Should gender critical people actually be non-binary?? Or should non-binary people actually be gender critical?? I'm struggling to see the difference

I agree. It's like the three Billy goats gruff: 'Oh don't eat me, eat my sisters.... they're FAR more binary!'

It’s also about recognising the relationship between sex and gender, and the distinction between them.

that sex is biological but doesn’t determine individual character or talents etc.

that gender is a socially constructed system of discrimination based on sex

that very little about gender, gender roles and gender stereotypes is innate or inevitable

Non binary people view themselves the way that GC people view them; and as GC people view themselves; as not being defined by gender stereotypes.

The difference is in how non-binary people view others. They believe that everyone else is one extreme or the other.

Non-binary is no good if you're GC because it effectively means you have no sex. They conflate gender and sex. Gender nonconforming means you deny innate gender and assert that it is simply social conditioning.

Young women today desperately need a good grounding in second wave feminism - 1970s Womens Lib, if you like!

because I thought much the same as you @FusionChefGeoff But in current terminology I’d say “gender non-conforming”. Those of us in what have long been considered as “mens jobs” for example - in my profession of academia fewer than 20% of the professoriate are women. If you’re a woman and a professor you’re pretty much gender non-conforming.

my opposition to “non-binary” is that it’s an attempt to evade gendered discrimination by reworking the individual body, rather than challenging the oppressive structures of gender and sex-based stereotypes.

iI ind no -binary to be the coward’s way out. It does nothing for other women and rejects sisterhood

They both seem to reject gender stereotypes, but that's about it I think?

A 'non-binary' GC thinks that gender expression is a spectrum - from very femenine to very masculine. Stereotypes do not have any effect on who you are.

A 'non-binary' GI thinks that gender identity is a spectrum - from 'girl/woman' to 'boy/man'. They use gender expression and stereotypes to assess their 'identity' and define themselves.

This!! Beautifully put.

There should be an 'applause' button here.

If you're gender critical, you don't get to insist that everyone else dances to your tune, you don't get to throw tantrums when someone slips up and uses the wrong set of made-up pronouns. Being non-binary on the other hand is a perfect way for life's drama queens to annoy everyone else.

Quite.

"I am stuffing you in a box, so I can demonstrate how free I am compared to you."

Yes, this is a great idea! I drive more than Dad, so I'm non-binary. He's quite sensitive and musical so maybe he's non-binary too. I earn more so that's a male kind of characteristic. Dad would like you to call them "she" and we'll let your school know before parents' evening. And I'm going to let my moustache grow because like, waxing is an aggression and facial hair so that's why I'm non-female now.

Yes, the smug, superior ‘hah!’ Tone was unmistakeable. That woman lecturing, ‘she just told you her pronouns were they and you called her she.’
well it’s obvious why he called that person ‘ she’. Because that person is unmistakably female. Even if everyone manages to succeed in the mental effort of permanently Centring your chosen pronoun preferences, they are still essentially lying to you when they use them. They all, all, even the most hard core genderists, see you as your sex. They can’t help it. Millions of years of evolution have hard wired it into their brains. Only serious medical intervention can change your outward appearance enough to fool your brain into thinking your sex is the opposite of what it is.
I don’t understand this desire to get people to lie to you.

Gender critical: people aren't defined by shallow gender stereotypes.

Nonbinary: I'm not defined by gender stereotypes but other people are.

You won't find a NB person anywhere who doesn't repeatedly chant "TWAW" and "TMAM" "NB lives are valid" along with all the rest of it including calling women "terf" and "boomer".

That's not living the way GC people do.

The only superficial similarly is thinking sex stereotypes are bad. That's where the similarities begin and end.

I had to smile when I read this because it is so true.

If you were an alien from another planet, and you landed in my local Tescos, you would think the uniform for the females of this country was a pair of jeans, some type of fleece or parka, and shoulder length hair.

There are no skirts, no high heels, no fully made-up faces, no skin-tight tops, no fucking knitting in the aisles because Tescos is the real world.

And that's the core of the issue here. Gender ideology is not a product of the real world; it is a creature of the hyperreal -- that mythical, fantastical, etheric realm of amorphous meanings and shifting impressions and platonic blueprints of the essence of bloody everything where an armchair slides into "sofa-ness" because it is a touch too upholstered and slightly too long.

Oh, let us decipher where the line between the armchair and the sofa doth lie! Hail, I am neither but a divan, you bigot!

Back in the real world, nobody really cares about any of it . . . until the moment they order a sofa and it comes and only one person can sit on it because it is actually a fucking armchair.

And everyone can see it's an armchair, everyone knows it's an armchair ... but no, we have to have all these people fluttering about, going "I think you'll find it's a sofa because #esoteric reasons."

And not only that, these people tell us that if we persist in thinking such things are armchairs, we are somehow bulwarks prohibiting the path of progress towards some wonderful future where bunnies hop everywhere and cartoon blackbirds chirrup on our shoulders.

I just can't with it anymore.

If someone came out as a 'gender non-conforming woman' would they be called a TERF?

Ugh. He does not understand why women DON"T want to open their safe spaces to men.

I have a 17-yr-old DS and for the life of me, often can't understand what he is on about. We had a big argument over women-only spaces the other day and had to agree to disagree. Obviously like many young people trying to be kind, he does not understand why women open their safe spaces to men. DH gets it though. There just seems to be a huge generation gap on this. He does have trans friends and perhaps thinks that all transwomen are as kind as his friends?

How so? Gender critical means believing that there is no innate gender (only innate physical sex) and that we should not be pressured into confirming with or identifying with gender stereotypes.

Non-binary means not identifying with gender stereotypes. It’s literally living the way that GC people do.

Oh

Everyone’s non-binary. No-one identifies with only male or only female stereotypes.

There’s something very strange about announcing that you are, or making it out to be a special feature.

It seems in many cases to be purely”look at me” performative; people wanting to be edgy.

sorely tempted!

marking so I can find later. I am totally confused by this issue and this appears to be the only place one can discuss it without being yelled at.

I agree with this.

I think people who wang on about their gender have either too much time on their hands or mistake having a gender with having a personality. Like hipsters and beards.