Does anyone feel like they have gone too far with gender critical?

[Francine83]

I have been really interested in lots of the gender critical ideas and have read a lot. I deeply share a lot of the very real feminist concerns. But does anyone ever feel that they went a bit far with some of these ideas? I know a lot of us have been exploring these ideas for a while now and I'm interested to hear how things have evolved for people. I would really welcome a reasonable and genuine chat about this.

IK is male. A man. He.

If you were raised by wolves you'd be very different to other humans tho wouldn't you? You may have severe intellectual disabilities. Be unable to communicate in human language...
So do you think you should be pitted directly against other humans and what's expected if them be expected of you?
Obviously how you've been raised changes you and should be taken into consideration because it isn't JUST about nature it's also about socialisation.
Being a woman is a complicated interplay between sex and gender. I don't think you can totally ignore either as tho it doesn't exist.

and intersex conditions are not grouped into male and female any more unless someone has been living as one or the other.

im sure you can provide evidence of this

First post nails it, as is so often the case.

Aldo I note that the “oooh look a DSD squirrel” ploy is already dragging the thread into a very specific direction

I don't think anyone is directly..
They are claiming she is intersex and at some point knew that, therefore is only 'pretending' to be a woman.

What then is 'intersex'?

Btw intersex is a horribly out dated term. It implies there is some mysterious third sex which is nonsense. I’m surprised you don’t know this given how concerned you are about it

terminology is either DSD or VSD

Being a woman is a complicated interplay between sex and gender.

No, it's a sex. Women are adult females.

You could literally just Google this. Even the Wikipedia article could tell you this.
Unless it's overwhelmingly evident someone may be male or female then now days they do not assign sex but allow that to be something someone chooses as they are able to do so.
In the past even if someone's genitalia was very ambiguous, doctors would pick a sex and try as much as possible, with surgery etc, to make the child that sex. That is no longer the case in Europe at least.

Not abuse.

But absolutely naming your misogyny/ internalised misogyny.

Khelif was happy to seriously endanger the lives of the female boxers. Khelif knew by 2023 that he was male. Khelif had the opportunity to do the right thing but chose not to. Meanwhile the IOC gaslit the female boxers. They didn't consent to fighting men. How could they?! That's not even sport, it's just abuse.

Khelif may well have a very compelling backstory, a very difficult life so far. But abusing women (who also have back stories and difficult lives and are full people in their own right) isn't a consolation prize for disadvantaged men! Unless you're a misogynist.

If you're cross about the scrutiny on Khelif, direct your anger at the misogynist IOC that put him in this position.

I did go too far in the sense that it was affecting my wellbeing as all I did was talk about it at home and with my friends, it was probably very boring for them. I still think it’s the most important issue for women, it’s a deal breaker for my vote but I now have deleted X/Twitter as I was ruminating and fuming all the time. Which is not helpful. I also changed my job over it (I was an EDI manager in the public sector). It’s still the hill I will die on. I think I went too far in how it impacted me but on the whole we need to go further or we lose sex based protection, and the truth re what a woman is.

I engaged with this topic closely for a long time as I tried to understand it - and where I stood.

Once I’d got to that point… I stopped engaging really.

Too much of it is very toxic and social media feeds you more and more of it if you engage with it, which makes it feel a far bigger problem than it is really.

I haven’t got the energy for people to be angry at me, from any side of the debate.

I think the whole idea that someone can become the opposite sex is simply not true. When someone is trans, they are putting themselves in a separate category. They shouldn't be treated any better or worse, but they should not be taught to believe that they are the opposite sex.
I think that if someone who has a penis and likes the colour pink, wearing makeup and Taylor swift, or a person with a vagina likes trucks and rugby and having short hair they should be encouraged to be themselves. A person who doesn't confirm to outdated gender norms. Not that they have to try and change sex.

Or calling him 'she'. And also talking utter nonsense about DSDs (no such thing as intersex).

The latest Khelif knew he was male is the point he went through male puberty. Which was likely some time ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

And who gets to decide what type of intersex conditions are grouped into which sex and why??

Medical experts, doctors, researchers - who do you think? Some DSD conditions only affect males. This is the case in Caster Semenya and from what I've read on here Kalief as well.

@Ambienteamber "Well in her case it's just really complicated isn't it? People are pretending it isn't...
This is assuming it turns out to be true that she is intersex or has some chromosomal disorder.. there's no such concrete proof out there as yet.
But there is proof that she has been raised by her family as a girl and has a female passport. So if she does indeed have any type of disorder this may have been discovered as an adult..
So you'd be asking whether how she identified, how she had lived her whole life is now somehow wrong? And who gets to decide what type of intersex conditions are grouped into which sex and why??
So alot of stuff to think about there regarding sex and gender identity."

For Imane and her family, yes it's very complicated and must be difficult to emotionally and culturally accept.

For the purpose of sports and legal access to female facilities though it is remarkably simple.

Imane has 5-ARD which makes her biologically and physiologically male. With all the skeletal, hormonal and organ differences that give males an advantage in physical activities. Knowing this and choosing to continue to place women in physical danger by hitting them with the full strength of a man is morally reprehensible and should be prevented by the sports governing body. Would you be ok with a female boxer taking testosterone or wearing gloves with metal in the knuckles and then getting in the ring and punching a female boxer in the face?

The "decision" over which DSDs are grouped into male and which are female is based on the biological definition of sex ie whether your body is formed around the capability to produce large or small gametes.

No it's the other way around. Disorders/ differences of sexual development (intersex is the old term) are all (or virtually all) affecting males or females. The idea of a hermaphrodite is not scientific, hence why the term intersex is outdated.

In some ways I don't blame Algeria though. If Western countries can send transwomen to compete as women, why shouldn't conservative countries send males with DSDs.

Your previous post suggested that female boxers signed up for this. That's victim blaming. They consented to take part in a sport in which risks are mitigated by such categories as ability, weight, age and sex. Sport without fair competition isn't sport. It's spectacle or outright abuse. Female boxers did not consent to fight a male and were coerced and gaslit by the IOC and the media.

Yep, and has known this for a long time. It's depressing that the women he punched who had a right to fair and safe competition were denied this. Why aren't their feelings considered @Ambienteamber? Why is Imane's feelings top and centre? He is a cheat pure and simple and as usual the women don't matter.

oh dear. No you won't get "torn to shreds". You simply haven't understand what GC actually means.

But since you are so vehemently anti-GC: please define woman.

Hear, hear. I agree as well that I no longer think drag is harmless fun.

@Ambienteamber I don't think gender is good or bad. I just now think that it does exist and is something some people experience.

Gender is society's expectations, assumptions and requirements of us based purely on whether we are male or female. I think you might be talking about gender identity.

What good things do you think arise from having these expectations? Or at least, can you not think of anything bad?

I do struggle to understand which arguments or behaviours made you change your position from "gender is harmful" to "gender is neither good nor bad". Unless you thought a gender- critical position was something else?

I can’t see anywhere that IK has been dehumanised at all. ‘Intersex’ isn’t used anymore whether it’s still on wiki is immaterial. And even with a DSD, a person is either male or female. One cannot be both. One cannot impregnate oneself.
Female boxers expect to fight women- or so I thought. Until the olympics.
And further to the accusations of being anti trans and transphobic, if you see it here, you must report it to MNHQ and it will be dealt with.
And the ‘literal violence’ appears to come one way only. May I point people to the ‘Terf is a slur’ pages
(please correct me if I’m incorrect on this)
Oh-and ‘cis’ is offensive to many people.
Thanks