Inside the mind of a progressive professor: female skeletons “did not exist” before the enlightenment, and biology is “bigotry”

It’s not often that I’m stunned into disbelief by the words of a sociologist. As a sociology honours student, I’ve felt I’ve become emotionally and intellectually insulated against the Judith Butlerisms and intellectual gymnastics so often associated with my field. At this point, I’ve seen it all. But an April 3^rd tweet-thread and earlier engagements by Leeds sociology professor Sally Hines left me toggling my settings. And no, this isn’t about her now-infamous claim that “before the enlightenment the female skeleton did not exist”

In her thread, Dr. Hines, a transactivist, succinctly summarized the principle arguments made against gender critical feminists by those seeking to discredit and dismiss them. Namely, that we are “reproductive essentialists,” and we are returning women to the dangerous days of only being characterized by our physical selves.

This is an assertion frequently applied to gender critical feminists by other trans activists, most notably to my recollection used by BC NDP Vice President Morgane Oger against Meghan Murphy while threatening her with legal ramifications for her activism. Dr. Hines states that she appreciates and agrees with “radical feminists” and “Marxist feminism,” but asserts that gender critical feminism is simply “foregrounding reproductive essentialism” its in “apolitical, conservative, and privileged” anti-radicalism. In another tweet, she says “GC people sure ain’t deep thinkers—and hang on, they aren’t feminists either.” This, referencing a reply to her earlier thread in which she called biological essentialism “bigotry.”

Ironically, in her argument, Dr. Hines is standing directly atop the actual premise of gender critical feminism. By flipping through the various radical feminist movements of the past, and namedropping matriarch intellectuals like Shulamith Firestone, she is recalling a time in which women faced seemingly insurmountable struggles based on and unique to their gender.

Effectively, Dr. Hines’ argument can be reduced to “women have faced centuries of unique gender-based violence and oppression they have fought against, so let’s erase the uniqueness of women.”  More than not seeing the forest for the trees, this is a logical mess that wouldn’t ever be applied to any other group which has faced struggle on the basis of their identity. Black-specific struggles would never be met with a suggestion that Blackness be reduced to a superficial performance free for anyone to take up. This is, after all, the reasoning against trans-racialism—what a white person cannot become Black because there are experiences inherently unique to Blackness that cannot simply be appropriated on the superficial transformative. Recall the Rachel Dolezal affair—though, to Dolezal’s credit, at least she was working to further the rights of African Americans… not calling them White Exclusionary Radial Racialists or some such ridiculous thing.

Is anti-trans-racialism biological essentialism? No, of course not. It’s common sense. It is against pure biology, in fact, in that it recognizes that the physical body is a superficial indication of something significantly more complex. Here is the principle argument of gender critical feminists, not in reproductive essentialism. We propose that there is a consistent historical dialectic surrounding the identity of women because we are women, and that this has resulted in an inimitable experience that must be acknowledged.

Further, the solution to oppression is not to simply scrub away the existence of the oppressed. Dr. Hines is effectively reasoning that the disregard of biological truth has this magical effect. It’s the equivalent technical truth to that a car with no tires can’t get a flat tire. She attributes her anti-reproductive/biological essentialism to influences like Shulamith Firestone—a revolutionary feminist who went so far as to advocate for synthetic birth technologies to free and separate women from the reproductive function. Firestone’s work is often appropriated by trans activists, as she preached the end of sex distinctions.

Again, Hines is playing into the hands of gender critical feminists without even knowing it. In what way does a biological male, trussed up in every possible traditional marker of female sexual oppression, represent the end of sex distinctions?

Transitioning from overtly displaying one sex stereotype to another is not ending sex distinctions, it is reinforcing them. This has long been a major part of the argument postulated by myself and other gender critical feminists. Our issue with gender—as in the socially enforced physical expression of people—is advertised in the very name of the ideology!

We question why a girl who does not want to demonstrate the stereotypical markers of femaleness necessarily has to be a boy, and why a boy who does not want to demonstrate the stereotypical markers of maleness necessarily has to be a girl. We ask why biological men can be celebrated for saying they feel as though they are women, as if womanness has a feeling that is distinct from maleness. What does a woman feel like?

Transgenderism strictly abides by the socially constructed markers of gender, and attempts to ensure the female/male sex distinctions are in the correct bodies, using the correctpronouns, and with the correct social responsibilities. This is as far from Firestone’s thesis as one could possibly get. Especially since it can be and is argued that many female-specific gender expressions (cross-culturally) were created for oppressive purposes.

After all, while biology is not all there is to a woman, it is because of our biology that we have been oppressed. The true “apolitical, conservative, and privileged” position lies with those who deny this fact. And assigning the title of “radical” to those who have never, ever faced that oppression but appropriate and celebrate the tool of it? It’s about as faux-woke as an NAACP chapter headed by a white woman.