Inclusivity and Ambiguity

reflections on a turbulent week

The last week has left me reflecting on the power of social media, not just over society but over my own life. I value Facebook and X as a source of dialogue with a much wider circle of people than I encounter physically in my everyday life and as a way of keeping up with extended family and friends across the world. I like being exposed to different ideas and intelligent debates. I’ve discovered wonderful insights into many aspects of culture, politics, history and the arts through being highly selective about who I follow and why.

But last week, the negative side of social media was on show, with the controversy over women’s boxing in the Olympics and the horrors unfolding as British cities have been burning – literally and metaphorically – with racist hatred fuelled by false social media posts. It’s hard to imagine how much these riots have added to the vast burden of sorrow and loss carried by the families and communities in Southport after the attack on little girls and their teacher at a dance class. Last Thursday, I touched on some of these questions in my Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Angela Carini in tears after her defeat by Imane Khelif, and Imane Khelif in tears after her victory over Anna Luca Hamori

Like many others, I was quick to comment on the case of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif by unequivocally supporting those who identified her as male. I now realise that this requires more informed reflection and grappling with what seem like insurmountable problems around sexual difference, women’s rights and identity politics, and I regret playing some part in over-simplifying an immensely complex dilemma. I should also say that I find boxing to be a barbaric sport and last week’s ugly confrontations have reinforced that, but the issues go beyond this one sporting controversy.

The controversy around Khelif has brought into focus how gender politics sometimes generates more heat than light. It has exposed the extent to which that incoherent alphabet soup—LGBTQIA+—does not provide a catch-all umbrella for everybody who is marginalised and made to suffer on account of their sex or gender. Persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, “intersex”, asexual and + (whatever that means) are not a community bound together either by gendered identity or by sexual orientation and desires.

Pride: here comes (almost) everybody

If we are going to reconcile these different and sometimes conflicting cases for inclusion and representation, we need much greater nuance and courage to acknowledge and deal with conflicts without name-calling and rage. We should also surely understand what we are defending and why when we align ourselves with different causes. It has become apparent that many of those who decorate their social media profiles with pronouns and wave their multi-coloured flags of inclusivity have little knowledge of what it all means.

There was an immediate assumption that Khelif was a trans woman, even though it was clear from the start that this was not the case. People with DSDs, only some of whom accept the label “intersex”, have appealed for a better understanding of their conditions. Their appeals have been largely ignored, apart from the fact that the offending “I” is being discreetly dropped, with no public apology or acknowledgement of this misappropriation. When suffering individuals stop being useful pawns in what has become the highly politicised and commodified marketplace of sex-gender activism, their suffering ceases to be of interest to those inclusive “be kind” campaigners. Detrans people are rarely allowed to ruffle the smooth assurances of trans activists, and the disquiet expressed by many lesbians over some trans women’s demands for full inclusion in all social and sexual activities is simply ignored.

I wish I had been more careful in the language of one or two of my tweets about Khelif. However, I still think that women are being asked to bear a disproportionate burden when their sex-based rights, capabilities and vulnerabilities collide with the demands of biological males to be treated as women in all aspects of life. Having said that, the cases of Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting are more complex and I accept that there are legitimate grounds for taking a more nuanced position based on what we know so far, which is very little and unreliable. These cases could have been resolved by a simple cheek swab which would have established whether or not the two boxers are chromosomally male, but that hasn’t happened.

I’ll focus on Khelif because she has been the main topic of debate. To those who say we have no right to debate about a person’s private life, I’d respond that the Olympics are a public competition. There are broader principles at stake when competitors knowingly participate in events where the legitimacy of their participation is contested and controversial, regrettable though this situation is.

There are no winners here. Khelif’s personal history has been thrust into the foreground as someone who comes from a culture that has very different codes of gender and sexuality than progressive liberal westerners. Women in previous competitions have defeated her, so it’s not a clear case of male advantage over a female competitor. On the other hand, if reports that Khelif has XY chromosomes are true, sports scientists seem to agree that this is a case of a difference in sexual development in which a child with seemingly female anatomy goes through male puberty, with all the implications of this in terms of testosterone levels and strength. XY chromosomes are only found in males.

