Do you think the term "Gender Critical" is why some people won't engage?

[Brefugee]

What i mean is, "gender critical" must put the backs up of people who are on the fence or are already some level of TRA? Because it sounds "critical" and that has negative connotations.

Do you think that if we'd adopted the term "sex realist" it might have worked a bit more in our favour? Especially with people who don't spend any time at all in this "discussion"?

I was thinking about it while perusing this article

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/media/article/bbc-trans-ideology-childrens-programmes-chq292hfz

http://archive.today/iDMMq
(archive link)

Maybe the minions at the BBC would feel more able to engage in a proper discussion about all this if they didn't hear "gender critical" but "sex realist"?

This is a useful.
In my experience most of the general public seem to be at 2 and 3, with some support for 4.
How would these people be responded to if they joined the conversation?

Why are you even bringing up what you're comfortable with? What a weird approach to addressing whether males should be in single sex spaces for females. Remove your ego from the situation and look at the needs and safety of young girls, who are far more likely to be the biggest casualties of virtue-signalling policies. This isn't about you or any individual.

If you are at step 2 then most posters wouldn't push back at all. It's just a name.

Step 3 is the tricky one. If I use female third person pronouns for someone that I know to be male then they could reasonably infer that I perceive them to be female. I am relying on their recognition that I am simply being polite and there is no implication that I see them as female.

Step 4 is where the rubber hits the tarmac. Why do single sex spaces exist? They exist for the safety, privacy and dignity of their users. There is an argument that trans identifying men would be safer in women's single sex spaces than in men's single sex spaces but there is no evidence to support it. On the other hand, there is documented evidence that trans identifying men have been and continue to be a threat to women and girls in single sex spaces and do deny every woman's rights to privacy and dignity by their very presence .

I am not an absolutist and I am happy to talk through the rough scale that I made up with anybody.

I like your scale. I think its a great way of starting a conversation. I also think the way it provides a vehicle to meet people where they are and start the conversation from their position is helpful.

I’m 2, 3 and 4.

can confirm it doesn’t go down well.

The reason we have an intellectually rigorous justice system is because inconsistent "human nature" is a catastrophically poor way of organising societies.
Wanting legal clarity & for that clarity to be met with compliance isn't the pursuit of "ideological purity", it's the necessary basis for a functioning democracy.

Lots of people ignore safeguarding. Calling a man 'she' is lovely for him, and makes women feel inclusive and open minded.

It can be disastrous for child safety. We're on a patenting site, and people are ignoring this to indulge mens ego.

Why are posters claiming safeguarding is hardcore and ideological purity to protect imaginary men?

this ^^

Robust safeguarding for publicly accessed single sex provisions also has to be blanket. Because not one female person needs to have to make case by case assessments on any male person who enters that single sex provision that hasn’t been signposted as needing to be there for a task.

No woman or girl should have to do that to use a public single sex provision.

This should never have been breached as a societal standard. And not one person who declares that they accept a male person with a transgender identity as being included in that single sex provision should forget that just because they are comfortable with it, that any woman or girl should have their needs removed to allow them to feel good about themselves, or to make male people happy or any other reason.

Another aspect of this is those who declare they don’t mind and / or haven’t really thought about it then demanding that people listen to their opinion on the topic. Why should the needs of some women and children be ignored because another woman doesn’t care enough about the situation declares their neutral voice should be heard with the same priority as those who do need the space to remain single sex?

Robust safeguarding for public single sex provisions is set at the standard of meeting the needs of those people who do need those spaces to be single sex to ensure the maximum number of female people are protected as well as a publicly open provision can be.

I have been thinking about this for a while.

I think one reason is that they need to have their position ratified as being a moderate solution. The problem is that those suggestions really do have huge safeguarding gaps and perhaps the person doesn’t understand these or they do but argue from their position of not needing those gaps to be blocked.

I also think that the fact that girls are under the age of being able to consent to agreeing to lower their boundaries is ignored.

Of course though, there are those women who say they don’t have a strong opinion on who uses a toilet beside them but they recognise others do and support those women and girls. Those are not usually the ones who then argue that their opinion is not being respected because they have already said they see that others have needs that they don’t and that they support the ones who do.

Declarations that support of robust safeguarding should be something to be ashamed about are concerning. Having people ignore the higher safeguarding needs or actively campaign to reduce safeguarding principles is how we got to this point.

