Kathleen Stock

“A first thing to note, in case it’s unclear, is that I am not arguing against legal protections for trans people against violence, discrimination or coercive surgeries. I enthusiastically support these protections.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“some 70s feminists then seemed to reason in a couple of defective ways about biological determinism and sex. On the one hand, some assumed all binary theories of sex must imply determinism: that is, that these theories must be saying something about the fundamental individual ‘natures’ of males and females in terms of dominance for males, and passivity and submission for females. Working backwards, they therefore concluded that, since biological determinism isn’t true, binary sex must be a myth. Meanwhile, an alternative feminist response from some seemed to go roughly: ‘If there were no natural differences at all between males and females, biological determinism would obviously be false. We all want biological determinism to be false. Hence there are no natural differences between males and females.’ Compare: Jed really wants it to be false that he’s got cancer. If there were no such thing as cancer, it would be false that he’s got it. Hence, Jed concludes, there’s no such thing as cancer.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism