Gender Critical or ",GC" as a term, do you like it?

[Mayyouleave]

Do you like the term "Gender Critical" or "GC"? I've seen a lot of people saying that "GC" isn't a movement. I think it is.
Be great to get a discussion going on this.

Its a long running made up dilemma - that people agree on somethings but not for the same reasons and dont agree on other issues.

Its only used when people want to add doubt onto an idea - it cant be a good one because he agrees and he also thinks x.

What matters is the solution. I dont want matt walsh to be tasked with it, but i dont want a liberal solution either. Im in favour of safeguarding being the solution over somethining like free speech simply because i dont want the outcome to be 'he can call himeself a woman and we can call him 'he'.

But before a solution is found, we need as many people as possible to acknowledge the problem.

I think that sums up where I’m at.

Half the problem, though, is that the usage of the term , gender, has developed in the same way that ‘gay’ doesn’t mean merry/ /happy, and ‘queer’ doesn’t mean strange. However, many people ( of all ages) still think it can be used interchangeability with sex , meaning male/female, rather than the stereotyping pink/blue meanings.

illinivich
I agree, as many people are needed as possible. I haven't said otherwise. Again, the thread is about people's opinions on the term Gender Critical. A term that afair, was made popular on this board.

Surely in that case one is identifying those things that fall under the umbrella of "gender" in order to criticise them? In the sense of assessing their positive/ negative traits and utility?

Ditto.

I don't think a blame game is productive. The world changed and the goalposts moved.
We can't change the past, we move forward from where we are.
Womens' sex based rights are under threat and I am incredibly grateful to those who were 'awake' enough to see it coming and shout about it.

I think it's a silly expression.

It's not accurate either. Sex can't be changed. That isn't a belief, it's fact. I am not "gender critical". For me, gender is something you grapple with when learning German ;)

Also "gender" isn't a thing. The protected characteristic in UK law is "gender reassignment".

I very much liked the term for what it originally meant - being critical of gender stereotypes and all their ramifications.
It wasn't about being critical of transgender people, it was about rejecting gendered boxes. Girls can't play football, boys don't cry, pink is for girls, short hair is for boys .... and all that crap leads on to.

Out of this, in conjunction with a grasp of basic reality that there are 2 sexes and humans can't swap between them, comes the GC view in relation to trans issues. Live your life, present as you want, but don't force the belief that a man can become a woman on other people.

Helleofabore

Since the words ‘gender critical’ has been detached from the original term ‘gender critical feminist’ and repurposed by those who seem to want to use it to wedge in groups of people who aren’t critical of gender but who agree that sex is immutable, the words have lost meaning and purpose

This is spot on.

Why do I think it's a movement, well because it started really on here and since then many groups have been created to tackle gender ideology.

But surely 'gender critical' doesn't mean critical of the term 'gender'? It means critical of gender, i.e. critical of gender stereotypes.

I have no problem with the term 'gender critical'. I am critical of gender stereotypes and gender identity theory.

I do have a problem with the term 'terf'. Not because I find it offensive as such, but because it implies that to be a biological realism is an extreme view held only by radical feminists (whereas in fact the vast majority of men, women and children, whatever their political or social views, know full well what 'man' and 'woman' mean).

It is a resistance. Not a movement.

I think I'm just going to change 'gender' into 'stereotype' whenever I see it from now on. I'm stereotype critical. If people want to change their stereotype, fine. Why would anyone need surgery or hormones to change their stereotype. And wtf do we need legislation to replace 'sex' with 'stereotype' when it comes to equal rights?

Good idea, or at least say in full 'gender stereotype critical' if clarification is needed.

It's a sex stereotype. Gender doesn't exist. And I also criticise any stereotyping of poor people, or people from other nationalities or religions, or Travellers, or people from other races. Admittedly sex does actually exist, as does money, as do countries. A lot of the rest is extremely tenuous.

But I'm agin encouraging anyone to let stereotypes limit their potential.

At its broadest 'gender critical' just means someone who doesn't buy into gender ideology. And it's weird to have a term to express this rejection. It is like treating not-being-a-Scientologist as a particular ideology of its own.

Just as with not-being-a-Scientologist, the rejection of gender ideology is going to be a feature of the belief systems of many people who are in other respects extremely diverse in their outlooks. Hence the questions about 'what gender critical means'

I do think, though, that despite the fact that many right wing and/or anti-feminist people might call themselves 'gender critical' in the very broad sense that I have mentioned above, it does have a core longer-term meaning which excludes the anti-feminist right. It's core meaning is simply the feminist rejection of the gender stereotypes that have confined women (and to some extent men) since forever, and that are now being used in a brand-new supercharged way to prevent women from even naming the sex class that has been victimised by these stereotypes.

