Besides the loss for philosophy, it is also a further indication that, as Professor Lawford-Smith said in her interview, this issue is toxic in the UK. Transwomen are transwomen. Transwomen should be treated as women in most contexts. There may be exceptions. These sensible thoughts--well-expressed by a transgender philosopher noted here --are now verboten in the UK, it appears.

Richard Marshall has resigned from 3AM Magazine, given this insulting treatment of his work. He is right to do so, even though this is a huge loss for philosophy. As he told me, it means the "end of the series" of interviews he has done over many years now, which now numbers nearly 400 interviews with philosophers about their work in accessible terms and freely available on the Internet.

Their real motto is "whatever right-thinking zealots in our little corner of the universe agree on, we're for it." The magazine has withdrawn Richard Marshall's interview with philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) because in the course of the interview she denied that trans women are women, and expressed the gender critical view of these issues familiar to readers of the blog from the work of philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex).

3:AM: Transgender has become a rather toxic issue but you have strong arguments about this issue. Where do you stand on this? How do you think we should think about all its complexities, and in particular why is it becoming something where feminists and trans people are falling out when you’d have thought they’d have been allies? Is anti-women sexism a hidden factor in all the rage?

HLS: It really has become toxic! I’ve been surprised by the levels of vitriol that have been directed at me and other radical and gender critical feminists within the profession. My stance is that a person can’t change sex (not even with sex reassignment surgery), that ‘gender identity’ has no bearing on sex, and that with very few exceptions gender identity should have no bearing on a person’s sex-based rights. Complications arise because of the extreme heterogeneity within the group of transwomen, from fully passing transwomen who have had sex reassignment surgery, to male-appearing transwomen (sometimes to the point of having full beards) who don’t take hormones. It seems like we’d want a law about discrimination against women in the workplace to protect the former person, because after all, all of her colleagues may believe her to be female, and so she may be genuinely subject to the same treatment that female people are subject to in that context. But it would be absurd for that law to protect the latter person, who everyone in the workplace will know to be male. Perhaps that person is subject to other kinds of discrimination, like for being trans, or for being gender non-conforming, and we should want laws to protect against that.

But we don’t get that by turning a law about female people into a law about anyone who feels a certain way about themselves no matter other people’s perceptions. My understanding is that radical and gender critical feminists, and trans people and trans allies, are falling out because trans people and trans allies expect feminists to be allies to the trans cause, and those feminists’ emphasis on the male/female distinction feels to trans people like a kind of betrayal. But those feminists also feel enormously betrayed by trans people and their allies, in particular by the trans allies who claim to be defending trans rights but really seem to be mostly interested in just venting all their pent up misogyny onto women, this time with a socially legitimate excuse for doing so! (Because we’re transphobes,you know, so we must deserve it). Just have a look at the kind of pushback women are getting compared to men—in our own profession e.g. Kathleen Stock in the UK compared to Alex Byrne in the US. So yeah, I definitely think there’s sexism hidden behind all the rage! We’re in a profession that is dominated by males—is in fact one of the worst disciplines across the arts for this—and who are people the angriest in at in the profession right now? Women. For excluding males. With their feminist theory. It’s beyond ridiculous.