Gender critical or Gender reactionary?

[FifteenToes]

I found myself drawn to this board, despite being male and not previously particularly involved in feminist issues, because it was the only place I could find people actually talking sense about gender identity. Having read a number of threads, answered a few and followed a lot of links, I've come to the conclusion there are broadly three "camps" in this battle, not two:

1. Those who believe gender identity is a "thing" we are born with. That has its own discernible neurological reality (which science just hasn't quite caught up with yet); that most people are born with the one that matches their genitalia, but some with the opposite one. And some with one of any number of other possible genders.

2. Those who believe gender identity is a largely invented concept with no scientific evidence for its existence. That to the extent that it does exist it's largely just a result of social conditioning; that there's certainly no evidence of it being a neurological "thing" we are born with; and that the common discourse about transgender perpetuates and strengthens it to womens' disadvantage. (Broadly "gender critical" as I would consider myself).

3. Those who believe that of course there are only two genders, male and female. This worked perfectly well for millennia of human history so there's no reason it should stop working now. When people think they are the opposite gender from their sex it's usually just because of narrow outdated ideas about how girls should play with dolls etc, and all the stuff about other made-up genders is just millennial self-absorbed nonsense.

I call the last one "gender reactionary" because, while it at first appears to challenge a lot of the same things as gender critical thinking does, it actually rests on a reactionary assumption: that gender identity is real and everyone naturally "has" it. It doesn't reject gender per se, but only the idea that it is, or can be, separated from biological sex.

What concerns me is the blurring of lines between (2) and (3). I've seen comments, articles etc. that appear to start out apparently like (2) but then say something suggesting that they really just want everyone to accept their "natural" gender. I must admit that while gender critical and firmly (2) myself, I actually prefer (1) to (3). At least (1) opens up a degree of flexibility and choice about how people might live and behave, even if (IMO) it's overly reliant on definitions and categories.

Has anyone else found this? What does being gender critical mean to you? Are you critical of the very concept of gender, or just of recent attempts to broaden it and separate it from biological sex?

A lot of words to say two groups have a regressive attachment to a socially constructed idea of 'gender', but thankfully, one group tells gender to get in the bin.

Oh My God that Venn diagram is EXACTLY what I mean! Thank you!

One thing that concerns me is that I sometimes see sources praised for standing up to trans ideology and ridiculing the idea of identifying people by their chosen gender rather than their biological sex. But when you dig down, you find that they're not actually doing that because they have a feminist outlook (or, I would say, simply a rational outlook) that rejects gender altogether. They're doing it because they're quite happy with society's accepted gender stereotypes and want people to stop challenging them.

So both feminists and conservatives are suspicious about a man that puts on a dress and expects to be called a woman. But for conservatives, that's because they think he should be wearing a suit. For feminists (or rationalists) it's because they reject the idea that anybody should have to wear either just because of what they have between their legs.

Yes, agree with Charlie.

Neither. Male and female are not gender descriptions but words that define the sex of a person. To your alien-vegetable-identified man I would say simply, fine, you do you, but why should an expression of your personality matter to me?

Right. I would basically include that in the second response. By insisting that male and female are simple descriptions of biological sex, you're declining to enter into a discussion that assumes the reality of male and female gender identity. As I would.

@ Theinebriati -

I don't understand how anyone could have spent any time studying GC politics or this board and still confuse 'sex' and 'gender'.

Sex is biology, based in material reality.
Gender is sociology, a set of made up rules that has no grounding in reality.

I haven't confused anything. I agree with everything you say here.

But there are many people who don't agree with your last statement, and not just among trans rights activists. There seem to be some who oppose trans rights precisely because they believe gender is not sociology, but innate.

Oh My God that Venn diagram is EXACTLY what I mean! Thank you!

You know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words?

Yes, the phrase 'gender critical' appears to emcompass both fairly conservative types and some women who are feminists in viewpoint.

This is one of the reasons why I do not use the term 'gender critical feminist' of myself, because it is a catch all and imprecise term, and also because to be a feminist is to challenge gender, so it's a neurology.

What's your point? As you can see, others have noticed this difference in motivation and emphasis already.

Oh ffs, how many typos and autocorrections? Neurology was meant to be typology.

I think the reason it was confusing OP is that you used "gender identity" to mean gender identity, and then "gender" (when you also meant gender identity) as something seemingly different in the way that people use "sex".

*tautology

Arrrgh!!!!!

He's talking about the fact that conservatives and left wing feminists have different motivators to stand against gender ideology. Something we've discussed here for a long time.

Yes, I get that now, but I don't think it was particularly clear.

Sorry for multiple gibberishing posts, I'm trying to post while also trying to sort out my child's access to remote schooling due to his year group isolating because of a case of Covid, and I fucking hate the complications.

Ooh interesting. I agree broadly with your three categories OP (as in the Venn diagram).

