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.....

Louise Perry wrote a good piece on “gender neutral” language some months back.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2021/02/why-using-gender-neutral-language-risks-excluding-one-minority-group-include

And in the earlier one she talks about “luxury beliefs,” a bit like how in this more recent piece she discusses “respectability cascades” - so on my reading it feels like she introducing and applying different concepts to the GC conversations?

People do argue that biological sex is socially constructed:

bariweiss.substack.com/p/med-schools-are-now-denying-biological?r=vzf7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

Also, look up Zachary Herz on Twitter, a scrote who thinks he's a philosopher, and offers his own definition of a woman.

' 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.'

Mammals and most animals know full well what male and female are. Without words and not just when they're looking to breed.

There are a massive range of behaviours groupings etc that exist across the animal world.

Male female is surely the primary thing animals of the same species recognise.

It's a magnificent attempt to say something without actually being seen to say it. And it's either thoughtless, or deliberately obfuscatory, to use expressions like "the biological categories of male and female are socially constructed". A category is a formal way of organising knowledge, and is obviously learned. The material reality you are describing isn't. There's a conflation of two issues. The old Buddhist image of "mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself" applies here.

@NiceGerbil

' 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.'

Mammals and most animals know full well what male and female are. Without words and not just when they're looking to breed.

There are a massive range of behaviours groupings etc that exist across the animal world.

Male female is surely the primary thing animals of the same species recognise.

They definitely do. The social structure of animals often involves many females living close to a dominant male, while other males are tolerated until they reach a certain age and then sidelined or excluded.

You can call that culture if you wish, but the idea that animals don’t recognise sex and respond differently depending on sex is straightforwardly wrong.

I often think that there can’t be many POMO farmers, or indeed anyone who grew up close to nature. POMO and queer thinking strikes me as having been thought up by human beings who sat in a room and never went outside their own heads to look at what actual happens in the real world.

Aparallaxia, thanks for that link to Katie Herzog’s report on how biological sex is being denied by professors fearful of being smeared by their students as transphobic. And … how the true victims of that denial are not sensitive medical students but patients.

Shameful that future doctors are being taught misinformation by teachers who risk losing their jobs and getting death threats if they refused.

Louise Perry is usually very good but this is just bizarre.

The most obvious response, surely, is that gender-critical views are not some extreme kind of opinion held by a minority but, as thinkingaboutLangCleg said: 'In reality, practically everyone throughout history has been “gender critical”, recognising that humans can’t change sex.' And I'm fairly sure that well over 95% of the population still think that. The fact that a small number of lunatics have captured establishment organisations so that they all now pretend it's possible to change sex doesn't mean that any normal or sensible person thinks that.

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.

Depends how far you want to go defining culture/language, perhaps? I mean, jellyfish have some amazing reproductive strategies, I would say no discernible culture/language. but all mammals surely have at least some level of culture/language, so is this not a bit of a moot point? Animals recognise and sex each other all the time. If a female wasn't able to discern a male, and vice versa, reproduction would only happen by accident. Animals are well known for having sex preferences or prejudices even intra-species - my dog (who is a bitch) prefers male humans, for example. Many dogs are afraid of males, sometimes can only be homed with female humans.

Or have I misunderstood?

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

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.

Yes, I think it's the casting of usual, everyday beliefs (and feminism) as 'gc' that is maybe sitting oddly?

But since the MForstater case has established 'gc' beliefs are a particular set, is this a useful thing? To define and name what was previously accepted by almost everyone might imply it's a sub-section of feminism/thinking, but it also might help to clarify what those beliefs are 'biological sex is real and immutable', say.

Agree that all feminism was 'gender critical' up until recently. Which is why the name of this board is so annoying.

The how do mammals even have any idea of male female and recognise others as the same/ opposite sex to them, without cultural context etc

Reminds me of something that really pisses me off.

In the 'West' it's this arrogant human attitude. That I suppose is embedded due to religion and just was useful.

That our fellow mammals are lacking in... Attachment to young, attachment to social groups. Are very basic in their lives. While we are far superior.

This excuses the way we have treated and do treat our fellow mammals.

It's becoming more usual and studied to note and try to understand . In fact other mammals are well capable of emotion, that they remember others they know, that they are attached to their children, that they mourn. Depends on the species of course.

In the end the proposal that all other mammals have zero idea about those around them- what sex they are - is preposterous.

It's human arrogance at its most extreme.

In 2015 - yes, SIX years ago - the New Statesman published an article by someone using the pseudonym Terry McDonald which said that "most people hold beliefs which could see them labelled a 'TERF.'"

So it's weird to now pretend that these beliefs have ever been niche or offensive. www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-terf

" Really weird anti GC article in New Stateman "

Ah....I think I see where you've gone wrong. 🤔

I was leaving the thread til I had time to reply properly but I see it's already been well covered and explained since then in Gerbil's thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4310644-Any-scientists-academics-who-can-explain-the-rationale-behind-the-idea-of-sex-is-a-social-construct so I'll just reply to few points:

You can call that culture if you wish, but the idea that animals don’t recognise sex and respond differently depending on sex is straightforwardly wrong....I often think that there can’t be many POMO farmers, or indeed anyone who grew up close to nature. POMO and queer thinking strikes me as having been thought up by human beings who sat in a room and never went outside their own heads to look at what actual happens in the real world.

That's not quite what I meant though. Clearly animals do respond to sex but taking the example of the dog that rejects males, or the animals that live in female-only groups, do they have a concept of sex as a classification and then fit individuals into it, or are they reacting more to scent or visual cues? Basically, are they thinking "I don't like this other dog" every time they encounter a male dog, or "I don't like male dogs"

In the end the proposal that all other mammals have zero idea about those around them- what sex they are - is preposterous....It's human arrogance at its most extreme.

