What does gender critical mean?

[Yarden]

Just that really. I’m not sure what “gender critical “ means anymore. I am not very critical of gender roles- I think they’re useful as a stereotype. does this mean I’m not gender critical? I guess I’m trans critical as I believe trans ideology is harmful as it encourages harmful interventions. What do others think? I’m so lost in this world now.

The safety statistics do not depend on stereotypes, they depend on facts. It data collection continues to use 'gender' rather than 'sex', then in a few years they'll show that women have become much more dangerous. This is already happening.

You initially said the child should be advised to ask a woman. Very sensible, and children, like adults, can usually tell the difference, particularly if that know that that difference doesn't depend of hair length or make-up or the colours being worn.

But if genderists have told your child, over and over again, that transwomen are women, because they conform to a stereotyped appearance, then unless the accompanying children are there, providing the second aspect of your 'safe person' definition, the lost child is dependent on the stereotype only.

Yes that just goes to show that women being (generally) physically weaker is fact not stereotype. And that people save themselves, when it comes down to it.

I agree. It's about statistical averages, general rules based on experience or data. Something being true more often than not. A general rule, or an average can and will be deviated from in an individual case, but is still a perfectly valid general rule/average. That's not the same thing as a stereotype. Stereotypes often aren't true or based on fact, and are imposed.

This isn't a stereotype. It's a well evidenced position, based on sex, not gender.

If your child was lost, would you rather they sought help from a woman or a trans woman? Do you think they would be safer seeking help from a trans woman than from a man?

I don't think it's complicated.

World Health Organisation definition of gender:

"Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time."

So gender would be the expectation that a woman should not receive an education or vote, that pink was a strong masculine colour (light red), but is now a soft effeminate colour, that soccer is a game for women and young boys in the US, but a man's game in the rest of the world, that women can wear men's clothes, but man can't wear dresses - unless they are in the church.

If you think this is worthy of criticism you are gender critical, and it follows that you think identifying with a gender is bonkers.

Oh and by the way, OP, I agree with popefully's definition of gender critical. And with another poster on another thread who said gender critical basically just means feminist.
Most people are sex realists rather than gender critical.

Gender stereotypes are unhelpful and unhealthy in many contexts. When a girl is good at maths but doesn’t get invited to join the robotics team because it is ‘boy stuff’ that is gender stereotypes holding her back. When a boy is told he shouldn’t cry like a girl or express his feelings, that is gender stereotypes harming him.

there might be a small number of cases where the stereotype works, but overall they are harmful and that is why I’d describe myself as gender critical.

Women have individual personalities,, no doubt influenced/affected in some cases by what society expects them to be like.
Male people who claim to be women perform (usually cherry picked) gender stereotypes about women.

ETA: I quoted you by accident, Merrymouse, although it was a great post.

I think that maybe you are misunderstanding some definitions.

Cambridge Dictionary

"stereotype: a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong."

Do women spend more on skincare than men? Yes. That is not a stereotype, it is a fact.

Is this because women are responding to societal pressure? That would be gendered expectations.

Are women just innately more interested in skin care? We could argue about whether that is true or not, but it wouldn't relate to gender, because it would be a consistent trait of women across cultures and time and would relate to sex, not gender.

It’s important to distinguish between wanting to question societal stereotypes (which may vary between countries, cultures, religion) while accepting that we also make some decisions based on understanding of human behaviour at population level and how it differs between the sexes.

Examples of stereotyping would be assuming that boys want to play football and girls want to play with dolls, or that Western women should want to shave their legs, or that it’s more normal for women to cry and be overtly emotional than men. These are generally unhelpful as they categorise men and women by interest and outward presentation, rather than by sex.

However, we can make some generalisations about behaviour which are not stereotypes, but are evidence-based. Eg more violent offenders and sex offenders are male than female. This is why the example of a child seeking out a woman rather than a man if they are lost and need help is not unhelpful stereotyping, but rather than a sensible response to make the situation as safe as possible. In this situation an example of unhelpful stereotyping might be the child seeing two women and going to the woman in the dress and make-up rather than the woman with baggy trousers, short hair and a lumberjack shirt on, because the woman in the dress seems more “motherly” or nurturing in some way.

Do women spend more on skincare than men? Yes. That is not a stereotype, it is a fact.

Can you therefore assume that any woman you meet will spend more on skincare than any man you know? No.

Does spending a lot on skincare mean you are a woman? Obviously not.

That's the sort of generalisation that probably helps you if you work in marketing, but I can't think of many other situations where it's useful.

"Can you therefore assume that any woman you meet will spend more on skincare than any man you know? No"

No - and it's not clear whether the expenditure is driven by the marketing or whether the marketing is driven by the expenditure.

@Myalternate I agree, gender used to be used in lieu of sex, as well as meaning pink and blue . I think also that’s where alot of confusion lays, because a lot of people still use it in those terms.

