Talk:Gender-critical feminism/Archive 7

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Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-03

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gabiangiuli (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jesstrada.

— Assignment last updated by Momlife5 (talk) 15:51, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-01

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jiselle04 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jlopez04.

— Assignment last updated by Bbalicia (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Bias

One would be hard-pressed to find an article more spectacularly tilted than this one. It's an ideological broadside, not an encyclopedia entry. Naturally, then, it is "currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment." Perfect. Nicmart (talk) 06:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

@Nicmart There has already been a requested move, and the result was no consensus. And keep in mind WP:NOTFORUM. —Panamitsu (talk) 06:33, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Getting consensus for cutting down on quotes

I recently made this series of edits aimed at reducing the number of long quotations (and, frankly, getting rid of some pretty badly phrased sentences like "Gender-critical feminists promote the idea that sex is important" without any definition of what that means when a better definition is present in the previous paragraph).

Many of these changes were reverted in this series of edits by Void and Swood Sweet. I suspect, based on the way talk page discussions have gone in the past, that the majority of people watching this page would prefer my version, and so I'm bringing it here to ask. Loki (talk) 15:13, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I think you mean me, not Swood. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC) And please explain why you think most people would prefer your version – surely edits are judged on their own merits, not on who makes them? Sweet6970 (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

They are, but I was hoping to just let people see the edits for themselves. But since you asked:

I think that it's obviously an improvement to the article to reduce the number of long quotes. Long quotes are often used to smuggle a POV into an article by putting it in the mouth of an advocate, and one of my major goals in removing the quotes was to maintain WP:NPOV. They're also often just bad stylistically: quotes aren't in Wikipedia's style and so swapping frequently between long quotes and our text can be jarring.

I also frankly think quoting sources at length is somewhat of an abdication of our duty to write an encyclopedia. The source isn't writing an encyclopedia, we are, and that includes a duty to summarize what the sources say. We would never include a long jargon-filled quote from a paper in the hard sciences, but for some reason when it comes to gender studies we have lots of similar jargon-filled quotes. Loki (talk) 15:39, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Regarding Long quotes are often used to smuggle a POV into an article by putting it in the mouth of an advocate: I think your reasoning is back-to-front. This article is about g-c feminism, and we need to tell readers what g-c feminists’ views are. Therefore, we should not be putting their views in wikivoice – we should give quotes to make clear that these are the views of g-c feminists, and not the views of Wikipedia. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Is the length of the quotes really that problematic? Quotes seem like a good solution to the difficulty of putting anything in wikivoice. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:34, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this, the problem is most of these are WP:RSOPINION in a highly polarised area.

Extensive quotes are about the only way through the issue of wikivoice, when practically every single aspect of this is hotly disputed by oppositional scholars. Void if removed (talk) 16:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Excessive quotes are a problem for the reasons described in WP:QUOTEFARM: Quotations embody the breezy, emotive style common in fiction and some journalism, which is generally not suited to encyclopedic writing. and Quotations that present rhetorical language in place of the neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias can be an underhanded method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia articles; be very careful. It's always important to ask why we're using a particular quote - is the precise perspective of the speaker important? If it's being used to introduce an argument or idea, is that argument WP:DUE? And if we have many quotes, are we really introducing a bunch of distinct ideas that are all worth their own quotes on an encyclopedic, or is it just trying to present arguments to convince the reader? My opinion is that quote-bloated sections are often the result of editors with differing perspectives on an issue rushing to add as many views supporting their preferred interpretation as possible, and especially adding more to "balance out" opposing views when they should be removing or paraphrasing those quotes instead. There's also a risk of nose-counting, where people add a bunch of quotes to just have the view of a lot of people agreeing; or situations where people effectively WP:SYNTH up what the major arguments are and what the broad strands of thought are on a topic by pulling a bunch of quotes out of either opinion-pieces or from news pieces that don't really present those quotes in that context. Situations like that are better-handled by summarizing the views of a bunch of people in one sentence (eg. "X, Y, and Z disagreed, saying this is wrong" rather than individual quotes for each.) The ideal way to summarize broad views is via a secondary source that discusses overarching opinions anyway, which both helps establish due weight and lets us characterize the strands of thought without having to try and assemble it ourselves out of quotes. --Aquillion (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty of quotes from those opposed to g-c feminism – I see that these have not been challenged. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant when I said that people ought to be more aggressive about removing quotes rather than adding ones to "balance them out" (which leads to a quote-farm.) Obviously we can't remove quotes in a one-sided manner, not unless there's actually significant differences in WP:RS coverage or something. But editors by their nature are more likely to go "that looks wrong" and notice problems that go against their own personal understanding of a topic, which means that in a controversial topic area it works best if people with different views on the topic work together to cut down on or paraphrase unnecessary quotes. --Aquillion (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Luckily these quotes are in the Views section, where the objective is to explain what the subject’s views are, and quotes direct from the horse’s mouth are often the best way of illustrating this. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:38, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that a Views section is better than normal for quotes, that's not a reason to go nuts with them. Wikipedia policy doesn't stop applying because a section is titled "Views". We still need to represent their views proportionally to the rest of the sources, and in the manner the sources say they should be represented.

In the article on anarchism, a good article about a political ideology, we do explain what anarchists believe, and even quote some of them, but we never quote anyone for a whole paragraph. The longest quote there is only 12 words long. Feminism (another good article) has some longer quotes, but not that many, and not that much longer. There's still never a whole paragraph quoting anyone. Loki (talk) 22:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Which of the current quotes is going nuts? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-03

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gabiangiuli (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jesstrada.

— Assignment last updated by Momlife5 (talk) 03:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Terminology

This article is about "gender-critical feminism". Having a terminology section titled "gender-critical feminism" seems completely redundant, seeing as that is the scope of the page. Having that section devoted entirely to criticism of "gender-critical feminism" is merely duplicating content from later in the article, and prioritising this opinionated criticism above the "views" section which explains what gender-critical feminism actually is. The content belongs in the scholarly analysis where Thurlow's views in particular are already represented. Void if removed (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the article reads very oddly with the paragraph on Terminology where it is – this is just a duplicate of material in the Scholarly analysis section. Sweet6970 (talk) 21:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. The group of people this article describes did not come into existence in the late 2010s when the term "gender-critical" was first used, nor did they come into existence in circa 2008 when Viv Smythe came up with TERF. The group pre-existed those terms, and those terms simply reflect names by which the group were known at various points in time. The purpose of the terminology section therefore is to document the various notable names this group has been known by, hence why we cite Thurlow and Grinspan et al. for the late-2010s rebranding from TERF to gender-critical. And if the group rebrands again as was noted as potentially occurring during the recent RM, and that rebranding is noted in reliable sources like Thurlow, then we would naturally document that subsequent rebranding in the terminology section.

I also don't agree with Sweet's point that the current paragraph for the gender-critical feminism subsection is entirely duplicative of content elsewhere in the article. Thurlow's work is quoted and summarised in several sections, but the content we include is unique within each of those sections. Grinspan et al. is duplicative, though I think the fix here is to remove the brief paragraph from the scholarly analysis section, as it seems to me to be more out of place there than the terminology section is given what Grinspan are saying in that sentence of their editorial. That said, whether or not the editorial for a special issue of DiGeSt is more due than the other twelve papers within the issue itself is perhaps a better question to be asking. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:58, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

The group pre-existed those terms

That is of course the opinion of some, but it is not universally shared. That is, it is the opinion of critics that this is so, and the opinion of those who call themselves "gender-critical feminists" that it is not.

The idea that there is some coherent "group" that moves from lesbian separatism in the US in the 60s, to organising on Mumsnet against the GRA reforms in the UK circa 2015 is of course absurd.

The only unifying factor is that all of those disparate people are (either contemporaneously or retrospectively by historical revisionists like Cristan Williams) being called "TERFs", most commonly as a term of abuse. Void if removed (talk) 10:14, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

[...] That is, it is the opinion of critics that this is so, and the opinion of those who call themselves "gender-critical feminists" that it is not. This only further warrants a "Terminology" section.

The idea that there is some coherent "group" that moves from lesbian separatism in the US in the 60s, to organising on Mumsnet against the GRA reforms in the UK circa 2015 is of course absurd. It is not, that is how all ideologies work. They develop and spread (or don't).

