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.

Why pick on feminists?
Who can forget the menz outrage when a transgender model was used for the sports illustrated swimwear catalogue? Huge outcry from men and transphobic comments galore - was there any pushback or pile ons in response from the TRAs? No? Funny that.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3964530-Sports-Illustrated-first-transgender-swimsuit-model

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

When has feminism ever opposed the idea that men and women exist?

Feminism has been part of achieving women's changing rooms, toilets and prisons to reduce abuse of women by men. The feminist campaign for better training, pay and recognition of women's sport has been huge for the last 40 years.

Feminism seeks to achieve women's rights. That means pulling down the false stereotypes about the sexes (gender) not hiding the factual differences between the sexes.

What if 99% of the population decided they were non-binary?
I think of all my female friends / male friends and they all have traits of the stereotypes of the other sex, this would probably be an accurate description of most people if they had to identify their gender.
Imagine a world based on it, no restrictions or safeguing all removed.
Those with female bodies would get damaged in sport such as rugby by the larger stronger players.There would be female non-binaries suffer fractures, spinal injuries and death.
Those with female bodies would never win a single medal in the Olympics it would all be males winning every single medal.They would never be picked for school teams as male non-binaries would dominate sport.
Those female non-binaries in jail, some of societies most vulnerable, would have violent encounters with stronger male non binaries.
Safeguarding of young teenagers from sexual predators would be eroded by communal changing rooms.
The non binary people who have children will still be disadvantaged in their careers because they need to take time off work carrying pregnancies.
How would you insure that the people observed female at birth are not disadvantaged?
What advantages is this movement bringing to women, it seems to be making our lives significantly worse.

Just once, I'd like someone to accurately assess what our radical feminist arguments are and address them. Just once.

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

You seem to have misunderstood the basic arguments.

People who are gender critical reject social categories.

However sex is not a 'social category'. It is a material biological difference. Women need access to, among other things, contraception and specific medical care because of their sex. I'm surprised you (or anyone else for that matter) claim not to have noticed this.

But @sharksarecool's diagram was incredibly clear that there is no difference at all apart genitalia! You know how Venn diagrams work right?

Where are you getting this statistical difference in crime rates? That wasn't in the diagram!

Apparently you don't know how Venn diagrams work. They convey the relationship between sets, not probabilistic information. So the ability to be violent or sexually aggressive goes in the middle of the diagram because it is present in both sexes. That doesn't mean that it is equally likely to be present in both sexes. It just means that displaying those traits is not determinitive of sex. It is also the case that being male or female is not determinitive of whether a person will display those traits.

Clearly this does mean that sex-segregation in intimate and vulnerable settings is an imperfect safeguarding measure. It allows in the approx 2% of sexual offenders who are women. It excludes the majority of men who are not. However it doesn't disadvantage them as they have seperate provision. Sometimes it creates difficulty by temporarily seperating people who do not want to be seperated. Additional mixed-sex spaces could be a good solution in those instances. Equally ALL safeguarding measures are imperfect. Eg. DBS checks don't pick up people who haven't been caught, I suspect that is far more than 2% of sexual offenders. They create an administrative imposition on all employees and volunteers working with vulnerable people, the majority of whom are good people. The requirement to not give sweets to neighbourhood children does not prevent grooming by other methods and removes an opportunity for conversation from some perfectly harmless bored and lonely old age pensioners. It is in the nature of safeguarding measures to be imperfect because they are all the things we do to try to prevent offending by creating a more difficult environment for offenders to work in, but we cannot know who the offenders are prior to their offending. If you want to make a libertarian argument against ALL safeguarding restrictions on that basis you can certainly make it, but be straightforward and consistent in what you are arguing for.

Statistically men as a group are far more likely to be violent or sexually aggressive. Attempting to infer a probability for an individual based on that is just bad stats.

In instances where a statistically significant but non-determinitive difference in traits between men and women has policy implications you need to consider if the difference correlates with sex or gender identity. As far as I'm aware in all cases the correlation is with sex. Therefore those policies need to differentiate on the basis of sex.

And why can't I also call myself whatever I like? Why can't I simply call myself non-binary, why can't I simply prefer gender neutral terms, and why can't that be respected?

You can use whatever words you like. So can others.

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

Again, you don't seem to have thought much about any of this.

Bus companies use 'discriminatory' system which charge different fares to different age groups. Car parks allocate spaces to different groups.

I should not use accessible toilets because I don't need the specific facilities that they provide. However, I also can't urinate in the same way that a man would and also need access to toilets for menstruation. None of this is related to identity. My toilet requirements are related to sex.

You can argue the toss about toilet construction, but it should be obvious that you create inequality if you pretend that men and women are exactly the same and have the same needs.

Apart from anything men don't risk pregnancy when they are in a vulnerable position.

OP, msny of us here believe that woman is a word that simply means "adult human female". No one can force a woman to be a man or vice versa, in the same way that no one can force a human to be a fish, or a dog to be a cat. All that GC feminists are doing is insisting that the correct definition is used.

This, in a nutshell.

