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"?

They really don't. Digital algorithms serve you different content to the people living in the same house as you.

The OP started this thread asking whether the name is why people on the fence struggle to engage.

That's what I'm talking about. That's the question that was posed.

And it's precisely because they're able to think critically that they aren't sucked in by the utter shite that's drip-fed to those outside of the movement already.

This

honest to god this is why i wouldn’t call my self GC, thinking that people can’t change sex and that sex is important does not mean you can’t vote green and think farage is a twat

the meaning of gc has been warped by the same people who have warped the words woman and man

Yes. Oddly enough, I'm aware of that.

For those of us (i.e. everyone) walking about, going into the Tesco where there's a whacking great big newsstand as you walk past the lunch time meal deal fridge, with all these newspaper front pages staring out at you or walking past the wee newsagent with its handwritten A- Board outside with 'Supreme Court says woman means biological' scrawled across it aren't getting a different digital algorithm as the other people in our house. They're either seeing the same thing as everyone else or determinedly covering their eyes with their hands, shrieking 'the horror! The right wing horror of women's rights!!'

As my post said, here in Scotland, it's gone way past social media into (gasp!) real life.

Have you ever considered why the British Left...for its history concerned primarily with the plight of the working class, of labour - seems to have been over-taken by american style identity politics?

The U.S.A has never had a genuinely Socialist party, or anything approaching it. The Democrats have tended to view everything through the lens of individual liberty and equality - which they call 'being progressive'. 'Woke' is an American invention and state of mind - borne out of the american experience, and then propogated via the american academy.

Have you ever wondered why american progressivism now seems to stand hand in hand with big pharma - rather than being in opposition to it as one might have expected? 'Trans' is a huge industry in the U.S. It is not 'progressive'. It signifies the height of the american cult of the individual, aligned with the interests of big pharma, and of billionnaires in silicon valley and beyond, pre-occupied with imposing their pet interests on the world ( and funded through U.S Aid dollars).

All of this talk of 'amplification' and 'alignment' is a total cliche - best suited to Owen Jones and the politics of twitter. But if all that that floats your boat, then best own it, heh?

Gender critical feminists haven't aligned themselves with the right.
The right has, however, firmly aligned itself with you.
And people like me find it hard to openly align myself with a movement that is amplified hatefully.
I don't mean that gender critical feminists are hateful. Let me very clear on that.
But the voices amplifying the messages, are.

I can totally see this. They've played a blinder.

Imo the only way to be living proof that it's wrong is to continue to be liberal and critically analyse harmful stereotypes. Which is what we were all doing with the "let toys be toys" etc.

I've seen in real-time how any campaign based on sex not gender (completely nothing to do with trans issues) gets branded "a bit terfy" at the very least.

With some people, the penny is dropping at least.

The irony!

Most people don't engage, because they don't generally engage in a thoughtful way with political content. And believe you me, trans ideology is most definitely political content.

And what if you are on not on twitter, and have never used social media ( apart from this sub forum and one other), nor own a smartphone, like myself?

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!)

Being fragiile and so not being able to countenance anything outside of a particular echo chamber does not make you enightened, or in any way morally righteous.

You say you don't see anything from trans activists on your feed; but why do you think it is you see lots of provocative feed about what is printed in the Telegraph or the Daily Mail etc ? What is that about?

Every Leftie I know, and have ever known, and that is many, seem to have far more awareness of what is written in the Daily Mail than I ever have done. Funny that!

Being fragiile and so not being able to countenance anything outside of a particular echo chamber does not make you enightened, or in any way morally righteous.

I don't think that was the point Bloozie was making? Just that you don't necessarily get fed articles that you would agree with, but often ones that are designed to annoy you enough to click.

I don't see much of that stuff but I do see pro-trans posts with rainbows on etc. But then I rarely engage with stuff that I don't actually like.

Because the algorithms are engineered for rage. Other than TikTok, which is primed for dopamine. I'm served right leaning rage bait because the algorithm knows I'm left-leaning.

I'm not claiming any kind of moral superiority, nor is it because I'm too fragile/in my bubble to explore the issue.

I'm just describing what I see and experience.

How do you know you "don't like it" if you don't engage with it?

Genuine question.

Then you're not bombarded with content that makes it difficult to engage with the issue, because in your mind the cause is inextricably linked with political forces that use rage for engagement and create division to conquer.

I was only answering the OP's question - why do people on the fence find it hard to engage with gender critical feminism.

People seem to think I'm entirely inventing the link with the right wing, or how algorithms work. Fine.

Can you not see, though, that you seem to feel enraged by what you perceive as 'right wing' feed. How do you determine what is right wing. What are your meausres?Do you feel that you must only " align" with certain persepctives? Do you automatically blank anything which triggers your 'right wing' antenna?

They're not engaging with trans ideology either.

The question was, those on the fence. Right now, those on the fence are drip-fed shite by the right. If I think about it, in the past I was drip-fed shite by the likes of Stonewall. But their influence is waning, while the influence of populism and the right is rising, and they're using GC causes to cause division.

