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.

If you think this is happening at the same rate and to the same severity for women that it is happening for trans people in the UK right now, you need to live in the real world.

No, you do. Go on, what is happening to trans people that isn't happening to women?

I think you have very little insight into how many women - sorry, female people - are living pretty fucking horrible lives.

Missing something? Massively, so let's help you out.

Man = language descriptor of Human Male
Stallion = language descriptor of Equine Male
Bull = Language descriptor of Bovine Male

Woman = Language descriptor of Human Female
Mare = Language descriptor of Equine Female
Cow = Language descriptor of Bovine Female

Gender = the constructed expectations of social performance pushed onto human males & females. Conforming to Gender expectations is a construction fully invented by Human beings. A man saying he "feels like a Woman" is a logical fallacy because in order to do so he has to construct his own ideal of what a Woman is outside of material reality of the human female. Woman is just the English Language descriptor of the 51% of the human population with the possible potential to birth young. In uterus she will go down the female developmental pathway which is observed these days long before birth.

Not all societies describe these imposed performances as Gender but all societies have them, the best term for them is "sex role stereotypes", they are restrictive, demeaning and often based around objectification. What is not in dispute is that all female mammals are at risk of sexual violence and thus function a safeguarding structure in order to reduce the incidence of this risk from the male of the species. Human females run sex segregation & safeguarding in exceptional circumstances ie when publicly vulnerable, as their preferred mode, Equines females will choose a cohort of males to run with who will provide protection. Deer will segregate in the wild, hinds have their nursery grounds and stags their bachelor grounds and only meet up during breeding season but even then at a safe distance. Dogs & Bears are opportune but if the female is unwilling violence can erupt.

The concept of masculine & feminine is just that, a concept that very few humans can be boxed into but it doesn't stop generations of humans trying over millennia & failing. This is why "Gender" as an organising of humans will fail over time, because it relies on sex role stereotypes and faith in order to push humans into restrictive, prescriptive boxes. 🤷‍♀️ It's a belief not a testable reality and like all belief based faiths allowed to run rampant becomes controlling. The quicker it's defined as a religion the better for all concerned, imho.

This is not just my belief based on decades of life and evidence it is the testable, measurable and observable reality. I know which sex of animal to put with the other sex to get foals, lambs & calves & I know which Tup won't look sideways at a ewe because he just isn't into it females. I also know that unless a Tup is fully castrated he will not be accepted into the female dominated herd unless he adheres to very strict criteria ie they choose him collectively. That is how nature works, humans are narcissistic, imho, to think we are above that level of natural selection & safeguarding & it is inherent in all female species to safeguard against male sexual violence. Facts are facts. 🤷‍♀️

@Ereshkigalangcleg

If you think this is happening at the same rate and to the same severity for women that it is happening for trans people in the UK right now, you need to live in the real world.

No, you do. Go on, what is happening to trans people that isn't happening to women?

Did you read my post which was about rate and severity? Or incidence and degree if you would rather use the stats terminology.

Are you telling me that you believe that if you were to take a random sample of 1000 UK woman and 1000 UK trans people, the women would have experienced the same incidence and degree of social harm, isolation and alienation that the 1000 trans people have?

Grow up.

Transwomen are simultaneously just the same as women with the same struggles, and different from women with their own, worse struggles.

Stop trying to emotionally blackmail us please. Imo, acceptance for trans people would be much easier to achieve if we were just asked to accept them as trans people. This denial of reality is not helping. Stop trying to bend reality to your will and you'll probably encounter a lot less resistance.

Interesting thread. Funny in parts. Some good arguments, none of them from OP, who nevertheless has kept on with his cheerful but elsewhere perforce dangerous nonsense.

Sometimes it strikes me too much is given to what we might categorise as the opposition, epitomised here by OP. (Part of being too nice, really.) Here is a suggestion; I have done this recently in real life, with good-enough results. (I used to work in the Argument Clinic, much beloved of Monty Python fans -- paid to teach arguing through argument. This is for free, though.)

