DiscussionDo you agree with gender critical feminism?

submitted by ukrdude10 from self.LGBDropTheT

I know this is a very diverse group, but because we were on friendly terms with r/GC, I was wondering how much of their ideology we agree with. Personally, I don't really buy the argument that TRA's are evil rapist men who want to degrade and destroy women. But then again I am a gay male so I will never be in a position to have that opinion. There are many biological women who support trans rights and see MtF's as real women. I would love to hear your opinions.

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[–]usehername 30 insightful - 3 fun30 insightful - 2 fun31 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Mostly yes. It's not so much that TRA's are evil rapist men who want to degrade and destroy women, but that the majority of trans-identified males (I think that term is fantastic) nowadays keep their penis, and tend to have AGP. There are a lot of high-profile trans-identified male trolls like Johnathan Yaniv and Alok "Little Girls are Kinky" Vaid-Menon legally being disgusting kiddie-lovers and woman haters/rapists. The current laws around transgender people allow these kinds of men to prosper and not many people seem to give a shit, which is why GC is extra outraged. Andrea Long Chu is a very famous "trans woman" who said that the bare essentials of being female are blank, dead eyes, and an expectant asshole. There are actually a lot of men like this.

Women who don't hop on board the trans train usually lose their careers and platforms, which can give the illusion that most women agree with trans "rights" (privileges). A "real woman" is female, and anyone pro-science agrees.

[–]BEB 26 insightful - 1 fun26 insightful - 0 fun27 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Trans-identified males in the US go to jail at disproportionately high rates: their lifetime incarceration rate is between 19-65%

Whereas the general US population's lifetime incarceration rate is 3%, and that's mostly men. Women don't go to jail much, and when they do it's primarily for non-violent offenses.

Among US serial killers, there is a disproportionately high % of trans-identified and/or cross-dressing males.

Of trans-identified males imprisoned in the UK a disproportionately high % are sex offenders.

A very large % of the trans-identified males now or about to be placed in women's jails in the US and Canada are in for extremely violent crimes: murder, pedophilia, rape, kidnapping - and again, most women in these jails are in for non-violent crimes.

Yet these violent, often heterosexual men are going to be placed in jail cells with women.

BTW: Upwards of 90% of trans-identified males in the US keep their male genitalia and according to a much-cited survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, close to 2/3rds of them are attracted to women.

So the men who are or are about to be given access to women in women's prisons in the US and Canada are violent, often heterosexual, offenders, 90+% of whom have intact male genitalia.

What could go wrong?

And you, OP, as a gay man, will be blamed because the gender lobby has used the organizations that homosexuals built and paid for to advance their own often-atrocious agenda.

[–]julesburm1891 28 insightful - 2 fun28 insightful - 1 fun29 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Short answer: it’s complicated.

Long answer: I’d consider myself a classical feminist. (I may have just made up this term.) By this, I mean I acknowledge that women experience discrimination on the basis of sex and that I believe in social, economic, and political equality for all women.

However, I find some problems with a lot of modern feminist camps.

  1. There is a tendency to focus on everyone and everything but women. A lot of people would rather focus on things like Islamophobia, racism, immigration, etc. rather than on Muslim women, black women, immigrant women, etc. I get the need to have a conversation about the needs of minority women, but I don’t understand why all causes need to stand at center stage and push women’s issues behind the curtains.
  2. The rabid focus on transwomen. I understand there are sane transwomen out there who are trying to get on with their lives and I respect that. That doesn’t change that they aren’t women and shouldn’t be the focus of women’s issues. Furthermore, what we are seeing in women’s spaces are lunatics like Julia Serrano and Rachel McKinnon shouting over women for their own benefit. The transwomen who are taking over feminist discourse are AGP men who do not experience the sexism women face, are demanding that we relinquish rights and safety for their validation, and largely seem to be a load of actual misogynists. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a transwoman talking about how validating it is to be degraded or harassed I could quit my day job. This all just seems to indicate that they believe women are worthy of being degraded and harassed.)
  3. The frivolous nature of a lot of modern feminist complaints. Who cares if dude sits with his legs spread on a subway? Does it matter if most of the books a person enjoys were written by men? Should I or should I not shave my legs? These type of complaints are just silly and detract from serious concerns.
  4. The push for things that aren’t actually in women’s interest. I really don’t know why modern feminism has decided things like prostitution, pornography, or doing sexual things you aren’t really into to make a guy happy are empowering for women. They’re not. What’s actually empowering is getting a practical education (STEM, healthcare, finance, the trades, etc.), having a good career and financial stability, and forging healthy reciprocal relationships.
  5. The cringe factor. “Men are trash.” “Girl, your eyeliner is so sharp it could kill.” “Kill all men.” All these platitudes are just fucking dumb and aren’t helping anyone.

