How is it "gender critical" to impose rigid binary social categories based on sex?

[CuriousPanda]

For most of history, the whole point of feminism was to oppse sex-based segregation and restrictions that were imposed by patriarchal society.

So I don't see how supporting strict gender categories, and simply calling them "sex-based" instead, in any way leans itself to "gender abolition".

One might get impression that "gender" is simply being used to mean trans people existing, and "gender abolition" simply means restricting trans people from being able to transition and use different gender labels. And basically nothing else.

With "sex-based rules and restrictions" being basically just gender roles but trans-proofed.

[HalfShrunkMoreToGo]

I would now classify myself as GC I suppose if I had to pick a label.

I don't care what anyone calls themselves, or wears, as long as no one:

• removes the use of the word 'Woman' when discussing female healthcare - cervical cancer, breastfeeding, periods, pregnancy
• removes the use of the words women/girls when discussing issues that directly impact human females such as female genital mutilation, infanticide of girl babies as they are considered lesser beings, rape and trafficking of female girls and so on
• introduces provisions that allow people with a penis to utilise female only spaces such as refuges, single sex wards in hospitals/mental health facilities, prisons, changing facilities, children's single sex dormitories on guides/school trips etc
• removes provisions for Female patients to be treated by female HCPs
• introduces male bodied people into women's sport, removing opportunities for women and driving up the physical hazards and risks to all other women competing. See recent examples in Rugby, MMA fighting, Archery, Weightlifting, Cycling, Running and Swimming.
• replaces female candidates in professional and academic awards with male-born people.

Inclusivity should be about adding provisions for wider groups not taking them away from another group.

We should be looking for ways to add facilities and services that meet Transpeoples needs without removing the facilities, services, accolades and rights that women have had to beg and fight for and in which we are still unequal compared to men.

[EdgeOfACoin]

How are you defining the words 'woman' and 'man', OP? What makes someone a 'woman' if not biology?

What are the characteristics that are shared by all women and transwomen that are not shared by any men or transmen?

A non-binary person gets pregnant. What is the one thing you know for a fact about that particular non-binary person?

A non-binary person produces sperm. What is the one thing you know for a fact about that particular non-binary person?

What characteristics are possessed by all non-binary people that are definitely not possessed by any 'binary' people?

As far as I am concerned, the words 'man' and 'woman' are simple descriptors of biological sex. Until someone can provide me with a non-circular, meaningful definition, I see no need to change my view. But hey, over to you, OP.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

What is "gender critical" about strictly assigning these labels based on someone's genitals?

Babies have their sex noted, correctly in nearly all cases, either at birth or earlier if certain antenatal tests are carried out. Nothing is assigned. Are you seriously suggesting that it is not possible to correctly note the sex of babies based on their external sex characteristic or antenatal test results?

And none of that has anything to do with being critical of gender as a social construct.

[lazylinguist]

Recognising what sex people incontrovertibly are is not the same as telling them how to behave, what to wear etc based on old-fashioned stereotypes historically associated with the sexes.

It is the transgender rights movement which embraces and promotes those stereotypes, not gender critical people.

[Cazzovuoi]

You have to understand OP that GC feminists don’t care what you call yourself, what you feel inside, what dresses/suits you wear. You do you and we’ll call you whatever name/pronoun you like. We have no issue with any of that despite what TRAs will have you think. Love and let live and all that.

However we will not deny the SEX based oppression of females (regardless of what gender they feel they are) and the predatory males (whatever gender they feel they are) that we must protect all women from.

We have no issue with trans women, as long as we are not compelled by threats of rape and violence to share the protection of our sex based segregated spaces. Or use compelled language. We cannot give up or rights because someone feels something.

[Ohpulltheotherone]

[quote CuriousPanda]@Ihaventgottimeforthis
Gender critical recognises that our sex in no way dictates our feelings or outward expression or identity or character.

Numerous people here have said, countless times, that being born "male" makes people inherently more dangerous and predatory purely by the virtue of their sex.

Sounds to me like many of you do believe sex dictates character.[/quote]
Jesus wept have you turned on the tv or read any news online in the past 100 years???

