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.

Ditto that I would also be freaked out if I suddenly woke up and appeared to have a male body.

In before that particular hackneyed thought experiment is brought up.

Perhaps we should all keep an open mind in case the earth is one day proved to be a flat disc and only approximately 6000 years old and thd dinosaurs were a hoax, too?

"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."

There are quite clearly (and as I guess you already know) exceptions to this where people with female anatomy and otherwise physically female have XY cells and can't produce eggs. As I said, a grey area, which is almost certainly larger than we currently appreciate.

There are quite clearly (and as I guess you already know) exceptions to this where people with female anatomy and otherwise physically female have XY cells and can't produce eggs. As I said, a grey area, which is almost certainly larger than we currently appreciate.

Except that no known human can or ever has been able to produce both sets of gametes. Why is that? It's almost like there are only two reproductive roles and both are needed...

@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?

If women are still being oppressed for having female bodies then I don't see why the position would change.

FloralBunting I can see the arguments on both sides of this debate but I think GCFs are oversimplifying the problem.

Floral, according to the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, the dinosaurs are a hoax. The earth isn’t flat, rather it is made by alien beings and the dinosaur skeletons are carefully put into the layers of soil.

I think we should all bear that in mind.

As I said, a grey area, which is almost certainly larger than we currently appreciate.

Does this apply in surrogacy, or are lots of "G with the T" men sufficiently committed to the cause to look for an MTF trans person to gestate their child, as it's a "grey area" and no one can possibly know what sex anyone else or what that means?

In fact, why can't they do it themselves? Cut out the middleperson?

@Rocket1982

FloralBunting I can see the arguments on both sides of this debate but I think GCFs are oversimplifying the problem.

What problem? That males and females are different physically but can express themselves however they like?

There's plenty of sexologist research into trans already.

It's all there in the public domain.

www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/ray-blanchard-transgender-orthodoxy/

Here's a helpful explanation.

Everyone is here because whatever technology was used, a sperm met an egg.

@Rocket1982

FloralBunting I can see the arguments on both sides of this debate but I think GCFs are oversimplifying the problem.

I think feminists are concerned with women's rights and protections. Hypothetical fancies about whether males can somehow be female do nothing but divert and distract people from this. So by all means spend your time trying to find proof of a sex spectrum. But don't ask feminists to give it much credence while you're trying to use an odd hypothesis to dismantle our rights.

"What problem? That males and females are different physically but can express themselves however they like?"

No, that the current evidence suggests that sex is not binary and simple categorisation will not suffice for all individuals. Future evidence is likely to complicate the picture further.

Rocket, sex may not be a simple binary, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t binary. Don’t you see this?

@Rocket1982

"What problem? That males and females are different physically but can express themselves however they like?"

No, that the current evidence suggests that sex is not binary and simple categorisation will not suffice for all individuals. Future evidence is likely to complicate the picture further.

This is not a problem for feminism. Future evidence that you hope for will also not be an issue for feminism, as you've already had explained to you.

Oh is it time to appropriate people with DSDs? That actually took longer than usual!

People with DSDs are still either male or female, and have no relation to trans. HTH!

@Rocket1982

"What problem? That males and females are different physically but can express themselves however they like?"

No, that the current evidence suggests that sex is not binary and simple categorisation will not suffice for all individuals. Future evidence is likely to complicate the picture further.

Current evidence? Show your working.

Suffice for what? What does this have to do with women's rights?

No, that the current evidence suggests that sex is not binary

No it does not, and keeping on saying it doesn't make it true.

Two gametes. Two reproductive roles. Two sexes. There are no human beings who don't have a sex, however ambiguous, and to suggest that people with DSDs are less than fully male or female to prop up your fringe identity beliefs is offensive.

@Rocket1982

"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."

There are quite clearly (and as I guess you already know) exceptions to this where people with female anatomy and otherwise physically female have XY cells and can't produce eggs. As I said, a grey area, which is almost certainly larger than we currently appreciate.

Again, you are missing the point. Feminism isn’t there for the label Woman so if we can make the case that Joe is really a woman then feminism has to include Joe, it’s about freeing the people who historically suffered under patriarchy because they were defined as women under the historic patriarchal meaning of women.

So it doesn’t matter if that definition was scientifically wrong or not. For the purposes of feminism what matters is the group of people not the word, and that group, being defined in the past, doesn’t change.

This is what the gender ideologues with their obsession about who can claim what label miss: it was never about the label, it was always about the people.

Now given that gender constructs are one of the tools patriarchy used to oppress and control those people, the feminist project will have the happy side effect of freeing all the Joes from their own gendered limitations. So to that extent, we fight for them as well. But they didn’t live the same lives as female people and it is not fair to both us and them to pretend that doesn’t matter.

For anyone new to this, this guy does some great videos, many referencing developmental biologists such as Drs Emma Hilton and Colin Wright, who are also great to follow on this.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=XN2-YEgUMg0

@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?

People are either female (produce large gametes, or none if the reproductive system is incomplete or not completely functional) or male (produce small gametes, or none if the reproductive system is incomplete or not completely functional). There is no third gamete, and it is my understanding that there is nobody in human history who has been able to produce both types of gamete. Not a 'spectrum'.

Do you believe that the men who transition in middle age after fathering children are some sort of third sex?

The second part of your post appears to be arguing for the existence of pink and blue brains. Throughout history women have been denied the privileges of men because of the argument that female brains weren't intelligent enough to be educated or be given the vote, and so on. Do you understand why feminists wouldn't agree with your argument here, or do I need to spell it out to you?

But if a brain which appeared to be typically female (assuming that such a thing exists) was found in a male body, do you think it is more likely that he had a woman's brain in a man's body, or that the original hypothesis was wrong and that those particular attributes were actually found in both male and female brains?

@Rocket1982

"What problem? That males and females are different physically but can express themselves however they like?"

No, that the current evidence suggests that sex is not binary and simple categorisation will not suffice for all individuals. Future evidence is likely to complicate the picture further.

Are you referring to DSDs here?