The Rub: no one but redfems are taking on these problems. Other feminists seem to either ignore them or accelerate them at some sort of maglev capacity. At the same time, radfems are politically far left, not super friendly to religion, and (from my experience) can get stuck in the “all men are evil” rut. As a centrist, a believer, and as someone who thinks most men are decent, I find it hard to relate to all of what radical feminism is about.

[–]wokuspokusWoman in a man’s world, TERF in whatever we call this madness 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree with pretty much all of that. I think Redfems don’t like men as a political class which is pretty valid given the way men have treated us over history, however most individual men are fine. I think you can dislike a certain group of people on the whole and still like many individual members. Modern feminism basically centres everything except women (what men want, racism, islamophobia (whatever’s currently on trend for the woke tbh). This leaves radfems as the only ones with an ideology that actually puts women first because they are women.

[–]Archie 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Agreed with everything, this is part of what drove me back to second wave feminism as well.

[–]BEB 14 insightful - 5 fun14 insightful - 4 fun15 insightful - 5 fun -  (25 children)

I just want to add that a good portion of middle-aged and older US and, I think, UK, gender critical feminists are 2nd Wave feminists.

2nd Wave feminists' support was essential for homosexuals in the battle for gay rights and also to get funding for AIDS research.

So gay men like you kind of owe us for being as accepted as you are, because without heterosexual and homosexual 2nd Wave feminists, gay men, who are a small minority, would have not have had the numbers or the clout to convince lawmakers to give them rights.

When I see gay men especially wail on GC feminists I want to kick them (not literally) because you would be NOWHERE without the women who fought for you back then. The women who are now GC feminists because we woke up to the incredibly dangerous gender agenda attack on women's rights.

[–]ukrdude10[S] 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Oh come fucking on, this sounds like a TRA rambling about Marsha P. Johnson and shit, no need for this hateful banter. I was just saying that I don't agree with vilifying all men because of actions of a few, none of us chose to be born with a penis and broad shoulders.

I support GC for the most part and read their sub regularly, I just don't think there is an all-male conspiracy to oppress women. straight men generally want to appease women for obvious reasons, while gay men are indifferent or supportive of women. But of course feel free to question my logic.

[–]BEB 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Where did I talk about vilifying all men or gay men? Where have I said there's an all-male conspiracy to oppress women?

I have literally supported gay men since the mid-1970s. I have lobbied for gay men's rights. I have nursed gay men with AIDS when people wouldn't even touch them.

The only thing I'm asking in return is that gay men REMEMBER what women have done for them - we provided the numbers to get you your rights - and we provided a hell of a lot of emotional support - and support women now that our rights, our dignity, our privacy, our safety, and our sports are under attack by former gay organizations and men who claim to be women.

[–]simpliyoot 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Gay "men" are not "men" as in theyre not part of the patriarchy. Theyre considered traitors to it and traitors are always considered worthy of death more than the people the patriarchy is meant to oppress. Heterosexual women are far closer to the patriarchy than a gay man will ever be. And no, you are not under attack by gay organizations. All of them have been hijacked by hyper aggressive, dominant, psychotic heterosexual men with the help of "intersectionality". All these former gay organizations were almost exclusively run by gay men to humanize same sex attraction. That was their only goal. And then they were slowly hijacked by lesbians who were the ones responsible for pushing out the gay men. There were no gay men to push out when the take over by straight "lesbians" happened. When the AGP men took over, they defeated the lesbians and there were no gays to be found.

