Gender Critical = fundamentally right wing (according to Vox)

[TheRealMcKenna]

I know it’s Vox, I know it’s not a ‘reputable’ news source, but this is hilariously bad.

Main points:

• TERFs calling themselves ‘gender critical’ are akin to white supremacists calling themselves ‘race realists’.
  
• Women are oppressed based on gender identity and not biological sex.
  
• Most ‘decent’ feminists include trans women in their movement, but a horrid bunch of conservative-allying pro-life supporting homophobic white supremacists don’t.
  
• GC feminists Who rely on ‘science’ have abandoned the idea that chromosomes determine sex (this is news to me)
  
• GC feminism is mainly a UK phenomenon and is ‘whipped up’ by the horrid Mumsnet site. Everyone else in the world is lovely (apart from those far right pro-life conservatives).
  
• GC feminists cite a tiny number of high profile cases to whip up fear and hatred of trans women.
  
• GC advocates bully people online, especially on Twitter.
  
• GC academics have a terribly large amount of power and influence.
  

www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Thanks!

That made me laugh. The straws they are clutching;!!

Naught educated wimmins. Shut the fuck up!!!

[caughtalightsneeze]

I've always thought I was left wing. But frankly the left care even less for women than the right do. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn scared me far more than the Tories ever have when it comes to my fundamental rights.

If that makes me right wing, so be it.

[HecatesHat]

The hysteria! Maybe that's how they know they're women, getting their knickers in a twist They should add that to the checklist. Never voted right wing, never felt right wing, always been for women & girls 🤷🏼‍♀️

[TheRealMcKenna]

I didn’t realise how old this article was as I only saw it on Twitter today. It did make me smile reading the comments below stating that all the ‘nasty’ TERFs on Twitter tend to be British.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

I've just made it to the end if that piece. It's hilarious, self contradictory, full of outright lies, evident obfuscations and is just a little bit ' on edge'.

If it wore cotton socks I'd bless it!

[Delphinium20]

I am and always have been left wing and I have the receipts to prove it!!! The thing that drives me most mad about TRAs is the idea that any questions about the rights and protections of women and children is somehow conservative!!!! My feminism collides with almost everything conservative!

I wish to god we could be focused on really critical issues like climate change, but instead we are dragged back into some regressive fight we didn't ask for and thought was behind us.

[NotTerfNorCis]

Their bitter review of Troubled Blood is worth a chuckle too.

www.vox.com/culture/21449215/troubled-blood-review-jk-rowling-transphobia-controversy

[PigeonToe]

"gender-critical feminists essentially believe the existence of trans women’s penises in a women’s space represents an automatic risk of rape"

Ha! I am so tired of being asked to feel sorry for trans women's misunderstood penises. For the millionth time, we don't care whether the penis belongs to a trans woman or to a common-or-garden man. Scientists have simply yet to discover for certain how to tell the difference between a rapey penis and a non-rapey penis, especially when said penis is in a women's space, where it should not be.

[bellinisurge]

They are just soooo desperate to cast us as Stepford Wives.
Pathetic.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

My thanks. I'm holed up with a painful back... can't do anything too strenuous... laughing at that is the best I can do 😅

[MichelleofzeResistance]

Women refusing to soldier = All The Bad Things.

Yeah yeah, I've got toddlers, I get it.

#theservicehumansaremalfunctioning

[EdgeOfACoin]

Looks as though the writer, Katelyn Burns is transgender:

wikispro.com/katelyn-burns-wiki-bio-age/

[MilleniumHallsWalledGarden]

the left-wing, pro-choice, woman-centring truth is so much worse than anything they can possibly imagine

[MichelleofzeResistance]

I'm increasingly noticing since the threads this weekend and the DfE guidance, there is a thing for some where there's free floating outrage and passionate sense of injustice and oppression looking around for something to justify itself on. Any passing theme, thought or generally known Bad Thing will do, Bad Words will do at a push, sometimes a random word pulled out of context of a post not even read never mind comprehended on which to hang the next bit of wrath.

