Should we dispense with the word gender critical and just call ourselves biological realists?

[Stopsnowing]

Just that really. If sex matters and gender is mainly irrelevant shall we just stop referring to being gender critical?

I suspect race realist has more meaning in the US than the UK and it's a shame that meaning makes it unsuitable for us to use. They already think we're aligned with the right, which is again more of a US thing.

It's the word realist that causes difficulties. I'm off to find my thesaurus.

@Nellodee

Gripper - Grounded In Physical Reality.

Nope, nothing that needs explaining. We need a term that, when ordinary people hear it, they think, "That sounds like me".

How about, I believe in sex-sensitive safeguarding?

@Funnylittlefloozie

I've never heard of a "race realist". Biological realist seems reasonable to me, and focuses on something far less tenuous than gender.

Exactly. But everything has to bow down to American cultural and linguistic hegemony doesn’t it? Because “race realist” has been used in America in an entirely different cultural context, it’s apparently not ok to use any term including the word “realist” over here.

@Nellodee

How about, I believe in sex-sensitive safeguarding?

Nothing with sex in it. Will embarrass people and the media. We need willing allies.

People with common sense

'Gender critical' when I first came across it on here was easily understood and afaik unproblematic -it means 'gender stereotype critical'. It arose in discussions around supporting gender nonconforming kids, not enforcing gender stereotypes etc. It's the thinking behind campaigns such as 'Let Toys be Toys' etc.

It wasn't about criticising people for their 'gender identity' because that just wasn't really a concept familiar to or important to most people.

I don’t care how you dress or what you think you are, enjoy yourself and feel comfortable, but I should be free to have the opinion that you can’t change sex and you shouldn’t be able to change your sex on your passport/birth certificate etc.

What are we trying to achieve with a rebrand though, @MidsomerMurmurs? Of course we can use any term we want. But it's a bit daft to hand our opposition ammunition to use against us, isn't it? Social media is international and heavily US-influenced. Calling ourselves biology realists would be labelling ourselves, "Aligned with hateful racists". Is that going to help?

And we have to think globally. There is no safety for the GC position while the pushback is only happening in England.

How can you avoid the word sex?
I’m a sex-centred feminist. I oppose sex-based disadvantage and I support sex-sensitive safeguarding. How can anyone disagree with any of that?

This would have been around 2010, when 'Delusions of gender' by Cordelia Fine was published. That's about gender stereotypes, 'stereotype threat', debunks neurosexism etc. I think it's unlikely she'd have given it that title now.

Sex-centred feminist does make me sound a bit randy though… is that better or worse than man-hating, from a PR perspective, do you think?

Gender critic is misunderstood. It can be interpreted as critical of transgender people.

Most of us are quite happy to say that transgender people shouldn’t be treated any differently to anyone else (apart from potentially needing mental health support). It’s the infringement of the rights of other groups and the enforced speech etc we object to.

I think a name with the words biological sex in it would be more easily understood by others and would garner more sympathy.

@Nellodee

How can you avoid the word sex? I’m a sex-centred feminist. I oppose sex-based disadvantage and I support sex-sensitive safeguarding. How can anyone disagree with any of that?

If you call yourself a 'sex centred feminist', some idiot will think you mean 'nymphomaniac', others will confuse it with the (itself misnamed) 'sex positive' movement.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow yes of course (and actually I’d really like more of a fight back in Scotland too, or rather, for more politicians to notice the amazing fight back by so many women). But actually I don’t think we need to concede accurate and clear terms just because American TRAs might construct silly ad-hom attacks based on a word that’s used. For what it’s worth, I think “gender ideology critical” is maybe as good as it gets. You need “ideology” in there.

People are saying anything with “sex” in it will be embarrassing for wider society and the media. I despair. Sex matters.

XXFem.

@Nellodee

How can you avoid the word sex? I’m a sex-centred feminist. I oppose sex-based disadvantage and I support sex-sensitive safeguarding. How can anyone disagree with any of that?

Surely you can see how using a label with sex in it is going to be problematic, if we are trying to make people want to align themselves with us?

A lot of PPs seem to be approaching this from a doctrinal perspective: which words should we be entitled to use, and which perfectly express our position.....

....and that's why TRAs are running fucking rings around us.

We need to harness the support that we have in the general population. We need to make it easy for the public and politicians to say, Yes, I am a ....biology believer (or whatever).

@Nellodee the problem with using the word 'sex' is that some will take it to mean the activity rather than the state. Like those old jokes about filling in the 'sex' field in forms with 'yes please' or 'not since last year'. And it's this squeamishness about the word that has led to the use of 'gender' instead of sex that is partly to blame for this mess.

I fear that some people would think a sex-centred feminist was the same as a 'sex-positive feminist'.

The thing about emphasising biological sex though, is that some of 'gender stereotype critical feminism' is about not overemphasising (or inventing) sex differences. The differences between the sexes are real, and immutable, but for most things they're not important and shouldn't be used to block or coerce peoples opportunities. Girls can be engineers, boys can be good parents. Etc.

People are saying anything with “sex” in it will be embarrassing for wider society and the media. I despair. Sex matters

Of course it does. But one of the key advantages that TRAs have had is that people are embarrassed about the word sex. Why do you think gender has almost entirely replaced sex, in the context of forms, etc? Stonewall-capture is part of the reason, but not all. Many people who have no clue about the whole sex/gender debate are more comfortable using 'gender'.

On the Today programme they’ve just mentioned this:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59760762

A new Women’s Health Ambassador. I’m wondering how it will work in the new reality …

Everyone I know thinks sex and gender are interchangeable. I used to work in market and social research and client after client would cross out sex and replace with gender when they looked at my draft surveys. They all said gender was 'polite'

@Nellodee

Sex-centred feminist does make me sound a bit randy though… is that better or worse than man-hating, from a PR perspective, do you think?

There will be a lot of men identifying as a sex centred feminist put it that way

How about something evolution based

The best names for movements say something really positive about the movement, while implying something negative about the opposition. They make people instinctively want to identify with the movement. Probably the greatest ever (from a branding POV only) is Pro-Life. It's bullshit, but it's highly effective. It's positive, it's conceptually easy to understand (on a superficial level), and it's strong. Pro-Choice sounds weak by comparison. If you were only going on the names, and had to choose between supporting life and supporting choice, which sounds more attractive?

The TRA movement does not tie itself up in knots, trying to find terminology that perfectly expresses its ideology. It has done a bang-on job of using terminology and slogans that appeal to the public, and that are hard to oppose. Trans Rights Matter/Trans Lives Matter: who could disagree with either of those?

We need something equally powerful and hard to disagree with.