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"?

That too, @Heggettypeg

BInary Gametes Ovaries Testes

Couldn't agree more.

There's an exquisite, pure, awe-inspiring honesty here that I deeply appreciate. I actually wish more Warriors on The Right Side Of History would be as honest and direct.

My point was simply that my views align with the left not the right. What you dismiss as identity policies no doubt includes many elements that I would agree with. For example that people can be at a disadvantage because of their sex, race, disability, class, sexuality, and that actions should be taken to level the playing field.

But those things are not particular beliefs of identity politics. Or really, even of the left.

If I believe that certain groups of society share a collective pattern of experience due to their membership of that group, and believe that policies should be implemented to address any specific disadvantage, such as EDI initiatives targeting working class people or people of colour, that would meet most peoples definition of identity politics.
This belief is much more commonly found amongst left wing people.

And, to bring this back to the original point, this is so important and unique to being classed as left wing, that you can't use a word for beliefs around the nature or sex that might suggest an overlap with someone on the right, who might think, for example, that collective patterns are more variable than you do, or that not all initiatives to create equity are just or effective?

I just do not understand the POV that says that having common ground with people who differ on some other issues is so, I don't know, what is it, traumatic, embarrassing? that it is any kind of a worry.

The cross political nature of the anti GI group is a strength, but it seems like you want to divide it into factions.

You have made statements that don't reflect my comments, and used hyperbolic language that doesn't reflect any feelings I've expressed, then questioned me on your own statements as though they were mine.
I can't answer for views you've attributed to me, only those I've actually expressed.
It will be tiresome for us both if I'm to go through your post a paragraph at a time repeating "I didn't say that..." when you can just look back over our conversation and see for yourself.
I think my meaning was clear and that you have misrepresented me.

If the term 'left-wing' means anything, it should surely be, is this for the greater good? Supporting an astro-turfing privileged cohort of males who want to impinge on the rights of three-quarters of the population (women and children) shouldn't make that cut, you'd think?

I absolutely do think. Which is the very problem I referred to earlier. As a left wing GC woman, its extremely difficult to see the political faction and people with whom your views align on other issues veering off in a direction you find incomprehensible. The Communist Party seem to agree though.

@TempestTost
My original point was that many left wing people who support identity politics in general do not believe people can change sex and that male people should access women's spaces. As PP pointed out, to put the interests of a typically privileged minority ahead of the greater good is to many of us, the antithesis of socialism.
You then told me that it was 'a losing game' to support identity politics while rejecting GI. The inference being that I could do one or the other, not both. Ie, pick a side.
I felt this served as a good example of the barriers people may feel to joining the GC movement. The perception that we must leave the rest of our politics on the back burner, because our support of identity politics can't be separated from GI. When in fact its entirely possible to support IP and simply believe that wanting to be the opposite sex is not an identity we wish to support, when it impinges on the rights of others.
Your choice of the word 'traumatic' to ask me why the left aligning with the right might be problematic is telling. Because it plays to the stereotype of the left as over sensitive, can't cope with, what do people on here say..? 'hurty words', emotionally driven. That stereotyping and othering contributes to the divisions you accuse me of wanting to create.
I don't find sharing views on GI with right wing people either embarrassing or traumatic. My own view is that almost everyone is GC, so I no doubt share GC views with the very worst people in our society and some of the best.
However having a view and joining a movement are not the same. OP asked what may be putting people off joining the GC movement. My view is that the association with the right is not helpful in winning over the left.
I agree it is a worry, because I think visible and vocal GC left wing support is important, not least because it will make left wing parties reflect on their direction if they are out of step with their traditional voting pool.

That's about where I am @5128gap , but put much better than I could!

I'm old enough to remember a Left that looked askance at Identitarianism. Identitarian politics conflict with class analysis at many, many points.Eg: In Identitarian terms it is an unalloyed good to appoint black candidates to posts where there has been a significant under-representation of black people BUT from a Left perspective there is no more positive outcome in advancing a black Etonian rather than a white one.

I listened to a very strange ep (6) of Fearless Diversity after the Battle of Ideas, which Simon Fanshawe had attended but his co-host, Rachel Cashman had not. Fanshawe had some criticisms but was measured & rational in expressing them. Cashman was weirdly emotional & her objections to attending seemed entirely based on fear of pollution by the Right, as if touching the hem of Toby Young's raiment would befoul her or rob her of something (presumably the good opinion of people who think like her).
This is a problem among & for self-styled "Progressives" who claim left politics. Cashman seemed to have lost sight of the fact that Fanshawe co-founded Stonewall with Matthew Parris, FGS, & that working across the aisle is not an occasion of moral peril, but a very, very banal aspect of normal politics. When one's politics withers to a disgust response directed towards the Other, it has ceased to be politics & has dwindled into tribalism.

