Gender Identity: What It Is and Why It Matters. By RachCosker‐Rowland, Oxford University Press, 2025. 368 pp. 40. 00 (hardback). ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐894798‐1

The title of Rach Cosker-Rowland's weighty book summarizes its ambition: to explain what gender identity is, and why it matters. The conclusions are striking: “our gender identities generate trans rights to freedom of (legal) gender, gender-affirming healthcare, and sporting participation…our gender identities establish that we morally ought to be treated as and thought of as the gender that matches our gender identity…our gender identity also seems to matter for the gender that we metaphysically are…we should understand being trans in terms of gender identity” 1, p. 318. What is gender identity? That question occupies part 1 (Chapters 2–5). The term received a clear definition in the early 1960s, shortly after its introduction. The psychiatrists Robert Stoller and Ralph Greenson explained gender identity as (in Stoller's formulation) “the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs, that is, the awareness ‘I am a male’ or ‘I am a female’” 2, p. 220.1 Of course, the conviction that one is male (female) will almost invariably amount to knowledge: children typically know that they are male (female) from a young age. If “gender identity” is understood as it originally was no further analysis or account is needed. Cosker-Rowland's book recounts none of this history and begins as if gender identity belongs with knowledge or beauty—at once familiar and a promising candidate for philosophical explication. To aid the reader home in on the intended target, she gives the following initial gloss: “Our gender identity is widely understood to be our sense of ourself as a particular gender, as a woman, as a man, as non-binary, or as another gender” 1, p. 3. This is doubtfully of enough help, partly because Cosker-Rowland never explains what a “gender” is supposed to be. Woman, man, and non-binary are genders or “gender categories” p. 5, which include girl, boy p. 67, demigirl, agender, and genderfluid p. 47. Could widow, actress, sister, or drag king be added to the list? If not, why? And is it credible that “woman,” which has an equivalent in every natural language, is significantly akin to vogueish terms popularized on Tumblr in the 2010s? Agender—“having no gender” p. 49—raises another puzzle. The gender category agender is necessarily uninstantiated yet may be someone's gender identity; this is inconsistent with Cosker-Rowland's conjecture that if someone has gender identity G, the person is gender G p. 318. The phrase “our sense of ourself as” is a second source of unclarity: whatever having a sense of oneself as a woman comes to, Cosker-Rowland does not think it is equivalent to believing that one is woman.2 She rejects the suggestion that having “the gender identity woman” p. 2 simply amounts to believing that one is a woman because it would not explain why gender identities are “worthy of respect” p. 4. She could have noted that it also conflicts with her claim that transgender women have such a gender identity, because some trans women do not believe that they are women.3 Waiving the issue that the target notion of gender identity has not been adequately pinned down, the basic idea of Cosker-Rowland's “subjective fit account” is that “our gender identity is the gender category that seems to us to fit us” p. 5. “Fit” is the normative notion that features in metaethics (and in Cosker-Rowland's other work). As she says, the fitting relation holds between “an action or attitude…and…an object or other thing. Fitting praise is praise of the praiseworthy, fitting envy is envy of the enviable, and amusing jokes are jokes that it is fitting to be amused by. The relation of fit is often paraphrased in terms of merit, appropriateness, correctness, or worthiness” p. 18. But gender categories, and categories in general, are neither actions nor attitudes. And yet they are said to “fit” people p. 20. What does it mean to say that a certain category fits something? The most straightforward way of reading “The category doctor fits/would fit me” (more colloquially, “The label ‘doctor’ fits me”) is as a suitability claim—given my skills, interests, personality, and suchlike, I am well suited to the medical profession. Suitability claims are not normative: supposing that doctor would fit me, it is not inappropriate or incorrect or unworthy if I fail to become a doctor. This is a problem for Cosker-Rowland because her subjective fit account is “inspired by” reports of transgender people who use the word “fit” to describe their experiences: “‘woman’ has never fit me,” “the gender binary…I didn't quite fit into it,” “socially I sort of fit a script for women better” pp. 15–16. (Cosker-Rowland assumes that these are descriptions of gender identities.) The quotations sound like suitability claims: living as a woman suits me (or would suit me) much better than living as a man, say. Just as some people feel immense relief from changing jobs, some transgender people feel immense relief from changing sex-roles, perhaps with the body modifications that make such changes easier. “The word ‘woman’ feels like a far better fit for me now” p. 15 does not seem to be about the fittingness of actions in the normative sense that has preoccupied philosophers. Nonetheless, Cosker-Rowland equates “I fit gender category G” with “It is fitting to treat me as a G.” “Trans women take the category woman to fit them…: trans women take it to be fitting…for them to be treated as and conceived of as women” p. 16. That is as dubious as moving from “I am well suited to the medical profession” to “It's fitting to treat me as a doctor.” Cosker-Rowland's quotations from trans people do not support the view that trans women think it fitting for them to be treated as women, as it is fitting for a praiseworthy person to be praised. But even that doesn't get us to the official version of the subjective fit account, because Cosker-Rowland has learned from some “cis women” that they “do not have the experience that it is positively fitting to treat them as a woman” p. 32. And yet, Cosker-Rowland insists, these women have the gender identity woman. What to do? Cosker-Rowland says that while some cis women may not take it to be fitting for them to be treated as women, they don't take it to be unfitting. Since trans women don't take it to be unfitting either, she puts the fitting account more precisely as follows: “for someone to have gender G as part of their gender identity is for them to not take it to be unfitting for them to be treated as a G” p. 16. However, this doesn't solve the problem because “unfitting” is equivalent to “not-fitting”: if it is unfitting to praise someone, then it is not fitting to praise them, and conversely.4 Not taking something to be unfitting thus