The only unifying factor is that all of those disparate people are (either contemporaneously or retrospectively by historical revisionists like Cristan Williams) being called "TERFs", most commonly as a term of abuse. That is your view of the subject. One might also argue that a unifying factor is anti-trans activism and advocacy. TucanHolmes (talk) 08:01, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

The topic of this article is the ideology or movement known variously in reliable sources as gender-critical feminism (including abbreviated forms) or trans-exclusionary radical feminism (including abbreviated forms). Unlike TERF (acronym), the focus here is on the ideology/movement itself and not on a specific term, but a terminology section is clearly warranted as a facet of the broader topic, and to document the various prominent terms that have been used. Gender-critical feminism is a term that only gained traction a few years ago (from around 2020), many years after the movement (i.e. the topic of the article) emerged under different names, and it's important to document the history of that term as well. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:20, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

What?

What on earth is this article about. Is TERF an expression of XX and XY sex determination? If it is then please say so in a more elegant manner. 92.18.249.104 (talk) 12:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This article is about Gender-critical feminism, as its title says. Sorry, I don’t understand your query. Do you have a suggestion for improving the wording of the article? Sweet6970 (talk) 17:02, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This article reads as a collage essay.

This article feels un-fit for Wikipedia standards Five pillars of Wikipedia. The article is confusing, overly wordy, and spends more words pointing holes in the ideology than explaining what the ideology is. Criticism should go in the criticism section, not in every sentence of the article. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia, not a collage essay.

The disambiguation notice at top links to Anti-gender movement which is significantly clearer article both in explaining its topic, and in doing so in a neutral and direct manner. There is also significant overlap which could be a good resource look to.

I get that this is a very loaded topic, and these kinds of subjects of Wikipedia tends to need a lot of people looking at them until they converge to a good point. But this article needs a serious overhaul. 91.130.50.13 (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia is written from a neutral perspective, and this includes pointing [sic] holes in the ideology. We don't do uncritical exposition for ideologies, since Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view, and an ideology includes a point of view. That's what an ideology is, a point of view is part of its essence. Wikipedia is also based on reliable sources and, where applicable, facts as established by reliable sources. While we might quote adherents to an ideology and explain its structure and basic premises, we also point out where these premises or structures are (obviously) wrong, if applicable. That is not criticism, more encyclopedic evaluation with respect to what reliable sources have to say. If a point is contentious, we attribute it. If it is not contentious, or represents a fringe position in a discussion, we treat it as such. This is to avoid giving false balance to various aspects of a topic. We do this precisely because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

Criticism should go in the criticism section. No, please see this essay about criticism on Wikipedia.

If you see problems with the article, please feel free to be bold and correct them yourself. TucanHolmes (talk) 14:06, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Need to remove disinformation section.

After the release of the Cass Review, it turns out the gender critical side was actually right all along when it comes to puberty blockers and youth transition, so I expect the politicized disinformation smear in the intro paragraph will be coming down soon? Gsm54321 (talk) 15:04, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Please see Confirmation bias. Nothing in the Cass Review refutes the info in the first two paragraphs. EvergreenFir (talk) 15:30, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

What paragraph are you referring to? I don't think the lead of this article references either of those two topics. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 15:31, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

It is unclear what changes you want to propose. The intro paragraph doesn't mention either puberty blockers or youth transition. Please be more specific. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:41, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

No, we don't write this article based on the opinions of the government of the UK, Russia or any other country known for their attacks on LGBT+ people. The "Cass Review" has been roundly criticized, like everything else the UK does in regard to trans rights.[1][2] Anyway, this isn't an article on trans health, but an article on a specific anti-LGBT+ movement, part of the wider far-right or right-wing populist anti-gender movement. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 15:13, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

AAB – you are surely aware of WP:NOTFORUM …. article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article….. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:11, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really sure how you think NOTFORUM applies here, Sweet6970. Would you be willing to clarify (either here, or if you feel it's too far off topic, perhaps on either my or your user talkpage)? Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:18, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Alpha3031: Try asking yourself how Amanda A. Brant’s comment contributes/does not contribute to the improvement of this article. It is an expression of personal views about the subject of the article, which does not address the point of the discussion, which is about the prominence in the article of comments about supposed disinformation. This is a Contentious Topic, both in Wikipedia’s terms, and in the real world. A blanket statement that the gender-critical feminism is an anti-LGBT+ movement, part of the wider far-right or right-wing populist anti-gender movement. serves no purpose, and is likely to arouse emotion. Further emotion on this subject is surplus to requirements. In addition, there are named g-c feminists mentioned in the article. The comment in effect smears these individuals as being far-right, so there is a WP:BLP problem as well. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:30, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

That seems like a minimal part of the comment, the sentence of which primarily focuses on stating that the two topics are different. It is still incredibly surprising to me anyone would suggests it implicates TPG but I will drop the matter on my end. Alpha3031 (t • c) 17:30, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think you can use Cass to make that argument without substantial WP:OR. For example, one citation is Billard, who says:

To support my argument, it is first necessary to evidence the claim that gender-critical discourse constitutes a coordinated disinformation campaign that is part of a broader political strategy to oppose transgender rights. As I have written elsewhere (Billard, 2022), there are various types of anti-transgender misinformation: (1) definitional misinformation, which is misinformation about what transition-related health care actually is and what it does; (2) misinformation about the accessibility of trans care; (3) misinformation about the safety of trans care; (4) misinformation about the cost of trans care; (5) misinformation about “desistance,”or the frequency with which people “cease to be trans”or“detransition”; and (6) misinformation about the etiology or “cause”of trans identity;

Now someone could argue that several of those points are potentially addressed by the Cass Review, with high quality evidence (notably, points 1, 3, 5 and 6). But that requires a lot of speculation about what it even is that Billard is talking about here as it is spectacularly vague, and in any case that's WP:OR so until a WP:RS wants to actually make that argument, Billard's handwavey assertions aren't likely to go anywhere.

A better criticism IMO is that one source just uses "disinformation" in passing in a fairly hyperbolic way that really just comes across as "opinions I disagree with", one isn't actually talking about "disinformation" at all and asserts statements are misinformation (eg. about trans inclusion in sports on basis of self-id, in the specific context of Spanish legislation) without justifying it or explaining why it isn't true AFAICT, and Billard's paper has no actual detail, and is hardly notable or significant for such a serious accusation. There's very little substance here, and it really doesn't belong in the lede given how sparse this is. Void if removed (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

We do not base Wikipedia articles on reports that have been seriously criticized by a significant number of scientists who are specialists in the subject. We can also consider sources that have received recognition only in some regions as fringe if they contradict the international mainstream in the relevant discipline. TERFism is disproportionately popular in British academia and clearly unpopular outside of it. Wikipedia:MONDIAL Reprarina (talk) 22:02, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

The Cass Review and the systematic reviews it is based on are absolutely high quality sources. They aren't relevant for this purpose, but the idea that it's been "seriously criticised" is basically nonsense. Hyperbolic chaff in popular media is not serious criticism of MEDRS. Void if removed (talk) 22:37, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Is International Journal of Transgender Health a popular media? Reprarina (talk) 23:03, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Let's not compare apples with oranges. The systematic reviews commissioned by the Cass Review and published in the most reputable of journals don't get dismissed because of some out-of-date social-science opinion pieces in WPATH's house journal. WPATH is welcome to publish systematic reviews that come to different conclusions, for example. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, despite what anyone's personal echo chamber may be saying, the Cass Review is as relevant as any NICE guideline and remains highly regarded as a thorough work in this field. Specific aspects, as one might expect from any 400-page wide-ranging review that took four years, are of course open to medical dispute and differing of opinion, and editors should supply reliable sources when making such remarks. Editors dismissing these publications as though a puppet document of a transphobic government really need to stop that now. I hope that's really clear.

Despite what writers, on both extremes of this culture war, have said, the Cass Review neither proves that the gender-critical side were right all along, nor is an attack on transgender identity or the importance of affirmative care. Come on, this isn't twitter, we can do better than this. I don't really see what the Cass Review has to do with "Gender-critical feminism" at all. That some GCFs have been banging on about puberty blockers and social contagions is really a matter for individual biographical articles on those people. -- Colin°^Talk 11:12, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

This article should be renamed to Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism, because that is the most common term for this

"Gender critical feminism" is a less used term; these people are called "terfs" not "gender critical feminists" Lados75 (talk) 12:37, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The failed attempt to move this page is less than 6 months old, nothing has changed since that interminable argument, please don't reopen this unless you have substantial new evidence. A personal dislike of "TERFs" is not enough.

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Gender-critical_feminism/Archive_6#Requested_move_31_January_2024 Void if removed (talk) 12:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, the closer has said in their closing statement explanation (emphasis mine):

An editor involved in this page move discussion asked me on my talk page to expand my brief closing statement.
My response is repeated here for your convenience.