These developments at puberty do not mean that a female child becomes male or that there are multiple sexes. Such cases are rare and cover a wide range of different conditions, but these are situations where it is appropriate to refer to a sex assigned at birth. For the vast majority of us, no such dilemma arises because our visible sexual characteristics conform to our biological sex. Relatively few people with DSDs are trans, suggesting that sexual difference may be hard-wired into many people from birth. So there are significant reasons not to confuse trans identities with DSDs. To express concern over the latter in women’s sports is not transphobic. Neither is it transphobic to exclude trans women like Lia Thomas from sports in which they clearly have a significant competitive advantage because they have been through male puberty and are anatomically male.

There may currently be no satisfactory solution to the dilemma of what to do when a biologically male woman with a DSD is also a talented athlete, as indeed many are. Khelif has undoubtedly struggled against many social and psychological obstacles to get to the Olympics. Still, anyone who watched the fight against Italian Angela Carini must surely have felt some discomfort at such an ill-matched contest? Carini has been gracious in defeat, but the uneasy questions remain, and responsibility rests with the IOC and other sporting regulatory bodies to find a better solution to such situations.

I regret being too quick to judge with some of my social media posts. Still, I remain profoundly concerned about the extent to which, once again, the resolution of a challenging situation around the significance of sexual difference entails women giving way. There may be no clear winners in this deeply troubling situation, but the female boxers are the clear losers.

The inclusivity that parades under the ever-more meaningless LGBTQA+ flag is hostile to all who question its claims. Indiscriminate claims to inclusivity tend to produce vigorously policed boundaries of exclusion, for inclusivity needs insiders and outsiders, with no grey areas. Everyone is either good or bad, with us or against us. Complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt would require living in a world of pragmatism, compromise, and a mutual willingness to navigate the sometimes conflicting spaces where rights collide and one person’s freedom becomes another person’s exclusion. Many who claim to be LGBTQA+ inclusive end up labelling all who dare to challenge them as cis heterosexist bigots in league with fascism and the Far Right. For those whose identities and lifestyles fit comfortably within the conservative status quo, and for populist politicians and religious conformists, there’s a corresponding tendency to demonise and vilify feminists, lesbians, gays, and trans people. The two ideological extremes are locked into a mutually parasitic relationship that excludes the vast majority of ordinary people of all orientations, identities and cultures struggling with life’s daily realities.

All this has been much on display this past week, and I repeat that I too made some comments that suggested greater certainty than I now feel—though I try never to name-call and slander those I disagree with. The word “terf” belongs within the same misogynistic lexicon as all the other words men use to show their contempt for women. And yes, there are and always have been women who would rather be dedicated followers of cultural fashion dictated by men’s demands than own up to doubts and struggles. Every woman who signs up uncritically to whatever is required to be part of the LGBTQA+ in-crowd is colluding in the mockery and silencing of many other women’s voices, including many lesbians and mothers concerned for the well-being of their gender-dysphoric children. There is a surge in adolescent girls identifying as trans. In a world in which murder, rape, sexual exploitation and abuse don’t even count as hate crimes so long as the victim is female, it’s hardly surprising that teenage girls are horrified when their bodies begin to change into objects of sexual commodification. Nor is it surprising that some of us get angry when women like J.K. Rowling are vilified for standing up for women’s rights. We’re at the beginning of exploring scientifically, psychologically and philosophically/theologically what it means to be a sexually embodied, gendered person without dominant men in patriarchal traditions having already decided that in advance. For the first time, women have found a voice in this quest for understanding. Perhaps it's not surprising that our fragile space of emergence has been colonised once again by men who know better than we do what it means to be a woman, while many women, including me, have yet to understand the question.

