Is the Gender Critical Movement Bound to Remain Rudderless?

[UtopiaPlanitia]

I came across a recommendation on TwiX for this interesting article and thought I'd post a link here (with a few excerpts to give an idea) for anyone who might be interested.

https://www.the11thhourblog.com/post/is-the-gender-critical-movement-bound-to-remain-rudderless

'For all its apparent moral clarity and empirical grounding, the gender critical movement suffers from a deep structural weakness. It lacks a horizon, a vision to move toward. Though move it does, it is rudderless, hitting targets on its way to nowhere definite or well-defined.

And without any clear vision, it’s destined to remain merely reactive, the reluctance or inability to say what it’s for or what kind of world it’s attempting to bring into being likely to ensure its eventual failure to win institutional power or systemic reform.

Every transformative movement needs the vision of a future worth defending beyond merely resisting the course of events and the GC project is no different…

…As such then, the movement resists but doesn’t envision what its own success looks like, thereby confining itself to the conceptual and institutional boundaries set by the very ‘gender industrial complex’ it opposes.

…The ‘trans-activist’ (or ‘sex denialism’) side, in contrast - along with the wider techno-capital system in which we, and it, find ourselves situated does have a vision – a horizon toward which it’s heading. It imagines a future where everything about us is flexible, modifiable, and optimizable. A world where identity, bodies, and even ordinary life can be upgraded, medicalized, data-tracked, and endlessly redesigned, all framed as liberation or ‘becoming your truest self.’

But underneath the uplifting language a simpler logic is at work: turn everything into something that can be engineered, monetized, connected, or (ideally) all three.

…[gender identity] is the ideal entry point for a form of capitalism that now treats the human body and personal identity as further sites to extract value from.

This is why “gender” has become a privileged site of transformation. It isn’t uniquely ‘fragile’ (as some would so vocally claim) but it is viewed by the system as uniquely modifiable making it a space perfectly suited for ‘optimization’, where the ‘optimal’ is simply the continued expansion of the system itself…'

How very male!

Without an understanding of the sex class discrimination against women by the male sex class, this is looking at the end product.

Rather than the origins.

In this man's world "gender" may well be a marketing tool or whatever he was talking about.

But without understanding its deeply engrained origins in patriarchy, he cant see what the real driving forces is. for instance the capture by so much of society by "gender" is because men are in power, and respond to male activists.

Women working at a grass roots level with connections that aren't about power and consumerism have power and influence, but men like this author dont recognise it.

Sex based women's rights dont need a "marketing" strategy as you cant sell to the oppressor who benefits from being that, that they should give up their view of the world and what is important and no longer be in power.

Even his notion that sucess is based on having a structured movement illustrates his mono male view.

And even if there was a movement, the question would still remain why aren't more women directly fighting back and opposed the new patriarchy.

Would a structured movement with hierarchies (leading to in fights) help women at the frontline as mothers with children under the influence of TRAs, or a service provider employee wanting her sex based rights.

There could of course be more campaign groups, not just hoping Sex Matters will do something.

The early sucesses of Women's Liberation were precisely because it wasn't bogged to in movement structures and procedures. It remained a network of women who individually or as groups decided what direcion or focus they wanted to invest time in.

It is an interesting article. Since realising what's going on I have seen the gender critical fight in terms of pockets of scrappy resistance fighting a frighteningly well-oiled machine which has taken over a variety of institutions with alarming rapidity. And yes, it is definitely tied to attempts to commodify human bodies and dissociate us from what makes us human. I think the resistance to this is becoming more organised. Both a strength and a weakness is that resistance is coming from across the political spectrum. And religion also seems to be a strong force against the soul-less individualism that is trans. I suspect the ultimate vision for different parts of the fight might be very different. The Catholic church might want something different from an old school feminist. What it is to be human is going to become an increasingly urgent question in the coming years. Interesting thoughts op. Thanks for sharing.

Bloke steadfastly refuses to recognise women's objectives & does so at length.
Pretty much what got us into this mess [waves at ex-Father Michael O'Flaherty & his misogynistic formation].

Apart from saying 'hell no' what are women's objectives? When I was trying to envisage a 'gender critical' future, I couldn't really apart from 'no men in women's spaces and stop making lifelong medical patients out of children'. Others may have one. Or maybe one isn't necessary. It's not just women's fight either there are plenty of men who appreciate the danger of transgenderism. What if they need a vision to succeed in their objectives? I'm just trying to think it through.

It isn’t rudderless. I see more and more women standing up and saying « no ». It is a collective of independent women who may not have the same politics but move forward. We are combined in the knowledge they are born female and it is not an abstract though in someone head

I suppose the writer's point is that saying no is reactive. He wants a vision to move towards rather than just to push back against 'transhumanism'.

Only a man could think that restoring women's rights wasn't a vision.

I'd say the first objective is force politicians off the crutch of visions & dreams & into the bracing realm of cold-eyed engagement with material reality in the here & now.

Or does he think we need a "proper leader"? Those are usually the source of "vision" discourse. "Vision" is a gussied-up version of kicking the can down the road, it's being told, "your life is shit & unikely to improve but lo! there is a land of milk & honey that we, as a Party/ nation/ species may one day reach, so do stop banging on about your problems & discontents".