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

All sorts of gendered words and terms.

These words denote sex. You are applying gender.

Ding! Ding!

Quite.

Yes fundamentally. I am happy to call you whatever but I won’t be MADE to call you whatever through threats and coercion. That’s the missing part.

TRAs don't like the pronoun thing being an optional courtesy.

I mean it would be hugely weird if it was just based on what was swinging between legs and that had no material reality, right? In fact, wouldn't that be like discriminating between someone who had a large nose and someone who had a small nose? Or someone who had hairy feet or smooth feet?

Haha nice try. No, it would not, because it's based on being a member of one or the other biological sex, not the size of one's genitals.

Did the Poundshop Sophistry Club venue have an unexpected closure last night?

Only it really doesn't does it? A lot of GC feminists are hugely invested in the gender distinction - it is their raison d'etre. They might say out loud that it is purely sex but what they're really referring to are the characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity - and namely likelihood of increased aggression in males.

You are confusing gender, i.e. societal expectations, and the influence of sex on behaviour.

Nurture = gender
nature = sex

There are obviously huge arguments about how much behaviour is influenced by nature and how much nurture, but it doesn't follow that because somebody rejects gendered expectations, they also believe in a 'blank slate', or that all gender critical feminists agree on how much behaviour is influenced by sex.

And to be fair I think most feminists would be happy to see the back of male aggression

But while it's here we can't close our eyes to it

Yes, I'm definitely going to respond by taking time to write a carefully crafted explanation of why sex both exists and matters, to posters who think that oppression and injustice is elimated if you just let everyone pretend that material reality doesn't exist.

Well, alright, I'm not. Because I am quite bored of explaining such a basic thing to people who should have learned it when they emerged from toddlerhood.

Sometimes it scratches an itch or allows you to practise your argument

But apparently people can't just be free to use masculine, feminine, or gender neutral labels and pronouns for some reason.

Why can't you accept that?

You can use whatever labels or pronouns you like.

I think a lot of GC feminists use "man" and "woman" as neutral signifiers of sex, whereas genderists use them to mean "people who behave as a man is expected to" and "people who behave as a woman is expected to." That is where we part company. I cannot accept that clothes, behaviour, accessories, hobbies, jobs, inclination to vote - whatever your own cultural signifier might be - are reflective of an inner status of males or females. Because the logical outcome of that is that women are innately suited to be the bottom-wipers of the universe and frankly, that idea can sink to the bottom of the sea where it belongs.

🙄

Oh, I do agree it's useful for rehearsing the painfully obvious arguments. I've just done that for years now, so I both need no practice and I think it's also important to make it clear to other women that they don't have to dance when ignorant people tell them to. Boundaries are a very important part of this whole thing.

I am gender critical. Two main reasons.

1. Gender (sex-based stereotypes, mostly false) is used as means of oppression, mainly of one sex (women and girls). Example: scientific thought is masculine. There are many others.

1. The idea of a (non-existent) so-called ' gender identity' is used as the foundation for an ideology which, put into practice, influences public policy in harmful ways. Example: children given puberty-blockers. There are many others.

These two reasons intersect, gender identity ideology supporting sex-based sterotypes, as it seems it must, faute de mieux , in its premises.

It seems we should not expect the OP to understand any of this. A reason for remaining gender critical is the simple fact obvious in debate and 'no debate' alike of the arrant stupidity of those in opposition.

Another wonderful thread. Thank you for starting it OP.

I did wonder just what you were basing your posts on as they come across rather like the usual prejudiced posts of people who actually have very little knowledge about what we discuss here outside what they gleen from other, ill-informed people. We see plenty of it. The aspersions that are actually incorrect, the simplistic, mantra-derived answers that certainly highlight the complete lack of evidenced thinking.

The hyperbole and the arguments that come from believing poorly written pieces by self-appointed thought leaders who are, at best, perhaps social media 'influencers'.

Anyone who presents us Montgomerie as an appeal to authority, is someone who spends far too much time allowing others to think for them. And again, we have seen quite a few this year who then also post articles or studies that don't really say what they think they say, or where a further well evidenced rebuttal has shown that article to be actually incorrect.

But, you started a thread, and it is not a new interpretation. Many of us have seen it all before. Whatever your intention was, whatever many of us clearly suspect was your intention, what you have achieved again is another thread for readers who are perhaps new to this subject to gather their own thoughts. To get a much greater understanding of why people feel that women's rights are under threat and the deep ramifications of being manipulated by superficial and simplistic mantras being used instead of clear evidence and studies.

As they read, they again see the logical and well thought out posts, the quick of the mark and ill-considered attempts to 'gotcha' that are eventually shown as being as empty as they always were.

Because as a pp mentioned up thread. The argument isn't actually with feminists, it is with material reality.

And when people are shown to not be able to accept material reality without having first to twist it to suit their purpose or to heavily filter it, it is shown that material reality still persists as it was. Now, of course the understanding of material reality grows as more evidence is amassed. But, it doesn't change to suit those who wish to deny it.

So, thank you CuriousPanda.