What does gender critical mean?

It was fascinating visiting East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down. Far less exposure to Western advertising, and (for example) underarm hair was considered normal. In West Germany at the same time, it was considered unsightly. I think advertising has a huge impact on norms. The efforts of marketers to persuade men that they need fancy grooming products, and that they also should use perfumes, moisturisers and makeup, have an effect on what society expects of men; women have been targeted more heavily and for longer.

Yes, but ... stereotypes sometimes influence behaviour. When boys are told "men don't cry" it tends to make them reluctant to cry in public, and that can even affect how much they actually cry even in private.

"Gender stereotypes" are both a simplification of statistical differences between women and men, and a simplification of real life personalities. Men may be typically more "masculine" than women, but the meaning of masculine is complex, a set of characteristics not a single characteristic. It is absolutely possible for a man or a woman to be more "feminine" than average on one measure, and more "masculine" than average on other measures.

And then some characteristics vary in other ways than "gender". I don't think the enjoyment of reading is a gendered characteristic, for instance.

I think you have that backwards. If one believes a significant amount of human sex differences in behaviour/norms is driven by innate evolved mating behaviour (and I don't, I think our innate behaviours such as they are are so deeply refracted through socialisation that only the latter is significant now), the fact that we are not fertile all our lives doesn't preclude some lifetime behaviours and expectations being set by the needs of when we are.

All this generalisation about human behavior being driven by mate selection is ignoring the fact that most women live for decades after we stop being fertile. And remain women, not men.

Also noting that through most of human history men have been making themselves beautiful by the standards of their culture to show their social status even if they don't need to worry about attracting a mate.

Some differences between men and women are innate, and some are contrived, and finding which is which requires some effort.

But at least some contrived differences can be spotted because they both defy logic and serve an obvious agenda.

For example, despite the sexes having the same average IQ, and women drivers being a better insurance risk, women (never men) have often been deemed too stupid to vote or drive.

Because the paternity of children must be assured, and that means women must be controlled. (Also, I guess that, being stronger than us, they just do it because they can.)

That's why radical feminists are critical of imposed gender norms and are also sex realists, given the roots of the problem in women's gestational potential. It follows that their feminism is of no use to transwomen, and a transwoman who self-identifies as a feminist is an idiot.

GC has become synonymous with sex realism, even though not all sex realists are GC. Maybe because gender ideology is a big problem for women, so it was feminists who noticed first. The Taliban are non-GC sex realists.

No, obviously not. In fact I've had to argue against the assumption that "genderless" == "what men do today" quite often on this board because the people who believe that more of gendered behaviour is innate than I do tend to project that onto me!

I don't think I'm "really" some other or mystery, I think that is load of gendered bollocks that only gained traction because men have had the upper hand in defining society for a very long time.

But like it or not, the reality is men have had, and currently still have, the upper hand in defining society, and therefore these myths do have weight and do affect us.

What I'm saying is that things are not black and white. We need single sex provisions to protect women today but also some of the problematic behaviour and ideas of men are rooted in that separation. So while we obviously can't solve that by just flinging the doors open as long as there are still real risks and disadvantages that men pose to women, we also need to recognise that segration itself causes problems and find ways to address that too.

It's different in humans because we have weak babies that take a long time to rear. Women and their offspring have better prospects of surviving and passing on their genes if they can get men to stick around. At a basic level. it's to a woman's advantage if she can maintain and appearance of youth and fertility as that is what men are generally attracted to.

You could say that this kind of analysis is depressing but I think the idea that women around the world have just been duped into wearing make-up etc. is more depressing, as well as being unrealistic.

@FlirtsWithRhinos "But the very act of keeping them out also perpetuates the dehumanising of women as "other" or "mystery"."
Aren't you just assuming here that the view from the males' perspective is the real one?
If women are excluding male people from our space we're not a mystery to each other. If we take ourselves and each other seriously we can't be Other.
This is the constant risk, that what is called "genderlessness" is actually just defaulting to the male.

100%.

Humans, unlike most animals, are able to change their environment and to a great degree their behaviour by choice.

Here's how it might have gone down...

Human males realised if they "owned" a human female they didn't need to compete to mate with her every time. So they domesticated us like humans domesticated animals and crops. We as females became "owned" by one man - we lost our right to choose our mates each time we mate. We moved from "females pick the males" to "men pick the women".

So women's place in (many) human cultures became dependant on having a male owner. And once women only had one chance to attract a single man to "own" us the stakes for both men and women to make the right choice became far higher - men because they would "own" us permanently and women because they had one chance to secure the best mate.

But since women weren't the ones doing the picking now, their best strategy was to be a woman that many men would want, to make sure they were picked and by a high status man.

So became rational for women to enhance whatever the men wanted to see in women. When that norm is socialised into gender, we get femininity and "women care more about their appearance". But it's not natural, it's learned behaviour.