We're not talking about the people 'demanding we listen to their opinion on the subject' on this thread though.
We are talking about the people who the OP WANTS to join the conversation. The (vast vast majority) of people who believe men are not women but are not coming forward to engage at present.
The point being made is that some of the people the OP wants to engage will undoubtedly not have a problem at the point of engagement with men using women's toilets, or using female pronouns for men or pretending socially that men are women.
Because in the mainstream many see these things as harmless. At the point of engagement.
If these people are to be engaged then seeing them as 'the opposition' from the get go, framing their voicing of where they are now as 'demands' they are listened to, after the OP has literally started a thread about why that they are not speaking, isn't going to work.
Nor is some of the scolding and belittling, the stereotyping, the sneering and positioning of intellectual superiority that often characterises the discussions.
If mainstream engagement is desirable then people need to be allowed to voice their opinions and have the opinion challenged without straying into loaded language where they feel they are attacked for being a bad feminist or less intelligent than other people or have no right to speak because they're new to the debate.

If people are not demanding that their voice is heard or scolding or belittling those who do have needs for single sex spaces on this particular thread, then that is great.

It doesn’t make my points irrelevant though because we see posters doing just that on other threads. Do you not think that this happens?

And if someone points out the harms of something, and people cannot see those harms of allowing some male people to be included in single sex provisions or language usage for whatever reason, does that mean the harms are not real and should not be highlighted?

Your points are relevent. The harms are real. The harms should be highlighted.
However this can only happen via the engagement of people who, at present, may not see that. And this thread is about why they are not engaging.
My point is that the harms can be highlighted without making the woman who doesn't yet see them feel small, a bad feminist or intellectually inferior.
Not all posters on this board do that of course, and people from the other side to it too, and no doubt alienate their own target audience in the process, but that's their problem.
However as a long time lurker and tentative participant, there is a vocal cohort who do go into attack mode when faced with anything less than 'all in' from the get go, with the focus the stupidity of the woman for holding the view.
These posters are imo part of the reason for lower engagement.
This is a difficult subject. Because GC women on this board and elsewhere have achieved great things, and offering up opinions on what may be a barrier to further engagement is never going to land well if we are looking inside rather than to external opposition. However, the OP asked.

This isn't particularly at you, because I see it in every bit of MN metadiscussion, but writing this in the passive (I was called xyz, I was insulted, it wasn't popular) tends to mean "five or six people did that".

This is not at all to dismiss your experience or belittle it in any way, but realise that of the (hundreds? No idea) of FWR posters, only a tiny percentage are going to be reading and responding to your particular post on a particular thread. It would be erroneous to conclude that the response from a few posters means that everyone else who is a "regular" on FWR would respond in the same way.

What I find really interesting is when really specific points are discussed (and derailers either don't find the thread or are successfully ignored) and we see the full breadth of points of view on here. There was a discussion on bisexuality some time ago that got heated but remained cordial and was enlightening.

It would genuinely be great if we had the capacity to have those conversations more often without shutting down on either side and going back to the same well-trodden arguments.

And this will make me sound like a bit of a dick but in "the old days" the discussion here tended towards the academic and analytical and I think on MN in general there is an increase in kneejerk "Facebook comment"-style posts which has also been seen to some extent on FWR, and they tend to provoke reactions and can take over threads.

As I said, there's room for all of us, and if we can hammer out where we agree and where we disagree and why, all the better. (In many cases this will be down to differences in how each individual assesses risk... as demonstrated by the Covid threads at the time)

@Helleofabore you and I had a discussion on another thread about my use of wrong sex pronouns in certain contexts. You listened. You asked me questions. You demonstrated empathy with my position. Only then did you hit me with the golden shot that made the difference to my outlook. At the same time in the thread I had posters jumping in to tell me I had no right to 'give away' women's language. Had the poster took time to hear where I was rather than launching into the set piece, that positioned me as the opposition, harming women, there would have been a conversation. As I had with you.

I understand 5128. However, I also think there is a difference between pushing back on posters who deliberately shame others with the intention of shutting down discussion and expecting a group of disparate people, mostly women, to take a gentle, welcoming tone that won't offend anyone having a different opinion. Obviously, this is an exaggeration, although we have been directly accused of that on this board too, of not taking a gentle approach to disagreeing (by a person who DARVO'd a lot on the board once you recognised the pattern across time and many threads). In fact, I have seen it quite often.

