The British Invasion
The British Invasion: TERF Island and Trump’s Executive Order on “Biological Truth”
This week, we’re excited to announce our newest Featured Author: Alex Byrne.
Alex Byrne is Laurence S. Rockefeller professor of philosophy at MIT. His work focuses on the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, and also in the philosophy of sex and gender. His most recent book, Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions, was released in January 2024.
He’s written for Fairer Disputations before, including a groundbreaking review of Judith Butler’s most recent book, a dialogue with Featured Author Abigail Favale on whether it’s worth saving the word “gender”, and a review of a book which defends pediatric gender transition. Here’s what he has to say about Fairer Disputations:
In Alex’s first piece for us as Featured Author, he looks at the science behind Trump’s controversial executive order on biological sex and gender identity, analyzing the furor it caused and arguing that it was made possible by the bravery of British feminists.
The British Invasion: TERF Island and Trump’s Executive Order on “Biological Truth”
Alex Byrne
The EO defines each sex in terms of the size of “reproductive cells,” and defines a woman as an “adult human female” (with similar definitions for men, girls and boys). But why was it felt necessary to define “male” and “female” at all, let alone in terms of “reproductive cells”? “Male” and “female” are common words in everyday speech. The same goes for “woman” and “man,” which are ubiquitous. And where did the EO’s defining phrase “adult human female” come from?
The answers lie across the Atlantic, in that drizzly sceptered isle, known affectionally to its gender-critical inhabitants as TERF Island. “British feminists,” Susanna Rustin writes in her fine history of British feminism, Sexed, “are at the heart of the movement to resist the philosophy or ideology that says every human being has an inner gender.” Some of these feminists may not wish to admit it, but Trump’s Executive Order owes much to them.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Trump's IVF EO, Gender as a Get-Out-of-Jail Card, and Finding Playmates
This week: Leah Libresco Sargeant on what Trump's IVF executive order gets wrong, Kathleen Stock on why gender shouldn’t be a get-out-of-jail card, and Gaetano Masciullo on finding playmates for his daughter in a country with few children. Plus: “toxic empathy” and what’s worse, Andrea Dworkin, how trans ideology took America by storm, our Flowers of Fire book club—and more!
From the Archives:
Featured Author Alex Byrne reviews “gender-affirming” child psychologist Jack Turban’s book, Free to Be.
The New Free to Be Might Make You Long for the Seventies
Alex Byrne
“However, even taking Free to Be at face value, it leaves the reader wondering. Is the current enthusiasm for placing gender dysphoric youth on a medical pathway that leads to infertility really as evidence-based as Turban makes out?”