In a recent blog post, Christa Peterson attempts to spell out why Kathleen Stock is an “anti-trans activist,” and to provide evidence. Though Peterson is clearly a talented philosopher and a gifted writer, I don’t think she succeeds, and I’ll try to explain why. (You can find Stock's reply here.) Feedback and comments are welcome.

A good place to start is with the question, “What is an anti-trans activist?” Peterson's blog post contains no clear answer. She does say, “Stock often claims to respect trans people, to support their rights, and to merely be concerned to advocate for cis women's supposedly competing rights and interests. This sounds reasonable.”

But this is just a “guise,” Peterson says. Really, Stock “misrepresents and mocks trans identities. She is at best dismissive of trans people's needs and interests. She belittles and vilifies them.” In addition, according to Peterson, Stock makes false claims about her own position: Stock claims various legal changes pose a threat to females. But, according to Peterson, these threats are not real. Also, according to Peterson, some specific claims Stock has made about political suppression have been untrue. Finally, Peterson also accuses Stock of hypocrisy: “While claiming to be centrally concerned with defending academic freedom and free speech, she has actively—and, unfortunately, successfully—tried to silence people who disagree with her.”

So, in Peterson’s essay, we never really get a clear definition of what an “anti-trans activist” is. It seems to me that two possibilities are on the table. One is that Stock’s own self-description is correct: she's an advocate for the rights of women, whom she takes to be adult human females. These rights may conflict with the rights-claims of others. This is at most foreseen, but not intended; Stock is not setting out to oppress trans people or anyone else on this view, but merely to liberate women. If this somehow did not lead to conflict with trans individuals, Stock would not be frustrated or disappointed. On this view, Stock is like a vegan, who advocates for the rights of animals. Yes, these rights may conflict with the rights-claims of some non-vegans, e.g. Jewish folks eating a traditional Passover meal (with meat). In disagreeing, our vegan is not anti-Semitic; if these folks decided not to eat meat, the vegan would not be disappointed that she had no conflict with Jewish people. Our vegan is merely pro-animal, not anti-Jewish. And perhaps Stock is like that: pro-female, not anti-trans. That’s the first possibility.

The alternative possibility, which Peterson seems to believe, is that Kathleen Stock really is intentionally anti-trans. Stock is targeting trans people qua trans people, not as a foreseen but unintended consequence of her pro-woman advocacy, but as an intended means or end of her activism. On this view, Stock is something like a Nazi, who targeted Jewish people because they were Jewish.

So, that’s the question Peterson means to address in her 7,000+ word post. Is Stock a pro-female advocate, whose advocacy occasionally puts her in conflict with trans folks? Or is Stock an anti-trans activist, intentionally targeting trans folks, due perhaps to animus or phobia?

If that’s the issue, as I think it is, then my first objection is this: I can’t see how Peterson’s evidence, even if true, proves her position. As mentioned above, Peterson sets out these accusations:

(a) Stock misrepresents and mocks trans identities.

(b) Stock is at best dismissive of trans people's needs and interests.

(c) Stock belittles and vilifies trans people.

(d) Stock makes false claims about her own position.* (see Postscript below)

(e) Stock is hypocritical when it comes to free speech.

Even if (a)-(e) were all true, how would that show that Stock is targeting trans individuals, rather than, as we’ve said, advocating for women’s rights, which unintentionally puts her in conflict with trans individuals? In other words, (a)-(e) would, at the very most, prove there is a conflict between Stock’s advocacy and trans individuals. (And, perhaps, in the case of (d) and (e), that Stock has some personal shortcomings.) But these accusations would not prove that Stock is an anti-trans activist.

Think again of a vegan, advocating for animal rights, and thereby put into conflict with Jewish people eating a traditional Passover meal. This conflict may well result in analogues of (a)-(e) for the vegan. The vegan may, in the course of advocating for animal rights, misrepresent, mock, belittle, vilify, and dismiss her interlocutors. The vegan may even make false claims about her own position, and be hypocritical about free speech. But consistent with all this is that the vegan is not an anti-Semite, not motivated by animus or prejudice or phobia toward Jewish people. The vegan may simply be pro-animal, and caught up in a heated debate. So too, you might think, with the case before us. Conflict is consistent with, and even expected on, both the pro-female and anti-trans hypotheses. So, merely pointing to this conflict, as Peterson does, will not prove the anti-trans hypothesis.

