What's going on with Genspect?

I don't know enough about law to comment on your question, OldCrone, but the judgemetn certainly seems to have been accepted in the UK as 'gender critical' beliefs broadly, especially when people are talking about discrimination, etc.

I agree that I would have said all feminism is 'gender critical' - and I'd suggest it has the second meaning of the word 'critical' - questioning, considering, not necessarily merely 'criticising', sexist stereotypes.

1. expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgements.

1. expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art.

(Google's Oxford definition).

The appeal judge said, 'We refer in this judgment to that belief as the “gender-critical belief”' and the judge upheld the appeal.

This is 'gender-critical belief' as protected in UK law. It's not particularly a feminist belief, or a belief at all, it's just stating facts. It's arguably a belief that it's sex which is fundamentally important, rather than gender, but that's all.

Does the judge using this term in the judgment mean that "gender-critical belief" now has a legal meaning in UK law, or is that term used by the judge just as a convenient shorthand for what might otherwise be a long paragraph setting out the definition?

If this is now the legal meaning of "gender critical" in the UK, does that mean that those of us who thought this term meant "critical of gender" in a more general sense now have to find a new term for "critical of gender", so that the term "gender critical" can be used to mean "sex is biologically immutable. There are only two sexes, male and female...etc" as in the judgment?

It's all a bit confusing, because people outside the UK (as well as those in the UK who haven't read the whole Forstater ruling) might continue to use the term "gender critical" to mean "critical of gender".

Same, Eresh. I'm not really interested in what labels may apply. I'm just a genderfluid nonbinary demifemi frostsexual post-Marxist kinda guy. I mean gal.

'Gender Critical' has always been a contested term. If you've been around FWR for a long time then you should know that. There have been plenty of threads.

I agree. I use it because there needs to be an umbrella term for the fightback against gender identity ideology and it's a broad church. But I would specifically call myself a GC feminist rather than GC.

'Gender critical' can refer to the beliefs as set out in Forstater:

'Gender-critical beliefs include the belief that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity.'

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/

It's more useful to refer to 'gc beliefs' than 'gc people', given that the latter includes almost everyone, which gives a category so large and so full of people with other wildly conflicting ideas as to be almost useless. It's similar to 'spherical earth' beliefs, I suppose.

@MalagaNights you say, 'I am a sex realist interested in women's issues, but I'm not a GC feminist.'

Do you consider yourself 'gender-critical'? What is your own relationship to that term?

The Forstater judgment sets out what 'gender critical belief' means in terms of legal protection in the EA.

The original judgment said:

"The core of the Claimant's belief is that sex is biologically immutable. There are only two sexes, male and female. She considers this is a material reality. Men are adult males. Women are adult females. There is no possibility of any sex in between male and female; or that is a person is neither male nor female. It is impossible to change sex. Males are people with the type of body which, if all things are working, are able to produce male gametes (sperm). Females have the type of body which, if all things are working, is able to produce female gametes (ova), and gestate a pregnancy. It is sex that is fundamentally important, rather than “gender”, “gender identity” or “gender expression”. She will not accept in any circumstances that a trans woman is in reality a woman or that a trans man is a man. That is the belief that the Claimant holds.”

The appeal judge said, 'We refer in this judgment to that belief as the “gender-critical belief”' and the judge upheld the appeal.

https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2021/0105_20_1006.html

This is 'gender-critical belief' as protected in UK law. It's not particularly a feminist belief, or a belief at all, it's just stating facts. It's arguably a belief that it's sex which is fundamentally important, rather than gender, but that's all.

Matt Walsh would absolutely be protected for sharing these 'gender critical' beliefs in the UK and I'm completely fine with that. I don't think anyone should be discriminated against for stating facts about sex even if they are an arsehole in many other ways.

