For what it's worth (to our valued users) using the report button to make out that somebody is a TERF, Gender Critic, or FART, means exploiting the natural goodness of my own heart and wasting my time funneling me down a rabbit hole checking whether the body in question has actually *said* anything transphobic: using the report button to say "this person posts in r/gendercritical" won't do it, so do better next time.
Also I invite /u/antonivs to say whether they personally consider themselves "Gender Critical" and they can have their ban or fuck off if so.
presumably the user reporting just saw the masstagger tag and went at it, without actually clicking through, which sort of illustrates one of its major flaws
Sorry you had to go through that effort, and I appreciate your integrity as a moderator.
I don't consider myself a transphobe. I'm sympathetic to many aspects of radical feminism - I don't think it's possible to deny that many radfem positions on the treatment of women in society, and on the behavior of men in that respect, have merit.
When it comes to the "trans exclusionary" aspect, I don't have any simple answers. Groups on "both sides" (at the risk of sounding Trumpian) have valid concerns, and right now those concerns aren't really being debated in a meaningful way - instead, battle lines have been drawn and there's an us vs. them mentality which makes debate between people with differing views difficult.
The issue that's arisen here is a typical example - there's a kneejerk tendency to assume that anyone who disagrees with or has questions about any aspect of the local "party line" is an enemy, and ban or shadowban them.
To some extent I'm sure this is just due to the difficulty of moderation in such a contentious environment, but it also seems to be a function of people who have a fixed dogmatic position, aren't really interested in dialog with anyone with differing views, and don't necessarily have much of a personally thought-through intellectual position on the issues.
Labels like "gender critical" are problematic because they're used as part of those battle lines I mentioned. To some people, gender critical has all sorts of right wing conservative connotations, presumably because this issue has made for some strange bedfellows.
Gender is a complicated topic that I've been interested in since it started becoming so contentious. Because it's not simple, I find it helpful to discuss it with others who are interested in it. It's impossible to have those discussions in subreddits where the slightest whiff of disagreement results in a ban.
This is really a kind of clash of cultures - people with different basic premises about ideas that involve a strong element of social construction. I'm a moral relativist, in the style of Gilbert Harman: "although there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong, we can make do with relative right and wrong." Part of that making do involves accepting that there are groups with differing positions, neither of which can be definitively and objectively said to be "right."
Morality, as actually practiced (even if universalism were true), evolves in response to these kinds of disagreements. When groups isolate themselves from each other and refuse to negotiate on the issues that separate them, moral evolution becomes impossible. That's the situation we currently seem to be in on this topic.
Hey, I thought I better take seriously my one chance to answer the question, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the gender critical movement?"
Nice job providing an example of what I described.
I'm a strong supporter of equal rights for everybody. That includes the rights of trans people, as well as the feminists who post in gendercritical. There's a difficult issue here which the kind of denial you're indulging in is not going to solve.
It reminds me of nothing more than the kind of ideological fixity that's so common among the right wing. It's a symptom of a position that you simply haven't thought much about, and a lack of empathy for others.
There is no both sides here. The scientific consensus is pretty firmly on the sides of trans people here. Equivocating with "both sides have good arguments" is the psychological equivalent of going "People on both sides of the global warming debate have good arguments."
The scientific consensus in what sense? (my personal impression is that a lot of the issue is people trying to cling to some kind of objective definition when dealing with a social/ethical issue, whether or not transpersons are "really" one gender or the other is simply not that relevant, what is relevant is our ethical obligation to treat transpeople with dignity, because gender-definitions are by definition slippery and contextual)
Like, you can say that biology points out that the simple XX-XY model doesnet really work, but that doesent really tell you anything, other than "Its kind of squishy" which well... duh. Its not simply an issue that can be solved scientifically like that.
>The scientific consensus is pretty firmly on the sides of trans people here.
The fact that you think this is relevant strongly suggests that you don't even understand the issues that are being raised.
Here's a fairly representative quote from r /gc:
>"We think that “...trans people deserve to be safe...and have dignity like anyone else.” We think that trans people deserve to have human rights just like everyone else."
The issues in question are social ones, they can't be settled by science. Thinking otherwise is naive and rank scientism.
Wrong. It means that taking cherry picked examples and bizarre attempts at critical theory by people in GC seriously is not gonna get you anywhere with anything. The lack of empirically demonstrated material consequences of "The trans agenda" is seriously damning for GC people.
Also it means you're kinda dumb and don't think sociology is a science.
scientism doesnt mean "someone has overwhelming empirical support for their thesis and i have nothing, so i'm red, mad, and tenderizing my dick and balls over it" btw, in case you weren't aware
Are you a positivist? It's ironic, because in what you believe to be your deflation of the 'scientism' charge, you reaffirm that very type of thinking with your choice of words.
oops! positivism doesn't mean "my ideology, which from its inception has prided itself on a basis in scientific rigour, is now completely outclassed in this regard, and if you point this out i will start mashing my cöck and bälls into a fine soggy paste" either
it looks as though you intend to characterize empiricism as positivism, and positivism as scientism. let me start by first pointing out that that's really fucking stupid!
Making appeal to an ostensibly* biological definition of womanhood and accusing other people of scientism is the crit theory equivalent of punching yourself in the face. Your very premises render your argument incoherent.
Also even theory roots itself in empirical reality, hence your own appeal to the history of the oppression of women.
*Not actually biological, unless you are a ninth grader or a time traveller from 1976
I'm not the same person who proposed that initial definition.
And furthermore, this statement: " Also even theory roots itself in empirical reality, hence your own appeal to the history of the oppression of women. " is extremely contentious and presumes a specific set of epistemological persuasions/beliefs. Though, it should be added ... nowhere did I make an appeal to that history. I believe you're confusing me with Antonivs, and carrying on an argument coupled with rhetoric aimed at this other person. I still maintain my original derision in accusing you of scientism, though.
vibe check: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/akck58/remember_to_clear_your_search_history_before/ef66ynx/
whoa, turns out even when you want to prove some deranged hapa nonsense you regress into the world of sense-experience. simply epic, my fellow redditor, Pure Reason has been critique'd yet again.
stop pretending you ve read horkheimer & adorno. its not funny
>The issues in question
love this weasely nonsense that you are doing up and down the thread. i dare you to name one issue and state your exact position on it, you coward
but dude, _concerns have been raised._ you have no idea how raised the concerns are right now, they are tremendously raised, and they've never been higher folks
Guess the real concern was solved by just deleting the post.
(Which is fine I guess, discussing stuff online is boring anyway, I delete comments all the time, if I think I was either stupid, or likely to get into a flame war).
Ah, one of the classic blunders.
Taken from an @evopsychgoogle thread about… whatever this is supposed to be https://twitter.com/evopsychgoogle/status/1189958542616252417?s=20
Weird he makes a huge error that places the thumb on the scale of the outcome he wants when doing his race science.
science
[deleted]
From that thread at https://twitter.com/evopsychgoogle/status/1189959136122785792 :
Can’t leave out the bit about IQ, someone might mistake this for liberal propaganda otherwise