Kathleen Stock wrote Material Girls, and Helen Joyce wrote Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality within two months of each other. Both books are 320 pages long, address the issues inherent in gender ideology, were written by women from the UK, and both caused a bit of a stir when they were published! I wondered which of the two was most worth reading, so I got both and decided to compare them. As it turns out, despite the above similarities, the two books have very different spins on the topic of gender ideology. In this article, I’ll give you a rundown of each book and help you decide if one or the other, or maybe both should be on your reading list. 

Material Girls by Kathleen Stock was published in August 2021, slightly before Helen Joyce’s book Trans. Stock is a philosopher and taught at the University of Sussex at the time of publication. Unfortunately, she has since been forced to resign due to her views on gender ideology. Her book, Material Girls, is the work of an academic and of someone knowledgeable in formal logic. The book is well organized and filled with footnotes and references. One thing to note about Material Girls is that it tends to focus more on what is happening in the UK and, beyond a passing comment here or there, does not address what is happening in other parts of the world. 

Helen Joyce, the author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, is a journalist and works for the Economist. Joyce’s book, Trans, is much more focused on the practical. Much of the research in her book is about current events and news items. She addresses the practical problems that are arising due to transgender policy, as well as the history of how those policies came into being. Most of the news stories come from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. WoLF even gets a mention as one of the very few organizations willing to stand up and defend women’s only spaces and speak to the problems of gender self-identification.

The two books discuss many of the same questions but often from different angles. For instance, both books address the question of the history of the gender issue. Stock speaks to the philosophy of gender and queer theory and the research of John Money and other sexologists. Joyce addresses the question from the angle of the first transsexuals and the first transsexual surgeries. Basically, Material Girls is a book about the philosophy of gender ideology and Trans is a book about the effects of transgender policies.

There are a few topics that only one or the other book addresses. For instance, Stock introduces the interesting idea of “Immersive Fantasy” and its role in facilitating the way people accept an idea that they may, in fact, find illogical. Joyce, true to her background in economics, tackles the topics of where is the money for all this coming from, and who is benefiting from it. She also has a really fun chapter about how the movie the Matrix fits into it all. It sounds a little frivolous, but it is fascinating and a great way to bring up the topic nonthreateningly.  

So, which book should you read? If you are new to learning about gender ideology and want to know what is happening in the prisons, schools, bathrooms, rape crisis centers, politics, and sports, I recommend Helen Joyce’s book Trans. Also, if you are looking for an excellent book to listen to on audio, Trans is an easy and engaging listen. Suppose you are looking for something that helps you make a logical argument against the illogical arguments of trans activism (such as the idea that intersex negating the binary sex categories). In that case, Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls is probably for you. Also, while Stock’s book is available on audio, you might want to read it with a highlighter in hand, and it will probably demand a little closer attention. I’m glad that I read both and am grateful to both of these brave women for helping us think more deeply about the philosophy, history and consequences of a topic that so many people are too uncomfortable to think about.

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Learn more about WoLF’s recommended books here! You can find links to purchase Trans and Material Girls, along with all of WoLF’s other recommended books.

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