As we have all seen, it is mostly women losing their jobs and it is the most vulnerable women, girls and children who are harmed when women are prevented from speaking up. So I don't care if it's not technically a 'belief'. I think Maya Forstater's ET was a superb practical thing to do which has made a huge difference, not only to women's employment rights, but also to the safety of children and vulnerable adults - because the women who speak up for them can no longer be sacked with impunity.

'Gender Critical' popped up out of nowhere in about 2018 and it never applied to just feminists. It has always been an 'umbrella' term or, as Genspect like to call it, a 'Big Tent' or, as I like to call it, 'forced teaming'.

People in the 'Big Tent':

• Feminists, some of whom adopt the GC label, many of whom never have
• Women's rights activists who say they're not feminists
• Parents whose children are affected
• Transwidows, children of trans, siblings etc.
• Lesbians
• Gay men
• Free speech campaigners
• Detransitioners, both male and female
• DSD rights campaigners
• People who care about safeguarding
• Philosophers
• Sexologists
• 'Rational trans' in all its dismal iterations (the chap in this case is an example of this)
• Biologists, and scientists more generally
• Sportswomen and sports fans who care about fairness
• Religious people who know what god made woman as
• Right wing people who know what a woman is
• I'm sure I forgot a few, it's basically everyone who is no longer willing or able to suspend their disbelief.

This article linked upthread is a great example of why 'Gender critical' is a problem:

https://medium.com/@amykronenberg1/phil-illy-and-genspects-autogynephilia-problem-54fabf3fcc68

It speaks repeatedly of 'the gender-critical movement' and 'the gender-critical community'. It describes Genspect as a 'gender-critical organisation' and describes 'angered gender-critical reactions' to what has happened. The author then says:

In my opinion, this controversy is emblematic of a larger issue facing the gender-critical community — one that threatens to cleave it apart from the inside: The inherent contradiction between radical feminists and other interest groups.
(my bold)

But this is not a new issue! 'Gender critical' has always been a problem since it was first coined. It has always meant that feminists should team up with some really nasty men and should STFU about anything that alarms us so as not to harm the wider 'gender critical cause', or else be 'driven out' as the author suggests. And some women have been driven out.

This 2019 thread is a good discussion of the issue:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3647573-Dickpandering-in-feminism

'Gender Critical' has always been a contested term. If you've been around FWR for a long time then you should know that. There have been plenty of threads.

Nevertheless, there have also been many interesting discussions here about what 'gender-critical' might mean as a feminist term - what it might mean to be critical of gender and whether that's the same as wanting an end to sex-role stereotypes, where 'gender' ends and biology begins etc. I just don't see why that needs a new term, surely that's just feminism.

Genspect doesn't work with children and never did. It's so strange the way everyone on this thread appears to believe it does

My Mum's advice was that you were probably dressed appropriately if you were presenting the weather and nobody noticed you.

You’re not a prude, you’re someone with common sense boundaries who thinks people should have consideration for others. There’s a happy medium between Victorian formality and Hippie love-ins, our society seems to have forgotten this.

It’s easy to dismiss women’s concerns by calling us frigid, prudish, batty, etc - male sexuality dislikes limits being put on it and reacts very nastily to women who try to restrain it. Helen Joyce & Trish Wood discuss this in a recent podcast (from 30 mins forward)

https://overcast.fm/+dqD_2FBBs/33:01

I have become Mary Whitehouse and I don't care.

Interesting thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4497416-Mary-Whitehouse-a-reappraisal

A woman who correctly interpreted what was happening with PIE and the Home Office.

https://whatcanidoaboutit.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/mary-whitehouse-versus-pie-the-home-office-1978/

Mary Whitehouse and her letter to BBC's Director-General, Charles Curran about the song:

https://droppedthemoon.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-great-chuck-berry-has-passed-away.html

Maybe this should have been discussed in the public arena but how many more instances like this would have occurred, and, given the period, how much of it would have been dismissed as Boys will be boys?

My suspicion is more than if they don't think Genspect would get anywhere they'd be nowhere near it. But they do, so that's where they will go next.

