An inclusive way to be gender critical?

But gender diversity is ‘the norm, we just don’t believe it has anything to do with sex...... I’m finding it really confusing trying to understand what you are getting at, sorry OP!

Thank you for engaging, op but you will not be dragging me any further into your thread. I have had no idea from the beginning what point you were making but hung around in case my comprehension skills were at fault. But now we've moved on to scoldings, sarcasm and smileys so I guess there's no illumination coming is there? No worries.

But this is the bit I don’t understand:

There is discussion going on currently regarding gender because for whatever reason people want it. To just say they need to stop 'navel gazing' and that gender shouldn't matter to them because it is cultural just disengages from them....However, apart from the TRAs, there is a huge moderate majority who are talking about this and who want to be inclusive to different forms of gender expression

But nothing is currently stopping people being inclusive of ‘gender expression’, is it? Indeed, GC people are probably near the top of the range of acceptance of gender expression. I personally don’t give a shit if a man wears a dress, make up, or whatever. Does no-one remember the 1980s? It’s not GC people who’ve turned the clock back to the 1950s by deifying stereotypes. It’s TRAs. Them and Tumblr teen girls in the US mainly who seem to think wearing ‘a man’s shirt’ makes them NB.

Yes, there are some people around who would sneer at a man wearing lipstick but they’re not sneering because we’re not discussing gender with them. They’re showing their innate prejudices.

Promoting gender expression by having inclusive discussions about it, only embeds these prejudices more IMO because it makes out that a girl wearing a ‘boy’s shirt’ is somehow different and needs a different, special label because well, hey don’t they know it’s a boy’s shirt? and wow, they’re a girl so ooh, that can’t be right blah blah.

We don’t need gender (the middle-man, as I called it above). All we need to do is emphasise that both sexes can wear what they want, do what they want, be brave, cry, etc, and not have boys toys, girls clothes, etc.

I should have said TRAs, not necessarily trans people.

@pensivepigeon I disagree. We currently hear constantly about celebrating gender diversity, and it is always tied to trans. It's always part of LGBT. It creates a world of ever-narrower labels and a focus on external presentation. It is given so much importance and airtime that people increasingly consider it more salient than sex itself. I agree, you would think that decoupling it from sex would allow people to see them as clearly distinct and be able to appreciate the need for sex-based protections. But in practice, the idea of celebrating gender diversity is nowadays used to muddy the waters and prove a point about everything being on a spectrum and all divisions being meaningless bigotry. As soon as you say "but sex is still real, right?" you get a tidal wave of sophistry telling you that sex itself is on a spectrum.

That is one reason why I think we need to dial back the focus on gender, not increase it.

Oh op, how disappointing. There was I wondering if you were on to some clever theory that was sailing over our heads. But basically it seems to boil down to yet another telling off for arguing too aggressively.

*suggesting

Arguing with them too aggressively, (even if it is only hyperbole) will only serve to make them feel demonised and turn them away from the gender critical cause.

So what do you actually propose? Currently any statement of fact regarding sex as a binary (to take one example) is branded as transphobia. Where are you suggestion the concessions are made?

Ooh ooh ooh! If a man is discriminated against for wearing lipstick to work, isn't that simply sex discrimination?

Would that not go for all instances of someone being discriminated against for doing something commonly done by their opposite-sex colleagues?

I don't know, really. Does a man need to wear lipstick to work more than a Goth needs to wear all-black to work? Where do we draw the line and say this is a matter for individuals to negotiate between themselves?

bourbonne yes I think gender identity is better served under beliefs, but some people do undergo extreme body modification, surgery, hormone treatment etc to drastically alter their physical appearance. So it seems a bit odd to place such people under 'beliefs' I guess? Unless we place gender identity under beliefs, but class people who have drastically altered their physical appearance under gender reassignment but defining it better so it is clear no one is changing or reassigning sex?

@NonnyMouse1337 I started to wonder "but how would an employer know who has professed a gender identity?" and then I had a brainwave... pronouns in email signatures!

How brilliant - a get-out-of-jail-free card in case I'm ever discriminated against for not having professed my gender identity in this way!

Seriously, though - could this fit better under the "beliefs" protected characteristic? Fingers crossed for Maya's appeal?

[quote bourbonne]@NonnyMouse1337 who would be the comparator? If I said I had a female gender identity, and then my brother said he also now had a female gender identity, and then my sister said she had no gender identity at all... Where does that leave us in relation to each other, and to what purpose? Genuine question.[/quote]
Hmmm I don't know. 🤔🤔

Maybe the comparator is a person who professes to have a gender identity vs someone who makes no such claim?

If a person claims to be gender fluid or has a gender identity of female/woman, for example, and they find their employer has avoided giving them a promotion (because the employer has some sort of prejudice towards non-binary/trans people) and has instead favoured someone who doesn't profess to have a gender identity, then that's discrimination.

I agree with your subsequent post that we already have the category of gender reassignment, which is a strange term, but we can rename it if needed and tidy up the definition without impacting the characteristic of sex.

I think it muddies the waters. Basically, it seems to mean "showing characteristics typical of another protected characteristic, but not convincingly enough to make discrimination by perception a possibility".

I absolutely think that you can be discriminated against for gender identity. There is a massive downside for men to not do performing masculinity. A biological male who shows up in a dress and make-up may definitely me discriminated against or steered away from certain roles.

But this discrimination is different from the one women face. A trans woman will never be passed over for promotion because her boss thinks she might get pregnant.

The issues are different and should be dealt with separately.

I suppose (sorry to keep posting as I think) I don't see that people can be discriminated against for their "gender identity". If I were discriminated against for, er, feminine-related reasons, it would in fact be sex discrimination, for I am indeed a woman, and an employer can't compare me to Philip in Finance who wears a dress on alternate days. Whereas if they discriminate against Philip for his frock-wearing, it is on the basis of gender reassignment and there'd be no point comparing him to me and my office frocks.

Does it just boil down to wanting a better term than "gender reassignment"? I think it would need to be specific that it refers only to cross-gender identification.

Then the next question is, what other modes of personal expression would there be calls to protect in law... Some perhaps less savoury than others. But I think I get what you're saying, @NonnyMouse1337 - that since we have gender reassignment in there already, we should tidy up the definition?

Not sure I agree, but interesting to mull over.

I thought I understood what you were saying, but I obviously don’t. What are we going to discuss? That’s a genuine question not a rhetorical one.

Inclusive of people who believe in gender identity? Well, I think most people are - they just don’t share that belief.