Gender critical viewpoint as explained by a bloke

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Morning all,

Was browsing reddit last night whilst sitting around on the evening shift. Ended up going down a bit of a rabbithole and reading some discussions on AskTransgender as was curious to see what the response to the recent supreme court ruling was.

Ended up reading a thread asking why so many cis women are 'not accepting of trans women' and one of the first responses I read was the below, which appeared to be written by a man. I'm still getting my head around the various arguments as tbh I've not really given much thought to the whole discussion the past few years - I don't think I've ever actually seen a trans person in real life aside from a few non binary looking schoolgirls who could also have been lesbians, and I work in the construction sector where all this woke stuff is pretty non existent.

Curious to see if people agree with the below. Sounds pretty logical to me and quite surprised it hasn't caused an epic shitstorm on there tbf lol.

Some people are just bigoted no doubt, but I think it's reductive to suggest it's all down to transphobia. I think more often it's a fundamental disagreement on a few key aspects.

Typically, the discussion focuses on trans identity and the refusal of gender critical women to accept said identity. However, I think in some cases the resistance might actually stem from the GC women feeling that their own identity is being challenged.

For example, if you've been accepted as 'a woman' all your life and somebody you perceive as male suddenly tells you that they're a women now and you're a cis woman some people aren't going to like that. Perhaps even less if that person is younger than them or of a demographic that would've been considered male in traditional societies.

That would perhaps explain why a lot of GC women tend to be middle aged - they've had years of being a woman and then suddenly a 20 year old 'male' (in their eyes) tells them he's a woman and biological women are now just a sub category of womanhood. Whether or not the GC woman is justified in feeling this way, some will no doubt argue that it's like telling a pre-op trans woman that she's now going to be called a 'pre-trans' rather than just a 'trans woman'.

Another common theme seems to be women's safety. I'm not going to try and define biological sex as there is much disagreement on what constitutes it. However, we know for a fact that 98% of recorded sex crimes are committed by individuals with a penis. This seems to be a big part of GC women's resistance to being alone in a state of undress with individuals that have penises, or facilitating a situation where said individuals could be around their daughters unsupervised whilst both are unclothed. Same for women who are rape survivors and experience trauma responses when alone with unfamiliar males, especially when naked and feeling vulnerable, or women that can't be naked with 'male bodied' people for religious reasons.

This isn't strictly about trans women from what I've read. The argument seems to be that we don't want to normalise the situation where a male paedophile can just claim to be a woman and follow the girls swimming team into the changing rooms. Many would say this is the entire reason we have sex segregated facilties in the first place and the reason behind the recent Supreme Court judgement.

Unfortunately, there have been a few high profile cases where some pretty vile sex offenders (e.g. Barbie Kardashian) have transitioned and been sent to women's prisons, which has fuelled the flames. Many people would argue that a male sex offender shouldn't be able to get sent to an institution full of vulnerable women just by claiming to be a woman shortly before the sentencing date, which appears to be what happened.

These aren't necessarily my own views. I'm just explaining what I understand to be the common GC arguments as somebody who has tried to understand both sides of the debate.

2 huge elements of womanhood are always omitted from the discussions and definitions of womanhood in the gender identity realm, which are motherhood and sexual oppression. We don't seem to be allowed to talk about either, sexual oppression particularly.

Some powerful voices in the trans lobby are adult males living out autogynephilia. I see EI/SI as an example. The biggest victims of the movement are autistic teenage and pre teenage girls who are often on a pathway to permanent disfigurement/medicalisation and who have become vocal advocates for the adult males.

These girls often see their parents/mothers as bigoted enemies when they try to safeguard them. It is a nightmare situation for those parents when schools and the NHS can cast them in this light too.

There is nothing remotely new in the first part. I was a victim of sexual grooming by 2 older males as an adolescent girl and I was their biggest cheerleader and supporter at the time. See also the grooming gangs cases. It is only later (and possibly permanently) that the sexual trauma can no longer stubbornly be ignored or brushed aside. Abusers always try to turn their victims away from their sources of protection and support.

