Most people who have been following the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s speech at the Oxford Union, and who have been observing this debate that combines transgender rights, the rights of women and free speech, might be tempted to conclude that the dispute has its origins in a sole ideology. That is, the transgender ideology which believes that one’s gender and one’s sex can be altered to accord to one’s authentic, inner self.

This is true. It is all about an ideology. But trans ideology isn’t the ultimate issue here. It’s the ideology of ‘feeling’ that’s at the root of the debate we’ve been having – both of the trans phenomenon and the way we all talk about it.

Saying ‘you’ve hurt my feelings’ has become a substitute for rational political debate

Trans ideology has blossomed in a culture in which one’s feelings is deemed paramount. It has come to maturity in an age of emotivism, an era inaugurated by the response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Being ‘authentic’ and ‘true to oneself’ is now lauded and applauded. Beliefs are respected because they are ‘sincerely held’. Today, the worst transgression you can make with someone is not to counter-argue or disagree, but to say something they might find ‘offensive’. The tyranny of feeling has reigned for some time.

The trans ideology is anchored in the foundations of emotion, ‘authenticity’ and adhering to one’s ‘inner self’. It’s therefore no coincidence that its most vociferous advocates, and even the polite and demure trans types we saw on Channel 4’s Gender Wars programme this week, carry over the language of feeling to the arena of political debate: Stock makes me feel uncomfortable, Stock preaches hate, Stock makes me cry.

We heard here how some trans people were ‘exhausted’ at having to justify themselves. One talking head spoke of their ‘internalised self-hatred’ that resulted from trans-sceptic feminist campaigns, while another concluded of opponents of the ideology: ‘Do you think your views might be considered hatred?’ The leitmotif was the naïve complaint ‘Why can’t we just be accepted for who we say we are?’

On the evening of Kathleen Stock’s debate, activists unfurled a flag which said: ‘We grieve for our trans siblings who have lost their lives on waiting lists, we grieve for those who have been murdered.’ Then a young protester removed a jacket to reveal the legend ‘No More Dead Trans Kids’.

This kind of overblown rhetoric strikes most people as hyperbole. But it’s the logic of emotivism, a mentality which continually invites exaggeration – because emotivism is what persuades and dissuades these days. It’s the common currency of political discourse, where one speaks of ‘hate crimes’, of subjectively ‘perceiving’ racism, of ‘feeling safe/uncomfortable’, and where the proliferation of ‘trigger warnings’ before films and TV comedies shows the new sensibility of sensitivity. Saying ‘you’ve hurt my feelings’ has become a substitute for rational political debate, a means to deflect and deter criticism by playing the pitiful victim.

This appeal to hurt feelings works. This is why trans activists have escalated the tone of their language. In April at a women’s rights march in Belfast, trans-allied counter-protesters responded with the chant ‘Nazi scum, off our streets’. The most egregious example of over-statement came last month, after British Cycling announced its policy preventing biological men from competing in women’s competitions. This prompted the cyclist Emily Bridges, who is biologically male but who came out as trans in 2020, to accuse British Cycling of committing a ‘violent act’, and claim that there is a ‘genocide’ being waged against trans people, aimed at their ‘eradication’.

Such accusations are entirely without justification or proof, but they are common. In addition to unsubstantiated accusations of ‘transphobia’, the rhetoric of ‘genocide’ is routine in politicised circles. This tells you either how paranoid have become, or how utterly cynical, employing the most alarmist language possible with a view to pursue their aims.

Either way, our culture is conspicuously more emotive in its language and in its essence. Some blame this rise of emotionalism as going hand-in-hand with the feminisation of society in the 1990s. Some have pointed to an allied ethos of postmodernism – with its rejection of rationality and objectivity – that has also affected the way we think collectively (In my 2004 book Conspicuous Compassion, I put the blame on both).

Whatever reason, it is feeling and authenticity that rules now. That’s what cleared the ground for the trans movement, and that’s what keeps it going.

As Stock reflected earlier this week: ‘It’s hard to believe now, but when all this started, I genuinely thought that people didn’t understand the issues and if I just explained them, they would concede that transgender women are not women and that facts have to triumph over feelings.’

Right now, facts don’t triumph over feeling. Kathleen Stock may have won the battle this week, but she faces a long culture war – a war against our culture itself.