Interesting. I think anthropomorphising animals and assuming they experience and conceptualise the world as humans do is arrogant.

A category is a formal way of organising knowledge, and is obviously learned. The material reality you are describing isn't. There's a conflation of two issues. The old Buddhist image of "mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself" applies here.

It's more (as mentioned on the other thread) "the map is not the territory" or Plato's shadows on the cave wall. It's not that objective reality does not exist - obviously it does and there are objectively two sexes - it's that everything we experience is mediated by the language we have to think in and the culture in which we learned the labels so we never have a truly unmediated experience.

None of this is to say that sex does not exist, just to clarify why I think it's reasonable to say it's also a cultural construct in the sense that as soon as you label it and abstract it into a category it's introducing a step between you and immediate reality.

@Blibbyblobby

it's that everything we experience is mediated by the language we have to think in and the culture in which we learned the labels so we never have a truly unmediated experience.

None of this is to say that sex does not exist, just to clarify why I think it's reasonable to say it's also a cultural construct in the sense that as soon as you label it and abstract it into a category it's introducing a step between you and immediate reality.

Yes, I think I see what you mean, though I'm not sure if you're excluding the possibility of thought and experience at a non-linguistic level. Or the possibility that as human beings we are actually capable of original, creative thought outside the information we receive from society - when I say "you" here, I don't mean you personally, but you as a communicator of this idea, of course.

My "finger pointing at the moon" image is relevant because if you do this you lose both the moon, in failing to recognise it, and the finger, in that it loses its explanatory power. It seems to me that by looking at the world as narrative and purely in terms of interpreting and manipulating the language we use to describe it, which is, as far as I can see, what deconstruction is, we lose both the moon of the material world and the finger of the concepts and theories we generate to describe and understand it.

'
In the end the proposal that all other mammals have zero idea about those around them- what sex they are - is preposterous....It's human arrogance at its most extreme.

Interesting. I think anthropomorphising animals and assuming they experience and conceptualise the world as humans do is arrogant.'

No. What's arrogant is our historical view that other animals esp mammals and esp those close to us. Do NOT experience or understand emotional connections, family bonds, friends in their groups, mourn etc etc.

Even now I've seen nature progs with things like. Omg elephants remember elephants they used to know! They mourn! OMG gorillas make good dads! This monkey is distressed her baby has died!

THAT is arrogant.

Mammals esp the larger ones display behaviour we recognise and relate to all over the place.

Seeing a male gorilla cuddling his baby and understanding it as the same behaviour as a man cuddling his baby isn't anthropomorphization FGS.

You see anyone who sees the action of cuddling a baby as imposing human behaviours and motivations when the actual behaviour and motivation could well be totally off the mark?

We are first and foremost mammals, great apes. If you can see one of our close relations in the animal world eg a mother orangutan mourning her dead baby, and think. Well I mean there's no way of knowing if what's going on is anything like with a human mother.

Then I find that really odd.

It's embedded though in many areas as so many things are, by things from the Bible. The animals were created for us to control. Less than us.

This is arrogance. To elevate ourselves so.

The idea that animals can't do think feel etc because they don't have language is also arrogant.

And anyway. How do we know they don't have language? Loads of animals have methods of communication. Some we're just finding have quite complex interactions.

Arrogance again.

Human language = communication.

Signalling oh hello mate long time no see with your truck or by touch etc is unlikely and these things are not real language. Too basic.

'None of this is to say that sex does not exist, just to clarify why I think it's reasonable to say it's also a cultural construct in the sense that as soon as you label it and abstract it into a category it's introducing a step between you and immediate reality.'

And yet the Taliban still know who needs to grow their beard a particular length and who needs to wear a burqa and not be allowed to work.

They clearly haven't thought about this stuff properly.

@NiceGerbil

'None of this is to say that sex does not exist, just to clarify why I think it's reasonable to say it's also a cultural construct in the sense that as soon as you label it and abstract it into a category it's introducing a step between you and immediate reality.'

And yet the Taliban still know who needs to grow their beard a particular length and who needs to wear a burqa and not be allowed to work.

They clearly haven't thought about this stuff properly.

Gerbil, I respect you but you are replying to what you think I am saying not what I'm actually saying, so I'm going to leave it here.

Yes the man in that essay linked kept saying that sex existed.

And that is was useful for biology.

But too flawed to be used for other reasons. Like deciding who plays who in sport.

This isn't my area as I'm sure you can tell!

Some examples might help.

'why I think it's reasonable to say it's also a cultural construct in the sense that as soon as you label it and abstract it into a category it's introducing a step between you and immediate reality.''

So an example that maybe you can say yes/ no because this.

I'm in a I dunno. Communal changing room for swimming. Person comes in takes their clothes off. I glance over - male body. Multiple physical cues.

I think what you're saying is that rather then just observing and... Acting or not. I think in my brain male. The bit where in my brain I think. This this and that = male. Is a cognitive step that's added by language and categorisation. Thus putting distance between the observation and the end point where I have applied various pieces of my understanding of the category, correlating etc.

I think that's what you mean?

Of course animals do that esp larger mammals.

How they categorise, how they're thought process is, is going to be very different to ours.

The idea that they are all pure instinct while humans apply an intellectual evaluation in the terms of the world language etc that we understand is the sort of arrogance about other animals I was talking about.

And in the end for certain animals/ mammals the female being alone with the unknown male often means danger. For animals, let's stick to great apes. That link male - danger is learnt or related to experience. The great ape will not think danger when they see a male in their group who is not an arse.

So no I don't agree. If that's what you were getting at.