Why conflate 'Gender Critical' and belief in immutable sex?

*and not but.

@Beancounter1 I've been running the exact same ideas through too and was looking fir threads that discusd it.

Someone mentions sex-based personality traits but if sex-based personality traits are an outcome of our biology someone like DH can't possibly know what these sex-based traits feel like because he doesn't have my female biology which leaves gendered stereotypes. 200,000 years of modern humans, that's a lot of nurture to unpick.

When the babies grow up into adults, the original sex differences have interacted with society and become gender differences. Is this a plausible explanation?

I don't think so. The sex differences remain sex differences, because they are immutable. If, for example, a natal male identifies as being of female gender, what does that actually mean? What characteristics make that the case? If you try to think of examples of possible signs/characteristics, such as preferring dresses, liking hobbies and interests which have been more popular with women, having personality traits which have been more commonly associated with women etc, those are simply stereotypes. They don't make anyone female. They don't add up to a gender. Indeed, it's perfectly common to be an actual woman and have none of those characteristics. So how can those characteristics possibly make you a woman?

I am gender critical because a) I am critical of gender in the sense of gender roles. They are old-fashioned, sexist and damaging, and imo people should be dismantling them rather than re-labelling and even physically altering themselves in order to fit in with them. And b) I don't think gender exists except as a bunch of stereotypes.

What "gender critical" people have been fighting has changed. They didn't choose their battles, their battles chose them.

It was "Let Toys Be Toys". Now it's "Sex Matters".

Maya Forstater co-founded organisations with both names. She gets stuff done!

And adding to that - there is overlap between some gender identity believers and gender criticals.

Non-binaries will generally approve of "Let Toys Be Toys" and will say gendered toys are a bad idea.

It's just they haven't realised that the idea of gendered souls belongs in the same dustbin. They accept the idea, but say that they as an individual just happen not to have one, while everyone else does.

(Neoliberalism again! See the libfem thread).

'Gender critical' thought does not deny the existence of gender stereotypes or the fact that people identify with these stereotypes but it is critical of the way in which society places importance on these stereotypes and imposes these on others.

What is does reject is that there is any evidence that gender identity is in any way universal, not that all gender identities fit into categories but that there are people who have no gender identity and do not seek to have one. Similar in a way that atheists do not seek to find god in a way that is meaningful to them.

Gender critical is the first. Gender is restrictive sex roles. Let's let anyone dress, behave etc as they wish and not have this is for men and this is for women.

This somewhat differs from my bullet points above, but I agree that this is the original foundation.

And as I said on the other thread the "Let Toys Be Toys" campaign is pure Gender Critical - an example of that core belief applied without any reference to this trans thing.

That core belief was very much the original philosophical basis of early opposition to "gender identity" - gendered souls are as harmful an idea as gendered toys.

So as "gender identity" got bigger, "gender critical" has come to be identified with the opposition to "gender identity" (rather than "gender" as restrictive sex roles), because gender critical feminists were there and saw the potential problems first.

Many now seeing the practical problems with gender ideology may not have been coming at it from a philosophical "gender critical" position - certainly conservative opponents would not.

We don't have a solid name for broader "gender identity" opponents - but then we don't have a solid name for its proponents either.

But in a way I'm glad that the name that's stuck for the opposition is the one rooted in the left-wing philosophy. Rather than something right-wing. It's going to get people to look into that more left-wing feminist side, and I think it strengthens us. (Much as "TERF" can when people stop and dig into the "radical feminism" bit...)

I don't think it's a great name tbh but in the end I'm not sure that matters.

Gender used to mean sex role. Still is used that way a lot if you look at WHO etc.

Then for ? politeness and for unknown reasons gender started getting used to mean sex on lots of forms etc.

And then finally the concept of an internal gender ID, also usually referred to simply as gender.

So all pretty confusing with 3 definitions.

Gender critical is the first. Gender is restrictive sex roles. Let's let anyone dress, behave etc as they wish and not have this is for men and this is for women.

I suppose the term is used because the idea of knowing inside you are the wrong sex. Means that there must be innate things inside. A female brain. Etc. And how can anyone know how opposite sex people feel? What is it based on unless feeling more at home in a different gender role?

Like I say it's not a great name but it's what has stuck.

It's not about being critical of individuals who feel they have an internal gender etc. The issue is around changing laws conventions in place for a good reason to be based on an invisible internal feeling rather than sex.

Although I question whether the idea that pretty much everyone has a strongly felt internal sense of gender id is true. Loads of people don't. I don't think it's ever been properly studied.

But I still don't find the label 'gender critical' particularly useful or self-explanatory.

You're not alone. There was a thread on this the other day.

I liked the idea of calling us "sex people" - an Alan Partridge reference.

I don't think that was broadly accepted - nor was anything else.

