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?

I find your acceptance of people having body parts removed deeply troubling, I genuinely don’t understand how you can possibly think that that’s a reasonable response to someone feeling uncomfortable about their body, especially when very young. And it doesn’t change their bodies to the opposite sex, it just leaves them in a ghoulish halfway house, reliant on hormones and medication for the rest of their lives, leaving many without sexual function and unable to have children. It’s monstrous to me that anyone can find this acceptable in a civilised society.

And women have lost a lot because of slippery language that changes what words mean, sometimes in the same sentence. (Canonical example "Trans women are Women [if we define "woman" to mean something that it never did before] and therefore have a right to be in Women's spaces [now we'll go back to the old meaning and hope you don't notice that if we've changed the meaning of Woman, it's not got any legitimate connection to the sense under which is was used for "Women's spaces"].

This is a perfect example of the sleight of hand so common in trans rights activism.

Views that are often referred to as 'gc' are pretty commonplace.

• 2 sexes
• Sex is immutable
• When society is segregated on the basis of sex, it needs to be on sex, not gender.

Most people agree with at least the first two points, no? Very very few people think there are more than two sexes, or that it's possible to change sex.

Which leaves the last point. Anyone who understands why women fought for their rights understands this point very well. There are some people who argue for mixed sex spaces - even some women who are quite down with views 1 and 2 come and go on view 3.

But the point is, it's not an identity, there is no flag (thank fuck), and it's unnecessary to decide whether a collection of very commonplace views shared by most of the population applies to a person or not. Almost everyone is 'gc', if you really want to label it. Just as almost everyone believes in gravity and the earth being round.

Your focus on this thread seems to be very much on 'trans' people. I just don't see that as a meaningful angle, tbh. I'm here for women, and girls. I don't care how people identify, I don't care what plastic surgery adults choose to have (so long as the NHS isn't paying), I don't care how people dress. I'm just not all that interested in 'trans' theories or tropes or ideas, because I think it's all specious waffle.

Women and girls. Our rights. Our spaces, our sports, our protections that were fought for and enshrined in law, to afford us privacy, dignity, safety.

You haven't said yet how you feel about single sex spaces - toilets, changerooms, rape crisis centres, prisons, etc.

For anyone just starting to think about these issues it can be pretty challenging to come to this board to think through your ideas. There are many battle scarred gender wars veterans who have put in the legwork to understand and combat how these issues affect women's rights and children's safeguarding issues. The debate is robust and can be combative and from what I understand from my hours of lurking this board has a history of bad faith posters and transactivists posting to generate terf hate material to perpetuate their claims that Mumsnet is just full of evil terfs and transphobes. I can see how this is difficult and maybe off-putting for newer posters, but also I get the gender veterans perspective, considering some of the disingenuous (at best) posts/comments that pop up (to be clear I'm not saying the OP's post is disingenuous). I feel like this meme is appropriate regardless if a new poster is a radfem or not!

I had been reading and thinking about gender for quite some time and didn't come to the Mumsnet gender boards for a few years until I realised it was somewhere I could actually see everyday women talking about gender and not just journalists and others with a public profile. I also wanted to be able to interact with like-minded people, although I'm not much of a commenter and am still much more of a lurker. And I use a few different usernames for privacy - yes, I'm paranoid which shows you the pernicious nature of this compelled belief system that has captured our institutions.

I have also learnt a lot here - but I'm glad it's not where I came early on when I first started understanding about how the gender identity belief system was undermining women's rights, children's safety and also the common understanding of reality that sex is indeed real and it matters.

Mumsnet is where I learned about the various employment tribunals for women forced out of their jobs for saying sex is real - these cases, particularly Roz Adams case against Edinburgh Rape Crisis, absolutely outraged me in how women with completely reasonable views about sex and gender were treated by the gender zealots in charge of these orgs.

But a chat forum is by nature fast moving and although it's a goldmine of information and solidarity I am glad I had some grounding in gender issues before reading here. Even aside from combative debates, there is now so much information about gender identity ideology on here (and so many mind-bending rabbit holes to go down when it comes to gender), and the board has it's own language (Malaga Airport types and gardening spring to mind - it took me a long time before I saw got the Malaga Airport/AGP/autogynephile reference) that it can be hard to understand and navigate if you're just starting to get your head around these issues. This isn't directed at the OP specifically, more general thoughts about people new to gender posting on here. This may all sound very patronising but so be it.

