Am I GC?

[GCornotGCthatisthequestion]

I have been looking into the trans issue for a few months now, looking at sources from both "sides" to try and understand the issues properly and form a view. I think I have come to a position that would get me called a terf in some spaces but also falls short of the view that most on on this forum hold. I would be interested to hear if you would consider me gender critical.

I don't believe that people can change sex, however, I do think that for some people, taking hormones and having surgery to resemble the opposite sex is the right thing for them.

I don't think that women should be forced to compete against transwomen in sports, particularly when prize money is involved or in sports like boxing where the risk of injury is high. I don't think it is reasonable to expect volunteer-run events like Park Run to be able to police whether or not someone who registers as a woman is a transwomen or not. While I understand the frustrations around women being beaten by transwomen in this race I can't see how they could stop this.

I have a close friend from childhood who identifies as non-binary, takes testosterone and has had their breasts removed. While I don't understand their decision I can see with my own eyes how much happier their life is now and I believe that this was the right decision for them. I care about them deeply and I am happy that they were able to make these changes and live a happier life.

I think children who have distress about their sex should receive exploratory therapy to try and understand what they are feeling and why. I don't think they should be given puberty blockers or any kind of hormone therapy until they are adults. I do, however, think most older teens have the capacity to decide how they dress and what name they want to be referred to as.

I will generally use the pronouns that someone asks me to about them. I don't look down on or sneer at people who add pronouns to email signatures. I don't agree with companies mandating that people have it add them.

I think people should be able to ask for a female doctor for intimate medical care and it mean biologically female rather than a transwoman.

I have felt uncomfortable with some of the content on this forum. The "tranvestigation" threads that seem to target black female athletes because they don't fit European standards of what a woman is meant to be. The overlooking of terrible behaviour from people because "at least they know what a woman is".

Would you say I was GC?

That’s not quite fair, OP. I’ve read the thread you posted (thanks) about the female athlete who some people thought might be male.

They weren’t criticising her looks. It wasn’t about perceived beauty or lack of it. Nobody would have commented if sports hadn’t been so tainted in recent years by male cheats competing against women.

We’ve become understandably suspicious, and that’s really unfair on women who happen to look less feminine than the average.

I try not to be affected, but I can’t help feeling slightly nervous for a moment if a tall big woman comes in, if I don’t immediately see that she is indeed female. I try not to show that brief moment of tension, as I’d hate to offend her.

I wholly blame the male sports cheats, and other men who intrude into women’s spaces, and their supporters.

Sorry @theilltemperedqueenofspacetime ! You put up the diagram while I was busy typing my message so we cross-posted. Thank you for posting it.

A crude illustration:
Traditionals: long hair is feminine and appropriate for women (by sex), not men
Genderists: long hair is feminine and appropriate for people who identify as women, regardless of their sex
Gender critical feminists: long hair is just long hair, anyone should be able to have it without getting labelled.

Works better than the first version I saw of this, which was:

Gender essentialists/trads: women should do the washing up
Genderists: whoever does the washing up is a woman
Gender critical feminists: everyone should take their turn washing up

Which sums up the theory OK but fails as a practical measure because men who say they identify as women are notorious for still expecting actual women to do all the mundane bits of womaning for them.

OP, to answer your original question I think you are not GC athough you may have taken some steps towards it. I'm not basing this on your original post, but on the followup where you said a gender-questioning girl should be allowed to wear boys clothes instead of a frilly dress. Whereas my position is that all girls, not just ones who doubt their sex or gender, should be allowed to wear whatever the hell they want (within bounds of decency and appropriateness for the occasion) - and that whatever outfits they choose to wear are girls clothes if they're being worn by a girl.

A man who loves makeup and sips prosecco is a man; a woman who lives in trousers and quaffs pints of beer is a woman. It's the determination to crush those sterotypes that makes someone GC. Which has a substantial, although not complete, overlap with the RF part of TERF. Less so with the TE part, which is why you will find most regulars here are not TERFs, but MERFs.

But you can't even give us an example of a thread about a black woman that fits what you're talking about 🫠🫠🫠

I guess my feeling on it is that if a 15 year old girl feels more comfortable in boys clothes then she should be allowed to wear them rather than being forced into frilly dresses. And loads of people are known by something other than their legal name.

