Jeremy Stangroom

either tacitly or explicitly by many trans rights academics. This is why many arguments in favour of exchanging the category of sex for the category of gender identity end up being presented as a question of ethics. But what I find striking about these ethical 5/12

arguments is their one-sidedness: usually, arguments in applied ethics will apply a metaethical theory to weighing up opposing policies, identifying those who stand to be affected by these policies and addressing the pros and cons of each policy in light of the theory. 6/12

These arguments in applied ethics are part of a wider discourse in which ethicists are responding and replying to others in the field, so even arguments presented in a one-sided way will usually cite opposing viewpoints, and if not, they are not too hard to find. 7/12

However, in the case of academic trans rights activism, not only are arguments in favour of exchanging sex-based for identity-based categorisation generally one-sided, but there is a push for opposing arguments to be not permitted in the discourse at all. 8/12

Many trans rights academics comport themselves as though the ethical correctness of this exchange of categories is so self-evident that those who deny it must be either seriously morally and / or epistemically lacking. So essentially what we have now is an academic movement 9/12

that seeks to impose a social categorisation system on ethical grounds without sufficient justification. In place of sober and disciplined argument there is hyperbole, appeals to emotion, blunt rhetoric and the elision, vilification and ostracism of would-be interlocutors. 10/12

So far these tactics seem to have been very effective within the academy (I am not sure whether I should find this surprising or not). As a postgrad in the beginning of my third year who is attempting to navigate this field and write a PhD in philosophy 11/12