Is the Gender Critical Movement Bound to Remain Rudderless?

It's not and never has been a 'movement'. It's a belief system worth of respect in a democratic society that sex is important and matters.

'Protections' and 'Rights' are different from each other - to my mind. A 'Right' tends to be an emancipatory licence to do or to act, whereas 'a protection' is a vehicle to provide shelter against a known problem or issue.

The Equalities act provides protections and adapatations, not rights, to various groups on the basis of understood suppressions/oppressions.

By understanding that a group requires certain protections one is working with, and understanding, the nature of human society - with all of its imperfections and inevitable restrictions. It is not utopian. 'Rghts' are more about moving towards an imagined utopia. that's certainly how I see it.

So being 'GC' is more about protections than rights - whereas trans activist tend to view the GC position through a lens of oppression and restrictive stereotypes about sex. they want to believe that we are already free of biology and the body and that the body is just an oppressive 'meat suit'....not the real self.

It lacks a horizon, a vision to move toward.

That's odd because I thought the goals were quite clear. Recognition that sex is important and has an impact that means that in some situations women require specific rights; refusal to be defined by sexist stereotypes. Basic feminism really.

I don't think feminism has an end point because there are key differences between men and women so societal/political changes will always impact differently.

It's true, but irrelevant, like saying the problem with horses is that they don't have wheels. True, they don't. But it's not a problem.

From what I've seen over the past six years, the "gender critical movement" is a loose alliance of a range of very different people from conservatives to communists, from the deeply religious to atheists, and from the polite to the downright rude. There are "standout" individuals and organisations and many examples of individual bravery and integrity. There is little infighting, primarily because there is no canonical "in" to fight about. The only thing we have in common is a belief that sex is real and it matters socially and politically.

Taking a doctrinally coherent position on tech capitalism and the movement towards meat lego is a different, though at times related, fight.

As @ArabellaSaurus said above, "If everyone could keep their rudders to themselves, that would be a great start."

But moving towards ( the ultimate progressive utopia) can sometimes mean revising and re-visiting the past and previous conditions, but doing do with a fresh persepctive and necessary modifications. The idea that human society always moves in a straight line towards a distant horizon is questionable. History and society tends to be cyclical......re-hashing and reformulating the same old themes and elements, but in slightly different configurations, for each new age.

I think he's riffing off Mary Harrington. But her vision is a lot more female centred.

I do think, though, there is a far deeper trend afoot which revolves around a rejection of the limitations of the body and of the earth and its cycles. And to my mind such movements are inherently masculine and anti feminine movements. Whenever man tries to conquer nature, nature is seen as a restrictive burden to be escaped or over-come. And female bodies are seen as inherently more linked to nature: to the earth and its cycles.

Movements towards not only transgenderism, but also towarsd transhumanism mre generally. Those billionnaites who want to live forever and cheat death and spend their millions on trying to reverese the ageing process. Augmenting the human body with robotic elements. Brain implants etc

Moving towards babies being born outside of the womb. Think Mary Harrington's vision of factories full of brain dead female incubators, gestating babies for people too busy or 'above' doing it for themselves.

To my mind a thoroughly dystopian Aquarian age,

And none of it very Green or Eco.

Aye. An overarching aim of the women's rights movements, to end VAWG and misogyny, is something I think most women are pragmatic about

It absolutely is not rudderless or without structure. It is one of the single most effective political movements in recent decades.

You don't require 'a vision' other than pushing back on and undoing the damage caused by trans ideology. And we all know what that looks like. We've always known it is a generational thing and would take 20 plus years to unravel.

I wrote my comment before reading his article then sighed and went a read it.

He has a point about the commodification of bodies but the title is odd and very annoying. Perhaps chosen for pure clickbait rage power. ‘Bound to remain rudderless’ is a strong statement and highly critical framing. Nicely wrapping together criticism of women being hopeless for not being sufficiently visionary.

Its clickbait nature worked as it pisses me off that once again a man is berating women for not resolving all the world’s ills including the capitalist system of reproduction and men’s recent turn towards wholesale fetishisation of women. If I were being mean, I’d think that this is the kind of man looking for a strong mummy to look after him.

However, if women don’t win ‘institutional power or systemic reform’, well colour me surprised that a several thousand years battle hasn’t been won yet and trying to retain some of our already hard fought for rights.

Lots of ‘visionary’ questions pissed in the blog but suggesting that capitalism turned inwards to the body as a new frontier of commodification is several decades old. My bah humbug view is that as soon as we find ourselves with less to eat (either climate instability or war or supply chain disruptions) we will suddenly rediscover the importance of the material body.

I like the analogy of rocks. That makes sense to me.

Our “movement” needs to be reactive though. Even if we stated and achieved a goal of say repealing the GRA, there will always be a movement of men pushing for ways for them to access female spaces.

It’s always going to be a case of holding the line and pushing back against whatever attack they come up with next.

Editing to say: the role of women saying no to men wishing to violate women and children is going to be a lifelong constant battle and sadly there will never be a final victory.

Grass roots movements and reality don't need rudders.

Their strength is their spontaneity and the fact their point doesn't need PR because everyone ultimately gets it.

Boats need rudders. Being GC is not a 'being in a boat' experience. It's being solid rocks that keep getting draped with assorted rubbish, including discarded rainbow flags.

Women don't need a rudder because we aren't going anywhere. We co-operate on some of the clean-up work as and when.

I have pointed out before that I think transgender activism is fundamentally right wing - it wants free market capitalist-type access to treatments without government oversight created and led by its own organisations - and this article supports that.

And who “leads” the transgender movement? Billionaires like the Pritzkers? Grifters like the Foxkiller cashing in on it? Lawyers like Strangio who have taken organisations like the ACLU to somewhere far and away from its initial cause?

You can keep ‘em, mate.

If everyone could keep their rudders to themselves, that would be a great start.

Yeah, those objectives sound fine to me.

It doesnt need ro bw a bloody crusade. We dont need a flag or a holy vision.

We just need everyone to be clear there are 2 sexes and those sexes are immutable. Policy and law accepting simple material fact.bThen we can all go home.

It's not rocket science.

There is no gender critical 'movement'. Just loads of individuals, not all of us women, getting on with life and refusing to take nonsensical shit.

Some of these men seem to expect something like the freemasons, with dressy-up clothes and code words and meetings and officers and leaders. No thanks.

This is like asking 'Earthlings, who is in charge of gravity? I think it is going in the wrong direction. We need it to go up not down, everything should go up, that's progress.'

Even without a leader, a movement, or words, men cant be women. Sorry buddy, that's just nature.

If you need an aim, it would be to repeal the GRA.

What he means is that our vision isn't sexy enough. It isn't "progressive" or offering up a blueprint for a new, sci-fi based way of living.

It's like believing in Father Christmas though. Completely made-up and never going to happen.

Our vision is too boring by comparison. This is why so many otherwise sane people support it.

Remember when the students stormed out of the auditorium when the lecturer made basic comments about male versus female biology? They prefer fantasy to reality

I'd argue that the trans movement is reactionary, against biological "norms" and fact based reality and science.
Of course they don't seem "rudderless" because they've had organisations like stonewall pushing them on and paving the way for them. It's also taken them at least two decades to get to their peak so, hardly dynamic compared to our apparent lack lustre approach.
Load of old twaddle if you ask me.

I think the people who care enough to crowdfund legal action or post on FWR are arguably a movement.