Which, of course, is a story as old as time. The worrying thing now is the democratic deficit; most people know this is bollix, but where does that get us? Our elected representives don't actually represent the views of their constituents, and this ridiculous and unscientific cult continues to blight our institiutions.

Is it a movement or women pissed off about losing their rights

I think the writer's assessment of capitalism and its interest in monetising women's bodies is correct. From using umbilical and placenta stem cells in medical research to legalising surrogacy and egg harvesting in young women, there are companies out there who see the female body as highly marketable in ways other than the usual older methods of prostitution and wage slavery.

I think that, other than the core desires to protect women and children from the negatives of Genderism, the cross-party nature of GC activism, in the UK at least, makes it a bit tough to create a much wider manifesto of ideas or a 'vision' that would be universally acceptable.

Edited: spelling

Of course, it's much easier to monetise the gender identity 'vision'.

It turns children and young adults into lifelong medicalised patients, forever needing supplements, surgeries and talk therapy. Since it is impossible to change sex, there will always be just one more purchase needed before they'll finally be perfect and happy at long last.

Plus, for the much older males, there's the very exciting complementary access to vulnerable women and girls in spaces previously forbidden. And also, if desired, access to males & females whose bodies haven't gone through puberty, and now never will, but are still above the age of legal consent.

Yes. It's unsurprisingly very easy to make money by endorsing and introducing a full-service predatory men's rights movement.

I can’t be arsed reading the whole article, but on the basis of the excerpts and comments above, does sound quite a male perspective - men can be very preoccupied with power in the world and which direction it is flowing.

But it is an appropriate question, what is the main objective of the GC movement. I think we could say the dismantling of the idea that a man who wants to be a woman can ever be any kind of woman inside. And vice versa.

I think there’s a more utopian vision - is certainly my vision but I’m not sure it is that of many GC people - a world where sex stereotypes are dismantled. We no longer have boys/girls toys, clothes, activities etc and children don’t grow up with restricted ideas of how to perform male or female. In some ways this objective is shared with a lot of sex deniers, so this vision has to come with respect for the realities of our sexed bodies and doesn’t promote the idea that there are no differences between men and women.

One of the reasons gender ideology has been so powerful in dominating society is that it's effectively both left and right wing.
Left wing in terms of social justice/intersectional politics, right wing in terms of neo liberal economics.
It's captured both socialists AND capitalists.

The article alarmed me by positing that the drive towards transgenderism is more powerful than the resistance because it has become part of the capitalist system which has allowed it to become quickly embedded in our institutions . The writer argues that is partly because it is driven by a vision of the future in which humans are increasingly detached from the human reality of their bodies. He seems to be saying we need an equivalent vision for the future to fight this. My immediate reaction is that I'm not sure we do but I do think we're in trouble because the system is infested with this ideology, especially schools and health. It's hard to fight on all the different fronts at once. Also, this isn't just about transgenderism, it's also about AI, surrogacy, sex robots, cyberspace and the commodification of the human body.

I'm interested that a few posters have described having a vision and a leader (although the article doesn't suggest a leader) as a masculine approach. I don't tend to ascribe particular traits to men or women unless there's particular evidence that certain behaviour occurs more in one or other sex. I'm not sure having a vision is a masculine thing. As I said before, it wouldn't be possible for the disparate voices trying to push back against transgenderism to have a single vision beyond saying no to transgender ideology.

I agree, I didn’t get that 'masculine' vibe from the article at all, I read it as a critique of big money vested interests aligned with the ideology of Genderism.

And also I took it as a call to GC activists to not just fight using the terms and references defined by Genderism but to expound on their own ideas for what an alternative way of being could look like. Which to me would be quite in keeping with Second-Wave Feminism and some RadFem thinking.

Is there really a ‘gender critical movement’ - or is there simply reality? A reality known to and adhered to by the vast majority of the public?

Why does reality have to be labelled as a ‘movement’ at all?

Excellent point 🤔

I think the people who care enough to crowdfund legal action or post on FWR are arguably a movement.

I'd argue that the trans movement is reactionary, against biological "norms" and fact based reality and science.
Of course they don't seem "rudderless" because they've had organisations like stonewall pushing them on and paving the way for them. It's also taken them at least two decades to get to their peak so, hardly dynamic compared to our apparent lack lustre approach.
Load of old twaddle if you ask me.

What he means is that our vision isn't sexy enough. It isn't "progressive" or offering up a blueprint for a new, sci-fi based way of living.

It's like believing in Father Christmas though. Completely made-up and never going to happen.

Our vision is too boring by comparison. This is why so many otherwise sane people support it.

Remember when the students stormed out of the auditorium when the lecturer made basic comments about male versus female biology? They prefer fantasy to reality

This is like asking 'Earthlings, who is in charge of gravity? I think it is going in the wrong direction. We need it to go up not down, everything should go up, that's progress.'

Even without a leader, a movement, or words, men cant be women. Sorry buddy, that's just nature.

If you need an aim, it would be to repeal the GRA.

There is no gender critical 'movement'. Just loads of individuals, not all of us women, getting on with life and refusing to take nonsensical shit.

Some of these men seem to expect something like the freemasons, with dressy-up clothes and code words and meetings and officers and leaders. No thanks.