I frequently make the mistake of thinking that other people must be approximately as knowledgeable as I am on this or that hotly debated topic. Surely, people do at least some rudimentary research before forming an opinion? Right?
Then I notice someone believing straight up lies and disinformation, and I get deeply frustrated. This blog post is to give you a brief description of what it even means to be “gender critical” and why many people, myself included, think that it’s a core tenet of women’s rights. Apparently, a lot of people don’t even know the basics.
No, it’s not conservative or right-wing
What’s now called Gender Critical was originally just an aspect of Radical Feminism, or, as I sometimes like to call it, Classical Feminism. I like to call it that, so it sounds less scary. It used to be a radical idea that it’s NOT a natural law or god-given that men should be the rulers of society. Now this is widely accepted among liberal and left-leaning people, so I’m not sure it needs to be called radical anymore.
This type of feminism mostly stems from the second wave of the women’s rights movement, and among its ideas was the notion that gender stereotypes are, well, stereotypes, and not natural or inherent to the sexes. The idea that there’s something in female biology that predestines the person to be feminine, a mother, a house wife, etc., is called gender essentialism. Feminists are against this.
Trans activists completely misuse the term “biological essentialism.” They have a useless and incomprehensible definition of it, based in post modern philosophy. Ask them to explain, in simple terms, why it’s harmful to say “the word ‘woman’ is defined as adult human of the female sex in biological terms” and watch them struggle, or come up with weird gotchas instead of providing a straight answer.
If gender stereotypes are bullshit, then there’s no claim to womanhood that a male person can have. All he can do is perform femininity, which does not prove that he’s a woman, because there’s no such thing as a feminine, womanly essence that women possess. There is only female anatomy, and males don’t have it.
Note that when I say “womanhood” I’m not talking about femininity or a traditional notion of womanhood; I simply mean the state of being a woman. I could as well say “womanness” but that’s not a word according to my spell checker.
When people say that gender critical people want to enforce gender roles, they are showing remarkable levels of ignorance. It’s like saying “socialists want to cut taxes for the rich.” It’s a direct reversal of the truth.
In recent years, many conservatives have latched on to the term “gender critical” because they’re critical of the transgender movement. Their reasons for being critical of the transgender movement are entirely different, and they are usually not critical of gender (stereotypes) at all. Their misuse of the label means nothing. It’s like eating meat, but calling yourself a vegan because you’re against the meat industry. Vegans may or may not want to team up with you based on this common ground, but you’re not a vegan if you eat meat.
If you research the history of the term “gender critical,” you will realize that it stems from feminist or feminist-leaning people. To summarize what happened: People who agree with this particular aspect of “radical feminism” (opposition to stereotypes) but don’t necessarily subscribe to all other aspects of it, or think “radical feminist” sounds a bit scary, decided to come up with this softer term called “gender critical” that they started to use for themselves. That’s all.
There are many fallacies, and false “evidence” that people come up with, to claim that gender critical really is conservative or right-wing in reality. This is not the place to debunk every single such fallacious claim, but let me tell you that a lot of it is straight up disinformation that people will insist on continuing to spread even when they are proven completely wrong. Always remain skeptical.
“TERF” is a bullshit term
This term is older than “gender critical” and is frequently used, as a slur, for people who criticize the transgender movement from a feminist standpoint. It’s now being used in jest by many, similar to how some women may call themselves a “bad bitch” in a sarcastic manner, but it’s mainly been used as a slur over the years.
It was actually a common thing a number of years ago that women who got called “TERF” on social media would have to look up what it even means, and then they would look up what “radical feminism” even means. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons they eventually came up with “gender critical” instead. So, funnily enough, the people who are now claiming that GC is a conservative, right-wing ideology, were basically admitting that it’s actually a radically feminist ideology by calling its adherents “TERFs.” They are now retroactively trying to change the meaning of “TERF” or saying things like “they should just be called TERs” (dropping the F which stands for Feminist) because they realized that it’s a bad look to cry about “evil feminists” all the time.
By the way, no radical feminist, or classical feminist, or gender critical feminist or whatever you want to call it, is actually “trans-exclusionary.” Let alone the hilariously hyperbolic “trans exterminatory.” They are exclusionary of males, regardless of whether they identify as trans or not. That is because they focus on women’s issues, not because they hate men. Not everything has to always include men. On the flip side, they include all female-born people in their politics, regardless of whether the person identifies as trans or not. This is because the most straightforward way to define “misogyny” is: Mistreatment of people born with a female body, for being born with a female body. People born with a male body do not suffer the same fates. It simply has nothing to do with trans.