Most really stupid arguments start off stupid and never improve. Often the best strategy is to go back to the beginning and attack the roots, so to speak. (This is not a plea for definition of terms or anything like that. Definition is most often a red herring anyway. ...)

The argument about 'trans', most readers here will have noticed, is a really stupid one. OK, how does it start? We trans people (or transpeople, yes some people think the spacing matters) are people whose gender identity ...

-- Wait! 'Gender identity', you say? But there is no such thing as gender identity.

Erh, but if there is no such thing as gender identity, then there is no such thing as a trans person (or transper ..., no, already too tedious).

-- Yes, right. No such thing. Not anywhere. Never was. Could not be.

But, but, ... Erasing identity! Transphobia! Literal violence! Equality Act! Cis! Section 28! LGBTQWERTYUIOP! Hormones in wombs! Monkeys with toys! Misgendering! Pronouns!

-- Sad, is it not? But there you are. And you know what? I do not care. Now piss off and stop bothering me. Oh, and if I catch you around my children again, ... [Redacted for Mumsnet acceptability.]

Just a suggestion. It has the advantage of truth, anyway.

If you think this is happening at the same rate and to the same severity for women that it is happening for trans people in the UK right now, you need to live in the real world.

I have no way of knowing unless you can explain what trans means. I don’t believe, for instance, that a male identifying as non binary but presenting as a gender conforming man faces particular discrimination.

It’s also completely irrelevant to definitions of sex and specific rights and services that women need because of sex.

Imo, acceptance for trans people would be much easier to achieve if we were just asked to accept them as trans people.

Much better from a personal point of view too.

The serenity prayer makes a lot of sense.

Most of these GCF arguments seem to rest on the assumption that biological sex is objectively determined, binary and immutable. It isn't. If there is enough of a grey area about biological sex owing to individual differences in sex chromosomes, the presence or absence of the SRY gene, the presence or absence of genes for hormones and hormone receptors that are normally triggered by SRY etc., then it is reasonable to suppose that there is an even larger biological grey area that we don't know much about (because it's even more complicated), which may (and probably does) have significant impact on brain function that leads to differences in characteristics correlated with lower-level determinants of sexual characteristics. If enough of a biological evidence base builds to support this conjecture, and we realise that there is a much larger grey area in 'biological sex' than the significant grey area currently appreciated, would GCFs modify their position?

Imo, acceptance for trans people would be much easier to achieve if we were just asked to accept them as trans people.

I absolutely accept trans people as trans people, the journey and the history are all part of a person, I accept it all. True transphobia is pretending that a person's past didn't happen, that there is no difference between a female and a trans woman.

Many trans people would be much happier if they can accept themselves and their past rather than trying to change to definition of words to squeeze themselves into a sex category they don't meet the definition of.

@merrymouse

Imo, acceptance for trans people would be much easier to achieve if we were just asked to accept them as trans people.

Much better from a personal point of view too.

The serenity prayer makes a lot of sense.

Absolutely.

@Rocket1982

Most of these GCF arguments seem to rest on the assumption that biological sex is objectively determined, binary and immutable. It isn't. If there is enough of a grey area about biological sex owing to individual differences in sex chromosomes, the presence or absence of the SRY gene, the presence or absence of genes for hormones and hormone receptors that are normally triggered by SRY etc., then it is reasonable to suppose that there is an even larger biological grey area that we don't know much about (because it's even more complicated), which may (and probably does) have significant impact on brain function that leads to differences in characteristics correlated with lower-level determinants of sexual characteristics. If enough of a biological evidence base builds to support this conjecture, and we realise that there is a much larger grey area in 'biological sex' than the significant grey area currently appreciated, would GCFs modify their position?

Pink and blue brains? Nah.

If you can prove that sex is a spectrum then not only would you be in line for a Nobel prize, it would indeed shift the conversation. However, given that the only proof of the conjecture so far is a handful if recycled opinion pieces in popular science magazines, women will be applying Chesterton's fence to any suggestion of weakening our rights and protections.