Thank you, editor Sideswipe9th, for coming to my talk page! And apologies for my usual terse closing statement. That was an interesting read with strong arguments on both sides of the article-title issue. Frankly I thought that overall the arguments in favor of the proposed page move were somewhat stronger, and yet there was interesting rebuttal to the nom's COMMONNAME and NPOV rationale, which strengthened the opposition a bit. At the end of my read I found that neither supporters nor opposers had been able to build a consensus either for the current title or for proposed titles. At first I very nearly relisted the request; however, I then considered the lengthy arguments by several concerned editors and decided to close the request instead. I suggest for editors to wait two or three months and then open a fresh move request with strongest possible arguments. History has shown that the longer the wait and the stronger the rationales, the more likely a follow-up move request will succeed. Thanks again!

This request opens with the nom's strong, policy-based rationale to rename this article. In very short order there ensued both support and opposition with strong arguments both for keeping the current title and for changing it. A good read of this survey yields fairly strong rebuttal to the nom's opening statement. So this is inarguably a contentious issue. I suggest that editors discuss this title issue informally to build consensus before opening a fresh RM. Thank you all for your welcome participation to search for the highest and best title for this article!
— User:Paine Ellsworth

So a future move request is not off the table, and if people feel that a more definitive case can be made after a discussion, the move request may be reopened. PBZE (talk) 17:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not see any purpose in opening a new discussion at this time. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:58, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Someone needs to come with some really strong arguments that weren't already dismissed. Btw, Void, I think you mean "A personal dislike of "gender-critical feminism" is not enough". I think actually the claim 'these people are called "terfs"' is itself a first class indication that that is an othering slur used by one side in this culture war. -- Colin°^Talk 11:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The term "Gender-critical feminism" is not very widely used in that exact form but the most commonly used term is "Gender Critical" (with or without a hyphen) and many (not myself!) would claim that "feminism" is implied even when it is not explicitly stated, making "Gender-critical feminism" the full form of the term. I feel that a move to "Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism" is definitely not a good idea as it would tie this subject even more closely to feminism, a link which exists but which is often overstated. Besides, it seems unfair to drag the Radical Feminists into this, any more than they already are, when most of the GCs are not RadFem and most of the RadFems are not GC. Personally, I favour a move to "Gender-critical movement" (with or without a hyphen) because the GC movement is a mixture of all sorts of people with little in common except for animus against trans people, which is the sole defining aspect of the movement. Only some of them have any connection to feminism at all and some are explicitly anti-feminist. However, given that getting agreement on anything in this subject area is all but impossible, I'm not going to propose it as it would probably get absolutely nowhere and just waste a load more of everybody's time. DanielRigal (talk) 11:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think your argument in favour of "Gender-critical movement" holds (a) "is a mixture of all sorts of people with little in common" is a really bad topic for an article and "except for animus against trans people" is literally the definition of transphobia which have an article on. -- Colin°^Talk 12:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

A movement is a movement even if it is a single issue movement that attracts support from people with little else in common. The fact that this article exists is proof that there is a subject here. I don't think that anybody is arguing otherwise. I guess that a merge and redirect to transphobia would be a theoretical possibility, and I wouldn't necessarily oppose that myself, but we all know that there is no realistic prospect of that actually happening and that it would be a waste of everybody's time to propose it. DanielRigal (talk) 12:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

You said:

animus against trans people, which is the sole defining aspect

The sole defining aspect is a shared belief that sex is binary, immutable, and important. That is how it is defined in WP:RS. That some also have animus towards trans people does not make that a defining factor in the belief, which is protected in the UK in those precise terms, while "animus towards trans people" blatantly is not, and could not be.

The problem is that there are a whole lot of sources that take the position that the belief that sex is binary, immutable and important is animus to trans people. Accurately representing this difference of perspective neutrally and fairly is hard, and approaching it from the standpoint that the subjects of the article are inherently bigoted or suggesting a redirect to transphobia when some WP:RS disagree is not ideal, to put it mildly.

I would propose:

• Rename TERF (acronym) back to TERF and remove the redirect that presently points here (and delete TERF Lesbians while we're at it)
• Create a page "gender critical" to cover just gender critical beliefs and the history of their legal protection, forstater etc and wider controversy using sources that only talk about "gender critical" (not "movement", that's overbroad, people who might share such beliefs are not part of the same "movement" by any stretch).
• Leave this page for "gender critical feminism" and link it from there as a historically important subset of those beliefs, ie those who coined the term and why, and its relationship to the term TERF, sourced only and specifically to material that talks about "gender critical feminism"
• Move all the "TERF ideology" stuff from here to "TERF".

But again, I can't see people going for that. But personally I think this is a legitimate POV split, per WP:SUBPOV. Void if removed (talk) 13:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

"Gender critical" isn't great as an article title per WP:NOUN. I'm not sure how much material there would be to cover that isn't rooted in some way in a feminist perspective? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:06, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Gender critical beliefs maybe? The issue for me is that the result of Forstater was the protection of "gender-critical" as a belief distinct from any feminist analysis, and the term has come to have a broader usage. The belief that "sex is biological, binary and immutable" is not an inherently feminist one, and one held by (I would suggest) the vast majority of people, and those are the terms it is classed as a protected belief in the UK.

Gender critical feminists - as the originators of the term - additionally maintain a critique of gender as a system of oppression. But they are a tiny minority, and plenty of people who are not feminists can now be classed as "gender-critical" in UK law. For example, Sharhar Ali won a tribunal ruling on this basis - but he is not a gender critical feminist. Kevin Lister lost a tribunal ruling on the basis of gender-critical beliefs, and he is not a gender-critical feminist.

In much the same way some people who are called TERFs are neither trans-exclusionary nor radical feminists, many people called gender critical are not critical of gender and some are even explicitly antifeminist, so including them in a page titled "gender critical feminism" is a little perverse. Void if removed (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I have to say taking your definition of gender critical from purely UK court cases isn't the best. As well as this the definition above definitely seems like one that some gender critical people would say is their believe. The thing is getting a strict definition is difficult because it's a mainly social movement and some people have a tendency to misrepresent their beliefs. LunaHasArrived (talk) 17:19, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

As I may have said before, one way is for someone to sandbox some ideas on split/merged articles. It's a bit of work, though, and I can see why someone might think they have better things to do.

Btw, Sharhar Ali's tribunal ruling was over a procedural failing surrounding his dismissal. It actually reminded everyone that "Political parties can remove spokespeople for holding "beliefs that were inconsistent with party policy", if done through fair procedures". Sharhar Ali could have been found to be procedurally wrongly dismissed due to a dispute over the party logo or some aspect of economic policy. That this tribunal is held up as an example of how GC beliefs are protected in law, is a good example of GC misinformation. Anyone in the Alba Party expressing the view that trans women are women, something equally protected in UK law, is likely to find themselves required to publicly apologise and repent in order to remain in the job. And if Helen Joyce, director at Sex Matters, suddenly announced they wanted to be called "Hugo" and identified as a man, something anyone might hope one could do and keep one's job in most circumstances, they might find Sex Matters had appointed a different Director of Advocacy.

But I agree that "feminism" is not necessarily a useful component, and many who are described as GCF or TERFs are not feminists by any reasonable measure. -- Colin°^Talk 14:56, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I have started over here by taking this article and stripping out all of the feminist theory/history and "academic criticism of TERFs" stuff, to try and boil it down to the essentials of "gender critical", the history of the terminology and the legal situation in the UK. Its a work in progress, might go nowhere, might not get consensus for it, was just idly curious to see roughly what would be left and approximately how long that hypothetical article would be. Void if removed (talk) 16:47, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I think these things can be worthwhile even if it isn't adopted. Just thinking about a subject from a different angle. -- Colin°^Talk 18:43, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there a plan to move this content somewhere else (i.e. a corresponding Trans-exclusionary radical feminism? Although they are divergent movements, the origins of GC/TERF ideology among white RadFems seem like a very notable aspect of this topic; I don't think omitting that or trying to treat them as separate concepts is an improvement. The History section in the current article isn't very long anyway and could stand to be expanded. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 17:28, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

That text shouldn't be moved anywhere. It's not appropriate as an article, it seems to just remove most other opinions than the movement's own opinions, like a WP:POVFORK of this article. It's also completely meaningless to separate "gender-critical" from gender-critical feminism (or movement)/trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF). They refer to the same thing, gender-critical (and GC) is really just shorthand for it. Others would describe gender-critical as a problematic newer "self-definition by some individuals and groups labelled TERFs" that serves to rebrand anti-trans activism (per the article). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 06:29, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason to rename TERF (acronym) as TERF or remove the redirect. The term primarily refers to the actual movement and ideology. The article on the history of the acronym is a sub topic. This article is the main article on the TERF movement and ideology, and the vast majority of readers are clearly interested in the ideology itself, not the history of the word. The history of the would should be summarized here (like we do) per Wikipedia:Summary style and discussed in detail in the in-depth article on the acronym. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 06:33, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

We have indeed established that Gender-critical feminism is not the most common term. Daniel Rigal is also correct that even when the term gender-critical is used, is it typically without the word feminism. Even supporters usually just call themselves gender-critical or its abbreviation GC. Critics on the other hand often dispute that this movement is even feminist. Therefore, Gender-critical movement would be more in line with WP:COMMONNAME. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 06:17, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

We have not established that at all. We've been though this all before and "gender critical movement" is nowhere. Really we are comparing apples and oranges here. Gender-critical feminism is a thing. There are scholarly works on it, written by people who hold these views. There are multiple groups and countless individuals who claim this term to describe themselves. It is certainly a topic worthy of an article on Wikipedia.

