Carole Hooven disputes Vyv Evans straight on the “biological essentialism” question:

Picking one point to explore in this article in @PsychToday that claims, among other things, that “TERF has been ‘rebranded’ as gender critical (GC) feminism, a ‘linguistic pivot’ from ‘anti-trans’ to ‘pro-woman’”. Take the idea of “biological essentialism” and Evan’s claims about “GC ideology.”

@VyvEvans: “GC ideology invokes biological essentialism: the idea that sex is binary and immutable, determined at the level of chromosomes. Thus, one’s gender must inevitably align with biological sex as assigned at birth.”

While there’s no consistent definition of bio essentialism, Evan’s seems off the mark. Nor does his claim about gender (a “sociolinguistic construct” with a “basis in biology”) follow logically from his definition.

Here’s a definition of “biological essentialism” from Oxford Reference:

“The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual’s personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture). The concept is typically invoked where there is a focus on difference, as where females are seen as essentially different from males: see gender essentialism.” https://oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973…

An example of a “gender essentialist” idea is that being nurturing is an “essential” part of being female: all females possess the trait, it is innate, determined and immutable. Not a product of socialization, etc. This kind of claim is, I hope everyone knows, false. Nonetheless, it is consistent with the idea that there are real and biologically influenced sex differences in nurturing. The existence of a sex difference in a particular trait— that exists *on average* —does not mean that the trait is “essential” to one sex or the other.

The claim that sex is binary and immutable (in mammals, including humans) is a fact of biology, not an “essentialist idea.” (Sex, however is not always determined by chromosomes.) And there is nothing that necessarily characterizes being male or female, other than the only trait that reliably differentiates the sexes: whether the reproductive system is organized around producing large or small gametes. The “gamete size” trait is the only trait that is “essential” to being one sex or the other.

There is no other particular behavioral or physical phenotype that necessarily follows from being male or female (e.g., some male animals can give birth or do all of the parenting, some females are larger and more aggressive than males, etc.), even in humans. BUT even with all this variation within and between species, we still observe dominant patterns of sex differences in nature. And human male and female bodies and behavior fit the dominant pattern in mammals (and other taxa), on average (bigger, stronger, more aggressive males, smaller, weaker, more nurturing females).

Dr. Evans claims that since GC feminists “invoke biological essentialism,” they believe that “one’s gender must inevitably align with biological sex as assigned at birth.” They do? That’s news to me. My understanding is that CG feminists understand that sex is binary and immutable, and most (not all!) believe that #sexmatters because on average, males and females are different in ways that matter in society.

Happy to have some GC feminists clarify their views on this.

Ok. Why yes, I do believe that sex matters because on average there are physical differences between women and men that matter a fuckofalot in society.