Two generations of feminism cannot undo thousands of years of cultural conditioning and institutionalised hierarchies by way of which women and girls have been universally subjected to male authority figures domestically, religiously and socially. From the Vatican to Afghanistan and Iran, the female body is still abjected and silenced in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As Luce Irigaray and many feminist theorists including myself argue, “woman” signifies lack, absence and negation, so no wonder the female body functions as virgin territory to be colonised and owned by others. We must ask how much these underlying assumptions about the insignificance and inferiority of the female body feed into the idea that men’s demands for inclusion take precedence over women’s sex-based rights whenever the two collide. The demand that women simply capitulate when conflicts over identity and gender arise has deeply problematic misogynistic roots which fester beneath the inclusive rhetoric of equality and rights.

This is all work in progress for me. I'll continue to try to occupy a space of reflective ambivalence and be honest when I get it wrong, as I may have done on this occasion. I believe these are vitally important issues, and I remain committed to the relevance of gender theory. I agree with Sarah Coakley that theology and gender theory are—or should be—co-dependent. The fact that gender has become a Trojan horse as far as women’s rights are concerned does not make me hostile to gender theory, but rather reinforces my commitment to research that struggles not to be taken captive by the ideologies of either the Vatican or Stonewall.

In years to come, we may hopefully have much greater insight and understanding into the fluid, shifting realm of gender and the ways in which our sexed bodies and desires are or are not shaped by conformity to changing cultural norms. We may also have rediscovered the wisdom in Christianity’s emphasis on mutual respect, fidelity and love, as well as shared responsibility for the children we bear, as inseparable from our questions above sexuality and desire, even as we challenge the heterosexual essentialism that informs those teachings. As we navigate these troubled waters, I want as much dialogue, difference, inclusivity and respect as it’s humanly possible to achieve, but that means all of us having to make difficult compromises and uneasy accommodations. It means not shouting down, name-calling and demonising those we disagree with, and it means being willing to make mistakes, to be corrected, and to change one’s mind.

If we care about minimising avoidable suffering and creating societies where all can flourish, all voices must be heard except those that intend only to spread hatred and violence. If you call gender critical feminists “fascists” just because you disagree with them, what would you call the white racist thugs on Britain’s streets? If you can’t tell the difference, do you really have anything to say that’s worth listening to? Social justice calls for attentiveness to power, including the power to amplify some voices and silence others.

True inclusivity means being honest and transparent about who we exclude, and why. I know what my boundaries are. I draw the line at the claim that lesbians have penises, that anatomical males should be treated as women in situations of intimacy and vulnerability for women and girls, and at the promotion of life-changing medical and surgical interventions for young people struggling with the complex hormonal and psychological fluctuations that are part of healthy adolescent development. I’m appalled by those who have been quick to condemn the Cass Review because it doesn’t shore up their ideological convictions.

Grandad's Pride - Liberalism's Shame

I do not believe that gender nominalism should prevail in areas like medical science and law where sexual difference matters, and I am glad that the law still protects those who question the spread and influence of gender ideology which, whether from the conservative or liberal end of the spectrum, would silence debate and exercise Orwellian control over language.

There are clear situations in which trans women have an unfair advantage over women in some sports, though it’s important to recognise that persons with DSDs might pose a different challenge. Filipino boxer Hergie Bacyadan is a trans man competing in the Olympics women’s section. He makes clear he has not taken hormones or transitioned surgically, so there’s no case to answer. There are reports that Bacyadan has said that people with XY chromosomes should not be allowed to compete in women’s Olympic sports, which surely calls for caution about branding people transphobic for expressing such views.

I differentiate between trans women and trans men. I have no inhibitions or concerns about trans men, because I don’t believe the two are equivalent. There are no controversies about trans men demanding access to male sports, male changing rooms, male prisons, etc. Gay men do not by and large seem to feel threatened by trans men demanding sex. I wonder how many men who struggled for acceptance of their sexuality would agree that some gay men have vaginas, and it’s transphobic to refuse to have sex with them. Maybe we should ask why these demands are all so skewed in only one direction.

Enough – for now.

Communities of Lovers and Others