The Intersex Continuum

I’m currently reading Alice Dreger’s book ‘Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex’ and trying to clarify for myself a series of questions about sexual dimorphism and social construction claims about biological sex. The book itself is excellent and highly readable, and surely a valuable resource for anybody who is interested in the history of how intersex people have been treated by society (and specifically the medical establishment) over the course of the past two centuries. Dreger is an advocate for intersex rights, and supports the rights and humanity of intersex people. For these reasons I would recommend the book unhesitatingly to anyone interested in this subject. My take on it here will be quite narrow and critical however, because I don’t agree with the strong version of the ‘sex as a social construction’ thesis which frames the historical narrative.

Dreger is an historian who does not question the Michel Foucault / Judith Butler inspired poststructuralist model of inquiry, and describes the history of medical definitions of sex through the nineteenth and twentieth century without any reference to a universal, history and culture independent account of ‘true’ sex. In a characteristic passage she states:

So, if we want to sort, what should we employ as the necessary and/or sufficient traits of malehood and femalehood? What makes a person male or a female or a hermaphrodite? This is the problem. Today my own students, college students in history classes, sometimes in exasperation ask these questions of me at the end of a discussion of the history of sex, as if I am holding the ‘real’ answer from them. ‘What really is the key to being male, female, or other?’ But, as I tell them, … the answer necessarily changes with time, with place, with technology, and with the many serious implications – theoretical and practical, scientific and political – of any given answer. The answer is, in a critical sense, historical – specific to time and place. There is no ‘back of the book’ final answer to what must count for humans as ‘truly’ male, female, or hermaphroditic, even though the decisions we make about such boundaries have important implications. Certainly we can observe some basic and important patterns in the bodies we call ‘male’ and the bodies we call ‘female’. And the patterns we notice depend in part on the cognitive and material tools available at a given moment. But the development of new tools doesn’t get us closer and closer to some final, definite answer of what it is to be ‘truly’ male, female or hermaphroditic. Instead it only alters the parameters of possible answers. A hundred years ago we could not point to ‘genes’ in the way we can today, but being able to point to genes doesn’t mean that we have found the ultimate, necessary, for-all-time answer to what it means to be of a certain sex[i].

The theoretical model is that of a continuum or spectrum, with more male traits on one side and female traits on the other. In the middle is a blurry bit which gets labelled ‘intersex’ or ‘hermaphroditic’ (I’ll use the 20^th century term ‘intersex’). Because the points which define boundaries between male, intersex and female change over time according to changing medical definitions and theories, ‘sex’ is a socially constructed form of categorisation. To put things very crudely, the wider and more fluctuating the blurry middle part is, the more arbitrary and less ‘real’ sex classes such as ‘male’ and ‘female’ are. There are at least three distinct claims which typically employ the sex as continuum model as a fundamental premise:

1.    Biological sex is socially constructed

2.    Biological sex is not real

3.    Biological sex is mutable and changeable

I'll come back to claim (2) at the end of this post, but for now I will restrict my focus to the question of the nature of the continuum. Specifically, if we accept that sex can be thought of as a continuum, how big and how ‘blurry’ is the intersex part in the middle?

The Frequency of Intersex Conditions

Alice Dreger’s discussion of the complexities and pitfalls of arriving at a firm and precise percentage are worth recounting and careful consideration. Before she gives any statistical estimate, Dreger lists a number of reasons why ‘it is almost impossible to provide with any confidence an overall statistic for the frequency of sexually ambiguous births[ii]’. Specialist medical texts offer different frequency estimates, so we don’t know which sources to trust. The samples upon which they are based might not be representative of the entire human population. Sometimes very rare intersex conditions cluster in particular geographic regions, so it is hard to work these local variations into a global statistic. Environmental factors such as hormone treatments complicate the picture further.

More fundamental considerations include the question of what exactly counts as an intersex condition. Some types of intersex conditions result in very clear anatomical ambiguity, whereas other types are less severe or less obvious. Particular conditions may or may not manifest themselves as cases of sexual ambiguity. Should we count all of the people with all of the various conditions, or only the cases in which sex is difficult to determine? Dreger’s account is also centred around the idea that the category of ‘intersex’ is culturally and historically relative:

… such a statistic [of intersex frequency] is always necessarily culture specific. It varies with gene pool isolation and environmental influences. It also varies according to what, in a given culture, counts as acceptable variations of malehood or femalehood as opposed to forms considered sexually ambiguous. And it varies according to what opportunities there are in a given culture for doubts to surface and be articulated on record. […] Frequency is specific to particular cultural spaces[iii].

Nevertheless Dreger does eventually offer us a statistical estimate:

When I am pressed for a rough statistic, I suggest that today, in the United States, probably about one to three in every two thousand people are born with an anatomical conformation not common to the so called typical male or female such that their unusual anatomies can result in confusion and disagreement about whether they should be considered female or male or something else. Anne Fausto-Sterling, through recent research, estimates the incidence of intersexed births to be in the range of 1 percent, although Fausto-Sterling warns that the figure ‘should be taken as an order of magnitude estimate rather than a precise count.’ (In other words, the number might be closer to one in a thousand.)[iv]

Although I appreciated the reasons for Dreger’s reluctance to state an exact figure, I found this statement to be very odd. Was it one in a thousand or one in a hundred? It looks like Dreger might be inclined to a more conservative figure than Fausto-Sterling, but she does not explain why.

It turns out that Anne Fausto-Sterling is one of the authors of the only academic study which attempts to rigorously answer this question:

We surveyed the medical literature from 1955 to the present for studies of the frequency of deviation from the ideal male or female. We conclude that this frequency may be as high as 2% of live births. The frequency of individuals receiving corrective genital surgery, however, probably runs between 1 and 2 per 1000 live births (0.1 – 0.2%)[v]

Again, there are two estimates: a liberal figure of 2% and a conservative estimate which differs by an order of magnitude – quite a big gap! In a paper written before this research was carried out, Fausto-Sterling provides an even more ambitious frequency estimate, together with an almost lyrical evocation of the ‘sex as a continuum’ thesis:

 **

For some time medical investigators have recognized the concept of the intersexual body. But the standard medical literature uses the term intersex as a catch-all for three major subgroups with some mixture of male and female characteristics: the so-called true hermaphrodites, whom I call herms, who possess one testis and one ovary (the sperm- and egg-producing vessels, or gonads); the male pseudohermaphrodites (the "merms"), who have testes and some aspects of the female genitalia but no ovaries; and the female pseudohermaphrodites (the "ferms"), who have ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack testes. Each of those categories is in itself complex; the percentage of male and female characteristics, for instance, can vary enormously among members of the same subgroup. Moreover, the inner lives of the people in each subgroup-- their special needs and their problems, attractions and repulsions-- have gone unexplored by science. But on the basis of what is known about them I suggest that the three intersexes, herm, merm and ferm, deserve to be considered additional sexes each in its own right. Indeed, I would argue further that sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories.

