Kathleen Stock — Material Girls
Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism is a book by British philosopher Kathleen Stock. It was published in 2021 by Fleet, an imprint of Little, Brown, and reached the UK non-fiction bestseller lists. At the time, Stock was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex.
The main article on this subject is Kathleen Stock (UnHerd).
What it is about
Stock examines the view that every person has an inner gender identity and that this should carry greater weight than biological sex. She outlines where this idea comes from and argues that sex remains relevant in areas including medicine, sport, statistics and separate facilities for women. At the same time, she writes that transgender people have the right to protection from discrimination and violence. The book is a philosophical argument about concepts such as sex, gender and woman.
Reception and criticism
The Telegraph called the book courageous and carefully argued; The Guardian reviewed it alongside Helen Joyce’s book and found Stock’s tone cooler and more abstract. Stock faced protests at her university from students who called her transphobic and resigned in October 2021. Her case became a well-known example in the debate about academic freedom.
The author
Kathleen Stock was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. She studied French and philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford, earned a master’s degree from the University of St Andrews and received her PhD from the University of Leeds in 2001. From 2003 onwards, she worked at the University of Sussex, where she focused on aesthetics, fiction and imagination. In December 2020, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to higher education. More than six hundred academics signed a letter opposing the honour; more than four hundred others signed a letter in her defence.
More voices on the book
The book reached number thirteen on the UK non-fiction list. Emma Duncan wrote in The Times that it was easy to read and broadened her understanding of the subject. A brief description of the author and book also appears in the source overview on genderhub.nl. Philosopher Julian Baggini called it a legitimate contribution to the debate. Adam Briggle felt that Stock’s conclusions mainly reflected previously held positions, while Alex Sharpe wrote that the book contains many errors and contributes to a toxic climate around transgender people. Helen Joyce’s book, which is often discussed alongside it, appears elsewhere in this archive: Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
What happened next
Stock resigned on 28 October 2021. The police had advised her to have CCTV installed. In November 2021, she became a part-time fellow at the University of Austin, and in March 2023 she founded The Lesbian Project with Martina Navratilova and Julie Bindel. In March 2025, the UK regulator Office for Students fined the University of Sussex £585,000 for failing to protect freedom of speech adequately. The High Court overturned that fine on 29 April 2026. The book’s themes are revisited on the page about trans people and women’s safety.