And you are vilifying gay men as if theyre somehow responsible for this mess, promised to laugh at the violent homophobic backlash from this (which means you know you're going to get away from this and walk away since whats really transing them is your gender binary bullshit) and you're on a site commenting on surrogacy being used by gay men. You know, surrogacy, where 99.99999% of the clientele is exclusively straight women and the service was designed for them but the only time a feminist talks about surrogacy is when 0.00001% of the clientele, a gay man, uses it and suddenly it's misogynistic. You have an extreme bias towards gay men to the point where it distorts and warps whatever principal you're trying to push.

[–]Shales123 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

False equivalency. The difference is that the TRAs are lying in order to guilt LGB into letting transpeople rape us

[–]simpliyoot 9 insightful - 4 fun9 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 4 fun -  (6 children)

...you did nothing for gay rights. literally absolutely nothing. It's been heavily debated in this sub. Only true homosexual lesbians actually helped and even that, they acknowledged they squandered most of their time on women's issues and left gays to put all the effort into homosexual rights. The reason the aids thing is brought up so often as a talking point is because thats literally the only time lesbians interacted with gay men and thought that was their contribution to gays in their campaign for same sex rights. Thats why they hold on to that talking point, otherwise, 99% of the work was almost done exclusively by gay men. And second wave feminists spent most of their time harassing lesbians and trying to appropriate their identity to turn it into a joke. You sort of forgot you're a heterosexual and try to hide behind "im a feminist", which means absolutely nothing since your people spent 2000 years basically committing genocide against gays. It took billions of dollars and mass media campaigns to persuade people to advance homosexual rights. I highly doubt a single cent was spent by your group to help with that. And homosexual lesbians dont represent the actions of heterosexual women. Theyre homosexual and were acting in their best interest. Since we're playing this game, where are my gay reparations.

[–]BEB 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Good- I'll remember your gratitude when the excesses of gender ideology turns huge swathes of the world back to overt homophobes and laugh rather than try to help you escape from the mob that wants to beat you into a pulp.

[–]simpliyoot 4 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 4 fun -  (4 children)

You're threatening apathy? The same apathy that you practiced before? Were you even alive when this supposed "favour" was done? Or did you read about it somewhere, forgot it was exclusively lesbians, your homophobia kicked up and you're somehow trying to collect a favour from all "gay-kind"? Im not sure if you're stupid, or if you think gay people are stupid. Gays And Lesbians have a troubled past because Gays feel the overwhelming majority of lesbians were helping carry your heterosexual homophobic asses and doing all the work for YOU with the rape crisis centers, the anti abortion movements, divorce and alimony payment legislation...just non stop homosexual female (lesbian) activism carrying your water for you while you were busy pretending to do god knows what. You're very well known to be a walking disaster and parasite to gay and lesbian movements and energy.

So, after Lesbians basically broke their backs helping you (and this is where gays have their gripe with lesbians), what exactly did you help them with in return? How did you help out with the "homosexual" part of their identity when they helped you with all the heterosexual parts of your identity? Practically nothing. Gay men had to fetishize themselves as fun, lovable accessories and emotional labour support for straight women and lesbians had to fetishize and dehumanize themselves into "fun" bimbos to counteract the "theyre going to collapse western civilization" bullshit.

And we KNOW the deep, psychotic levels of homophobia you go through. You just constantly keep forgetting you're literally a heterosexual. What you just pulled is the equivalent of "oh! so thats what YOU think? well, then im joining the KKK immediately!" thats not the sign of a stable person. You've already had KKK levels of homophobia within you. And what you said is the equivalent of me saying, "i'll remember your lack of gratitude as the straight men begin raping you and laugh rather than help you escape the men who want to slice your neck"... again, the fact that you think we dont see what you are is a joke. We've met PLENTY of your kind. No one is indebted to you for something you never did..dont try to revise gay/lesbian history, we've been through this before with transexuals, antifa anarchists, everyone else. To gays and lesbians, you're not an oppressed woman first. You're a heterosexual. And how are we supposed to align ourselves with you in your fantasy military war general scenario where you think you're building some armada but the gays you tried to recruit find you to be an idiot because your analysis sucks. You dont even understand that heterosexism is causing all these innocent children to transition, and not "gender ideology". You're probably not even aware 90% of these transexuals are heterosexual men and women. You're too busy hyper focusing on "the big bad evil men", which can sometimes be accurate but everyone rolls their eyes when people like you see an asteroid coming to wipe out all life on the planet and call it sexist because it's going to kill all women.

