Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions

by Alex Byrne

Sex used to rule. Now gender identity is on the throne. Sex survives as a cheap imitation of its former assigned at birth, on a spectrum, socially constructed, and definitely not binary. Apparently quite a few of us fall outside the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’. But gender identity is said to be universal – we all have one. Humanity used to be cleaved into two sexes, whereas now the crucial division depends on whether our gender identity aligns with our body. If it does, we are cisgender; if it does not, we are transgender. The dethroning of sex has meant the threat of execution for formerly noble words such as ‘woman’ and ‘man’. In this provocative, bold, and humane book, the philosopher Alex Byrne pushes back against the new gender revolution. Drawing on evidence from biology, psychology, anthropology and sexology, Byrne exposes the flaws in the revolutionary manifesto. The book applies the tools of philosophy, accessibly and with flair, to gender, sex, transsexuality, patriarchy, our many identities, and our true or authentic selves.  The topics of  Trouble with Gender  are relevant to us all. This is a book for anyone who has wondered ‘Is sex binary?’, ‘Why are men and women different?’, ‘What is a woman?’ or, simply, ‘Where can I go to know more about these controversies?’ Revolutions devour their own children, and the gender revolution is no exception.  Trouble with Gender  joins the forefront of the counter-revolution, restoring sex to its rightful place, at the centre of what it means to be human.

Genres: Philosophy, Gender, Nonfiction, Science, Womens, Feminism, Cultural

320 pages, Hardcover

Published January 3, 2024

Reviews

[Spencer Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

As of this writing, the only copies of this book available are the advance copies. I'm fortunate that the author gave me one. I doubt that the five people who have so far given it zero stars have a copy. They in all likelihood are dishonestly trying to discredit the author for ideological reasons, without having read it. I have read it, and I'll try to write an official review somewhere after I've looked at parts of it again and given it more thought. But for now, I'll just mention that Byrne's book is admirably clear and occasionally funny. The humor isn't mean-spirited, and it gives his writing a light touch.

Mary Midgely once compared philosophers to plumbers: you don't know you need one until something stinks. Well, contemporary discourse on gender stinks, and someone needs to do the dirty (and generally thankless) work of probing the pipes and seeing where things have gone wrong. Enter Byrne. He does a great job of clarifying the underlying concepts of this debate. What is gender? What is gender identity? What is even an "identity"? His thoughts on these and other questions should be clarifying even for those who disagree with his conclusions. The only reason I withhold a fifth star is that there were a few points where I wanted him to say more. I'm interested in the normative questions here: what should we do about, say, women's sports? Well, maybe it's unfair to fault anyone for not writing a different book, but it still affects my overall feeling about the read, fairly or not. It makes a great pairing with Helen Joyce's Trans: Where Ideology Meets Reality, since that book does go more into these practical questions. Nonetheless, anyone who wants to get clear about just what to think about these trans issues would be very well advised to read this book, haters be damned.

[Matt Berkowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the books I’ve read on gender, this is the one that most closely matches my views. Byrne masterfully clarifies the supposed distinctions between sex and gender, ultimately concluding that “gender” is an erroneous term, which mostly serves to muddle and confuse communication.

After the first chapter that discusses the incendiary cultural, academic and political climate about all things “sex/gender”, Byrne really gets to work:

Chapter 2 sets much of the groundwork for the rest of the book by dissecting four common usages of (1) “gender”: gender as “femininity/masculinity”, (2) gender as “sex-typed social roles”; (3) gender as “identity”; and (4) gender as “woman/man”.

Byrne carefully dissects each of these uses and concludes that “gender” is usually not just unnecessary but obfuscatory in its meaning. Just use “sex”. The first usage—gender as “femininity/masculinity” (1)— originates with psychiatrist Robert Stoller who suggested gender refers to the amount of masculinity or femininity found in a person. If masculinity and femininity refer to traits typically associated with being male or female, then typically masculine traits can be exhibited by females, and ditto feminine traits by males. We don’t need “gender” to describe this. Given that gender does not take degree modifiers (“more” and “less”), it would not make sense to ask “what is your gender?” when you want to quantify how typically masculine or feminine a male or female is.