Yes they, AGPs.

It's not solely about 'the long game', I'd suggest.

Which is more inviting to a boundary transgressor - a conference where they are welcome and accepted, or a conference where they cause scandal, upset and strife?

It is VERY hard for people to understand personality disorders because they don't follow the normal social rules or expected course of action. It is important to remember the word 'disorder' is there for a reason.

I'm not making any political points at all, other than I'm sick of having to play nicely to men who fetishise womanhood. Why do they fetishise it? Because of the power imbalance.

It's all about power. Always.

I'm not really making big political points or trying to argue who should be prioritised or even worrying about people deliberately undermining the rules - just saying that it's up to the conference organisers to set the rules of engagement and to say clearly what they are.

As far as I can tell Phil Illy and his outfit didn't pose an immediate safeguarding threat to participants, though I agree that indirectly there are many concerns that the organisers do need to think through. And safeguarding is a separate question from whether there is a net positive or negative effect.

Genspect might not be able to host a single conference that meets all these different needs. It's potentially a positive thing to host different events and different kinds of events with different attendees - a sign of how many people with many different backgrounds and perspectives are deeply enagaged in what Genspect have to offer. So Genspect need to consider what/who their main conference is for, and what the limits are.

Ironically if the main conferene is "for anyone and everyone" then the limits may actually have to be tighter and more conventional than an event with more limited attendance.

Personally I'm glad that Julia is at the conference offering the insight that Julia brings. However, I rely on Genspect to set the right safeguarding measures for Julia to follow in both attending the conference and in how influencial Julia's voice is in shaping the framework.

Remind me, isn't this basically how all the organisations got initially captured in the first place?

It is text book 'get in at the start' infiltration.

Oh, it's always our fault.

Interesting article about Genspect 'debacle' which seems to boil down to ‘it’s not Genspect or the men who created the problem, it’s all feminists’ fault for being nasty'. 🤷‍♀️

https://medium.com/@amykronenberg1/phil-illy-and-genspects-autogynephilia-problem-54fabf3fcc68

I'd put money on "playing the long game".

Some groups are outstanding at the long game.

In a conversation between Gluck and Glinner, it's obvious that it's a deliberate strategy because various organisations had previously been stopped by feminists, lesbians, women.

That's why there's been so much care to demonise women, marginalise and traduce us so that our voices are disdained and ignored. (Denton's playbook is very clear about this and it's been very successful.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1760s&v=mS8ZfFZ-Bc0

In another thread, zeldafighter cited this piece from 2014 that reinforces the tactic of cancelling and boycotting women.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Thomas Szasz's 1979 review in the NYT of Raymond's Transsexual Empire:

Miss Raymond has rightly seized on transsexualism as an emblem of modern society's unremitting — though increasingly concealed — antifeminism.…

Janice Raymond's analysis is bitterly correct. The very existence of the “transsexual empire” is evidence of the persistence of our deep‐seated religious and cultural prejudices against woman.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/archives/male-and-female-created-he-them-transexual.html

@BonfireLady I'd put money on "playing the long game". TRAs overreached and the clever ones know that they need to row back for now.

This is very much a "give an inch" situation. We've seen it time and again. That's why so many of us react so viscerally to AGPs being given the time of day. Genspect are of course free to learn from AGPs, they can decide whether there is value in that particular course of action. But they don't have to do it at a mixed agenda conference, and they don't have to publish images of a man living his best fetish on their twitter account.

Bonfire, one of the things that puzzles me is that there are people in Genspect who work with children (for example Stella and Sasha work as adolescent therapists) and should have been trained in safeguarding procedures, so I’m confused as to why that training didn’t kick in when it came to organising the conference.

I’m honestly not trying to be unreasonable in my criticism of how things were handled but it seems such a glaring safeguarding error to allow that attendee’s behaviour (and to promote him) that I can’t understand how none of these professionals picked up on it.