Future of legal gender and mumsnet

[Strangerthantruth]

Davina Cooper responds to Mumsnet critics.

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/2020/04/30/responding-to-gender-critical-feminism-on-gender-sex-and-a-generous-feminist-politics-in-anxious-times/#more-1141

I haven't read it all as it's long and mostly unoriginal. I will try to go back to it but if anyone else wants to read cutting edge thoughts on why men can claim to be women, here you go.

I had a go at reading this. What stood out for me was the idea that gender critical feminism is based around people's 'reproductive capability'. No - that would mean dividing the world into those who could have children and those who couldn't. An entirely different thing.

It's like when they start shouting about GC women just wanting everyone to be gender conforming at butch lesbians. Lying or stupid, could be either, most likely a bit of both.

There is no consistent frame of reference that is gender critical as far as I can see. The only commonality is the understanding that male humans are not female humans. Whereas genderwang, which this blog is promoting, thinks that males can sometimes simultaneously be female. Or vice versa. Or they can be neither. Wang.

Cooper uses the words ''capable of reproduction'' when describing a definition of sex she wants to undermine.

Well of course, because its the male centred definition.
Even 'fertile' women are not actually fertile for a large percentage of their lives. Thats normal for women.

Think this has been discussed a number of times if you are interested to see earlier threads:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3825365-Future-of-Legal-Gender-Survey

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3428851-The-Future-of-Legal-Gender

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/surveys_students_non_profits_and_start_ups/3419517-The-future-of-legal-gender-survey

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3732308-Future-of-Legal-Gender-academic-talk

And these in response to the actual survey which was totally unprofessional and with biased questions

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3401337-Attitudes-to-Gender-a-survey-being-used-to-write-a-new-gender-bill-in-the-UK

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3391553-FLAG-Attitudes-to-Gender-Survey-Loughborough-Uni

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3274586-Big-research-project-to-decide-if-we-still-need-sex-as-a-legal-category

Hmm well I think if you asked the vast majority of people whether a woman without children was a woman, of course they would agree that she is. Whether they think she should have children is a different matter. But of course she’s a woman because if she is human and isn’t a woman, she’d be a man.

Oh, I agree. But then if you ask them - I don't think that's where the mental gap is.

It's when you ask people - if a person who can't be a mother can still be a women, is reproductive role an essential part of being a women - that they may get confused.
A lot will still say yes, but quite a few will think twice, they feel like they are suddenly contradicting themselves.
It's this idea of talking about classes or roles that seems to be the problem. Educationally we spend a lot of time talking about not defining who people are by their role, and I wonder if that hasn't created confusion.

Ah, sorry about the typo sentence there.

Ffs, this crap again.

Whenever someone is looking into developments in how a given society understands gender, they need to be very, very clear that ‘gender’ is used to describe three separate things:

1. biological sex. This impacts on peoples lives with respect to sexual attraction, potential reproductive function and health needs, i. e it’s about our bodies.

2. social gender. This covers gender stereotypes, gendered socialisation (e.g. girls and boys are very often socialised into expectations that girls should be nice, while boys have a certain level of entitlement). It covers how the world around you treats you, it covers how you behave towards others, and it covers what society expects you to do
   I.e it is about the socially created meanings of sexed bodies, and power-relation in society run through all of it.

3. gender identity. Apparently an internal feeling of mental alignment with social roles.

Bodies, social world, and psyche. Three different things, only one, number two, is correctly labelled ‘gender’. It really doesn’t have to complicated, even though there will of course be situations and roles where two or all three are involved.

I think the concept of motherhood is one example where there is overlap between biological and social aspects.

I am fairly sure only trans-identified people have gender identities, and I am yet to be convinced that even they have them

It's a deliberate thread of argument for more reasons than just defining what a female is or isn't. It's also heavily pushed because in trying to drive focus to reproductive role (or the act of reproduction) you can also draw commentary and frame a narrative that will be unpalatable or offensive to a great number of females (and some males) - namely those who don't have kids, don't want kids, can't have kids, or sympathise with all of the above. That's a lot of women. It's a touchy subject and they know it. It's the type of thing for which even a hint is enough to make some women look away. I

That's why you so often find them yelling "so women who can't have children aren't female?" when you've said nothing of the sort and they're running out of lines to take.

They believe that is we say sex is an element of reproduction, that sex exists for reproduction, then we must believe that all individual men and women have to reproduce or at least be able to. An infertile women would not really be a woman.

I think people are told that that's what the crazy radical feminists believe (just like the religious right), and once the seed of the idea has been planted, it winds its roots round the idea of sex == reproduction and they can't hear that that's not what the crazy radical feminists think at all - in fact they just have the very plain and normal idea that women are adult, human, females, and females are the ones with the large gametes.

For anyone not familiar with the project aims it's worth reading the earlier threads that Stumbledin linked to.

The following summary I've linked below is by the KCL law department to lay out the justification for the project. I've pulled out some key points.

It reveals that you've guessed it- a) Stonewall were on the advisory group and b) a "draft reform bill to focus further policy and wider public discussion on the legal regulation and recognition of gender identity in England and Wales" is supposed to be produced.

As a major piece of law reform research, this project is intended to significantly contribute to debates about gender identity reform. While current agendas focus on the experiences of people whose birth gender does not "fit", this research addresses more broadly the implications of reforming a binary legal structure currently anchored in gender designation at birth.

Also:

Many representatives from stakeholder groups have already agreed to participate (see Pathways to Impact).

Where do these representatives come from I wonder and what are these "stakeholder groups"?

A) Advisory Group (AG): Including representatives from the EHRC, Stonewall and EDF. It will meet at key stages to advise on research design, dissemination, and assessment of research methodology. Members will also assist in reaching research participants.

