Gender Critical Quotes

“Maleness means war.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female, connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas "emasculate"--not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine analogue. 'Virile'--manly, we oppose to 'puerile'--childish, and the very world 'virtue' is derived from 'vir'--a man.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Man-made World: Or, our Androcentric Culture

“Trans people are trans people. We should get over it. They deserve to be safe, to be visible throughout society without shame or stigma, and to have exactly the life opportunities non-trans people do. Their transness makes no difference to any of this. What trans people don’t deserve, however, is to be publicly misrepresented in philosophical terms that make no sense; nor to have their everyday struggles instrumentalised in the name of political initiatives most didn’t ask for, and which alienate other groups by rigidly encroaching on their hard-won rights. Nor do trans people deserve to be terrified by activist propaganda into thinking themselves more vulnerable to violence than they actually are.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“And perhaps most awkwardly, they have been left unable properly to explain why, internationally, half the population in a given culture might be disproportionately subject to specific experiences like rape, sexual slavery, female genital mutilation, honour killing, female infanticide, banishment to menstrual huts, surrogacy tourism or death by stoning for the act of adultery. Clue: it’s not possession of a female gender identity.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“I am critical of gender identity theory – but not of trans people, for whom I have friendly sympathy and respect.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“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

“In the spread of gender-identity ideology, developments in academia played a crucial role. This is not the place for an extended critique of the thinking that evolved on American campuses out of the 1960s French philosophy and literary criticism into gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory and the like. I will merely focus on what some have dubbed 'applied postmodernism' and the form of activism, known as 'social justice', that seeks to remake humanity along ideological lines. And I will lay out the key elements that have enable transsexuality, once understood as a rare anomaly, to be converted into an all-encompassing theory of sex and gender, and body and mind.

Within applied postmodernism, objectivity is essentially impossible. Logic and reason are not ideals to be striven for, but attempts to shore up privilege. Language is taken to shape reality, not describe it. Oppression is brought into existence by discourse. Equality is no longer achieved by replacing unjust laws and practices with new ones that give everyone the chance to thrive, but by individuals defining their own identities, and 'troubling' or 'queering' the definitions of oppressed groups.

A dualistic ideology can easily be accommodated within such a framework. Being a man or woman – or indeed non-binary or gender-fluid - becomes a matter of finding your own gender identity and revealing it to the world by the medium of preferred pronouns. It is a feeble form of dualism to be sure: the grandeur of Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' replaced by 'they/them' on a pronoun badge.”
― Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

“I am against the rush to medicalize our children and young people to present as the opposite sex when they are confused or when other conditions such as autism are misattributed as trans.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“As developed by trans activists, standpoint epistemology says there are special forms of standpoint-related knowledge about trans experience available only to trans people, not cis people. For instance, only trans people can properly understand the pernicious effects of ‘cis privilege’, and how it intersects with other forms of oppression to produce certain kinds of lived experience. As with some versions of feminism and critical race theory, when transmuted through popular culture this has quickly become the idea that only trans people can legitimately say anything about their own nature and interests including on philosophical matters of gender identity. Cis people, including feminists and lesbians, have nothing useful to contribute here. Their assumption that they do have something useful to contribute is a further manifestation of their unmerited privilege.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“So straight away I want to be absolutely clear about what I’m not saying, before I go on to explain and justify these points in more detail in the next chapter. (I can anticipate a lot of these misunderstandings because they’re frequently fired at me by critics, as assumptions about what I must really be saying.)

I’m not saying that to physically alter oneself to look like the opposite sex, or unlike one’s own sex, or both, isn’t ever a reasonable thing for adults to do in response to developing a misaligned gender identity. I think it can be, and have explained why in Chapter 4.

More generally, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with looking or being radically sex nonconforming, either naturally or artificially. Quite the opposite. Personally speaking, I value and celebrate sex nonconformity: masculine women, feminine men and androgyny. Indeed, it’s partly in the service of this evaluation that I’ve made the arguments I have.

I’m not underplaying the psychological relief it gives many trans people to think of themselves as members of the opposite sex. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, am I saying that trans women and trans men, respectively, shouldn’t ever call themselves ‘women’ and ‘men’ or be referred to that way by those around them. I’ll explain why in the next chapter.