So if if if and if there @Rocket1982

Makes no sense.

The key that the gender ideologues haven’t realised is that:

Just because something is not a simple binary;
Does NOT mean that it is therefore a spectrum.

If enough of a biological evidence base builds to support this conjecture, and we realise that there is a much larger grey area in 'biological sex' than the significant grey area currently appreciated, would GCFs modify their position?

You are on the wrong website, if you think people on this board don't understand the ins and outs of sexual reproduction in mammals. However, if you want to argue that some people have a sex that is neither male nor female go ahead.

Meanwhile female people will always need specific rights and protections that men don't because of the nature of reproduction.

You are also heading down a road that leads to some people losing rights and protections despite suffering from gender dysphoria because they don't meet the correct criteria for being 'trans'. You really aren't helping anyone.

Most of these GCF arguments seem to rest on the assumption that biological sex is objectively determined, binary and immutable. It isn't.

Oh yes it is. Everyone on the planet is here because a sperm-producing human (a man) impregnated an egg-producing person (a woman). Just like all the other mammals. If and when you decide you want a child you, just like Owen Jones, will need to seek out someone of the opposite sex to procreate with.

You're playing the obfuscate-with-science card and we dealt with that one some years ago.

"Pink and blue brains? Nah."

That is very dismissive of my argument. Is your response based on anything more than assumption? My question was if, in the coming years, the evidence was there, would GCFs modify their position?

Are you telling me that you believe that if you were to take a random sample of 1000 UK woman and 1000 UK trans people, the women would have experienced the same incidence and degree of social harm, isolation and alienation that the 1000 trans people have?

Not "trans people", because I think female and male people have different reasons for transitioning. But MTF trans people, as a random sample, I don't think are any more likely than women to be facing "social harm, isolation and alienation".

So no, you grow up.

Oh yes it is. Everyone on the planet is here because a sperm-producing human (a man) impregnated an egg-producing person (a woman). Just like all the other mammals. If and when you decide you want a child you, just like Owen Jones, will need to seek out someone of the opposite sex to procreate with.

Quite.

Most of these GCF arguments seem to rest on the assumption that biological sex is objectively determined, binary and immutable.

Nope, you have misunderstood.

Firstly, the possibility of fuzziness at the boundaries of the exact biological definition of sex does not mean that the vast majority of trans people for whom their physical sex is clear and unequivocal even if unwanted are suddenly "really" the other sex, any more than the difference between high and low tides means mountains are really seas.

Secondly, even if it were true that all the trans people whose bodies are currently classified as male are, in some indefinable yet deeply true way, actually more akin, identical even, to female people, it doesn't change the history of the group that have been defined and oppressed by the older version of sex, it doesn't change the impact of their physical body and reproductive role, and that is itself is enough to recognise them as a distinct and meaningful group separate to trans women.

@Rocket1982

"Pink and blue brains? Nah."

That is very dismissive of my argument. Is your response based on anything more than assumption? My question was if, in the coming years, the evidence was there, would GCFs modify their position?

Well yes, just like if the evidence of God existing suddenly came to light, then I would change from an agnostic to a believer. The ‘if’ you are using is carrying that whole sentence.

Evidence of what, that there's a larger grey area than the grey area before?

Is that a parody?

I absolutely accept trans people as trans people, the journey and the history are all part of a person, I accept it all. True transphobia is pretending that a person's past didn't happen, that there is no difference between a female and a trans woman.

Many trans people would be much happier if they can accept themselves and their past rather than trying to change to definition of words to squeeze themselves into a sex category they don't meet the definition of.

YY. And yes, I don't support lying to these people. It's not kind, in the long run, and the sooner supposedly well meaning but largely ignorant people realise that, the better for everyone concerned.

Well yes, just like if the evidence of God existing suddenly came to light, then I would change from an agnostic to a believer.

Yes exactly. If God appeared in front of me when I was sitting on my sofa wide awake and said "bet you believe in me now" then after getting myself checked out by a psychiatrist I probably would.