Do you know who rape, murder, assault, abuse, rob, intimidate, coerce, traffic, molest, kidnap, defraud the most?

Clue - it is NOT women.

Women do nasty stuff too - but it is by a large majority that men do more nasty stuff.

Women and men both grow up in care, both are victims of neglect and crime and abuse, both lose parents young, both go through wars and poverty and all the other horrible shit in life but women do not end up as fucked up and as detached as men. Women simply do not commit the level of criminally and morally wrong behaviour. They just don’t.

Are you for real, honestly? Are you honestly suggesting that men don’t have some kind of inherent tendency that women just don’t have?

I can’t believe this is real, you’re on a wind up surely

[NotTerfNorCis]

The difference between male and female, men and women, is biological.

Feminists use the concept of 'gender' to mean the social and cultural expectations surrounding each biological sex. Feminists want to change these expectations which they see as giving men more power and prestige. That's basically what feminism is.

If anyone wants to 'live as a gender', including 'living as the gender they were not assigned at birth', that can only mean upholding these social and cultural expectations. If you take biology out of the picture, that's all you have left.

This is why feminists are critical of gender and gender identity.

Sometimes, biology matters. Males and females ARE biologically different. One example of where it matters is in sports. If all sports were mixed sex, women would be excluded from most of the elite competitions because, physically, they couldn't compete against elite male athletes. So sometimes men and women do need to have their own areas and categories.

In short, feminists support some limited different treatment based on sex, not gender, because:

1. Gender means regressive social roles that are usually very tenuously linked to biology.
   
   
2. Sometimes biological sex does make a difference.

[chickenyhead]

If there wasn't any sex by birth (a protected characteristic) there would be no need for trans anything.

Sex is a biological fact.

Gender is a societal construct.

I believe you are deliberately CHOOSING to peddle misinformation.

You are dangerous.

[WrongWayApricot]

It's gender critical because it removes gender as a way to label and segregate people. I would love to know what you think gender critical means, maybe you'll get better answers when you've defined it. I honestly find it really hard to understand how anyone that understands gc theory could want to keep gender. Don't you just want to be you, as you are, with no societal expectations based on your genitals? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

[Thelnebriati]

How is it "gender critical" to impose rigid binary social categories based on sex?

The alternative that's being forced on us leads to homophobia thats so extreme it would make members of Westboro Baptist Church flinch.

[suggestionsplease1]

@Cazzovuoi

You have to understand OP that GC feminists don’t care what you call yourself, what you feel inside, what dresses/suits you wear. You do you and we’ll call you whatever name/pronoun you like. We have no issue with any of that despite what TRAs will have you think. Love and let live and all that.

However we will not deny the SEX based oppression of females (regardless of what gender they feel they are) and the predatory males (whatever gender they feel they are) that we must protect all women from.

We have no issue with trans women, as long as we are not compelled by threats of rape and violence to share the protection of our sex based segregated spaces. Or use compelled language. We cannot give up or rights because someone feels something.

so 'you do you and we'll call you whatever name/pronoun you like' and you also won't used compelled language...

am I missing something here..?

[BernardBlackMissesLangCleg]

'you think this '

god it's dull

[midgemagneto]

Compel != polite request

[chickenyhead]

@suggestionsplease1

It isn't you that's missing anything.

[PickAChew]

Gender expression doesn't trump basic biology, panda

My garden is host to lots of birds, including several woodpigeons. Unlike a lot of birds, all woodpigeons, regardless of sex, look pretty much the same. That does not prevent them from being distinctly male and female, as becomes clear when they have sex. In the same way, a male human body, however it is decorated, is still male. It has male sex organs, it is bigger and stronger than a female body. It has a prostate which may cause problems in middle age, which aren't prevented by wearing a skirt and some lippy.

Sex is unchangeable and more important than some arbitrary concept of gender. Feeling like a woman doesn't protect you from prostate cancer.

[Alltheprettyseahorses]

This is all quite wacky. Understanding the reality of biological sex has nothing to do with reinforcing gender roles. If it did, women would never have got the vote. Sex matters (in life and law was it?). Many illnesses and medical care requirements are strictly sex-specific. As for spaces, setting aside safety, privacy and dignity concerns and sticking to sheer practicality, if I tried to use a urinal I'd piss on my own feet and the queues for the women's are long enough without fellas getting in the way and having to use our cubicles and they wouldn't want the extra waiting time so no one would be happy. Do people not think any more?