TERF and its expansion "trans exclusionary radical feminist" is a label used by writers to talk about people they hate. It isn't a well defined set of beliefs. Often, such people don't even have to hold gender critical or feminist views at all. It covers anyone perceived as transphobic in the modern age, though mostly women, whereas men more often get called plainly transphobic. Well have an article on this slur: TERF (acronym) and we have a topic on transphobic beliefs: transphobia. Advocates that this article be renamed all loudly equate GCF with transphobia (and racism and Nazis typically) so go write at the article "transphobia" about it if you have the sources. You lose the argument when you say GCF==transphobic people. I might as well argue that the current Tory party is hatefully transphobic and so we should redirect Conservative Party (UK) to a new "transphobic Tory scum" article to express my feelings about them. I can find plenty material about transphobic Tory politicians to fill it with. That's the intellectual level being advanced here. That one simply wants ones advocacy position of hate to be spelled out in article titles.

There are a set of beliefs held by gender-critical feminists, just as there are sets of beliefs held by conservative politicians. To the extent that those beliefs tend one towards transphobia, typically in the minds of others, that can be documented if we have the sources. But let's please not make the mistake of saying that because you or your favourite writers think all GCF are transphobes that the words are synonyms. That isn't how an encyclopaedia works. Colin°^Talk 11:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

"we have a topic on transphobic beliefs: transphobia" Yes. And what is classified as transphobia by academic sources = what "gender-critical" feminists do, according to academic sources. Reprarina (talk) 13:24, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

You've just said it yourself "classified as", not "is and is entirely equivalent to". An iPhone is "classified as" a smartphone" by all reliable sources. While Wingnut (politics) is an informal term (though widely used if you search Google News), the relationship between that word and the less intelligent right-wing politicians isn't really any different to the relationship between TERF (and its expansion) with GCF. Arguments that TERF isn't a slur are frankly about as embarrassing as trying to justify Tory scum on the grounds, that, well, they really are the scum of the earth. An encyclopaedia shouldn't be lowering itself to using partisan terms-of-abuse, regardless of how much many of us here think that abuse is merited. -- Colin°^Talk 13:41, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Give me academic sources at the level of The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies and Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education, which titles articles about the UK Conservative Party as Tory scum, and avoid the term UK Conservative Party.--Reprarina (talk) 13:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I say "classified as... by academic sources" instead of "is" because I do not want to violate WP:NOTAFORUM. Reprarina (talk) 14:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Colin, what part of terf includes a pejorative word like Tory scum. On a different note whilst terf in common parlance has become synonymous with transphobia, is that the case in academia and is there any academia that says terfism and gender critical feminism is different. There are many a group that are labelled from outside rather than inside, especially groups associated with bigotry as few people like being associated with bigotry. I would also really like to know what groups gender critical feminists together but transphobia, afaik they only ever promote 2 ideas: freedom to say their gender critical views, and being transphobic. LunaHasArrived (talk) 16:17, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Colin, what part of terf includes a pejorative word like Tory scum.

It is more like "scab", in that use and context has rendered it a pejorative. There is no serious disagreement that it is a pejorative. The only disagreement is whether it is technically a slur. Void if removed (talk) 22:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Etymologically, scab was used as a prejorative (1580s) before it was used to describe strike breakers (c. 1800s according to RS) not the other way around, so that example might not work either. Alpha3031 (t • c) 10:08, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

"what part of terf includes a pejorative word like Tory scum" this is the kind of typical analysis of "TERF" that fails to understand how words work. As I may have mentioned before, if I shorten the word "Pakistani" to the first four letters, I get the second most offensive word in British English. If I do similar with "Australian" to "Aussie" I get a friendly shorthand. Most of the analysis of TERF by activists falls into that trap. Dictionaries don't make that mistake as they focus on usage. So Oxford will tell us that the word nowadays means "a person whose views on gender identity are (or are considered) hostile to transgender people, or who opposes social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people" and "TERF is now often used with derogatory or dismissive intent". So we have a dictionary telling us it is a vague term of abuse, no longer connected to its original meaning, and used towards people who's views are being hatefully dismissed.

Yes there are lots of labels for people "from the outside rather than inside". You know what most of them have in common: they are derogatory and dismissive and over-simplify what defines that group or what qualities it may have.

Use of that word or its expansion is the preserve of activist literature preaching to their congregation. If you examine neutral sources you won't find it outside of quoting someone or referring to it. Even groups that support trans people in the UK like Stonewall and Mermaids do not use that language. They know that one can't hope to win hearts and minds when one comes across as a hateful fundamentalist. -- Colin°^Talk 11:39, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Ok so you agree that it has to be the way that terf is used that makes it derogatory and dismissive, i do have to say your analysis that terf is a slur is a matter of opinion. Some people consider cis a slur (in fact some of the same people that say terf is a slur say this), this does not mean it is and I have to say that transphobe fits in oxford dictionaries definition above, should we just rename this article transphobia deemed acceptable in the UK, because is there any difference to that and gender critical feminism. LunaHasArrived (talk) 16:11, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree, no. Words can become unusable (outside of attribution). Look, you can always find someone who thinks X is a perfectly ok word, typically because they use it or they grew up using it. Just because some people have a different opinion doesn't mean that serious neutral writers don't avoid it. Like we are required to by policy. There isn't a single article on Wikipedia that says "X is a TERF" in Wikivoice. The "cis is a slur" is Twitter nonsense, at a "you smell too" intellectual level.

Editors who can't find a difference between "transphobia" or "transphobia deemed acceptable in the UK" and "gender-critical feminism" maybe shouldn't be editing this article or using this page as a forum to express their opinions. -- Colin°^Talk 17:01, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

The problem with the above has to be what one considers serious neutral writers has a huge impact on their conclusion. I do agree though at the moment something gender critical seems to be the most reasonable but I haven't done a heavy analysis of academic sources at the moment and I (unfortunately) live in the UK so exposure to UK media might bias me on this. LunaHasArrived (talk) 18:13, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

But even leaving the "slur" debate aside, another problem with "TERF" is the fact that (as I've pointed out in talk more than once) there are academics who consider it not a neutral term, and use it because it isn't neutral (Hines, Williams). And there are even those academics who insist on using it but also simultaneously argue it is a misnomer because "they aren't feminists" or somesuch. And there are academics who note its controversy and avoid it because other, less inflammatory terms are available.

As a thought experiment, it is frankly inconceivable that in an interview the BBC would introduce, say, Kathleen Stock as a TERF. That should give a pretty clear hint that whatever the strong opinions of a handful of academics, it is actually a clearly non-neutral term. Void if removed (talk) 18:31, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes the BBC, the most neutral news source on trans people. On a more serious note, does Wikipedia follow newspapers or the academic sources. As well as this there should be a note of TERF Vs trans exclusionary radical feminist, I don't think anybody could accurately say the later is a slur despite the former starting as a abbreviation and their usage is very different. LunaHasArrived (talk) 18:41, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

The BBC have their flaws but they, and ITV and Sky News are legally required to be neutral in their reporting and language. They wouldn't dream of calling anyone a TERF. Nor would any serious newspaper reporting. I'm not so familiar with US TV/Radio/Newspapers but pick your favourite and imagine a news reporter talking about some matter, and describing Stock or Rowling as TERFs in editorial voice.

