The Gender Identity Debate
A selection of Quillette essays and interviews examining the cultural, scientific, and legal dimensions of gender identity.
Quillette
· 6 min read
Biology and Gender
A collection of 20 posts
Podcast #314: A Gay Author’s Escape from Cults, Drugs, Queer Radicalism, and ‘Scrupulosity’
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with writer Ben Appel about his new memoir, ‘Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic.’
Ben Appel
· 72 min read
The Scandal of Ana Caldas, and the Case for Sex Screening in Female Athletics
Caldas’s tragicomic sixteen-year saga—spanning record-breaking runs in four sports—demonstrates just how far some male athletes will go to hide their true identities.
Jonathan Kay
· 17 min read
Even in Failure, Nicola Sturgeon Has Learned Nothing
After championing a failed independence campaign and viciously denigrating women seeking to protect female spaces, Scotland’s ex-first minister insists that she’s the real victim.
Joan Smith
· 16 min read
The Rise and Fall of ‘Gender-Affirming’ Therapeutic Care
Thanks to the US Supreme Court, America’s helping professions—including medicine, education, and psychology—may finally adopt an evidence-based approach to treating trans-identified children.
Forest Romm, Kevin Waldman
· 16 min read
It Should Never Have Come to This
If we hadn’t spent so long pretending that ‘trans women are women,’ the growing political movement to align our laws with biological reality wouldn’t have been necessary.
Robert Wintemute
· 16 min read
Protecting Women’s Volleyball—Then and Now
When I played pro volleyball twenty years ago, I never heard anyone seriously argue that biological differences between men and women aren’t important. Such a claim would have been laughable.
Megan Willis
· 7 min read
I Thought Being a Gay Man Would Save Me From Womanhood (It Didn’t)
Queer theory transformed me from a depressed, weird, intellectually curious child into a brainwashed teen who disfigured her body.
Laura Becker
· 11 min read
I Blew Up My Lucrative Public-Service Career (And So Can You)
A veteran of British Columbia’s public-sector workforce explains how DEI enforcers forced him to choose between keeping his job and honouring his values.
Nick Osmond-Jones
· 23 min read
Podcast #247: Should Imane Khelif Be Allowed to Box Against Women?
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with biologist Emma Hilton about the controversy surrounding a champion women’s boxer whom critics accuse of being biologically male.
Quillette
· 16 min read
For Competitive US Runners, a ‘Non-Binary’ Identity Has Become a Lucrative Asset
The New York Road Runners club now allows mid-grade men to earn prize money by opting into race categories reserved for athletes claiming to be neither male nor female.
George M. Perry
· 15 min read
XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained
The historical, political, and medical context of the Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting cases.
Doriane Lambelet Coleman
· 13 min read
The Campaign to Erase Biological Sex
In a new book, excerpted below, Duke Law School professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman argues that we can support trans people without denying the facts of human biology.
Doriane Lambelet Coleman
· 13 min read
The Cass Effect
A landmark report properly emphasises the application of science, not slogans, in establishing treatment protocols for trans-identified children.
The Quillette Editorial Board
· 14 min read
From Banana Slugs to Human Beings, There Are Just Two Sexes
An examination of 18 supposedly ‘trans animals’ disproves activist claims that we all live on a non-binary gender ‘spectrum.’
Emma Hilton, Jonathan Kay
· 11 min read