[RNZ] Spike in online hate toward trans community after Posie Parker visit - researchers

[landOFconfusion]

For those who aren’t familiar with the New Zealand media landscape, RNZ is the equivalent of the BBC. It’s a state funded public service broadcaster.

There is an interesting article on RNZ today about the real and measurable effects that ideologues like Posie Parker have on creating and intensifying hatred towards marginalised groups.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/487306/spike-in-online-hate-toward-trans-community-after-posie-parker-visit-researchers

I will not deny that it is confusing but "Gender Critical" is the exact opposite of the Right Wing Christian "anti-gender" stance, which might be more accurately described as "anti-feminist".

Right Wing Christians are against what they call "Gender Ideology." This terminology is most common in Eastern Europe.

By contrast, "Gender Critical" means being critical of "Gender Identity Ideology".

Anti-women activists on both the Left and the Right sometimes deliberately conflate the "Anti-Gender Movement" with "Gender (Identity) Critical" views - but for very different reasons. On the Left, to smear "Gender (Identity) Critical" views as being aligned with the Right Wing Christian "anti-gender movement"; on the Right, to attempt forced-teaming between Right Wing Christians and Radical Feminists.

The anti-women trans activists who have a stranglehold on Wikipedia have, for political reasons, subsumed Gender (Identity) Critical views as an aspect of the "Anti-Gender Movement". They further reveal their political motivation by referring to people who hold Gender Critical views as "TERFs".

The reason why "Gender Critical" became popular as shorthand for "Gender Identity Critical" is that the vast majority of people who hold Gender (Identity) Critical views are so far removed from the "Religious Right" that they were completely unaware of the term "Anti-Gender", ie. as in "Anti-Gender Movement".

This confusion with the Anti-Gender Movement is why some people dislike the term "Gender Critical" and every now and again there is a thread on Mumsnet calling for a better description.

In 2019 a guest author on Fair Play for Women suggested "Critical Realism":
https://fairplayforwomen.com/critical_realism/

However, Maya Forstater's Employment Tribunal Appeal has established that Gender Critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010 Protected Characteristic of "Religion and Belief". The ruling also defines Gender Critical beliefs. These relate to Gender Identity.

So, in the UK at least, there is clear separation between the "Anti-Gender Movement" of the Religious Right and "Gender Critical" as shorthand for "Gender Identity Critical". The UK definition established in law does not make any reference to Religion in general, nor to Christianity specifically nor to any political persuasion.

So, No. Right-wing Christians do not "tend to be on the Gender Critical side". The Church of England aka "The Tory Party at Prayer" has bought into and preaches "Gender Identity Ideology" aka "Transgenderism". In the UK, Right-wing Christians tend to be on the side of magical gender essence and "gendered souls".

Gender Affirming Transgenderism, rather than "Gender Critical" is, naturally, "right-wing Christian", as well as "fundamentalist Islamic", as it is regressive, anti-science, anti-woman and anti-feminist.

They WILL disappear, at least some will, if they get Cervical Cancer because they didn't understand that as a WOMAN they needed to go and get a smear due to the word WOMAN not being used on the calls for PEOPLE with a CERVIX attending for a smear.

Personally, I am very critical of gender. I think the concept of gender is immensely harmful in society and to individuals.

I also think gender ideology and gender identity ideology are both problematic - the latter is just a different inflection ok the former.

The sort of ‘right wing’, religious arguments against gender identification, IME tend to be very much pro-gender as an organising principle in society. It’s very much a gender ideology itself.

Absolutely spot on.

But it is how politics, society and culture work.

If women (original female meaning) cannot differentiate themselves from men (original male meaning) in public discourse, how can they have a political voice? How can they recognise, name and describe the things that happen to them, or happen differently to them, because they are women?

Because these things still happen. Our society may have rules about treating women fairly but we all know sexism is coded so deeply in our social, economic and cultural norms that women are on an uneven playing field from the day they are born.

How can women organise and politicise and establish the support structures we need to mitigate that disparity if we have lost the language we need to name and describe them and the physical, political and mental spaces we need to heal from them?

One of the worst evils of colonisation was to break indigenous cultures by banning their languages and sepatating and redefining their children so their self knowledge was lost. But the people were still alive, so that was OK?

Very interesting blog about Australian TRAs. Four fingers pointing back indeed.

https://panoramicgutterview.blogspot.com/2023/03/four-fingers-pointing-back-tldr.html?m=1

https://twitter.com/RuthLessTWAM/status/1638859771855126530?t=qrOrVHGQjmPfgRoSdjW59Q&s=19

Not at all. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Gender Critical means (that's not unusual, as the term has been misrepresented to mean 'anti-trans').

To understand what Gender Critical means you have to go back to feminism's definition of gender: a set of expectations of behaviour imposed upon each sex.

To be Gender Critical means to be skeptical that those expectations are correct. Generally speaking, GC feminists believe that these expectations are socially constructed, that they are not based in the actual sexual differences between men and women, and that they are damaging and limiting to women's lives (and men's, but less so).

All this has existed for decades. Notice I haven't mentioned trans yet.

Then along comes a theory of gender identity which suggests that these gender characteristics (which feminists have been working to dismantle for years) are not only innate, but are fundamental to a person's identity and have primacy over the sexual characteristics when determining what a woman is and what a man is.

It should come as no surprise that feminists reject this theory.

There's a brilliant Venn diagram that shows how all this fits together. I don't have it to hand I'm afraid.

I don't think these types can hold more than one construct in their heads.

I think that’s being generous.

I think they’re perfectly capable of doing so. They’re choosing to be utterly disingenuous.

Great post Bosky.

This poster knows though.

Right-wing Christian zealots share a belief in sexist stereotypes with gender identity ideologues. Both groups also are deeply misogynist and homophobic - it was TRAs who recently assaulted one of the original participants in the Stonewall riots at a pride march, remember.

All that Christian fundamentalists share with the people on this board, and most people whose synapses connect, is an understanding of biological reality.

Christian thinking is a good deal more complex than that. I won’t attempt to lay out that complexity, but will just respond to what you said about the CofE. It is hardly the Tory Party at prayer these days, though some parts of it are aligned with very conservative social values. On the whole, I think the top level leadership is very ‘be kind’ and also fears being painted as anti-trans; at that level it does appear to have bought into ‘transgenderism’. But at that level, it’s not really right wing.

At grass roots level, and possibly even within my own parish church, there’s the full range of views on gender and ‘gender identity’ issues. In my church there is a desire to be welcoming to everyone, but what this means in practice has not been worked out yet. I am doing what I can from my own personal experience to point out that ’be kind’ is not enough and that women’s rights are impacted, and that truth matters. Attempting to speak truth must not be shut down in favour of woolly illogical niceness that encourages body mutilation and men taking women’s spaces as their own.

How about we don't demonise Christians considering there has been one Christian school shooting and one attempted one?

Because it's not done in the name of Christianity.

What isn't?