So that’s my first objection. Even if we grant all the sound and fury of Peterson’s accusations, her conclusion does not follow. Now, when it comes to shortcomings in an argument, that’s a very serious one indeed! It’s so serious, that it may even warrant ending the response here. But I’d also like to consider Peterson’s first two volleys, in order to show that her accusations are not well-aimed; they don't hit their targets. I won’t respond to every point in detail; Peterson has released more hares than one can reasonably chase, and it would be tedious for the reader to do so.

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Peterson’s first volley is that an example of Stock’s public philosophy is “shallow,” and “not serious,” and “representative of the quality of her consideration of these issues.” The argument comes from Stock’s witness statement in the Fair Cop Judicial Review. There, Stock argued for this conclusion: “it is not reasonable to define a transphobic incident in terms of ‘an incident perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender (etc.)’,” even if it is reasonable to define racist hate incidents as incidents perceived to be racist.

In a nutshell, Stock's reasoning is this: (Step 1) When it comes to paradigmatic utterances treated as racist by the law, there is no reasonable interpretation of the utterance on which it didn’t express some contempt, ridicule, disapproval, etc. It’s not merely racial description, it’s a racial evaluation. But, Stock says, (Step 2): At least sometimes and perhaps most of the time, when it comes to paradigmatic utterances proposed to be treated a transphobic by the law—e.g. “trans women are men”—the reasonable interpretation may well be one that is purely descriptive, and not evaluative at all. Stock is cautioning the court against hastily defining transphobic hate incidents as they define racist hate incidents, since, possibly, there’s this important difference. Now, whether that difference is actual requires some empirical work. But it seems apt to point out, as Stock does here, that we should do the empirical work, and actually check whether these alleged examples of transphobic hate incidents are analogous to racist hate incidents with regard to “some identifiable pejorative element,” before moving forward with the legal definitions and treating the cases the same with regard to e.g. legal punishment.

Peterson’s complaint is that “[t]his is not a disanalogy. The bread and butter of racist ideology is purported ‘observable facts’ about differences between races.” Now, in response, it’s hard to evaluate arguments featuring metaphors—e.g. “bread and butter”—at crucial points, no matter how appetizing the metaphor. Presumably Peterson means something like it often happens that racist ideology is justified by purported descriptive facts about races. Maybe so. But my primary worry with this response is it seems irrelevant to Stock’s argument. Which part of Stock’s argument is Peterson challenging? Step 1? Step 2? The inference from these to the conclusion?

One interpretation is that Peterson is challenging Step 1, and saying that, even in some paradigmatic—“bread and butter”—cases of utterances rightly interpreted and punished under the law as racist, the reasonable interpretation is one on which the speaker means only to describe races, and not express any contempt, ridicule, etc. Another interpretation is that Peterson means to challenge Step 2, by saying that utterances like “trans women are men” are in fact not best interpreted as purely descriptive, just as we don’t interpret these “bread and butter” statements from racist ideologues as purely descriptive.

Whichever Peterson meant, I believe the right response is to direct Peterson back to Stock’s own witness statement, where Stock addresses just these sorts of objections. (For the first interpretation, see section 10. For the second, see sections 6-9.) It seems unfair for Peterson to accuse Stock of making an argument that cannot “survive a moment’s critical thought,” when Peterson’s own response is unclear, partly due to metaphor, and is also addressed in the very same document Peterson criticizes. So I don’t think Peterson has proven that this slice of Stock’s public philosophy is “shallow.” For even stronger reasons, Peterson has not proven that this one example of Stock’s public philosophy “is representative of the quality of her consideration of these issues.”

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Scrolling down Peterson’s article, the second charge I’d like to respond to is that Stock misrepresents (and mocks?) trans identities:

Stock, without exception, misrepresents how trans people think and talk about their identities to make them seem ridiculous. Trans people's dignity and legitimacy does not depend on the success of any one attempt to conceptualize their experience. But the most common way, in terms of "gender identity," is perfectly functional. The commitments of the popular notion are minimal: people have an internal sense of their own gender that can come apart from their knowledge of their assigned sex, and is generally fixed, and certainly not revisable in the way ordinary beliefs are. This is an empirical claim. It is empirical. It is close to a bare description of trans people's existence and experiences.

