A late response but since it hasn't yet been addressed:
From
@Trianon's audio excerpt at
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/grace...-mallory-ortberg.77242/page-195#post-11601661
LAVERY: Yes, I can understand why people will hold the view that there was a naturally occurring organic type. Ah, after all, that is what patriarchy tells us every day. And it is a very difficult view to get your head out of, and yet...
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying, are you saying, sorry if I may before I go to a bigger point, are you saying that every woman that believes that, is effectively having their mind warped by patriarchy?
LAVERY: Ah, I wouldn't use that phrase. I think that it is difficult to think one's way out of structures that one is informed of frequently. If you believe...
INTERVIEWER: 'cause some, 'cause the irony is some of those people are very much feminists and have thought nothing but about patriarchy and how to think their way out of those structures and still come to the conclusion that is the male body retains an advantage over the female bodies.
LAVERY: [smacks lips] I think it makes sense to refer to sex as real and important and determinative and deserving of respect, when it comes to traits, I do not think it makes sense to refer to an (sic) higher organisms as though they always and inevitably possess the sexual characteristics which single organism (sic). Ah, as to the question of whether or not many of the people arguing on this on behalf of the question of naturally occurring types or woman as a naturally occurring type are feminists, it's beyond doubt at this point that there are some feminists who do take that view but that but (sic) that all I would say that's a profound historical novelty. I do not think you could find a single feminist who would take that view prior to Caitlyn Jenner appearing on the front cover of Vanity Fair. I think historically the notion that woman is a natural type deserving of specific and enumerated sex-based rights is precisely what feminism was created to oppose.
INTERVIEWER: You have written, "I am quite sure that women's rights are not, have never been and must never be sex-based." How can you say that with such surety?
LAVERY: Well again, I say it on the basis of twenty years of active research and teaching in the field. I have been doing this work for a long time. The notion of sex-based rights is a very recent phenomenon that hasn't existed more than a few years, it's a really bad deal for women, and I don't say that as a trans woman, I don't say that as anyone other than a scholar of feminism.
Everything that Lavery stated in this interview is either fallacious or factually false but I'll restrict this post to only the history of sex-based rights.
The notion of sex-based rights has existed at least since the 18th century. The earliest exponent that I am aware of is
Olympe de Gouges. Many sex-based rights--or at least the campaigns for them--emerged from modern medical advances, so it would be anachronistic to expect Gouges to argue for access to (safe medical) abortion, for example. That notwithstanding, she does advocate for female-specific rights in other domains of female experience. Gouges' advocacy is distributed over her essays, novels, articles, plays, and pamphlets (see
https://www.olympedegouges.eu/index.php). The closest writing to a "manifesto" would be her
Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen. However, this writing is not concerned with sex-based rights (with perhaps the exception of Article 11 ) and can be regarded as proto-liberal feminism. It is essentially Gouges' proto-feminist response to
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Some of the sex-based rights that Gouges championed were: state-provided welfare for widows, the legalization and regulation of prostitution, civil rights for unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children, the state-enforced financial obligation of men to their out-of-wedlock progeny and their mothers,
state-sponsored refuges for women (and their children) fleeing domestic violence and hospitals dedicated exclusively to maternity.
Regardless of whether you are persuaded by Gouges' arguments or that what has come to be known as "difference feminism" makes up only a small portion of her written work, Gouges nevertheless recognizes a need for sex-based rights and advocates for them. Thus the idea that sex-based rights are a "historical novelty" and originated in the 21st century is patently false.
Further, the property of an idea being historically novel does not somehow delegitimize that idea. In the history of ideas every idea was at some point
sui generis, a new and unique concept. Intellectual history is characterised by a series of new ideas that were at the time of their conception historically novel. Whether an idea is derivative or novel has no bearing on its validity. An intellectually honest person will evaluate an idea based on its merits. Claiming that sex-based rights are a recent invention and asserting that they are somehow vaguely a product of the patriarchy does not amount to an argument against sex-based rights. Lavery has provided no argument against sex-based rights. His naive suppressed premises are that "new ideas are necessarily illegitimate" and "any ideology that doesn't valorize uniform sexual equality is antifeminist". Nowhere has Lavery argued for either of these enthymemes.
