Cambridge Dictionary definition of Gender Critical

[Ingenieur]

There have been quite a few discussions recently about the Cambridge dictionary definition of "woman", but I'm very disappointed in their definition and examples of "gender-critical".

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gender-critical

The definition appears to assume the validity of the concept of a "gender identity", and the examples given for context are completely biased.

Bad show, Cambridge...

I agree that definition is both inaccurate and biased.

I think the definition is probably accurate, it is stripped down to basics. Some examples are clearly showing judgement and are therefore biased. Someone thought they could make it look balanced but the reality is that the positive examples are based on facts and the biased examples pull on emotional responses.

It is not subtle.

The definition omits criticism of gender as social construct and thus conflates gender-critical and gender-traditionalist/gender-affirmative approaches. It's lazy, incorrect, and comes from a place of bias.

Yep.

Indeed, it's a central tenet of the position!

You could try writing to them and see what they say.

I tried OED about another word and they said it is not ‘their’ decision what a word means. They just look for thousands of examples not just in British English. You can probably find out their policies.

imo, if their researched include US thinking, and Twitter etc, basically that will be the end of any stable meaning in language at all. The end of clear thought.

For all those who say language changes, it does, but it never used to be in this way.

I think it is a shame that the idea that sex is a fact was legally judged to be a belief in the Maya Forstater case, even though it was expedient and it is great that she won,

There used to be a distinction between belief and fact based knowledge about nature.

Is it worthy of a civilised society to belief that Dinosaurs once existed?

@ScrollingLeaves

Yes, I agree it's worth trying to see what their policies are.

And agree that it's a shame there isn't a clearer distinction between "belief" and "knowledge/ fact" in this regard, an unfortunate result of mashing together a number of unrelated areas of discrimination to create the Equality Act I reckon.

There used to be a distinction between belief and fact based knowledge about nature.

Really? In law?

There's no such thing as a 'fact', though. There are hypotheses that are proven or not proven, or supported by evidence.

To assert that something is a 'fact' just because most people agree on it is counter to the principle of science. As I understand it. Which admittedly is not much.

Binturong is really good on this.

As I understand it there is a spectrum (sorry!) of scientific confidence.
There are things long supported by evidence which have stood up to challenge for 100s of years (humans have exactly two sexes, easily disproved by a single human having a third sex) and there are things which don't even stand up to a 5 second challenge in the pub (humans all have a gender, I don't, busted).
These are not and should not be presented or believed with remotely the same level of confidence.

Some things really are spectrums!

The trouble is that some things are so universally known that nobody has ever had to actually establish them, have they?

ArabeIIaScott · Today 16:21
There used to be a distinction between belief and fact based knowledge about nature.

Really? In law?

There's no such thing as a 'fact', though. There are hypotheses that are proven or not proven, or supported by evidence.

To assert that something is a 'fact' just because most people agree on it is counter to the principle of science. As I understand it. Which admittedly is not much.

I understand that, but what in that case what is the word for knowing - as far as is possible at the moment - that the world is spherical (ish?) or there is night and day?

Are we going to say those aspects of our lives, round earth and night and day, on which we rely, are a hypothesis, just as it is a hypothesis for some that people are born with a sense of their gender and this may be different from their sex? So the one hypothesis has no more importance than the other?

Is it a hypothesis that some things are material and other things are only ideas
beliefs?

Lost all credibility. Which is what happens when you're gullible twits who permit political capture.

And the usual thing that this lobby breaks whatever it grabs for.

They forced this into the dictionary in the fond belief that validated it and made it official cos respected agency/document. Which it won't be now.

It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow, based on past experience.

The debate about belief vs fact makes sense if you go back to the fact (ha!) that The Equality Act 2010 does not protect facts: it protects people.

People hold beliefs, not facts.

Some beliefs have been tested in court, to decide if people holding those beliefs should be protected from discrimination, ie. discrimination in relation to those beliefs.

Some beliefs have passed the test, some have failed and others have yet to be tested.

Some of the beliefs that have been tested:

The Trend Towards Expansion of Protected Beliefs Under the Equality Act 2010
27 February, 2020 - Forbes Solicitors

The following beliefs have been afforded protection in recent case-law.

• Climate change
• Spiritualism, life after death and ability of mediums to contact the dead
• Left wing socialist beliefs (at first instance)
• Right of Scotland to Independence
• Belief it is wrong to lie under any circumstances
• Belief in the sanctity of life, extending to anti-fox hunting and anti-hare coursing
• Belief that the UK should not be ruled by a hereditary monarchy
• Belief in the abhorrence of paedophilia and/or the sexual abuse of children and belief in the abhorrence of domestic violence towards women

https://www.forbessolicitors.co.uk/news/46787/the-trend-towards-expansion-of-protected-beliefs-under-the-equality-act-2010

One of the tests is whether something that someone believes actually qualifies as a "philosophical belief".

The five tests are whether a belief meets the "Grainger criteria":

(i) The belief must be genuinely held.

(ii) It must be a belief and not, as in McClintock v Department of Constitutional Affairs [2008] IRLR 29, an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.

