I don't believe that exercising your power to suppress something you don't like is inherently good or bad. It obviously depends on the contents of what is being suppressed.
The gender critical movement is based on antisemitic conspiracy theories (eg Bilek) and unhinged hatred of trans people (eg Glinner).
I’m “Gender Critical”, because like many people born in the 1960s I see women as being a group of individuals primarily discriminated against by virtue of their sex - particularly in regards to contraception and the economic and social consequences of reproduction.
Sex is biological and objectively real. Gender is a social construct relating to imposed standards of masculinity or femininity.
How have we ended up reinventing the idea that sexed identity is the performance of innate gender roles or preferences? Just because we’ve allowed people to opt out by changing gender doesn’t make the idea of linking gender to sex any more acceptable. This is an entirely regressive state of affairs, and pointing that out is in no way hateful.
It is really not as hard and fast as "there's men" and "there's women" and "you can tell them apart by a quick genetic test".
There's basically a sliding scale from "definitely male" to "definitely female" (in unmodified body) and a mostly-but-not-always correspondence between said body and the genetic markers (XX and XY).
If the testosterone receptor codons are damaged, the extra testosterone that the XY chromosome normally produce will not get a chance to influence the fetus, so any make characteristics will be under-developed (or not developed at all). Heck, there have even been genetically XY people who have sustained pregnancy and given birth.
I mean, somewhere between 0.02% and 0.05% are born with effectively both make and female sexual characteristics.
So, yes, as long as you insist that "there are two sexes, and it is objectively easy to say which one is which", I would say that it is, if not hateful, at least ignorant and disrespectful.
Trans people, more than any other group, are acutely aware of the reality of biological sex characteristics.
Fuck the meta level. I'm only interested in engaging with specifics.
There's plenty of actual transphobia occurring, out there in the real world - as in, real hateful violence and oppression being done to people who identify as trans or even just behave in non-gender-typical ways. So you're quite factually wrong about this.
Gender-critical feminists do not even register on the radar.
These people are abusers and bigots. They’re no different than any other hate group, except that they often use the language of victimhood to cloak their primary mode of social aggression. (This is the mode of aggression that it is most acceptable for AFAB people to express, so they get really, really good at it. It has a lot in common with the dynamics of emotional abuse, and, for lack of a better term, mean girling (which is, especially after adolescence, a particularly effective form of abuse)).
So you have no idea what you’re talking about, but based on your other comments in this thread — you genuinely seem to think homosexuality is a modern invention? And that it came out of some sort of predatory behavior? — it seems this is a willful ignorance that accommodates the hate and disgust you already feel for certain minorities.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet, etc.
Your ignorance on this is truly stunning.
It's quite true that homosexuality used to be viewed like that. And yet, strange as it might seem, even that was a significant step forward from earlier perceptions of MSM which essentially were reminiscent of the Graeco-Roman model. Obviously these perceptions were also colored by bigotry, but we can see parallel changes in the discourse among male gays themselves.
Society should progress, but not "at any cost" or "by any means."
Those are the exact same things. One is just the perspective of the oppressor and one is the perspective of the oppressed.
> it’s a not well-thought idea
Why? You give no evidence to support your argument as to how restricted speech makes makes things “more fair and democratic”.
No, they are not. "Moral authoritarianism" is a judgmental label, putting equality sign between a democratic mechanism of protecting human rights and authoritarian rule, which is by definition undemocratic. A logical fallacy hidden behind a There's no place in a constructive discussion for such language, because it is not just untrue, but also offensive.
>Why?
There's plenty of historical evidence on how hate speech supports transition of society to a tyranny. Germany 1930s is the most obvious one (and the reason, why freedom of speech is restricted in modern Germany), but there are many many others. On the other side, there is not much evidence that ultimate freedom of speech results in more prosperous and democratic society.
And there’s plenty of tyrannical countries that have no free speech. What’s your point?
Also, democracies can absolutely be authoritarian. Look up the phrase “tyranny of the majority” if you want to see why following a democratic process is not sufficient to avoid authoritarian behavior.
Any big government that regulates all of the minutiae of its citizens’ lives at the expense of minority lifestyles is authoritarian, even if the he majority decided it.
> When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the German constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Through decrees and laws, the Nazis abolished these civil rights and destroyed German democracy. Starting in 1934, it was illegal to criticize the Nazi government. Even telling a joke about Hitler was considered treachery.
Sounds like you are on the side of the nazi's, given that you support abolishing civil rights.