But let's take this thought experiment to Wikipedia. @Amanda A. Brant, et al, if you are so so confident that the term is both neutral and accurate and fair description then I challenge you to get the lead paragraph of the bio of anyone on "TERF Island" to say that these people are TERFs. Or even that they are trans-exclusionary radical feminists. I'm not asking you to edit war. Persuade editors on those articles. You might have enough "friends" to feel bold making that point on this page, but you don't have a WP:SNOWBALL chance elsewhere. And this matters, because editors don't like linking to redirects and don't like linking to incorrect terms. You'd swiftly find people objecting to linking biographical articles to a hate term or misleading term and rightly insisting that reliable neutral sources don't actually do that.

The fact is that if this article was called "Trans-exclusionary radical feminism", writers would get tired of writing that expansion after a sentence or two (and realise how misleading it is when used to describe certain people) and resort to saying TERFs or the ridiculous TERFology/TERFism. And then we get unstuck, because TERF means "hateful middle aged woman who holds views I consider transphobic" and before we know it, the article no longer describes a branch of feminism at all, but becomes a dumping ground for whoever half of Twitter hates.

Counting word usage, as happened in the last discussion, is a deeply flawed process. It doesn't tell you why people are using a word. They might well be using it to criticise its use, for example, or include it in parenthesis to indicate it is an alternative. It doesn't tell us that people who use one term are writing opinion pieces about how much they hate some other people, mainly in the US, whereas people who use the other term are a far more mixed bunch. It might tell you about US dominance in English speaking publications. Or about which magazines or newspapers get sucked into a Google Scholar search. It isn't particularly useful for our purposes here as both terms are widely used.

I think some US academics have dug a hole for themselves. Rather than write about important feminist points, they have wasted time arguing that their term is great and "not a slur" and that other term is a euphemism invented by Bad People. And now they find they can't back down. So we end up with a silo term, that can only be used by people preaching to their (mainly US) congregation, or as a signifier about which camp one is in on Twitter. -- Colin°^Talk 07:56, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Looking through a few of the pages on Wikipedia devoted to people on this page who have been called transphobic. There seems to be basically no mention of gender critical feminism or terf anywhere. Gender critical (no feminism) seems to be almost a UK legal term not a wider view and certainly not a historic one. Terf is only mentioned on Magadalen Berns' page (in the lead not in wikivoice) but rad fems who have been called transphobic seems to be a pretty common camp. This was just individuals Wikipedia pages though, no groups whatsoever. LunaHasArrived (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

With a few exceptions, pages on individuals invariably hit WP:BLP issues using terms like TERF and anti-trans and transphobia. Pages on groups are far more free with this language, see eg. the lede of Women's Declaration International. Void if removed (talk) 09:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes of course, but that's why it was interesting to see no link to gender critical (apart from in a legal sense) LunaHasArrived (talk) 10:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Which people have you looked at that don't link it? Have you opened up the source to look for links? There will be links back to here and to TERF (acronym) but they won't use that language in wiki voice. The things is, you read some of the advocacy on this page where being GCF is equated with being a white supremacist, or child offender, in terms of supposedly universal agreement that these people are so bad we don't even cite their works, only the works of those who hate them, and yet when it hits reality, we find these people very much not cancelled and very much not called TERFs by any respectable source that values neutrality. -- Colin°^Talk 12:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

It should be mentioned that it was lead paragraph with my above statement (as was yours about getting TERF into lead paragraphs). I looked through Kathleen stock, Holly Lawford-smith, Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffereys, Helen Joyce, Julie Bindel, Magadalen Berns', Robin Morgan, Maya Forstater and Jo Phoenix. Of these Helen Joyce, Maya Forstater and Jo Phoenix use Gender Critical (no feminist), Magadalen Berns' has TERF (linking to here) and the rest have no mention in the lead. This list was gathered from reading through this article, it is possible I may have missed some but I did also search for people mentioned who had no Wikipedia page just in case. Some of the people on the above list do have both feminism and mentions of transphobia in the lead but no label to this movement. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:11, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

So for example, the page on Helen Lewis (journalist) links both here and to TERF (acronym) as follows:

Lewis said "I've had two tedious years of being abused online as a transphobe and a 'TERF' or 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist'—despite my belief that trans women are women, and trans men are men—because I have expressed concerns about self-ID and its impact on single-sex spaces"

Now it makes sense to link TERF to the page which explains it is an insult and what it means.

But it makes no sense to link "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" to this page, because "gender critical feminist" is not a term of abuse.

This is the whole problem with this pretense all these terms are interchangable. Everyone knows TERF is a derogatory term used to pretty much like "witch" these days, and that is what she's referring to. It is clear in context she is expanding that term for clarity for the unfamiliar, but per MOS:NOLINKQUOTE there is no way that the expansion should link here, because there's no way that Helen Lewis would agree - in the context she is listing terms she has been abused with - that "gender critical feminist" is one of those. Void if removed (talk) 12:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

In the same vain Transphobe shouldn't link to transphobia then. I think that both this and Trans exclusionary radical feminism are linked so people learn about those movements and can judge Helen Lewis for themselves. Perhaps neither should link whatsoever but I'm not an editor truly experienced with MOS guidelines. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:23, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we have thoroughly established that and it's all in the archives. We have also established, from the very beginning, that trans-exclusionary radical feminism and gender-critical feminism are to be treated as synonymous terms for the purposes of this article. Gender-critical feminism is merely (yet another) attempt at rebranding this specific form of transphobia (nobody says it's synonymous with transphobia in general, i.e. all forms of it). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Amanda, you write "we have established" so many times on these pages, as though the many people who disagree with you, writing in the very same sections, simply don't exist. As for "nobody says", well Daniel did, just further up this page, when they said this could be a merge and redirect to transphobia.

Go look in any serious newspaper that is doing serious reporting (not opinion pieces) that reports on the controversy surrounding Kathleen Stock or Maya Forstater, for example. Or even JK Rowling for that matter. Does the journalist call them TERFs in editorial voice? No. I doubt you'd find any calling them trans-exclusionary radical feminists either. Does anyone seriously claim Forstater or Rowling have a radical feminist position?

It is perfectly possible to write in an academic journal without lowering oneself to Twitter-level hate-words: This is hate, not debate is a thoughtful academic piece by a trans person arguing that others are writing and saying things that make their life less safe. Their point would be lost if they used hateful language themselves. On Wikipedia, we don't copy the language of biased sources, or the language of hate. This is so well established, we have a policy, which requires us to be neutral. -- Colin°^Talk 16:51, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

We have established it. Whether you agree or not is immaterial, especially since you don't cite any sources to back up your claims, unlike me and others who researched this quite thoroughly when we discussed it. I haven't seen any editor besides you dispute the fact that the specific phrase "Gender-critical feminism" is not the most common term. It would be surprising, especially given the solid evidence cited in earlier discussions that demonstrated other terms or specific phrases to be more widely used than "Gender-critical feminism", which is a fairly new term. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 18:20, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

this source currently used on the page is interesting for containing this line:

many (not all) gender-critical feminists are also radical feminists

Which means that gender critical feminist and trans exclusionary radical feminist cannot be equivalent.

Note that this paper uses "gender critical feminist" throughout. Neither TERF nor trans-exclusionary radical feminist appear. There is no unanimity here and taking a couple of more anti-TERF sources as authorities on this is going to end up advancing one specific POV.

And in any case, some of the positions are more nuanced. Eg. Thurlow give their opinion that this is in part a rebranding, but that the terms are not precisely equivalent, as I've stated before, several times. Void if removed (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

That's like saying that Pluto must be a planet because it's a dwarf planet. No, "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" as a full phrase just can't be split into its individual parts. Some TERFs are not radical feminists, and while that's a contradiction in language, it's not a contradiction in meaning. Loki (talk) 00:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Some TERFs are not radical feminists, and while that's a contradiction in language, it's not a contradiction in meaning.

I'm sorry, I absolutely don't follow what you're saying here. Either "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" is a neutral, accurate descriptor, or it isn't.

As is abundantly clear TERF is not applied only to radical feminists, or even feminists, but actually to denigrate basically anyone deemed transphobic on the grounds of believing there are two human sexes and you cannot literally change sex. If the full expansion "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" also applies to people who aren't radical feminists, or even feminists, it isn't actually a neutral, accurate descriptor either. If these terms just mean whatever shibboleth the author is railing against in a given context, and not a coherent set of beliefs, how is this different to, say, US Republicans calling everything they dislike "Marxist" or "Critical theory" or "Woke" or some such?

All this is why neutral sources don't use it - because it is both inaccurate and inflammatory.