Which leaves many others bewildered because they're looking for coherence, and logic, and actual facts that join up, and some kind of sense. Sometimes there just isn't any. And that's the thing here: sometimes you're dealing with trying to engage with and think about actual issues, and sometimes the words are irrelevant because it's just a person communicating they feel really, really strongly. They're not wholly sure about what, but it's Bad and it's mostly your fault. Creating sides and fearing some dreadful unseen authority is often seeming to be involved.

Seriously. There is the real facts and politics aspect of this, and there is the engaging with someone who is struggling in that frame of mind aspect of this, and that's where it all falls down. Facts and debate don't work when someone's communicating like this.

[TheRealMcKenna]

Facts and debate don't work when someone's communicating like this.

That’s the point - there is not considered to be any room for debate as in the article:

“Not every item of personal and ideological obsession is worthy of philosophical debate. In particular, scepticism about the rights of marginalised groups and individuals, where issues of life and death are at stake, are not up for debate.”

This is straight from the Nadia Whittome school of ‘fetishising debate’ and wanting to debate away someone’s existence.

Leaving ‘debate’ aside, there is no room for any sort of reasonable discussion any more (as JK Rowling has proved).

[Igneococcus]

This reminds me of a comment by Disgusted of Manchester today in the Scottish section of the Times:

"Women should not be attacked for being women in any environment. attacking JKR's transphobic views is not misogynist though. The truth is that misogynists, as well as nazis, white supremacists, MRAs, racists, islamophobes, Christian right wingers, muslim extremists etc all support JKRs views on trans people."

That's quite the collection.

[CloudyVanilla]

Honestly I agree with them.

It was actually me realising when talking with a friend who turned out to be an MRA and realising that out views on trans people aligned, and then realised that yes the hard right have a similar opinion of trans men and women that made me rethink.

Not a popular view on MN but there are feminists who are not trans exclusive. My favourite internet community is now the Witched vs the Patriarchy sub reddit.

[CloudyVanilla]

Witches*

[RuffleCrow]

Haha, I think these loons underestimate how many die hard lefties they've alienated with this irrational dogma!

I was hanging out with the SWP at 19, protesting the Iraq War at 21, only ever voted Lib Dem or Green up until I joined the Greens at 30. Spent 6 years in that party and only left because of the misogyny.

Anyone writing articles like this thinks me supremacy was what we lefties were fighting for from day 1. If it was, I was completely unaware of it.

[RuffleCrow]

male supremacy

[EdgeOfACoin]

It was actually me realising when talking with a friend who turned out to be an MRA and realising that out views on trans people aligned, and then realised that yes the hard right have a similar opinion of trans men and women that made me rethink.

Surely an argument stands on its own merits, not whether other people agree with you?

I'm sure far right extremists and I would agree on the colour of grass. I wouldn't start believing that grass is pink in order not to agree with someone on the far right.

[CloudyVanilla]

No in this case it made me look further into the issue and I now have a completely different perspective, I wouldn't say I agree anymore at all with a lot of stuff I previously believed to be merely gender critical.

I just thought I'd comment on this thread as the article is about those alignments of views and I did find that to be true in my experience.

[UglyGlassVase]

@CloudyVanilla


Either you or your friend has a fundamental misunderstanding of the ideology you believe you agree with.

[FWRLurker]

TRAs are the equivalent of race realists. Here’s why:

Race is to ancestry as gender is to sex

Race is a social construction that is applied to you based, in part, in your ancestry, and which comes along with it certain unfair assumptions about how you should behave and what you should be capable of.

Gender is a social construction applied to you on the basis of your sex, and which comes along with certain unfair assumptions about how you should behave and what you should be capable of.

Sex and ancestry are biological and measurable. Gender and race are oppressive social constructions.

TRAs want gender to be more important than sex. They want to make women’s oppression and stereotypes define what women are. They also believe sex does not exist so are equivalent to people who claim to be “race-blind”.

GC women acknowledge that gender and race are used to oppress people, and encourage people to think of others and themselves not on the basis of stereotypes but as humans.

[nepeta]

[quote UglyGlassVase]@CloudyVanilla

Either you or your friend has a fundamental misunderstanding of the ideology you believe you agree with.[/quote]
Yes. Someone put this in these terms: Both the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan need a word for race, but the reasons why are utterly different.