Mick Hartley

From the Times:

A British author has said that the “radioactive” issue of transgender identity is threatening to stifle debate after Oxford University Press dropped his book on the subject.

Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, had signed a contract with the academic publisher for Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions. After he submitted a manuscript the peer-reviewed publisher said it did not address the subject in “a sufficiently serious or respectful way”.

Byrne, who found another publisher, believes Oxford University Press (OUP) declined to print his book because it contained a critical analysis of gender identity. He told The Times: “These days race and transgender issues are both like the third rail of public discourse. You can get in very serious trouble by saying the wrong things about either topic. But why the trans thing has become so radioactive, I absolutely do not know.”

Byrne, 63, originally from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, became interested in gender in 2018, 24 years into his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said he had been “absolutely horrified” by how Dr Kathleen Stock quit Sussex University in 2021 in the face of vociferous student protest against her views on gender. Byrne said: “Disagreement is great – that’s what philosophy is all about. But ostracising, shaming and insulting?”

In 2020 Byrne had a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Philosophical Studies called Are women adult human females?, which presented six different arguments for why they were this alone. Critics believe that defining women as “adult human female”, a pillar of gender-critical thought, excludes transgender people.

Well no – it doesn't "exclude transgender people". That's like the sport argument when it's presented dishonestly as stopping transgender people from participating in sport, when of course what they're doing is excluding men from women's sports. The men are still free to participate in the sport appropriate to their biology. And it's the same here. The definition of "adult human female" is excluding transwomen, ie men claiming to be women, not all transgender people.

Anyway, as a commenter notes, that definition also excludes children, female cats, trees and rocks. "That's because all those things are not women." It's how definitions work. If they don't do some excluding, nothing gets defined.