The difference now is the authorities; who have some legislated control over children, above that of parents are now in collusion with physical and emotional abuse. When historically they had been apt to turn a blind eye and dismiss concerns.

Even post Cass Report, we are still not really allowed to raise concerns about what is happening to children. I am very careful about what I say to my own children as I want them to come to me. My younger 2 are 12 and 14, both with an autism diagnosis. The elder is gay and (thankfully, please let it continue 🙏) still a girl, or a subsection of girl. I am still so worried for them, we are not out of the woods yet.

This is far more important to me than any risk to myself. I feel I am through the worst for myself, in the sense that I am very clear about who I am, whatever assails me from the outside world.

I don’t like the part where it says “some sex offenders have transitioned”. It absolutely should have been “some transwomen are sex offenders”. Barbie Kardashian was trans at the point of committing his crimes and that sentence very much attempts to hide that fact.

I think that must depend where you come from. There might be lots of lefty's living in leafy London suburbs, but when you live in a rural town or another city such, as Stoke on Trent, there's a lot of backlash against migrants (sadly). I live in a former Tory stronghold, which turned red at the last GE, and let's just say there are a lot of Daily Fail readers round here.
I regard myself as middle class, I'm a lefty and I'm GC and think what the bloke wrote was either very Tra leaning because he wanted to try and win them over gently, or he hasnt grasped the situation fully, which wouldn't be a surprise as he's a bloke.
Theres no need to constantly cite violence, why can't women and girls just have privacy and comfort

I’d think that I had at least two of those haircuts including that perm back in the 80s 😬

motherhood and sexual oppression

I think some part of this is because at the first mention of motherhood the genderists start gishgalloping about how not all women are mothers and it's biological essentialism to bring motherhood into it (and with a side helping of "ahh but some mothers adopt and we still call them mothers" as if that's analogous to not being able to define "woman").

They can't understand that no-one is saying "woman" necessarily means "mother", but that it's something many have experienced and is unique to being a woman. (And tbf, parenthood at a broader level can sometimes be just as relevant to the discussion - or it should be if men were doing as much of the parenting as women!)

If the logic skills were above infant-school level it might get discussed more, but I think most sensible GC women give up because it's clearly very very confusing for the genderists!

Gender addled people say 'woman' is a identity. Women know it to be material reality. 'Woman identity' may exist separate to and/or in addition to being a woman, but it's sex - mterial reality - that is more meaningful. And can't be opted in or out of.

They have in the past complained about us using logic, as though it was a sneaky and unfair trick.

I don't remember similar objections to our ability to deploy reading comprehension skills, but it is possible they haven't been noticed.

It really doesn't matter if you want to be a mother or are a mother.

If you don't want to be a mother you rely on contraception. If you want to be a mother and can't you rely on specific, more invasive, fertility treatment (and might have had your head chopped off or been completely sidelined in previous centuries). And even if you don't want and can't have children you can still face discrimination because you might become a mother.

Meanwhile some men don't even know if they have children.

The reproductive process in mammals puts vastly different burdens on males and females.

I don't remember objections to reading comprehension, but it can only be a matter of time. I have definitely been accused of 'using facts'.

notorious for it

😀

Being same-sex attracted isn't only about feelings though (in an all-in-your-head sense). Sexual attraction comes with a measurable set of physical responses.

"However, I think in some cases the resistance might actually stem from the GC women feeling that their own identity is being challenged."

What a load of bollocks. A man pretending to be a woman doesn't challenge my identity at all. I know what women are and they aren't men. It's just reality. Some people are reality challenged, I'm not one of them.

I’d say a lot of GC women are a certain age because they remember a time when fashion dictated that it wasn’t necessary to wear skirts and heels in nightclubs; it felt revolutionary for men and women to look androgynous, we never thought that men would start insisting they actually are women.

My personal identity is unaffected. But the legal identity of my sex class is at risk. And therefore so are the protections that have been afforded to it, undermining centuries of feminist fights to establish them.

