Gender Inequality and Biological Supremacy: A Sex Equality Analysis of Patrick Parkinson’s “Neutral” Proposal

Abstract In this essay, a response to an article by Patrick Parkinson, Shannon Gilreath disputes Parkinson’s claim that religiously motivated discrimination against transgender people should be the subject of special exceptions to prevailing antidiscrimination law, especially where the transgender person does not seek to conform to the traditional male/female gender binary. Gilreath maps the ways in which Parkinson’s proposal is an argument for biological superiority, which has been the rationalization for systematic and systemic social inferiority throughout history, including most notably in the contexts of race, gender, and sexuality oppression. In concluding that Parkinson’s proposal is little more than a restatement of the faulty differences-based approach to equality through law, Gilreath ultimately concludes that its principles are wholly inconsistent with the legitimate purposes of antidiscrimination law.