Applying the same general approach to such definitions, then ‘race critical’ would be claiming that race exists in an immutable biological way and cannot be altered even if you identify with a different race and ‘gay critical’ would be claiming that homosexuality exists in an immutable biological way and cannot be altered even if you really really want to be straight. If I’m interpreting that correctly, then these are currently the mainstream beliefs – kind of like ‘gender critical’ used to be the accepted mainstream belief.
This rather proves the point that they can’t express the opposing side’s position to that side’s satisfaction.
I’m pretty sure everyone here can present at least one version of Genderism accurately. Here, I’ll do one.
Each of us has a mental model for interpreting and interacting with the world. The specifics of this model are partially biologically determined. The biologically determined features are immutable and vary with sex. We will refer to the sex-dependent part of one’s model as gender identity. Attempting to interpret and interact with the world according to a gender identity that is not yours is both ultimately impossible and a source of acute suffering we will call gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is alleviated by allowing people to live according to their gender identities. This reduces overall suffering, so we should do so.
For the sake of pedantry, I could add, “Some people’s gender identity is that of the opposite sex,” after the definition of gender identity, but whatever. And it’s supposed to be gender dysphoria, not gender distributed. Stupid phone.
As I understand it, the phrase “gender critical” isn’t referring to the immutability of sex, but rather to the concept of gender as sex-based roles and stereotypes, and to these things as a means of oppression of women, and then criticizing gender, aiming to get rid of it. I suppose it is possible to suggest “race” is referring to ethnic or skin-color stereotypes, used as a means of oppression of certain identified groups of people, and then criticizing this version of “race” while advocating getting rid of it. In both cases, the goals of getting rid of roles and stereotypes and ending oppression seem to me to be good things. I do know people who, I think naively, wish to do away with tracking race or sex and providing dedicated resources by race or sex, perhaps under the assumption that these problems will go away if we don’t look at them.
I don’t think I can make “gay critical” work in the same way.
Option 1: When “[subject] critical” is understood as “thinks about or examines [subject] critically”, to be gender critical is just to think critically about the subject of gender. That is, to examine the concept of gender, how gender applies and affects the world, and to draw conclusions from that examination. To be race critical is to think critically about race. To be gay critical is to think critically about male homosexuality. To be lesbian critical is to think critically about female homosexuality.
Option 2: Of course, some might be using “critical” in the sense of the Critical Theory/Marxian Conflict Theory term of art. In this sense, to be Critical is to apply the tools of Dialectical Critique (also a term of art) in search of syncretic truths revealed in the meeting of Thesis and Antithesis. (terms of art, all)
Option 3: A normative sense. Like, “Teelah was very critical of Prince Adam.” This doesn’t even make sense when applied to gender, but it’s closer to what Genderists do than anything. Someone who hates his or her “assigned gender” is quite critical of gender.
Okay, I’ll see your “look back in horror” and raise you “looking on in horror right now. Just off the top of my head here’s what being “uncritical” of gender has resulted in:
Violent male sex offenders being imprisoned with women in what were and should be female only prisons. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men being admitted into what were and should be female only rape and domestic violence services. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men being housed in what were and should be female only hospital wards. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men and boys competing on what were and should be female only sports teams. The women and girls have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men invading women’s toilet and changing facilities. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
The mutilation and sterilization of children whose minds are insufficiently developed to comprehend the import and gravity of the disastrously life-altering path they’ve been encouraged to take.
The erosion of women’s health care through the erasure of the words “woman” and “women” in the name of “inclusion.” There is no comparable erasure of “man” and “men” in health communications which are equivalent to the campaigns from which all references to women have been excised.
The bullying, intimidation, villification and assault of any and all women who dare to oppose any of the above, or who even questions the validity and coherence of trans ideology.