Not surprisingly, it is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality, much less the frequency of each of the three additional sexes: it is not the sort of information one volunteers on a job application. The psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ defects, suggests intersexuals may constitute as many as 4 percent of births[vi]. 

 **

Although the four percent figure has been shown to be unsupported by the available evidence, it is hard not to conclude that Anne Fausto Sterling is quite keen on the idea that the percentage of intersex people is a lot bigger than people would tend to expect. Vast infinitely malleable continuums need room to blur boundaries and break categories, hundredths are way better than thousandths for this purpose.

All of the intersex advocacy organisations I have looked at use Fausto-Sterling’s figures, and the OII Australia site contains a detailed list of distinct conditions with respective percentages. The most up to date quoted figure seems to be 1.7%, taken from a book written by Fausto-Sterling in 2000, which bases its figures on exactly the same academic source I quoted from above.

The OII Australia site also refers to an academic paper critical of Fausto-Sterling’s frequency estimate by Dr. Leonard Sax. He argues that Fausto-Sterling’s definition of intersex as including ‘anything that deviates from the Platonic ideal of male and female bodies’ is far too broad. His definition of what counts as intersex leads to a radically different frequency estimate:

‘The available data support the conclusion that human sexuality is a dichotomy, not a continuum. More than 99.98% of humans are either male or female. If the term intersex is to retain any clinical meaning, the use of this term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. The birth of an intersex child, far from being “a fairly common phenomenon,” is actually a rare event, occurring in fewer than 2 out of every 10,000 births[vii].’

The OII Australia site argues against Sax’s narrow conceptualisation, and favours a broad and inclusive category which

“…encapsulates a range of atypical physical or anatomical sex characteristics. These share in common their non-conformance with medical and social sex and gender norms. This non-conformance with stereotypical standards for male and female is why intersex differences are medicalised in the first place and, while that remains the case, it makes sense to us to include them in a definition of intersex.

The difference between narrow and broad definitions in medicine is somewhat ideological. The exclusion of some diagnoses that embody atypical sex characteristics but not others seems, at least to us, to be irrational. Intersex people do not share the same identities, but we share common ground in the stigmatisation of our atypical sex characteristics.”

Clearly there is a very important question here as to whether scientific distinctions and definitions are purely ‘ideological’ or not. Also, the suggestion here that stigmatisation itself might be a criteria for what counts as ‘intersex’ is surely problematic: flat chested women and men with high pitched voices may well face stigma, that doesn’t mean that they are ‘intersex’. Another consideration is how ethical considerations intersect with scientific questions. Intersex people face marginalisation and stigma both because they have bodies which do not conform to biological norms and also because such conditions are in fact unusual. If the level of ‘unusualness’ is reduced, this would arguably lessen the sense of marginalisation and stigma. Should we base our definition of ‘intersex’ on social justice considerations or scientific theories?

Putting these complex and contentious philosophical questions to one side, what types of specific ‘moderate’ intersex conditions are we talking about here? Leonard Sax rejects several of the various types of intersex condition identified by Fausto-Sterling because they do not fit his scientific definition. By far the biggest category he objects to is that of ‘Late Onset Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia’ (LOCAH). This single category accounts for a massive 1.5% of Fausto-Sterling’s 1.7% figure. What is this condition and what are its symptoms?

The broad category of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) is described by a popular internet medical site as:

…an inherited (genetic) condition causing swelling of the adrenal glands. The condition is associated with a decrease in the blood level of a hormone called cortisol and an increase in the level of male sex hormones (androgens) in both sexes. Some people get a mild condition that produces no symptoms. Others (mainly baby boys) develop a severe form that can be life-threatening. Medical treatment to correct hormone levels is available. Surgery to improve the appearance of unusual genitalia (in girls) is sometimes considered.

Leonard Sax accepts that the severe (and very rare) form of CAH is a genuine intersex condition, but he denies that the milder version of LOCAH is an intersex condition. To sum up his analysis and put it bluntly: all men who have LOCAH are unambiguously male. Sometimes they experience balding.  Many women who have LOCAH have no symptoms. Of those that do, symptoms include excessive body hair, infrequent periods and acne. A small percentage of women with LOCAH have a larger than average clitoris. If you want details, refer to his article through the link above (it’s technical but not that hard to understand). I checked out a couple of the studies Sax refers to. Dreger is correct when she warns about radically different estimates from academic sources – the papers referred to by Sax quote a frequency of around 1 or 2 in 1000 for LOCAH, very different from the 1.5% figure. I’m not an expert in medical science, so it is hard for me to understand this massive discrepancy. The best explanation appears to be that there is a fairly wide spectrum of conditions which include higher than average levels of male hormones in females (androgens), including rare conditions like LOCAH but also including much more common conditions such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

The conclusion to be drawn from these observations is that there appears to be a contemporary trend towards a much broader and more liberal definition of intersex conditions. This trend is in conflict with a more conservative scientific definition of intersex. Radically different frequency estimates are a consequence of this ideological conflict.

The fact that this sort of conflict exists is consistent with Alice Dreger’s over-arching postmodern narrative. She convincingly describes how doctors and medical specialists strived throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for a very narrow definition of intersex. By defining males in terms of the presence of testicular tissue, and females in terms of ovarian tissue, the existence of ‘hermaphrodites’ was squeezed into an almost non-existent category. People with ‘ovotestes’ are extremely rare (0.0012% according to Fausto-Sterling), so by defining ‘hermaphroditism’ in this way, Victorian sensibilities could be preserved. The desire to preserve a rigid sex binary was linked to societal gender norms and fear of homosexuality. The existence of intersex people was a threat to the social order which needed to be contained, so narrow scientific definitions were sought after for reasons which were not always purely scientific.

Searching around the internet for alternative interpretations concerning intersex, I came across this tumblr blog which includes the most broad and liberal conception of ‘intersex’ that I could find. The authors of the blog insist that medical authorities should not have the sole right to determine who is and who is not intersex, and that people with PCOS are definitely intersex if they want to self define as intersex. Crucially, the question of whether someone is intersex or not has more to do with identification than it does with any sort of medical description. The ideological underpinning of this blog may well be indicative of a new historical era. Dreger’s phrase for the Victorian approach towards intersex people was ‘The Age of the Gonads’. This blog may well go down in history as representative of ‘The Age of Trans’.