A quick first note: though we were promised “receipts,” as the kids say, I see in this part of the essay no proof that Stock misrepresents anything, nor that she does so with an intention to mock.

More importantly, I worry that Peterson vastly overpromises here. Peterson promises a “perfectly functional” way to conceptualize the experience of trans people, in terms of “gender identity.” And she says the commitments of “gender identity” are minimal. The problem, as I see it, is that the very first commitment of Peterson’s proposal here is obscure. Peterson says, “people have an internal sense of their own gender.” But what does “gender” mean there? “Gender” is said in many ways. Worse, it’s a technical term, imported from linguistics by psychologists and philosophers, so we cannot rely on any pre-theoretical grasp of the term as we do philosophy: a definition must be given, at least ostensively, by pointing. But Peterson offers no definition at all. She, at least, seems to understand what she’s said, and is quite emphatic that she has made an empirical claim. But, without any clear sense given to “gender” in her definition here, I don’t think any reader is in a position even to understand her claim, let alone agree that it is empirical.

Worse, I think that on any reasonable way of fleshing out the definition here, Peterson will not successfully conceptualize the experience of trans people, by her own lights. Indeed, on any reasonable interpretation, Peterson’s proposal will be trans exclusive. Let me explain.

What might “gender” refer to, in Peterson’s definition of “gender identity”? Mari Mikkola (2016, 21) puts one option this way, “Speakers ordinarily seem to think that ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are coextensive: women and men are human females and males, respectively, and the former is just the politically correct way to talk about the latter.” On another popular use, “gender” refers to stereotypical ways human males and females are expected to behave. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink, etc. Stereotypical masculinity and femininity. Another proposal one finds in the literature is that “gender” refers to social roles of sex-based oppression or privilege (e.g. Rubin 1975, Haslanger 2000). Once upon a time, Judith Butler held a “performativity” theory of gender, wherein gender was defined in terms of regular self-expression vis-à-vis norms about males and females. Elinor Burkett (in)famously tied gender to having certain kinds of experiences, so that to be a woman, for example, was to have enough of the right sort of experiences typical of females in society. There are others, but I think you get the idea: it’s a contested space.

Given her talk of internal sense of gender—or, later, of an internal “representation of our own gender” (emphasis mine)—it seems like Peterson may have any of these proposals in mind, or perhaps something novel, on which gender is a type of non-propositional mental state, something like a sensation, or a feeling. It would have been nice for Peterson to be a little clearer about what she meant by “gender,” given her attempt to provide a clear definition of “gender identity” with minimal commitments. But, in any event, it may not matter much, since as far as I can tell, all of these proposals suffer from a general problem, which I’m trying to pin down in a work that’s under review.

The problem is something like this: philosophers, like Peterson, who wish to engineer trans-inclusive definitions of our gender terms like “man” and “woman,” accept that any satisfactory proposal must correspond to self-identification. That is, as Katharine Jenkins (2016, 396) puts it, these philosophers accept that “an important desideratum of a feminist analysis of gender concepts is that it respect these identifications by including trans people within the gender categories with which they identify and not including them within any categories with which they do not identify.” According to these philosophers, whatever boundaries your proposed definition of e.g. “woman” draws, those boundaries had better correspond exactly to people’s self-identifications. If someone identifies as a woman, she’d better be within the boundaries of your definition; if not, not. That’s a theoretical constraint these philosophers have taken on.

But these philosophers have painted themselves into a corner; the task is impossible. We cannot simply define gender in terms of gender self-identification, since that would be viciously circular (e.g. “To be a woman is to identify as… a woman”). Yet any other proposal will necessarily depart from the criterion of self-identification. That is, any other proposed definition of gender, or gender terms like “man” and “woman,” will fail to respect the identifications of trans individuals. And that’s because of the contingent nature of human cognition, and human self-identification. Pick any non-circular criterion you wish as your proposed definition of gender. Call it “G.” Whether someone satisfies this criterion will have no necessary connection to their self-identification; there will invariably be counterexamples. Someone might satisfy criterion G, and self-identify as that gender. But he might satisfy G, and not self-identify as that gender. Maybe he doesn’t satisfy G, and doesn’t self-identify as that gender, but maybe he doesn’t satisfy G, yet does self-identify as that gender.