Trans identified males are not women. Never have been, never will be. Don’t go on about how “marginalized” and “victimized” they are, or how they are at much greater risk of being victims of violence or murder than anyone without some hard statistics to back these claims up. The ability of this oh-so-powerless group of helpless snowflakes to force women to submit to their presence in what had once been and should be female only spaces proves that these protestations of victimhood are lies. Just own up to the fact that you’re defending entitled men.Powerful entitled men. Trans activism has been wildly successful in its recruitment of a startlingly broad range of public and private institutions to advance and enforce their completely unreasonable and dangerous demands. (See the above list from off the top of my head, compiled without leaving this page, and without breaking a mental sweat.) And who has paid the price for this imposition of the will of a tiny minority of men? Women and girls. That’s the real horror. Actual harm, actual violence, actual dismissals, silencings and deplatforming. You don’t have to wait for the hypothetical perspective of some imagined, delusional, “inclusive” future to find faux horrors to boggle your mind as you look back. Open your fucking eyes and look at the horrors noted above. Horrors you are promoting. So yeah, I’m “critical” of gender. Why aren’t you?
Not directly answering the question of what the “critical” in “gender-critical” is referring to, but a good essay (text of a talk). It contains this bit:
Gender critical feminists are gender abolitionists, which means, committed to getting rid of this sex caste hierarchy, and achieving the liberation of those subordinated by it, namely females.
And this:
‘Because male power has created in reality the world to which feminist insights, when they are accurate, refer, many of our statements will capture that reality… what a woman “is” is what you have made woman “be”…. If male power makes the world as it “is”, theorising this reality requires capturing it in order to subject it to critique, hence to change…” (MacKinnon 1987, p. 59).
Even if we chose traits like ‘warm’ and ‘nurturing’ as our necessary condition for membership in the category ‘woman’, this still wouldn’t be essentialist in the sense of naturalising women’s inferiority, because we’re naming a way that male power has shaped women. And we’re doing this in order to criticize and dismantle that shaping – which is the opposite of naturalising it in order to leave it in place.
Holly Lawford-Smith argues that gender is not something to be embraced and celebrated, but a system of oppression which should be rejected. She introduces gender-critical feminism, explaining what it means to conceive of gender as norms and to be critical of gender on the basis of that understanding.
I do think it is a fairly common interpretation that “gender-critical” means “critical of gender”.
It’s a relatively minor thing but I really don’t want women in men’s privvies either… Fairs fair, wouldn’t be hard to remove someone who doesn’t belong in there as a male, but you look like a right prick for doing so…
The rest of it can’t compare… It’s not even on the level of circumcision vs. cutting little girls’lady bitz off…
Ok, here’s the other thing… Given what people like the Republicans are and what they’re attempting do they really think it’s more likely that the gender goblin side is going to be on the “right” side of history (in the sense that the “right” side will be writing it)?
Or am I being too parochial? “My side will win because it is righteous” is a religious view with no evidence supporting it. Who wins is who wins, and mostly the winner is a right bastard.
Gender critical is not critical of gender, it’s critical of gender ideology, as put forth by people who insist on the primacy of gender identity over the reality of biological sex. Being of one race or another is not fundamentally an ideology, but merely a biological difference. Being same sex attracted is also not fundamentally an ideology, but also, merely a biological difference. Gender presentation is not fundamentally a biological difference, it is superficial. This is why Proudman’s comparison doesn’t work. It’s apples and oranges. Not to say that same sex attraction and race can’t be approached ideologically, but that they are not in themselves an ideology.
Given gender as the stereotypes and roles that are demanded of people based on sex, and the means of oppressing women, then yes, gender critical means critical of gender. This is a common understanding of the term. For gender as just simple description without demands and expectations, perhaps not. But “gender critical” is not about trans at all, it is about women, and it just creates strong conflicts with gender ideology. Again, as I understand things, and as described by Holly Lawford-Smith, among others. Even without a transgender movement, there would still be gender-critical feminism.
That doesn’t make sense to me without the underlying assumption that gender characteristics are somehow different than characteristics based on sex. So I don’t know if my thinking is outdated on this, or if I’ve been fooled by the trans movement in to thinking that it has.
I’m not sure what aspect you find doesn’t make sense. I do think the two items I linked to by Holly Lawford-Smith are pretty good sources to read.