Is sex really a ‘continuum’? Is sex ‘real’?

We can think of sex as a continuum, with male traits at one extreme and female traits at the other. All people will fall within the reach of two intersecting normal curves, the left curve representing mostly males and the right curve representing mostly females. The intersection in the middle is the group of intersex people. The problem for this very abstract model is the fact that biological sex can be conceptualised across a number of distinct axes. We could look at genetic factors such as chromosones, gonadal tissue, secondary characteristics (such as body hair), genital morphology, hormone levels or reproductive capacity. Every factor would produce a different sort of graph. The huge complexity of intersex conditions would defy any attempt to provide a realistic picture with such a simplistic model.

Professor Daphna Joel refers to a ‘3 G’ model of sex which defines sex on the basis of genetic, gonadal and genital factors. Using this model, 99% of all people fall into one of two categories, male and female. Males have all of these physical features: XY chromosones, testes, prostrate and seminal vesicles, penis and scrotum. Females have all of these features: XX chromosones, ovaries, womb and fallopian tubes, clitoris, vagina and labia. This model is described as ‘almost perfect dimorphism’. Intersex conditions mean that we cannot say that sex is absolutely dimorphic. Some conditions (such as those which involve ambiguous genitalia) are cases of unusual intermediate phenomenon. Some conditions (such as Complete Androgen Insensitivity) involve a set of mis-matching features (XY chromosones and testes combined with female genitalia). Joel emphasises how incredibly unusual this almost perfect dimorphism is: we can be 99% confident for example that a baby born with a penis will have all the other features ‘matching’ (testes and XY chromosones). There are very few natural phenomenon with this high degree of probabilistic uniformity.

I’m going to conclude by quoting a passage from an academic paper by Caroline New, who argues against the idea that intersex conditions support the notion that sex is not ‘real’:

Postmodern writers massively exaggerate intersexuality and misrepresent sexual attributes as continuous rather than as distributed dimorphically, despite the variations and overlaps on any one dimension. Do these variations mean that sexual difference is not real? Once again postmodern feminists have higher standards than anyone else for categorisation. Hawkesworth maintains that females and males are not ‘natural kinds’ because there is no set of properties possessed by every member of each of these groups (1997). From a realist point of view, ‘natural kinds’ are so called because they tell us something about the causal structures of the world. Causally important properties are contingently clustered, but in such a way that the presence of some properties renders the presence of others more likely – because there are common underlying properties that tend to maintain the clusters of features (Keil, 1989:43). Biological kinds can never meet the essentialist criteria postmodern thinkers implicitly require (Boyd, 1992). Biology is messy and complex, and its regularities take the form of tendencies rather than laws. In the case of sexual difference, these tendencies are strong, ‘the genotypic and phenotypic division of bodies into two sexes crosses species and millenia’ (Hull, forthcoming). Sexual difference, then, is a ‘good’ abstraction. Pace deconstructionists, it brings together characteristics that are internally connected, and the connections in question are substantial, not merely formal (Danermark et al 2002).

---

[i] Dreger, Alice D. ‘Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex’. Harvard University Press,1998.

[ii] Ibid, p.40

[iii] Ibid, p.42

[iv] Ibid, p.42

[v] [Melanie Blackless, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, Ellen Lee, 2000, How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis , in American Journal of Human Biology 04/2000; 12(2):151-166.]

[vi] Anne Fausto-Sterling, 1993, The Five Sexes, in The Sciences 33: 20-25.

[vii] Leonard Sax, 2002, How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling, in Journal of Sex Research, 2002 Aug;39(3):174-8.

Trans Warfare

I’ve never met Renee Gerlich. She contacted me several months ago and we talked about a protest action she was involved in which targeted the ‘Scale of our War’ exhibit at Te Papa museum. I was impressed by the pictures of her huge Archibald Baxter banner draped over the official banner, and I wrote a short blog  about this intervention.

We became facebook friends. Renee often posts links to articles written from a radical feminist perspective. These articles, some written by herself and some by others, attract heated debate. In many respects facebook is an awful medium for political discussion. Complex subjects are not served well by pithy statements which ‘comment’ boxes seem to cater for. The fact that people cannot see each other, but can also interact in real time, means that it is a lot easier for people to resort to insults and abuse. Arguments degenerate into attacks, and thoughtful contributions are often completely absent. Although Renee’s facebook posts about topics such as prostitution and sexual violence attracted a huge amount of vitriolic and abusive comments, there were also some really compelling and well thought out arguments embedded in the toxic and superficial comment-box warfare. I read the comments and the articles, they made me think about topics I rarely see discussed elsewhere (both in the mainstream media and the various leftist niche media I follow). As a human being who is appalled by things like gender stereotypes, sexual violence and patriarchal power structures I am interested in feminist thinking. As a Marxist I am also acutely aware of the danger of adopting ‘party line’ perspectives on divisive issues, so I always find myself drawn to looking into arguments which challenge orthodox positions.

Over the past few months these heated debates have surfaced above the level of facebook and transformed into a campaign against Renee. Rather than writing articles or blogs debating the issues of concern, these critics have accused Renee of “hate speech” and have ostracised her from the activist community she is a part of. Some of these people have signed a vicious petition which denounces her as an enemy of human rights. Renee was blocked from the recent Zinefest in Wellington because her views were considered ‘transphobic’. These political pressures have also resulted in Renee losing her job.

Initially I supported Renee purely on a basis of respect for the principle of freedom of speech. I don’t have fully worked out ‘positions’ on the divisive and heated topics Renee addresses. Nevertheless I do understand the difference between ‘hate speech’ and ideological polemic. It was clear to me that Renee was ‘guilty’ of writing heated and provocative ideological polemics, but certainly not guilty of ‘hate speech’. Cultivating an atmosphere of trust and respect in which people feel safe to express unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints should be a priority for the left. Shutting down debate around heated and divisive topics undermines this fundamental principle.

The facebook response was volcanic. Did I know that Renee was a TERF and SWERF? ['Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist' / ‘Sex Worker Exclusive Radical Feminist’]. In response to my statement that I was supporting Renee’s right to freedom of speech without necessarily endorsing her views, one commentator said “People on the left should be able to choose not give bigots a voice without being scolded for ‘censorship’. The humanity of sex workers and trans people is not up for debate.” Renee’s writings were described as ‘hateful’ and ‘transphobic in the literal sense of the word’. Her views were ‘creepy’ and pathologised trans people. As a  'cisgender' person Renee has no right to comment on the legitimacy of trans people. Renee thinks that transwoman are rapists. Renee is trying to silence the voices of trans people and deny them their right to exist.

