Blanking

Over the past few months, I have written a number of critiques of “gender critical” or “sex realist” or “sex uncritical” feminism. I was compelled to write these critiques because of the situation we are in. The fragile hard-fought-for rights of trans people to live their lives safely, with dignity and on their own terms, are being dismantled. That this has come about in the UK in no large part because of the well-funded campaigning of groups that call themselves feminist is for many feminists not just enraging but a source of immense grief.

In this post, I bring these critiques together in one place. Here they are in order of publication: A Noisy Part, Oh Cruel World, Insistence on Relation, Hounded, Unthinking Freedom, Patriarchal Hammers, Meaningless Sex, Words Stripped of Meaning, and Stealing Sex. This one, Blanking, is number ten.

Some of these posts were written in response to developments in policy from Trump’s Executive Orders (A Noisy Part), to the Supreme Court decision and the EHRC’s interim guidance (Patriarchal Hammers, Meaningless Sex, Words Stripped of Meaning). In other posts, I offer a critical analysis of the broader ideological landscape, which is both anti-woke and anti-EDI, exploring how common sense and reality are used by commentators not just as if they are, well, commonsensical terms, but also forms of possession (Oh Cruel World, Unthinking Freedom). I also explore tactics used by “gender critical” feminists to create the impression they are being silenced at the very same time their voices and agendas dominate the media and political landscape (Insistence on Relation, Hounded). The flip-side of the “we are silenced” narrative is how the power of trans people or “trans activists” is inflated as if acquiring rights is policy capture (Stealing Sex).

I know from conversations with feminist academics that it is becoming harder to do feminist work, to organise our events and spaces, because of the hostile environment created by “gender critical” feminism. That they are policing the category of “women” has also meant, in practice, that feminists who are not part of the “gender critical” movement are increasingly being policed. The situation is likely to get worse. I have been told it is also getting harder to fund research on gender and women in part ...