Sitting on the gender spectrum
Charlie Porter is a fashion journalist who thinks he’s a gender-rebel.
I am 48, a midlife point that gives me perspective on what I maybe didn’t realise before. I have always used clothing to poke at the assumptions of gender. As a kid, I had safe parameters from my whiteness and middle-class upbringing within an accepting family. Where I sit on the gender spectrum is like a comedy version of “male”, which has allowed me to pass lightly in this patriarchal society.
Others, he hints, are not so capacious in their thinking.
According to gender-critical feminists, men who voice their trans-inclusive beliefs on gender identity are bullies and misogynists. It is common among such men to desire the dismantling of patriarchy. I am one of them. Yet I believe the result of the gender-critical argument is that gendered stereotypes are maintained, and patriarchy is consolidated.
I’m gonna go right ahead and say I don’t think he has a clue what the gender-critical argument is. It’s certainly not “laydeez should wear skirts and men should wear trousers.” I’m also gonna say I don’t think he desires the dismantling of patriarchy, because here he is saying he’s better at feminism than those stupid women are.
I read the article and yes, he is mixing up people who think there are only 2 sexes with people who think those 2 sexes need to adhere to gender roles like dress vs pants.
I sometimes wonder how much opposition to GC views would disappear if those opposed could actually state them in a way that doesn’t make those who hold them start to claw at the furniture.
That would certainly help, but it seems to be out of the question.
He clearly doesn’t understand the gender-critical argument. Certainly an awful lot of people who claim to oppose gender-critical arguments cannot state the actual arguments; instead, they confuse “gender-critical” with something like “oppose trans rights and support adherence to gender roles” or something like that. I don’t know how much clearer the phrase could be: “gender-critical” => “criticize the concept of gender” => “oppose gender roles and gender-based oppression”.
I mentioned elsewhere, and it still befuddles me, that LGB Alliance USA issued a statement in which they implied the existence of a large number of organizations that called themselves “gender-critical” but nonetheless sought to uphold gender roles. Are there any such groups? I can understand some TRA organization like Stonewall or the ACLU claiming that, I don’t know, maybe Focus on the Family or the Catholic Church is “gender-critical”, but I don’t think either of those organizations would use the term to describe themselves. So are there any? Or is this really about groups that are called “gender-critical” by others? I would think, if you want to understand a position, you should ask people who actually claim to hold that position, not people who are said by others to hold it.
But how much of this is actual confusion and how much is deliberate? I would think it would be harder to so consistently misrepresent the GC position without knowing it to some degree. I am not inclined to give TAs the benefit of the doubt. They have demonstrated that they do not argue in good faith; in fact, they do not “argue” at all. We’ve seen how trans activists can’t point to any actual hateful, bigotry in JKR’s statements. They can’t because she hasn’t said anything of the kind. This has not stopped them from claiming she has. Trans activists are very careful to avoid quoting the compassionate, understanding statement sshe has made in defence of trans identified individuals. This is a deliberate strategy; it could not have come about by accident.
Back in the early days of Orca studies, researcher Paul Spong was working with a captive killer whale called Skana at the Vancouver Aquarium, trying to measure her intelligence. After conducting a series of tests in which she did very well, the whale’s behaviour changed. In a repeat run of the same test, she got the results 100% wrong. This amazed Spong, because he realized she had to have known the correct answers in order to “fail” so spectacularly. It could not have been chance. He figured that Skana was bored and/or pissed off, and expressed this by total non-compliance with the objectives of the test.
In the struggles for Orthodoxy in the early years of Christanity, the works of those who were deemed heretics were usually destroyed, but at least some of these heretical beliefs could be reconstructed, to a certain extent, because critics had paraphrased them in their polemics in order to refute them. Not the best way to go about determining the heterodox beliefs of early Christian variants, but I’d be willing to bet that the early Church Fathers did a better job of encapsulating and conveying the beliefs of those whom they opposed than TAs have (or ever will) in their no-debate, non-argument smearing of the radical feminist position.