I stood back from the battlefield and pondered. Was I missing something here? My understanding of the word ‘transphobic’ is based on my understanding of the word ‘homophobic’. People who are homophobic have a fear based hatred for gays and lesbians. They pathologise same sex attraction and encourage discrimination, violence and marginalisation of homosexual people. Although both women and men can be homophobic, men are much more prone to feeling threatened and hence lash out violently. Men are also threatened by lesbians, who remove themselves from being sexually available to men. Similarly, I thought, men are the people we should expect to be more likely to adopt intense attitudes of transphobia. The existential horror of a man seeing that the woman he is attracted to actually has a penis (as depicted for example in the movie ‘The Crying Game’) is the epitome of this sort of fear based hatred.

Given these assumptions of mine, it seemed weird to discover this battle between trans rights advocates and radical feminists. I thought that Radical feminists were fundamentally opposed to people who demonised gender non conforming people. I thought that slogans like “Biology is not Destiny” would unite feminists and trans people. I thought that trans people would have a similarly critical view of gendered power relations, and would tend to align themselves politically with radical feminists.

There is a massive, frequently ugly and toxic, ‘culture war’ going on internationally between trans advocates and radical feminists. From what I have read the heart of this conflict is in western, English speaking countries like the US and the UK. The battle between Renee Gerlich and the people trying to shut her down is the New Zealand microcosmic version of a larger international trend. Radical feminists are currently on the losing side of this ideological battle, and are frequently 'no platformed' and prevented from speaking by the militant actions of the trans lobby. Preventing Renee from selling her magazines at the Zinefest may seem to be a minor and insignificant affair, but when looked at in the international context of similar types of silencing, it appears much more sinister. For examples of what I am talking about see here and here and here. 

There is no equivalent battle between supposedly ‘transphobic’ men and the trans community. Pretty much all of the writing on this subject comes from liberal feminists who attack so called 'TERFs' or radical feminist women. People like me – heterosexual males – are simply not involved in the ‘debate’ (scare quotes because the conflict rarely approaches debate, and more usually revolves around attacks such as those I noted above). This fact in itself is quite noteworthy I think. I’m fairly confident of the robustness of the analogy I drew between homophobia and transphobia. I would bet large sums of money on the claim that men are more guilty of acts of violence, discrimination and marginalisation directed towards trans people. Yet they are not (apparently) involved in this war.

Who was I defending here? Although I was confident that Renee was not guilty of hate speech, I was not sure if I actually agreed with her political stance. Trying to clarify my own views, I re-read her blog and followed the hyperlinks. I read up on trans activism, gender theory and radical feminism. While I was doing this I decided to post links to articles with questions about these topics on facebook. Instead of focussing on the really ‘hot’ aspects like male violence which Renee tends to focus on, I kept things at a very theoretical level. By engaging people with philosophical questions about concepts to do with sex and gender, I thought I might be able to bypass the tendency for these debates to degenerate into toxic slanging matches. Also, there was a very acute imbalance between the quality and sophistication of the argumentation on Renee’s side  (very high) and the ‘pro trans’ side (from what I could find via google searches, very low). I was hopeful that some of my friends who opposed Renee’s views could provide me with links to convincing counter-arguments.

This is one of my posts:

This argument:

"This notion of “gender identity as essence” has troubling implications. The unclarity about what kind of a property it is, and its inherently entirely subjective nature, means that the doctrine of gender identity becomes unfalsifiable. Positing the existence of a gender identity is thus equivalent to positing the existence of a soul or some other non-material entity whose existence cannot be tested or proved. If we wish to avoid this implication, the only option is to make a claim for the objective reality of gender identity and to try to search for its material basis. And then we come perilously close to positing the existence of gendered brains, and suggesting that people can be born with a brain belonging to one sex but with the primary and secondary sex characteristics of the other sex. I am not qualified to pronounce on the validity of these claims, having no scientific training and very little knowledge of neuroscience. But feminists have long been suspicious of any attempt to argue for the naturalness of gendered traits and dispositions, as these arguments are so frequently invoked to justify women’s social and political subordination. Furthermore, this account of what gender identity is not only necessitates the existence of a “female brain” or a “male brain”; it also requires some plausible explanation as to how the sex of the brain and the sexual reproductive organs of the body might come to be mismatched. (I acknowledge my own scientific limitations here, but like any good feminist, I recommend those who are inclined to believe in the existence of ladybrains to read Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender)."

It could be there is something really wrong with this argument (and the associated arguments in this blog), but I don't know what this is. If anyone can explain exactly what is wrong with this argument (or the associated arguments on the blog) without resorting to accusations of 'transphobia' or 'hate speech', please comment.

The quote is from a blog written by the analytic philosopher Rebecca Reilly Cooper, this is the most clear and lucid exposition of the concepts involved I have found so far.

Although there were several commentators who immediately attacked me rather than making actual arguments, there were several who did not and it was possible to have a reasonable discussion. The comment-box debate ended up revolving around the claim that both  sex and gender are socially constructed. By ignoring the fact that sex is socially constructed, and assuming that humans are sexually dimorphic in nature, Reilly Cooper’s argument was resting on questionable foundations. I disputed this, and we had an interesting discussion about the significance of intersex people in the debate.

Although I strived to keep things on an intellectual level, it didn’t take long before I was again accused of ‘transphobia’ for daring to discuss the truth of the claim that sex is socially constructed. I came across as an aloof theoretician, playing games with concepts which I didn’t really understand because I am ‘cis’. Even if I wasn’t intending to be hurtful, my public discussion of these concepts was unavoidably transphobic.

Why was this discussion so sensitive and dangerous? Simply put, if you think that anatomical sex is not socially constructed, then slogans such as “transwomen are women” are not true. Facts about physiology are independent of the language we use to describe them and the social and cultural interpretations we make of them. Males who take hormones and have sex reassignment surgery might look more feminine afterwards, but they are still biologically male. This claim hurts the self identity of many trans people. Helen Highwater (a transwoman) describes this acute pain:

“So I was set up to face the world. I’m a woman born in the wrong body if anybody doesn’t like that it’s because of their own issues. I started to meet other transsexuals through support groups. It seemed the world was a tough place, full of bigots and transphobes. Full of people who thought that those of us who looked, sounded and acted like males were not proper women. It became so important to pass. The more we looked, sounded and acted like woman the less likely we were to get “violently misgendered” by the public. I heard tales of transwomen being called “guys” and the transwomen involved being deeply hurt by this. My friends were being hurt all of the time and this took an enormous toll on their validity and their ability to see themselves as worthy members of society. It seemed that those people closest, wives, partners and parents found it the hardest to accept that the person they knew is actually a woman. Being told you’re a man by the people you love hurts the most.