We all have very different approaches on this board. I think that there will always be people who won't join in a discussion unless it is moderated as hard as a Facebook group or similar, that either forces only what a moderator considers 'appropriate' or removes any strong voices as being immoderate. MN is not going to be like that.

And the other thing is, do those who complain about the regulars on MN who they consider to be unkind in their responses also then complain symmetrically about the posters who constantly berate and undermine women who are saying they need and want all single sex provisions to be single sex? I must admit I have not been on all threads much lately, maybe there has been a change, because I don't see any symmetrical effort.

Who is to say that one of the major reasons people don't join in discussions on this board is because they don't want to draw the attention of a poster calling them hateful, transphobic, or just unkind and intolerant, because of their position that female people who need all female single sex provisions to remain should have those provisions?

Bref

I think that since extreme transgender activists who wanted to silence feminists into dropping the debate dropped the 'feminist' off the original term which was 'gender critical feminist' to group other groups into the feminist movement, that the term 'gender critical' has the issue of being misunderstood. I am not sure what we should be labelling the generic group, as well as what we should be labelling the feminists.

The generic group is certainly not 'gender critical' as you know. Sex realist could work. But I guess, I am also someone who rejects most labels. So for now that might work, but it will still be rejected by many of the group in it for various reasons. Largely because they still won't understand what women believe who are in the group.

I think in your last paragraph you identify another important reason. However, the actions of those in opposition are outside of our control, we can only really focus on the things we may be able to change to increase engagement.
As a person who has lurked more than participated, I can only offer my view on the barriers to engagement that I feel could be acknowledged and addressed.
Because from what I've seen on several threads, you are in danger of being drowned out by those in your own camp who don't want a conversation or to listen, only to speak and to tell. By those using this issue as a gateway to push other agendas. By those who don't want to let women speak at all unless they are saying the right words.
And on the point that women shouldn't be expected to be nice, I see this a lot and it always niggles away at me. Because while I think its an entirely laudable and reasonable position when speaking truth to power, we are talking here about engaging with other women, not the men who seek to silence us and keep us in our boxes. Women who may well have spent much of their lives being shouted down by men who frame them as intellectually inferior, who dismiss them as fragile and over sensitive, unable to cope with debate because they express discomfort with other views, or the way they are treated. Understandably they may have little appetite for being treated this way in a women's movement.
By all means argue women's right to adopt the same techniques as men are permitted, but where that strays into belittling and alienating other women, its not going to help engage them.

You have some valid points. However, I don't believe we should be 'controlling' anyone though.

Myself, I have been subject to as many shaming posts on MN by posters who have opinions diametrically opposed to me as by posters who only have a small difference of opinion. If I took them all personally, I would have disappeared a long time ago.

However, I also am part of other women's rights groups where the discussion is very heavily moderated. MN is not a heavily moderated site and it never was. Everyone has a choice these days of where to go to discuss these issues, thankfully.

However, it also needs to be acknowledged that if you do voice your opinion on a board specifically set up for these discussions, either way there is a good chance you are going to be challenged by someone. It is a discussion board, not a broadcast board. If you come and give your opinion, surely you must understand that you might be challenged about it?

Either way, this is tangential to Bref's OP about the label of the movement. Sadly, this is yet more of the same discussion that has been had on many threads now about how women should or shouldn't discuss issues about protecting female people's needs.

Yes, I understand. I took the question more as a general one about low engagement as in is it the name (or something else)?
Its not about telling women how they should discuss protecting our spaces, rather pointing out that the way some people discuss it is not conducive imo to increasing engagement. Which is an important difference.
The first frames my comments as trying to police or control women, which is not at all where im coming from.
The second is pointing out the impact of certain behaviour, which people are obviously free to ignore and continue to debate as they choose. A right I would defend as I'm not a fan of heavy moderation either.

From my perspective, it isn't a desire to police tone. I am not the 'kindest' communicator myself, I don't get offended easily, and I do enjoy debate.

You don't have to be kind to welcome people into the movement. Civil would help though.

The intellectual superiority and the insults are not robust debate. They're... arrogance? Impatience? Contempt? I've been accused of being a man many times in conversations like this, on this board, because I simply can't be a woman, because a woman wouldn't hold my views. I think a couple of people have intimated it on this thread, actually.

