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"?

Jjust because you cease to define something ( Sex) it does not mean that its existence and the consequences of its existence ceases.

Just by saying that some men are now 'women', and that actual women are now 'cis' - it doesn't stop there being a differentiation between men and women, male and female........it now means we need a new term for women ( as in adult human females). Women are not going to be shunted off into a lay -by named 'Cis'.

Yes, I think this is a very reasonable argument.

All stereotypes do tend to have some basis or origin in reality, though. There are some generalised differences between the sexes. The problem is when a stereotype is wielded so as to confine people within its parameters.

That was the “Everyday Feminism” (ugh) view of Feminism. Women don’t need our own rights movement apparently, it can be an all purpose one for everyone. Magdalen Berns did a video on it.

yes.

I find any person who declares that dismantling 'sex' is possible to be an idealist without any semblance of reality.

It would all be very nice in theory, but it is impossible while female people are the humans who have the babies. And what is the solution? Growing humans in bags pumped with nutrients? Hardly a solution, I would think.

Indeed. And it has been floated around on threads for years.

Let's add as many groups as possible for feminists to look after, and of course, female people then suffer. But oh ... those feminists, they have been quite successful, let's leave it to them to campaign for us.

Let's make feminism part of the omnicause group!

I think what you’re missing is that some (many) of the posters claiming this are themselves quite goady. They come in with “why are you all so xxxx here, why can’t you be more kind, I’m GC but you’re hateful etc”.

Like it or not, when you enter an established community space as a newbie, all over the internet and off it, it’s etiquette that you don’t come in and demand things in a hostile way. It gets people’s backs up. Go on Money Saving Expert forum or anywhere, it’s not exclusive to GC women at all, but people think we should be held to a higher standard for some reason.

I think its about being free from the restrictions having an immutable sex imposes. If sex can be seen as fluid, a state of mind, a choice, the result of medical interventions, then how can it be used as a basis to oppress me, kind of thing.
To be perfectly clear, this is not my view, so I can't defend it. However I am interested in why GI has gained traction amongst (erstwhile) feminists and I've come across this view.

Exactly.

"people think we should be held to a higher standard for some reason."

Because we are women maybe? Because we are supposed to be nurturing and gentle?

When I see accusations from people that they have been ill treated on MN FWR, I do tend to remember just what type of posts evoke those types of responses. There is usually some undermining in the posts, if not blatant censuring. It might be that someone has posted about how they don't understand why women are spending so much effort on keeping men out of toilets because, to them, it is not enforcable, or there is far better things to be working towards, or because they simply don't care about it and wanted to belittle those who do care about it, or they have a vested interest that they don't disclose or any number of reasons.

However, I rarely see someone new without any history come onto a thread, make a comment about how they don't mind sharing toilets with someone but can see that others need it get posts that could be considered unwelcoming.

Just like pronouns. If posters who wish to use pronouns simply say, I choose to without the tail end hook or 'those who don't are disrespectful, unkind, hateful, [insert negative word here], I don't see all that many posters rejecting that person's opinion.

I guess I am not on all threads, so I don't see it. I DO see a fuck ton of censuring posts from people who declare 'I am GC but you all are ...[insert negative word here]' and they do get responded to.

That is a part of it, for sure. Because we even see it in the discussions about sport. The feminists who believe that women are in no way disadvantaged physically in sport and that the discussion about female people being disadvantaged physically is hold female athletes back from performing equally as the male athletes in a mixed event.

Rather than acknowledging that actually female athletes ARE performing equally as the male athletes are, at just as high skill level and peak fitness, but no training method is going to bridge the physical advantage gap.

However, I also do believe that gender identity has gained so much ground as to negatively impact female people's rights because they used other groups and philosophical theories such as queer theory and postmodernism to convince policy makers and activists who were determined that the T were an integral part of the LGB political movement. They leveraged off that movement and other movements to their advantage.

Precisely this, and it was the point I was trying to make.

Maybe that’s some of the - I hesitate to use the word - rationale.

It makes no sense to me. What restrictions does sex impose?
Apart from the basic restriction on possible reproductive ability (and of course even within that just because a woman could have a baby doesn’t mean she has to), what is restricted? The restrictions are a result of culturally variable gender stereotypes and roles, not sex itself.

