Should gender critical people actually be non-binary?? Or should non-binary people actually be gender critical?? I'm struggling to see the difference

[FusionChefGeoff]

After watching the 'thought experiment' video at the American Uni (sorry, can't remember the details!) I was struck by how the student who identified as non-binary basically presented the gender critical view - ie I do not agree with the gender stereotype associated with women, it's regressive and pointless, so I'm rejecting the stereotype by identifying as non-binary.

So why can't that person instead identify as 'gender critical' instead??

Or are there nuances that other non-binary people would explain that sets them apart from gender critical feminists?

I'm just struck with an 'if only' moment that if all the NBs had instead just used the GC 'label' that would give a lot less power to the rest of the movement!

If someone came out as a 'gender non-conforming woman' would they be called a TERF?

I had to smile when I read this because it is so true.

If you were an alien from another planet, and you landed in my local Tescos, you would think the uniform for the females of this country was a pair of jeans, some type of fleece or parka, and shoulder length hair.

There are no skirts, no high heels, no fully made-up faces, no skin-tight tops, no fucking knitting in the aisles because Tescos is the real world.

And that's the core of the issue here. Gender ideology is not a product of the real world; it is a creature of the hyperreal -- that mythical, fantastical, etheric realm of amorphous meanings and shifting impressions and platonic blueprints of the essence of bloody everything where an armchair slides into "sofa-ness" because it is a touch too upholstered and slightly too long.

Oh, let us decipher where the line between the armchair and the sofa doth lie! Hail, I am neither but a divan, you bigot!

Back in the real world, nobody really cares about any of it . . . until the moment they order a sofa and it comes and only one person can sit on it because it is actually a fucking armchair.

And everyone can see it's an armchair, everyone knows it's an armchair ... but no, we have to have all these people fluttering about, going "I think you'll find it's a sofa because #esoteric reasons."

And not only that, these people tell us that if we persist in thinking such things are armchairs, we are somehow bulwarks prohibiting the path of progress towards some wonderful future where bunnies hop everywhere and cartoon blackbirds chirrup on our shoulders.

I just can't with it anymore.

You won't find a NB person anywhere who doesn't repeatedly chant "TWAW" and "TMAM" "NB lives are valid" along with all the rest of it including calling women "terf" and "boomer".

That's not living the way GC people do.

The only superficial similarly is thinking sex stereotypes are bad. That's where the similarities begin and end.

Gender critical: people aren't defined by shallow gender stereotypes.

Nonbinary: I'm not defined by gender stereotypes but other people are.

Yes, the smug, superior ‘hah!’ Tone was unmistakeable. That woman lecturing, ‘she just told you her pronouns were they and you called her she.’
well it’s obvious why he called that person ‘ she’. Because that person is unmistakably female. Even if everyone manages to succeed in the mental effort of permanently Centring your chosen pronoun preferences, they are still essentially lying to you when they use them. They all, all, even the most hard core genderists, see you as your sex. They can’t help it. Millions of years of evolution have hard wired it into their brains. Only serious medical intervention can change your outward appearance enough to fool your brain into thinking your sex is the opposite of what it is.
I don’t understand this desire to get people to lie to you.

Yes, this is a great idea! I drive more than Dad, so I'm non-binary. He's quite sensitive and musical so maybe he's non-binary too. I earn more so that's a male kind of characteristic. Dad would like you to call them "she" and we'll let your school know before parents' evening. And I'm going to let my moustache grow because like, waxing is an aggression and facial hair so that's why I'm non-female now.

Quite.

"I am stuffing you in a box, so I can demonstrate how free I am compared to you."

If you're gender critical, you don't get to insist that everyone else dances to your tune, you don't get to throw tantrums when someone slips up and uses the wrong set of made-up pronouns. Being non-binary on the other hand is a perfect way for life's drama queens to annoy everyone else.

There should be an 'applause' button here.

This!! Beautifully put.

They both seem to reject gender stereotypes, but that's about it I think?

A 'non-binary' GC thinks that gender expression is a spectrum - from very femenine to very masculine. Stereotypes do not have any effect on who you are.

A 'non-binary' GI thinks that gender identity is a spectrum - from 'girl/woman' to 'boy/man'. They use gender expression and stereotypes to assess their 'identity' and define themselves.

