A Gender Critical Feminist's Response to Rachel Anne Williams’ Post ‘How to Be A Gender Critical Feminist: What Does It Mean To Be Truly Critical Of Gender?’

M G Dykson
Nov 2 · 6 min read

Williams begins the analysis by copy and pasting then highlighting and commenting. I will follow suit.

“Take their [GCF] first statement, for instance:

Feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy.

Wrong: feminism is the movement to liberate everyone affected by patriarchy. Trans men,cis men, and nonbinary people are also harmed by patriarchy.”

Wrong: feminisms’ focus is females, it’s in the nomenclature. Feminisms’ focus is on women because females as a sex class are gendered subjugated. Because gender affects everyone, feminisms is a catalyst for freeing others but as a catalyst remains for women. Feminisms’ motivation is the subjugation of women via gender.

“Thus, we come to the first fundamental claim of “gender critical” feminism: trans people are not who we say we are.

But is this position truly critical of gender? Or merely reactionary? I maintain that it is not critical of gender because gender itself includes the systems of power that have been maintained by cisgender (non-trans) people for hundreds if not thousands of years to marginalize trans people and deny them the legitimacy of their identities.”

No, you are very misguided here. Gender is not about trans people any more than it is about women. It is a process of how society socialises it sexes of which there are only two sexually reproducing classes, just like most things in the animal kingdom of which we are a part. Yes, intersex shows sex to vary. That is why I said reproducing. Intersex, if permitted via the evil medical establishment, your buddies, will be socialised as free from gender as possible, hopefully so they can express themselves as they see fit but generally they will be socialised according to the evils of medicine, that think they can determine the true size of a clitoris, and rectify too large a clitoris or too small a penis for example.

“If “gender critical” feminists were truly critical of gender they would recognize that patriarchy also enforces cis sexism, the discriminatory belief system that trans people’s identities are not as valid as cis people’s. Thus, to be critical of gender would entail also being critical of these cis-sexist systems of power.”

Your argument here is flawed. What makes a valid argument? Premises leading to a sound conclusion. Sexism is discrimination on the basis of sex, usually against women as a sex. So because trans-genderism is about gender, sexism does not apply to trans-ideologies. What makes trans-identities valid? As on par with cis-people. You identities are valid as a fetish because they have no basis in reality.

“We do not believe that men can become women by ‘feeling’ like women.

Let’s not forget Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” On the “gender critical” view one is born a woman in virtue of your reproductive capacities. On a truly gender critical view, we can recognize that a trans man is a man because of the identification processes critical to his authentic self-becoming. It is not about merely “feeling” one way or another in the loose sense one “feels” hungry or “feels” tired. It is a nonreductive phenomenon that cannot be reduced to any particular set of “feelings” but encompasses one’s entire mode of being”

Here you make obvious your misunderstanding of de Beauvoir and GCF. De Beaviour is saying, not by choice, the socialisation of the female as woman, that is, at the service of men! Yes, because of females’ reproductive capacities, she is subordinated as woman, that is the gender system that gender critical feminists are trying to break free from. Trans is far from critical of gender but greedily appropriate as many signifiers of sex they have the money to purchase, claiming gender is their entire mode of being, which if one is a trans-woman must be also a masochist for they are the only ones who want subjugation, and they can come as either males or females.

Further, what are these identification processes? They can only be visual fetishizations.

“We do not condone the erasure of females and female-only spaces, the silencing of critical thinking, the denial of biological reality and of sex-based oppression.

“Gender critical” feminists hold that recognizing that trans men are men is a “denial of biological reality.” I would hold this is not a truly gender critical position because denying the legitimacy of trans people’s identities is a denial of phenomenological reality, of the primacy of identity in determining how we come to understand our own genders. To be critical of gender requires us to recognize how cis normativity operates in society to tie gender to a rigid biological determinism that says how you were born dictates your gender, rather than recognizing the plasticity of the human mind to break free of the rigid rules of how you must identify depending on how you were born.

Here you misunderstand phenomenology, ie lived experience. Because trans is a visual fetishization there is no lived experience for it to be a valid identity or as you say one’s entire mode of being, for you are not being, you are yearning for the object of your gaze. Trans men are women, trans women are men who have either got a fetish or have followed the fashion. Further, if you knew anything about how people acquire an identity, the primary acquisition of it comes from one’s socialisation, not by proclamation nor appropriation. Your phenomenological reality is a fetish, not the lived experience of the gender of the sex you appropriate. To be critical of gender is to be critical of gender, critical of gender is the same as saying cis normativity. Cis-normativity is a neologism that subordinates those critical of gender as somehow being normative, they are not reifying gender, like trans do. Gender critical do not tie gender to biology, patriarchy and trans does that. Gender normativity that says men can cut off their dicks and become women is biological determinism. Gender critical, would not deny the reproduction of the species, via sex between two distinct sexes, which happens to be the best way in nature to ensure diversity and survival. Critical of gender recognises the plasticity of the human mind, that is why these feminists fight against this rigidity that says, for example, girls wear pink dresses and submit to men’s desires. Trans ideology reifies biological determinism.

“To be critical of gender requires us to decouple gender from reductive physiological systems like whether or not we can get pregnant. Patriarchal gender involves rules and norms that dictate that the genitals you have at birth determine what gender you can have and how you can express your gender. Any valid criticism of gender requires the recognition that this is a biological essentialism that has no place in modern society.”

If you wish to decouple gender from so called reductive physiological systems, well then why do you try to build a jig-saw puzzle picture of your desired sex’s gender with physiological things like fake breasts, fake vaginas, sans vulva, which you insist that you, via a sexed based costume, scream ‘I’m ridding the binary’? No, you are not. Have you seen the movie The Silence of the Lambs? Pretty prophetic, don’t you think? I know you are yearning for my womb, so you could epitomise woman that little bit more.

“Recognizing the reality of trans identities does not include a denial that people with certain reproductive systems are targeted in certain forms of oppression. But criticizing gender in a systematic fashion also requires recognizing that trans people are oppressed by a cis-normative system of power that attempts to deny we are who we say we are.”

Do you know what else de Beauvoir said in the 800+ pages that some male git edited down by some huge %? No, I believe you have not read anything of de Beauvoir other than her most famous quote. She also said, women don’t define women, men do. Trans is a masculinist discourse in so far it thinks it has the power to name. trans identity is denied in arenas where fetishes are not legitimized, like my marriage to PJ Harvey.

Trans women are men.

To be not women, does not entail that you are man.

The rest of your words can be mirrored back at yourself

Trans-woman’s speech

M G Dykson

Written by

God | Godess

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade