Discussion thread - GC? Radfem? Terminology we use, and does it matter?

Yup the emphasis on the external appearance on social media and perhaps also the blurring of reality and make believe

I understand this is probably not the core aspect of what you're referring to, but FWIW:

I'm male. I call myself GC as a descriptor of my intellectual viewpoint. It means (to me) that I don't believe gender is innate, or that gender identity is a robust, proven or coherent enough concept to meaningully define people by. No particular social or political attitudes necessarily flow from that, it's just application of logic to the evidence available. It's like the fact that I call myself an atheist.

I don't call myself a feminist. Not because I don't believe in the ideas and changes that feminists propose (on a case by case basis, I generally do), but because I'm skeptical of people from outside of disempowered groups co-opting the identity of those groups and indulging in the language of disempowerment when they don't share the experience. It's for women to decide what feminism is and what it does.

When people on mumsnet started the 'let toys be toys' campaign they didn't have to align themselves with a particular philosophy.

As far as I remember there was a very conscious decision to make LTBT single issue, and not to get into the politics around it directly.

I call myself 'gender critical' because I criticise the concept of gender. That's pretty much it. It's a Ronseal description.

I don't call myself a radical feminist, because it's a particular theory of feminism, and in all honesty, I don't know enough about it to say whether I am a radical feminist or not.

Really I don't think that anybody has to call themselves anything. An argument should stand or fall on it's own merits. When people on mumsnet started the 'let toys be toys' campaign they didn't have to align themselves with a particular philosophy.

plenty of radfems talk about gender as existing to oppress women as if that's the point, why those ideas/social structures were developed.

What other function do they serve other than keeping women in their place? As midgeghost pointed out, so many of the apparently innate differences seem to result in men retaining power and women providing a service, which seems awfully convenient.

I'm a feminist who centers women and girls issues in my feminism. I appreciate men have issues and so I work with some mens mental health charities. I am supportive of trans rights for those who accept biological sex is real and understand that women's spaces are important.

I saw recently a blog post from someone saying that GC trans people aren't allies to women and I don't really agree with that, I feel as an adult you can choose what you want to do with your body etc and people like Rose of Dawn are people who provide a calm and reasonable voice to this mess. I'm happy with men standing for women's rights too as long as they actually are standing for women's rights and not the weird patriarchal lib fem pretence that I tend to see from my FB friends where its seems men are just getting what they want and women are lining up to support :sex work is work", "porn is great", "I love being strangled", "twaw" etc

I guess that difference may be strongest in those who have had to battle most against sexist assumptions that have held them back. When you have had to fight so many incorrect assumptions you really start to reassess every assumption

I would prefer to start from a position of no innate differences unless proven otherwise

As it is the world we live in happily ignores real differences, as evidenced with shocking lack of knowledge of female biology in medicine, yet still there is a widespread belief that men make more natural scientists, that men are better suited to leadership roles in business, that men are more rational and less emotional

Both funnily enough to the detriment of women

How would you describe your feminism Chestnut?

That's exactly what I've said, though. Radical feminism typically has an extremely limited - not nonexistent - list of things that it sees as biologically based. Half of the things discussed on FWR, or more generally in feminism, come down to questions around how much biology influences things like social structures, or behavioural choices. It's common to see those with a radfem perspective basically mock any suggestion that some group social phenomena might be rooted in some kind of physical or chemical or behavioural difference between women and men.

I'd agree that properly understood patriarchy should be the description of an effect though I'd say I rarely see it used with that level of discipline, and plenty of radfems talk about gender as existing to oppress women as if that's the point, why those ideas/social structures were developed.

Many other feminists are much more open to the possibility that biology has a more widespread or broad set of effects. You see the difference in viewpoints in questions around motherhood, breastfeeding, or different distributions in employment sectors, among other things.

I'm fairly surprised that people wouldn't see that there is a difference in thinking around this, though as some seem to think that the radical feminist tradition is the only "real" feminism, I guess maybe I shouldn't be.

Biology has always been in implicit.
Rape
DV
Prostitution
Abortion
Pregnancy and childbirth
Etc etc etc

It was never considered that women would have to be explicit about the differences in biology. Reproduction, size etc. It was felt these things were self evident.

The we can do the things/ equality was about male structures that women were excluded from.

Does anyone seriously think that feminists through the years forgot or didn't recognise that men tend to be bigger, stronger and (for whatever reason) more violent than women? I can't believe that anyone really thinks that was what was thought.

There's actually quite a lot about biology in there, and plenty of things innately connected to it.

What kinds of things are you thinking of? Where Chestnut talks about "it will include almost nothing as innately connected to biological sex", I assumed what was meant is that men/women don't have innate personality traits, abilities, interests, etc. That those things are learnt from the way we are socialised. I've always believed that was where radfem analysis sat too?

What are the central tenets of your feminism Chestnut?

What I've said is that when you look at Radfem ideology, it will include almost nothing as innately connected to biological sex, even when you are looking at things on the group level

I think you might be cherry picking the bits of radical feminism that fit your preconceptions.

There's actually quite a lot about biology in there, and plenty of things innately connected to it.

Radical feminism doesn't hold that the patriarchy exists in order to oppress, either. You're laying a narrative, an intent, onto a description of function.

What I've said is that when you look at Radfem ideology, it will include almost nothing as innately connected to biological sex, even when you are looking at things on the group level. They also tend to connect this with the idea of patriarchy, which is to say that it exists explicitly as a means to oppress.

Much more so than many other people who think of themselves as feminists do (and I don't mean liberal feminists). And much more so than a lot of people who think of themselves as supporters of women's rights. Most see the intersection of socialisation and biology in the desire to seem masculine or feminine or in many more human behaviours and social structures, and they don't necessarily think these things all developed in order to oppress women, or even that they all do oppress women.

I think a term like ‘stereotype rejector’ or ‘stereotype reducer’ might be more useful descriptor to the wider population than GC.

Gender critical isn’t clear to a bystander and gives an idea that we’re criticising life choices when we mean to criticise gender stereotypes.

I want to use gender disbeliever or gender atheist (gender infidel?!) but I think that a bit niche. It perhaps gives credence that some people are entitled to believe in pink brains.

Gender stereotype critical?

Unlimited potential: Report of the Commission on Gender Stereotypes and Early Childhood
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4106251-unlimited-potential-report-of-the-commission-on-gender-stereotypes-and-early-childhood

ChestnutStuffing - ” Where you would lose a lot of them is in saying that any kind of culturally mediated/expressed differences between men and women are only caused by socialisation, are a manifestation of patriarchy, and would be better off abolished, and an important goal of feminism is to accomplish that.”

I agree - because these are elements of dogma, not incontrovertible, scientific facts, and they therefore require a leap of faith. Choosing not to take that leap is not necessarily due to stubbornness, lack of “education” or misogyny but rather to healthy scepticism.

MedusaBadHairDay - ” I think what throws me with this particular subject, it's there is huge support for campaigns like Let Toys Be Toys (which is very much saying that differences are a result of socialisation and should not be enforced) and that support is from radfems/libfems/ people who'd never call themselves feminists - but that doesn't then translate to widespread agreement on gender as a social construct.”

This is equally understandable, IMHO. Gender does not need to be accepted as 100% a social construct in order to be against forcing children to play only with “stereotyped sex role” toys and for encouraging children to play with a wider range of toys.

In fact, it is possible to totally reject the notion of gender as a social construct and still support “Let Toys Be Toys”, eg. transgender ideology would support boys playing with “girls’ toys”, vice versa and “unisex toys” on the basis that toy preference reflects innate “gender identity”.

Feminism draws certain conclusions about the world because it interprets observable phenomena according to a specific belief system.

I shy away from discussions about what it means to be a “real” feminist because they always seem to end up with one or more purists identifying heresies that need to be rooted out. BTW I am NOT suggesting that anything like that is going on in this thread.

The problem that I have with “RadFem”, as a term and as a thing, is that it includes truly “fundamentalist” feminists who brook no dissent.

The term “radical” originally meant “root”, as in “fundamental”, but it also means “extreme” in the same sense as “fundamentalist”, eg. relating to religion.

That, I think, is part of the reason why a lot of people, men and women, switch off when they hear the word “feminism” and dismiss arguments by disparaging them as “feminist”. Not “misogyny” as a reaction to women or womanhood but more akin to Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and whatever you would call fear of fundamentalist Christianity or any other religion. It is not to do with individual people but with the extreme tenets and would include antipathy to extreme political views.

I am thinking out loud here, these are not well-developed ideas but more like musings so I am not wedded to them nor prepared to defend them to the death

They are thoughts at the back of my mind that I think account for the fact that I tend to talk about “Women’s Rights” rather than feminism but I am perfectly happy to call myself a feminist or be called a feminist.

I also agree with previous comments that “Gender Critical” as a term has its problems. As far as its relationship to Transgender Ideology is concerned, I agree that it is used as a catch-all term for what is very often (most often?) better described as something like “Anti-pseudoscience” or “Pro-Science” without any presumption of adherence to a feminist viewpoint.

Where you would lose a lot of them is in saying that any kind of culturally mediated/expressed differences between men and women are only caused by socialisation, are a manifestation of patriarchy, and would be better off abolished, and an important goal of feminism is to accomplish that.

I would say that latter group is more what characterises GC positions or RadFems, and it's not identical to feminism itself. In some ways I think it's been unable to give people a really knock-it-out of the park answer to gender ideology because most don't see masculinity and femininity as whole negative or even false ideas. So the GC approach just doesn't resonate.

I've had conversations with people who self describe as GC who don't view it that way either, so it's not even a universally accepted idea within that group.

I think what throws me with this particular subject, it's there is huge support for campaigns like Let Toys Be Toys (which is very much saying that differences are a result of socialisation and should not be enforced) and that support is from radfems/libfems/ people who'd never call themselves feminists - but that doesn't then translate to widespread agreement on gender as a social construct.

That is interesting, @ChestnutStuffing. I probably don't fit the criteria in your second paragraph. I took GC to mean "critical of the concept of an innate gender identity unconnected to your sex, which must override biological reality". To be honest, I say GC as shorthand here, but in RL I'd just say "I don't believe in gender ideology" and illustrate it with examples of the ideology playing out.

I suppose I am a feminist but I worry if I call myself that I will be confused with lib fems so I usually say I campaign for the rights of women and girls. I also use the phrases gender non conforming and sex stereotypes when discussing issues.