Gender Critical = fundamentally right wing (according to Vox)

[TheRealMcKenna]

I know it’s Vox, I know it’s not a ‘reputable’ news source, but this is hilariously bad.

Main points:

• TERFs calling themselves ‘gender critical’ are akin to white supremacists calling themselves ‘race realists’.
  
• Women are oppressed based on gender identity and not biological sex.
  
• Most ‘decent’ feminists include trans women in their movement, but a horrid bunch of conservative-allying pro-life supporting homophobic white supremacists don’t.
  
• GC feminists Who rely on ‘science’ have abandoned the idea that chromosomes determine sex (this is news to me)
  
• GC feminism is mainly a UK phenomenon and is ‘whipped up’ by the horrid Mumsnet site. Everyone else in the world is lovely (apart from those far right pro-life conservatives).
  
• GC feminists cite a tiny number of high profile cases to whip up fear and hatred of trans women.
  
• GC advocates bully people online, especially on Twitter.
  
• GC academics have a terribly large amount of power and influence.
  

www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical

[TheRealMcKenna]

I had a university professor tell me over twitter that biology was so a social construct. And mocked anyone for their lack of intelligence if they disagreed.

The thing is that these ‘purity spiralists’, as usual, take something with a grain of truth to it and then stretch it to beyond its limits. It is true that there is much to what we’d consider ‘scientific conventions’ that is socially constructed, but it doesn’t mean the language and theory doesn’t reflect observable reality.

For example, we name magnetic poles north and south and magnetic field lines are drawn from north to south in direction. That is inarguably socially constructed. However, those field line directions can then be accurately predicted in the presence of a changing electrical current. We could call the poles Fred and George and have the field lines going from F to G and a motor would still spin in the same direction in an alternating current.

The same is true with biology. We could name the organism at the top of the food chain the bottom prey and it would still go round eating other animals.

I despair at times.

[BolloxtoGender]

Corrupt job creation scheme for various grievance studies academics.

[TheRealMcKenna]

For anyone wondering where all these unintelligible and counter-intuitive ideas come from, this video is a good introduction (one of the co-authors of Cynical Theories).

This is where the ideas of ‘woman is a social construct’ and ‘biology is not real’ originate.

[FeedTheSparrows]

I wonder what the writer of the Vox piece makes of the 5,000+ people who have signed the Labour Women's Declaration?

[BolloxtoGender]

Much of academia seems intellectually corrupt, and should be reformed or defunded.

[Winesalot]

People, and supposedly intelligent people at that, actually buy into this idiocy.

I had a university professor tell me over twitter that biology was so a social construct. And mocked anyone for their lack of intelligence if they disagreed.

[TheRealMcKenna]

I don't understand how simply removing the way to name women/men would change the power structures.

Neither do I and neither does anyone outside of these strange and seemingly deliberately vague academic disciplines. Most people live quite happily with the assumption that language is a way of describing some sort of reality in much the same way that drawing a food chain accurately reflects and represents the fact that owls eat mice. Drawing the food chain in the opposite direction doesn’t affect the owls or the mice in any way.

However, it seems that the postmodernist approach to language is the other way around - language is a tool used by those in power to ‘enforce’ a reality that only exists because it supports the powerful.

It’s all very interesting to talk about as a philosophy and critique of art/literature, but completely falls apart with the claim that objective reality doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, we hear it time and time again with claims such as ‘there’s no such thing as biological sex’. People, and supposedly intelligent people at that, actually buy into this idiocy.

[Winesalot]

There is a disconnect though in the understanding that changing meanings of words will mean that laws become ineffective.

The ‘kindness’ they are showing in accepting a social change enacts a future law change. There is a reason to destabilize language and science.

The reason becomes very clear when you see women expressing disgust at other women objecting to a transwoman simulating a stillbirth labour and causing emotional pain to women in a support group and ultimately having a woman cut off from that support due to that person’s actions.

Or tweets from someone stating they cannot wait to get a uterus transplanted to abort a baby.

Or a Feminist group in Ireland who has declared how outraged they are for deadnaming a teen who demanded jail in a female prison for their gravely violent crime.

Not sure how the posters shaming us can calm this dissonance of the abject minimization of this in flavour of being ‘kind’ and allowing language to be changed.

[BolloxtoGender]

Which has obvious implications on power structures. In a nut shell, that’s how I see it anyway, I don’t have a philosophy or law or gender studies or sociology degree.

[BolloxtoGender]

Without language, you can not have laws to govern a society.

[NRatched]

@TheRealMcKenna

I disdain people who agitate to have the category 'woman' made meaningless in law and social customs.

As a slight derail, I am part way through reading Cynical Theories, and it appears that this is precisely what the ‘applied postmodernist’ ideas from which Queer Theory and later Gender Studies were derived ends up doing. The aim seems to be to end the oppressive power structures in society by doing away with the stable categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and the ‘oppressive’ scientific basis for the categorisation and language. How this ever became established as an academic discipline in Universities is beyond me. Slow clap for Butler.

It seems that the Critical Race Theorists were slightly smarter in their insistence that race was a stable category.