I know that there are other ways that people interpret “gender critical”, but I think that the way I understand the phrase is common, and I think HLS presents it in a well-written and clear way. I’m not trying to claim that this is the One True Correct way to understand things, but that this is a common way, shown in writing by at least some notable feminist thinkers.
Sex: women are female, they give birth, they have various biological characteristics associated with that fact.
Gender: women are weak and less intelligent, they should serve men, they should stay home, they need to make themselves pretty to attract men, their value is based on their attraction and their use by men to produce babies.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see that, with this understanding of gender, gender is oppressive toward women, and activists would work toward getting rid of it. Gender abolition. Gender criticism. Nothing to do with trans. But it is based on the idea that sex is important, that sex is immutable, and that the stereotypes and assumptions of gender are just that, stereotypes and assumptions and not reality. Gender ideology has this pretty much exactly the other way around, and so is in conflict. Even without gender ideology, the oppressive notion of gender would still exist, and people would want to eradicate it.
“Gender critical feminists are gender abolitionists, which means, committed to getting rid of this sex caste hierarchy, and achieving the liberation of those subordinated by it, namely females.”
Basically Lawford-Smith equates sex with gender here, which I would agree with. Getting rid of the sex caste hierarchy has always been a goal of feminism generally, so I’m not sure that gender critical feminism as it’s referred to now (according to Lawford-Smith) would have been recognizable without the trans movement’s insistence that gender is different than sex. The ideas of “gender spectrum” or “gender neutral” or “non-binary” or “performative gender” don’t have much meaning when they are contrasted with the biological sexes, of which there are only two, and insisting that there are more than two genders, of which there are still only two, and then taking it a step further, and concluding that there are more than two sexes and that one need only choose. This is the ideology. Men are trying to subordinate women in a different way now, and the people who go along with it are not feminists. So I suppose gender critical means critical of gender in that way, but it’s gender ideology that elucidates Lawford-Smith’s distinction.
twiliter, I’m struggling to see why you think Lawford-Smith equates sex with gender in the quoted sentence. Caste hierarchies (and the imposed mechanisms of gender which support them in this case) are clearly social constructs. That they are built on skin colour or parentage or sex doesn’t change that.
Applying the same general approach to such definitions, then ‘race critical’ would be claiming that race exists in an immutable biological way and cannot be altered even if you identify with a different race and ‘gay critical’ would be claiming that homosexuality exists in an immutable biological way and cannot be altered even if you really really want to be straight. If I’m interpreting that correctly, then these are currently the mainstream beliefs – kind of like ‘gender critical’ used to be the accepted mainstream belief.
I imagine we will one day look back in horror – just like we look back in horror at the Satanic Panic.
Do we though? We’re in the midst of another one though at least there doesn’t seem to be much buy-in from law enforcement.
Weren’t “feminists” in on that one too?
This rather proves the point that they can’t express the opposing side’s position to that side’s satisfaction.
I’m pretty sure everyone here can present at least one version of Genderism accurately. Here, I’ll do one.
Each of us has a mental model for interpreting and interacting with the world. The specifics of this model are partially biologically determined. The biologically determined features are immutable and vary with sex. We will refer to the sex-dependent part of one’s model as gender identity. Attempting to interpret and interact with the world according to a gender identity that is not yours is both ultimately impossible and a source of acute suffering we will call gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is alleviated by allowing people to live according to their gender identities. This reduces overall suffering, so we should do so.
What’s these people’s excuse?
For the sake of pedantry, I could add, “Some people’s gender identity is that of the opposite sex,” after the definition of gender identity, but whatever. And it’s supposed to be gender dysphoria, not gender distributed. Stupid phone.
A fantastic demonstration of opposing a group without knowing what the group is about.