I believe that TAs wilfully misconstruct the GC position, but in order to do this so well, to do so in such a way as to completely obscure that position, they have to know and understand it well enough to avoid conveying any part of it to their audiences. This could not happen by chance. It must be a deliberate choice, because no radical feminist I have read has ever held, or articulated, the position that TAs have constantly claimed they do. You can’t do that by chance 100% of the time. As far as honesty and reliabilty are concerned, the positions of feminists and trans activists are just about perfectly asymmetrical. On one hand, gender critical feminists can martial lots of evidence for present, actual harms to women that trans activists have constantly assured us will never happen. On the other hand, genderists have failed to present any evidence at all for the pervasive, unrepentant, racist, imperialist, colonialist, right-wing funded, fascist, patriarchal, trans-genocidal bigotry with which they continuously accuse gender critical feminists. So pardon me if I’m not inclined to believe that the constant, consistent misrepresentation of the gender critical feminist position by trans activists is anything other than calculated and malicious.
YNNB,
Perhaps some of the trans activists do understand the position, as you suggest, and deliberately distort it. I don’t see evidence of such deliberate misrepresentation among the social justice advocates I know. I think it’s simpler for them to assume that all opposition to “trans rights” is of a piece; it’s all about hating trans people, it’s all conservative, it’s all wanting people to adhere to traditional gender roles, and from this flows objections to homosexuality, women’s rights, and trans rights. The idea that there might be something else being argued is dismissed; such suggestions get rebuffed by “proof” that the complainers are “really” in league with the conservatives, guilt by association or well poisoning or something, therefore there is no need to look at any more details. They don’t want to know what the GC position is because they’ve already decided what it is, la la la fingers in ears I can’t hear you. Wilful ignorance rather than deliberate misconstruction. Dehumanize the enemy, then you don’t have to put any effort into trying to understand their views.
Of course people also make themselves believe things for self-serving reasons (pretty much the definition of rationalization) all the time. That way you get all the tactical advantages of playing dirty, cheating, lying about your opponents, doing whatever it takes to destroy anyone who gets in your way, while at the same time keeping your conscience white as snow (in your own eyes) and enjoying all that feeling of righteous anger and victimhood that comes from being unjustly under attack.
@Sackbut #5;
Well put. This is also the conclusion I’ve drawn.
Ironically, when they respect our background and intelligence they’re not noticeably more likely to “think something else is being argued.” They’re more likely to think we’re too smart not to know damn well what we’re doing.
I’ve tried many times (as have others) to engage with gender identity fans on this point, asking them to state the GC position in such a way that a typical person broadly on the GC side would agree with it. A sort of Turing test. I’ve spent considerable amounts of time and effort on this and on trying to return the favour: on trying to state the TA position such that a typical TA person would agree.
You know what? I’ve never had the slightest success in either direction.
When they’ve even made an attempt to state the GC position with any honesty at all (rare), we’ve never got more than a few tweets in before the insults come out. Even where there’s been a reasonably respectful back and forth, at some point there will always come some obviously deliberate gross misstating, even if that contradicts what we’ve already agreed. From that point, insults will start flying, always from their side.
It’s as though they can’t help themselves. It’s as though they genuinely can’t bring themselves to state the GC position honestly. Or perhaps that in beginning to do so, they realise that the position is pretty sound and theirs is not. Or maybe they’re scared that people will think they’re catching TERF lurgy.
When it’s the other way around, deterioration is similarly rapid. It’s as though they’re looking for any excuse to kick over the board and storm out. They will take enormous offence at some statement or other, apparently at random and rather than working through a correction – as I’ve tried to do – they’ll say that there’s no reasoning with TERFs and end things in a flurry of insults.
I think both Sackbut and Bjarte are right.
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Sackbut:
But haven’t they noticed that many of the most outspoken opponents of political overreaching by trans advocates are lesbians, and a growing number are gay men? How do they make sense of that?