I think most GC people on this board are 2). But the problem is that many of the young / the woke / people who haven't thought about it much, think that we are all 3).

I think it's an important distinction and one that is not clear in many people's minds. So if you are openly GC, many people will think you are a regressive conservative bigot. I have been wondering recently if the GC message needs to be made clearer on this point ... e.g. we are fine with the boy who likes dresses, the girl with short hair and boyish name, the man who goes out in make up or a glittery top. In fact we embrace those things. We just don't think it means they are actually the opposite sex. It sounds obvious but I don't think it is, to a lot of people.

@FWRLurker

Here’s the problem in a nutshell - gender means about 10 different things.

Most people (like OP I guess) think gender is just a polite euphemism for sex. seriously, it’s like 95% of the population, including educated liberals.

Feminists defined gender as the Different stereotypes imposed on people on the basis of their sex. Eg women expected/forced to exhibit certain behaviors and not others.

Sexist male psychologists (eg John Money and those who did the first Modern SRS ops) defined someone’s “gender” as the extent to which an individual Psychologically desired to perform masculinity or femininity. Modern trans / queer activism has latched on to this concept, mostly forgetting the feminist POV.

Whenever anyone has a conversation about gender It’s really a conversation about the confusion between these concepts.

Yes, I think this is a huge part of the problem. Although as I hope is clear now, I haven't conflated the two the way you suggest. I use gender the way you say feminists defined it. That's what I meant throughout my post.

When conservatives reject identification by gender identity it's not always entirely clear whether that's because they sex and gender as meaning the same thing, or because they acknowledge a different thing called gender but reject attempts to choose it freely.

It's probably an irrelevant distinction though. They usually believe in imposing the social and behavioural expections associated with maleness and femaleness upon people, whether they give that its own word or not.

Don't apologise Floral, hope you get it all sorted out!

I should add that I am not yet brave enough to be openly GC Just refining my argument for when I am!

Yes, feminists have been pressing for such acceptance for a long time. But you will not be able to separate cleanly the feminist message from the conservative one because the TRAs will not let you as it is too useful to them to hitch them together so they can pretend we are the same.

Doesn't stop the feminists from continuing to press our case, of course.

I think we've established that I used far too many words and it's taken a while to tease out what I meant. Thanks for bearing with it. Sometimes it's not easy to clarify this stuff without a degree of thinking aloud.

I'm relatively new to this board so it may well be this is old ground for many, that I was unaware of.

That's fine. Now you've clarified, did you have a specific point beyond noticing the uneasy pairing of feminist and conservative activism?

@DisappearingGirl

Ooh interesting. I agree broadly with your three categories OP (as in the Venn diagram).

I think most GC people on this board are 2). But the problem is that many of the young / the woke / people who haven't thought about it much, think that we are all 3).

I think it's an important distinction and one that is not clear in many people's minds. So if you are openly GC, many people will think you are a regressive conservative bigot. I have been wondering recently if the GC message needs to be made clearer on this point ... e.g. we are fine with the boy who likes dresses, the girl with short hair and boyish name, the man who goes out in make up or a glittery top. In fact we embrace those things. We just don't think it means they are actually the opposite sex. It sounds obvious but I don't think it is, to a lot of people.

Yes, I've had that too. People assuming that I must be rejecting the dominant trans ideology because I'm bigoted, or haven't had it explained enough to me yet. Because that's the only alternative they can imagine.

I want to say I don't believe the boy in the dress is really a girl because there's no innate connection between being a girl and wearing dresses. That I'm happy for him to go on wearing dresses for the rest of his life and see no reason why he should have to mutilate his body to justify doing so.

But people get as far as "I don't believe the boy in the dress is really a girl..." and then I see their eyes glaze over in condescension.

@FloralBunting

That's fine. Now you've clarified, did you have a specific point beyond noticing the uneasy pairing of feminist and conservative activism?

That was indeed my main point. I think we need to be careful before praising those rejecting trans ideology, that they're rejecting it for the right reasons.

However, DisappearingGirl's point about the difficulty of explaining a gender critical position to people without being taken for a bigoted conservative is also important.

Frankly, I'm quite content to be focusing on campaigning for women's rights and protections, not against trans anything. When I do that, I don't tend to get dragged into pointless discussion about the reasons why any given person doesn't like trans ideology.

My focus is clear, and I am always happy to clarify it - I stand for women's liberation, the only concern I have with trans anything is when it impacts that aim.

As i said, I don't make any claim to be 'gender critical'. I'm a feminist. When I feminist, it's rather hard to mistake me for a conservative.

However, there are conservatives who stand with us in certain campaigns, who have different starting points and opinions, and as we are often working towards the same specific end, like the GRA reform consultation not involving Self ID, and I have no intention of distancing myself from them to please ideologues of a different stripe.

That makes sense.