As I understand it, the phrase “gender critical” isn’t referring to the immutability of sex, but rather to the concept of gender as sex-based roles and stereotypes, and to these things as a means of oppression of women, and then criticizing gender, aiming to get rid of it. I suppose it is possible to suggest “race” is referring to ethnic or skin-color stereotypes, used as a means of oppression of certain identified groups of people, and then criticizing this version of “race” while advocating getting rid of it. In both cases, the goals of getting rid of roles and stereotypes and ending oppression seem to me to be good things. I do know people who, I think naively, wish to do away with tracking race or sex and providing dedicated resources by race or sex, perhaps under the assumption that these problems will go away if we don’t look at them.
I don’t think I can make “gay critical” work in the same way.
Option 1: When “[subject] critical” is understood as “thinks about or examines [subject] critically”, to be gender critical is just to think critically about the subject of gender. That is, to examine the concept of gender, how gender applies and affects the world, and to draw conclusions from that examination. To be race critical is to think critically about race. To be gay critical is to think critically about male homosexuality. To be lesbian critical is to think critically about female homosexuality.
Option 2: Of course, some might be using “critical” in the sense of the Critical Theory/Marxian Conflict Theory term of art. In this sense, to be Critical is to apply the tools of Dialectical Critique (also a term of art) in search of syncretic truths revealed in the meeting of Thesis and Antithesis. (terms of art, all)
Option 3: A normative sense. Like, “Teelah was very critical of Prince Adam.” This doesn’t even make sense when applied to gender, but it’s closer to what Genderists do than anything. Someone who hates his or her “assigned gender” is quite critical of gender.
Okay, I’ll see your “look back in horror” and raise you “looking on in horror right now. Just off the top of my head here’s what being “uncritical” of gender has resulted in:
Violent male sex offenders being imprisoned with women in what were and should be female only prisons. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men being admitted into what were and should be female only rape and domestic violence services. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men being housed in what were and should be female only hospital wards. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men and boys competing on what were and should be female only sports teams. The women and girls have no say in this and are forced to submit.
Men invading women’s toilet and changing facilities. The women have no say in this and are forced to submit.
The mutilation and sterilization of children whose minds are insufficiently developed to comprehend the import and gravity of the disastrously life-altering path they’ve been encouraged to take.
The erosion of women’s health care through the erasure of the words “woman” and “women” in the name of “inclusion.” There is no comparable erasure of “man” and “men” in health communications which are equivalent to the campaigns from which all references to women have been excised.
The bullying, intimidation, villification and assault of any and all women who dare to oppose any of the above, or who even questions the validity and coherence of trans ideology.
Trans identified males are not women. Never have been, never will be. Don’t go on about how “marginalized” and “victimized” they are, or how they are at much greater risk of being victims of violence or murder than anyone without some hard statistics to back these claims up. The ability of this oh-so-powerless group of helpless snowflakes to force women to submit to their presence in what had once been and should be female only spaces proves that these protestations of victimhood are lies. Just own up to the fact that you’re defending entitled men. Powerful entitled men. Trans activism has been wildly successful in its recruitment of a startlingly broad range of public and private institutions to advance and enforce their completely unreasonable and dangerous demands. (See the above list from off the top of my head, compiled without leaving this page, and without breaking a mental sweat.) And who has paid the price for this imposition of the will of a tiny minority of men? Women and girls. That’s the real horror. Actual harm, actual violence, actual dismissals, silencings and deplatforming. You don’t have to wait for the hypothetical perspective of some imagined, delusional, “inclusive” future to find faux horrors to boggle your mind as you look back. Open your fucking eyes and look at the horrors noted above. Horrors you are promoting. So yeah, I’m “critical” of gender. Why aren’t you?
Holly Lawford-Smith: What is Gender Critical Feminism and Why is Everyone So Mad About It?
Not directly answering the question of what the “critical” in “gender-critical” is referring to, but a good essay (text of a talk). It contains this bit:
And this:
Also this paper by HL-S, Gender-Critical Feminism, which notes in the abstract:
I do think it is a fairly common interpretation that “gender-critical” means “critical of gender”.