And yet another employment tribunal today ruled in a damning verdict that this sort of discriminatory attitude is unacceptable in UK civil society. Void if removed (talk) 09:09, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe Loki is saying that TERF cannot be read as a simple wikt:WT:Sum of parts. Hope that clarifies things. Alpha3031 (t • c) 10:21, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

But the claim is also made that it is a simple, accurate sum of its parts and that's why it is ok to use when specifically referring to the branch of radical feminism (encompassing most notably Raymond and Jeffries) who are trans-exclusionary.

Gender-critical feminism is clearly not exactly the same thing, rather it is a superset for wider feminist beliefs, encompassing different kinds of feminism (eg. radical, socialist, marxist, and even liberal) who happen to agree that sex is binary and immutable, and gender is oppressive.

Using "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" for all of these views is patently inaccurate and this is borne out by the sources which make it clear there is a distinction. Some sources are invested in using "TERF" as a synonym for "transphobe" and not a specific accurate descriptor of any particular branch of feminist thought, and expanding the acronym doesn't make it any more accurate or neutral once you start saying "well, it doesn't apply to radical feminists, or even feminists, its more than the sum of its parts". Frankly it is incoherent to argue that "trans exclusionary radical feminism" is both a neutral accurate descriptor and also means people who aren't radical feminists or even feminists.

Returning to the Pluto analogy, it is like saying that "dwarf planet" applies to non-planetary objects. No - you can't just call a moon a "dwarf planet" any more than you can call Graham Linehan a "trans exclusionary radical feminist" and then claim its accurate because its not just the sum of its parts. Void if removed (talk) 10:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

"woke" is a good example. Apparently diswashers and scones can be woke. The word is now mainly used by people who don't care what it originally meant, don't care to come up with a rigid definition, but use it in a "I know it when I see it" mindset against things or people they hate. "TERF" and "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" have fallen into that bucket and are used by a siloed group just like the pejorative "woke" is used by a siloed group. The meaning and usage is accepted within that group but to everyone else outside, eyes roll. -- 12:16, 20 May 2024 (UTC) Colin°^Talk 12:16, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe the comparison made by LunaHasArrived was strictly in response to Colin raising "Tory scum" as a point of comparison. Thank you for understanding. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:05, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

If one wants to play the "don't look at what each word means" game then that pretty much rules out all the criticism of "gender critical". If all we are left with are opaque terms composed of multiple words, and those words are not to be examined, then why are trans activists so determined to avoid using "gender critical feminist" as a term?

The "TERF/trans-exclusionary radical feminist" naming has this problem. Abbreviated it is an offensive term of abuse. Expanded it is utterly meaningless to our readers, and trying to explain the meaning ends up demonstrating how unconnected it is with any actual modern usage. Plus it is way too many syllables. -- Colin°^Talk 14:25, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Dunno, why are race activists so determined to avoid race realist? I don't really care, I think gender critical is shorter and I doubt it'll avoid the treadmill in the long run. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:38, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I suppose, going back to the topic of the actual title, I would probably oppose TERF because it's clearly not WP:NCACRO, which makes it a decision between the two longer forms, and honestly the other one is just too much of a mouthful. Hell, I wish this section head was shorter. Already trans-exclusionary radical feminism PRIMARYREDIRECTs here anyway. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:44, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Classifying the movement as cisnormative

I looked it up and saw that the article did not use the word “cisnormativity” at all. Meanwhile, academic sources clearly classify the movement as cisnormative.

In recent years, a form of feminism known as trans exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) has contained cisnormative arguments similar to those of social conservatives, promoting the vilification of people with a trans lived experience in the guise of “gender-critical” feminism. Berger, Israel; Ansara, Y. Gavriel. Cisnormativity. In: Goldberg, Abbie; Beemyn, Genny. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies.

Scholars spanning educational contexts, including K-12 (e.g., Carrera-Fernández & DePalma, 2020; Schmidt, 2017) and higher education (e.g., Chang & Leets, Jr., 2018; Nicolazzo, 2017), have identified educational institutions as cisheteronormative spaces whose structures, classrooms, and curricula often- times perpetuate trans-exclusionary ideologies. In many instances, TERFs oppose LGBTQ+ inclusive school policies and educational advancements (Pearce et al., 2020), contributing to understandings of cisnormativity in educational spaces and rendering such heteronormativity inextricable from the discussion of TERFs. In: Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education.

We have at least two encyclopedias which focus attention on cisnormativity in TERF movement, so I should we should add it in the acticle.--Reprarina (talk) 14:09, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

This was added recently to the Scholarly Analysis section. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 12:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

views - gay rights

Is there any reason this section solely quotes GC people and makes no mention that most gay people disagree with them. At the moment someone who reads the section would have no idea about the disagreement involved. Perhaps this would be best served linking to an appropriate article but it does strike me as a problem. LunaHasArrived (talk) 18:05, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I would love to add a popular opinion section if you could get good sources on it. Loki (talk) 20:04, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

From a very very quick search

this source says only 8% of cisgender gay, lesbian and bisexual Britain's have a negative view of trans people. (No mention of gender critical)

this 2nd source Has the juicy quote "The findings seem to disprove claims by groups such as the LGB Alliance and The Lesbian Project, as well as several “gender-critical” pundits, that including the “T” somehow erases the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people." And goes more into people saying there is no divide.

I'm sure there's more and not from pinknews alone, but as I said this was a quick search (searching "yougov" on pinknews) LunaHasArrived (talk) 21:10, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Those could go on a more general page about the relationship between LGB people and trans people, but you're gonna have to get us specifically opinions on gender-critical feminism (or trans-exclusionary radical feminism) for this page.

(See why this is hard?) Loki (talk) 00:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Why is it a problem for a section on the views of gender critical feminists about a specific subject being based on quotes of gender critical feminists giving their views on that subject? Void if removed (talk) 20:15, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Basic WP:Due weight (emphasis added):

However, these pages should still appropriately reference the majority viewpoint wherever relevant and must not represent content strictly from the minority view's perspective. [...] In addition, the majority view should be explained sufficiently to let the reader understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding aspects of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained.

This section should put minority viewpoints on the relationship between LGB rights and trans rights within the context of the broader gay rights movement. Some of the sources and material at Lesbian erasure § In relation to transgender people is probably relevant here. It's especially concerning to directly cite "We're being pressured into sex by some trans women" as a source without mentioning any of the widely covered reactions to it. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 20:29, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

This is not an article about gay rights falsely emphasising the minority opinions of gender-critical feminists about gay rights.

This is an article about gender-critical feminism, describing their views. The best sources for those views are not people who hate them saying why they hate their views and think they're wrong, even if those views are in the majority, any more than the page on Christianity should heavily feature the views of the global Muslim majority. Void if removed (talk) 20:37, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

It is currently heavily one sided, look at the above section on intersex conditions and compare the 2. It reads like a press release from sex matters or get the L out, if we shouldn't have criticism sections we shouldn't have sections that only show one side of the argument either. LunaHasArrived (talk) 20:58, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

• I don't know what Wikipedia you've been reading, but the encyclopedia I know loves to point out when religious or spiritual groups believe in things that contrast with a mainstream (i.e. scientific) consensus; see especially List of topics characterized as pseudoscience § Religious and spiritual beliefs.

Terves Reiki practitioners are perfectly fine sources for the things Reiki practitioners believe, but to achieve NPOV and DUE, we are obliged to at least make note of the fact that their beliefs are not mainstream, and have been criticized by numerous feminists, lesbians, trans men, and scholars who consider their beliefs about... er... the efficacy of Reiki, to be faux-concern, scaremongering,[3] demeaning and wrong.[4], or as part of a right-wing effort to falsely equate their transphobic ideology with Left movements, drive a wedge between trans people and the rest of the LGBTQ community.[5] Some amount of criticism content is absolutely due in this section, and its omission is glaring. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 00:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

(As a note: these were the sources most convenient to me, primarily to demonstrate the existence of substantial sourced critique of gendercrit narratives purporting transbian invasion, butch genocide, etc. They're not the result of an exhaustive search or necessarily the ones that should be included alongside the current content. I hope an interested editor finds the time to do that work.) –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 00:38, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

last sentence of the lede

The "in some countries" seems very out of place, looking at the article at the moment the by country section contains 3, the United Kingdom (seems to be about 90% of the section), the United states and south Korea. The only organisation mentioned in either of the latter 2 is Wolf (which looking at their page has been criticised for allying itself with the right wing). Looking at the UK ones there are definitely organisations that are criticised for allying with far right organisations.