Take just one example. Suppose someone reads Simone de Beauvoir, missing the existentialist call-back, and thinks that one is not born, but rather literally becomes a woman, by being objectified, being forced to abide by feminine gender norms, etc. Suppose that is our criterion G. Now, one might do all that, and yet not identify as a woman (perhaps, to use Elizabeth Barnes’ recent example, due to cognitive limitations). Or one may not meet the criterion G, and yet identify as a woman (e.g. a radical feminist). Similarly with trans individuals. These are counterexamples, by Peterson’s own lights.

The same will go with every other proposed meaning of “gender,” though I leave it to the reader to supply examples. But if that’s right—if any criterion distinct from self-identification will necessarily come apart from self-identification—then, as I said above, philosophers like Peterson have painted themselves into a corner. They have begun a task that cannot be completed, by their own standards. And this is a serious problem. It’s not that we just haven’t yet been clever enough in our conceptual engineering to produce a concept that draws the boundaries in just the right way. It’s rather that the task is impossible, in principle.

So, no, unfortunately I don’t think Peterson is right when she says that she’s given us a perfectly functional definition of “gender identity” with minimal commitments. And I don’t think she’s proven that Stock has misrepresented the state of play here with regard to "gender identity," let alone that Stock has done this with the intention to mock. Indeed, if the argument I just gave is correct, I think Stock has underplayed her hand, and a satisfactory concept of gender identity is not merely elusive, it’s impossible.

I’m currently nearly 3,000 words into a reply to Peterson’s 7,000+ word post, and we’ve touched on only two of the allegations that Peterson levels against Stock. As I said above, I think Peterson has released too many hares for us to chase without the exercise becoming tedious. I’ve followed a couple hares, but I leave it to others to follow the rest, if they have an interest.

If you find yourself too close to the subject to read Peterson’s surprisingly personal attack on Stock with a critical eye, perhaps reach out to a philosopher who is of a different mind than you are. That’s how philosophy is meant to work: a clash of ideas, iron sharpening iron, correcting each other’s blind spots, and all that. But, if I may add, we should do this with gentleness and respect.

I wish all my philosophy colleagues peace in this difficult time.

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Readers may wish to see Stock's reply to Peterson, available here: https://kathleenstock.com/response-to-christa-petersons-blog/

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POSTSCRIPT: An objection from Peterson

1/14/2021

In the text above, I relayed one of Peterson’s allegations this way: “In addition, according to Peterson, Stock makes false claims about her own position: Stock claims various legal changes pose a threat to females. But, according to Peterson, these threats are not real.”

In Peterson’s original text, the allegation reads like so: “The ‘threats to females’ that supposedly justify her opposition to trans inclusion are not real; she has been unable to point to any serious, coherent risk to cis women from the specific, concrete material advances for trans people she has opposed.”

I summarized that on the list of allegations like so:

(d) Stock makes false claims about her own position.

In Twitter correspondence, Peterson (rightly) points out that some content was lost in this process. In that correspondence, Peterson says, “The claim that she’s focused her activism in places where cis women do not genuinely have substantial interests on the line is of course the argument that she is not advocating for women’s interests so it is very mysterious it goes missing here.”

I think this is a fair point! I should have preserved more content when I put that allegation on the list; that would have been more faithful to Peterson’s text. Mea culpa.

But I don’t think this affects my point. Still, Peterson’s allegations do not prove that Stock is an anti-trans activist. Peterson’s argument remains invalid. And you can see that by revisiting the vegan/Passover case, suitably modified.

Peterson’s idea seems to be this: if it’s true that “the ‘threats to females’ that supposedly justify [Stock’s] opposition to trans inclusion are not real,” and yet Stock continues to oppose trans inclusion all the same, then this “is of course the argument that she is not advocating for women’s interests.”