It’s a relatively minor thing but I really don’t want women in men’s privvies either… Fairs fair, wouldn’t be hard to remove someone who doesn’t belong in there as a male, but you look like a right prick for doing so…
The rest of it can’t compare… It’s not even on the level of circumcision vs. cutting little girls’lady bitz off…
Ok, here’s the other thing… Given what people like the Republicans are and what they’re attempting do they really think it’s more likely that the gender goblin side is going to be on the “right” side of history (in the sense that the “right” side will be writing it)?
Or am I being too parochial? “My side will win because it is righteous” is a religious view with no evidence supporting it. Who wins is who wins, and mostly the winner is a right bastard.
Gender critical is not critical of gender, it’s critical of gender ideology, as put forth by people who insist on the primacy of gender identity over the reality of biological sex. Being of one race or another is not fundamentally an ideology, but merely a biological difference. Being same sex attracted is also not fundamentally an ideology, but also, merely a biological difference. Gender presentation is not fundamentally a biological difference, it is superficial. This is why Proudman’s comparison doesn’t work. It’s apples and oranges. Not to say that same sex attraction and race can’t be approached ideologically, but that they are not in themselves an ideology.
Given gender as the stereotypes and roles that are demanded of people based on sex, and the means of oppressing women, then yes, gender critical means critical of gender. This is a common understanding of the term. For gender as just simple description without demands and expectations, perhaps not. But “gender critical” is not about trans at all, it is about women, and it just creates strong conflicts with gender ideology. Again, as I understand things, and as described by Holly Lawford-Smith, among others. Even without a transgender movement, there would still be gender-critical feminism.
That doesn’t make sense to me without the underlying assumption that gender characteristics are somehow different than characteristics based on sex. So I don’t know if my thinking is outdated on this, or if I’ve been fooled by the trans movement in to thinking that it has.
I’m not sure what aspect you find doesn’t make sense. I do think the two items I linked to by Holly Lawford-Smith are pretty good sources to read.
I know that there are other ways that people interpret “gender critical”, but I think that the way I understand the phrase is common, and I think HLS presents it in a well-written and clear way. I’m not trying to claim that this is the One True Correct way to understand things, but that this is a common way, shown in writing by at least some notable feminist thinkers.
Sex: women are female, they give birth, they have various biological characteristics associated with that fact.
Gender: women are weak and less intelligent, they should serve men, they should stay home, they need to make themselves pretty to attract men, their value is based on their attraction and their use by men to produce babies.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see that, with this understanding of gender, gender is oppressive toward women, and activists would work toward getting rid of it. Gender abolition. Gender criticism. Nothing to do with trans. But it is based on the idea that sex is important, that sex is immutable, and that the stereotypes and assumptions of gender are just that, stereotypes and assumptions and not reality. Gender ideology has this pretty much exactly the other way around, and so is in conflict. Even without gender ideology, the oppressive notion of gender would still exist, and people would want to eradicate it.
“Gender critical feminists are gender abolitionists, which means, committed to getting rid of this sex caste hierarchy, and achieving the liberation of those subordinated by it, namely females.”
Basically Lawford-Smith equates sex with gender here, which I would agree with. Getting rid of the sex caste hierarchy has always been a goal of feminism generally, so I’m not sure that gender critical feminism as it’s referred to now (according to Lawford-Smith) would have been recognizable without the trans movement’s insistence that gender is different than sex. The ideas of “gender spectrum” or “gender neutral” or “non-binary” or “performative gender” don’t have much meaning when they are contrasted with the biological sexes, of which there are only two, and insisting that there are more than two genders, of which there are still only two, and then taking it a step further, and concluding that there are more than two sexes and that one need only choose. This is the ideology. Men are trying to subordinate women in a different way now, and the people who go along with it are not feminists. So I suppose gender critical means critical of gender in that way, but it’s gender ideology that elucidates Lawford-Smith’s distinction.
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twiliter, I’m struggling to see why you think Lawford-Smith equates sex with gender in the quoted sentence. Caste hierarchies (and the imposed mechanisms of gender which support them in this case) are clearly social constructs. That they are built on skin colour or parentage or sex doesn’t change that.