Next, the second usage (2): gender as “sex-typed social roles”. This typically mixes biological and cultural/societal norms exhibited by males and females. Males may be the more aggressive sex (biological norm) and more frequently fulfill certain occupational roles (cultural/societal). Here, gender just means sex. So, again, just use sex, i.e., sex-typed social roles.

Gender as “identity” (3) originates from John Money, who became notorious for his role in dealing with a baby who had a botched circumcision, later recommending the boy be raised as though he were a girl. In a 1955 article, Money used “gender role” not as a “sex-typed social role” but rather as “all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively…” (p. 41). But the term gender identity was then coined by Robert Stoller and his colleague Ralph Greenson in 1963. Stoller defined gender identity as “the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs, that is, the awareness ‘I am a male’ or ‘I am a female’.” As Byrne says, “Notice that Stoller could equally well have used the phrase ‘sex identity’ ” (p. 42), which was actually used occasionally back then. Using gender to mean awareness of one’s sex is even more troublesome than using gender to refer to femininity/masculinity. Saying “My gender is female” could mean “My sex is female” or “I have a female gender identity”. Again, “gender” is superfluous and confusing. “Sex” can give us all we want.

Lastly, gender is often used as a politically correct synonym for sex (4). Given the many other meanings of “gender” though, why not just use “sex”? Sure, “sex” has other meanings too (“sexual intercourse”), but contexts are usually clear enough that we can distinguish between the intended meanings. Nevertheless, using “gender” to disambiguate “sex” as “male/female” from “sex” as “sexual intercourse” might be defensible if “gender” didn’t have so many other (ambiguous) usages/meanings.

Chapter 3 is all about biological sex, how it’s defined, how it’s determined, and the differences between biological definitions of sex and the nebulous, sloppy, indefensible definitions of sex trotted out by unscrupulous gender/feminist studies scholars (like the execrable writer, Judith Butler).

Quite simply, biologists agree that sex is defined by gametes: one group has the capability to produce large gametes (“females” in the human species) and the other group has the capability to produce small gametes (“males” in the human species). In some species, the sex that produces the large or small gametes is opposite that of humans; in some, one can switch their sex from one to the other; and in still others, one can produce both large and small gametes. But this pattern—sex being defined by gamete size—is persistent across all biological organisms.

There are other traits associated with being one or the other sex—chromosomes, genitalia, body hair, etc.—but these things help determine an organism’s sex, varying across species and can be rather complex, involving continuous (rather than discrete) variables. Moreover, there is a small subset of individuals where it is not trivial to determine which sex one belongs to—previously or less commonly called “intersex” individuals, now more commonly individuals with DSDs (developmental sex disorders). Though some unscrupulous scholars, like Anne Fausto-Sterling, have estimated an implausibly high prevalence of those with DSDs (as high as 4%), credible estimates are more like 1 in 20,000. For such individuals, we can still often determine which sex they are. Regardless, there are still only two sex categories, and it is really just an academic exercise to understand the rare cases in which individuals cannot be neatly or clearly described by these two categories. It’s not like there is a third sex that evolution has carved out that we can define them by.

Chapter 4 is all about “gender identity”: whether it’s “real”, a coherent concept, something immutable, something socially conditioned, predicted by other abnormalities, etc. To cut to the chase, Byrne helpfully distinguishes between two types of gender identity: (a) “core gender identity”, as defined by Stoller, referring to “apparent knowledge of one’s sex” (the “apparent” is an addition by Byrne because one could be wrong about one’s own sex in outlier cases, e.g., individuals with DSDs); this is stable and does not involve any intrinsic or internal sense; and (b) the contemporary meaning of gender identity, referring to “one’s intrinsic sense of being male, female, or an alternative gender” (WPATH’s definition). The former definition is much more clearcut, but it has been replaced with the much more elusive, dubious, latter definition. No one has devised a reliable method to detect gender identity as per definition (b). Thus, Byrne rightfully concludes that this latter version is ill-founded conceptually.

Byrne prefers the APA’s definition of gender identity (“a person’s basic sense of being male, female, or of indeterminate sex”), which is much closer to Stoller’s “core gender identity”, and of gender dysphoria (“the aversion to some or all of those physical characteristics or social roles that connote one’s own biological sex.”). Once again, notice the lack of need for the term “gender”.