[dworky]

This is exactly what happens when you close down all debate, erroneously accusing us of bigotry. You learn sod all about feminism or our position/argument.

[WaltzingBetty]

And? Since time immemorial we've lived in a patriarchal society, this doesn't mean that the status quo should not be challenged.

@CuriousPanda how do you challenge the patriarchy if you cannot define it? Patriarchy is founded upon male dominance.If you don't recognise males, how can you define the patriarchy and thus challenge it?

How can you ensure sex based rights for women if you don't accept sex as an immutable characteristic ?

[chickenyhead]

OP has made it clear that they think gender and sex are the same thing.

No matter how many people explain the difference, they will not learn. They will not listen.

[WorkingItOutAsIGo]

I think OP isn’t necessarily here for genuine debate.

But the debate is nonetheless valuable. I have realised what I am thanks to PPs.

Gender critical and a sex realist.

I am critical of the notion of gender and recognise the reality of biological sex and how that can be used and abused (as well as being the most amazing thing).

The OP can call them self what they like, wear what they like, use whatever pronouns they like - I will support them all the way. But I will also recognise their sex and will intuitively know whether they are of the sex that represents possible danger to me or not.

[DdraigGoch]

What are "masculine and feminine labels and pronouns"?

man", "woman", "he", "she", "mother", "father", etc.

All sorts of gendered words and terms.

@CuriousPanda let's just examine one of those terms then:
Mother
noun
1. A (human) female who has given birth to a baby
2. A human female who parents an adopted or fostered child
3. A human female who donates a fertilized egg or donates a body cell which has resulted in a clone.

"Human" and "female" are both terms of biology, not sociology. Therefore "mother" is a sex-based term because it refers to biological roles, not those imposed by society. It is a biological fact that mothers are of the female sex, gender doesn't come into it until decisions such as which parent (or both equally) will be taking the lead role in care (beyond biological functions such as breastfeeding which are sex-based).

Take emperor penguins for example. When a hen lays an egg, the cock will keep incubate, hatch and feed the chick while the hen feeds. Even though the cock does most of the early child-rearing, that doesn't mean that he is really the hen. No, that is merely the sex-based role he has. Sex-based, not gender-based because the hen is exhausted from bearing the egg so she must feed first, the cock has a brood patch to keep the chick warm and can express "crop milk" from his oesophagus to keep the chick alive until the mother returns with her catch. The cock is still the cock, the hen is still the hen.

[irresistibleoverwhelm]

I can call myself a purple unicorn but it doesn’t make it true.

If I started to get arsey because other people refused to recognise my innate magical unicorn-ness (on the perfectly understandable grounds that unicorns aren’t actually real), and insisted on calling me a human, I might qualify as a self-obsessed fantasist with a childish set of delusions.

When you can point me to a real material non-male non-female “non-binary” human (as opposed to someone who has just made up the idea of “non-binary” in their head and wants to be called it), then I’ll agree that “non-binary” is a thing and not just a made-up idea. (And no, people with DSD/variances of sex development don’t count, sorry.)

[Thelnebriati]

suggestionsplease1 am I missing something here..?

Yes you are.
People are saying they'll use the pronouns you prefer, by their own choice to be polite. And they will not stop using sexed language.
You can use whatever name you choose, but you cant choose the terms others use for themselves.

[ahoyshipmates]

Oh, the irony.

[MimiDaisy11]

But you are forced to call yourself "woman". Even though many trans men nd non-binary people do not want to use that label

Why don’t they want to use that label? Is it because they have prejudice and see gender roles to the categories of women and men. It does appear that way as they generally love to use stereotypes and gender roles for why they do or don’t fit in a category.

You get people who are really into reptiles or other groups of animals but what if they started saying they don’t like the label mammal to be applied to them and feel more connected to another category of animals. That’s what it’s like for people to reject categories of female and male. It doesn’t make any sense.