oh, im sure some heterosexual men have helped you with your feminist campaigns in the past (which im sure you barely contributed to). Do you feel like you owe heterosexual men and then accept them as normal sane people when they threaten rape or death when you dont show "gratitude"? Or does it end up just validating every single thing you thought about them.

[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Welcome back, exponent2. Already get sick of your new alt?

[–]fuck_reddit 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

“Gay men... would not have had the numbers or the clout to convince lawmakers to give them rights.” Yeah, tell that to the hundreds, if not thousands of gay executives and high-level bureaucrats that poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marriage equality campaigning and spent hundreds of thousands of hours speaking directly to presidents, senators, and congressmen.

[–]BEB 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm talking about before. The 2nd Wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. I was around from the mid-1970s. Most gay men were not openly gay outside of gay bubbles. Pretty much everyone in their lives knew they were gay, but it was mostly don't ask, don't tell. And they lived in fear of being beaten up on the street, or losing their jobs, or apartments, for being gay.

I have a very close friend from university, who has never told me he is gay. EVER. About ten years ago, he introduced me to his male partner, but never said, WE ARE PARTNERS, or I AM GAY. He has never told any of his old friends that he's gay, even though we all knew in university and couldn't have cared less, but didn't mention it because he didn't. Again, don't ask, don't tell.

I had a boss in the '80s, a fabulously successful and very nice man - same deal. He had a beard (a woman he pretended was his girlfriend) and the more cruel people in the office would make fun of him and his beard behind his back.

Even in 2004, when Gavin Newsom legalized gay marriage in San Francisco, the backlash helped George W. Bush win re-election because Americans still weren't ready.

Hell, even in 2008 CALIFORNIA (home of uber-liberal nut jobs) had Prop 8 on the ballot trying to ban gay marriage. AND IT PASSED.

Bottom line: women have traditionally been always more on the side of gay men than straight men have in many cultures. I have traveled a lot for an American, including in cultures where gay men are encouraged or forced to transition - it's women protecting gay men in most of them.

And it was women in the US who provided the numbers and the support for society in general to accept gay men.

Before COVID I used to fly a few times a month. I am a chatty person and look harmless so UBER drivers open up to me, and, anecdotally, I would guess that there are a lot of straight men in this country (the over 40s perhaps) who have still not accepted gay men, they're just hiding it because to say it now in public would be suicidal. But go look at the comment section of Breitbart if you want to see how much support heterosexual men give gay men.

And now, gay male leaders, (mostly younger) gay men and the organizations gay men helped build, have turned on all women, with their support of gender identity policies like the Equality Act, which will set women's rights, women's privacy, women's dignity, women's safety and women's sports back years to decades.

So yeah, I am not happy.

[–]INeedSomeTimeAsexual Ally 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Nah. I only agree with the Gender Critical part but also to a degree since radfems understand it as a symptom of patriarchy and how poor young women can't cope with all the sexism and stereotypes associated with their gender so they transition into men while men always transition for fetish reasons and are inherently predatory this way. This is one possible scenario but I disagree on generalizing it onto the whole phenomenon. They can be the inverse: a man who can't cope with the gender roles assignes to him so he thinks he must be a woman inside and then a woman, who is too deep into yaoi that she believes she's a gay man. Still not the only dynamic. More is going on in this whole trend. Anyways I am just a gender skeptic, not a radfem. Radfems would probably hate me for also pointing out the issues men deal with too because hurr durr women shouldn't be a men's emotional labour or something. Eh.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Mostly but i don't agree that gender is 100% a social construct. Yes much of it is societally constructed like pink is for girls etc... But there are some clear reasons why sex based roles would be evolutionarily advantageous.