I don't understand how simply removing the way to name women/men would change the power structures. Men will still know which people to beat and rape, even if there is not a word for that group of people. The only result of doing away with the wording is that it will be impossible to make laws to protect one group of people who statistics show are at risk from another group of people (on the whole. NAMALT, etc)

Before language was even a thing, people were well aware that women and men were different. If language ceases to become a thing, then men and women will still exist seperate from each other.

[S00LA]

Centreing women comes across as very wrong for a few groups of people. Many TRAs seem to think GC feminism is 'anti trans', when infact, it is pro-woman

“ When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”

When you have spent your whole life with people saying

“ You’re a white man - well of course you must have what you want. Any cost to others is irrelevant collateral damage “

it does seem hateful when women stand up and say “ Woah, what about my rights!”.

It upsets the whole natural order of things. I think that’s why so many TRA supporters here struggle to answer any factual questions - to them it’s just how the world works, like gravity. So they can’t define basic concepts like man / woman / sex / gender / human rights.

And they can’t explain why they think trans gender is a right but trans race is appropriation, trans able is a mental illness and trans age is trolling.

[caughtalightsneeze]

The midnight misogynist was here not that long ago. We had a fabulous chat about the girls in his office and how much they love his big car

I almost feel sorry for him. He's so clearly a fantasist. I imagine him to have a rather mundane job and to still live with his parents, but he imagines that's what real life is like for the men he idolises.

[NRatched]

Not sure why I quoted that post, please ignore the quote Not quite got the hang of it yet.

[NRatched]

@Winesalot

Threads started by trans women usually descend into shit slinging pretty quickly. Any thread started here that is started with the intent to berate and shame women will generally be not well received. And why should it be well received here? it is not well received anywhere on MN.

Only last night we had a poster who wanted to discuss that a women's place was in the kitchen. I offered recipes and a biscuit. Others did as well. Not one of us abused the poster and the thread was deleted. There was nothing slung and that happens most weeks. There are however posters that continue to engage only superficially, sometimes not taking the time to read a post but pounce and declare it phobic and hateful. Lots of those!

Somewhat on topic, this is one of the areas where I see similarities between MRAs and TRAs. MRAs seem to think that feminism is about punishing men rather than being something that doesn't really involve men at all (I know! Can you imagine?! Women, eh?).

100% agree with this. Centreing women comes across as very wrong for a few groups of people. Many TRAs seem to think GC feminism is 'anti trans', when infact, it is pro-woman. If trasactivists all disappeared tomorrow (or changed their aims to no longer be about removing womens rights, but fighting for trans rights instead), ANY group attempting to rewrite laws to remove womens rights would get the exact same reply tbh. These days, even mentioning womens rights, or that women are an actual thing, is deemed hateful and its so weird to me. Coming to feminists moaning 'what about the men' or whatever is not realistically going to go down well. Going onto a forum predominately for black people whinging about not caring about white peoples rights would get the same. Or a forum thats about saving the whales, whinging that sealions are important too and why don't you care about them?

[NRatched]

@Winesalot

Threads started by trans women usually descend into shit slinging pretty quickly. Any thread started here that is started with the intent to berate and shame women will generally be not well received. And why should it be well received here? it is not well received anywhere on MN.

Only last night we had a poster who wanted to discuss that a women's place was in the kitchen. I offered recipes and a biscuit. Others did as well. Not one of us abused the poster and the thread was deleted. There was nothing slung and that happens most weeks. There are however posters that continue to engage only superficially, sometimes not taking the time to read a post but pounce and declare it phobic and hateful. Lots of those!

I suspect that thread would have been read as hatred by some. As the poster sounds like peple took the piss, which they rightly should from what you have said! Why posters are expected to engage in good faith with someone like that is beyond me, the OP clearly is not engaging in good faith, so why should anyone else waste their time, when its clear the direction the thread will go.

This reminds me of the 'midnight misogynists'. Do we still get those? I am not on late often these days but they were regular as clockwork, and not long ago appeared to be shifting from outright MRA, to TRA, and the threads used to be deleted by morning so I wouldn't know. But those kinds of threads were very deservedly met with pisstaking. But even on those, you would have someone wailing that why can't women just be nice, this is why FWR has a 'bad name', and so on.

Honestly, IMO FWR has a 'bad name' because it is the only part of the internet with a lot of members that unconditionally centre women. People are NOT used to that so to see it, is a bit of a shock to the system for many. Women are meant to put everyone else first, if they don't, there is something wrong.

And this is half of the problem.

[NRatched]

@Quaagars

I generally do see replies in good faith, unless the poster is starting a thread simply to scold women for not being nice

Really?
The responses I've seen given to people saying they're a trans woman have always been fucking disgusting.
Although not if it's a trans woman who has the same view, they sometimes get a free pass.
Threads started by trans women usually descend into shit slinging pretty quickly.

