Can we be "Sex realist" now? Not "Gender critical"?

[DiamondThrone]

I feel like we've been boxed into a corner. Being defined by "gender", when what we are actuall defined by is "sex", not womany feels.

We’re critical of gender bollocks.

Some would use sex realism to reduce our rights, as we are built to have babies and should stay home and look after them.

I'm critical of gender stereotypes.

Everyone is a sex realist because, well everyone knows sex is real.

No. Sex is chromosomes, not societal expectations.

But back to my point - "critical" has an inherant negative connotation. And "gender" is a thing we don't accept.

So why are we defining ourselves by something we don't believe in?

But, also, "sex realist" is more understandable to people out there than "gender critical". Which means - what?

Right. So let's say that!

Yes, this. I like the term gender critical. It does what it says on the tin.

And what does it say on the tin?

You might as well call yourself "religion critical".

I like the term 'normal'.

I like to just use the term "women" tbh.

It isn’t a societal expectation that only female bodies give birth and breastfeed.

It’s easily leveraged to infer female bodies should complete the process.

Male bodies are a massive advantage to them. I do to want to cement that, thanks.

I am clearly not explaining myself well enough.

Why are we defining ourselves by something that we don't believe in? And making us sound negative at the same time?

I get where you’re coming from. And the recent trend for TRAs to use the term “gender critical ideology” as a put-down has also made me question whether it’s the right term. And I also agree that what we’re arguing for is, in the main, sex realism.

Would gender-abolishinist work? Or would that just muddy the waters further?

I agree. We share sex realism with some people who are not critical of arbitrary imposed gender norms. Trump. The Pope. Click to see captions.

I suppose I believe gender is real, whatever real means; I just don’t think it should supersede sex in law or policy.

I don't think I'm in that Venn diagram.

Nice try at a gotcha, though.

I understand your point but I don’t think sex realist works as everyone is sex realist, even those pretending as hard as possible that they aren’t.

I don’t think gender critical is analogous to religion critical as gender (aka sexist stereotypes) is inherently a bad thing whereas religion isn’t necessarily. But equally I wouldn’t think there’s anything wrong with being religion critical as a political position.

Oh you mean the men who think that taking hormones (not HRT, they are not replacing anying!) changes their biology and turns them into women?

I don't think you've been keeping up. This is their new attack.

Even transgender people are sex realists because they try to make themselves look like the opposite sex, even to the extent of medicalisation and surgery.

They know sex is real which is why they try to emulate it.

They think they are making themselves into the opposite sex. Whereas we are sex realists.

It's gone way beyond gender, now. Does nobody read Reddit? Bluesky?

What? I’m aware that they say this. But I very much doubt any of them believe it.

Of course they’ve come from female when we finally pushed back against them taking woman.

Yes! I’ve been thinking the same and prefer to call myself SR rather than GC. Let’s all do it. Sounds more positive and more understandable to people who don’t know much. Difficult to call SR views bigoted too no?

I'm gender critical. I was gender critical as a Feminist way before trans people were even on my radar, way before the term Gender Critical was coined, because I understood that the gender roles presented by society as innate and natural are in fact social and artibtrary, a mechanism for patriarchial control of women (and also constraining men).

Under patriachy appropriate gender behaviour is conditioned and policed through social expectations and social sanctions and women who do not exhibit the expected gender expressions are deemed to be flawed and unnatural. The gender citical insight is that behaviours that are genuinely natural don't need to be policed because they happen anyway. The fact that "unnatural" women need to be managed is proof that the gendered behaviours were never natural in the first place.

When trans women were first on my radar I thought "great! a bunch of guys pulling at this from the other side - women saying "being female doesn't mean we automatically do all that constructed Feminine stuff any better than men do" and men saying "being male doesn't mean we can't do all that constructed Feminine stuff just as well as female people". I was very disappointed when I realised they wanted to throw away the female, make being a woman just about the contructed Feminine stuff, and on that basis claim a right to everything of "women" even things that only exist in the first place because some people are female. I still cling to the hope we can get through this stupid version of trans rights and forward to something more inclusive and open-ended for women again.

Sex Realism is a much broader church. There are people who believe like me that sex is significant and cannot be ignored, but unlike me want to also keep those gender constructs alive and firmly tied to sex. The society that they envision based on that is not a place I ever want to see us go. So yes I believe sex is real, but Sex Realist isn't a banner I would speak under.

They don't really believe that they have changed sex though. If they did, it would be an innate belief, not reliant on affirmation from strangers.

In one version, they think that their true biological sex is not that signified by their natural physiology (ie as on birth certificate) and that the proof is their body-incongruent gender identity.

Existence of gender identity is impossible to prove or disprove. But even if you've got one, your biological sex will always remain what it says on your original birth certificate (absent very rare DSDs).

I can't think of a pithy term. Birth-sex sticklers?

They believe they are changing biological sex by taking hormones and modifying their bodies.

Wake up people! This is the new frontier.

It doesn't matter what they believe. It matters what they say. And they say they were always women, and that taking the hormones and adapting their bodies confirms that sex.