I don't think many people would disagree with this. But where GC and TRA Ideologies differ is in assigning meaning to it.

To a TRA, all the above are signs that the girls "gender expression" differs from her "sex assigned at birth". And this would indicate that she has a different "gender identity" from that also. She would be encouraged to see herself as a boy born in the "wrong body" and to demand male pronouns, accusing anyone who didn't use them of being "transphobic" and "harassing" her or denying her "right to exist".

One of the things the Cass Review noted was that this type of social transition can often lead to a medical pathway - puberty blockers (now banned, thankfully), cross sex hormones and, ultimately, surgical mutilation and sterilisation. Like eating disorders, it is often (though not always) driven by social contagion.

The GC view is that girls sometimes want to dress in "male" clothing, often eschewing "female" clothing, and the same for mannerisms, etc. Maybe this is because she's a lesbian. Maybe it's because she's a tomboy. Maybe it's just her sense of style. But it's not because she's a boy trapped in a girl's body.

So, which one of those most matches your view? That should answer your question about whether you're GC or not.

Personally I think that many girls/women's clothes such as skirts, dresses, swimwear, underwear etc remain exclusively girls and women's clothes. However 'boys clothes' except for perhaps underwear are only distinguished by the size, cut and fit. Almost everything else Eg, trousers, tracksuits, jackets, shirts, jumpers etc are sold to both boys/men and girls/women. If anyone compared my wardrobe with my male friends, there would be very little difference

You’re right, we don’t. And of course people have to play the hand they are dealt with and adapt and make the best of things. I do appreciate that.

But do you vaguely see the point I was trying to make? Did your friend have counselling to get to the root of why she wanted to go through the risks of surgery in order to fulfil an idea in her head about what being “non-binary” is?

I wonder where the idea came from that non-binary = no breasts.

I appreciate you said you didn’t want to focus on your friend so I am just offering food for thought rather than expecting answers.

Does disagreement = bullying now? If you have identified posts that come close to bullying please report them.

It's almost as though men are expected to choose comfortable clothes that permit a human to lead an active life and women aren't.

We don’t identify as women, we ARE women.

Maybe you are thinking of the threads which have discussed the issue of athletes with DSD's in female sporting categories- with particular reference to Caster Semenya, Barbra Banda and maybe even Imane Khelif?

I think that poster meant 'anyone' as in men, not us

What you are calling 'transvestigation' is more likely valid discussion around the mess and confusion created by the imposition of trans ideology - especially when it realtes to males in female sporting categories and males in female toilet facilities?

When something is pushed and continually referenced then it tends to assume a bigger proportion in the public consciousness, and becomes more of 'an issue' than it might have been if it had not been pushed in the first place. People become hyper-alert to things when they are continually reminded of them.

Indeed. 'oh no, I'd better not say anything or challenge anyone in case I'm accused of bullying'
Accusing people who disagree with you as being bullies in an attempt to shame or silence them, still sadly works with some people. But it doesn't work with me anymore.

When someone starts a thread on a forum which is known to be a place in which people who perecieve things in a certain way congregate, and that person poses an open question, or a challenge, for the forum - then it is inevitable that they will receive lots of responses. This is how on-line 'debate' tends to go. Anyone familiar with posting on forums or in comment sections knows this.

I don't think the OP is as naive as you are perhaps trying to make out.

Being a woman is not a performance, or a set of attitudes...it is a biological reality that is fixed at conception and reveals itself throughout life.

Personally I think that many girls/women's clothes such as skirts, dresses, swimwear, underwear etc remain exclusively girls and women's clothes. However 'boys clothes' except for perhaps underwear are only distinguished by the size, cut and fit. Almost everything else Eg, trousers, tracksuits, jackets, shirts, jumpers etc are sold to both boys/men and girls/women. If anyone compared my wardrobe with my male friends, there would be very little difference

Yes that's what I meant. It would have made more sense the other way round.

Accusing people who disagree with you as being bullies in an attempt to shame or silence them, still sadly works with some people. But it doesn't work with me anymore.

It doesn't fly here in general, and we see attempts to do it frequently.

