Really weird anti GC article in New Stateman

[IAmWomxxnHearMeRoar]

Attempting to link this article by Louise Perry (who's bio at the end says she is a campaigner on domestic violence):
www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2021/07/it-s-still-possible-cancel-gender-critical-feminists-strategy-won-t-work

Spends most of the time making a weird comparison with a far right anti-science headcase.
Choice quotes include:
GC/Terfs: "reject the idea that the biological categories of male and female are socially constructed". (Seriously, do even TRAs argue this? That was not my understanding!)
Also, bemoans the fact 15 years no one was writing GC books. Er....I don't think there was much of a need then.....

Can't read it too many this month apparently!

Although don't remember going there before

Anyway

Yes plenty of activists argue that sex is and always has been a social construct

We used to call being critical of stereotypes feminism.
So no, it wasn't a thing in the past. It was kind of assumed that women (and men) fighting for equality didn't believe in brains that don't know much about the gold standard, but do like fluffy kittens.

It's s mixed article I wouldn't say it's a straight up anti.

Talks about JBs track record with women's issues
Talks about threats cancellation etc

It is a bit odd. Although she's normally very good and worth reading.

It doesn't seem to consider that the reason why people are suddenly expressing GC views is not because they used to be too leftfield and are now becoming mainstream, but because GC views were the mainstream (to the extent that they didn't need to be discussed) and are now being challenged. There can't be a single New Statesman reader who isn't aware of the debate around trans rights so it's weirdly disingenuous to pretend that the growth in GC discourse is happening completely independently of trans rights activism.

Can't read it too many this month apparently!

It's always worth checking for archived versions @NiceGerbil:

archive.fo/EI1pI

Although once you've read it you might not thank me for the waste of time.

Having read it I withdraw my "waste of time" flippancy. However, if you look at the substance of the article the introduction is very peculiar and for some reason makes an analogy between gender critical concepts and Alex Jones, the American right-wing radio host, advancing a conspiracy theory that the US government was intentionally putting endocrine disruptors into the water supply with the goal of feminising American men.

Thanks nauticant I managed to read it in a private browser :D

I don't think the article is 'anti GC' at all.

I agree, Alias.

These paragraphs segue from the subject of Alex Jones, whose ascientific interference meant that decent science required a respectability cascade to be reasserted, and the gender critical viewpoint. A respectability cascade is a positive thing, in both cases.

What can send an idea upwards in a respectability cascade? There are times, as in the case of endocrine disruptors, when the strength of scientific evidence makes the theory undeniable to anyone in a position of expertise. In other cases, the idea might be intuitively persuasive, but has for some ­reason been relegated to outsider status.

It’s not brilliantly clear, but she’s saying that our viewpoint is intuitively persuasive, but was somehow delegated to outsider status, but is now undergoing a respectability cascade, and that it’s becoming less and less possible to cancel the women who are discussing the GC perspective.

The success of two new books suggests that we are witnessing the progression of a new respectability cascade in relation to “gender-critical” beliefs

Apologies, meant to add this, which is the first part of the paragraph that follows on from the quotation in my first post.

She seems to be giving some kind of partial account (though inaccurate) of the movement to protect womans rights, but cant quite bring herself to actually put the arguments and why they are being put forward now?
tbf maybe thats no allowed in the New Statesman?

It reads like a lot of BBC stuff. Like you are only getting part of the story. Its like someone quite intelegent wrote an article on a topic and then someone else kind of rearranged the sentences and cut out the part that actually explains what its about.
Wasn't there some famous author who did this? Cut and paste? Was it William Burrghs?

Yeah, not sure what the Alex Jones bit is about at all?

'sceptical of gender ­stereotypes and rejects the idea that the biological ­categories of male and female are socially constructed'

that sounds reasonable, no?

This isn't 'anti-gc' at all.

Makes some interesting points, although maybe the intro throws it off a bit.

I'm also not sure that Bindel began as 'gender critical' per se, has she not always been a radical feminist, even before there was such a thing as 'gender critical'?

I agree with posters who found the piece supportive of GCs.
The article seems to be saying sometimes perfectly valid, scientific beliefs - like endocrine disruptors or that we have two sexes that matter - can become painted as being beyond the pale to talk about because of some people talking nonsense and making these views seem, in the eyes of the judge in Maya Forstater's first ruling, "not worthy of respect in a democratic society."
If anything, I think in this article, Louise Perry is comparing Alex Jones to the bullying and silencing tactics of sex-denialist activists - they've both derailed public perception and stifled fact-based conversations around important topics. But now, because we can see that two recent books presenting a gender critical view have done very well (she calls the texts authored by Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce "incisive, compassionate and nuanced"), it's an indication that the tide seems to be shifting. So saying sex matters and questioning trans activist claims is now becoming much more respectable in the eyes of the public than it was even a few years ago.

Yes, it's a rather odd article but ends up sounding like it's promoting Helen Joyce's and Kathleen Stock's books! But it takes a very roundabout and confusing route to get there. Is it a way of leaning GC without wanting to stick her neck out too obviously perhaps? Or was there heavy editing/editorial pressure that ended up making the message a bit muddled? The message overall is really not anti-GC though IMO!

My head hurts after reading.

