I found especially valuable chapters 2(What is sex), 4 (What is Gender Identity?), 5 (What Makes a Woman?) which really will help me understand arguments on the various sides better going forward, and 8 (A Better Activism in Future) which puts out her vision for improvement of this debate, and questions that need to be quantitatively answered (but currently are not), for policy to move forward. Chapters are a bit long (an hour each - I'd prefer shorter) and the context of examples and law is UK focused, but that doesn't diminish the importance of this book. She lays out current theories on both sides and provides clear explanations. Taking gender for example, she identifies at least 4 different meanings that are in current use by activists, government officials, policy makers, medics and scientists, which make this debate so fraught and confused. Without being lofty or 'academic' Stock explains in clear language how the debate between transgender advocates and feminists has become so muddy, by clearly identifying the many different meanings of the words and concepts in use. Highly recommended contribution to the debate on sex & gender.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Material Girls makes a clear, humane and feminist case for our retaining the ability to discuss reality, and concludes with a positive vision for the future, in which trans rights activists and feminists can collaborate to achieve some of their political aims. She looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organisation and data collection. Professor Kathleen Stock surveys the philosophical ideas that led to this point, and closely interrogates each one, from De Beauvoir's statement that, 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman' (an assertion she contends has been misinterpreted and repurposed), to Judith Butler's claim that language creates biological reality, rather than describing it. Material Girls is a timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex.

Material Girls by Kathleen Stock