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?

@NecessaryScene

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...)

Great explanation of the origin of the term, thanks. Maybe talking about left and right wing is just muddying things further?

[quote Iceniii]@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.[/quote]
Yes, you can never know what someone's sex-based personality traits (i.e. what I am calling gender here, the result of nature + nurture) feel like to them. You can only know what you feel like, in relation to the stereotypes and messages you see all around in society.
Some people are very strongly influenced by these messages (and by their upbringing), some are not much influenced at all so come to believe they don't have 'a gender'. But I do think nearly everyone does have some personality traits rooted in their sex.

@BlueBrush

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).

Yes I take your point about sexism relating to all four bullet points.

You say "gender is the strict sense of expectations based on stereotypes", which is fine but it is not the meaning of the word gender I am using here. It is a tricky word!
Can you conceive of a world in which gender exists, but is not linked to any expectations or assumptions? I am trying to isolate gender from sexism.

Yes, you can never know what someone's sex-based personality traits (i.e. what I am calling gender here, the result of nature + nurture

I think you are confusing gender and personality.

I agree with you.

Gender is a thing. A crappy thing, but it's a thing.

But sex is more important.

Babies aren't identical, full stop. Even identical twins have different personalities. I had m/f twins, now adult, and raised them as gender-neutrally as I could, just watching their interests develop and letting them play as they chose with everything. We used a toy library and they could choose. Both grew up to be creative - one is musical, the other artistic. Their interests showed early. Both had dolls, both had bikes etc.

I think an awful lot of what we hear called gender is just personality and interests. Perhaps not all, but probably most.

If society weren't so obsessed with labelling interests and activities as being for girls/women or for boys/men and judging people for breaching imaginary boundaries, a lot of gender dysphoria would subside or be much more manageable.

If we didn't fuss so much about what people are 'supposed' to wear - especially boys and men - happiness could be wider spread. After all, women can get away with wearing practically anything and nobody bats an eyelid. Who wouldn't want that freedom?

Sex, though, that's immutable. You can put yourself through painful surgeries or take cross-sex hormones for life and every single cell in your body will still announce the XX or XY (or XXX or XYY or whatever if things went a bit awry) that was your inheritance when sperm met egg. That's just fact.

Wear what you fancy, live who you love, follow your interests, call yourself whatever you choose, express your individuality, I wouldn't dream of interfering or criticising.

But if you've had a male puberty, it's not fair to colonise women's sport. And if you've had male privilege in your work life, it's not fair to sweep in and snaffle awards intended for women who didn't And if you have a penis and are older than 5 or 6, it's not fair to colonise the girls' or women's changing rooms. And if you are a sex offender or rapist, it's not fair to self-identity into a women's prison and skew government crime statistics so it looks as if women suddenly started raping people.

Live and let live and respect for all - and if you're a man and use the ladies and behave like a lady there, I'm good with that, too. It's all the other bog standard men who will follow you in if you insist on self-ID that really worry me. I realise I'm an outlier here.

No boys in girls' toilets at school though. Girls learning to manage periods do not need boys hanging around outside. After 18 maybe.

@Justjoinedforthis

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.

Yes these are all social constructs, that have been concocted for the benefit of a subset of people, and by implication withhold an unmediated life from the rest. These constructs have power but not innate power. They have the power we give them by broad acceptance.

Nationality: an artificial grouping determined by geographically proximity. When your family, your profession, you hobby, your clan, your town is enough to make you belong somewhere, why is nationalism carefully promoted? Why does it even exist? It is an easy harness on our minds so we can be endlessly manipulated. It exists as a manifestation of authoritarianism.

Money: another construct, to reify one's labor so that the worker does not retain all the benefit from the value of their own labor. Of course it has its use to facilitate trade, but that is an incidental outcome. You may say we can't do without it in an interconnected world, but there is no safeguard and no limit to the parasitical absorption of our collective work into money, which we do not get to keep.

Gender: one guess who needs gender roles to persist so they can keep their distance from housework and 18 year cycles of raising a child to competent adulthood. How else can the patriarchy maintain its power? Gender is such an easy way to tie up decades of women's lives so the men can live like kings each in their contemptible little mind castles.

Most of the systems we live under are conveniences but certainly not meant to be convenient for women. These systems have been developed to keep a permanent dominant class, which of course requires the existence of a permanent under class. Men DO think women are their support humans.

It is almost impossible to see water when you are a fish. It is like expecting to see air. Our systems are not perfect, they are not even good. They're just what we are dealing with as we go through life. Of course these constructs impact us. But they are still meaningless. That they have meaningful impact on us is a descriptive state, not a prescriptive state. For now we can individually choose to decline these constructs. Until the day comes when we do so collectively.