I suggest removing the "In some countries" part but want to feel out what consensus would be on the swap. I personally think "some major Gender critical feminist groups" but I'm very happy to compromise with "some gender critical" or other suggestions. LunaHasArrived (talk) 21:42, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

What exactly in the body of the article is the last sentence of the lead ‘In some countries, gender-critical feminist groups have formed alliances with right-wing, far-right, and anti-feminist organisations’ based on? Sweet6970 (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

First section of controversies covers it pretty fully. LunaHasArrived (talk) 17:44, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

The citations for the line in the lede are two pieces that don't explicitly say this AFAICT, a piece in Der Freitag that we quote attributed text from in the body, because it is arguably opinion, and a piece that seems to be WP:RSOPINION and makes the claim with no citations (so again, this should really be attributed). I don't think that's enough to construct this definitive claim in wikivoice. What that source says is:

To this end, a key issue in the current political and scholarly landscape is the growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances, between “gender-critical” feminists (sometimes known as TERFs - Trans- Exclusionary Radical Feminists), religious and social conservatives, as well as right-wing politics and even neo-Nazi and fascist movements. Their target are transgender people, queer activism and theorising that support an expansive approach to gender identity. An example from the USA is the colloquium, “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left,” sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation (2019), a think tank that is promoting tough immigration politics, traditional marriage laws (keeping it heterosexual), and stricter abortion legislation.

The citations for the first line in the "controversies" section of the body are about WoLF appearing on a Heritage-organised panel in 2019, and a citation that seems completely irrelevant (again, AFAICT).

A far lengthier and more detailed critique of WoLF appears on the WPUK site here. Part of that critique is:

The problem here is that alliances with the Christian right are being continually used as a stick to beat all gender-critical feminists with, including women who’ve taken a consistent and principled stand against them. The mud has been raked very successfully. A radical feminist critique of the political erasure of sex has been linked, perhaps terminally in the US context, with religious homophobes and racists.

Seems to me that - to avoid the weasel wording of "some groups" and vague "alliances" etc - there is the specific controversy of US-based radical feminist group WoLF appearing on a Heritage-sponsored panel in 2019, something that was criticised by left-wing gender-critical feminists in the UK. Rather than expanding this claim to ever increasing vagueness and implication it should be narrowed. Void if removed (talk) 08:45, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Note: These incidents are connected to Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, a group which explicitly wants to bring together "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" and "conservative Christian anti-LGBT" groups.

As far as I know, the connection goes deeper than that, though I would need time to dig up sources on this. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull in particular seems to be a connecting hinge. Then again, she is also connected to WoLF. TucanHolmes (talk) 09:04, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

But she is explicitly neither gender-critical, nor a feminist. Void if removed (talk) 09:24, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is probably better off on kjks page, but Wikipedia currently describes kjk as gender critical. LunaHasArrived (talk) 09:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

The CTV source in the lede states

"The Canadian Anti-Hate Network is tracking anti-trans hate and TERF groups in the country, and one thing that’s come out of their work, is that despite labelling themselves as feminists, these groups often collaborate with conservative and far-right groups, and many of these groups are out of Vancouver."

This seems pretty explicit with reference to Canada. LunaHasArrived (talk) 09:28, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

But the problem is the conflation of "TERF" with "gender-critical feminist".

We have so many reliable sources saying that TERF is a derogatory epithet for anyone deemed transphobic, and not straightforwardly the same thing as "gender-crtical feminist", especially outside of academia, that relying on this source for his claim is basically WP:SYNTH. Void if removed (talk) 09:33, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I would possibly agree however it's groups that self label as feminist, and in the article in general they make reference to anti-trans hate groups so TERF isn't claiming that role. In reference to TERF throughout the article they talk about these groups believing in conflict between women's rights and transgender people's rights, they talk about "sex based rights". They say these groups relate to the "Women's Human rights campaign". It is very clear that this source is not using TERF as a stand in for Transphobe and that the groups mentioned are gender critical (and especially use feminism) LunaHasArrived (talk) 09:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

But the problem is the conflation of "TERF" with "gender-critical feminist

The distinction between the two is muddied, the lines blurred. That's why this article states

Gender-critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or TERFism

That's also why this article acknowledges that some sources say that "gender-critical feminism" is merely a rebrand. TucanHolmes (talk) 20:06, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

views - sex based rights

In the United kingdom section the first bullet point (starting existing exceptions) whilst not saying anything wrong (I think it has to be proportional means of achieving a legitimate aim in certain circumstances or and some other stuff, but I am no legal scholar and haven't read the exact document for a while), seems badly sourced. The ehrc link fails verification for me and the wpuk page about suella braverman I was surprised to see linked at all. I tried doing a search but a quick look at gov UK and the ehrc but didn't find anything that would support the current text and it seems a shame to get rid of it.

Any help finding better sources for this bullet point would be appreciated. LunaHasArrived (talk) 11:48, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I think this is the updated link to the current EHRC page:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/separate-and-single-sex-service-providers-guide-equality-act-sex-and Void if removed (talk) 12:20, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes this is what I was thinking of in terms of a source backing this up. Thank you LunaHasArrived (talk) 14:01, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

For a better cite for the other (ie, this is what is meant by GCFs in this context) how about page 135-6 of Sex and Gender: A contemporary reader:

This chapter has surveyed the history and current state of English and international laws on sex and gender. It has shown that, where laws relating to sex have been enacted, they have been intended to remedy the disadvantages suffered directly and indirectly by women. These disadvantages have always been based on women’s biology as females and on the social constructs built upon their biology. In consequence, the law has defined women as females and has provided rights and protections to counter the historical and continuing restrictions imposed by these.

Our conclusion is that there are just too many situations – those envisaged in the Equality Act exemptions being prime examples – where removal of the protected category of sex will reduce, and possibly remove, the very protections that were enacted to help natal women and redress their historical disadvantage. It is for this reason we argue that we need to retain the protected characteristic of sex in the EA, since its replacement by ‘gender identity’ would obliterate its historical and continuing basis in biology, cut women off from our heritage (women’s lives matter, just as black lives do) and blur the distinction between people who have been discriminated against because of their bodies and those discriminated against because of their identities.

And RE: WPUK, on page 99

Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), founded by socialists and trade unionists in 2017 to campaign for women’s sex-based rights. WPUK’s conscious debt to the second wave is evidenced by their ‘Five Demands’ (WPUK 2018), and their distinction between sex as biological – which underpins their emphasis on women’s bodily autonomy – and gender as a restrictive construction that feminists must challenge.

Void if removed (talk) 12:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong here but the top 2 show nothing about the phrase "sex based rights" (a very particular phrase used a lot) and the bottom is just wpuk was founded because people wanted to protect sex based rights. None show gcf's saying that sex being a protected characteristic is an existing sex based right. Also the middle paragraph seems to be interesting as it's arguing against people wanting to remove sex as a protected characteristic in the UK (something I don't think I've ever seen, ironically the only one I've seen people arguing to remove is gender reassignment). What we want is a source backing up that sex being a protected characteristic is a sex based right. LunaHasArrived (talk) 20:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

The description of this chapter (8) in the introduction says

The reasons why British and some international law safeguards sex-based rights are explained by Rosemary Auchmuty and Rosa Freedman in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9, Callie Burt examines the basis of challenges to sex-based legal rights in the US and the consequences of these. Together, these chapters argue that legal recognition of sex, and sex-based rights, is essential.

Void if removed (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Sarah Lamble source (provided by Void above, post at 18:40 9 June 2024)

Rather than arguing about the motives of the right-wing press, how about talking about our article?

Void, do you have any suggestions for specific wordings for adding to this article, based on this source? Sweet6970 (talk) 22:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC) The source: [6] Sweet6970 (talk) 22:22, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Not sure how to trim it, but to start summarizing Lambe's thoughts on the differences between the anti-gender movement and the GC movement is:

Sarah Lamble argued that the gender critical movement in the UK is similar to the anti-gender movement but differs from it on four counts:

1. the UK GC movement focuses on transgender issues as opposed to the broader campaigns of the anti-gender movement
2. The UK GC movement emerged as a backlash to attempts to reform the Gender Recognition Act, though the GC movement was based on longstanding british transphobia
3. The GC movement in the UK initially emerged as a white feminist movement before gaining support from right-wing, Christian and neofascist groups. Additionally, while both oppose "gender ideology", the GC movement frames it as a threat to women’s equality and gay rights
4. The GC movement in the UK cross multiple constituencies as well as political and partisan lines

Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 23:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Most obvious and least contentious place is the "relationship to Anti-Gender movement" section. I'd add something like:

Sarah Lamble described several key differences between gender-critical feminism and the anti-gender movement, noting a defiance of typical left/right divisions and concluding that "gender critical feminists see trans rights as a threat to women’s equality and gay rights, whereas conservatives generally oppose gender and sexual equality altogether".