Granted I don't read every thread, but the only ones I have seen instant attitude with is the long OPs that are all along the lines of 'you are all transphobic bigots, let me educate your pretty little heads'. Which (rightly) tend to get sarcasm. I often wonder how a thread on a male dominated forum would go down, if the OP started off telling the men they were not very nice and simply do not understand issues on a topic the men have spent a while reading about and understand as much as most..

IIRC we have a fair few regular trans posters. Oddly, those posters are often berated by those claiming to be 'trans supportive' because they do not hold the same opinions that have been deemed acceptable by transactivists..that phenomenom is always interesting to watch in action. I recall a thread started here that was, again nowt to do with feminism, that was all about 'can we all not just be nice and believe X' and a trans poster (hamster was in the name, I don't remember it totally but others will? will try and find it in a bit if needed) tried speaking to the OP and was completely ignored for pages and pages while the OP kept on about how awful we were. I think that ended up in the trans poster being called transphobic too. By someone who 'identified' as 'cis'.

[Winesalot]

aggressive, obtuse

And there is nothing aggressive about the constant implication, or outright stating, that women are hateful for discussing their boundaries and the erosion of women’s rights? Really?

And obtuse ... posters who repeatedly ignore questions and only engage at shaming and berating, and who repeatedly cannot evidence their claims might be said to be obtuse.

[caughtalightsneeze]

And with respect not always because The responders are "unapologetically feminist", but because posters are aggressive, obtuse and tend to pile on against posters who dissent.

It's interesting that you use the term aggressive when all I see is people asking questions. That's a description that is often applied to women who question things whereas men are viewed as inquisitive.

As for piling on, you may view it as piling on; all I can see is poster after poster asking questions, wording them in slightly different ways perhaps, in the hope that at some point someone will answer them. Further upthread I asked someone to point me to a particular comment because I wanted to read what they were referring to. Instead of explaining that it was on a different thread I got a couple of responses saying 'its very clear' , 'its right there' and then an incredibly patronising reply telling me that it was actually referring to a different thread. That was as straightforward as a question could be and could easily have been answered with 'it's not on this thread, it's a separate thread' but even that straightforward question was met with a refusal to engage.

[BolloxtoGender]

I disdain people who agitate to have the category 'woman' made meaningless in law and social customs.

Yes. This ^. I also disdain them for their smugness and arrogance in thinking they are being clever by doing so, playing with words, using meaning less word salads in what they think passes as debate or discussion. And even more so, for thinking that they are being virtuous and kind, whilst not having a real a grasp on the oppression women faces.

[BolloxtoGender]

The irony is that man / woman is a stable category in reality, whereas white people and black people? In reality, they are not categories. Then the postmodernists academics (who make millions selling their Emperor s new clothes by capitalising on racism) end up using white and black as proxies for if you believe in western civilisation and capitalism or Marxism, REGARDLESS of what your actual colour is.

It’s all circular logical and very 1984, freedom is slavery, newspeak, mini truth etc..

[TheRealMcKenna]

I disdain people who agitate to have the category 'woman' made meaningless in law and social customs.

As a slight derail, I am part way through reading Cynical Theories, and it appears that this is precisely what the ‘applied postmodernist’ ideas from which Queer Theory and later Gender Studies were derived ends up doing. The aim seems to be to end the oppressive power structures in society by doing away with the stable categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and the ‘oppressive’ scientific basis for the categorisation and language. How this ever became established as an academic discipline in Universities is beyond me. Slow clap for Butler.

It seems that the Critical Race Theorists were slightly smarter in their insistence that race was a stable category.

[BlackWaveComing]

I disdain people who agitate to have the category 'woman' made meaningless in law and social customs.

Or who demonstrate, through their words and behaviour, that they have toxic and highly masculined and sexist attitudes to women.

If a transwoman does not fall into this category, good luck to her. I neither disdain nor celebrate her. If she has interesting things to say I'll listen. If she doesn't, I won't. Same as any other decent male.

I'd suggest a precondition of that for me is that no male tries to coerce me, using my female socialisation to put others first, into uttering untruths.

I can co-exist quite happily with trans males who do not try to force me to agree they are women.

This thread has-been one long, tedious exercise in the anti-women posters attempting to use shame and moral posturing to coerce women to collude in a lie, for the sake of males. So boring. So pointless.

[Dreeple]

I wouldn’t dream of saying something awful like “transwomen” (lol) are men.

But women are adult human females. Nobody else is a woman, or even gets within a million miles of being a woman.

[InspiralCoalescenceRingdown]

What I find most interesting about this thread is how @wellbehavedwomen posted multiple thorough posts detailing the GC feminist argument, complete with links to sources, and there has been no engagement with those posts from pro-gender identity posters. That gives the game away somewhat.

As to the actual argument - that we're aligned with the far right? I mean, so what? The far right are opposed to Muslim rape gangs (e.g. Rotherham). My question to @CloudyVanilla, et al.:

Are you aligned with the far right in opposing rape gangs or are you in favour of rape gangs?

If we want to play these silly guilt-by-assocation games further - let's bring up Iran. Trans people can legally change their sex in Iran, but there is the death penalty for homosexual sex.

Are pro-gender identity posters happy to be aligned with a state that executes people for being gay?