@Beancounter1
You say "gender is the strict sense of expectations based on stereotypes", which is fine but it is not the meaning of the word gender I am using here. It is a tricky word!
Can you conceive of a world in which gender exists, but is not linked to any expectations or assumptions? I am trying to isolate gender from sexism.

Hmm. So I've read back over your posts and I think you're using gender to mean personality traits that in some way correlate with your sex? (Correct me if I'm wrong!) Now I'm completely open to the possibility that men and women on average display different personality traits or behaviours, and they that might be partly due to nature as opposed to just nurture.

But in that case, why not just talk about personality traits that correlate with sex? What is the term "gender" adding there? After all, there are different physical traits that correlate with sex e.g. women are shorter, men are more likely to die from Covid. We don't have a specific name for those.

My point here is that, when you start using "gender" to talk about personality traits, you're always bundling them up as a pink set of traits and a blue set of traits. But even if men and women on average have different traits, as individuals most of us display different traits from the pink and blue categories. E.g. a person might like wearing flowery dresses and fixing cars, a person might like playing rugby and nurturing animals. When you're talking about having "a gender", it's always restricting people to assumptions that they do or should fit one category or another.

Not sure if I've missed your point there!

[quote BlueBrush]@Beancounter1
You say "gender is the strict sense of expectations based on stereotypes", which is fine but it is not the meaning of the word gender I am using here. It is a tricky word!
Can you conceive of a world in which gender exists, but is not linked to any expectations or assumptions? I am trying to isolate gender from sexism.

Hmm. So I've read back over your posts and I think you're using gender to mean personality traits that in some way correlate with your sex? (Correct me if I'm wrong!) Now I'm completely open to the possibility that men and women on average display different personality traits or behaviours, and they that might be partly due to nature as opposed to just nurture.

But in that case, why not just talk about personality traits that correlate with sex? What is the term "gender" adding there? After all, there are different physical traits that correlate with sex e.g. women are shorter, men are more likely to die from Covid. We don't have a specific name for those.

My point here is that, when you start using "gender" to talk about personality traits, you're always bundling them up as a pink set of traits and a blue set of traits. But even if men and women on average have different traits, as individuals most of us display different traits from the pink and blue categories. E.g. a person might like wearing flowery dresses and fixing cars, a person might like playing rugby and nurturing animals. When you're talking about having "a gender", it's always restricting people to assumptions that they do or should fit one category or another.

Not sure if I've missed your point there![/quote]
To me 'gender' is shorthand for the phrase 'personality traits that correlate broadly (on average) with sex, due to the interaction of sex-differences and social conditioning'. I believe this type of gender is inevitable and pretty much universal among humans - it is a very rare person who really has no gender traits.
That is not the same as 'having a gender' or 'gender identity'. It is this bundling and identification that is not inevitable and is harmful.
But I concede that my usage of the word is difficult or unusual, and that your idea of what gender means is more commonplace.

In which case it probably does make sense to regard criticism of gender as inseparable from belief in immutability of sex. I still think it is worth bearing in mind though that these two things are not synonymous.

@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.

Men and women can’t have evolved differently because we get half our dna from dad and half from mum. There’s a tiny bit of one chromosome different. The difference is largely hormonal and biological differences. I’m not a more nurturing parent compared to my husband while my husband isn’t better at map reading and navigating than me.

To me 'gender' is shorthand for the phrase 'personality traits that correlate broadly (on average) with sex, due to the interaction of sex-differences and social conditioning'. I believe this type of gender is inevitable and pretty much universal among humans - it is a very rare person who really has no gender traits.

Okay, now you're losing me again. I get the sense you're really really hung up on the word "gender" and are trying to base a conversation around the word, rather than material reality.

What would it mean to have "no gender traits" given that definition? Do you mean "no personality traits that tend to correlate to their sex"? "No personality traits that correlate to any sex?" "No personality?"

Height correlates to sex. Is this like looking for a person without a height?

Please, figure out what your question is, and don't use the word gender anywhere in the post.

Yeah, there is a tendency, especially in the media, to lump anyone who thinks sex is immutable, and objects to the current form of gender ideology, under the view gender critical.

Maybe people think of it as meaning critical of gender ideology.

Ultimately though there most people think sex is immutable and always have, but they have all kinds of different views about gender. The way feminists talk about it isn't like the way anthropologists talk about it, for example. And neither of those is the same as the idea that we have some innate gender identity.

@NecessaryScene

To me 'gender' is shorthand for the phrase 'personality traits that correlate broadly (on average) with sex, due to the interaction of sex-differences and social conditioning'. I believe this type of gender is inevitable and pretty much universal among humans - it is a very rare person who really has no gender traits.