OP you are clearly a sex realist. You would fall squarely into TERF territory and if you voiced your views within certain quarters you might be at risk of losing your job or being discriminated against for your.

It’s perfectly reasonable to feel uncomfortable about people speculating about the sex of athletes and I remember this did happen during the Olympics when two known male athletes were in the Olympic boxing (both winning medals) there was a third person who looked male and there was speculation around that person. Whilst these conversations are uncomfortable (and usually when they happen there are just as many women saying we shouldn’t speculate) I think they are understandable.

I don’t know how informed you are but there are situations now where the entire podium of a women’s event has been taken by men. Most notably the 2016 800 meter final where 3 male athletes won gold, silver and bronze. The three athletes (including GB’s Lynsey Sharp) who came 4th, 5th and 6th were smeared as being bad sports and racist because (it was said) they had a problem losing to Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui because they were black rather than because they were men.

Women who oppose men in women’s sports have been accused for at least a decade now of being racist and targeting TW and DSD males because they don’t fit European beauty standards of femininity. We have been gaslit by the media who have consistently lied that these men are “women with high testosterone” and we have been called racist as a direct result of these lies.

What surprises me under the circumstances is that more women do not engage in this type of speculation. The fact that we don’t I think is testament to how cautious we are about inadvertently pointing the finger at masculine women and calling them men. For the record I expect many of us on here fail to meet the European beauty standards for women (I certainly do) and I am a survivor of being mistaken for a man on several occasions.

https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-25-00-too-big-too-strong-too-powerful-too-black-for-weepy-waifish-sharp-and-jozwik/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4JeLO8RCtoQ&pp=ygUUMjAxNiBvbHltcGljcyBseW5zYXk%3D

I have t read the whole thread but I don't subscribe to typical GC ideas anymore.

I said from the start it would be problematic to use the term as it would then be seen as a political position, which would be opposed.

If you only look at all the issues, and include all the information and have the freedom to discuss it, looking at it all from an evidenced safety and evidenced scientific/ medical perspective, is more sensible.

It can't be politicised when there's evidence of harm.

Which ones? You need to say who or give a link to the thread so we know who or what you mean.
(I mean 'must' but was overcome by the gender stereotype that women should not demand anything! Lol)

I'm a man. I occasionally feel l uncomfortable at the way men are portrayed by some posters, because I don't want to be tarred with the same brush. But overall, I have felt very supported by women here who empathise with my distress as a parent of a trans identifying (adult) child. And I have been told very firmly how wrong I was when I said something that seemed true to me but turned out to be based on ignorance. Some of the women here can be very blunt. They are not generally meaning to offend.

OP did link the thread.

Had not seen this but the thread seems to be pointing out that the fact men can take part in women's sport as transwomen is making it difficult for gender non-conforming (for whatever reason) women. I looked up Devynne - she looks entirely female.

I know that having spent much of my life, in the off-line and on-line worlds, prefacing any different opinion with 'I'm sorry but . . ' one of the great freedoms of posting on a majority female discussion forum, and of getting old, is feeling able to state my dissenting view without apologising for it.

It does mean having to grow a thick skin and accept other people disagreeing with me. The only thing I can't stand is being patronised.

And I've had to train myself into it. The number of times I've looked at how a post of mine started, and gone back and deleted the 'I'm sorry but' or even 'Yes but'. It isn't that I want to be horrible, just that I want to let my words stand on their own merit.

I am hoping that sensible rules are enforced regarding the female sporting catagories soon, then we can start to trust that all competators are female again. That will end any 'transvestigations' of athletes.

Going back to racism, the biggest example of racism that I have seen in this debate is from the TRA side. IW is an example of someone who has used the horrific argument that "if black women are women, then trans women are women." It has been discussed and condemned on this forum with various screenshots if the OP wants to read further.

Regarding surgeries. There are definitely ethical issues with performing body modification surgery on the body of someone with gender dysphoria/body dismorphia. The people being operated on are often vulnerable (even when adults) and it does go against the first priciple of medicine which is first do no harm. There is definitely a lot to unpick and I have become less and less comfortable with it, the more that I have read post-op reports (often with photos) from the people who have had these surgeries.

It has been said before, and it should be said again- some of the biggest victims of this decade + push of Gender Identity Ideology is the trans-identifying people themselves.