I’m not saying trans people are ‘deceivers’, nor that they are ‘delusional’ or ‘duped’ – far from it. I’ll explain why in the next chapter, so there can be no doubt.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“LGBT activism also fails on intersectionality for trans people themselves. It has no interest in acknowledging the somewhat different political and social situations of trans men and trans women respectively, but insists on treating both as identical for the purposes of lobbying. As far as trans activism is apparently concerned, there is no relevant difference in the situations of a fourteen-year-old transidentifying teenage female, attracted to other females, who is crowdfunding ‘top surgery’ and self-harming in the meantime, and a forty-one-year-old late-transitioning autogynephilic heterosexual male with no intention of divorcing the wife.”
― Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

“I was gradually waking up to the fact that, you know, I was just a useful idiot, are the two words I would use”
― Elisa Rae Shupe

“My experience as a parent whose young adult daughter needed time, exploration of treatment options, and healing of multiple issues but instead clambered aboard the medicalized trans train has led me to feel like I’m in a tortured dream state.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“When trans ideology comes to a family, it is like a bomb drops and relationships are decimated, the profound ripple effects spreading from the point of detonation.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“Even when raised by a loving parent, a young adult may be influenced to the point of hopping on the fast-moving trans train and leaving the loving family behind.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“The biggest decision of a young person’s life, to present themselves as the opposite sex, needs time and thorough investigation of the root causes prompting the request for drastic measures of drugs and permanent surgery to remove healthy body parts.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“This mastectomy craze of removing healthy breasts that is happening to our young girls and women today will probably be the era that we look back on in the future and ask ourselves how and why we ever allowed and glorified self-harm.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“On an individual basis, unless one has worked to address their feelings and issues through years of therapy and other gentle, natural options, and unless one has examined the personality, past, and underlying issues, as well as the relationship with social media, then healthy body parts should not be cut off. We are harming our children and pretending we are helping them when we do not allow them time to mature.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“I hope to see those who participate in the gender affirming care model switch to engaging in the examination of deeper issues and the exploration of other treatment options beyond immediate transition when gender confusion presents itself. Young people may need support with counseling to understand and heal from the root cause of their feelings and experiences of dysphoria.”
― Lisa Shultz

“As a mom, I feel compelled to ask questions. Why are girls demanding the drug testosterone in skyrocketing numbers? Why are so many young girls and women getting mastectomies? What is happening when the young woman’s scarred mastectomy chest is glorified? Why is there a new industry profiting from removing any traces of femininity of our daughters? Why is this drastic medicalized trend rushed, creating a destructive trans train that roars fast and furious, ignoring the whole person, their history, and their family?”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“There’s no need to rush life-changing, body-altering decisions that are difficult or impossible to reverse.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“Only allowing affirmation indicates that a child’s feelings are facts, and we believe that feelings, which are often transient, are not facts. One may hold respect and empathy for those suffering from gender confusion and still say no to a destructive ideology that advocates the medicalization of kids.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“I am not aware of any other mental or medical condition in which a kid or young adult self-diagnoses themselves after social media and internet engagement, undergoes no objective testing, and then receives irreversible medication and surgery upon demand”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“Something is terribly wrong when natural and holistic measures to relieve emotional struggles are left untouched in favor of lifelong, irreversible medical interventions that are experimental, expensive, and come with a host of additional adverse effects.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“There is a significant lack of evidence that cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures, such as mastectomies, that attempt to chemically and cosmetically alter biological sex are effective solutions to young women’s difficulties. Transgender medicalization is an experiment that might have dire consequences on the future of our children and society.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“Why is there a perseveration on gender instead of expanding inquiry and addressing all dimensions of a being in distress? Why are we enabling kids to possibly run from something such as past trauma or encouraging distraction from emotional pain by quickly writing a prescription for puberty blockers or a cross-sex hormone on the first or second visit to a clinic?”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“The word 'affirmation' is literally a 'positive' word, and so our gut instinct is that it must be a good thing. In reality of course an 'affirmation only' approach denies the person any thoughtful enquiry, which could be extremely helpful. After all, the phrase goes, 'a problem shared is a problem solved', and not merely a solution shared...'. The post op regretters were universally of the opinion that if they had been able to access an exploratory space in the first place, then they would not have pursued the irreversible physical steps, which they later came to regret.”
― Dr Az Hakeem

“Gender critical is not 'anti-trans', or 'transphobic', in the same way that psychiatry is not 'anti-mental illness'.”
― Az Hakeem, DETRANS: When transition is not the solution