It's like she's saying it, without saying it iyswim

It's like someone quite intelligent wrote an article on a topic and then someone else kind of rearranged the sentences and cut out the part that actually explains what its about.

Definitely. If I had a paper copy of the article I would have been turning the page to try to find the conclusion.

I agree it's quite confusing. I don't think she's trying to push a particular point of view, I think she is saying that GC views are becoming (always were actually) respectable to hold.

It ends:

There is a quote that is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “How did I go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” This is also how ideological change happens: slowly, then all at once.

I think that she's trying to express the 'emperor's new clothes' moment when suddenly everyone speaks out and expresses an opinion which had previously been surpressed.
Recognition of the G.C position has been a hard won battle by many brave women and I think their struggle against the bullying tactics and agression of transactivism needs to be more acnowledged here; everyone KNOWS there are only two sexes, it's not like a 'far out' position.

In my opinion the article is confusing and disingenuous:

The success of two new books suggests that we are witnessing the progression of a new respectability cascade in relation to “gender-critical” beliefs – a branch of feminism (often described as “trans exclusionary radical feminism” or “Terf” by some critics) that is sceptical of gender stereotypes and rejects the idea that the biological ­categories of male and female are socially constructed

It's framing GC views as having been unusual, rather than totally mainstream but widely suppressed by fear and threats. Ask 100 people on your high street whether men should be competing in women's sports or entering women's changing rooms and you'll find that most are GC. It's wrong to say that GC views are newly-respectable.

Putting their names beside such ­controversial arguments has still come with a personal toll for both authors, but their recent success should be compared with the situation 15 years ago, when there was almost no one offering any kind of gender-critical argument in the UK media.

Back in 1997 Germaine Greer resigned from Newnham, a women-only Cambridge college, when transwoman Rachel Padman was appointed. In 2004 Julie Bindel wrote a piece for the Guardian about a Canadian trasnwoman who was fighting to become a rape counsellor in Canada. Even in the days before Twitter and FB they were piled on and Bindel's career blighted. Everyone in the media and academia took note. Perry knows as well as we do that it's been fear and threats that have silenced GC people. Pretending that everyone used to be woke but GC views are becoming fashionable is nonsense.

Calling GC views controversial is a tactic used by the BBC and other pro-trans media when referring to the 'controversial' LGB Alliance. Theres nothing controversial about the LGB Alliance, it's what Stonewall used to be.

Perry has covered her own back. If attacked by trans allies she can say 'I said GC views were controversial and only recently gaining in respectability.' If attacked by the GC brigade and she can say: 'I wasn't knocking GC views, I was only saying they've fairly recently got traction in the public sphere.'

It's like she's saying it, without saying it iyswim

IDSWYM. Having thought about it more I'm wondering if the peculiar introduction is to throw some red meat to the bloodhounds so they're distracted from the fact that later on in the article she does say some sensible things.

More than anything it should be saved as an example that unless people are willing to be heretics either they have to parrot the orthodoxy or they have to speak in code.

What you end up with is a confusing difficult to untangle mess.

It's almost as though she has taken a gamble on which side of the IQ Bell curve TRAs fall on.

@ArabellaScott

'sceptical of gender ­stereotypes and rejects the idea that the biological ­categories of male and female are socially constructed'

that sounds reasonable, no?

Actually, I'm GC but as a full-on card carrying alumni of post-modern theory circa mid-90s, I am also entirely ok with the idea that any concept of sex in a human mind is socially constructed and there is therefore always some degree of "seeing what we expect to see" in the differences between women and men.

To elucidate that a bit, while sexual difference is self-evidentially a real thing outside culture, cognisance and language because babies, I'm not sure to what extent a creature without culture and language would know itself to be female and recognise other females as like it in a way males were not, and to what extent it would just get on with sex one day and with childbirth another day and not especially notice commonalities with other birth-givers.

What the TRA bollocks misses is that (a) while the fact of sex is overloaded with cultural meaning an empirical reality of sex differences still underpins that social construct (because babies), and (b) the social construct is not just experienced internally but imposed externally based on the body perceived by others, and therefore a self-identified trans gender experience, even one that includes "passing", is not and never can be equivalent and interchangeable with the experience of gender as it is imposed on the inescapable fact of the body.

Salut!

I agree there seems to be something upside-down about this. Especially the idea that gender-critical opinions are only now becoming respectable. In reality, practically everyone throughout history has been “gender critical”, recognising that humans can’t change sex. It’s only in the past 20 years that the gender identity movement has suddenly leapt into power.

Perry calls gender-critical beliefs a branch of feminism … that is sceptical of gender ­stereotypes and rejects the idea that the biological ­categories of male and female are socially constructed.

But rejecting gender stereotypes is absolutely standard feminism, it’s at the heart of feminism — not some new branch.

And the idea that the biological ­categories of male and female are socially constructed just doesn’t make sense.
The biological categories are of course real — women are female, men are male.
It’s the related stereotypes that are socially constructed, unnecessary, changeable in different eras and cultures, and of course rejected by feminists.

Louise Perry writes as sensibly about women’s issues as any journalist is allowed to, on a left-wing magazine these days. I think she’s being constrained by the left’s fear of offending trans actvists.