amounts to taking it to be fitting, and so Cosker-Rowland's account predicts that many women will not have the gender identity woman, and perhaps no gender identity of any kind.5 For convenience, let's stipulate that to have “gender identity G” is to take it to be fitting to be treated as a G (i.e., not to take this to be unfitting). Treating S as a G involves “using pronouns associated with Gs…inviting S to G-only events, permitting them to use G-only spaces” p. 24 and the like.6 The result so far is that many cis women (and perhaps many trans women) do not have the gender identity woman. Still, no doubt some people do have this gender identity; that is, they take it to be fitting for them to be treated as women. Is such a person's opinion worthy of respect? Not especially. Suppose I take it that it is fitting for me to be admired, and I will be crushed if no one admires me. If I am not in fact admirable, my judgment is not worthy of respect—or at least not more worthy of respect than my other opinions. Why are fittingness judgments about being treated as a woman any different? Cosker-Rowland argues that “gender identities merit respect for the same reasons” as “Sikhs' judgements that they ought to always wear turbans in public” p. 84. Granted, we “ought not force Sikhs to not wear turbans in public,” and to that extent respect Sikh men's judgments, but this is not analogous to the gender case for two reasons. First, the Sikhs' judgment is about the behavior of Sikhs, not others. If a Sikh thinks non-Sikhs ought to prostrate themselves when meeting Sikhs, that is an opinion that people are free to not take seriously. Second, the Sikhs' judgment is one of obligation, but fittingness judgments aren't. If I think it fitting for me to be treated as a G, that is not to take others to be obliged to treat me as a G.7 In the first five chapters of part 2 (Chapters 6–10), Cosker-Rowland attempts to erect many substantial rights on the foundation of gender identity. Even if gender identities (understood as stipulated earlier) are not as widespread as she thinks, that does not drain her argument of interest. In outline, it has two parts. According to the first part, if S takes it to be fitting that others treat them as a G, then S can “live with integrity” only if others in fact treat S as a G. According to the second part, because we have “fundamental liberal rights to be able to act to live and act with integrity” p. 120, S has a right that others treat them as a G. On integrity, Cosker-Rowland appeals to Cécile Laborde's Liberalism's Religion 7. Integrity, Laborde explains, “is an ideal of congruence between one's ethical commitments and one's actions” 7, p. 203. Return to the Sikh example: a bare-headed Sikh is not living with integrity since he takes himself to have a “sacred duty” p. 48 to wear a turban; likewise for carnivorous ethical vegetarians and fighter pilot pacifists. Taking political liberalism for granted, turban-wearing should not be banned, and this is arguably because it prevents Sikhs from living with integrity. However, for Laborde such accommodations only go so far: requiring motorcycling Sikhs to wear helmets is permissible p. 218. In the first part of the argument, Cosker-Rowland assumes that “if it is fitting or correct for one to do something, other things equal, one ought to do it.” Granted this assumption, because “trans women judge that it is fitting for them to be treated…as women, they judge that they ought to be treated…as women” 1, p. 123.8 And since “living with integrity” is living “in line with our view of the life we ought to live” p. 120, Cosker-Rowland infers that trans women can live with integrity only if they are treated as women. The second part of the argument moves from the liberal value of living with integrity to the conclusion that trans women have a right to be treated as women. The first part of the argument repeats the mistake in the earlier discussion of respect: “fitting” does not imply “ought.” Laughter is a fitting response to an amusing joke, but one is under no obligation to laugh, even if other things are equal. And the two parts combined involve a suspicious expansion of the idea of living with integrity. As Laborde explains it, the relevant attitudes are “one's ethical commitments,” not one's views of others' commitments.9 In any event, Cosker-Rowland's more capacious conception of integrity does not generate rights as easily as Laborde's does. If the members of some religious sect hold that birth is an illusion and others ought to treat them as sempiternal beings, this should not exempt them from any age-verification rules. Cosker-Rowland's overall strategy in the (lengthy) second part of the book is therefore questionable at multiple points, although to be fair the abstract sketch above elides a mass of detail. Interested readers will find much material to wrestle with. Oxford University Press's blurb promises that the book engages “a wide range of gender-critical feminist philosophers' arguments,” which is a welcome change, but this is spoiled by persistent misreadings, miscitations, and omitted citations.10 The chapters on gender-affirming healthcare should have been reviewed by someone with knowledge of the literature.11 OUP should note that quality control in this area of philosophy is not working. Finally, Cosker-Rowland's account of being transgender. She endorses the explanation standardly found in “affirming” gender medicine, that a trans person has a gender identity that does not “match” their “sex assigned at birth,” but mystifyingly replaces “sex” with “gender.”12 “Sex (gender) assigned at birth” is not, in Cosker-Rowland's usage, a euphemism for “sex at birth”: to be assigned male at birth is to have male noted contemporaneously on an appropriate document p. 308. The obvious problem is that this practice has not been around for long, and trans and cis people have been around for longer. Cosker-Rowland's solution, in the thirteenth and final chapter, preserves the idea that a mismatch between assignment and gender identity is sufficient for being trans pp. 308–309. But then there is another obvious problem: an ordinary man might have been assigned female at birth due to medical incompetence, with everyone ignoring this honest mistake. Granted his gender identity is man, he would then be transgender; a similar mistake would turn someone like Elliot Page cisgender. Back in the day, we knew what it was to be transsexual. Transsexuality's contemporary descendant, being transgender, is decidedly more nebulous and deserves an explanation. Gender identity as Cosker-Rowland conceives of it is of no help, and neither is obstetrical paperwork. Many thanks to Tomás Bogardus, Pete Bornschein, Moti Gorin, and Holly Lawford-Smith. For the backstory to this review, see https://philosophersmag.com/on-being-rejected. The author declares no conflicts of interest.