[–]julesburm1891 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes. I agree that there are a lot of socially constructed gender roles (e.g. boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls). It seems kind of insane to insist that everything is socially constructed though. Considering things like aggression tend to follow sex-based patterns across cultures and in different primate species, it seems likely that some differences do relate to sex.

[–]usehername 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Are you quoting Blaire White??

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't understand your question.

[–]usehername 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It was a yes-or-no question, but based on the fact that you didn't understand, I'm guessing you don't know who that is, so the answer is no.

[–]Elvira95Viva la figa 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

VioletRemi is strong radical feminist, and I like to agree with her, usually lol Seriously speaking, TRA are mostly deluded men with a serious fetish. They might not want to degrade women, they want to be like women and destroy anyone or anything that goes against this delusional want

[–]censorshipment 6 insightful - 9 fun6 insightful - 8 fun7 insightful - 9 fun -  (0 children)

Nope. I think white GC feminists are playing damsels in distress.

Black GC feminists (such as the ones on Lipstick Alley and some of them are on the FDS subreddit) don't act like damsels in distress... we just don't want to share spaces with men. We aren't afraid of them.

Black libfem TRAs are our biggest enemy... they love to put on capes to save Black trans women from us. 😂

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

No.

Gender critical feminists have a fundamentally materialistic, Marxist outlook on women as being a means of production. They don't serve women's best interests at the end of the day, and their worldview contains no space for harmony between the sexes or peaceful human reproduction. They are often very intelligent, creative women but it is it what it is.

People are people, not things.

[–]BEB 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I think you're thinking of radical feminists.

Most GC feminists, or rather GC people, because gender critical has become a Big mixed-sex Tent, are just normal, non-dogmatic, people, now from across the political spectrum.

GCers believe that biological sex is dimorphic and immutable (hardly a controversial position about five minutes ago) but that people should be free to behave/dress/ appear as they wish, regardless of gender stereotypes.

GC people also acknowledge that women and men have different life experiences based on their biological sex and based on how societies treat them because of their biological sex.

Also that, because of men's propensity to stick their penises into vaginas whether invited or not, and females are the sex that can be forced to reproduce, women need protection in certain circumstances, including in spaces where they are naked or otherwise vulnerable. Common sense, really.

And many GC women aren't scared of trans-identified males per se: we are scared of any male, because there is a very significant chance that we've been raped or sexually assaulted, even in countries where women appear to have close to equal rights.

So we just don't want men, ANY man, around when we or our children, are vulnerable. Again, common sense.

Read JK Rowling's statement on her site - IMO she explains GC feminism correctly, and I don't even know if she considers herself a GC feminist.

[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Completely agree with you here. I don't mind if a man was to wear a dress or wear makeup or behave in a feminine way, so long as he acknowledges that none of that makes him a woman or any less of a man. Same goes for women who are masculine or wear men's clothing.

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

We're looking at the same thing through different lenses.

[–]BEB 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

At least half of the "liberal" GC feminists I know are heterosexual women, many in happy relationships with men and most with children. The rest are lesbians, but most don't seem to be man-haters, per se.

And there's a huge contingent of GC feminists who are conservatives; they don't tend to call themselves "feminists" but they're out there on the front lines, using their law degrees, etc., fighting the good fight against gender ideology.

For example, very conservative, Abigail Shrier, has probably done more for GC feminism than any other American women of the last ten years (not because others didn't try).

Most of the GC feminists on s/GenderGritical seem to be not particularly liberal. I would say s/GenderCritical actually leans centrist/slightly conservative politically.

The GC feminists on Ovarit.com seem to be more liberal, but again, the majority seem to be un-radical, heterosexual women, many with children.

The GC movement also now has a hell of a lot of men, including gay men, and now "Progressive" Super Straight men, so there's that.

Bottom line is that I don't see why a gay man who believes that society should allow him to be a healthy, happy gay man and not try to make him into a facsimile of a woman wouldn't support GC thought.

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Things must have moved on from the last time I checked in with r/gendercritical a couple of years ago. Radical feminists were very much running the show and were the heart of all of the ideas being discussed and promoted there.

