Gender-critical Ideology and Transphobia in Transnational Exchange

This thesis identifies common strategies used within and exchanged between self-described ‘gender-critical’ movements in the UK and Germany over the past decade. By doing so, it illustrates how these strategies allow gender-critical argumentation to enter public discourse and be transmitted transnationally. In the introduction, I briefly genealogise and historicise the discursive employment of ‘biological’ sex, a concept crucial to gender-critical thought. Examining the social milieu in which sex categories develop allows me to underline and problematise the rigidity of sex classification systems. Consequently, I present alternative models of sex/gender difference, highlighting the mutual necessity of women’s and trans liberation, in opposition to the mutual exclusivity of these projects proposed within gender-critical thought.
In chapter one, I address how the overstatement of harm in Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls leads to the escalation of the conflict between the gender-critical movement and trans people. I then reconfigure the position of vulnerability adopted by gender-critical feminists through a transfeminist, intersectional reframing. Lastly, I consider the influence this overstatement of harm has on the reception of Material Girls in Germany.
In chapter two, I explore how free speech and debate narratives are strategically employed to reanimate transphobic arguments. I discuss how perceived closure around the meaning of transphobia constructs a form of hegemonic trans-inclusivity in the minds of gender-critical actors. I then demonstrate how ideological/institutional capture narratives are used to rationalise this perceived hegemony, and further, how this is portrayed as a transnational phenomenon.
In chapter three, I address the erasure of trans perspectives within gender-critical literature that focusses solely on unrepresentative subpopulations within the trans community, such as trans criminals, constructing a dangerously misrepresentative image of trans people. Finally, I examine how this focus forces the German gender-critical movement to reach transnationally for evidence of its claims, establishing and reinforcing transnational networks of knowledge exchange.