Absolutely, there has been an outright attack on women's rights. Thankfully that seems to be righting itself, at least in the UK.

We are making some progress, but I want to pedantically point out that a passive sentence construction risks missing the immense sacrifices and work done by an army of women to ensure that we have gc beliefs protected in law, that the SC clarified what 'woman' means in law, and are case by case challenging attempts to undermine or remove women's rights.

It sure as fuck didn't right itself! 😂

I agree totally with this. 👆

And I think I’d interpret the thing in the Reddit poster’s comments about it leading GC women to question their own identity as meaning that IF Gender Ideology has changed the meaning of “man” and “woman” to be defined in masculine/feminine terms, rather than (as most of us had previously understood it) personality-neutral terms meaning adult human male/female, then where does that leave those of us who have spent decades being gender-non-conforming people who don’t subscribe to the idea that we have pink fluffy feminine brains and like being support humans?

Changing the meaning of words has significant impact. As @DeanElderberry says, it literally removes our sex-based anti-discrimination rights. It also imposes regressive gender stereotypes as the default. And it makes it impossible for those on the (genuinely) more marginalised side of the equation to argue our case.

Edited to add: this is why the SC ruling was so important.

@FrontEndLoader was it this thread?

https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/1mnfw28/why_does_it_feel_like_so_many_ciswomen_are_not

If so, looks like that comment has been removed. Can't see it under the post.

One of the reasons a masculine / feminine axis doesn't make much sense is that gender roles and stereotypes change, and are different in various countries even at the same time. It would be ridiculous to change from a man to a woman and back again on a voyage.

Ooh, there's an interesting reply on that thread:
...........
So this might come off as a bit of an unpopular take, but I'm saying this as a fellow trans woman with a background in counseling psychology and social sciences.

A lot of trans women, and this is especially in newly out trans women, still have a ton of internalized misogyny that they haven't addressed yet. That internalized misogyny impacts the way that they treat people around them, even if there's no malice intended. It's something that a lot of cisgender women struggle with too, however, because of the fact that trans women have almost all experienced some level of privilege from being male presenting for part of their life, expectation carries over subconsciously and it can come off as verbose, arrogant, or just straight up toxic.

There are definitive differences in the lived experiences and perceived social value of women and men in our society, and if you are trying to live in the world and be accepted as a woman by the community around you and you continue on engaging in the world around you with all of the audacity of a mediocre cisgender man, it's a huge disruption of how people expect the rules of the world and their immediate society to continue working.

When you add in the fact that prior to coming out and living as a woman in society, the only points of reference that most trans women have of how to code their language and behavior as feminine comes from media like TV, movies, advertisement, music, pornography, or video games which are all industries controlled by men and therefore have a highly misogynistic slant to them and are not necessarily based in reality, regardless of intention or actuality, it kind of makes sense why many women can be so apprehensive.
..........

They've omitted any reference to our losing rights, etc, but it's pretty good as far as it goes. Shifts the focus slightly.

That does make some very good points - apart from "the only points of reference that most trans women have of how to code their language and behavior as feminine comes from media".

Do these people not have mothers? Or sisters, daughters, female classmates or colleagues, perhaps even friends? And unless they live on Mount Athos they presumably also interact occasionally with female members of the general public, shop assistants, medical professionals, bus drivers ...

Yeah but thats people. And 'womanhood' isnt about people. Its about signifiers, fetishised tropes of 'femininity'.

Well, it’s partly there. But most middle aged women are not resistant to the idea because their “identity is being challenged”. I don’t give a flying fuck about “identity”. I don’t think transwomen are women, because it’s just simply factually not true. They’re men, whether they’re pretending, or role-playing, or deluded, or however they “identify”, and whether they’ve had surgery or hormones or not. That’s all.

Absolutely, so true. Terrifying really. Good luck to you and to us all. I was reading about Sweden’s massive uptick in FtM transitioning over a 10 year period and their detransitions and policy rowbacks. And how the church intervened to tell women’s rights groups to pipe down.

This. It really is that simple.