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.

@FlirtsWithRhinos but it's not realistic and it doesn't help the cause.
Lucy can not use female pronouns, she can not do, say or enjoy anything that is in any way in keeping with the gender of female.
Lucy is still more likely to be raped, killed, mutated, turned down for promotion or financially disadvantaged. Lucy not 'having a gender' means fuck all to the rest of the world.
As you said, sex is the way that the world sees gender. It's unfortunate but if you get rid of the social construct of gender, people with vaginas will still be victims of all the unspeakable things listed above.

I'm really struggling to understand your arguments. It would help perhaps if you explain how you define sex and gender.

Why don't we focus on the real issues like VAWG and rape rather than ridiculous abstract ideas about getting rid of gender. Which won't happen and regardless, will not help the majority of the women who whilst you're arguing about pronouns and toilets, continue to die daily.

Lucy can use the pronouns associated with her sex.

Getting rid of gender is basic feminism.

What do you mean by gender though?

My back of a fag packet definition is that it's a man-made oppressive social structure which perpetuates male power and female subordination.

I don't think anyone's arguing that we focus on gender only and ignore VAWG. If anyone genuinely did, then I'd agree ignoring VAWG is not helping anyone.

I do believe you can identify and fight multiple manifestations of misogyny rather than one.

You might not know this but a lot of gender issues actually hinder the fight against assault, rape and VAWG. Data on rape being deliberately muddied as men are recorded as women. The "quick and dirty" protections of single-sex spaces being abolished.

The idea that woman is a personality.

All of it contributes to rape culture and misogyny.

I'm constantly reminding people of the two women a week statistic. Unfortunately that now also gets bogged down by "who counts as a woman" by people who think labelling any group as "female" is offensive. It's set us way back.

Because basing things on gender rather than sex means that if Lucy is raped she may not be able to access single sex rape support and if she asks for a woman to carry out any intimate procedures she could end up with a male who has a "woman gender identity "

The argument that only instant results are worth working towards would have meant we are still treated like property in law, no right to vote and marital rape wouldn't be a crime. So I disagree with that.

Yup.

I want to be a woman. I feel powerful as a mixed ethnicity woman. I don't think I want to live in a world without gender, I want to live in a world without limitation, assumption and harassment based on my gender

It's your sex. Gender tells you to wear a dress have long hair and wear make up. Your sex doesn't do that.

I get what you're all saying but it all feels a bit pointless. Getting rid of gender. I mean that's going to take decades, if possible at all. It would be like trying to get rid of capitalism.
Great in theory but how do we achieve it in real terms?
Meanwhile those of us who work with vulnerable women day in day out can see actual real life solutions which could make so much difference yet get so much less discussion on MN than 'toilets, email signatures' it all feels a bit misdirected.
I think it reminds me of middle class feminists sat in large houses, frantically writing away these very nuanced, articulate, well written responses to idiots who call them terms on the internet. But what does it all achieve?

Do all the GC women on MN support charities which urgently work with women facing homelessness, who have MH problems or are facing CAFCASS meetings? Or fighting for basic provisions for their children with fuck all money? Or workplace discrimination? Or being the only Somali woman in their university and facing misgynoir at every possible turn? I hope so.

Do all the GC women on MN support charities which urgently work with women facing homelessness, who have MH problems or are facing CAFCASS meetings? Or fighting for basic provisions for their children with fuck all money? Or workplace discrimination? Or being the only Somali woman in their university and facing misgynoir at every possible turn? I hope so

I do - providing those charities are for women as in adult human females eg Fila and not adult human females and men with lady feelings. Where I work money has been made available for a number of hubs for women to tackle VAWG, mental health and poor take up of services by women from different racial & cultural backgrounds but when the criteria were published it was for “women including TW” so women including men. FFS

No. Not far enough

I don't think you understand me.

Gender critical does not mean "I opt out of gender for myself as an individual in the hope that society will magically respect that".

It means "I challenge the myths of gender within society in the hope that more and more people will see them as the limiting falsehoods that they are and stop framing both their own identity and their understanding of and interactions with others through gendered constructs at the personal, instiutional and legal levels".

Yes, that is likely to include some degree of rejecting genderised behaviour and presnetation for myself, because why would I choose to align with beliefs I consider harmful, but it's not by any means the whole of it, or even the largest part. Primarily, it's about pushing for social change not personal identity.

