Why conflate 'Gender Critical' and belief in immutable sex?

[Beancounter1]

I'm confused about why the term 'gender critical' is conflated with the belief in immutable biological sex. To me they are not necessarily the same thing.

I believe it is not possible for someone to change their sex. Would you say this is a 'gender critical' stance? My belief in immutable sex doesn't necessarily mean I don't believe gender exists. Maybe someone can change their gender, if not their sex.

Sex seems a really clear-cut biological characteristic, but I am on the fence about gender - I am inclined to think it does actually exist and that it is not 'all society's influence', that some of gender is nature not nurture.
But I don't have a definition of gender.

The situation is not helped by the fact there is, in common usage, only one set of words, 'woman' or 'female', to signify both gender and sex. Language does not help here.

Please could someone who has put a lot more thought into this help me out here?

But I still don't find the label 'gender critical' particularly useful or self-explanatory.

You're not alone. There was a thread on this the other day.

I liked the idea of calling us "sex people" - an Alan Partridge reference.

I don't think that was broadly accepted - nor was anything else.

Thread: I don't much care for the 'gender critical' handle. Is there anything better.

@NecessaryScene

But I still don't find the label 'gender critical' particularly useful or self-explanatory.

You're not alone. There was a thread on this the other day.

I liked the idea of calling us "sex people" - an Alan Partridge reference.

I don't think that was broadly accepted - nor was anything else.

Thread: I don't much care for the 'gender critical' handle. Is there anything better.

Thanks, I missed that thread so will go and read it now. Then to bed - thanks for your replies

I don't think it's a great name tbh but in the end I'm not sure that matters.

Gender used to mean sex role. Still is used that way a lot if you look at WHO etc.

Then for ? politeness and for unknown reasons gender started getting used to mean sex on lots of forms etc.

And then finally the concept of an internal gender ID, also usually referred to simply as gender.

So all pretty confusing with 3 definitions.

Gender critical is the first. Gender is restrictive sex roles. Let's let anyone dress, behave etc as they wish and not have this is for men and this is for women.

I suppose the term is used because the idea of knowing inside you are the wrong sex. Means that there must be innate things inside. A female brain. Etc. And how can anyone know how opposite sex people feel? What is it based on unless feeling more at home in a different gender role?

Like I say it's not a great name but it's what has stuck.

It's not about being critical of individuals who feel they have an internal gender etc. The issue is around changing laws conventions in place for a good reason to be based on an invisible internal feeling rather than sex.

Although I question whether the idea that pretty much everyone has a strongly felt internal sense of gender id is true. Loads of people don't. I don't think it's ever been properly studied.

Gender critical is the first. Gender is restrictive sex roles. Let's let anyone dress, behave etc as they wish and not have this is for men and this is for women.

This somewhat differs from my bullet points above, but I agree that this is the original foundation.

And as I said on the other thread the "Let Toys Be Toys" campaign is pure Gender Critical - an example of that core belief applied without any reference to this trans thing.

That core belief was very much the original philosophical basis of early opposition to "gender identity" - gendered souls are as harmful an idea as gendered toys.

So as "gender identity" got bigger, "gender critical" has come to be identified with the opposition to "gender identity" (rather than "gender" as restrictive sex roles), because gender critical feminists were there and saw the potential problems first.

Many now seeing the practical problems with gender ideology may not have been coming at it from a philosophical "gender critical" position - certainly conservative opponents would not.

We don't have a solid name for broader "gender identity" opponents - but then we don't have a solid name for its proponents either.

But in a way I'm glad that the name that's stuck for the opposition is the one rooted in the left-wing philosophy. Rather than something right-wing. It's going to get people to look into that more left-wing feminist side, and I think it strengthens us. (Much as "TERF" can when people stop and dig into the "radical feminism" bit...)

'Gender critical' thought does not deny the existence of gender stereotypes or the fact that people identify with these stereotypes but it is critical of the way in which society places importance on these stereotypes and imposes these on others.

What is does reject is that there is any evidence that gender identity is in any way universal, not that all gender identities fit into categories but that there are people who have no gender identity and do not seek to have one. Similar in a way that atheists do not seek to find god in a way that is meaningful to them.

And adding to that - there is overlap between some gender identity believers and gender criticals.

Non-binaries will generally approve of "Let Toys Be Toys" and will say gendered toys are a bad idea.

It's just they haven't realised that the idea of gendered souls belongs in the same dustbin. They accept the idea, but say that they as an individual just happen not to have one, while everyone else does.