Let’s face it, most forms now ask for your gender. Are they asking for your biological sex, or whether you prefer ‘girl’ activities or ‘boys’?

Spending anything at all on skincare is a luxury rich-world choice that for most of history would have baffled most people.

If the lost child has a choice between a long-haired person wearing high heels and a frock and a short-haired person wearing jeans, a fleece and flat shoes, how do they decide who to go to?
If high-heels is a man and flat shoes is a woman, how then?
Even when high heels insists that he is a woman?

My brain relies on stereotypes to some extent because they help me process information quickly and make decisions efficiently. Stereotypes are a form of cognitive shortcut that allow me to categorise and predict the world based on past experiences. I like them and I use them. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. That’s fine. But it’s a good working system.
i would prefer firefighters to be mostly - not always- men because I think their strength could be required in an emergency eg to carry a comatose person from a burning building. Men typically have better upper body strength. Yes this is sex based but it’s not always true. But it’s a good working stereotype that is based in fact

I agree with this post from Steven Pinker
https://x.com/sapinker/status/1892392434241278322?s=46
“Stereotypes are statistically accurate (in this example, gender stereotypes are consistent in direction with actual differences between women and men).”

These aren’t really stereotypes. They’re fundamental differences between the sexes which arise because of our physical differences. You can absolutely make generalisations that at population level, men have more upper body strength than women. As a sex, men are more physically powerful, bigger and faster than women. This is why we have single-sex sports and need them to remain so.

On an individual level, I’m a fairly tall woman and I’m taller than some men. I’m probably stronger than some too. But that is not reflective of women and men as a whole, and it doesn’t mean that we should have mixed-sex sports (just because some women would beat some men).

Stereotyping might be assuming that men want to be firefighters because they like trucks more than women and are more active than women, so women who also want to be firefighters are therefore more masculine-presenting. Maybe try thinking about stereotypes being linked to image and interests which are changeable and dependent on context, rather than physical characteristics such as size and strength which are fixed at population level.

So the stereotype that women are more empathetic than men.
If you were hiring for a role that required empathy, and you had a male and female candidate who were equally qualified. Would you hire the woman based on your belief in stereotypes?

I'm really interested to know - how did you make the decision as to which situations are ok to rely on stereotypes, and which require further analysis? You say you rely on them "to some extent" - where have you drawn the line?

It sounds as though your requirement for a firefighter would be better described as "upper body strength" rather than "most men and a few women" - surely that is the aspect you're actually looking for?

I know a woman who was harassed out of the fire service, btw, so lovely to hear that people think stereotypes are fine and dandy if they mean you can avoid the problem of having to think too hard.

People are harmed because of them.

No, your brain relies on your lived experience and observations. Lightning fast.

If you then choose to construct stereotypes based on that lived experience that's a different thing, a conscious choice. Much slower and more reflective. If that construction is informed by other authority (anything from your mother to the bishop to the verbose political theorist), that is different again.

If you then decide to impose and enforce those stereotypes, that you have constructed, or adopted from things you have learned from authority figures, onto other people, maybe sit down and have a little think about what entitles you to do that, when they have their own lived experiences that might differ from yours.

See the ludicrous 'skin care' argument upthread.

Did you realise that's talking about a specific paper? What did you find useful in that paper?

From the abstract of that paper, it seems that even within the confines of the study, stereotypes were wrong in 100 cases.
So when you're making life-altering decisions about people and don't take the time to measure the actual thing you're looking for, and rely on sex to fill in the gaps, you're going to be wrong in a hell of a lot of cases.

Do you have a link to an accessible version of the paper you say you agree with, OP?

I think you mean 'my brain relies on patterns'.

A stereotype, by definition, is likely to be misleading.

Many animals have pattern recognition skills and react instinctively. As humans we also have the ability to analyse data and check whether our initial perceptions were true.

If your criteria is "people who are strong ' or "people that spend a lot of skincare", find a way of assessing whether a person is strong or spends a lot of skincare (this is what marketers or recruiters do).

Not rely on the equivalent of "people in Cambridge are proven to spend the highest amount on skincare compared with other cities so I'm only going to recruit people from Cambridge, assuming they all spend loads on skincare".

Is it worth remembering in this discussion what the origin of the term is and how it is now misapplied.

It was a stream of feminism. And the term has been detached from
the original purpose, the description of that stream of feminism.

When the extreme transgender rights activists detached the feminist from the term they have rendered it meaningless because of the groups they swept in to be included. Those groups who want to uphold sex stereotypes.

I still don’t really know though what ‘gender’ refers to as it is used by so many people these days. Does anyone know why it was labelled ‘gender critical’ instead of ‘sex stereotype critical’?

This isn’t a stereotype. It’s a fact based on most paedophile sex offenders being men. It’s basic safeguarding advice. It’s not that a Mother is more helpful. It’s that she is less likely to be a sex offender.