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Gender Critical Feminism
Feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy. We stand up for the rights of women to control our own bodies as individuals and to control women-only spaces as a class.
Women are adult human females. We do not believe that men can become women by 'feeling' like women or 'identifying' as women. We condemn the erasure of females and female-only spaces, the silencing of critical thinking, the cancelling of feminists and critics, the denial of biological reality and of sex-based oppression. We oppose the 'cotton ceiling' and the pressure on lesbians to have sex with men. Women are oppressed to exploit their biological sex characteristics, and women have a right to a movement that is about their own liberation from that oppression. We resist the redefinition of both "women" and "feminism" to make them serve men.
"Women do not decide at some point in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity.’ Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex." –Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts
"Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men—control, violence, insult, contempt—that no threat seems empty." –Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
30 comments
Saving this post and adding it to my calendar to reread every fucking year to see how many years it takes us to get out of this insanity.
Not for decades if not centuries.
People are often telling us the trans debate “isn’t that big of a deal” and we should focus on other things. It really upsets me that they think women not having a word, the legal protections women fought for, a movement for women (since women are unnamable and can’t have their own spaces or groups), and other issues isn’t a big deal.
Brilliantly captures the chilling ethos of the time we're living through.
It’s like living in Trump-ruled America. Just as soon as you think things are too far and people won’t have it - it becomes the new normal. It’s hard having faith, but I really have to. There will be a future that isn’t revolving around men’s ability to get rich or get off... I just hope it comes in my lifetime.
The sad thing is, it's the Democrats that are pushing this stupid trans bullshit, not Trump, shitty as he is.
True dystopia. ): I thought the future was supposed to be brighter.
The future was brighter. Year after year it got better. Until it didn't.
I think nearly all the progress women have made in the past twenty to thirty years is the legacy of the work of second-wave feminists in the 70s...speaks ill of what is to come in the next twenty to thirty years as we'll be dealing with the anti-feminist legacy of the gender identity + "choice" portion of third wave activism. Even if we correct course now...we'll still be dealing with the negative ramifications of what they did for years to come.
And when men ask us why women weren't able to speak, we will show them the violence that followed when we did try to.
Beautiful. Enraging. We will not forget.
Damn... Makes me want to start collecting a timeline of when and how these things shifted....
I'd be curious, too. I'd love to use the Wayback Machine or something to figure out approximately when so many women's interests groups and organizations and websites started calling us all "uterus havers" and shit like that.
Most of it has happened somewhere in the last 10 years. There were efforts made previously, but never on this scale. It wasn't until a few years ago that it started to spread into the mainstream though.
If you want to create a really thorough timeline I think following the money is never a bad idea.
My oldest recollection is of the Midwives' Association probably in the early 10s. I may have the name wrong. Possibly someone else, with a better memory could recall.
Chaz Bono saying testosterone made her feel irritated at women’s voices and made her feel “sharper” was during an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation in 2011. I remember very clearly that the interviewer and callers didn’t call out the obvious misogyny. That was my first inkling that there was a very sexist movement afoot and no one was questioning it on the left.
This American Life had a story on a TIF in 2002. I remember she seemed very sexist.
This one? https://www.thisamericanlife.org/190/living-the-dream
They also ahd an episode with one of those "part timers" or whatever. Changing gender based on week or time of day or whatever.
I think that’s the one about two little boys with gender dysphoria. If I remember correctly, the boy in the family that didn’t “affirm” outgrew it and became a gay young man. The family that affirmed was going to suppress their son’s puberty.
The TIF one I’m thinking of was in an episode about testosterone
Episode 190 of This American Life is about two trans identifying boys and it aired in Aug 2001. I think that’s the first I heard of puberty blockers.
oh damn I don't remember that episode. I don't remember when this came onto my radar because there didn't seem like there was anything weird about being GNC to me - like I went to alt clubs as a teenager a couple decades back, where sometimes people asked me if I was trans, and I don't remember really caring or thinking much about it - so no "Aha" moment - I remember "preferred prounouns" and pronoun circles from about 5-6 years ago...
Who wrote that?
I would love to know, as well. This is superb and I hope to read more from this brilliant woman!
It was Barracker, in a thread on Mumsnet in March. The full comment is here.
She also wrote an excellent piece on the real problem with us being forced to use she for men claiming womanhood called Pronouns are Rohypnol.
This is chilling. Who knew that when people recently started to say "The future is female," men would so quickly appropriate the words "female" and "woman," take them on for themselves, and severely restrict girls' and women's ability to successfully use them to politically organize?