OP if you're still reading and are open to some advice from a random internet stranger, I would read around gender identity from writers and researchers in this field. If you're interested in black women's voices who don't agree with the prevailing idea that gender identity trumps sex there's the barrister Allison Bailey who took her employer to court for around her gender critical/sex realist views https://allisonbailey.co.uk/ and also also a substack writer called N3vlynnn https://blog.n3vlynnn.com/p/how-the-trans-movement-is-erasing https://blog.n3vlynnn.com/p/stop-co-opting-black-female-oppression?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Both Allison Bailey and N3vlynnn are lesbians and this informs their perspectives, but they both talk/write about their experiences as black women as well. You may not agree with either of these women (or any of the other writers I mentioned below) but in reading a range of voices, including ones we disagree with we can figure out our own position.

My personal favourite writers on gender are Eliza Mondegreen, Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, Sonia Sodha, Lisa Selin Davis and Jamie Reed with the LGBT Courage Coalition. There's also the Cass Report. There are many others if anyone else wants to chime in.

Lipstick Alley is also good for black women's perspectives. Again, female dominated spaces focused on women are the places where 'gender' issues were first questioned and challenged.

Victoria Smith, Brendan O Neill, Sonia Sodha are excellent writers on this subject.

Also, @GCornotGCthatisthequestion you might find this thread interesting for different views about the term GC/Gender Critical. It's interesting for definitions of the term GC, and also for posters' alternative preferences, like sex realist.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5148530-gender-critical-or-gc-as-a-term-do-you-like-it

Also yes, we aren't here to recruit or convince people. Read the facts, seek evidence, check sources, check all angles and make up your own mind.

Yes, Victoria Smith is great, and also Hadley Freeman and Janice Turner at The Times. There are various posters who take issue with Janice Turner (I think) for some of her writing about trans women (Debbie Hayton in particular) so there's a range of views within this forum and debates between posters who have been involved in the gender issue for many years. So it's not just new posters vs old timers :)

I really love what @VeronicasMonocle said. I'm here since two-three years. I arrived here already very critical of the trans ideas, as I have a young daughter who identifies as trans and is set on the idea of hormones/mastectomy as soon as she is an adult. I'm a biologist working on cancer, so I'm quite well versed in reading scientific/epidemiology studies. I am horrified that procedures that have so many side effects are allowed for people with healthy bodies. I am horrified by the fact that, if you look for facts about double mastectomies and steroid use, you'll see different things reported on mainstream media (and scientific literature) compared to top surgery and gender affirming testosterone. New scientific research is silenced as much as possible if the results are negative. Most of the times I think that these surgeries/treatments should be banned completely, sometimes I think, with a robust enough safeguarding, they might be offered to adults (over 25) as elective procedures. I think/hope gender dysphoria (whatever that vague diagnosis is), will gradually be treated almost exclusively by therapists rather than by surgeons/endocrinologists. Personally, after seeing the shameless way it has been pushed, and the misogynists undertones, I find it impossible to take a more "neutral" stance, even if wanted to.

some people feel happier and better altering their body so it looks like the opposite sex

Undoubtedly many adolescent and young adult females feel happier and better doing this, particularly this decade, where there are observable clusters of it in certain schools and friendship groups. A few years ago young women in similar social groups felt happier and better starving their body, in some cases to death - anorexia has the highest death rate of any mental illness. Other young women felt happier and better cutting their body repeatedly, with the pain and bleeding and scarring associated with that one of the things they 'needed' to do.

I would like to live in a world where deep distress associated with becoming an adult woman was treated as something girls should be helped to live through without harming their bodies, and where adult women were seen as people with choices and freedoms and possibilities, not something to be despised and destroyed.

(I mean 'must' but was overcome by the gender stereotype that women should not demand anything! Lol)
I posted that one, OP. Surprised you don't know what I mean. To spell it out (and this has a lot to do with being GC) I am pointing out in a mocking way that women are not allowed to make demands on others, since they are, in the patriarchy, support humans who should STFU and cook the dinner.
And you can tell nothing about me from it apart from my probably having a somewhat wry sense of humour and also realising what the position of women really is under neo-liberal patriarchal capitalism. I am also GC and a biological realist, while not being a biological essentiallist i.e. biology does not equal destiny.