At its core, feminism just is gender criticism, and gender criticism is feminism. Because gender stereotypes are the ideology through which the oppression of women is enacted and endorsed, and they are demolished when we critique them and point to their unreality.

So I am happy enough with 'gender critical'. I think 'sex realist' might be a slightly better term though. It carries a clearer sense of the absurdity of gender ideology.

No, its stupid
And I hate labels, they are afterall what powers TRA.
I accept biological reality.
Thats it

No feminism is about protecting the rights of all women, including the vast majority who do not conform to any stereotype. The suffragettes wanted all women to have the vote, not just women who were 'feminine'. Women are female, and discriminated against because of that. Feminism existed long before anyone (John Money, late 1970s self-described 'feminists') started theorising about the existence of something they chose to call 'gender'.

AlisonDonut
It is a resistance. Not a movement
Why would you call it a resistance and not a movement? Personally I'm proud to be part of it, a movement, although I understand others never call it such.

I have to agree that I prefer biological realist. I mean, yes, I am also gender critical, but that's in the sense of thinking gender stereotyping is damaging patriarchal bullshit, rather than specifically anything to do with the conflict between trans activism and women's rights.

Gah - word salad! Should read '...that biological realism is...'. Not sure where the 'to be a' came from.

Since the words ‘gender critical’ has been detached from the original term ‘gender critical feminist’ and repurposed by those who seem to want to use it to wedge in groups of people who aren’t critical of gender but who agree that sex is immutable, the words have lost meaning and purpose.

That's really astute @Helleofabore and catches what I've been feeling for a while.

As a dyed-in-the-wool 2nd wave feminist. I've always been "gender critical". For me (and millions like me from the women's lib movement/2nd wave) it's fundamental to feminism - a critique of sex-based stereotypes.

And contrary to some of the twisting of my words upthread, the main attack on extremist gender ideology and transactivism has come from 2nd wave feminists - women around my age and older. Journalists such as Julie Bindel & Suzanne Moore were noting the emerging TWAW discourse in the late 90s/early 2000s. And of course, there's Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire back in the 1970s, and staunch feminists such as Sheila Jeffreys speaking & writing about this for the last 30-40 years. Germaine Greer was public about this in the fight to try to stop a transsexual man from joining her all women college in the late 1990s/early 200s.

For me, the gap - when women didn't notice what was happening - was in the period of "liberal feminism" - when the undergrads I was teaching at the time tried to tell me that they "didn't need feminism" or "were not feminists" because "women are equal now."

I told them to come back in 20 years after a few maternity leaves, and the young men they'd studied with & started work with had zoomed ahead in promotions & salary ...

We took our eye off the ball, but it wasn't the 2nd wavers. And it's the 2nd wavers now who are leading the move to fix things.

I'm really pleased to see the revival of grass roots feminism, in this resistance to the attack on the fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman.

But it's not the only tenet of feminism, which is a much broader movement. And I think some of the newly radicalised "gender criticals'" need to remember this. We need a movement which will keep going on other important matters once we've diverted transactivism.

Activism on femicide worldwide - the million or so foetuses aborted each year because they are female; surrogacy - the use of women as merely vehicles for rich couples; prostitution & sex trafficking - some big international fights!

Standing alongside the likes of Matt Walsh resisting the mutilation and sterilisation of children and the mangling of basic language to describe reality is completely different to a 'feminist' movement that will be co-opted by men, as always, to further their interests. As demonstrated by the so called 'professional feminists' who failed to keep feminism about women and girls.

It is a subtle difference. There is more than one war going on here.

some of the twisting of my words upthread

Maybe your words were the problem. If you left your undergraduates thinking that women didn't need feminism any more, that speaks volumes about your inability to show them what the live issues were. Your failure as a lecturer, not their failure to see what was happening in the world because they were being given an inadequate grounding.

I'm not surprised by that - your use of that quite disgracefully snide 'Up to a point Lord Copper' quote to say that you (quite mistakenly) thought I was wrong (and that you were too gutless to say so outright, and think yourself clever because you can quote Waugh) told me that you are self important and self regarding and intellectually dishonest. Not qualities that ever go down well with the sceptical and intelligent young. Or with the middle aged, or with other 2nd wave feminists.

Rather than flouncing around telling us how wonderful you are, maybe do some honest reflection on how your own poor communication skills, and more broadly, the sloppy acceptance of the word 'gender' by academic feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, grew into the tragedies we see around us today.

I’m a gender realist.

I don’t mind ‘gender critical’, and sometimes use GC for convenience when talking to other women, eg on Mumsnet, because it’s well known.

But I prefer ‘gender realist’, which is a more exact definition. I don’t care what other people call themselves, I’ll stick with reality.