(Neoliberalism again! See the libfem thread).

What "gender critical" people have been fighting has changed. They didn't choose their battles, their battles chose them.

It was "Let Toys Be Toys". Now it's "Sex Matters".

Maya Forstater co-founded organisations with both names. She gets stuff done!

When the babies grow up into adults, the original sex differences have interacted with society and become gender differences. Is this a plausible explanation?

I don't think so. The sex differences remain sex differences, because they are immutable. If, for example, a natal male identifies as being of female gender, what does that actually mean? What characteristics make that the case? If you try to think of examples of possible signs/characteristics, such as preferring dresses, liking hobbies and interests which have been more popular with women, having personality traits which have been more commonly associated with women etc, those are simply stereotypes. They don't make anyone female. They don't add up to a gender. Indeed, it's perfectly common to be an actual woman and have none of those characteristics. So how can those characteristics possibly make you a woman?

I am gender critical because a) I am critical of gender in the sense of gender roles. They are old-fashioned, sexist and damaging, and imo people should be dismantling them rather than re-labelling and even physically altering themselves in order to fit in with them. And b) I don't think gender exists except as a bunch of stereotypes.

@OchonAgusOchonOh

I do agree with you op to an extent re nature and gender. I think nature has helped create some of the stereotypes of gender. Men and women evolved differently due to the skills that were of benefit to them. So the sex who bore children tended to raise and nurture the children meaning characteristics such as cooperation with others in the same role had an evolutionary advantage. Likewise the sex who did not bear young were in a position to protect and hunt so characteristics such as aggression were an evolutionary advantage.

What all that means is that women tended to have the more nurturing characteristics, men the more aggressive ones so stereotypes of what it means to be a man or a woman evolved. People were expected to fit into the appropriate stereotype which further reinforces the stereotypes.

So basically, nature contributes, nurture reinforces and power allows those with power to subjugate those without and further reinforces and expands the stereotypes.

I read an excellent book years ago called A Mind of Her Own about the evolutionary psychology of women. It had a lot of this stuff in it.

If you are interested in this please read ‘Inferior’ by Angela Saini. It talks through the main arguments for ‘sex-based personality traits’ and pretty much de-bunks them.

@LolaSmiles

My understanding of gender critical is that gender critical asserts that gender is a social construct based on stereotypes of maleness and femaleness. The GC position would be that these stereotypes are harmful to men, women, girls and boys. A GC position would say there is no reason why a girl/boy/woman/man can't have certain interests, dress a certain way, behave certain way, express themselves as they wish and the world would be a better place if we acknowledged gender stereotypes are limiting for all.

I was going to write something along these lines 😊

@Beancounter1 I've been running the exact same ideas through too and was looking fir threads that discusd it.

Someone mentions sex-based personality traits but if sex-based personality traits are an outcome of our biology someone like DH can't possibly know what these sex-based traits feel like because he doesn't have my female biology which leaves gendered stereotypes. 200,000 years of modern humans, that's a lot of nurture to unpick.

*and not but.

@MishyJDI

What we need is genital inspectors at the entrance to every male and female sex segregated venue. Everyone has to flash their genitals to ensure they are right to enter. You can never be too sure when someone who looks CIS is actually not and who looks trans is actually CIS.

The only answer, is genital inspections. Just to be safe!

Funny isn't it, that throughout human history no one has ever had a problem figuring out who are the men and who are the women, and no one ever really had a problem with the idea of single sex spaces either.

It's only now that it is all becoming oh so difficult...

Just catching up on the discussion Beancounter1!

When you put it like that - yes, gender stereotypes are absolutely harmful as they cause/allow/enable/encourage sexism, against males and females.
If there was no sexism, gender would be just dressing up/down and role-play and harmless.
So we are back to sexism is the problem. Which probably falls under point 2 above but this is not clear.

So firstly, the first two points don't deal with sexism on their own. Going back to that picture I posted upthread, the position that sex is immutable and matters is consistent with a very conservative belief that women are inferior to men e.g. women aren't intelligent enough to be allowed the vote. So you do need some other bullets in there to deal with sexism itself.

Secondly, even if men and women were treated completely equally, and there was no power imbalance, I would still say that gender (in the strict sense of expectations based on sex stereotypes) was something worth critically analysing, because it constrains us all. I think of gender as a cage that says "you're a woman, so you have to like nurturing people" and "you're a man, so you have to like fixing cars". If we opened the cage doors, and were free to choose what we liked and what we do, maybe lots of us would still end up clumped together by sex. Maybe a disproportionate number of people with ovaries, really do like wearing eyeshadow - who knows? The point is 1) we should remove the expectations and assumptions, and 2) it's worth analysing the social factors that might contribute to some of this gendered behaviour (the clumping together).

