Gender Critical Belief

Gender Critical, what does it mean? 

“Gender identity v gender critical beliefs – the great divide” (Didlaw) 

This “great divide” has certainly been playing out in the Green Party over a number of years now, and has led to the recent setting up of the Exiles group and this website

It’s important to state that Gender Critical is a bit of an umbrella term, those who use it to describe their views may have varying views on the political issues and how best to protect and fight to keep the rights and protections of women and girls. We sadly have to fight because women and girls matter! 

But the belief at the core is that sex is a fact of biology which can’t be changed and whatever anyone believes their gender identity to be should never override that. Gender critical people believe “that sex is a fact of biology that cannot be changed” and doubt “the idea of gender identity” (Cambridge Dictionary).

Whereas “A gender identity belief is one that considers everyone has a gender that could be different from their birth sex and effectively overrides sex. Their view is that gender takes precedence over sex” observed at birth. (Didlaw) 

Dr Kathleen Stock in her Institute of Ideas lecture London 2024 said that, “The standard categorisation of women and men relates to sex – to think otherwise is a type of fiction”.

Gender Critical beliefs are protected in law (Equality Act 2010) though many organisations including the Green Party seem to be struggling to understand that. 

Why is it so important to understand the material reality of sex? asks Edie Wyatt

“Women are structurally disadvantaged in every human society ever recorded.” She argues that “If the state has no capacity to recognise the structural disadvantages of sex that women and girls face there is no way to protect those material disadvantages .”

Disadvantages include “pregnancy, domestic violence, reproductive health…”  etc.

The advantages of male physique over female physique grant men greater strength, speed and stamina than women, so to allow them to compete in the women’s category in sports is also unfair.

No mammal has ever been born other than through union between a male gamete and a female gamete; it’s a key factor in the process of evolution and we wouldn’t be here to argue about it if it didn’t exist.

Males who self-ID as women and are recorded as such, eg by police after an offence, skew the statistics, as well as placing women in danger (“Isla Bryson” being a well known example). It’s sadly not unusual to see a headline such as “Woman murders man”, but it turns out both were male. Crimes wrongly recorded as “women’s crimes” are a hindrance to efforts to understand and put measures in place to prevent crimes.

As stated earlier some organisations are struggling to grasp the importance of protecting those with gender critical views despite court cases won by those with GC views

In the most recent case (at the time of writing in August 2024) the issues in the employment tribunal proceedings brought by Dr Jon Pike against the Open University have “been resolved”. The OU has acknowledged its decision-making in relation to this event fell short; “The OU reiterates its apology it made to all colleagues after the Professor Phoenix judgement”. Dr Pike will also receive a settlement as well as an apology. Part of the claim now resolved concerned the setting up of a GC research unit in summer 2021. (The events that unfolded after this and led to the tribunals are well recorded online.)  

The Lib Dems have faced similar issues; they recently acknowledged discrimination against a member for her GC views, before the case got to court, presumably they knew they would lose and were cutting their losses (again well recorded online; Natalie Bird is the Lib Dem member concerned).

The Green Party is also facing very similar court case(s) of discrimination and of course has lost a case to Shahrar Ali.* 

Fun facts, as currently understood

Everything alive today descends from a cell that lived 4.2 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the earth formed. The genetic record suggests that sex evolved 1-2 billion years ago in early eukaryotes. The first evidence for sexual intercourse is from about 385 million years ago, as evidenced in the fossilized remains of an armoured fish.

Evolution only stops when a species goes extinct; for humans, that might be sooner rather than later as climate chaos gathers momentum. Ironically, the belligerent intransigence of gender ideologues has led to a weakening of the Green Party’s central purpose of fighting climate and environmental degradation, bringing extinction that much closer.

Gender ideology obviously needs robustly challenging; it is not based in science, it is misogynistic, homophobic and dangerous, especially for young people. The Green Party’s failure to put forward a coherent response to the Cass report, with some members even describing it as “rubbish”, is evidence the ideologues are now in charge. They expect women and those men that support them to stay quiet about this unsettling situation, and seek to silence anyone who speaks out against it.

But as Sall Grover says:

“What happens when you claim that sex is changeable or gender Identity is more important than sex, is that everything breaks because you’re actually making a complete untruth about the most basic truth in our lives – male and female – be ahead of everything else” . August 2024 Sall Grover

Finally some myth busting about gender critical beliefs

Some who support gender ideology have put about the idea that GC people support gender stereotypes. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and it’s yet another bizarre aspect of this “debate”. GCs are against gender stereotypes, eg that men can’t cry, women can’t drive, very active stereotypes from the 80s that many will have spoken against. Indeed gender identity is the ideology which promotes gender stereotypes by leading people to believe that if you don’t conform to such stereotypes you must be the opposite sex and need to change your body rather than changing society.

Many women feel they fought for their rights over time and despair they need to now do it again. 

But #WomenWontWheest.  

Editors note*

Shahrar Ali recieved a no fault suspension on August 23. He was due to speak at the Autumn conference on a motion he had put forward about the Cass Report. We are still awaiting to hear the final costs that The Green Party will be liable after he won his discrimination case against the Party.