I've also been flatly told I'm not feminist, because I 'include men'. My own interpretation of feminism has never been in opposition to men - it's about women being equal, not opposed. My opposition to the patriarchy comes with the recognition of the harm it does to men, as well as women. And while being told I am not a feminist is fine, because there are many sub-sections of feminism, it inevitably means that this branch of feminism is not for me - because you're explicitly telling me it's not, from the get-go.

I also get the impression that many people don't want to welcome different voices into the group. That's what I mean by ideological purity. Someone upthread asked why safeguarding is 'ideological purity'. It isn't. Different approaches to safeguarding can surely be entertained and discussed though? It doesn't feel even worth entering the conversation now - so many of you are in a settled state in your minds, which is fine, and you don't have the patience to bring anyone on a journey. Also fine - it's not your job to educate anyone.

But it does rather leave gender critical feminism feeling like a closed circle. Also fine - I only joined this conversation to suggestion why people aren't engaging more, as per the original question.

“Different approaches to safeguarding can surely be entertained and discussed though?”

If a safeguarding suggestion has significant weaknesses making it unfit for its purpose, why should it be entertained?

With specific reference to the name, I think much arises from the thinking that 'critical' movements are critical of the established mainstream thinking. So the person in the street would probably not think it was necessary to have a movement to be critical of the default thinking that people can't change sex. They may therefore see the name and believe it meant something else.
Also problematic is 'belief'. While i understand the utility of the term to secure protection via the EA, it does have the unfortunate affect of implying that its 'just' a belief rather than the fact based position most people would identify with. So again perhaps giving the impression its more than it is.
My auntie Majorie, my hairdresser, the woman I chat to on the train don't believe men can be women. They also wouldn't think this needed a special name, or was a 'belief'. It's just...obvious?

The term 'gender critical' was coined in the early days as a way to describe the process of questioning the whole concept of 'gender identity'. This term was coined in quite a casual/fluid way during the process of intense discussion. It was never coined by a leader or intended to be a rallying cry to 'join a movement'. A movement is not artificially orchestrated, it arises naturally ( which is where Zara Sultanah et al are getting it wrong) - as people tend to find each other.

If people new to the issue are repelled by the tem 'gender critical' it is probably because it sounds so esoteric and specialist. The term served its purpose in various court cases during the earlier days but now it has become too constraining ( IMO) and is now used as an easy way to dismiss concerns over the inherent conflict of rights that is the outcome of gender ideology in practice. I would never use it myself, or about myself. It is a label. I'm not keen on labels.

Most people are not political creatures. Most now come across issues primarily through social media, and then, at best, feel compelled to take a side - without ever really understanding the fundamentals, not having been there since the early days. so positions are adopted, rather than evolve more fluidly over time.

This board has long served as a meeting place; a valued space in which people of like feeling on this issue could freely engage, share, educate and organise. I imagine some have come here quite late in the day as the issue has gained momentum in public consciousness - due to increased media coverage - and it probably does come across as a fuly formed club in which newbies or those who have purposefully come to argue or provoke are not welcome. Being 'welcoming' is not its purpose as far as I'm concerned.

And while being told I am not a feminist is fine, because there are many sub-sections of feminism, it inevitably means that this branch of feminism is not for me - because you're explicitly telling me it's not, from the get-go.

Again - who is the "you" here?

I don't agree that because a person tells you it's not for you on the internet that "it inevitably means" anything whatsoever about how suitable a cause /belief / whatever is to you? That is not a logical conclusion to draw.

(Unless you're saying that the only things that are for you are those in which no-one tells you they're not - but I don't think that it what you are saying? )

And I'll add my 2p - I detest the "only a man would think this" accusation. I've got fed up of arguing against it but I did use to all the time. What you say or think has no relation to whether you're a man or a woman. I understand the sentiment, that people who don't grasp a female perspective are more likely to be men than not, but it's not an absolute. But again, not being on every post on every thread, you wouldn't have seen that.

I agree, and posted similar a couple of days ago.
"On another thought, I think a lot of people who naturally think people can't change sex are baffled about all this for the same reason that we had people questioning on the Maya Forstater and subsequent threads.
The idea that knowing this forms some kind of "belief", that didn't even meet the standards of WORIADS in the first instance, seems like it applies to some very odd, legal technicality or fringe belief. So many people could not understand why it was treated as a belief system rather than fact.
To the average person this just makes no sense.
(I do get why it was done that way - it genuinely was an interesting discussion each time!)"