Absolutely.
I think the master stroke was to get women to accept TIM as not like the other men. So even those women who deep down don't believe they are actually women believe them to be a special kind of man, seen as inferior, and discriminated against by other men, in danger from men, so therefore sharing a common oppression with, and being a natural ally to women.
Add to this the heady possibility that, hey, you don't have to be the inferior sex yourself if you don't want to, because sex isn't even a thing..! And here we are.

Stereotypes and roles ascribed to us because of our sex. And while yes, they do vary culturally, they consistently result in women having greater restrictions than men.
Women have tried for a long time to seperate sex from gender stereotypes, yet they persist as strongly as ever. I guess there are women who feel the only way to be free of them is to be free of sex itself.

I guess there are women who feel the only way to be free of them is to be free of sex itself.

When you're online, you're a combination of pixels, and letters. I can see why the feeling that we are not/we are more than our bodies has grown in recent years. No physical restrictions in cyberspace!

yes - but being ‘free of sex’ is an impossibility. Whereas in the last century or so in many countries, so many significant breakthroughs have been made in breaking free of artificial gender constraints (we can vote, have financial independence; we can be educated to the highest levels in any field and are not arbitrarily barred from professions merely because of our sex). I really don’t understand why some people seem to give up on continuing with this - which is surely truly ‘progressive’ - and chase the illusion of sex being mutable or optional.

Yes, and it’s no coincidence that it increased massively during and following the C-19 pandemic.

"He doesn't see gender stereotypes as stereotypes. He sees them as evolutionarily baked in differences between men and women."

To some extent I agree with him (certainly in terms of protector vs nurturer)... but of course there are exceptions. Many exceptions, and we are all exceptions to a some extent.

So if a woman wants to work 60 hour weeks and dedicate themselves 100% to their career (and if they have kids leave their husband to do the vast majority of the child-rearing) how does your husband see her? A failure of a woman, or just an unusual woman whose we know is odd but we let them get on with it? Something else?

The stereotype that fire fighters (who carry people down ladders) or soldiers (who carry 60 lbs of kit whilst jogging 20 miles a day) tend to be men makes a lot of sense. The stereotype that a man is not a real man because he likes watching Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice and having a good old cry once in a while is nuts!

Possibly because for all the strides made it still isn't enough. For many women the opportunities to operate at the highest level remain largely theoretical as illegal sexism has been replaced by discrimination by stealth. We're still not safe from male violence. We still do the majority of domestic drudge and often get better rewarded for being pretty and serving men than we do for our skills and abilities. 'Conventionally attractive' seems to involve more money, more interventions and time then ever before and is pushed at young women from all directions. As is the type of sex we should be providing for men if we are to be cool and 'sex positive'.
There was a recent thread with a woman blaming feminism for selling women a lie because her life was hard. Because in age old fashion, where things aren't going well, it's women who get the blame.
I think women are navigating a world that is tough and unsafe. So cosying up to the safe not men men, who love women so much they want to be one, and believing you're only an injection or two away from escaping womanhood altogether if you like, appeals.

Hm, it's not all entirely cultural though. I'm an outlier among women in that I'm well above average height for males. In many of the sports I've done, eg; martial arts, my reach is a huge advantage but that advantage evaporates completely when sparring with males (even far shorter ones) due to their hugely greater punch strength, short-fibre muscle ratio, & other factors specific to our two sexes.
The reason for the protected female category in the first place is that female anatomy imposes restrictions on performance relative to males.

Well yes that’s dimorphism which is inescapable. So we remove the barrier to women doing sports by having sports separated by sex, rather than the old gendered view that women simply shouldn’t do sports. Pretending sex doesn’t exist and instead promoting ‘gender’ was undoing that advance and is now hopefully being corrected. Sex realism can lead to true progress; supporting notions of gender end up being regressive.

Yes.
Sexist: "I can't possibly fly to the moon, I'm a woman."

Genderist: "I've always wanted to fly to the moon, so I must really be a man."

Sex realist: Designs rocket with controls and seating of appropriate womanly size, packs good supply of tampons, and flies to the moon.

Side note (and possibly apocryphal) but NASA apparently asked Sally Ride if 100 tampons would be enough for a 6 day mission to Space.

Quite so - but the genderist would still likely find she needed most or all of the adaptations to the male-designed kit!