I didn't post this but I will comment on it:
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.
This is true. One argument that says TWAW is that black women are women. It is an entirely racist argument and (I suspect) comes out of the US, which has a history of racism based on historical slavery.
This particular argument is very important in the TRA world since transwomen are doing much the same as someone pretending to be black - they are wearing 'woman face' as though it was a costume you can put on and take off.
I think it important to reject the 'x is a woman so transwomen are women' (where x = any woman who is not white and heterosexual) argument where it stands. This argument has a lot to do with being GC.

I am very critical of gender. I do not believe that girls should wear frilly dresses and simper, nor that boys can't wear lipstick and eyeliner. But that's all shallow surface stuff anyway. My position, broadly, is based on the following:

• In the 21st century developed wealthy (mostly European/Western) societies, we are incredibly fortunate that in most aspects of life, people's sex doesn't really matter. Female humans are able to go about their education, work, social activities and so on, with relatively little difference to male humans.
• Indeed, our societies have become increasingly non-physical in many regards.
• However, despite our many achievements, humans are mammalian animals.
• Mammalian sex is determined at conception and is immutable. Mammals furthermore tend to be sexually dimorphic to a greater or lesser extent.
• There are only two sexes, unless you are a fungus.
• Sometimes, our sexed bodies matter - for example: physical strength and speed, propensity to violence and committing sexual assault, being a victim of sexual assault, menstruation, pregnancy and lactation.
• I'm no anthropologist and have not made a study of all human societies, but it seems fair to state that where our sex matters, it is almost universally female humans who come off worse in being discriminated against and being maltreated by male humans. Yes, even in 21st century developed wealthy (mostly European/Western) societies.
• Therefore, where sex matters, it still matters. Some of us have this controversial idea that female humans are full, actual people. And we would quite like our words to describe female people and female experiences and female needs and female wants. And we would quite like our single-sex spaces and sports and, yes, prisons (because even naughty female humans are still full actual people).
• We do not have the Soul Vision to detect which male humans are sufficiently sad and/or ladylike-in-mind to apparently be categorised as Not Male. Or the converse.
• But regardless, male humans are not female humans.

@Fernery When I look at photos of transmen (biological females) who have had surgery, it is very unusual for them not to be covered in scars from cutting. This includes both double mastectomies and phalloplasty (I have seen phallos that are covered in deep scarring as the arm donor site was cut so much). I do wonder if there is an element of self-harm going on.

That's a bit long for a T-shirt, @Kucinghitam . About right for nailing to a door though. Anyone likely to be passing through Wittenburg?

And Ive just realised that if you count point 2 as a sub-section of point 1, that is 9.5 theses!

Also yes, we aren't here to recruit or convince people. Read the facts, seek evidence, check sources, check all angles and make up your own mind.

Absolutely, the chat here is mostly organic. We just want to discuss these issues, we have no obligation to angst over what terms and words we use. The person who was offended by the "old timers" calling the board FWR, for example, that's very precious. I'm posting for myself, not you. HTH.

This isn't unique to MN, if you (general you) go into any established group, online and offline, it's sensible to get a feel for the culture and work out if it's somewhere you'll feel comfortable, rather than presuming that it should change for you or giving everyone a lecture.

Yes, Victoria Smith is great, and also Hadley Freeman and Janice Turner at The Times. There are various posters who take issue with Janice Turner (I think) for some of her writing about trans women (Debbie Hayton in particular) so there's a range of views within this forum and debates between posters who have been involved in the gender issue for many years. So it's not just new posters vs old timers :)

Indeed.

We do not have the Soul Vision to detect which male humans are sufficiently sad and/or ladylike-in-mind to apparently be categorised as Not Male. Or the converse.

With the honourable exception, of course, of Layla Moran.

'David TC Davies

I hear what the hon. Lady is saying. May I bluntly ask her whether she would be happy sharing a changing room with somebody who was born male and had a male body?

