Right or left, I want no part of extremism
And as a gender critical woman, I want to firmly distance myself from it
Being openly ‘gender critical’ is a choice I’ve made and I’m happy to defend my position to anyone who asks me. I don’t think male people can ‘literally’ become women, and I don’t think their declaring themselves as such should entitle them to be perceived as female in every situation - for example, sports, prisons, data collection, women-only panels and shortlists, women-only safe spaces like refuges. I find the idea that ‘woman’ is a costume you can put on a bit insulting, so while I support everyone’s right to dress however they like, I don’t support the idea that wearing a dress and lipstick magically makes you female.
Because of this, I’m aware I have one area upon which, if I sat down for a beer with Trump, the late Charlie Kirk, or maybe even Tommy Robinson, we would agree on.
Just one.
I very much doubt we would share any common ground whatsoever other than agreeing that people can’t change sex.
There would be many of their views that I would and do find abhorrent. I support their right to hold those views but I want to live in a world where it will always be safe for me and the people who come after me to disagree with them.
The reasons that we hold this one particular view about the reality of sex are also different. I am critical of 'gender’ because I can see, as a woman, that the socially constructed concept of ‘gender’ has and continues to be used as a means of restricting women’s rights. Strict gender roles - neatly symbolised by the high-heeled shoe so beloved of cross-dressing men - are a way of slowing women down and making it more difficult for us to live freely. I have raised my children, as far as I possibly could, in a ‘gender neutral’ way, in the sense that I have encouraged them to play with whichever toys they are drawn to, and to dress in whatever clothes they like.
When my daughters were very little I sometimes bought them ‘boys’ clothes and shoes because I thought they looked less restricting to their movement and more robust for messy play. My third child, a boy, wore dresses when he was pre-school age to play and dance in if he wanted, and nurtured dollies if that was part of his game. I never lied to my kids about their sex, but I also never said to them, “That’s only for boys” or “That’s a girls toy”. In fact, if they said anything like that to me, I would remind them that, not that long before they were born, women were told being a doctor or going to university was ‘only for boys’, so it was probably better if we didn’t think about things in that restrictive way any more.
I very much doubt that the men of the extreme right would agree with me on any of that.
Their reasons for reinforcing the reality of biological sex are, I suspect, mostly to do with their deeply conservative, and often religious ideas about the family, heterosexuality, and the kind of binary gender roles - ‘men adventuring out in the world’, ‘women in the home’ - that feminism has sought to challenge.
To be clear: there is a sex binary. There are two sexes, male and female.
But the gender binary beloved of the extreme right seeks to reinforce the oppression of women on the basis of this biology.
I don’t believe wearing a dress and lipstick makes you female, and they don’t either. Your sex is immutable, on that we can agree. But for the men of the far right, this immutability extends to gender too: they promote regressive notions of men and women’s roles, and restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, that I as a feminist want to deconstruct or smash.
Funny, isn’t it, that the trans flag offers up the same binary ‘pink and blue’ version of the world that I so despised when I pushed my trolley round Mothercare circa 2010 buying clothes and toys for my daughters.
Trans ideology - the extreme version - reinforces the exact same regressive ideas about gender that the far right adores: man = tough, short-haired, leader; women = weak, long-haired, nurturer; historic women who wore trousers and led battles can’t have been female at all; being a ‘woman’ is all about spinny skirts, lipstick, long hair and heels. Both trans and far right ideology seek to put men and women in regressive restrictive boxes: the prison of gender.
Men who want this reinforcement of the gender binary were out in force at Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom rally in London, led by Tommy Robinson. I say men because if you look at photos of the rally it seems like the crowds were predominantly male.
If you spoke to any of those men they would probably have something to say about trans people and they would agree that you can’t change sex. Would they also want to smash patriarchy and dismantle gender? That, I would say, is less likely.
The support of Robinson, Trump, Kirk and Musk from high profile gender critical women is worrying. I don’t understand why women would support far right extremists any more than I understand why women would support trans ideology extremists. Both want that gender binary reinforced; both undermine same-sex attracted people’s reality; both are a threat to women’s rights.
Kelly Jay Keen - a woman who I have stuck up for here on WHAT ABOUT WOMEN - was not only at Robinson’s rally but was shown in one of his tweets to be part of his inner circle.