This gives an idea of what they are intending to facilitate and why Stonewall is on the AG for this academic legal research exercise.

3. GOVERNMENT, PARLIAMENT AND LEGAL PROFESSION. The Women and Equalities Select Committee report on Transgender Equality (2016) recommended comprehensive action including addressing needs of people who identify as non-binary. Given the timing of this project, its research findings are ideally placed to influence future legal and policy debate. The research team will work with specialist lawyers, and policy-makers (including on the AG) drawing on research findings to respond to proposed law reforms and, where necessary, outline alternatives for government departments and shadow ministers.

https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FP008968%2F1

From what they have written in this blog and earlier ones they are definitely a bit miffed that women outside of the advisory groups handpicked population, ie mumsnet, got involved and gave them a response they don't like.

The real world isn't fooled by the blether.

Oh look, another TRA who thinks they're entitled to co-opt the experience of infertile females in the service of their grotesque argument.

She was the "principal investigator" on the survey. Didn't get the responses she wanted. Was shocked that people objected to the framing of her questions (clearly not framed very well, then). Is now objecting to the results of her (and others') "investigation."

This is "shoot the messenger", "the voters were wrong, but we won the argument" stuff.

It's incredibly worrying that public money is going to this sort of manipulation, and that the manipulation is being fed back in to public policy (which will affect even more public spending).

Its all so daft. Surely other academics have zero respect for all this, too?
It’s not ‘attacking’ to point out when surveys are poorly constructed and won’t be able to show the answers that they said they were looking for.

How can anybody have a legal gender when nobody can explain what gender is or why it needs to be recognised?

Oh look, another TRA who thinks they're entitled to co-opt the experience of infertile females in the service of their grotesque argument.

It's so clueless. Causes and treatment of infertility are obviously completely different for men and women, as have been the historical social consequences.

I’m really curious to know how supervisions, projects, grant applications, lectures, seminars, writing for publication, meeting discussions, conference presentations, marking essays and exams, awarding grades, or just you know, having a conversation about work, can go ahead when critique is construed as attack?
Isn’t having a debate to form consensus (that can be challenged at any time by new evidence) how academia works?

If someone appears to be producing work below the standard level for their post, would they just not say anything then? What would be an acceptable way to challenge that?

"Gender critical feminism is often equated with radical feminism. However, radical feminism – as popularised in the 1980s and ’90s by writers such as Catharine MacKinnon – placed sexuality and not bodily sex at the heart of women’s oppression. It was women’s socialisation into heterosexuality, and the eroticisation of male domination, that were identified as being key to women’s subordination to men."

Well, yes, a critique of the gendered roles and expectations in heterosexual relationships is a part of radical feminism. However, arguing that radical feminism was about critiquing heterosexuality is missing the fundamental ontological point. Who are the people who are being socialised into accepting submissive or subordinate roles. Women. What is a woman? If your answer is 'anyone who identifies with or as the gender marked "woman"' then you can't make a critique, because you're saying that 'women' identify with their own subordination and are happy with it. Any person who doesn't must be some kind of non-binary individual and not a woman. You see this with the historical revisionism suggesting that any insufficiently feminine woman in history must have really been a transman, even when conforming to femininity meant incredibly limited horizons.

The second-wavers could write critiques of heterosexuality and gender roles in the way they did because they were unpicking the assumption that gender roles were innate or natural - a viewpoint only held by strong conservatives now. I can only imagine their reaction if someone had said at the time that yes, gender (or sex role stereotype, as it was called then) and biological sex are different, but biological sex is unimportant, and gender, instead of being harmful and limiting to both men and women, is some integral and valuable part of one's identity.

They didn't have to address that nonsense. They didn't have to argue that biological sex mattered. We, sadly, do, and so we have to return again and again to 'what is a woman?'

I agree, Chatty.

I don't see any effort made to engage with these concerns. If you see who the named research team are, as well as Cooper they all have a focus on trans/gender identity issues.

I suppose that's par for the course in academia at the moment.

The research associate who co wrote several of the blogs scolding women for objecting appears to be "non binary".

Co investigator Flora Renz' work is listed here. You'll see a theme

www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/1193/www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/1193/renz-flora

Julian Vigo wrote this about her concerns about the focus of this study and the research team's priorities. It's worth a read

link.medium.com/BELrH3PFD6

She was the "principal investigator" on the survey. Didn't get the responses she wanted. Was shocked that people objected to the framing of her questions (clearly not framed very well, then). Is now objecting to the results of her (and others') "investigation."

This is how so many things seem to be set up now. Foregone conclusions, and 'consultations' or 'investigations' just a formality, a process gone through to prop up the prevailing ideology, or even to 'educate' anyone who doesn't agree.

It's a failing of very basic research methodology, I would have said.

This is how so many things seem to be set up now. Foregone conclusions, and 'consultations' or 'investigations' just a formality, a process gone through to prop up the prevailing ideology, or even to 'educate' anyone who doesn't agree.

Prefigurative research? Just assume that everyone agree with you.

Miriel I totally agree with everything you said. Second wavers didn’t have to engage with what a woman was because people hadn’t quite reached this level of idiocy yet.

As for whether they are respected in academia, depends who you speak to. They (the members of the project) are part of quite a powerful clique and wield quite a lot of influence (esp Prof Cooper). However, I don’t see their work cited in court judgments or similar so it has quite a niche audience I think. Their general influence makes it quite hard to challenge them though because the repercussions could be very serious.

Yep.

Bookmarking the Julian Vigo link, there's an academic I have a great deal of respect for.

I'd say it's not a failing of methodology or prefigurative reasearch. It's fraud. Falsifying an input to receive funds and with that "experience" qualifying for public funds