Relatedly, the last chapter is fascinating: what is an “identity”? Byrne argues that “an identity is a category such that people can identify with its members or as one of its members” (p. 175). And these have three features: identities are categories of people; they have associated stereotypes; they have loosely associated socially imposed norms or rules. For example, Canadians and men are people (1), Canadians are nice and fond of ice hockey, men don’t like discussing feelings (2), Canadians should be modest and law-abiding, men should be strong/assertive (3). Other than that, there’s little to bind many identities together – they are numerous and diverse. Bringing this back to “gender identity” as per definition, there’s little evidence to suggest that this type of identity is intrinsic in a sense that other, typical identities are not. So, how should we think of this type of identity? Byrne points out we ought to separate between identifying as a male, from identifying with male. Since Byrne (successfully) argued that the gender identity by definition (b) is a myth (the contemporary “intrinsic” kind), it makes much more sense to construe gender identity as analogous to identifying with the opposite sex—which would alleviate much confusion and not needlessly conflate sex and related concepts (like sex-typed roles).

Overall, this is a much-needed book and a breath of fresh air when it comes to clarifying so much confusion about all things gender. Byrne has done us a great service.

[Marcos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A philosopher takes on the gender craze, a deeply polarizing and often dumb issue that fires up upwardly mobile people in the wealthiest nations ever to exist because we are bored at the end of history and its fun to fulminate on the vagaries of identity and deny obvious biological facts through narcissistic word games grounded in incoherent critical theory.

Anyway, good book, quick read. Footnotes are fun too. Only four stars because it should have been 150 pages longer.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Byrne, a professor of philosophy at MIT, and arguably therefore an actual American philosopher, thinks his colleagues must become bored ploughing the same furrow year after year with their students, and yet they show a curious reluctance to apply their particular box of tricks and tools to new and challenging material thrown up by the transgender debate. He sees no good reason not to dive in with his own, uncluttered and curious mind, and ask the sort of questions that he would ask for any other aspect of human life and culture. This is the sort of uncomplicated innocence that the Cultural Revolution is designed to eliminate from the American campus but apparently it is still to be found.

He does refer to the struggle sessions endured by some fellow philosophers, Kathleen Stock in the UK and Holly Lawford-Smith in Australia, but I think he aspires to some form of civilian or non-combatant status; perhaps like a war correspondent. “The social and political territory at stake in the TERF wars is not the subject of this book. Our focus will be on the ammunition lobbed by both sides – claims about sex, gender, gender identity, women and men. A sub-plot is the failure of philosophy,…” [p13] And after a brief survey of some critical moments in those TERF wars: “If there are insightful explanations of the ‘transgender moment’, this book is not the place to unearth them.” (p33)

The result is less than 200 pages of clearly written, accessible text, which does not even pretend to be a comprehensive review of the field, but is rather a refreshing exercise in clarification of language and concepts.

Of course he gets started with the attempt to define gender, and brings out a useful historical survey of the word’s evolution: gender as femininity / masculinity (Robert Stoller), gender as social roles (Ann Oakley), gender as identity (John Money), gender as woman / man (“Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex is all about women and she didn’t choose a misleading title.” P43), gender as sex. We get a fine dissection of Judith Butler’s concept of performativity and psychologists melting away the sex binary. He is persuaded by none of the above. His conclusion is that sex differences are indeed interesting, and can be discussed perfectly well without the concept of gender.

In his chapter about sex, Byrne has a pretty clear position: “What is the principle that divides the sexes? For an answer we should turn to biologists, not gender studies professors or philosophers. (Likewise, if you want to know what the nature of gold is, you should ask a chemist, not a financial historian.)” p60 He examines the arguments of influential writers like John Money and Anne Fausto-Sterling in order to demonstrate that “the explanation of the different ‘variables of sex’ relies on the simple categories of male and female. To be chromosomally female is to have the sex chromosomes typical of (human) females, to be hormonally male is to have the hormonal profile typical of (human) males … There is a multidimensional spectrum, but it is not of sex, rather, the dimensions are related to sex, … Far from showing that the question of whether sex is binary is ill-posed, …. it makes perfect sense.” P68 In the same chapter he scrutinises claims by Fausto-Sterling – which others uncritically repeat – about the frequency of so called intersex conditions, and establishes that she has wilfully overstated by a factor of over 100 times. (It also seems clear to me from the account given that these are not misunderstandings but blatantly false claims that fly in the face of good evidence to the contrary.)

