Gender critical board?

[Arewehumanorbones]

Would it be worth asking MNHQ to set up a gender critical board?
Two main reasons:

1. People who don't identify as feminists may find it more acceptable to use. Even though I suspect a majority of posters will be feminists.
2. To try to decouple the perceived necessity in some people's minds that to be gender critical you must first be feminist. When in fact as has been pointed out Kiwi farms has lots of gender critical posts but no feminists.

Any thoughts on that?

Indeed.

Ive never heard someone say it IRL but if I did everything they say after that point will be treated with the scepticism it deserves.

What is gender criticism if it isn't feminist? Does it still distinguish between sex and gender? What does 'not feminist' mean? Supporting patriarchy?

I only discovered the gender critical stuff by idly wondering where feminism was up to. I'd never have discovered it if hidden away as a gender critical forum. It has been useful and enlightening to me to read these discussions.

I have been GNC and gender critical virtually all my life (starting with preferring toy cars to dolls at 3 or 4 years old). But I had never considered myself to be a feminist.

I still don't feel worthy of the title feminist as I know so little of the history, the language or the theory.

But I'm still happy to read and post in FWR. Because I'm damn sure I want to protect the rights of women and children.

Feminist is just a label.

It means different things to different people. I don't call myself a feminist, because I don't like labels, but I am not put off by the term.

I come on here to discuss issues and am interested in what others have to say, feminists or not.

This board gives us critical mass and something to coalesce around. It is not full of pontifications and philosophical esoteric BS that I thought it would be full of, despite my initial perceptions.

OP others might already see you as a feminist, because of the issues you are interested in, whether you agree with the label or not.

Personally , I think it's a bit precious to 'not want to associate' with 'feminist' because of some negative connotations, rightly or wrongly.

I feel the same as you @HawkeyeInConfusion

Apologies for not RTFT, but if you want to start a thread which doesn't to your mind fit in feminism, then just pick wherever else seems appropriate. If it's about something recently in the media, there's 'In the news'. If it's related to schools, one of the Education boards. Etc etc.

However, I do wish FWR was still called 'feminism and women's rights', I never did understand that change.

I do wish FWR was still called 'feminism and women's rights'

Yes perhaps we should ask @mnhq to put it back since the 'feminism chat' moniker is a nothing but a scar from a time when antifeminist trolls were organising to silence and control women/mothers, which ended up with the CEO getting swatted.

Op you probably aren't going to be able to gauge from this board whether there is a desire for it because the people here obviously aren't put off by the word feminist (they are here).
I think you might be using the word gender critical in a different way to others here? To me all feminism is or should be critical of gender, and to be critical of gender makes you a feminist. But like others have said, others critical of the current trans rights political movement ( and the ideas underpinning it) are not necessarily critical of gender. But I do get where you are coming from. There obviously is an audience otherwise kiwifarms and the times comments wouldn't be full of non feminists pointing out the emperor's lack of attire.

I'd rather we just stop using the phrase 'gender critical' tbh.
+1 to this - Julia Long made this point quite eloquently when she was speaking at the Haringay Resister’s meeting. We aren’t ‘racism critical’,
we aren’t ‘homophobia critical’ or ‘misogyny critical’, so wtf are we ‘gender critical’?

It’s the term that’s stuck now, and to my mind it’s symtomatic of female socialisation to appease and not appear to be rude or disruptive - otherwise we’d be anti-gender, gender abolitionists or other such stronger, clearer term.

Personally I like ‘gender atheist’ for myself. I don’t believe in gender, quite simply.

Or just anti-stereotype?

I don’t necessarily think it’s come to mean ‘transgender critical’ but I do think that is what seem to regard it as or infer it to be. That someone who is gender critical must be ‘anti-trans’.

Saying that gender critical = transphobic would be the same logic as atheist = islamophobic which is clearly a bonkers and incorrect leap to make.

Ohhhhh I see what you mean. That people who object to transgenderism on the basis of transgressing traditional gender stereotypes, or from a place of homophobia, get described as gender critical, when they’re not, they believe in gender (and uphold sexism and misogyny) as much as TRAs do just with a different set of rules.