What does it actually mean to be gender critical??

My view is that these issues have stemmed from phrases such as "born in the wrong body" and "transwomen are women" being taken literally. These phrases were originally used to ensure that trans people felt included and recognised but are now being used as statements of fact.

To believe that trans people are literally born in the wrong body you must posit a "gender identity" that is innate and exists only in the mind. This concept has been reinforced so many times now that it's being accepted as scientific truth by the general public (despite any evidence). When GC feminists attack the notion of "gender identity" they attack the foundation stone of the whole concept of trans as it's now understood.

I think about this too. GC people think gender is destructive - let’s abolish it - but trans ideology relies upon gender existing doesn’t it?
No gender, no transgender

I do fall down often but I try and say, we should not be saying men do manly things and women do womanly things. Carrying on from that, I don't believe a child is trans just because they prefer certain activities or like dressing a certain way. Some people say they "feel" like a man or woman, which in my view is BS because I don't "feel" female, I just am. And the notion that I cannot be in a certain profession or have a certain hobby because of my "gender" is so flipping sexist. The idea of gender is BS, in my view. Just be you, wgaf what you prefer?

Lajestic I'm as baffled as you are.

I think perhaps one complication is that some people seem to think that sex/gender confer value, hence offence taken when Jeni Murray talked about 'real' women.

We have value because we are human, not because of our sex. However, that does not lessen the impact of sex.

It's clear that for various reasons some people don't fit easily into one sex category or the other, however that doesn't lessen the need for sex specific protections and services in specific situations.

I'd say that you are not missing much actually. I find the term gender abolitionist to have merit too.

I too am on a learning expedition and as such I am always interested in discovering where people have gained the knowledge they based their strong opinion on when they post here on MN. On both sides. Usually, regular posters will be very upfront in their discussion points and often will reference their information.

If I ask someone who comes and posts with a strong 'you are phobic' view, I ask for what they have read etc. Usually, they will link up to something that I have already read and seen debunked and disproven (usually by experts in the fields that are being discussed).

Sadly, almost always there will be either a plea for 'being kind', mentioning stats that don't stand up to scrutiny, a discussion on sex as a spectrum (politicising people with DSDs who have asked the community to stop), or bringing racist or homophobic tropes into the discussion.

Last night I followed a twitter thread where a transwoman used all of these including using clownfish as an example. Eventually, they could only argue that they did not feel like they thought a man should, therefore they felt they had to be a woman.

Of course, this nicely makes the point and many have said it before.

No.... just because you do not feel like you fit in as a male does not mean that what you feel is what a female 'feels'.

There probably aren’t many sites where people explain why they are gender critical because feminism means being opposed to the imposition of gender roles.

It would be like vegetarians setting up a load of sites saying they are non-meat eating vegetarians.

Why does it then become so conflated?

Because if you keep gender and sex separate, it's tremendously invalidating for people who believe that to be a woman is to perform femininity.

let's do away with stereotyping and labels

Got it in a nutshell. But not the labels "man" and "woman", because they refer to material physiological realities, are the basis of laws which protect us, etc etc - we need words to differentiate between the sexes because sex is an axis of oppression. Without them we can't describe our experiences as members of an oppressed class.

What they fail to grasp is that our position is the same position feminists have taken since time immemorial: woman is not a gender. Not a collection of stereotypes, not the performance of femininity, not a submissive and nurturing essence.

An awful lot of the batshit crazy we see these days comes from the conflation of female and feminine.

Gender critical is just critical of gender, but many think it’s critical of trans people.
If they were after 3rd spaces, I know I’d be behind them.

Gender critical = critical of gender,
Boys and men can wear dresses and have plaits. Girls and Women can wear baggy clothing and like trucks.
I am in agreement gender is a social construct, but where I differ from TRA Is I it’s meaningless. It’s just a bunch of sexist stereotypes we should be fighting against.