Thread: I don't much care for the 'gender critical' handle. Is there anything better.

but gender traits are real and people have real (to them) identification with sets of gender traits that they call 'gender identity'. Not everyone does this so not everyone has a gender identity, but everyone has some or other gender traits, as it is part of being human.

Hmm. It's true that despite broad equality, men and women do behave in typical ways, and there is certainly male-typical and female-typical dress patterns. (Some of which arise in part from body shape, some is sexual signalling, some is pretty arbitrary).

And people have different levels of interest in how much they follow society-typical sexual signalling. Some conform by default, some take pleasure in conforming, some don't want to conform, some want to conform to the stereotypical opposite sex, and be treated as the opposite sex by sufficient opposite-sex signalling

But, and it's a big but, those who want to not conform, or want to conform to the opposite, are often seeming to follow rather odd stereotyped views.

Both transwomen (particularly heterosexual) and transmen often tend to dress in ways which really aren't very typical of the opposite sex in reality, but actually signal "too hard" in a rather stereotyped way. It's not really conventional "gender expression" of the opposite sex.

And that then distorts things, particularly for women. "Woman" as role-played by heterosexual transwomen is not something most actual women are going to relate to. Which seems to quite naturally be leading young women to decide that well, they're not "women" as per that characterisation, so they must be "non-binary".

But regardless of this "gender expression" - which may be excessively opposite-sex stereotypical, the actual behaviour patterns of transmen and transwomen remain very sex-typical. Transwomen are more violent, aggressive and overbearing, transmen are more self-concious. Behaviour remains very sex-typical, suggesting that this inner "gender identity" thing they claim to have - something in the brain - is not related to any sort of "innate biological sex role", nor does it show signs of matching the "gender identity" that the opposite sex is supposed to have.

I see no statistical common behaviour between transmen and men, and transwomen and women. No evidence of an "opposite-sex brain". Trans people generally behave like non-trans people of the same sex with the same sexual orientation.

So my rejection of it is not just really on philosophical grounds - I genuinely cannot see the behaviour difference you would expect to see if there was this "gender identity" commonality.

Except for the capitalist part. Gender has nothing to do with or any influence on what economic system is in place.

Theoretically maybe not, but in practice our supposedly capitalist society (goods and labour exchanged for money) is underpinned by a huge amount of unpaid labour that is done disproportionately by women due to their reproductive role (sex) and socialisation as support humans (gender).

If women just stopped that unpaid labour - the childcare, the domestic labour, the caring - capitalism would sure as hell notice.

Whereas 'gender' is a real phenomenon?
Or am I just tying myself in knots with words?

Maybe. Try expressing what you want to say without using the word "gender". It's too overloaded. Particularly on its own, but even with other words attached, you rapidly enter circular definitions.

Possible substitutes - "sex stereotypes", "sex roles", "sexual signalling", "sex-typical characteristics"...

You seem keen. I suggest this video:

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper really digs into this - into the laws and documents and academic texts talking about gender, and finding all the circularities.

(This is one of the two videos that transwoman Debbie Hayton credits for a conversion to being gender critical.)

Indeed, if that trait can occur in a male, it's not a female trait, is it?

Actually I don't like that. You could still say something is a "female trait". Something that is 98% true is a reasonable thing to say, even if there are exceptions.

Females are attracted to males. That is true at the 95%+ level. If you were David Attenborough, you would be quite happy saying something 95% true about an animal you were describing without qualifying it.

Finding 5% of the population are an exception just means your original statement was not 100% true. Being attracted to males is a female trait, but not all females have it, and a few males do have it.

A male having this female trait does not make them a female though. They're a gay male.

probably disagree with 3,

Are you sure? I'm not saying there are not sex roles, or sex-related behaviour. I believe, like you, there are male and female character traits.

But a male exhibiting traits that normally appear in females is not evidence of that male having a "female soul". It's a statistical outlier.

Indeed, if that trait can occur in a male, it's not a female trait, is it?

If "gender identity" were a good model, it would be better applied to sexuality. Sex attraction is so strongly associated with sex, that it would make sense to say a gay man had a "female gender identity" and a lesbian had a "male gender identity". But that's a rubbish model, and it's demeaning.

They're just unusual men and women.

I think there are some people on the gender-critical side who would hold those 4 points, and also believe that there aren't sex-related traits - we're blank slates and it's all socialisation.

So we're not unified on that, and I'm not including either view in the bullet points. We're just saying that either way (blank slate or sex-related statistical trends), you don't have gendered souls, or "brains in the wrong body".

Ok, well let's deal with 4 first: "gender stereotypes are harmful". Two quick examples. There is a gender stereotype that women aren't good leaders, and this has the effect of making women less likely to be selected for senior roles. There is a gender stereotype that "boys don't cry", which I would argue has the effect of making it harder for boys to learn how to cope with their emotions. I think you would agree these are harmful?

WRT nature Vs nurture I found "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine a fascinating and accessible read. "The Gendered Brain" by Gina Rippon is also a good read.