The Potential Problematics of Posie Parker

This is going to be a really controversial blog post. And before I am questioned for platforming somebody as “problematic” as Posie Parker is, I want to make clear my conviction that peoples’ opinions–no matter how controversial–deserve to be taken seriously. Perhaps some people are genuinely evil with no intention but to bring others to ruin with their opinions. Parker, though highly inflammatory, is not one of these people. I am convinced that she has the opinions she has because she believes that she perceives a serious injustice. And she wants to use her voice to create solidarity behind ideas that will make the world a better place on her understanding. If you are interested in assessing for yourself whether she is sincere in holding her beliefs in good faith, watch her Triggernometry interview here.

Now, who is Posie Parker? She’s a British women’s rights activist, who subscribes to the belief that “trans women aren’t women.” She follows gender critical feminists in asserting that a woman is defined as an adult, human female. That is, the socially constructed aspects of gender expression are not and cannot be equated with gender itself. Because trans women are not biologically female, they cannot be appropriately classified as women in Parker’s view.

The major upshot of this belief is that trans women should not be allowed to use spaces designated specifically for use by women, like women’s restrooms. Parker suggests that women (this term shall, for the purposes of this blog post, refer only to adult, human females and exclude trans women as participants in the category) need to have certain spaces where they can be trust that men will not be present. This is because women, says Parker, are more vulnerable in spaces like the restroom. Women are “in a bigger state of undress, most of the time” (minute 10:25 of her Triggernometry interview) than men, and they use the bathroom for more than just, well, using the bathroom. Parker claims that women feel threatened by the possibility of men penetrating these spaces designated for use by women.

She–like many conservatives in America, ironically enough–is concerned with men feigning trans-ness to invade and prey on women. She references the case of Karen White quite liberally. (For those who don’t know, White is a biologically male rapist who claimed to be a trans woman and was allowed to be sent to a women’s prison). Parker also talks about how many trans women are actually just autogynephiles, or men with a fetish for falling in love with themselves as women. She makes the interesting point that many men have recently come out as trans women in middle age, but few if any women have come out as trans men in middle age.

And to finish my summary of Parker’s views, she also subscribes to the view that transitioning a child is child abuse. She finds it disturbing that parents can make medical decisions for their young sons and daughters that would permanently sterilize them and change their body chemistry for the rest of their lives. What’s more, says Parker, is that these permanent decisions can be made at a time where children are extremely malleable and vulnerable to change. A young girl going through a phase where she is tomboyish perhaps runs the risk of being perceived as a trans boy by her parents in this day and age according to Parker, and she finds this possibility alarming.

People may have visceral reactions to any and all of the concerns which Parker raises, and for good reason. But I want to try my best to make sense of what is really bad (as in bad argumentatively) about Parker’s argument, and to see if there’s anything here that is deserving of intellectual consideration.

I do not think it is productive to attack Parker’s use of the term “woman.” Many have argued that maleness and femaleness are immutable biological characteristics while manhood and womanhood are socially constructed phenomena that are subject to change. When Parker uses the term “woman,” it appears as though she is referring to what many feminists would call “female.” A feminist who is adversarial to Parker’s position may attack her for conflating two distinct concepts. But it is clear that what she means by woman is what many others would mean by female. And furthermore, she is supposing that there is more overlap between femaleness and womanhood than social constructionists let off. I do not think this is an unreasonable view.

Parker does, however, make use of sweeping generalizations that do aspects of her position no favors. Suggesting that all women in women’s restrooms are more vulnerable than are men because of undress and their use of sanitary products seems to infantilize women, which runs counter to the aims of an ideological position that seeks to empower women as Parker’s does. This is not to say that there aren’t real biological distinctions that exist between men and women on the whole which render women generally weaker and in need of substantial protection against predatory advances that men perhaps are not. But it is to say that Parker ascribes the role of the public restroom in a woman’s life something more than what it in fact is. I am not a woman, so I don’t attempt to speak for them, but I find it hard to imagine that women view the women’s restroom as a refuge from a deluge of patriarchal oppression. I would like to think that women, like men, find the restroom to be a place where they can comfortably do their business and go about their days.

As Freudian and regressive as I find Parker’s remarks about autogynephilia to be, I feel as though she raises an interesting concern that is worthy of investigation. Namely: why is it that so many males are transitioning in middle age, whereas females do not? I don’t find Parker’s argument relying on Ray Blanchard’s account of autogynephilic transsexualism particularly persuasive. Again, this is too Freudian for me to take seriously. (Though I don’t completely write Blanchard’s opinions off as nonsensical; he has said many sensible things about the psychology of transgender identification). But, I do think this is an observation that warrants critical examination. I would be curious to hear what explanations there might be for this phenomenon.

And lastly, I don’t think Parker is unreasonable for being concerned about transitioning children. If we define harm as a setback of interests (in the style of Joel Feinberg), then it makes sense to say that a parent harms their child when allowing them to transition medically. That is, a child is being stripped of their ability to later in life choose for themselves whether or not they want to have children. Also, that child’s body chemistry is being fundamentally altered in ways that might seem unacceptable under many comparable circumstances (i.e. should an anorexic preteen be permitted to continue starving themselves because they are psychologically predisposed to?). None of what I am saying is uncontroversial, I know. But I do think there is something to be said for the fact that the interests that children have long-term in leading minimally flourishing, autonomous lives in the future override immediate interests they might have in leading potentially minimally flourishing lives in the present. Maura Priest argues against this point of view extensively, and I hope to take up her concerns in a future blog post, but for now…

Thanks for reading this post, and as always–let me know what you think. Though inflammatory, I feel that Parker is a cultural critic whose convictions are worthy of examination. Most people’s are.