(iii) It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.

(iv) It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.

(v) It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others (para 36 of Campbell v United Kingdom 4 EHRR 293 and para 23 of Williamson’s case [2005] 2AC 246).”

Although we say that a belief is protected, in reality it is the people who hold that belief who are protected.

They can take a case to an Employment Tribunal, arguing that they have been discriminated against because they hold a "protected belief", ie. a belief that has passed several tests including whether it is WORIADS, not just that it is WORIADS.

In Maya's case she first had to argue that her belief passed those tests and should be protected. The first Tribunal found that although Maya's belief passed some Grainger criteria that it failed the WORIADS test.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60c1cce1d3bf7f4bd9814e39/Maya_Forstater_v_CGD_Europe_and_others_UKEAT0105_20_JOJ.pdf?ref=forstater.comassets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60c1cce1d3bf7f4bd9814e39/Maya_Forstater_v_CGD_Europe_and_others_UKEAT0105_20_JOJ.pdf?ref=forstater.com

IMHO the fact that the WORIADS aspect of Maya's appeal had wider implications has led to a forgetting that her belief had also to meet the other four Grainger criteria, including:

(ii) It must be a belief and not, as in McClintock v Department of Constitutional Affairs [2008] IRLR 29, an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.

The McClintock case:
https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2007/0223_07_3110.html

Perhaps the reason the EA2010 talks about "Philosophical Belief" rather than just "Belief" is related to the fact that Empirical Science developed as an offshoot of Natural Philosophy?

Natural Philosophy - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy

It is always worth a peek at the Talk Page for Wikipedia articles to see if there is any debate about what should or should not be included in the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_philosophy

Seems a reasonable dictionary definition to me. Dictionaries aren't the place to set out a full account of every philosophical viewpoint which merits an entry.

It is not a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow. A thousand years ago it was. But the interactions between physical forces and bodies are understood in this case. There are many widely accepted hypotheses in science but this is not one. Nor is it a hypothesis that the earth is round. Seriously.

Languages changes. But in some cases it is changed.

I am quite happy with the definition. It will be a great example in the future of the madness that many people currently believe you can change sex.

That the sun will rise tomorrow is a prediction. That prediction could be based on an understanding of the physics of the situation or simply on the heuristic that 'it always has in the past so it'll do the same tomorrow'.

I actually wonder how many people will read that definition of believing in sex as a fact of biology and think duh of course it is. That part of the definition is clear cut once it gets to the gender part its more wolly and tricky to understand. It wouldn't surprise me if it made people realise that actually they are gender critical

Thank you Bosky · Today 06:43
for explaining in such detail the complications around ‘belief’ in law; and also how knowledge is only really hypothesis or prediction ( if I have not misunderstood your post).

I shall read what you wrote more carefully later, though this still may not lead to my doing your information much justice I am afraid.

Thanks in particular for explaining that the EA protects people rather than beliefs per se, but that people’s Philosophical Beliefs must meet certain criteria so they couldn’t just be anything.

In real life, aside from Equality law and Philisophical beliefs, for ordinary people, I think there is a distinction between what people feel they know and can touch and see, call this what-they-can ‘confidently predict’ if you will, and what they experience as a ‘belief’ needing no material evidence.

I am so surprised to see that an ability to predict on the basis of the experience of material evidence, what some would call ‘knowledge’ or ‘science’, is seen as though it is on an equal footing as a belief in heaven, say, even if, absolutely, people must have their right to believe in heaven protected.

Even if in the Middle Ages Natural Philosophy began with religion, I thought it had eventually lead and branched off into to the study of nature and human kind as being separately, pragmatically ‘knowable’.

It seems surprising that to “know” you have a cut and are bleeding is not understood as a material ‘fact’ so much as a belief you have a cut. What about giving birth? A random experience on an equal footing with someone’s belief they are a woman trapped in a man’s body?

It seems in theory it could be said that everything known has to go through the medium of human thought, and everything involving human thought is essentially just an individual filtered and biased belief. But though I understand that in principle, imo in practical life, that doesn’t seem to altogether correspond enough to daily life make sense.

Isn’t the idea that everything is just an artificial construct of the human mind, even if it is based on experience - with no one thing truer than another - what post-modern queer theory is derived from?

No wonder TWAW, if there is no real material ‘fact’.

No wonder that GC’s material realism is not seen as trumping gender belief but only begrudgingly allowed alongside it.

One of the ways we can determine the validity of a scientific theory is through its predictive capacity.

We have models of the universe that we can use to predict sunrises with a high degree of accuracy.

We have models of biological sex that have similarly high degrees of predictive capacity.

Gender identity, though, has extremely limited predictive capability, to the point that it can't really predict anything useful.

My understanding of gender critical is being critical of gender, not gender identity.

@jellyfrizz

Sure, I see that. But like most of the stuff we see, gender itself needs defining so we can discuss it properly.

Gender to a 2nd wave feminist is different to its historic popular meaning, which is different to those who subscribe to gender ideology - and in that case gender means sex when it suits, means stereotypes when it suits, means an inner feeling of yourself when it suits...