It's just a story, sure. But it's no less reasonable than the widespread assumption that women "naturally" feel the need to enhance themselves to capture a man, and in fact given how our close ape relatives live, mine rings truer.

That's bizarre to think that because it is biologically driven it has to be in nearly 100% of women and nearly 0% of men.

Height is biologically driven and men are on average taller than women. There is a lot of overlap and if someone is eg 5'7" you won't be able to accurately guess their sex from their height, but men are still on average taller than women.

No, it was @Yarden's first post that made me think of Greer. I'm reminded of that chapter every time someone on these boards asks something along the lines of, are gender norms always bad?
I think it's helpful to ask, "Am I only doing this because I'm female and that's what's expected of us?" But also, "Am I only ashamed of doing this because it's associated with being female?"
I don't think it's straightforward untangling all that.
And in relation to trans stuff, for male people becoming "female" is always about subjugation, humiliation, emasculation.
I feel like we have to push in two directions at once to push back against the lies.

Women use appearance for status and to access higher quality mates.
Men use money and achievement for status and access to higher quality mates.

It's what explains attractive young women with old rich men.

Men and women also use these status markers to signal status within sex. Women judge each other on appearance and men on wealth and achievement.

Obviously these are generalisations and many don't but it's a stereotype because it's an observable pattern.

It always amazes me the degree to which people cling to blank slate theory that we have no sex related behaviours everything is top down taught from culture.

When it's just observably not true.

Some people seem so frightened that saying human females use appearance as a reproductive strategy will mean they are forced to wear makeup, that they seem prepared to go along with a nonsense theory that everything is nurture.
And designed to suppress women.

This is where feminism starts to look like a cult with dogma to most people.

I reflect on the animal kingdom - amongst mammals, like other groups, it's the males who have to look good for the females. Their reproductive strategy is to sow their seed in as many females as possible. They're not fussy. There is no risk or major investment. The females are picky because they have a small number of very expensive gametes and the physical and psychological investment is huge. I don't see why that would be different for humans. We've all seen the clips of young Masai men leaping up and down to impress the girls of the tribe. Human males show off in the presence of females.

Even in species where the male has a harem, they fight other males for sexual access rights. The females only have to be fertile. So I tend to think that worrying a lot about your appearance is encouraged, at least, by gender stereotypes.

I think what is biologically driven in women is caring (and worrying) about one's appearance more than men on average.

So if this was true, and biology was a direct predictor of wanting to look attractive to the opposite sex, we would see it in nearly 100% of women and nearly 0% of men, wouldn't we?

Do you genuinely think this is the case?

Or have you thought about what expectations are placed on the classes of people that until very recently (evolutionarily speaking) were either the physical workers or the child-bearers, not having much choice about either?

Why does removing all segregation help stop women being unfairly limited, etc. Surely what would help with that is the destruction of gender. The actual un-artificial issues women have to do with their sex, their vulnerability to males, is not going to change.

You've got it backwards.

Firstly, I didn't say all. I explicitly said we don't need to set a specific target.

I'm saying assume we don't innately need sex segregation, work towards that, then where/if we find we do need it, keep it.

That's not the same as saying it's always bad.

I'm saying question it. I'm not saying remove it arbitrariily.

Secondly, on "Surely what would help with that is the destruction of gender."

Sex segregation create issues as well as solve them.

Women's private spaces, for example, exist to remove both the physical/sexual risk of assault and the emotional strain of being alert to that risk all the time, of feeling unsafe or encrouched on by men.

However, the reason some men have a "womens toilet" fetish is exactly because it's a place they can't go, associated with a part of the body they don't have and is considered transgressive to see.

Right now, those men exist (oh how they exist) so we have to keep them out. That's non-negotiable. But the very act of keeping them out also perpetuates the dehumanising of women as "other" or "mystery".

Obviously we can't solve that by getting rid of single sex spaces while we still need them. But you can recognise that enforced (as opposed to voluntary, like your example of the women who spent a lot of time apart from their men but sometimes come together) sex segregation has repercussions in artificially over-emphasising the importance of differences between men and women - in other words, allowing gender to creep back in.

But your utopia of no sex segregation relies on not one single man being dangerous to women and using his superior size and strength. That will never happen. Otherwise you're saying it's fine to sacrifice a few women to the greater good of no segregation and the (IMO) myth of the sexes being identical.

As you say, it's a Utopia. It's not supposed to be a blueprint for feminism in the real world - not a target, remember - it's supposed to be an ideal to measure against to stop us falling into gendered traps. We should always ask why we need a specific supprt or segregation. Does that reason still hold? Are we allowing the existence of the support to let society off the hard work of actually dealing with the underlying problem, or is this a fact of life that will always be with us? Because Gender, Sexism, Unconscious Bias, whatever you want to call it - this thing doesn't come with a label saying "fake" so we can all see it for what it is. It pretends to be "natural", "the way things are", "innate differences".

It's also not "not one single man". It's "men are no more a risk to women than other women".