Young women today desperately need a good grounding in second wave feminism - 1970s Womens Lib, if you like!

because I thought much the same as you @FusionChefGeoff But in current terminology I’d say “gender non-conforming”. Those of us in what have long been considered as “mens jobs” for example - in my profession of academia fewer than 20% of the professoriate are women. If you’re a woman and a professor you’re pretty much gender non-conforming.

my opposition to “non-binary” is that it’s an attempt to evade gendered discrimination by reworking the individual body, rather than challenging the oppressive structures of gender and sex-based stereotypes.

iI ind no -binary to be the coward’s way out. It does nothing for other women and rejects sisterhood

Non-binary is no good if you're GC because it effectively means you have no sex. They conflate gender and sex. Gender nonconforming means you deny innate gender and assert that it is simply social conditioning.

Non binary people view themselves the way that GC people view them; and as GC people view themselves; as not being defined by gender stereotypes.

The difference is in how non-binary people view others. They believe that everyone else is one extreme or the other.

It’s also about recognising the relationship between sex and gender, and the distinction between them.

that sex is biological but doesn’t determine individual character or talents etc.

that gender is a socially constructed system of discrimination based on sex

that very little about gender, gender roles and gender stereotypes is innate or inevitable

I agree. It's like the three Billy goats gruff: 'Oh don't eat me, eat my sisters.... they're FAR more binary!'

Sex is binary.

Gender is a made up social thing.

Non-binary sex is impossible.

Non-binary gender is a nonsense because it recognises that gender doesn’t really exist while making a big fuss about gender and insisting on applying gender stereotypes.

The whole thing is very teenage. “Wah! No one understands me! I’m so original and special and misunderstood! I’m going to prove how different I am by copying the social trend of the day!” Yawn 🙄 If it was the eighties they’d all be punks, if it was the sixties they’d be hippies, yawn bloody yawn.

It’s funny. Fir some reason it reminds me of my time at college. I was the only person there who wore a white T-shirt, jeans and trainers, and was frequently called “conformist” by the dreary hippy contingent, every last one of whom had a matching parka, dreadlocks, goatee and smelled of patchouli.

We’re all different, in exactly the same was as each other! Look at my purple hair, cartoon avatar, pronouns in my bio and socialist politics!

BootsAndRoots

Non-binary is like "queer" (a lot of heterosexual people now call themselves "queer") where everyone wants to call themselves something to be different from other people and then can feel victimised.

Just googled and discovered queer is also a verb "spoil or ruin (an agreement, event, or situation)." eg "Reg didn't want someone meddling and queering the deal at the last minute"

So, ironically, heterosexuals are queering the queer community!

SlightlyGeordieJohn

It’s funny. Fir some reason it reminds me of my time at college. I was the only person there who wore a white T-shirt, jeans and trainers, and was frequently called “conformist” by the dreary hippy contingent, every last one of whom had a matching parka, dreadlocks, goatee and smelled of patchouli.

We’re all different, in exactly the same was as each other! Look at my purple hair, cartoon avatar, pronouns in my bio and socialist politics!

One Way by the Levellers... nothing more ironic than 30,000 dreary hippies (all looking exactly like your description) at Glastonbury singing along together "There's only one way of life, And that's your own"

I would imagine that non binary people don’t believe gender is purely a social construction.

NB are people who can’t conceive of living without paying attention to gender stereotypes. Therefore, even when they don’t conform to these stereotypes, they still have them in their heads and give them importance. They think they’re progressive but they actually retain a kernel of conservatism because they subconsciously can’t let go of stereotypes.

Gender critical people pooh-pooh stereotypes and ignore them. They don’t define themselves by them nor by whether they fulfil all, some or none of them. GC people aim to be free of gender stereotypes whereas NBs either choose to reify them because they love gender ideology, or simply can’t conceive that they can just be themselves without any reference whatsoever to gender stereotypes.

For some NB people though, it’s simply narcissistic attention-seeking, nothing more.

Exactly so.

They’d actually shout “Conformist!” At me as an insult as they say around all smoking roll-ups and drinking scrumpy.

Everyone should be treated as non binary. But as we all know it's not the case.

Hence we are still working on a gender pay gap.

You can say what you like and have whatever pronouns you want but don't think for a minute you will get treated any differently.

Except to cause upset about people getting your pro nouns wrong.

Not you op I just mean In general.

How does non binary work exactly? I'm not being goady I'm just struggling to see how it makes a difference to anyone in real life.

No rtft but GC people don't chop breasts off or have gender nullification surgery as some NB people do.

So, no thank you