Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical? Plus poll on political view.

[UnlockedXCX]

I know I'm making a lot of threads but TRA ideology is so widespread that it makes me question if there's something I'm missing sometimes. I also added a poll. I understand viewpoints are more complicated than being X or Y, but it's just to get a rough idea of mumsnet mindsets. Thank you.

No. I don’t think I’m wrong to be ‘gender critical’ (although that isn’t a term I like or use) because as a science graduate it’s self-evident that biological sex rather than socially constructed ‘gender’ is the determining factor of being a man or a woman.

Politically, I am neither a liberal nor a conservative as those terms are commonly used. I am a social & economic libertarian.

Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical? No

Politically, I roughly consider myself to be... Conservative? Liberal?
What does that have to do with anything?

I also don't ever feel I'm wrong about gravity. Or that my politics are relevant to that question.

Why have you come to a British parenting site to ask this if you’re American? Why not ask a group of people who understand your terms of reference?

Do you ever feel wrong about being gender critical?

As I'm well acquainted with reality: No. Never have never will.

No one can change sex no matter how many rainbows and moonbeams someone wishes on.

Our politics do not translate to yours AT ALL.

Happy to give you a full explanation of why it is different, but not at this time of night.

One thing I would say is that although we have two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, we do not have a two party system, and even our Conservatives are probably more left wing than your Democrats.

JK Rowling is a life long left winger who previously donated millions of pounds to the Labour party and is friends with the former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. She eschews the use of legal tax avoidance schemes, preferring to pay UK taxes on her colossal income in full. She has consistently championed the rights of women (including abortion rights), children, gay people, Jewish people and so on. She's pretty much always on the side of the underdog. She opposed both Scottish independence and Brexit, and is generally unafraid to incur the wrath of different groups of people for different reasons at different times. She is one of a group of left wing feminists who have formed the strongest opposition to gender ideology in the UK, along with others such as Julie Bindel and Rosie Duffield, to name just two.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, it's because the idea that JK Rowling has been radicalised by the far right into attacking an oppressed and vulnerable minority, and even that she has always been hateful/bigoted/homophobic/racist/whatever but just managed to hide it well, quite simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

It is the sort of stupid idea that could only have been dreamed up by Americans who have absolutely no knowledge of UK politics, who the key players are, what they believe, or where JK Rowling sits on our political spectrum, but are applying American logic to British people and politics.

It just doesn't work.

Just because, in America, the only people standing in opposition to gender ideology are conservatives who vote Trump, love their guns more than their children and want to ban abortion, that doesn't mean that people who oppose gender ideology in the UK are the same.

You just cannot apply the same principles to your political system and ours. It simply doesn't work.

I had an American (former) friend tell me that even if JK Rowling might have a point about things like Scottish rape crisis services being run by trans women who call female rape survivors bigots for wanting single sex support, she shouldn't express her views out loud to her 14 million Twitter followers because Trump is mean to trans people. The idea that a British feminist shouldn't express her lawful opinions about issues affecting women in the UK/Scotland, where she lives, because Americans elected an orange nut job who hates both women and the LGBT+ community, is really quite offensive.

I also got to enjoy a lecture about how bio-essentialism and reducing women to their biology isn't what feminism is about. I'm afraid I replied that the only thing Americans have to teach the rest of the world about feminism is how not to do it, and if only American feminists were more like JK Rowling and less like Judith Butler, American women might have abortion rights enshrined in law and paid maternity leave.

That conversation is the reason why she and I are no longer friends.

“Gun to your head if you had to pick a side…”

Given the very real violence, aggression and threats by TRAs, I find the use of this terminology very chilling. I would never use this saying to ask a question on a parenting forum (or within any other context)….

Agreed. UK politics don't compare to us politics at all.

The main two parties here have been the Conservatives and the Labour party for many years. The conservatives are socially conservative but they still would probably be to the left of the Democrats economically and socially probably not a huge amount difference to them

Meanwhile Labour are are socialist party and given the US thinks socialism is full on red peril this is a completely alien concept to the USA. They are linked to the trade unions and traditionally had a working class membership (this has very much changed in the last couple of decades). It's supported by many younger people - there's a national split in voting largely based on age with older voters being much more likely to be Conservatives.

Both parties are for the most part pro LGBT and pro abortion. There isn't much of an abortion debate here at all. The main difference between the two is the conservatives think less money should be spent on the public sector and that taxes should be lower.

We also have the liberal democrats. They are economically closer to the Cons, are generally very educated and value education and middle class. But socially they are much more liberal and pro EU/ globalists (the Conservatives are much more pro British).

Then there's Reform. They are a new party, who are likely to be the second party at the next election replacing the Conservatives. They are somewhat fashioned on the Republicans and very anti immigration pro British. But still socially much more liberal than Trumps party. They economical are a bit of a mix of low taxation, cuts in the public sector (end wastage) but still massively support free healthcare.

We view all US politics as bonkers.

I would identify as centre-left or a social democrat. I've ticked liberal because I think that's what you mean by it, though it's rather a slippery word.

I have no doubts about being a biological realist. I'm hopeless at pretending the emperor has fancy new clothes.