If believing you can't change your sex, but also believing gender non-conforming behavior shouldn't be punished qualifies as gender critical feminism then I suppose I'm a feminist now. There used to be a lot of baggage that went with that.

[–]BEB 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think that the GC movement has changed a lot even in the time that I've been reading about it, which is about five years.

I would say that in the US, gender critical is now a movement of homosexuals, both male and female, and homosexual-friendly heterosexuals, from across the political spectrum, many of whom do not consider themselves feminists. I feel that its basic intent is to:

  • stop the transing of children, many of whom are gay

  • protect the sex-based rights of women and gay men

  • protect the sex-segregated spaces of women and often children

  • protect women's sports

  • protect free speech

  • protect parents' rights to choose the best medical care for their children

  • protect the science of biology

In the US, there are still rad fems involved - for instance, WoLF (the Women's Liberation Front) is still doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of court cases. But even WoLF doesn't seem that hard-edged now. I could have sworn that you used to have to be a Marxist to join WoLF but I don't know if that's the case anymore.

But many of the posters on this sub and on s/GenderCritical I would say lean centrist or conservative, given their comments in the run up to the US election last year.

Ovarit seems to be more liberal and you might still get a rad fem vibe from the posters there. But the gender critical movement is being flooded by normies - as evidenced by the explosion of Super Straight.

So I think, while rad fems deserve a tremendous amount of credit and thanks for sounding the alarm and for taking an incredible amount of vitriol from trans activists, including death threats and job loss, they are no longer the only ones moving gender critical thought into the public mind.

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Where did all the radfems go?

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good question.

I think in the UK there are still some fierce sisters - there's a contingent of them who seem to consider themselves very Left, who constantly take US feminists to task for "allying" with the Right.

These UK feminists' notion of "allying" seems to mean US feminists teaming with conservatives only on issues of concern, such as the transitioning of minors, and saving women's sports & spaces.

Oddly enough, some of those UK uber-Lefty, Marxist-type feminists use preferred pronouns and are willing to compromise more on gender identity policies than the US feminists who the UK feminists claim are "allying" with the Right. Go figure.

I remember r/GenderCritical being way more rad fem than s/GenderCritical is now. s/GenderCritical is a very tolerant space in which posters often express conservative political viewpoints. TBH, I prefer s/GenderCritical to r/GenderCritical because I felt the latter was sometimes too dogmatic.

I think that the moderators on Ovarit are more rad fem and more hard-assed, but even on Ovarit there seems to be posters who are not very Left, or Left at all.

So yeah, I'm sure that there are rad fems out there still hard-lining, but I think that the battle against the gender ideologists to retain just basic human and civil rights for women has kind of made many rad fems focus on the immediate danger and if/when that is over, maybe they'll get back to Marx and striking the roots of patriarchy.

[–]fuck_reddit 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree with a fair amount of their assessments of events (ie, trans people and eliminating sex-segregated spaces are a threat to women.), but I disagree with most of their theory. Largely because social construction theory is just wildly wrong. I also know (as a man) that their understanding of male psychology is warped at best.

[–]OPPRESSED_REPTILIANIntersex male | GNC | Don't call me "a gay", "twink" or "queen" 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No. They are just as delusional as TRAs.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Certainly much of GC, or at least its popularity, seems to be a reaction to trans women, however, the basic tenants of GC don't require trans to even be a thing, men will always exist; though GC may have been developed because of and through the lens of trans. Not about to undertake the intractable task of a genealogy of the feminisms...

It's also a culture.

I'm generally amenable to the basics of GC, if not the culture. The main topic I break with GC on is the idea that men and women, beyond their basic reproductive biology and physical capabilities, are the same. I instead see psychological differences: styles of cognition, career interests (not necessarily aptitude!), etc. All sorts of things that I don't think can be adequately explained solely on the basis of a socially-constructed patriarchy or a social reflection of only reproductive and physical-capability dimorphism. I think that's an oversimplification.

While sharing many individual goals with GC, my sometimes different means and ethical handling of arriving at the same conclusions will get me skewered by them, which is alienating. Especially because the rationale for some of my belief has been completely co-opted by TRAs for their nefarious purposes.