Some people, who were known as “TERFs” thought it didn’t matter how much we pass or integrate, it doesn’t make us women. Despite what we’d been told by medical professionals. Despite what it said in official NHS literature. Despite what is said by every trans support group out there. It’s so easy to see why the words “transwomen are not women” are so hurtful and triggering. They cut at the very foundations of everything that has helped to build a level of self-worth and to finally deal with the shame.”

I have absolutely no idea what this experience feels like, and I am acutely conscious of the fact that I am treading on highly sensitive territory here. At the same time, through reading Renee’s blog and the work of other radical feminists, I am also acutely aware that the issues at stake here go far beyond the emotional sensitivities of people who identify as ‘trans’. To get a good sense of the broader picture, and the radical feminist case against transgender ideology, I would recommend Sarah Ditum’s article Be that you are: on gender as class .

This quote outlines some of the concerns relating to the ‘sex is socially constructed’ thesis:

Yet what we are, we cannot say. The condition of the human female in society is becoming increasingly one that is unspeakable. This is something that is to do with trans politics, but I want to be absolutely clear at this point: it is not something that has been caused by the existence of trans people, the vast majority of whom simply wish to live without harming or being harmed. The backlash has taken several forms. The first was the “choice feminism” of the 1980s and 90s – a decontextualised sort of anti-politics that told us whatever a woman does is good, particularly if what she does is what she would have done without feminism to tell her she can be a person in her own right. Then we had the neurosexism of the 1990s and 2000s (so deftly addressed by Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender), which reassured us that whatever women choose, they choose because that is what women do.

And from these, in the late-00s and 2010s, has been birthed the rhetoric of trans advocacy (which, I reiterate, is not the same as trans people themselves), a chimerical compound of the two previous strands of backlash. Within the lore of trans advocacy, as seen in the extract from Lauren Rankin above, the individual’s stated choice is always the ultimate arbiter, to the point that physical sex may no longer be considered as a material condition: “male” and “female” are said to be “assigned”, and should the individual disagree with their “assignation”, the individual’s judgement is sovereign. This leads us to a situation where, counter to all that is known about mammalian biology, it is possible for trans theorist and activist Julia Serano to claim that the presence of a penis is perfectly consistent with a state of “femaleness” (Whipping Girl, p. 16).

Does this conflict mean that we have to choose between two groups of people, and side either with radical feminists or trans people? Do all trans people share a politics based upon a concept of gender as self identification, together with an extremely emotive focus upon correct pronoun usage?

The answer is No.

There is a small yet highly articulate group of trans people, particularly but not exclusively transwomen, who reject gender identity politics and embrace a ‘gender critical’ perspective. From what I can gather the ‘gender critical’ umbrella includes both trans people who have a radical feminist perspective and others who share other varieties of ‘unorthodox’ views about gender. In 2014 a group of gender critical transwomen gathered in Portland to discuss their political views. The blog which covers this conference is interesting to read because you get a sense of the complexity and difficulty of the political questions these people are dealing with. They make jokes about ‘solving all the problems of trans politics’ and openly admit to failing to agree on a number of fundamental issues. At the same time they are very clear about the basic difference between their outlook and the dominant trans ideology:

For several of us, being able to articulate that we are still male even when we pass socially as female, or that one can be a “male woman”, is a key concept in understanding our lives. We all agreed that actions and behaviors are more important than intentions and self-identifications, and attempts by trans activists to be the world’s pronoun police are misguided and futile. It is absurd to imagine we can legislate other people’s reactions to us.

Echoing Renee’s concerns about male sexual violence and the appropriateness of gender transition for children:

Well, all of us agreed that convictions for sex offenses (other than prostitution) and/or violent crimes should permanently disallow trans women from legal change of sex. We all agreed that fighting against childhood gender policing was a more pressing issue than transitioning children, which many of us were skeptical of. We all thought that further scientific research on transition was important, including evidence-based studies on who transition helps and how it helps them, in addition to who transition doesn’t help and how it hurts them. We all agreed that we wanted to hear more trans women’s voices, and we wanted there to be more narratives of the experience of gender nonconformity and transition, since none of us felt like the traditional narratives had fully explained our lives.”

Miranda Yardley is a UK based transwoman who takes a completely uncompromising radical feminist stance. Her twelve point Antigenderism Manifesto is worth reading to get a sense of the vehement and passionate opposition to the gender identity paradigm. The embedded links will take you to various blogs written by gender critical trans people and radical feminists. Point number twelve of the manifesto explicitly counters the popular slogan ‘transwomen are women’:

12. Accept that ‘trans women’ fails in making ‘trans women’ a subset of women because reality gets in the way. Saying ‘transwomen are women’ is an erasure of the actual lived lives of both women and transwomen and at best makes transwomen appear broken. Do transwomen really feel like that? What anyway is the ‘trans’ for if that statement is true? Similarly ideas of being ‘coercively assigned male/female at birth’ immediately makes us start from a point of inferiority or defectiveness. This is not self acceptance, this is a crass denial of reality.

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Another charge laid against Renee Gerlich and other ‘TERFs’ is that they pathologise transgender people. Just as gay and lesbian people were subjected to a medical discourse which framed their sexuality as an abnormality to be solved through psychiatric treatment, trans people are now subjugated to a similarly oppressive approach towards their identities. Radical feminists openly discuss theories which seek to explain the reasons why people are driven to transition away from their gender. Does this mean that they are trying to ‘solve’ a problem that does not really exist? Are they guilty of the same kind of blinkered moral paternalism which motivated the bourgeois psychiatrists to ‘cure’ homosexuality?

To do justice to this question would require a lot more than I will attempt here. One thing that  is outstandingly clear is that the motives of radical feminists are fundamentally different from the motives of the bourgeois psychiatrists who attempted to ‘cure’ homosexuality. The psychiatrists were effectively trying to preserve  the status quo gendered power relations of society, whereas radical feminists seek to destroy these relations. Also, as Sarah Ditum emphasises in the quote above, feminists are not at all ‘threatened’ by the existence of trans people, they are opposed rather to the gender identity ideology which legitimates a range of practices which effectively prop up and maintain the status quo gendered power relations. Some of these practices, especially the current set of regulatory and political practices which pertain to gender dysphoric youth seeking gender transition in the US, effectively encourage people to transition. So it follows that if radical feminist critiques gained political traction, there would very probably be smaller numbers of people undergoing sex reassignment surgery.