So I'm not suggesting Lucy becomes somehow unsexed or pretends she is unsexed. Her sex is a fact that will always be recognised, and to some degree - though until we get rid of gender, the social constructions laid on top of sex, we do not know to what degree - she will continue to face challanges because of her sex. Even in the most perfect, unsexist world there can ever be, even if it could be possible to have a world were men no longer choose to rape, her physical strength will limit her compared to many men and her reproductive role will impact her more than it would a man.

But nevertheless, there are also social constructions that contribute harms on top of whatever baseline sex-based harms there may be, and those harms can be challenged and can be reduced. And that is what Gender Critical feminism is about.

I don't think you're understanding the points at all.

Why wouldn't GC women support the list you gave?

I think it reminds me of middle class feminists sat in large houses, frantically writing away these very nuanced, articulate, well written responses to idiots who call them terms on the internet. But what does it all achieve?

patronising and knobbish.
You don't apparently know the difference between sex and gender and yet you work where you do?

Isn't that all a bit like saying we shouldn't waste time fighting racism/racist oppression because that takes away from supporting victims of racism/racist oppression.

Can't we do both?

Shouldn't we do both?

People can multi-task, you know.

If people are only invested in supporting victims of oppression and not actually tackling the source of that oppression it kinda sounds like they don't want the oppression to end. When people who work in those sectors don't want the oppression to end it sounds like they're protecting their jobs over ending oppression.

as an example: i like high heels, machine guns, lego, football, fancy cakes and afternoon tea, nail varnish, crossfit, wearing docs, wearing dresses, dancing, beer, heavy metal, fantasy novels and ballet

Some of those things are usually what is acceptable for "male gender"
Some of those things are usually what is acceptable for "female gender" and never the twain shall meet.
In the old days i was called a bit of a tomboy - these days i'd have people trying to have me declare myself non-binary
it's all hogwash.
Women are raped and oppressed because of their sex.

Was just about to post pretty much this.

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

Reality does. These are mutations on the male and on the female chromosomes. There are DSDs that occur in males, and different ones that occur in females. IK's DSD seems to be 5 ARD which only occurs in males.

It is a rare abnormality which is called "male at 12" because the testosterone kicks in at puberty, when the working internal testes push out testosterone to create an otherwise normal virilised male body.

That otherwise normal male body happened to have an F on a document because of their undetected DSD, and so was allowed to repeatedly punch a woman in the face in the Olympics with millions watching, and to steal her gold medal. Yay IOC.

And to OP, No.

Meanwhile those of us who work with vulnerable women day in day out can see actual real life solutions which could make so much difference yet get so much less discussion on MN than 'toilets, email signatures' it all feels a bit misdirected.

That's really heartening! Please could you share the solutions? Have you posted about them already and can link to the thread?

So many of us do feel powerless and despair which is why trying to challenge gender nonsense when we can feels like the only thing we can do. Or supporting the court cases that stand up for those standing up for women's services.

@Ambienteamber

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.

They are saying that Imane Khelif is male, with a male disorder of sex development. Not a woman, and it's not safe or fair for IK to compete against women. Most of the available evidence points to this. Do you have any thoughts at all, on your moral pedestal, for the woman who was punched in the face by a man in front of millions, humiliated and mocked and forced to apologise for saying it wasn't fair?

The "I don't see colour" line of thinking aligns more with the genderist belief that body sex is an irrelevant detail that has no significance or relevence to people's experiences and outcomes and so there is no basis for sex-specific rights or support.

(1) to be clear, this used to be just mainstream feminism - it is only since the idea took hold with some feminists that trans women are literal women, and with that the need to "respect" gender as superceding sex, that the label Gender Critical was coined

This.

Sex and sexism is real in the same way race and racism is real.

Gender is make believe. People who choose a gender select it based on feelings and not material fact. It's the only way men can say they're women and vice versa.

Yes I feel similarly about capitalism to how I feel about gender. They are inextricably linked and work to reinforce each other.

I don't have a middle class background, I live in a flat and my actual work as well as charitable giving is hugely focussed on practicalities similar to the ones you mention. As you're interested in backgrounds, you may wish to know that the vast majority of people I've met with trans identities or who are self proclaimed allies are middle class and white and wealthy.

Working with vulnerable people is one of the driving factors behind my conviction for using my relative privilege (I'm white and not destitute) to hold the boundary of single sex spaces for women and children. There is a huge class element to this, with the decision making elite in government, NHS, prison service etc and privileged allies remaining largely unaffected by policies which erase women as a class.

You know that feminists posting here have whole entire lives right? Many I know, including me, keep work and feminism entirely separate online due to the demented behaviour of misogynist trans rights activists.