3 questions for GC women

[ChirpyFinch]

As the title says, three questions for the women in this chat.

1. Do you think the majority of people are gender critical, and why/why not?

2. Globally, the right wing is more vocally gender critical than the left. They are also far more likely to be regressive on a range of women’s issues like abortion and anti-gay. Why do you think they agree with GCs on this one issue but disagree on so much else (if you think they do?)

3. How many trans people do you estimate there are globally?

Also linking CautiousLurker's recent post, which I hadn't seen, but is very relevant:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5147164-does-gender-dysphoria-actually-exist

Thanks for attaching @ArabellaScott Didn’t think to do that!

I'm not here to dis social sciences. Done right it's a worthy discipline.

Oh absolutely. But the key is 'done right'. All of them necessarily involve an element of interpretation or extrapolation to fill the gaps between what can be tested, and there seem to be a lot of people involved who forget that should be a minor rather than a major part of it, and who would rather play with what-ifs (which can be great fun) than do the harder work of collecting and analysing proper data.

I think it's because many scientific "truths" have turned out to be the interpretations of truth most convenient for those in power.

Facts aren't subconsciously biased, but the people who observe them often are. Bias creeps in in what observations they register as significant, in how they interpret them, and in what they choose to observe in the first place.

I know Foucault gets short shrift on this board (for very good reasons), but he wasn't wrong about that.

We as feminists certainly know this, women having been on the receiving end of unconscious bias since forever. After all, for a long time it was generally taken as fact that women are naturally better suited to domestic roles. An obvious conclusion drawn from our reproductive role, and many scientific observations were made to support it. The lens was never widened to consider the role of society in shaping our choices and capabilities.

Asking "is this really true? How do I know it's true? Do the facts bear out everything being laid on them?" is not a bad thing.

That is why I usually take the route of arguing not that sex exists and gender is made up, but of pointing out that sex exists as well as gender, and there are social power differentials due to sex differences as well as gender that also need to be recognised, challenged an mitigated, and therefore we need language and social understanding that recognises and separates both sex and gender.

there are social power differentials due to sex differences as well as gender

Yes. So much of the problems for women arise from being physically smaller and from being the child bearing sex.

That is why I usually take the route of arguing not that sex exists and gender is made up, but of pointing out that sex exists as well as gender, and there are social power differentials due to sex differences as well as gender that also need to be recognised, challenged an mitigated, and therefore we need language and social understanding that recognises and separates both sex and gender.

Agree. I think the suggestion we 'abolish' gender is unhelpful. A species that exists by sexual dimorphic reproduction is very unlikely to want to try to erase all signifiers of sex. Gender exists. It just needs to be clarified that, while social conventions and stereotypes exist, they can sometimes be limiting and/or harmful, and aren't hard and fast rules.

"That is why I usually take the route of arguing not that sex exists and gender is made up, but of pointing out that sex exists as well as gender, and there are social power differentials due to sex differences as well as gender that also need to be recognised, challenged an mitigated, and therefore we need language and social understanding that recognises and separates both sex and gender."

Yes. Gender exists as a concept. Sex exists as an abidingly material fact.

I would argue that 'gender' social power differentials are largely shaped by the sex of the person with a gender identity belief. And yes, we need language to be able to be separate and well defined.

However, I think while it is useful to understand gender, it is also imperative to understand the significant overreach where those who believe in gender identities wish to declare that sex has miraculously disappeared, is largely irrelevant or is overwritten by 'gender'.

And obviously, the motivations of those who believe in gender identities need to be scrutinised and understood in relation to the harm that they cause with their demands in language and compliance.

"..it is also imperative to understand the significant overreach where those who believe in gender identities wish to declare that sex has miraculously disappeared, is largely irrelevant or is overwritten by 'gender".

That overreach is huge - to the extent that we've allowed these people to influence the NHS into providing completely unevidenced medical treatment for children & young people with catastrophic consequences.

I was reading a thread on here this week where a trans activist was manipulating the thread (deletions abounded) and demanding unconditional respect for their dangerous views with not an iota of self awareness. It seemed to mirror what happens in real life where women are repeatedly threatened, manipulated and coerced to remain silent. As this thread demonstrates:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5134408-do-you-talk-about-this-stuff-in-your-real-life

Brava @RedToothBrush spot on 👏

"demanding unconditional respect for their dangerous views with not an iota of self awareness"

This cannot be said enough.

This has been the dynamic that has been used for a long time. However, the claims of 'not being able to have a different opinion on this board', is being performed for new readers. Because it is not that these posters cannot have an alternative opinion. It is exactly as you say. For some reason they believe that they should be able to state their opinion and have it accepted as being valid in the discussion of women's and girl's rights.

And again, to bang on about it, with no evidence to support it.

I still don't think 'Gender' exists. I think personalities exist (1) , and that one could refer to them as 'genders' (lower case) or 'genres' or 'types' if one didn't want to use 'personalities', and that of those possible terms' 'gender' is the worst precisely because it is a grammatical term associated with language elements called 'masculine' and 'feminine' so people start to imagine it is more linked to sex than to anything else, or even, as now for so many people, that it a replacement for sex.

