Talk:Kathleen Stock

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Anythung to add>

Is she known for anything besides transphobia? Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 16:09, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

She's one of the more prominent and independently notable figures in the UK's "gender-critical" movement. She had an actual academic career before falling down the anti-trans rabbit hole, and since going all-in she's become something of a general anti-"woke" crank. She published a piece in the Telegraph defending conversion therapy only an hour ago. Nope Rocket (talk) 19:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Some stuff that could potentially be added: criticism of her book, accusations that she retaliated against and damaged the careers of fledgling academics critical of her, the controversy surrounding the awarding of an OBE to her for "services to education" despite reportedly not having a particularly long or distinguished career in her actual field (although she did actually do things before transphobia). Nope Rocket (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Her academic career prior to the anti-trans stuff (circa 2018) involved philosophy of fictional works or something. Maybe worth a mention, who knows. Here's a list of her academic stuff: https://philpeople.org/profiles/kathleen-stock Chillpilled (talk) 22:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I might've missed the mark with the above comment. I drew from Wikipedia when writing the RW articles on Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce. To be honest, I found that Joyce's professional history made for a more interesting read than Stock's, and it seemed a bit more missional and easier to work into the framework of her article. But it would be a good idea to have a section giving an overview of Stock's academic career (i.e. her publications, appointments, etc.). Maybe a more fine-grained analysis if anyone with a better knowledge of her field wants to dive into reading her pre-transphobia stuff. Has she always been a contrarian? Does some of the binary and absolutist thinking that comes up in her takes on trans issues also crop up in her work on aesthetics and literary analysis? I feel like exploring these questions could provide context for her career shift to professional transphobia. Nope Rocket (talk) 02:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Isn't it good to be gender critical? I mean the word was used interchangeably with sex until the activists hijacked it. The exception to that use was when it related to behaviour or 'roles' stereotyped to sex. ^{— Unsigned, by: 86.180.141.219}

Hey so

Apparently she felt the need to defend Kate Forbes, a candidate to run an entire country, from criticism for her anti-gay and anti-abortion Christian stances: https://unherd.com/2023/02/the-crucifixion-of-kate-forbes/ (though actually the article doesn't seem to mention the abortion thing directly). I only skimmed the darn thing, but wow. The LGB Alliance was out here doing the same thing... they must REALLY want an anti-trans candidate to replace Sturgeon if they're going to these lengths, out in the open. Chillpilled (talk) 21:34, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

This could be used to build "Very fine people on both sides..." into an actual section. TERFs often seem willing to form unholy alliances with ring-wing ideologues and religious fundamentalists. And Stock, unlike Helen Joyce, is a self-identified feminist. She's willing to further imperil the right to choose, a key feminist victory and principle, in the name of transphobia. (Something I still can't comprehend as a cis feminist.) Nope Rocket (talk) 04:15, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Abortion

Tossing this in here. Refers to feminists as "reproductive extremists": https://archive.ph/OfjtW Chillpilled (talk) 08:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"Peer-reviewed work on sexual orientation"

Let's just blow this claim out of the water. This is the only published paper on sexual orientation by Stock listed on PhilPapers. Is it peer-viewed? Sure, it was published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, which is an academic journal even if one sniffs at the humanities. Can it fairly be considered academic work on sexual orientation? Or is it an anti-trans polemic that meets standards of academic citation? Here are some quotes to help readers decide (emphasis mine).

"In recent times, it has become commonplace, at least in certain progressive circles, to argue that sexual desire, and so indirectly sexual orientation, is directed towards something called ‘gender’."

"For instance, roughly two-thirds of the lesbians in the group said they would only date trans men and not trans women, or would date trans men as well as trans women. The researchers had assumed that, to be consistent with their lesbianism, lesbians should exclude trans men and include trans women. Blair and Ashley put such incongruence down to negative, discriminatory attitudes against trans women and ‘femmephobia’. To my mind, a more compelling explanation of such findings is that female homosexuals have a disposition to be attracted to females."

"This discussion has consequences for a further pair of conclusions, both of which draw sustenance from the idea that sexual attraction is directed towards something called ‘gender’, not Sex. I shall focus on the conclusions as they pertain to lesbianism in particular, but the arguments generalize. The first conclusion effectively says that a lesbian, understood as someone disposed to desire others with a ‘female gender’, might, as such, straightforwardly and repeatedly experience attraction to trans women as part of the normal terms of their own orientation, even under conditions otherwise ideal for the manifestation of the disposition (see, for instance, Chuck Tate 2012). The second is that any trans woman who is exclusively attracted to others with a ‘female gender’, since she herself has a ‘female gender’, counts as a lesbian (Chuck Tate 2012; Sharpe 2019). In other words, biologically male people can be the objects of genuine lesbian desire, and can even be lesbians themselves."

"There are many reasons for would-be conceptual engineers to be wary of such claims, not least because of the multiple harms that might ensue for lesbians—understood as females who are same-Sex-attracted—if such norms were socially enacted in a context which already includes both misogyny and homophobia (Stock 2019). But the point to take away from present discussion is that such claims look confused. For it seems likely that there is no widespread sexual desire which takes ‘gender’ as an object but not also Sex. Hence there’s no good reason to make the conceptual switch being urged upon us."

The pretentious capitalization of "sex" grows tiresome quickly. It's not the 17th century, Kathleen. She even "corrects" a direct quote at one point. Also cites herself at least once! Noodles (talk) 17:33, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Responding to the simplest issue from Noodles above (apologies I'm not familiar with the syntax for formatting replies):

"The pretentious capitalization of "sex" grows tiresome quickly. It's not the 17th century, Kathleen.

First para of the introduction:

"To avoid confusion, I’ll use ‘sex’ to refer to sexual activity, and ‘Sex’, capitalized, to refer to biological sex.

Presumably you didn't really read the paper at all.

This is all such bad-faith bullshit. Was RationalWiki ever a sincere effort, or was it always as I find it now, a tiny pool of cultists? Signed: Sad-face visitor. ^{— Unsigned, by: 212.159.113.7 / talk / contribs}

Drink! Carthage (talk) 06:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I could just as well assume "bad faith" from the way Stock is citing this paper from Blair and Hoshkin (Ashley seems to be her middle, not last name). Stock is interpreting this survey in a way its authors explicitly cautioned not to and gave reasoning for (p. 15 of Blair/Hoshkin), reasoning Stock doesn't seem to address, and in actual fact seems to create a straw man of their hypothesis. Blair has also mentioned the amount of respondents saying they'd consider a trans partner increased with time as they continued taking surveys over the years (the data Stock is citing is from 2011, and I know this from a now-privated tweet from Blair but if you want to verify I guess you can email her or something). An article in Vice noted a weird discrepancy in these kinds of data, which is heterosexual respondents will say they wouldn't date a trans person, but other questions reveal significantly more of them would have sex with a trans person. Vice also noted these results are similar to when identical questions are posed about whether people would date or have sex with a bisexual person.

By the way, why was Stock defending Nina Power recently immediately after it was revealed via a court case that in private texts Power was talking about anti-racism being a conspiracy to cover up the existence of fairies? That was weird. Chillpilled (talk) 10:28, 20 August 2024 (UTC)