Feels like it’s Eden from Aston doing a bit of follow up data collection with confirmation bias thrown in. Or a Graun intern writing a piece? Anyone who follows these threads knows the vast majority are leftie liberals disappointed by our current political representatives. Mind you, absolutely none of any of the parties impress me. All v troubling.

Ditto. What are you hoping to achieve here OP?

@UnlockedXCX OP, other posters are right that US and UK politics are very different and your categories don't really match the UK political landscape. It is true that a lot of the so-called progressive media (like the Guardian) and far too many public and cultural institutions have framed the gender issue in Left/Right terms and smeared people with sex realist/gender critical views as "right-wing bigots", but the main push back on gender ideology has been from left-wing feminists in the UK, as you can see from the majority of the replies on this thread!

A few posters are asking what the purpose of your thread is for, but having read a few of your comments on another thread it seems like you're a young American who feels pretty isolated from your fellow liberal peers because of your views on gender - am I getting that right?

I definitely understand feeling isolated in real life, as do many other posters on this board. But the Feminism board on Mumsnet is primarily British posters so also probably doesn't reflect your experiences as an American (although there are definitely a few Americans, Canadians, Australians and others but not the majority). If you're looking for some fellow liberal Americans who are pushing back against gender ideology I really recommend the writer/journalist Lisa Selin Davis, who has a substack called Broadview, and Eliza Mondegreen who writes Gender Hacked (also on Substack). Not necessarily great for real life connections but it helps to know there's others out there, and they focus on the US so might reflect your experiences. Lisa Selin Davis is particularly focused on being a lonely liberal voice on this topic, and how hard it is to be heard and also ostracised by friends and peers.

Apologies if I'm misreading you!

I have no doubts and neither does my partner. We are both socialists. The Communist Party of Great Britain is firmly gender critical. I think your poll is a bit useless to be honest.

I couldn't vote because I'm conservative and liberal.

They are not opposites.

The left are the current authoritarians.

No one owns liberalism or authoritarianism they shift historically between the left and right.

But only the left seem blind to this.

I don’t think I’m wrong about being gender critical. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever felt as right about anything in my life and I just can’t get my head around why so many people still aren’t 😂
Up to about five years ago I was taken in by TWAW, be kind, etc. But once you know, you know.

You might as well have posted are you conservative or a good person?

As that is evidently the simpleton position many are still clinging to even when the left is evidently doing batshit evil things.

Realism is the magic word here and all over this topic.
Without realism life gets so impossible hard. As Humans we have developed all kinds of technologies and techniques to get along at the simple day to day level.
Why throw that all away?
(ps. I know I am right, I take after my mother.)

I'm a liberal with a small L but I'm fed up of people trying to argue black is white (ie the whole trans thing).

Outside my own home I keep my opinions to myself.

As many have said, your categories are not an either/or thing - so don't really work.

Also, I wouldn't say TRA ideology is widespread - I think it just seems like that on the internet. Most people I talk to in real life know that there are two sexes, and want separate facilities and sports for men and women.

And no I don't think I'm wrong about sex realism.
I've tried very hard for years to find where I might be as I've taken wrong positions before strongly believing I was right.
But I can't find it in this. It just seems too blatantly wrong.

But then I also think aborting healthy 37 week babies is blatantly wrong, and many people support that, so you have to conclude being incontrovertibly wrong is subjective and people come to wildly different conclusions.

Unless like me you believe in absolute good and evil, that both confusing and mutilating children and killing babies are both evil.

Is that conservative or liberal?

Ah…do you actually understand what ‘gender critical’ means then? It’s being misused a lot nowadays, especially in the US, I think.

My politics are firmly socialist.

I have spent my life fighting against regressive gender stereotypes.

I have also lived long enough to experience sex discrimination and am passionate about challenging sexist practices.

Because of these things, I am what is known as “gender critical”. I’m happy for ANYTHING to challenge gender stereotypes. I’m not happy to see protections against sex discrimination being eroded. I see gender ideology as entrenching regressive stereotypes, and eroding protections against sex discrimination.

I regularly challenge my views and thinking on this and other subjects. While I am always open to changing my view - and have done several times on other subjects - I remain convinced that being a sex realist/gender critical feminist is correct. The alternative is to support gender stereotyping and erode the hard-won rights against sex discrimination that have been in place for less than 50 years.

Hey! He educated himself. With one google and found one post and went with it.

That's pretty deep research in these times.

That's why political compass is useful - I see they've revised the questions lately, but couldn't do it through to the end because my internet is glitchy atm. I'll go back later to see whether it mentions gender issues at all - it did not in the past. Just stuff like taxes, publicly funded medicine, women's rights, race, capital punishment . . .

My politics are too complex and I feel like the meaning of the words liberal and conservative are being changed almost as much as words like women and men by current activism.

Before the whole thing went awry, I probably was closer to Liberal Democrat Party views than any other. They seemed more centrist, less extreme. Now I am a member of the Social Democrat Party. I think, in some ways they are conservative with a small c, but broadly their aims are probably closest to my views.

I wish I could believe I was wrong about transactivism. It seems incredibly harmful to me, from the removal of women’s rights to the mutilation of children’s bodies, I can’t remember a time when society was so much at risk. If I could look away and forget all about it, I would, but everything I see tells me it’s a slowly unfolding disaster.