Interview: Dr Kathleen Stock

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism

The full text of this interview is available on Feminist Current.

Dr Kathleen Stock OBE is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex who has written a number of articles for peer-reviewed academic publications primarily on aesthetics, sexual objectification, and the impact of modern gender theory on the rights of women and girls. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to higher education, after which many philosophers took to social media to object, circulating an “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy.”

She has recently published a philosophical examination of the main tenets of gender ideology, called “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism,” available now in both hardback and in electronic format.

“I think the objectification of women (females), on a massive scale, is at the heart of many societal problems for women and girls, and this is one of them. I’m not saying it’s the only cause of gender identity ideology by any means, but certainly it’s there. The idea that womanhood is a costume or an appearance is absolutely bound up with an objectifying way of looking at women as aesthetic surfaces, as shapes, or sexually attractive objects. In the book I explain that I once had a trans woman say to me, ‘I must be a woman because heterosexual males want to have sex with me.’ It seems incredible, but in an increasingly pornified, objectifying society, that kind of logic is in the ascendant. Of course womanhood is not a costume, and being a woman is far more than what you look like or how sexually attractive you are. But that’s not a message that seems to be getting through.”