Should we cry out ‘Genocide!’ and join in the chorus of TERF denunciation because of this? I don’t think so. The most convincing piece of evidence for this response  comes not from any radical feminist but rather from Maria Catt, a young ‘detransitioner’ from the US who suffered from sexual assault trauma prior to her transition. In an interview with ‘Youth Gender Professionals’, Maria explains that the various therapists who worked with her failed to recognise and deal with the significance of her trauma. They focussed instead on the apparent evidence which backed up the ‘brain sex hypothesis’, the idea that Maria had a ‘true’ male identity mistakenly matched up with a female body:

I’ve talked to therapists who specialize in trans care and I know this is already a concern for a lot of them. The political climate makes them nervous to speak openly about it. They need the voices of detransitioned people talking about trauma to create a climate where they can talk about trauma. More transitioned people being willing to speak openly about the role of trauma in their gender dysphoria would help a lot too. We are so constrained by this “brain gender” narrative. The political emphasis on sticking to that story, and editing life stories to affirm that narrative, ends up hurting trans people. At the end of the day, people get to transition because of their human right to autonomy. Part of respecting people’s autonomy is creating therapeutic contexts where they are making these big decisions with their most relaxed, calm, realistic mind. Therapists who treat trans people incorporating trauma education and treatment into their practices is a base level necessity to fulfill the ethical requirement of respecting their patients’ autonomy.

This is a clear example of a case in which the prevailing gender identity orthodoxy led to a harmful outcome that may well have been avoided had the therapeutic model been different. Critical and humane investigation and engagement with the causes of gender dysphoria is surely possible and desirable. It doesn’t have to set out to ‘cure’ trans people, and it does not prohibit gender transition. There is nothing I have read in radical feminist accounts which would contradict this sort of common sense and humane approach.

Another way of looking at this issue is to examine whether or not people would suffer harm if they were influenced by radical feminist thinking and decided to embrace gender non conformity rather than transition. Again, I am aware that this is a complex topic with all sorts of intricacies. I don’t pretend to understand any of these intricacies. Yet there is at least one very striking example of a person who became a transwoman and then decided to de-transition because of the influence of radical feminist theory. Miriam Afloat describes this influence:

If I had not made the deliberate choice to tell myself, with regards to radical feminist analysis, “hey, just re-read this article and try to understand what they are saying, from their perspective, and keep an open mind,” I would likely not have detransitioned. There was a specific article that started me down that path of analysis, written by Elizabeth Hungerford, titled “A feminist critique of cisgender”,

Did Miriam suffer harm from this change of perspective? I don’t think so. This interview with Miriam is perhaps the most moving, sincere and intelligent piece of writing I have come across which provides a window into the complexities of gender dysphoria. Miriam is empowered and validated by radical feminist thinking about gender:

Limiting my self-expression based upon some obligation to represent myself as someone easily understood to be a man by others is antithetical to my goals. It would involve falling back on conservative notions of gender. Seriously, fuck that. I transitioned not only because of a desire to not be physically male, but also because I felt unable (unwilling?) to express myself as a man in this society. Two years of transition, and I realize that being a man trying to be a woman was limiting in simply a different way. I went from one box to another, because I was still operating within the framework of the gender straightjacket.

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What position should Marxists take on these disputes? Shortly after my most recent round of facebook gladiator combat, one of my Marxist friends posted this statement:

Race is socially constructed, it is also real. Class is socially constructed, it is also real.

Gender is socially constructed, it is real, and it oppresses trans people. The radfem claim that gender is not real only serves to deny transgender identification, imposing biological essentialism on trans and non-binary people.

The problem with this statement is that it is not true. The radical feminist claim that gender is socially constructed doesn't equate to claim gender isn't "real". It is challengeable and contestable and malleable, because it is socially constructed. That means it isn't 'real' in an absolute or naturalistic sense. But of course radical feminists recognise the reality of things like division of labour, male violence and so on as a part of a larger and very "real" system of oppression.  Renee replies: "Radical feminism asserts that race, class and gender are all real, social constructions that are exploitative. Gender is an hierarchical system which assigns traits and roles to people based on their biological sex. The institutions of marriage and prostitution are based on this. Radical feminists don't claim gender is not real – they just claim that it is a system of power whereby men oppress women on the basis of biological sex, and women cannot “identify” their way out of this situation. A girl sold into child marriage or born into a brothel is being subjected to a very real system of gender whereby power is held over her by men, who treat her as property because of her sex. Identity politics totally evaporate this real system of power and abuse into an ephemeral matter of identification."

What about the claim that radical feminism ‘imposes biological essentialism on trans/non binary people’? Again, this is simply not true. To recognise and acknowledge things like sexual dimorphism and the facts around women's oppression as they relate to physical bodies is not 'essentialist'. A better word would be 'materialist', which is what Marxists are supposed to be. Everything about radical feminism is opposed to 'essentialist' ideas about the body.

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It feels very odd writing this blog. I'm sure that many people will vehemently disagree with what have said, and will attack me with the same slurs that have been directed at Renee. I'm also fairly sure that some people will not only disagree with my arguments but deny that I have any right at all to make them. Although I strongly oppose the silencing effects of privilege theory politics and 'call out' culture, I do recognise that my views on this subject come from a position of ignorance. I am a fairly ordinary heterosexual male. I don't know what it is like to feel things like gender dysphoria. As a male I don't know what it is like to experience things like regular sexual harassment or patronising sexist behaviour. 

Having said that I do know how to critically evaluate arguments, and I strongly believe that people should be able to speak their minds on sensitive topics without fear of censure. I also think that people have a right to be wrong. By putting forward views and arguments about a topic I have little familiarity with, I am taking quite a big risk. It could be that I have missed something vital, or that my presentation of these arguments is distorted by the fact that I am really pissed off about people I know ostracising a sincere and passionate activist. Another aspect of all this is the fact that all of the links I have provided are to overseas content, except for Renee's blog. It could be that the New Zealand context does not quite 'match' the contours of the debate I have sketched. 

Acknowledging all of these caveats, I welcome sincere and respectful debate.

The Basic Income Debate: how much does it cost to enter Utopia?

My grandfather had a job in the freezing works for most of his adult life. He would usually work a standard forty hour week, occasionally working overtime at a higher rate of pay. One of his favourite stories concerned his co-worker, Steve, who in my grandfather’s words was ‘a bit odd’. Nobody knew exactly what Steve’s position was on the floor. He was a hard worker and was always willing to provide a helping hand. The other workers would guide Steve towards appropriate tasks that he was capable of, and watch out for him in case of any possible dangers. The bosses knew all about Steve but didn’t seem too bothered. He collected his wages at the end of each week just like the other men. Steve was one of the vast majority of male adults who had a job in New Zealand during the post war boom period of the 1950s and 1960s. Unemployment levels were tiny,  fluctuating around 1 – 2%, and most jobs were solid forty hour week positions with a strong union presence.