But the idea of "sacrifice a few women to the greater good of no segregation and the (IMO) myth of the sexes being identical" is also a misrepresentation. It's not about some theoretical idea of equality - remember, it's not a target - it's about a balance between the risk to individual women from men and whether we can reduce that at source rather than just remove the women, versus the harm done to women as a whole by perpetuating the segregation that emphasis our differences and causes men to other and fetishise us.

That’s a sex based description, not a gender based one. A gender based description would be anyone wearing a dress is the safest for a lost child to ask for help.

Whereas I can't think of anything that is more obviously socially constructed than "privacy and dignity" or "modesty"!

Maybe, but it's not innately a bad thing, is it? I mean, arguably modesty = having boundaries. It applies to men as well as women.

What is undeniable is that right now plenty of women do experience being unfairly limited, characterised or abused because of their sex (including self limitation that is only recognised in hindsight),
Agreed.

so the starting point does not have to be "what's the 'right' level of segregation to stop at?", it can just be "what's the right direction of travel to make things better?".
We agree on the direction of travel, that the socialisation of men needs to change. As does the socialisation of women. But your utopia of no sex segregation relies on not one single man being dangerous to women and using his superior size and strength. That will never happen. Otherwise you're saying it's fine to sacrifice a few women to the greater good of no segregation and the (IMO) myth of the sexes being identical.
Why does removing all segregation help stop women being unfairly limited, etc. Surely what would help with that is the destruction of gender. The actual un-artificial issues women have to do with their sex, their vulnerability to males, is not going to change.

Is this a reply to me? If so you have fundamentally misunderstood what I am saying.

Whereas I can't think of anything that is more obviously socially constructed than "privacy and dignity" or "modesty"!

But my whole point is that there's no need to define this stuff upfront. Maybe you are right about where the natural differences line is. Maybe I am. What is undeniable is that right now plenty of women do experience being unfairly limited, characterised or abused because of their sex (including self limitation that is only recognised in hindsight), so the starting point does not have to be "what's the 'right' level of segregation to stop at?", it can just be "what's the right direction of travel to make things better?".

The measure shouldn't be target numbers or a desired known future, it's whether women today are still saying there is a problem.

I must have met different men. Even the majority of them, who don't suddenly decide to dress as some kind of deluded porno fantasy, are very focussed on looking 'right'. Uniforms, vestments, rules about shaving or not shaving, old school ties, agonising about pefectly normal, non-health-related hair loss, snarking about other men's height, it goes on and on, and they can be very fragile around it.

I think what is biologically driven in women is caring (and worrying) about one's appearance more than men on average.

The way it might manifest might change over time. Trends come and go and obviously make-up wasn't so widely available in the past, but the underlying issue remains constant in my view across time and cultures and is likely biological.

I honestly think that some people who act like it's purely a social thing are divorced from reality 🤷‍♀️

@I’ve finally found the section from Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman that often comes to mind on these discussion threads:
“Some say that women shall not be free until they are liberated from womanhood itself. Judith Lorber looked forward to an age when we might no longer ask at birth what sex a child is, because it will be of no consequence.

• “When we no longer ask “boy or girl?” in order to start gendering an infant, when the information is as irrelevant as the color of the child’s eyes (but not yet the color of skin), then and only then will women and men be socially interchangeable and really equal. And when that happens there will no longer be any need for gender at all.”

• “The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bi-sexuality, pre-Oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity … the cyborg is resolutely committed to pariality, irony, intimacy and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian and completely without innocence … I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.

@FlirtsWithRhinos
Privacy and dignity is just as important as safety. Men and women are always going to be physically different and have different physiological experiences. We can tell men about periods and embarrassing flooding, but they won't experience it. We can imagine the embarrassment of inappropriately timed erections, but we can't experience it. It's not wrong of people to want privacy, or have modesty. Too often these days a desire for privacy is rebranded as shame. (Not saying you are doing this.)

I don't see why it is a necessarily a good aspiration to make males and females mix all the time. We should be able to pretty much do any job we like, but we can't be each other and sometimes it's healing and simpler (for both men and women) to just be around our own sex. The nuclear family is a fairly recent development for humans. (Caveat for that statement and this next bit - I have no particular expertise or knowledge of ancient history, I'm just repeating what I have read).
Stone Age peoples and tribes split off into men and women even when they are doing the same activity - eg dancing or hunting. One pregnancy every four years doesn't suggest living together a lot.
The women of ancient Scythian tribes of the Steppes and near Asia sometimes wouldn't see their husbands/partners/sons for years - and these societies were known for sex equality.

Back to safety - even in the unlikely event that men are socialised to be as unaggressive as women, they will still be bigger and stronger and they will still have more innate aggression and a higher sex drive, so they will still have the means and motivation to enact sexual violence on women. We can reduce the number of males who are like this, of course, but we can't eliminate it. That's where the SS spaces come in.

Is this directed at me? That's the exact opposite of what I believe