Summary of (my) criticisms of Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward
Draft version: version 1 (2023)


Laqueur problems. One set of criticisms has to do with the case of the one sex theory dug up by Thomas Laqueur. To begin with, Kathleen Stock does not explain the theory properly, enabling one to see why various people would subsequently regard one sex versus two as a “live debate,” in contrast to flat earth versus round earth theory say. The one sex theory posits that within a sex, as well as variations in size, shape, colour, there can also be sexual organs which are inside-out versions of each other. Females have inside out organs in relation to males: the ovaries are the female testes, etc. One word was used to refer to both. Stock speculates that the one sex theory might suffer from more puzzles but without specifying the puzzles or asking an expert or noting that the theory has the opening advantage of conceptual simplicity. It relies on fewer concepts to make sense of sexual organ systems.


A missing big moment. Stock presents a history of big moments in the development of gender identity theory but misses out research into societies which posit a third sex or third gender (hijras, Gilbert Herdt’s Sambia). This is a glaring omission.


Theory sources. Stock wonders why more and more people assert that some biological males are women and some biological females men. She doubts that they have been reading 1970s radical feminism or Judith Butler. But she overlooks other theory sources. For example, people who work in media may be taught other ways of seeing images and what the viewer brings so as to perceive in a culturally standard way. Research here can be extended into sex and gender perceptions.


Come what may. Stock thinks that biological males who assert they are female or females who assert they are male are immersing themselves in a fiction. But an overlooked theory is that some identities are held come what may. If something else clashes with it and this something else is perpetually drawn attention to (“How can you be this, given X?”), it nevertheless has to go. The identity is held fixed.


General political theories. In asking what we should do about trans rights claims, Stock does not appeal to general political theories, such as utilitarianism. She seems to want to derive claims about what to do while bypassing these or an explicit account of her relationship to them.


References
Edward, T.R. 2022. One sex or two? Kathleen Stock on Thomas Laqueur. Available on PhilPapers.
Edward, T.R. 2022. An unmonstrous family? Omissions in Kathleen Stock’s history of gender identity theory. Available on PhilPapers.
Edward, T.R. 2022. Reading trouble? On a rejected alternative to Kathleen Stock’s immersion-in-a-fiction explanation. Available on PhilPapers.
Edward, T.R. 2022. Flowchart girls: Kathleen Stock versus non-negotiable fictions. Available on PhilPapers.
Stock, K. 2021. Material Girls. London: Fleet.