The point of this anecdote was to contrast Steve with the position of similarly vulnerable people in the much harsher world of the 1980s. Moving ahead another 30 or so years, it is hardly a difficult task to broaden the scope and relevance of such an anecdote. Unemployment levels have increased dramatically and have apparently stabilised somewhere around 5%. The prominent radical economist Yanis Varoufakis predicts that this level will drastically increase in the near future . Because of the incredible power of modern computer technology and the prospects of artificial intelligence, Schumpeter’s famous notion of ‘creative destruction’ will soon become outdated. Whereas technological change in the past both destroyed old jobs and created new ones in roughly equal measure, today we are looking at a future in which the number of jobs destroyed by new technology vastly exceeds the number of new jobs created. Varoufakis’ prediction is backed up by a recent academic study which states that because of computerisation, 47% per cent of US jobs are at risk.

Alongside these ‘rise of the machines’ dystopian projections is the increasingly bleak nature of the jobs that remain to be fought over. Guy Standing has coined a new phrase, the ‘precariat’, to describe the apparent growth of precarious employment. Positions similar to the one held by my grandfather in the freezing works have become increasingly uncommon, and a variety of piecemeal options are the new normal. Jobs are subcontracted out for short term periods, casualised and made more flexible. Unions and the certainties and securities they fought for and often won are increasingly marginalised, and jobs become more insecure.

Both of these bleak forecasts are of course subject to a number of caveats. Science fictional premises such as the idea that artificial intelligence will develop to a point at which robots will pass a ‘Turing Test’ are contentious. Guy Standing’s book has triggered a number of critical and  insightful responses which question the extent of precarious labour and the politics of distinguishing between an old fashioned working class and a 21^st century ‘precariat’. For the purposes of this essay I will put these complexities and doubts to one side, and draw attention instead to two certainties.

The first certainty is the fact that inequality has drastically increased because of changes to the shape of the labour market. At one extreme there is a growth in highly specialised, high income jobs. Outweighing this massively, there has been a growth in low wage jobs. Entry into the sphere of highly skilled and highly rewarded work is more restricted because of technological changes:

 “At the same time, with falling prices of computing, problem-solving skills are becoming relatively productive, explaining the substantial employment growth in occupations involving cognitive tasks where skilled labour has a comparative advantage, as well as the persistent increase in returns to education (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Acemoglu, 2002; Autor and Dorn, 2013). The title “Lousy and Lovely Jobs”, of recent work by Goos and Manning (2007), thus captures the essence of the current trend towards labour market polarization, with growing employment in high-income cognitive jobs and low-income manual occupations, accompanied by a hollowing-out of middle-income routine jobs.” From Frey and Osborne (2013),ibid., emphasis added.

 At the other end of the spectrum wages are so low as to be insufficient. Poverty hits a much bigger proportion of “first world” society than it used to. The unemployed, the under-employed, the precariously employed and those on low incomes generally are becoming more numerous.

The second certainty is that this large pool of poor and insecure people is much more diverse than it was in the past. Vulnerable people like Steve, ethnic minorities and those with low levels of education are joined by white males with university degrees. Taxi drivers have doctorates and supermarket workers are scientists waiting for a lucky break.

For most of these people, wages are hard to come by and frequently need to be supplemented by a variety of different types of state assistance. Even jobs which pay a ‘living wage’ are often insufficient for basic needs. A solo parent working a 40 hour week paying the current New Zealand living wage living wage ($19.80 per hour) would take home $672 each week after tax. If we make the very conservative assumption that she lives somewhere in Auckland and has to pay $500 per week in rent, she would also receive a total of $366 per week from the government (an accommodation supplement plus tax credits). That’s 35% of her income provided by the state and just 65% provided by her wages.

It is in this context of stagnant wages and technological upheaval that the proposal for a universal basic income (UBI) has gained momentum across the globe. The details of UBI schemes and ideas differ from country to country, but they all share the same simple and elegant concept of an unconditional regular payment to every citizen. Everybody would get exactly the same amount of money, rich and poor alike. There would be no readiness to work criteria, and hence no need of an expensive and humiliating bureaucracy to administer the payments. The payment would be modest but enough to survive on. In an era of inequality and work insecurity, the UBI would provide a solid floor of guaranteed income to everybody.

In stark contrast to the increasingly dystopian reality of 21^st century global capitalism, UBI proponents frequently invoke utopian aspirations in their arguments. The Belgian academic Phillipe Van Parijs is an eloquent example. He grounds his philosophical arguments upon the principle of  real freedom’. Whereas the traditional liberal concept of freedom is defined formally in terms of the absence of constraints, ‘real freedom’ requires a solid material basis. An unemployed person who is offered a low paying job with awful conditions is formally free to reject such an offer, but with bills to pay and a harshly judgemental welfare bureaucracy observing her choices, such freedom has little substance. A UBI would provide the real freedom she needs, the freedom to say ‘no’ to job options she would prefer not to pursue.

There are several other worthy arguments for the UBI proposal. The vast and important sphere of domestic labour is like the hidden part of an iceberg. Formally recognised paid labour forms the visible part of the iceberg. Basking in the sun of economic legitimacy, people do all sorts of important jobs which pay proper public dollars. Submerged beneath the ocean in unrecognised darkness, children are looked after, clothes are washed and meals are prepared. Most of this labour is performed by women, and almost none of it is recognised and paid for. A universal basic income would provide a modest level of payment to people who do this sort of work, and hopefully set the stage for a more radical system of recognition.

A green argument goes something like this: contemporary capitalism requires endless economic growth. This growth is the result of ‘work fetishism’, a system in which people are compelled to work long hours producing more and more goods and services. Because we have a fossil fuel based economy, all of this frantic activity puts a strain on our environment. A universal basic income would work like a pressure release valve, allowing people the freedom to work less and therefore relieve some of the impact of our carbon-heavy labour footprint.

Another argument questions the value and centrality of the work that is currently recognised by monetary reward. David Graeber describes the modern reality of ‘bullshit jobs’ in which more and more people feel that their work contributes nothing to the greater good of humanity. Activities which do contribute to the greater good such as volunteer work, looking after children or writing songs are not recognised by our economic system as being valuable. Again, the UBI would free people up to spend less time on bullshit jobs and more time on genuine activities which realise different types of values.

These utopian arguments are a welcome antidote to the limitations of the current political climate. They employ the language of philosophy and ethics, and deny the abysmal economic ‘realism’ and narrow mindedness of mainstream political commentary. Against a background of pessimism and corrosive cynicism, they embrace genuinely progressive aspirations for a better world. Yet they all rely upon the assumption that the UBI is set at an adequate level to satisfy basic needs. There are many problems with this assumption, and to investigate what they are we must leave the lofty realm of philosophy and ethics and return back down to the mundane level of politics and money.