Both trans and GC are at each others throats, and no middle ground can be held by a person without either crowd assuming that the person indeed belongs strictly in the other, respective camp.

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think that's changed - what is now thought of as gender critical in the US is not any really defined ideology, and thus has become very big tent and includes gay men and gay-supporting conservatives.

Many people now referred to as gender critical by the gender lobby are not the gender critical or radical feminists of old, instead they are just normal people who are OK with men wearing dresses, etc., but believe what I have stated in other posts on this thread.

GC people are not at the genderists' throats per se. We just believe that their rights end where women/gay men/parents/scientists/children's rights begin.

We want ourselves respected and our rights maintained, but wish the genderists the best in their fight for rights, safety and freedom.

And please, anyone - name one GC person who has gone after a trans activist's job? Who has issued a death or rape threat to a trans activist? It doesn't happen.

But yes, there is no pie in terms of women sharing what little we have with men claiming to be women.

By claiming that they can identify into women's oppression, transgender identified males imply that women can identify out of our oppression. We cannot.

Gender people can simply change their appearance and their oppression disappears, women cannot.

From the ages of between approx. 12-50 most women can be forced to reproduce. For our entire existence, except since the advent of the pill and abortion a mere 50-60 or so years ago, women have been kept in an almost constant state of pregnancy during those years.

My grandmother, who wasn't legally allowed to vote until her late 20s, and not because of her pronouns, was one of 14 children - that was extremely common then. Her mother was pregnant or taking care of an infant for decades.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what women have had to put up with for human's entire history and before.

But even me - before Title IX I was not allowed to take Shop, because it was for boys. Girls had to take Home Economics to learn how to be housewives.

Even had my grandmother and I declared ourselves transmen, or changed our pronouns, our oppression would not have been lifted. We were not oppressed because of our identity, but because we were/are women.

And i would love someone who supports trans demands to explain the difference between trans-racialism and trans-genderism and why one is feted and the other one shunned. Go ahead, I have time...

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think that's changed - what is now thought of as gender critical in the US is not any really defined ideology, and thus has become very big tent and includes gay men and gay-supporting conservatives.

If that's the case, then maybe sign me up. I appreciate the work you're doing to try and change the perception. Just as how there are some reasonable trans people out there, but we all tend to pay attention to the bad actors, I think is the same case here. Groups get judged by their perceived extremists, and I do see those sorts of people or thoughts banging around in places I'd consider to be largely GC.

[–]BEB 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I myself am not trying to change the perception: I feel that the perception of what trans activists consider "gender critical," and what people who are now sort of considering themselves "gender critical" (although many wouldn't know that term, much less use it) has changed from its rad fem origins, and I'm just trying to explain the changes.

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm generally amenable to the basics of GC, if not the culture. The main topic I break with GC on is the idea that men and women, beyond their basic reproductive biology and physical capabilities, are the same. I instead see psychological differences: styles of cognition, career interests (not necessarily aptitude!), etc. All sorts of things that I don't think can be adequately explained solely on the basis of a socially-constructed patriarchy or a social reflection of only reproductive and physical-capability dimorphism. I think that's an oversimplification.

You summed this up so beautifully, and I wholly agree. 2nd wave feminism is dehumanizing and reductive. There also, possibly just in the recent past, was a whole subculture associated with it that had prejudices and taboos not necessarily drawn from the belief system itself. They were, to put it mildly, down on bisexuals.

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was around for the tail end of 2nd Wave feminism, and I would say that it was far from dehumanizing or reductive.

I don't think younger people understand what women were up against. We were not considered deserving of basic human and civil rights. In the US, to this day, women do not have an Equal Rights Amendment.

2nd Wave feminism, as I remember it, was a broad movement composed of women, normal women of all colors, who were fed the fuck up with our oppression. There were radicals, and that's what killed it, but so much of it was women, just average women, in a collective roar.

