A Partial Historiography Of The 'Gender Critical' Moment In Publishing
A work in progress
Historiography is the history of the sources. When historians study the backlash to genderwoo, they will find no evidence to support the narrative that it resulted from right wing, evangelical conservative forces. They will instead find many primary and secondary sources explaining how the illiberal and totalizing demands of genderwoo turned people against ‘gender identity’ in law and policy. One of our projects here at The Distance has been a systematic effort to document this true history for the record.
The reader will find many books apparently missing from this list. For example, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce and Material Girls by Kathleen Stock. I have read these books, but I have not written a review or interviewed either author. This is merely a digest of what I have already written online about books on the ‘gender critical’ shelf. More reviews and interviews will come in the next year. This project is far from over, but categories are now clear enough to share a preliminary bibliography.
My rules here are not rigid. I have for example included an interview with Ben Appel, whose book is coming out soon and will be reviewed. Because it is evidence for the existence of autogynephilia, which gender activism has sought to erase and media has chosen to ignore, I have also chosen to include Phil Illy’s book here. However, I have listed him as an activist rather than an academic, like Dr. J. Michael Bailey, who has explained Illy’s methodological problems in my interview and has a book of his own.
To me, Illy’s text is a gnostic bible of disembodiment, evidence that the spiritual crisis of modernity is at the core of the ‘trans’ phenomenon. His will not be the only such text I have read, or eventually must read, to make my case.