I think of the left as a progression towards a more equal distribution of power and wealth in society. I'm also old enough to remember when this was focused solely on social class, and I believe class inequality should be a key focus. However that doesn't mean inequality arising from sex, race, disability etc shouldn't also be recognised and addressed.
The black Etonian will face additional challenges due to his or her race and if a woman, her sex. Their comparator isn't the WC comprehensive school educated individual, its the white Etonian.
I think many on the left are comfortable with this evolution because the 'identities' being included are based in reality rather than belief, as is the disadvantage arising from their membership of that group.

Therein lies the rub - if we're all having lovely individual ideas of what the Left is then it's not the Left at all, it's a hyper-individualist project doomed to failure.
You're slightly mixing your frames of reference by bringing in Eq A comparators, which do include belief as a specific PC, but if class & material analyses don't take primacy in Left politics, then the Left is reduced to eg; advancing the comical proposition that Rishi Sunak is materially disadvantaged in comparison with Boris Johnson because Crenshaw.

People have their own individual ideas of what is means to be right wing too. So presumably equally doomed to failure?
I'm not mixing up anything. You are conflating my reference to certain groups in society who are disadvantaged because they are of that group, such as POC, women, disabled people and indeed, WC people, with the wider concept of there being (protected) characteristics that it is illegal to discriminate due to.
Every one of us has a PC, as we all have a sex, an ethnicity, are married or not married, have an age, may have a religion or belief and cannot be lawfully discriminated against because of it.
This is different from recognising that some peoples PC is more likely to result in their disadvantage. And indeed in the case of WC people, they will encounter discrimination despite their class not being a PC.
I believe class and wealth should remain central to left wing politics. However society is complex and there is room for nuance. As a left wing WC feminist sometimes my interests will align more with middle class women, sometimes with WC men. Its issue dependent.

I don't think it's the name 'gender critical' that puts people off really. I think the vast majority of the world's population know full well what a woman is, but they have no desire to nail their flag to the mast about it. Some of them think we should #bekind and pretend that TWAW. Some just either don't come across it as a concern in everyday life or are too fearful to be openly GC. I'm absolutely fully GC, but I never really talk about it irl, especially at work.

I always thought that was a 999 one, never knew it was a cover!

Do you really think that right wing people aren't concerned about the greater good?

Do you think left wing people do not ever think, this might be for the greater good, but it crosses the line with regards to individual rights or welfare?

There is no hierarchy in the EqA & the desire among Progressives, whether they style themselves Left or Right, to establish hierarchies of oppression is how the police wound up believng that Suffragette ribbons left on a fence might be criminal acts against a man at a bus stop.

The problem here is one of what used to be called stereotyping, on the basis of things like race, sexuality, etc.

You can decide to put people together in a group - lets say all brown people, who aren't of European descent. And then you may look at that group as a whole and decide they are more likely to be disadvantaged, statistically speaking.

But it's a logical fallacy, stereotyping. And a mathematical one. Just because an individual belongs to that group you have defined, it does not mean the individual has in fact been disadvantaged. You create these abstractions, like "whiteness" or "blackness" which are then identified with advantage or disadvantage, but they aren't actually real. It's just a name for a group of people you've decided to draw some lines around.

Do we, for example, count the American Nigerian community within the black community, a target for equity producing programs? They are of African origin, have dark skin. And yet they are one of the most successful immigrant communities in the US in terms of wealth, educational attainment, and job status. Are they really needing a step up compared to other Americans? Is that not reinforcing and making economic/social divisions stronger, rather than breaking them down?

And you could choose to draw lines around people in all kinds of slightly or radically differernt ways. We can see how fraught some of them have become, what counts as "queer", who is indigenous. The experiences and background of most of the identity groups are so varied and different there is almost an arbitrary quality to them at times. There is as much variation within the group as there is in the general community.

The idea that we can create a clear hieraerchy of these differernt groups is also false on the face of it, or that place in the hierarchy determines the merit of the claim to be in the right.

You can be oppressed as all fuck but your demands of those who are better off could still be unfair or unjustified.

You can have some experience of disadvantage in some ways, but may be advantaged in others, on the very same basis.

Look at the claim that individual Asian students, like your next door neighbour Robby who worked hard at school, should have a harder time getting into higher education because statistically he must have been advantaged. That's always the other side of equity creating initiatives.

TBH I don’t think most people are familiar with the term or even think there are two “sides”. Most people I know seem to think there are group of crazy people (trans activists) and everyone else. They are very unaware of all the women fighting this ideology and the gains that have been made. I think JK Rowling is the only person to pierce the consciousness of the majority of people and so she has been massively helpful by being vocal in her support. Those I know think JK Rowling is just speaking common sense like the majority. The End. So many have no idea about the so-called “Gender Wars” and how dangerous self ID is.

Are you a feminist? Do you believe that women are a class based on our sex and that while we may have very different lifestyles and levels of advantage, we nevertheless share a common disadvantage in comparison to men as a class? If you do, then substitute women for the groups you've mentioned, and you will see the answers I would give you.
If you don't, then you must not have been concentrating whilst on this board.