The recent Swiss UBI referendum did not formally specify any amount of money, yet many of the advocates openly discussed a figure of 2500 francs per month. Guy Standing, who is also a prominent UBI advocate, was quite critical of this: ‘The amount being discussed […] is quite high, and it is useful to have a referendum on whether the Swiss approve the policy in concept. Let the details be decided later, and let the unconditional basic income be implemented gradually, so people can see that society doesn’t collapse, as some wilder critics contend it would.’ There are two concerns here: first, if the UBI is set at a high level it will come with a correspondingly massive price tag and proponents will have a difficult job convincing voters of its economic feasibility. Secondly, if the UBI is too generous, then large numbers of people will not bother working at all, and the economy will collapse. Standing, like many other prominent UBI advocates, is in favour of very modest UBI schemes which take into account these concerns. As with any political movement, there are both moderate and radical versions of the proposed reforms. Godfrey Moase's Australian UBI proposal involved a sum of $30,000 per year, clearly at the radical end of the UBI spectrum. Here in New Zealand  Keith Rankin has proposed a UBI of $9,080, Gareth Morgan offers $11,000 and Sue Bradford has suggested $15,000 per year with additional amounts for parents and over 65s. Although without doubt it is the larger sums that are necessary if we want to do justice to the utopian aspirations sketched above, it must also be clear that in today’s political climate the more conservative UBI proposals will much more easily gain legitimacy.

Michael Fletcher, in his recent article on Gareth Morgan’s book The Big Kahuna, disputes the claim that a UBI system will abolish the need for targeted state welfare assistance. He likens the variety of income needs for various types of households to a skyline of city buildings of various heights. Some people are single and able bodied with relatively cheap basic needs, whereas families with only one adult and several dependent children have much more expensive needs. In order to completely abolish the current welfare system,  Fletcher argues that we would need to provide “everyone with a level of assistance that matches the height of the tallest buildings. A UBI set to the height of the tallest buildings would give too much to many, therefore be too expensive, and risk undermining work incentives.”

Phillipe Van Parijs, probably the most eloquent and intellectually formidable advocate of UBI, is very forthright on this issue. In a 2002  interview he insists that “Unemployment benefits must not and will not be replaced even by a generous universal basic income. They must keep operating with amounts adjusted, as job-seeking-conditioned, time-limited and earnings-related top-ups on people’s basic incomes.” Echoing Fletcher’s concerns about the variety of individual and household needs, he predicts that even in the long term “sensible levels of basic income will not enable us to dispense with means-tested top ups for people in specific circumstances.”

Whereas the more radical UBI schemes would clearly have a range of far reaching consequences for those currently living on benefits or scraping by on low incomes, the situation is far less transparent and straightforward for the more moderate versions. In order to evaluate such schemes we need to look very carefully and critically at the details of the UBI policies. Would beneficiaries receive adequate top-ups to their basic income? How would the basic income affect existing state transfers such as tax credits and accommodation supplements? What changes would be made to the income tax regime, and how would these affect those on low wages?

To illustrate these thorny and complex issues, consider the example I made use of above: a sole parent with two children living in Auckland working 40 hours per week at the current living wage rate of $19.80 per hour. Assuming she pays around $500 per week in  rent, the  current system would provide her with a net weekly income of $1038. This consists of her net wage ($672), plus $366 worth of state transfers (tax credits plus accommodation allowance). Suppose that Gareth Morgan’s Big Kahuna version of basic income were to be implemented by a new government. This would involve an $11,000 annual net basic income, which translates into just over $211 per week. Morgan’s UBI policy also involves a flat tax rate of 30%. To work out exactly what she would receive under this new system, we would need to know how the existing system of tax credits and accommodation supplements would be affected by the basic income. At the left extreme we might imagine a UBI policy which did not disturb existing transfers at all. Our solo parent would be better off in this case, receiving $1132 net income each week (about $90 more than the status quo). At the right extreme we might imagine a UBI policy which reduced her current state transfers by an amount exactly equal to the new basic income of $211. Instead of $366, she will now only receive $155. Her net weekly income (taking into account the higher flat tax rate of 30%) will be $920, meaning that she is now $118 worse off than she is under the status quo.

Now suppose that our hard working solo mother wants to change direction in life. She might want to further her studies, write poetry or leave her job in order to have more time and energy for her growing children. According to the utopian arguments I sketched above, a basic income would provide the means for her to exercise ‘real freedom’ and make such a choice without fear of dire material consequences. Again, the crucial consideration would have to do with the level of the ‘top-ups’ rather than the basic income payment of $211, an amount which would not even pay for half the weekly rent. Even if we assume that she can easily access additional top-ups which would bring her income up to the current status quo entitlements, her prospects look fairly grim. The current sole parent benefit plus tax credits and accommodation supplement totals just under $708 net per week. Let’s assume that she can access this under the new regime, and somehow figures out how to budget for three people on the $208 she has each week after rent is paid. If you find that assumption a bit hard to swallow, then try imagining her writing poetry at the same time. Of course, back in the real world thousands of Aucklanders have found a solution to similarly impossible budgeting scenarios: they live in their cars.

Gareth Morgan’s UBI scheme is certainly not the only version, and it is surely conceivable that an appropriately tweaked system of a modest basic income with targeted top-ups would be more progressive than the clumsy and unjust system we live under today. Yet there are clearly many reasons to be wary of the supposed benefits such schemes propose.

The elephant in the room is the problem of low wages. People such as my grandfather and Steve were able to accomplish modest tasks such as paying for food, clothing and shelter on the basis of their wages alone. In Marxist terminology this is a fundamental part of capitalistic ‘reproduction’: in order to keep the wheels of industry turning, workers must have their basic needs met so that they can continue to provide their labour. It is an obvious and yet fundamental observation, with an increasingly complex and obtuse relation to the neo-liberal structures of contemporary capitalism I sketched at the beginning of this essay.

In a book apparently aimed at a conservative American audience, Phillipe Van Parijs likens the UBI to a subsidy paid from the state. Instead of paying the subsidy to the employer, Van Parijs argues that it should be paid to the employee: “At the other extreme [from employer subsidies] we find the UBI, which can also be thought of as a subsidy, but one paid to the employee (or potential employee), thereby giving her the option of accepting a job with a lower hourly wage or with shorter hours than she otherwise could.” Much as we might like to endorse the values of the utopian arguments for UBI, we must acknowledge and critically engage with these other, potentially more sinister forms of reformist logic.