Layla Moran

'I believe that women are women, so if that person was a trans woman, I absolutely would [. I just do not see the issue. As for whether they have a beard, which was one of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier comments, I dare say that some women have beards. There are all sorts of reasons why our bodies react differently to hormones. There are many forms of the human body. I see someone in their soul and as a person. I do not really care whether they have a male body.'

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-11-21/debates/BE06C5D4-E549-4F94-87B1-9B77F32EA155/Self-IdentificationOfGender#contribution-D19C2233-43AF-4A86-881F-05A71F6D74AB

That debate on self ID, by the way, is a great snapshot of how batshit the arguments were in 2018. For anyone interested in the history.

It looks like my meme image hasn't got past the moderators! It was the rollercoaster one with fresh faced newly peaked women terrified by the wizened old gender veterans :) https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/15th-september-2020

Late to the thread and my apologies if this already got asked and answered.
To your original post you sound fairly gender critical to me.
If you remember older posts from here, then it seems like a fair assumption to me that you've been here a while and read quite a bit. If you have then you'll have seen threads started here that pretend to be in good faith, but it quite quickly becomes clear they are just an attempt at provocation. From your OP I think there is some commonality of view that is shared with GCs here. You might be cautious thinking there are some extreme views here, and have some reservations, fair enough. I don't remember myself reading the black female athletes thread and would very much appreciate a link to read them please.

On your post I quoted above.
Where medical alteration provides happiness as a TERF I'm on board with that, but I'd like some safeguards. Surgical body modification to deal with a disconnect between a healthy body and an troubled mind can have profoundly negative as well as profoundly positive, to use your language, outcomes. I would want to be sure that for any given individual that as much care as possible was put into the assessment that surgery was the best course of action for that individual with the highest chance of happiness at the end.
The bigger the life change, and the more irreversible the life change, the more we need to be damn sure that the right choices are made. It's our duty as society to care and help. An extreme example of this would be state assisted life termination. Another, when a woman wants a surgical procedure that will irreversibly render her sterile, the doctors can ask an annoying amount of questions.
People can and do change their mind. No couple ever gets married with the intention of divorce, just things change over time. Some quite deep things can change in a person over time, sexuality, depression, friends, religious beliefs. People change.
If someone is going to change their body to match the state of their mind, we have a duty of care as the expected facilitator of the change to make sure that is the right option for them. We can't stick the bits back on afterwards if it doesn't work out. I'm happy your friend got profound positive impact on their mental health but for some people it doesn't give the results they hoped for. Detransitioners is the name for people who realised after the surgical change that their mental health didn't improve or even got worse. But it's too late then, their body can never be restored. They are now lifelong dependant on the drugs and they still have the original mental health condition.
Part of being a TERF for me is strongly wanting people going through these mental health issues to be fully assessed by experts in the field before irreversible surgery. I would want them fully informed about life after the surgery. Ideally I'd like someone considering surgery to talk to people like your friend who benefitted from the surgrey as well as people who were disappointed with the results. I'd like them to be able to ask hours of questions from both the happy and the unhappy to find out what it really entails, and what life after surgery is like. The more informed they are about the reality of life after surgery the better.
I had a distant relative, who I've never met, who transitioned and still ended up taking their own life well over a decade ago, long before this all became politicised. I feel sympathy for what they went through, but I can't help but wonder if more help with the underlying mental health issues would have been their route to your friend's profound positive impact.
If your friend's change had led to a negative outcome how would you feel about it? Each person is different. I don't think there's a one size fits all solution. I think the best course of action for each individual is unique to that individual. I think that's what society should do. Put significant hollistic effort into learning about all the factors that influence the current state and future state of someone with the mental health around this subject, and try to achieve the best individual outcome for each individual.
PS when you say profound positive impact on their mental health some would accuse you of being a TERF based on that alone. In some circles using the words mental health around these issues is verboten because it implies that the solution is mental healthcare based not body altering surgery. This makes them very very angry, and their womanly testosterone levels flair right up and they loose the cockettish head tilt while they scream and shout. For such men say the words magical womanly spirit essence and they will return to their slightly less threatening girly pillow fights and spinny skirts mode.

Ohh and one last question please.
Where do you stand on The Standiland Question please?

Why did this post prompt a laugh react, OP?

It was meant be a thumbs up, sorry!