I feel compelled to respond to the points that Laura makes here, because her thread has gotten a lot of attention and there seems to be some confusion about what gender critical people believe.

So here we go.

1/ https://twitter.com/DiscordianKitty/status/1391313778483113984

Laura's first point is that GCs 'reinforce gender stereotypes and pressure cis women to conform to those stereotypes'.

Gender critical people are, by definition, critical of gender, which they see as consisting of regressive stereotypes of masculinity & femininity.

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Since most GC people see "gender" as something harmful (it punishes gender non-conforming people), they would not want to reinforce gender stereotypes. Their mission is exactly the opposite - they want to get rid of 'gender' which, for them, consists of stereotypes.

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Perhaps people exist who claim to be GC but, in fact, police gender in a way that does not align with a GC stance. But 'gender criticals' do not insist that people act in accordance with sex-based stereotypes. In fact, GC people usually celebrate gender non-conformity.

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Many GC people are gender non-conforming, and there are many gay and lesbian people in the GC community; homosexual people are gender non-conforming anyway, as heterosexual behaviour is a stereotypical element of masculinity and femininity.

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Laura claims that GCs 'have a list of rules about "real" women and physical features that makes them real.'

If GCs had such a list, it would consist of only one feature:

Being female.

Which brings us on to the next point.

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Laura's second point is that 'GCs reduce women to our reproductive organs and reinforce the harmful idea that the most important feature, purpose, and role a woman has is to be someone else's mother.'

This is actually two points, so I'll address them separately.

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Laura's point that GCs 'reduce women to their reproductive organs' only makes sense if GC people make the claim that women are nothing but walking reproductive organs, or that women have no value outside of reproductive function. I have never seen any GC make such claims.

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GC insist that women are 'adult human females,' which means that someone must be biologically female to be a woman.

If I say that a horse has four hooves, I am not saying that a horse is reducible to that specific feature, but that all horses have this feature in common.

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If a GC person says that a woman has a female biology, they are claiming that a female biology is something that all women have in common, not that women are 'reducible' to their biology.

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Laura says that GCs 'reinforce the harmful idea that the most important feature, purpose, and role a woman has is to be someone else's mother'.

This is not a feature of a GC position, which states that women are biological females and that gender is a set of stereotypes.

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It may be the case that a GC could think that being a mother is the most important role for a woman, but GCs are less likely to believe this than others, because much of the 'women as maternal' narrative is part of the regressive stereotypes that GC associate with gender.

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Laura associates GCs with "vagina feminism" that 'makes bread from your own vaginal yeast and writes epic poems painted in period blood'.

I believe that there are likely a few reasons why GC people might embrace this kind of 'vagina feminism'.

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Firstly, since GC people believe that the only necessary condition for being a woman is being female, the category of women will be hugely diverse, with women who range from hyper-masculine to hyper-feminine.

The only thing that they'll have in common is a female biology.

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This lends itself to a celebration of female biology.

Secondly, many GCs recognise that women have been exploited, abused, and shamed based on their biology, so it's understandable that they'd want to turn that around and celebrate the female body.

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Laura claims that 'GCs say things like a trans woman will never be a woman because she'll never experience the pain of childbirth'.

If someone said this, it might be the case that they meant that male people cannot understand childbirth in the way that female people can.

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If someone literally said 'trans women can't be women because they can't give birth,' then that doesn't make sense. There are female people who cannot give birth.

People tend to generalise (e.g. "women have periods") and it's not always true in each individual case.

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Laura asks if her friends, who are sterilised or cannot carry to term, are not women.

From a GC perspective, there's only one relevant question. Are they biologically female?

If yes, then they are women, regardless of their fertility.

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Laura tweets: '"Saying people who menstruate erases women just say women" they screech while they cheerfully completely erase me, a cis woman who does not menstruate.'

GC would consider any female person to be a woman, whether she menstruates or not. So Laura is not erased.

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Laura's last point is that 'GCs regularly harass, attack, and try to silence [her], a cis woman who inconveniently disagrees with them.'

Harassing, attacking, or trying to silence people is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, GCs also experience this.

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She finishes: 'So fuck [GCs] in the eye, every one of those mysoginistic ghouls'

Since this directly follows a tweet about the unacceptability of online harassment, it casts some doubt over her sincerity.

Wild idea - let's not say that anyone should get fucked in the eye.

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Hope that helped clear things up for anyone who was feeling a little confused about Laura's thread.

Let's try to engage in discussions in a respectful way wherever possible.

Okay, I'm done.

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