Overall I think this book is very intelligently written & thought provoking. Stock is an excellent writer and articulates her ideas well. She is not anti-trans like her critics decry. She respects trans identities and simply thinks Stonewall would be better off fighting for a third gender neutral space for GNC people who don’t fit neatly into a male or female space, instead of demanding that people use the space that reflects their ‘gender identity’. It is not that *all* men or trans identifying women are a safety risk - it’s just that statistically speaking, female people are very vulnerable to violence from male people and thus we need single sex spaces to ensure their protection. This does not mean that all trans women, or even all men, are predators, of course that’s not true.
There is also no way to distinguish between a genuine trans woman and a male who pretends to be trans in order to gain access to vulnerable women, as gender identity is an inner state that can’t be externally guaranteed. Especially so with the new idea that trans people don’t have to try and ‘pass’, or take hormones etc. It’s impossible to tell who is trans from looking at them.
Unfortunately some bad actors are out there, such as Darren Merager and Jeremy Melvin Carlson, convicted sex offenders/pedophiles who appropriated trans identities to gain access to vulnerable women. Stock has a point about keeping people like this out of women’s spaces. But in places with Self ID, there is nothing to stop these people from going into a woman’s changing room. I am glad we don’t have Self ID in the UK because it keeps out predatory men like them.
Stock criticises some of the flawed data or reasoning behind transgender activism - not because she hates them, but because she wants the best outcomes for all people involved, including trans people, and to do that we have to use good data and be honest about what that is. The flawed data she mentions, for example, include the Stonewall suicide statistics (which say half of trans people attempt suicide due to transphobia, but this is contradicted by the NHS’ GIDS data that showed only 3 trans patients attempted suicide in several years). It turns out the Stonewall survey isn’t adequate as the participants weren’t selected at random and so the results can’t be extrapolated to the population as a whole. It’s a very poor method for drawing data, according to statisticians. Additionally, it’s socially irresponsible for them to talk about suicide in this way as suicide is socially contagious. Attributing suicide attempts to a single cause goes against the Samaritans Media Guidelines, which also state that this type of irresponsible reporting gives others the idea to kill themselves.
I also like how she says all sides should focus on what they have in common rather than our differences, so we can work together to create change. For example, both nonbinary and gender critical people want to tear down gender stereotypes, so that’s a good starting point to work together. In an ideal world we could work together, and this book inspires me to try and do that in some way.
Like Stock I’m sympathetic to trans people, and I agree we need to be honest about evidence, data, gender identity etc, as this can only help trans and non-trans people, when done in a spirit of compassion.
Overall I give this book 5/5. There are some very minor points of reasoning I didn’t agree with but over all she did a brilliant job with this book.
(On a final note, I’d like to point out that as far as I can see, none of the 1 star reviews actually address any of the arguments in the book, and none of them are from verified purchases, so take from that what you will).
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