Okay, now you're losing me again. I get the sense you're really really hung up on the word "gender" and are trying to base a conversation around the word, rather than material reality.

What would it mean to have "no gender traits" given that definition? Do you mean "no personality traits that tend to correlate to their sex"? "No personality traits that correlate to any sex?" "No personality?"

Height correlates to sex. Is this like looking for a person without a height?

Please, figure out what your question is, and don't use the word gender anywhere in the post.

It would have to be a person who was somehow not influenced by the experience of having a sexed body.

Seems fairly impossible, and also not really all that nice.

Basically just rewording things that have already been said but anyway-

I described myself as a "wannabe gender deconstructionist" before I was aware of a movement to consider people to be the sex they identify as rather than their physical sex. I associated rigid gendered expectations with conservatism, so it seemed really odd to me when I first saw conservatives being referred to as "GC." I do think it would be useful to have a term that simply refers to rejecting the plan to replace sex with gender identity without any other implications.

When I became aware of what I call "genderism," I was struck by how much attention is being paid to more superficial aspects of gender roles, that is, clothing or makeup, or even body modifications, while at the same time a complete de facto denial of the aspects of gender that I consider most harmful- the tendency for females to get stuck with the unrewarded shit work, the tendency for females to prioritize others, (males in particular,) the tendency for females to be self-effacing, while on the other hand, the tendency for aggression, violence and perveyness to come from males.

How much of this comes from girls being taught in myriad ways that they must be pretty and nice, and the boys being taught in a myriad ways that they must be strong and tough? When I first noticed that "women's studies" was being replaced by "gender studies," in universities, I was pleased because I thought those were the kinds of things they would be tackling...

I would really like to know how this would be playing out if transwomen who behave like stereotypically creepy men were as rare as women who behave like stereotypically creepy men.

To me 'gender' is shorthand for the phrase 'personality traits that correlate broadly (on average) with sex

That is your definition, but the WHO definition is:

Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.

www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1

Women who are critical of gender are referring to the WHO definition.

I'm increasingly disliking the label gender critical for people who are speaking out against the specific issue around the idea that you can change sex, and implications for law and safeguarding as there really is so much confusion around what it actually means.

Online it's smeared and those with no interest in unpicking what it actually means close their ears to any arguments.

The only reason they're linked is simply that, as WHO above, gender is socially constructed.

You can't change sex in the way you change clothes.

But many younger people don't understand the term gender in the same way as the WHO definition.

The video linked upthread is good though, i saw it elsewhere yesterday,

To me 'gender' is shorthand for the phrase 'personality traits that correlate broadly (on average) with sex, due to the interaction of sex-differences and social conditioning'. I believe this type of gender is inevitable and pretty much universal among humans - it is a very rare person who really has no gender traits.

Which personality traits do you consider to be due to sex differences? The only sex difference I can think of that might be argued to affect personality is the fact that women give birth to babies and might be expected to have a more 'nurturing' personality.

But that's still just a stereotype tbh. It doesn't by any means apply to all women. Some have no desire to have babies. Some are unkind and abusive to their children.
Many are great parents but do not have a 'soft, maternal, nurturing' type of personality. And with those who do have that type of personality, what evidence is there that it is innate and tied to sex differences? If it's innate, why aren't all women like that?

In any case, most of the 'gender characteristics' discussed in the context of the trans debate are superficial and surely have absolutely bugger all to do with innate sex differences and everything to do with social conditioning.

Great post flavouredbanana.

Many women around the world really can't separate gender roles and expectations from their sex. And it's harmful to them. Eg unable to access education. Hence feminists are GC by default.

Part one of two excellent documentaries that tracks how gender stereotypes impact how children learn, achieve and deal with daily social interaction skills.

Notable as boys are not encouraged by society to develop emotional literacy. And taught to be physically aggressive in many cases. A subtle drip drip drip of cultural attitudes and media. The documentary tracks this to adulthood and male violence.

Whoops

Someone just posted a video about what gender and gender identity are on this thread, including this written definition, which I think is excellent.

I agree that ‘gender critical’ implies a particular feminist analysis (like ‘TERF’), however, using the WHO definition it is pretty self explanatory.

What I don't understand, after reading this thread when it's clear you can't change sex, and the gender definition from WHO is clear, why are there many bright young people, and many 'stars' who aren't partially young speaking out against the 'GC' view?

[quote Soontobe60]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.

[/quote] There’s an excellent quote in this

“Gender is affected by culture”

It’s perfect. You can travel across the world and experience the various roles and expectations that a woman must conform to. Your sex will never change and the sexual reproduction role of your body will never change.