[–]simpliyoot 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I dont and they dont believe what they say either. It's mostly because when you see how they talk about trans identified females (the ones who are straight women but identify as gay men) you can see they can clearly tell whats wrong with them and what happened to them. The "dysphoria" straight people have is the exact same dysphoria gays and lesbians used to have (although our culture somewhat helped us stop it). It's just from psychotic levels of gender and both men and women refuse to let go of it and it slowly destroys them. I think we just see AGP men and AGP women when theyre most enraged, infuriated and dehumanized because they see gays and lesbians as monstrous cackling demons who wont validate them because we're hateful, cruel and sadistic people. They dont understand that if we do validate them, we ruin our civil rights...and we've sort of been murdered for 2000 years for being unable to be attracted to the opposite sex, which they sort of demand from us as a group and force us to say "genitals are a preference and im a perverted fetishist for saying i like same sex genitals". Theyre not evil people but they will destroy us simply because they think we're evil for not interacting with, engaging or validating them as the same sex so the affects of their destruction would be the same as an evil homophobe.

[–]endless_assfluff 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, and I would also consider myself to be a radical feminist. And I also don't buy into the argument that trans women are evil rapist men who want to degrade and destroy women. That is because this is not what gender-critical or radical feminists believe. These straw men get repeated because gender-critical or radical feminists are easy groups to shit on: many people think the word "radical" indicates a failure to consider nuance and middle ground, and many people, although they might not like to admit it to themselves, also dislike the word "feminism."

I'm going to use an imperfect metaphor to illustrate what I'm thinking. Liken saying "all men are rapists" (or that any subgroup of men are rapists) to saying "all odd numbers are prime." Switching it around, "all rapists are men" is like "all prime numbers are odd." None of these statements are true. What radical feminists are actually saying is "most rapists are men," which is like "most prime numbers are odd." (Of course the ratios are off here because it's not like there's one female rapist and an infinite number of male ones. You get the point.) We're also saying "this is an important thing to take into consideration if we want to prevent people, both men and women, from being sexually assaulted." Now if you don't trust any data that suggest rape and sexual assault crimes are more likely to be committed by men, or if you don't think we should take biological sex into account when discussing sexual assault, at least those are both a step above misrepresenting the argument.

I don't have the data on sexual assault committed by TRAs or trans women, so I won't comment on the relative prevalence of that. But we don't need every single TRA/trans woman to be a perv for it to be a concern. Just some. Just a subset. Just enough to say "hey, what should we do to prevent this problem" rather than "this NEVER happens."

I could go into more detail about what line of thinking and introspection led me to radical feminism, but no one asked that so I'm going to cut it short.

What I'm saying is, people siding with any ideology have beliefs that may conflict with each other and that they may have arrived at through any number of ways. Some gender-critical or radical feminists arrived at our beliefs through an interesting reasoning process, but it's not productive to talk about them in a space like this where many people hear the words "radfem" or "GC" and assume they must be wrong in some stupidly obvious way like the odd-number example I described above. So because your original post has a sentence crapping on GC/radfem beliefs, the replies you're going to get are mostly going to be from people who also feel comfortable crapping on GC/radfem beliefs to some degree.

For my part, I have no clue whether writing this out was worth the time, but I hope it was.

[–]MarkJeffersonTight defenses and we draw the line 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

To me, TRAs are any Males AND Females who are apologists for the Trans who behave badly, those who demand special privileges for Trans, and encourage the proliferation of trans(including children who can't consent to transition) no matter the consequences. So TRA is a bit of a misnomer, since it's not really about Trans "rights" activism. Also note that TRA does not necessarily include the Trans perpetrators in question; It just refers to the activists. Anyway, I'd agree with those who share this general definition insofar as it comes to this specific issue, and that may or may not include people who identify as GC or Feminist. I wouldn't carry water for the followers of any ideology.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There is a big overlap between gender crit feminism and radical/2nd wave feminism. I agree with some of their ideology, and some I disagree with. Mainly, I agree with gender being a patriarchal social construct that harms women, trans activism being in direct conflict with women's rights and LGB rights, and the misogynistic harm of prostitution/sex work/pornography. I disagree with other things, like PiV being inherently power unbalanced, and GNC men using makeup/feminine clothes hurting women. So I don't consider myself a gender crit feminist or even ally in general. I just hate homophobes and misogynists, which is why I hate TRAs. Lol.