Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical? Plus poll on political view.

I couldn't vote because I'm conservative and liberal.

They are not opposites.

The left are the current authoritarians.

No one owns liberalism or authoritarianism they shift historically between the left and right.

But only the left seem blind to this.

I have no doubts and neither does my partner. We are both socialists. The Communist Party of Great Britain is firmly gender critical. I think your poll is a bit useless to be honest.

@UnlockedXCX OP, other posters are right that US and UK politics are very different and your categories don't really match the UK political landscape. It is true that a lot of the so-called progressive media (like the Guardian) and far too many public and cultural institutions have framed the gender issue in Left/Right terms and smeared people with sex realist/gender critical views as "right-wing bigots", but the main push back on gender ideology has been from left-wing feminists in the UK, as you can see from the majority of the replies on this thread!

A few posters are asking what the purpose of your thread is for, but having read a few of your comments on another thread it seems like you're a young American who feels pretty isolated from your fellow liberal peers because of your views on gender - am I getting that right?

I definitely understand feeling isolated in real life, as do many other posters on this board. But the Feminism board on Mumsnet is primarily British posters so also probably doesn't reflect your experiences as an American (although there are definitely a few Americans, Canadians, Australians and others but not the majority). If you're looking for some fellow liberal Americans who are pushing back against gender ideology I really recommend the writer/journalist Lisa Selin Davis, who has a substack called Broadview, and Eliza Mondegreen who writes Gender Hacked (also on Substack). Not necessarily great for real life connections but it helps to know there's others out there, and they focus on the US so might reflect your experiences. Lisa Selin Davis is particularly focused on being a lonely liberal voice on this topic, and how hard it is to be heard and also ostracised by friends and peers.

Apologies if I'm misreading you!

Ditto. What are you hoping to achieve here OP?

Feels like it’s Eden from Aston doing a bit of follow up data collection with confirmation bias thrown in. Or a Graun intern writing a piece? Anyone who follows these threads knows the vast majority are leftie liberals disappointed by our current political representatives. Mind you, absolutely none of any of the parties impress me. All v troubling.

I would identify as centre-left or a social democrat. I've ticked liberal because I think that's what you mean by it, though it's rather a slippery word.

I have no doubts about being a biological realist. I'm hopeless at pretending the emperor has fancy new clothes.

Agreed. UK politics don't compare to us politics at all.

The main two parties here have been the Conservatives and the Labour party for many years. The conservatives are socially conservative but they still would probably be to the left of the Democrats economically and socially probably not a huge amount difference to them

Meanwhile Labour are are socialist party and given the US thinks socialism is full on red peril this is a completely alien concept to the USA. They are linked to the trade unions and traditionally had a working class membership (this has very much changed in the last couple of decades). It's supported by many younger people - there's a national split in voting largely based on age with older voters being much more likely to be Conservatives.

Both parties are for the most part pro LGBT and pro abortion. There isn't much of an abortion debate here at all. The main difference between the two is the conservatives think less money should be spent on the public sector and that taxes should be lower.

We also have the liberal democrats. They are economically closer to the Cons, are generally very educated and value education and middle class. But socially they are much more liberal and pro EU/ globalists (the Conservatives are much more pro British).

Then there's Reform. They are a new party, who are likely to be the second party at the next election replacing the Conservatives. They are somewhat fashioned on the Republicans and very anti immigration pro British. But still socially much more liberal than Trumps party. They economical are a bit of a mix of low taxation, cuts in the public sector (end wastage) but still massively support free healthcare.

We view all US politics as bonkers.

“Gun to your head if you had to pick a side…”

Given the very real violence, aggression and threats by TRAs, I find the use of this terminology very chilling. I would never use this saying to ask a question on a parenting forum (or within any other context)….

Our politics do not translate to yours AT ALL.

Happy to give you a full explanation of why it is different, but not at this time of night.

One thing I would say is that although we have two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, we do not have a two party system, and even our Conservatives are probably more left wing than your Democrats.

JK Rowling is a life long left winger who previously donated millions of pounds to the Labour party and is friends with the former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. She eschews the use of legal tax avoidance schemes, preferring to pay UK taxes on her colossal income in full. She has consistently championed the rights of women (including abortion rights), children, gay people, Jewish people and so on. She's pretty much always on the side of the underdog. She opposed both Scottish independence and Brexit, and is generally unafraid to incur the wrath of different groups of people for different reasons at different times. She is one of a group of left wing feminists who have formed the strongest opposition to gender ideology in the UK, along with others such as Julie Bindel and Rosie Duffield, to name just two.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, it's because the idea that JK Rowling has been radicalised by the far right into attacking an oppressed and vulnerable minority, and even that she has always been hateful/bigoted/homophobic/racist/whatever but just managed to hide it well, quite simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

It is the sort of stupid idea that could only have been dreamed up by Americans who have absolutely no knowledge of UK politics, who the key players are, what they believe, or where JK Rowling sits on our political spectrum, but are applying American logic to British people and politics.

It just doesn't work.

Just because, in America, the only people standing in opposition to gender ideology are conservatives who vote Trump, love their guns more than their children and want to ban abortion, that doesn't mean that people who oppose gender ideology in the UK are the same.