Gender critical thinkers were trying to break down stereotypes in the 'Let toys be toys' times .. which was the catch phrase which underlies the wish that everyone should be free to present how they wish without having people make assumptions about their sex.

Now, we are forced to make declarations about people's sex in order to protect our sex based rights and the reason for that protection is rooted in female oppression.

We do not want to be oppressed on the basis of our sex, we do not opt into this oppression, we reject it.. but are being forced to declare our sex and defend our rights to be called women even though we do not wish to be defined by the stereotypes that go along with that word which are imposed upon us by others.

That is hard... fighting for the right to be defined as women when that definition is harmful to us but not being able to be defined as women is more harmful.

People can change aspects of their physical sex. Cross sex hormone therapy influences the development of secondary sex characteristics (and in trans men, primary to some extent).

‘Pre gay’ children more often exhibit cross sex gendered behaviour traits. There is much discussion here about the fact that ‘trans children’ will most likely turn out to be gay if supported until they desist.

What we need is genital inspectors at the entrance to every male and female sex segregated venue. Everyone has to flash their genitals to ensure they are right to enter. You can never be too sure when someone who looks CIS is actually not and who looks trans is actually CIS.
The only answer, is genital inspections. Just to be safe

Why on earth are trans activists so obsessed with genital inspections?
GC women aren't asking for this. At All.
The constant claims that this is what women want is weird and creepy af, and quite frankly stinks of some kind of porn-fuelled wishful thinking.

I would describe myself as GC, but what does slightly wind me is people dismissing gender as a social construct therefore meaningless. Money is a social construct, nationality is socially constructed - both these still have the power to impact lives and experiences.

Being critical of gender is not dismissing it.

It’s like class - another social construct that harms people that I’d happily get rid of but certainly exists and affects people’s lives.

If something is ‘nature not nurture’ that is sex not gender.

@jellyfrizz totally agree, but I do read a lot of posts along the lines of ‘gender doesn’t exist’ ‘gender is nonsense’ etc.

@StealthPolarBear

Really good point. I've always assumed GC to mean critical of gender stereotypes, so the fact you have long hair and wear a skirt does not make you a girl or woman. As you say that's different from knowing that sex cannot change. And tbh that's not a belief any more than a belief in the earth orbiting the sun or that my ds is my ds, or that I live in the village I live in. Those things are usually called facts.

I've always thought this. Women are now being labelled with something that I'm not sure should be a label.

Right, but in this space such posts would be using "gender" to mean TRAs' "inner gender identity" concept, rather than the feminist structural concept.

This makes for very interesting viewing, explaining the language used by those who believe society based on sex as opposed to those who would advocate for a society based on gender identity.

@NiceGerbil

I don't think it's a great name tbh but in the end I'm not sure that matters.

Gender used to mean sex role. Still is used that way a lot if you look at WHO etc.

Then for ? politeness and for unknown reasons gender started getting used to mean sex on lots of forms etc.

And then finally the concept of an internal gender ID, also usually referred to simply as gender.

So all pretty confusing with 3 definitions.

Gender critical is the first. Gender is restrictive sex roles. Let's let anyone dress, behave etc as they wish and not have this is for men and this is for women.

I suppose the term is used because the idea of knowing inside you are the wrong sex. Means that there must be innate things inside. A female brain. Etc. And how can anyone know how opposite sex people feel? What is it based on unless feeling more at home in a different gender role?

Like I say it's not a great name but it's what has stuck.

It's not about being critical of individuals who feel they have an internal gender etc. The issue is around changing laws conventions in place for a good reason to be based on an invisible internal feeling rather than sex.

Although I question whether the idea that pretty much everyone has a strongly felt internal sense of gender id is true. Loads of people don't. I don't think it's ever been properly studied.

It's helpful to be clear about these three aspects of the word 'gender'. You say that 'gender critical' relates to the first, i.e. being against gender stereotypes, which is fine, but my original point here was that the term has become an umbrella for anyone who doesn't believe in 'gender identity', and also for anyone who wants sex-based rights to be prioritised. Yes it is all related. But I am not a fan of ambiguous and confusing terminology. However, as you say we may be stuck with it now.