But suppose we find our vegan opposing a group of Jewish people, campaigning against them, telling them to stop eating meat, etc. All the analogues of (a)-(c), and (e), above. Now add also that, in fact, the vegan has a false belief: these Jewish folks are not eating meat, our analogue of (d). Does it follow that our vegan is anti-Semitic, rather than pro-animal? No, it doesn’t follow. For the vegan might believe that these Jewish folks are eating meat, and conflicting with them on this basis. Perhaps there’s something that looks much like meat on their plates. Or perhaps our vegan received false testimony from an otherwise reliable source. The point is just this: the best explanation of our vegan’s behavior may well continue to be that she’s pro-animal, and not anti-Semitic.

In a similar way, even if Peterson succeeds in proving all her allegations against Stock, including (d) that “the ‘threats to females’ that supposedly justify [Stock’s] opposition to trans inclusion are not real,” Stock’s opposition to trans inclusion may—as with our vegan—be based on a false belief. And, as with the vegan case, the best explanation of Stock’s behavior may well continue to be that she’s pro-woman, and not anti-trans. So, I conclude that, even making the content of allegation (d) more explicit, still, Peterson’s conclusion does not follow from her premises. She does not succeed in proving that Stock is not pro-woman, still less that Stock is anti-trans.

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Upon reflection and subsequent Twitter discussion, I think we might be able to go even further than the largely negative project I pursued in this reply. I think we can show not only that Peterson’s case that Stock is anti-trans fails, but also that, plausibly, Stock is not anti-trans.

And that’s because, if I’m understanding the issue correctly, it seems like a fairly familiar case of explanation. Suppose I see a man on the beach with an unfamiliar device in his hand, which occasionally beeps. When it beeps, the man stops, digs into the sand, and unearths an object. I wonder what makes this device beep. I see him unearth a red metal cup, so I wonder if it’s red objects that make the device beep, or perhaps cups. But the next object is a green metal whistle. So, the device doesn’t seem to be tracking or targeting red objects, nor cups. Perhaps it’s tracking metal objects, I think. I notice the next few objects are also metal, confirming my hypothesis. And I notice that the device slides right over non-metal objects, without beeping. I eventually conclude this device is “pro-metal,” you might say, for our purposes, rather than e.g. “anti-red-cup.” And I did that by evaluating a few conditionals, about what the device would or would not do in various situations. Would it beep if the object weren’t metal, e.g. a red plastic cup? Would it beep if the object were metal? What if the object were metal and not red? And so on.

In the case at hand, Stock is our device, and we’re wondering what she’s tracking, or targeting. We observe that she’s “beeping” around—she’s in conflict with—some trans individuals. We wonder if she’s anti-trans, or if she’s pro-woman, and it’s a coincidence that she’s beeping now around trans individuals, the way it was a coincidence that our metal detector beeped around a red cup. That is, we wonder whether she’s in conflict with trans people because they’re trans, or because their rights-claims are in conflict with the rights-claims of women. To check, we might evaluate some conditionals, as we did with the metal detector.

(A) If the rights of trans people were not in conflict with the rights of women, and Stock believed this, would Stock still be in conflict with trans people?

(B) If non-trans-individuals’ rights were in conflict with the rights of women, and Stock believed this, would she be in conflict with those individuals?

If you think the answer to (A) is ‘no’ and the answer to (B) is ‘yes’, then I think you should conclude that Stock is not anti-trans, but rather pro-woman.

Why think the answer to (A) is ‘no’? Well, some evidence is Stock’s life and activity before the last few years, before the present issue rose to salience, as well as her behavior toward trans individuals in areas where there is no perceived conflict with women’s rights.

Why think the answer to (B) is ‘yes’? Admittedly, this one is slightly less clear (to me at least), but imagine that some other feminist issue close to Stock’s heart rose to prominence. Perhaps an anti-abortion measure were enacted, or some such. Do you think Stock would oppose this measure, in way similar to her current behavior? Or would she sit this out, since it’s no opportunity to harass trans people? Given my knowledge of Stock, I suspect the answer to (A) is ‘no’ and the answer to (B) is ‘yes’. So, I conclude she’s pro-woman, and not anti-trans.