It’s not a “fringe” view
Many of the world’s leading women’s rights activists agree with gender critical views. In no particular order: Alice Schwarzer, Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Sheila Jeffreys, Janice Raymond, Robin Morgan, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many others, including arguably bell hooks:
One of the issues I think many people have with trans women is the sense of a traditional femininity being called out and reveled in, a femininity that many feminist women feel like, ‘Oh, we’ve been trying to get away from that.’ — bell hooks
This was in a discussion with trans activist Laverne Cox. When Cox ponders on whether he is “feeding into the patriarchy with [his] blonde wigs” he is interrupted by bell hooks with a quick “yes.”
At the time this happened, bell hooks was the darling of the liberal media, and nobody dared to call her a “TERF” too loudly. Most feminists, when they express the same sentiment, face immense backlash. If they’re white, they’re accused of “white feminism.” Ironic, given that some of the most prominent black feminists seem to agree with the gender critical perspective.
Of course, the entire argument that it’s a “fringe” view is invalid to begin with. It’s nothing but an argumentum ad populum aka argument from popularity: The fallacious idea that the opinion that more people agree with must be the right one. Nevertheless, I wanted to dispel the myth that it’s a fringe view, because humans are subconsciously affected by fallacies even if they know they’re fallacies.
There is no “female brain”
We have absolutely no conclusive evidence of a thing such as a “female brain.”
There are philosophical issues with this anyway: If a female person is defined as a person with female anatomy, then any brain found in the body of such a person would, by definition, be a “female brain.”
But fine, let’s decouple the brain from the rest of the body. Theoretically, there could be some development in the brain that normally happens only if you’re female, but for some reason it happens in some people who are otherwise male. A sort of “neurological intersex” condition, if you will.
Tough luck; there’s no evidence for such a thing.
Note, by the way, how close this claim is to gender essentialism. Trans activists will accuse feminists of essentialism, and then talk about female brains. The irony!
Saying males are male is not wrong
I like to compare this to religion. If I had a coworker who’s deeply religious, and I kept going up in his face saying “there’s no god, it’s just stupid make-believe” then that would be harassment. The same applies to going up in the face of a male coworker who believes he’s a woman and saying “you’re not a woman” all the time.
But does a religious coworker have a right to force me into their religion? Do I not have a right to admit, or even comfortably state, that I’m an atheist? Why then is it such an enormous taboo to “admit” that one doesn’t believe “trans women” are women?
Sure, there’s gender dysphoria, I get that. But a mental health condition doesn’t give you the right to control other people’s thoughts and feelings. As part of the mental health support they receive, trans people ought to be taught that they have to cope with the fact that other people may not see them as the sex they wish to be seen as. No matter how well you think you pass, if you still have that fear in you, it will weigh on you, and eventually you’ll end up in a situation where someone learns you’re trans and says “oh, so you’re not actually a woman then.” Not to mention how rare it is to actually pass that well; most will be clocked as male routinely through daily life.
It’s healthier to be at peace with the fact that many people will simply never see you as the sex you wish you were. As an added benefit, you can then stop bullying people who admit to not sharing your beliefs about gender identity.
“Transphobia” is bullshit now
Of course there’s discrimination against transgender people. Duh. And of course anyone who cares about universal human rights and dignity is against that kind of unjust discrimination.
But now a “transphobe” is apparently anyone who doesn’t believe in gender identity, anyone who thinks it’s unfair to let males partake in women’s sports, anyone who thinks that males shouldn’t get a state-protected right to enter all female-only spaces, and so on.
It’s a bit like “Islamophobia” now. Sure there’s unjust discrimination against innocent Muslims. (See my previous blog post.) But “Islamophobia” is a bullshit term that’s used to shut down any discussion that involves criticism of Islam as an ideology.
“Cisgender” is bullshit too
It would be one thing if “transgender” were defined in terms of, say, having gender dysphoria, or taking hormones, or whatever, and then “cisgender” could be used simply to mean “person who isn’t transgender.” But that’s not the way these terms are used.
Both “transgender” and “cisgender” are now defined in terms of “gender identity.” A person who is “cisgender” is said to have a “gender identity” compatible with the “sex they were assigned at birth.” (I’ll ignore the absurdity of the idea that sex is “assigned” at birth, because I want to finish up this blog post soon.) What if I don’t believe in the idea of people having a “gender identity”? It’s almost the same claim as the female brain.
So no thank you, I reject “cis” as a label. It makes no sense under my worldview.
It’s bullshit all the way down!
I said I was gonna write more blog posts, but shorter ones. This one ended up not so short. Time to wrap it up.
There’s many other issues I could touch on, like the scientific evidence that it is definitely unfair to let male people, even if they undergo hormone treatment, to play in women’s sports. Or I could address the fallacy that feminists are supposedly “painting all trans women as sex offenders” when they complain about men in women’s changing rooms and so on.
But there’s a reason people have written entire books on this topic, like “Trans” by Helen Joyce. The bullshit is never ending, and you need never ending amounts of effort to counter it all.
So that’s it for today.