all social norms, rules and behaviours based on stereotyped characteristics should be abolished entirely. All of these arguments and propositions are prima facie valid, because social structures can be remade by social beings however we’re able. Sex essentialists would take all these options from us, because they reduce behaviour to fixed biological traits that cannot be changed.

Nowhere is the debate between sex essentialists and gender realists less productive than when it comes to ‘women’s spaces’ such as bathrooms, refuges and prisons. The radical argument that everyone with a penis poses a threat to everyone with a vagina at all times makes sense within the gender critical framework, but appears puritanical and impractical as a guide to public policy to most people. On the other hand, gender realists argue that violence against women is a product of patriarchy - toxic socialisation which causes male-identified individuals to feel entitled to have access to or control women’s bodies. Whenever people in womens’ spaces - either cis or trans - are identified as predators then those individuals should be treated as the criminals they are, and sanctioned on the basis of their behaviour, not their identity or gender performance.

These are sometimes difficult questions. But when lay people appear uncertain or uncomfortable about these issues, and become susceptible to gender critical propaganda, it’s likely not because their instinctive beliefs about sex and gender are being called into question. It’s because they don’t know - and likely have never even thought before - about how those beliefs should apply in particular edge cases. That’s totally normal. But the propagandandist exploits that ambiguity and uncertainty to drive a wedge between people and their beliefs, whereas the activist is there to help and guide the public through unfamiliar terrain.