Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions
By Alex Byrne.
Polity Press, 2023.
Hardcover, 320 pages, $29.95.
Reviewed by Nathanael Blake.
America is confused about gender, and MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne is here to help. Earlier this year, Byrne faced down (largely online) critics after it emerged that he contributed to the Trump administration’s HHS report on treating gender dysphoria in children. The campaign against Byrne seems to have ended with a whimper; academic cancel culture ain’t what it used to be, and this wasn’t his first rodeo.
Byrne had already tackled gender in both his scholarly work and a 2023 book, Trouble with Gender, in which he engaged with both academic gender theory and pop culture—from Simone de Beauvoir to Dave Chappelle. The result was informative, amusing, and consistently well-argued while being organized into readily digestible chunks for what he called a “curious—and open-minded—general audience.”
That intended audience is a liberal one. Trouble with Gender was written for the sort of New York Times readers who have nodded along when that paper occasionally published pieces critical of transgender ideology and activism—but who still want to think of themselves as good liberals. This book sought to aid such liberals as they try to permit themselves to question transgender orthodoxy.
Perhaps for that reason, Trouble with Gender mostly avoids engaging with conservatives (who, of course, don’t need persuading) and is disdainful when it does. For example, early in the book Byrne insists on separating the T from the LGB, asserting that, “Gay rights infringe at best marginally on the rights of others…Let’s face it, gay rights are boring. Philosophers, who love introducing undergraduates to controversial claims, gave up years ago assigning academic articles arguing that homosexuality was immoral or that gay marriage should not be allowed. The arguments were unconvincing, and, anyway, students weren’t interested.” In contrast, he believes that “transgender-related conflicts…are more significant and wide-ranging. Which is to say, male and female do not matter in sex and marriage (except as a matter of personal preference), but they might be important elsewhere.
Conservative readers will find this as unconvincing as Byrne finds their arguments, but they might still cheer at the barbs he slings in the other direction. He pricks the egos of fellow philosophers, whom he contends “have done little to diminish the nonsense surrounding sex and gender and in some cases have even managed to increase it.” He also observes that “Wacky views about sex are not uncommon among sexologists,” and states that “A tenuous grasp of reality is an occupational hazard of being a sophisticated French philosopher.”
Zingers aside, Byrne seeks to correct the dominant academic foolishness by clearing away the intellectual weeds that have overgrown the topics of sex and gender. He largely succeeds, but he then provides little guidance as to how we should live with sex and gender. This will disappoint some readers, but he has nonetheless provided important clarity, perhaps especially for his intended audience.
Byrne’s thesis is that gender either means sex or is just a source of confusion, “producing nothing but bamboozlement.” He insists that “using ‘gender’ to mean anything other than sex is to obscure important issues for no good reason.” He’s right. The current gender discourse obfuscates the truths that sex is binary, male and female are real, and there is no third sex or third gamete. Pretending otherwise occludes our understanding of ourselves and other important matters. For example, Byrne points out that “Understanding evolution is impossible without bringing sex into the picture.” Of course, defending the reality of the sex binary means responding to those who claim that so-called “intersex” conditions disprove it. Byrne handles this adroitly, with a particular emphasis on how the frequency of such conditions has been grossly and intentionally exaggerated.
Men and women are real and definable. And though the obfuscation around sex and gender has made it harder to untangle matters of biology, identity, and society, the task can still be managed. As Byrne puts it, “If ‘woman’ designates the undesignatable, so does every other word, and language is meaningless.” On the other side, the activist mantra that “trans women are women” is obviously false.
But, Byrne argues, this does not settle the various controversies (sports, bathrooms, prisons), for he does not believe that their resolution depends on whether “trans women are women” Rather, he suggests that men who wish to live as if they were women (or women who wish to live as if they were men) may sometimes be accommodated, if doing so is not too disruptive or intrusive upon the rights of others. And so, for example, Byrne consistently uses preferred pronouns, which he regards as a mark of basic human respect.
But this nod to transgender identities did not keep Byrne away from the third rail of this already fraught subject—the link between some transgender identities and autogynephilia, a paraphilia in which a man is aroused at the idea of being a woman. Trans activists tend to shriek in outrage at the mention of autogynephilia, but it obviously applies in some cases. Byrne seems to consider it mostly as an interesting example of human sexuality, and he seems generally tolerant, even accepting, of various peccadillos and oddities of human sexuality and identity. Nonetheless, he will not overlook philosophic nonsense on their behalf. And so he explains that,
Despite the way some clinicians talk, being trans is not a medical diagnosis. Children and adults may be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but this is neither necessary or sufficient for being trans…Mild gender dysphoria is probably a feature of many ordinary adolescent girls’ lives. Similarly, some people learn to live with stronger forms without taking themselves to be transgender.
Well put. Feelings are neither destiny nor identity. And Byrne expands on this subversive (at least of the popular cultural ethos) point, noting that “true” selves are not always our best selves, or even good. Indeed, “the permanent and stable traits of ordinary people are usually a mixed bag. If you are inclined toward anger or selfishness please don’t be your true self.” Thus, Byrne warns readers that “Be your authentic true self! is one of the worst pieces of advice.” This calls to mind Chesterton’s observation about the empirical observability of the doctrine of original sin. Thus, though Byrne’s warning about the potential evil of “true” selves may be so obvious as to be borderline banal to any person of practical wisdom, it is an intriguing note to end on, given that it invites precisely the sort of normative judgments that Byrne avoided or dismissed throughout this book.
His explicit conclusion is that sex is real and so are sex differences, from average strength and aggression to the asymmetries of human reproduction. These shape us and society, and we should not lose sight of them in a fog of obfuscating gender talk. Byrne is engaging and informative in making these points, and most readers will learn from him. Liberal readers in particular may feel that they have had a cloud of confusion lifted. Yet they may still be left wondering: now what?
After all, Byrne leaves us with little in the way of answers or positive proposals. He demonstrates that “trans women” are not women, but does not answer if (and if so, when and where) they should be treated as women. What ought to be the legal status of adults who wish to live as if they were the other sex? Should children ever be transitioned, and if so, under what conditions? Byrne seems to hint at a broadly liberal approach for how these matters should be resolved—something like a dose of Mill with a dash of Rawls thrown in—but it is not obvious from this volume.
And so Trouble with Gender leaves readers wanting more. Perhaps this is simply a philosophy professor’s habit of leaving his audience hanging—and thinking—rather than providing the answers for them. Perhaps Byrne feels that having cleared the philosophical weeds, the rest may be left to his readers.
But conservatives may be forgiven for wondering if liberalism after the sexual revolution is simply unprepared, even unable, to provide a coherent normative understanding of what embodiment means for how we are to live as men and women.
Nathanael Blake, Ph.D., is a Fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All.
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