What is a woman? Byrne notes that hypotheses about the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman “should ideally be supported by converging lines of evidence.” p89 I like this [implicit] nod towards Critical Realism, which argues that reality can be examined from a whole array of very different perspectives, and does not depend on a single, carefully articulated point of view. In this vein, Byrne shows that one can approach the what-is-a-woman question from many angles with consistent results. In the process he makes a great distinction between a social construct and a socially significant category. A woman, like gold, is a socially significant category – they have many associations, but their reality is not dependent on them. “We unproblematically and easily identify people as women every day, as did Aristotle more than two millennia ago. English speakers use the word ‘woman’ to label them, Spanish speakers use ‘mujer’… If a linguist wanted an example of an unclear, arcane or hard to understand word, ‘woman’ would be the last on their list. Put another way, if ‘woman’ designates the undesignateable, so does every word, and language is meaningless.” p100

Gender Identity, by contrast, is a term with flimsy justification. Among many useful observations, Byrne notes that there is a tendency to project onto everybody some ideas or beliefs that are only actually observed in transsexuals and that includes aspects of so called gender identity. Ultimately, the problem is that “the orthodox conception of gender identity does no explanatory work at all.” p121

To understand the notion of being born in the wrong body, Byrne looks at some cases (Jan Morris) and some clinical theorists of sexual differences (Blanchard, Hirschfield and others). He suggests that, ironically enough, the current promotion of gender diversity actually “flattens the landscape” in comparison with the complexity of sexual differences explored by clinicians in the past century. Far from liberating, this is a restrictive and unimaginative ideology.

In his discussion of biological essentialism, the question whether biology is destiny, Byrne challenges all sides in the debate. “Scientific claims should of course be critically scrutinised, particularly if they confirm one’s prejudices or the pieties of the moment. But this coin has another side. If the research threatens to discomfirm one’s prejudices, one must be careful not to dismiss it by overhyping the reservations and limitations that accompany every scientific study.” p158 Byrne is even-handed and his complaints about feminists in this context are certainly reasonable, but when he identifies Ann Fausto-Sterling as a feminist I realise that we need more work on defining that term.

Byrne finally returns to gender identity under the notion of becoming one’s true self, an ideal with which he has no sympathy. Not everybody’s true self is to be admired or even respected and a serious moralist would rather advocate working to become the best self one can achieve, probably in opposition to one’s less desirable tendencies. In any case, the concept is confused and cannot be taken seriously. This chapter is particularly scathing about the notion of a non-binary identity, pointing out that there is nothing awkward in the concept of a non-binary man or an enbie woman.

There is something to provoke everybody in this useful and highly readable book, but it has a good natured and often humorous tone. Because so much is at stake it is a bit infuriating to encounter an academic able to regard the field without obvious passion or emotional commitment, under the posture of a neutral observer. but it is surprisingly helpful all the same to have a competent philosopher help to organise and illuminate terms and ideas that have until recently been bandied about so recklessly and so uncritically.

[Damion Reinhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophical exploration of ideas around gender and identity; scholary approach but mostly written in plain language.

[Diane Jeske · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 rounded down)

This is a well-argued critique of current ideas about sex and gender-identity written by a highly respected philosopher. Byrne offers cogent arguments against both the idea that sex is a spectrum -nope, just two sexes- and the idea that sex is socially constructed. He also has a convincing chapter defending the conceptual claim that a woman is an adult human female. (The fact that he needs to devote a chapter to defending this claim shows how far from common sense the debates about sex and gender have gone.). As a professional philosopher I also appreciated the chapter about how academic philosophy has abrogated its responsibility to interrogate conceptual claims and has shut down discussion in its rush to comply with current gender orthodoxy. Highly recommended for anyone trying to understand these debates and how we arrived at our current state with respect to them.

[Marco Tullio Liuzza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Byrne's brilliant book thoroughly critiques one of the most revolutionary concepts in the recent history of psychology and social science. The author's rigorous philosophical approach effectively dissects the concept of gender and questions its utility in the scientific discourse. However, I also appreciated its updated review of the scientific literature on the topic. The book is nicely written such a pleasant reading.

[Melissa]

Goodreads review