Recently I made a video where I got banned
from a Gender Critical community, and it had
been asked of me what the movement was in
the comments, and as I had also been thinking
of the movement I thought that I should make
a video explaining my views on it.
'Gender Critical' 'feminists' make a distinction
between sex and gender. They see 'gender'
as a harmful social construct based on personality,
and as something that should be abolished.
Sex, on the other hand, is what they actually
thinks determines whether someone is a man
or a woman. While many different definitions
are used by Gender Critical feminists, the
most common definition is that a woman has
XX chromosomes and a man has XY chromosomes.
An important consequence of this is that the
vast majority of trans men would now be considered
women and trans women would now be considered
men using these definitions. They also oppose
many sex-positive movements and other feminist
movements as they think that certain sexual
activities are oppressive against women and
often defend trans people.
They will say that their main aim is to abolish
the patriarchy, which they view as the current
system in which men oppress and restrict the
freedoms of women, notably using their definitions
of men and women of course. They believe that
women's spaces should be protected, and if
necessary, checks should be done to ensure
that those who enter are what they consider
women and not men. If they suspect a woman
is a man, they will often go after them to
question it, even if this means that a man
has to enter a women's space. They in fact
will claim that most, if not all, trans women,
or 'trans identified men' in their definitions,
claim to be women purely to oppress women
and access their spaces. It is also said that
these people and society put pressure on lesbians
to have sex with these men.
They also think that identity is very important.
Especially so, those of groups they see as
being oppressed. They get offended by people
with XY chromosomes calling themselves women,
and even moreso when they call themselves
lesbians, and see this as removal of their
true meanings.
So, let's debunk this transphobic heap of
shit.
Firstly, let's go back to their definitions
of sex and gender. As I said, many of them
have different definitions of what sex is,
but most agree that it is XX or XY. Perhaps
the most obvious problem with this is that
genetic disorders exist in which people are
not XX or XY, and in fact many people with
or without a Y chromosome have sexual traits
far more similar to most who have XX and XY
chromosomes respectively. The common rebuttal
to this is that as these people are a minority,
it doesn't matter that much. However, this
is wholly irrelevant. Even if only one person
did not fit their overly simple definitions
of sex, there would be a complete injustice
done as a result because of the harsh nature
of this difference made by Gender Critical
feminists. And as around 1% of people are
actually intersex, this binary system of sex
causes masses of problems, as it does in the
current society. However, sex could still
be a perfect binary with perfect definitions
and all the rest of the problems with the
movement would still exist.
The idea that gender is personality is just
complete bullshit. I would have to imagine
it comes from the connected idea that gender
is used to oppress cisgender women and shouldn't
exist, and then links it to the patriarchal
connection between gender, except mistaking
it for sex, and personality. However, the
truth is that you can define 'gender' however
you want, but the state of being a man or
a woman or something else is clearly a concept
other than physical sex, from my own and other
people's experiences. Sex does correlate strongly
with gender, but so does personality with
sex, and as these people rightly point out,
sex and personality cannot be considered the
same thing. Misdefining gender and then assuming
that it must therefore be sex that determines
if someone is something that can be described
by gender is just ridiculous. I should also
point out that gender is not a choice, and
given the current society's hostility I don't
see why someone would fake being trans.
And that brings us on nicely to the identity
element of this. Gender Critical feminists
will say that women mean more than just their
genitalia, or more generally sexual characteristics.
However, their definition of women refers
precisely to this! Using this bigoted and
false definition of a woman, saying that a
woman is more than genitalia is just sexist,
because the term relates to literally nothing
else. Whether or not someone meets their definitions
as a woman in reality means absolutely nothing
except their sexual characteristics. And seeing
that these people do use genitalia to directly
define these identities, it seems creepy as
fuck to me, especially when it's done to children.
And as I have said before, the labels gay
and straight are stupid themselves, and caring
so much about whether or not someone meets
the definition of 'lesbian' is just homophobic.
It is true that in society there is a patriarchy,
in which cisgender men tend to be dominant
over cisgender women. However, much of the
proponents of this hierarchy, and those who
are making it happen, tend to oppress transgender
people, often through pretending they don't
exist and banning them from gender-segregated
areas. The idea of women's spaces, however,
is extremely patriarchal in itself. If it
weren't for bigoted men they would not need
to exist at all, so at the very least it is
just letting the patriarchy go free. But there
is another problem with it. Not only do some
cis men not want to harass cis women, but
many cis women can and do harass other cis
women. And as I said earlier, when they suspect
that someone other than a cis woman has entered,
they will often use violence against them.
However, this usually ends up being a cis
woman, wrecking the point of it being a 'safe
space' against trans women and other genders.
Many Gender Critical people even want genitalia
checks to check the sex of people trying to
use women-only spaces, which is seriously
fucked up to say the least. In addition to
this, they often oppose certain consensual
activities in the belief that they are oppressive
to cis women, especially when trans women
are involved, as I said earlier. However,
this is purely done in bigotry. They will
often threaten trans women and use cis women
who sleep with them against all trans people
in general, despite everyone involved giving
consent and being happy with the relationship.
Therefore there is a lot of pressure for cis
women not to have sex with trans women, even
if they want to, from this and right-wing
men's rights movements, and practically none
pressuring them to have a sexual interest
in trans women from society.
Note how all this is very much misogynistic,
sexist and transphobic. What is any of this
doing to stop actual abuse and smash the patriarchy?
It is literally supporting it! They want to
reduce women to their physical genitalia by
seeing it as such an important identity and
trait of a person, and then tell them how
they can have sex and use them as a tool to
attack trans people. Meanwhile, what the fuck
have they done to the bigoted, fucked up cishet
males that are the fucking problem? Fuck all.
In their actions, TERFs might as well be fucking
MRAs.
I have a lot more to say on the matter, so
if you have any questions I will answer them.
I was going to make a more general video about
transphobia, as many I've seen are very lacking
and too generous to the transphobic position,
but I ended up scrapping the idea.