Our sex is part of our personality. And the number of different personality types is indeed infinite. The old days when we looked up our star signs or our Myers Briggs personality types (so many of them, trite though they are) seem innocent now compared with the gender juggernaut.

Our society may have favoured stereotypes around the sexes, though they are going to be very variable through time and place. People marketing products will certainly try to convince us that our personality / genre / type / star sign / nationality / gender / nationality / class / whatever means that we will be particularly happy and admired and fulfilled if we buy or wear or eat or use whatever it is that they're selling, and we really ought to look and behave like the actor or model they've chosen to represent people like us.

And all that is probably worthy of a bit of sociological analysis if you like that sort of thing, and people, particularly young people, who get very hooked on the advertisers' dream models probably need some psychiatric advice. Better keep the psychologists away from them, they're probably either under the sway or in the pay of the advertisers.

But I don't think 'Gender', that essentially sex-based set of predictive stereotypes, is even as real as star signs.

(1) The horrible thing about saying personalities exist is I fear I may be agreeing with Jordan Peterson, but it can't be helped.

Whoever wanted the gluten free cheese cake I've found one (also dairy free) in my new second hand Helmsley Helmsley book (avocado lime)

I guess the thread is standing because regardless of the OP there has been some good discussion (as well as some nice recipe chat)

It would be a shame if all those lovely links to reliable evidence were to disappear.

(Jordan Peterson is one of those annoying people who never expresses doubt or uncertainty about anything. As a result I can't trust anything he says at all. If I don't already know the facts from somewhere else then I can never tell when he's talking incontrovertible facts (which he often does) and when he's just guessing or preaching. Which makes him useless.)

(Actually scrub the "often". I haven't listened to Jordan Peterson enough to know, the bits I've listened to are mostly true but I haven't listened to much, he may talk total bollocks most of the time for all I know.)

He also isn't in a position to criticise anyone doing serious damage to their body in pursuit of a half-baked theory.

The horrible thing about saying personalities exist is I fear I may be agreeing with Jordan Peterson, but it can't be helped.

I have found my agreement with him on some issues quite alarming, myself, but use the realisation to try an interrogate why and to what extent … and hope I am not being seduced to the dark side.

@Helleofabore

Yes. Gender exists as a concept. Sex exists as an abidingly material fact.

I would argue that 'gender' social power differentials are largely shaped by the sex of the person with a gender identity belief. And yes, we need language to be able to be separate and well defined.

Actually I would classify the observation of your second paragraph as also part of the sex outcomes. Anything a person is landed with because of their sex, whether it's a direct physical outcome or an indirect gendered social outcome, needs the language of sex and to factor sex in its analysis

When I say "gender exists" I mean gender identity, the feeling of gender that is somehow unconnected to sex. Personally I think it "exists" like God exists, not in its own right but still with material impact due to those who believe in it/act for it.

The reason I avoid getting into the "is gender identity real" question is because I think from the perspective of protecting sex-based analysis and rights it's less important whether GI is real and more important to recognise it's a separate thing to sex and should not be treated as socially or legally the same. Get GI out of sex altogether (including the sexed body modifications) and it doesn't really matter any more if some people want to believe it.

I think we agree Flirts.

I agree with quite a lot of what JP says. I also find him annoying sometimes and think he has a blind spot for a lot of women's issues. What I do hate is anyone telling me who I should and shouldn't read/listen to. I think that's extremely unhelpful.

Of course there would be tears and tantrums. Male privilege (many don't know they have) means they expect to be included in everything they feel entitled to.

OP, would you agree that it is insanely arrogant of "trans people" to think they can change the definitions of man and woman which have been around for millennia?

Do you think it's it worryingly controlling when governments expect the population to just roll over and run with these new definitions?

I agree.

There are societal gender norms, roles, stereotypes that people are subject to. But I've never seen a convincing argument for the existence of 'gender' as a standalone thing that someone can 'have' - or even a coherent, non-circular explanation of what it is. I do see that someone might identify with societal gender norms, but as simply doesn't make sense.

Yes, this!

A male person with gender dysphoria has got absolutely fuck all to do with me, but their existence changes the definition of what I am? And deprives me of a word to describe what I am in a way that makes sense to me?

WTF.

I would suggest it's how we feel in relation to said stereotypes and how we see.them placed in the world.

That is obviously a far more complex and nuanced relational stance than 'I have a pink/grey/orange flag and identify as stardust gender'.

A mix of how we feel about specific traits/clothes/behaviours and how we feel about conformity or oppositionality etc, probably also sexuality and how we feel about significant people, and so on mixed in there too.

I've never seen a convincing argument for the existence of 'gender' as a standalone thing that someone can 'have' - or even a coherent, non-circular explanation of what it is.

I agree.

Biological sex - male or female - exists and is easily observable.