You just cannot apply the same principles to your political system and ours. It simply doesn't work.

I had an American (former) friend tell me that even if JK Rowling might have a point about things like Scottish rape crisis services being run by trans women who call female rape survivors bigots for wanting single sex support, she shouldn't express her views out loud to her 14 million Twitter followers because Trump is mean to trans people. The idea that a British feminist shouldn't express her lawful opinions about issues affecting women in the UK/Scotland, where she lives, because Americans elected an orange nut job who hates both women and the LGBT+ community, is really quite offensive.

I also got to enjoy a lecture about how bio-essentialism and reducing women to their biology isn't what feminism is about. I'm afraid I replied that the only thing Americans have to teach the rest of the world about feminism is how not to do it, and if only American feminists were more like JK Rowling and less like Judith Butler, American women might have abortion rights enshrined in law and paid maternity leave.

That conversation is the reason why she and I are no longer friends.

Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical?

As I'm well acquainted with reality: No. Never have never will.

No one can change sex no matter how many rainbows and moonbeams someone wishes on.

Why have you come to a British parenting site to ask this if you’re American? Why not ask a group of people who understand your terms of reference?

I also don't ever feel I'm wrong about gravity. Or that my politics are relevant to that question.

Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical? No

Politically, I roughly consider myself to be... Conservative? Liberal?
What does that have to do with anything?

No. I don’t think I’m wrong to be ‘gender critical’ (although that isn’t a term I like or use) because as a science graduate it’s self-evident that biological sex rather than socially constructed ‘gender’ is the determining factor of being a man or a woman.

Politically, I am neither a liberal nor a conservative as those terms are commonly used. I am a social & economic libertarian.

It's not just because you haven't understood our political landscape, but because you ask one question in the thread title but the poll relates to a different question.

I'm a biologist (specialised in the genetics of sex, before moving into analysis of medical research) so I am absolutely certain that sex is binary (mushrooms aside) and in mammals it is immutable.

I'm a feminist, so I know gender is sterotypes, social expectations and utter bollocks. It's not an identity and it doesn't trump sex.

Neither of these are going to change.

On the Political Compass, which I test myself against each election, I am consistently between -8/-8 and -9/-9 (about the same place as Pyotr Kropotkin). From where I'm standing I can barely see your poll options in the distance.

Your poll is hopeless for UK readers. Our Liberal party (Liberal Democrats) is centre right, the Conservatives are right wing, the Labour party varies between centre and centre-left. Your Democratic party is right wing in UK terms and generally sits around the same place as our Conservatives.

I have soiled my ballot

I understand people's frustrations with the limitations of FPTP, but a dirty protest seems somewhat extreme.

it's a bloody serious topic and you (high school? college freshman?) CBA to do even the most cursory research to pose a better "poll"

Why not just have "yes" and "no" to answer the question in your title?

I don't think I'm wrong because

• you can't change sex.
• sex is important in many cases where "gender" isn't.
• not everyone "has" a gender
• for children the only way to diagnose gender dysphoria is through the use of stereotypes.
• gender ideology is massively sexist.

This ^^

No, I don't think I'm wrong, mostly because I've taken time to listen to all sides and think it through very carefully.
If I'm ever shown evidence that means I've got it wrong, I'll change my mind but so far the TRA side of the argument seems to mostly be strawmen and mudslinging so I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.
I'd probably describe myself as left wing politically, although now that'd be more 'old school left wing' and not 'puritanical left wing'

I've ticked liberal but I'm sort of centre-left-ish. I believe in the rights of people to be supported by society, for society to give a good, humane and decent standard of living to those who can't provide it for themselves, for whatever reason. For good standards of support, education, healthcare, societal structures (policing, government, street-sweeping etc) to be free at the point of use and available to everyone. For everyone to contribute to that support and the services society offers according to their ability, and that those who can contribute more, should. But I also believe in personal responsibility to support yourself as far as possible - the safety net of the welfare state should be a trampoline, not a hammock.

I have always questioned if I'm wrong in my GC views. When I've had to be careful what I say at work. When I've lost friends. When I've been told I'm a bigot who should be kicked out of groups. When I've attended events where women have been threatened with violence.

And yet no matter how many times I examine my views, I've never EVER come to the conclusion that the gender critical viewpoint is wrong.

Socialist
Further left than our UK Labour party.

I think a lot of people blame US big pharma and capitalism for the current iteration of trans ideology hence the grumpy answers.

US posters and TRAs often don't understand what being gender critical actually is. In case this is you:

deadwildroses.com/2019/10/07/handy-venn-diagrams-the-radical-feminist-position-on-gender/

My view that mammals can't change sex is unlikely to be challenged.

Could I ever believe that so called gender identity is a more important category of human than sex? Nobody has convinced me yet, least of all the transwomen who proclaim their supposedly female identities whilst engaging in: harassment; doxxing; voyeurism; indecent exposure; taking women's places; speaking over and for women; ignoring women's boundaries; involving unwitting women in their fetishes; threats of rape; threats of violence etc. In short, acting precisely like men.

Politics, unlike sex, isn't binary

No I'm not wrong in my view that it is literally impossible for a human to change their sex and it is literally impossible to be born in the wrong body.
I follow the science not the politics, so I didn't vote.