I don't engage in any of it because none of it is thoughtful.

But having seen all of it puts me off engaging with the whole issue, because the loudest voices in politics, the media and social media are.... to put it mildly, crackpots.

A lot of the commentary on this thread comes from a perspective that assumes that there is a pool of on the fence people that are being presented with thoughtful content that they are rejecting. Because they're not interested in politics? Because they're not critical thinkers? Because they're all really TRAs?

I'm merely trying to say that they're not seeing thoughtful content. You have to seek out thoughtful content. What we are being served, is right wing tripe.

I don't understand why people find this hard to understand.

If you want to motivate people to find out more, seek out the thoughtful content, you'd have to find a way of GC issues not being used as a political football. Maybe by distancing yourself from the hyperbole. I don't know. I think the horse has bolted tbh and it's just become one of those issues that now has a Teflon-layer of GBeebies that discredits the whole lot.

Doesn't make sense, sorry, what you mean when you say the "cause in my mind is inextricably linked with political forces...."?

I became engaged with this issue when the I read an article in a local newspaper in which the Mayor of Liverpool ( very 'Left wing' city) said he wanted women to be arrested for "a hate crime" ( in 2018) for putting little stickers saying " women do not have penises" on the anatomy of an Anthony Gormely figure on a local beach. I'd been teaching and had never come across 'a trans child' or this issue much, if ever, at all before then. I'd been deeply engaged with the female experience, though for all my adult life.....being a woman and all....having had a child at 19 and then two more before I was 28....but just generally involved in what I would call a 'Goddess' type feminsim. Centred in the body.

I was a political activist in my youth. Helped set up a peace camp outside of a nuclear base; became involved in the peace movement, and then the squatiing movement in the early 1980s. I became vegetarian at 16; set ip a women's group at my local college when studying for my A levels. Used to be a Labour voter and Labour party member.

Can you help explain what must have happened to me to be so manipulated by right wing forces?

The Telegraph is right wing. The Express is right wing. The Daily Mail is right wing. GBeebies is right wing. Lawrence Fox is right wing.

I am not determining that these voices are right wing. They evidentially ARE.

And because they are seeking engagement or trying to engineer division, they are presenting the issues in a way that is hateful and designed to provoke rage. And yes, this does enrage me. I don't want to be targeted by hateful organisations that in all honesty don't give a shit about women, it's all about the numbers.

And yes, I automatically blank news coming from all of the above sources because the bias is ridiculous. It's not about aligning with perspectives. It's about being given information in a way that allows me to form my OWN perspective, rather than a one-eyed exploration of an issue.

What would you say determines whether something is 'right wing'? Do you think anything which you classify as 'right wing' is automatically bad or suspect, or to be rejected? If so, why?

For the love of actual God... I give up.

In 2018, the word 'woke' had a specific meaning and gender identity wasn't fodder for culture wars. In 2018, you probably stood a chance of getting information that was relatively balanced.

In 2018, you were therefore not being bombarded by the ins and outs of every National Trust toilet by right wing media outlets seeking to use gender identity as a wedge issue to divide us.

The question was, why are people on the fence struggling to engage?

You don't like the answer. You take it as an attack on you.

It's absolutely fucking exhausting.

So you associate being right wing with " division"? Were do you stand on the matter of boundaries of any type? Do you think boundaries are always negative?

Boundaries ( to my mind) indicate some degree of separation and individuality,....though some might call that "division". So when we differentiate between one type of thing and another we instantly have a division...in that not everything is the same. Do you think differentiation ( or any degree of separation) is always a bad thing?

I actually think you should give up. You are starting to swear and become aggressive and dismissive. I've been very patient and have shared personal information in order to try to elicit a more thoughftul response from you.....but I suspect it is you who have come to this issue late in the day and with a pre-formed take on the issue. Even the use of the term 'culture war' is indicative.
You can seemingly only conceive of an experience that is from within the boundaries of your own frame of reference.

1. Their stated alignment with right wing political organisations and support for right wing political causes, makes them right wing. The right wing has adopted gender identity as a cause. Not all gender critics are right wing, every right wing political party in the UK is gender critical. I'm not going to enter into a debate on whether the right or the left even exist any more in some sort of 'I will run her ragged with semantics in a way that I believe evidences my superior intellectual prowess' kind of way because the Daily Telegraph is widely and openly understood to be right wing, and so is Lawrence Fox. Knock yourself out trying to wang your way round to that not being so.
2. Information from sources that have a stated alignment with any political organisation, left or right, is unbiased and to be rejected or treated with extreme caution. Finding unbiased news sources is very hard, and they're not the ones targeting floaters online to cause division.

Any stance that seeks to or serves to preserve the tradional order with regards to who holds the wealth and power in society.
Depending on how extreme the view anything from mistrust to hatred of anything or anybody percieved to be a threat to the status quo.

So 'Left wing' is automatically wanting to reject and over-throw any established way of doing things?