But what I'd really like to do is resolve the issue of overreliance on critical academic sources that insist they're all hateful white supremacist TERFs, and the fact that this article draws a definitive path from mid-20th century US radfems to the emergence of British feminist resistance to GRA reform on Mumsnet in the 2010s, which makes basically no sense at all.

It is this latter that I think it truly supports, ie it supplies additional (critical) weight to the notion that the gender critical feminist phenomenon isn't a straight line from Janice Raymond, but something arising across multiple different feminist perspectives in response to a) legal reforms for self-id and b) getting abused as a TERF if they objected.

Anyway, this is pie in the sky. Simple changes. Void if removed (talk) 12:18, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Having quickly read this article, from my fairly ignorant position, this looks like a very useful source. As void notes, it is critical of GCF but importantly makes the point that such anti-trans viewpoints can only be argued against and defeated when one has "clarity on the divergent groups, perspectives, and motivations behind different strands of gender-critical and anti-gender politics." The author here seems to have made a good attempt at describing the UK groups and their positions, and reads as a relatively sane criticism of groups the author disagrees with, which makes a change from some of the sources posted here which are frankly embarrassing to read. -- Colin°^Talk 12:59, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I support Void’s proposed addition to the article, set out above.

Void, do you have specific proposals for resolving the issue of overreliance on critical academic sources that insist they're all hateful white supremacist TERFs, etc. ?

Sweet6970 (talk) 14:17, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Here's a rough outline of what I would personally aim for in the lede, and I believe all this can be sourced to the existing citations on the page. On the understanding there is absolutely no consensus for this, and the chances of getting wording like this are slim:

Gender-critical feminism is a term used by some feminists who consider sex to be biological and immutable, while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, to be inherently oppressive.

Gender-critical feminism came to wider prominence primarily in the UK in the mid-2010s following government proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act and the formation of several notable gender-critical feminist groups who campaigned against the changes, resulting in a number of high-profile controversies.

Although originally arising within a feminist context, "gender-critical views" more broadly are now classed as a protected belief under UK equality law, where they are defined as the belief that sex is biological and immutable, that people cannot change their sex and that sex is distinct from gender identity.

Attitudes to gender critical feminism and gender critical views vary widely, with some sections of civil society issuing strong statements of condemnation. Scholarly critics argue that the term "gender-critical feminism" is a rebranding of longstanding trans-exclusionary and transphobic views originating in some strands of radical feminism in the mid-20th century. Distinctions between gender-critical feminism, trans-exclusionary radical feminism, gender-critical movements more widely, as well as relationships and crossover with conservative anti-gender movements are a subject of debate and controversy.

Of course the lede should follow the body, and it is hard to get anywhere even close to this without refocusing a lot of the article, but I think this is a brief summary of what is actually relevant to an uninformed reader, and there's plenty of scope for enumerating all of the various contradictory scholarly criticisms elsewhere. I think this can be supported by both the sources of gender critical feminists themselves (like Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader), as well as critical sources like Lamble and Thurlow. These are complex and disputed terms. I also do not think we should treat the lede as a coatrack for every new condemnation that comes along, and the TERF Ideology/TERFism stuff needs to be relegated to attributed opinionated critical commentary, not definitive in the opening line as it is now.

So much of the criticism needs to be attributed and placed in context, I think it needs to be summarised like this and expanded in greater narrative detail, picking out some common threads and allegations.

But none of this is likely to happen, so. Last time I was seriously discussing a rework of the lede last year, the whole ridiculous "TERF" redirect to this page happened and derailed everything for months. Void if removed (talk) 08:18, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I would roughly agree with the general trend of this draft for the lead, but I think more emphasis needs to be put on the gender-critical aspect. For instance, in Holly Lawford-Smith’s book gender critical feminism: p44 ‘…we should see current forms of masculinity and femininity as artefacts of patriarchy…’ , and on p50 quoting Rebecca Reilly-Cooper ‘ Gender is a set of norms that are applied to people on the basis of their sex….’ And in Sex and Gender, Selina Todd says at p90, of second-wave feminists: ‘Feminists believed that while sex is determined by biology, gender is socially and politically constructed.’ Also, mention should be made of the dispute over gender identity; Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls is mostly a dismantling of the concept of gender-identity, from a philosophical viewpoint. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Gender-critical and anti-gender movements

The UN Women article is, per the first sentence, about people (and movements) "opposed to equal human rights for LGBTIQ+ people" that "have acted in social movements and governments to exploit social, economic, and political instability by attempting to bring reactionary beliefs into the mainstream and reverse gains for members of marginalized groups". It then mentions that "these movements use hateful propaganda and disinformation to target and attempt to delegitimize people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics." It then cites "movements encompassing “anti-gender”, “gender-critical”, and “men’s rights”" as examples of the movements it discusses, indeed movements taking attempts to "frame equality for women and LGBTIQ+ people as a threat to so-called “traditional” family values" to "new extremes." The claim that the article is not discussing the anti-gender or gender-critical movements in the introduction is clearly without any merit whatsoever. Some further sources:

• The Times: UN Women says gender-critical activists are ‘anti-rights movement’
• The Attitude: UN Women post in support of LGBTQs and say ‘gender-critical’ people are ‘anti-rights’ (specifically links it to the quote about hateful propaganda and disinformation)

(I also noticed that TERF group Sex Matters specifically said the quote about hateful propaganda was about their movement) --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@Amanda A. Brant:

1) The ‘Un Women’ piece mentions ‘gender-critical’ once. It does not even refer to gender-critical feminism, so it is questionable whether it is relevant to this article at all. I left part of your addition in the article in a spirit of compromise.

The piece also includes reference to movements which frame equality for women and LGBTIQ+ people as a threat to so-called “traditional” family values" i.e. these movements are opposed to g-c feminism, and indeed, opposed to feminism of any kind. There is no way that it is legitimate to have a statement which is not about g-c feminism in the lead.

2) You say: The UN Women article is, per the first sentence, about people (and movements) "opposed to equal human rights for LGBTIQ+ people" that "have acted in social movements and governments to exploit social, economic, and political instability by attempting to bring reactionary beliefs into the mainstream and reverse gains for members of marginalized groups”.

So obviously it does not make sense to include g-c feminism in this, since it is well-known that various prominent g-c feminists are lesbians. This damages the credibility of the whole piece.

3) You say:It then mentions that "these movements….

No, it does not. It says: State and non-state actors in many countries are attempting to roll back hard-won progress and further entrench stigma, endangering the rights and lives of LGBTIQ+ people. These movements use hateful propaganda and disinformation to target and attempt to delegitimize people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics.

This is not referring to g-c feminism, and it is not reasonable to read it in this way.

4) You say: The claim that the article is not discussing the anti-gender or gender-critical movements in the introduction is clearly without any merit whatsoever. Amanda, you know very well that the anti-gender movement has nothing to do with g-c feminism, except, of course, that g-c feminism is the opposite of the anti-gender movement. You cannot use a reference to the anti-gender movement as an excuse to include reference to this piece in our article on g-c feminism.

5) Amanda, you should self-revert. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

This UN peice says the various movements overlap in retaliation against 'gender ideology', our article describes gender critical feminism in this same way. Gender critical feminists have self identified as being a target of this article (see sex matters in the times). This peice is definitely about gender critical views and seems to apply very well to gender critical feminists.

Going point by point

1) the peice also mentions mens rights only once and anti-gender twice, who is this article about by the standard your supposing? There are people that argue that gender critical views (in their modern manifestation) are inherintly anti-feminist

2) this defence makes no sense, it is historic fact that there is usually a member of a minority who works alongside people stripping their rights away (especially if it's unlikely to effect this particular member in the near future)

3) Sex matters said themselves this part is related to "women's rights compaigners) some gender critical feminists obviously think this applies to them.

4) how is the anti -gender movement and gender critical feminism opposites, this article, the council of Europe and now UN women all say they are related.

I can see arguements about it not being necessary in the lede (at the moment anyway) but given it already was mentioned in the times, it seems odd to exclude it in the article. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

1) Who is this piece about? Good question. The piece never specifies who it is talking about, and this is particularly problematic when it says State and non-state actors in many countries…. – these are the parties who are supposedly using hateful propaganda and disinformation etc, which our article wrongly attributes to g-c feminists. The piece is so vague that it is useless as a source for Wikipedia.

2) The piece asserts that g-c feminists campaign against rights for LGB people, and women. It does not specify who these feminists are, let alone provide any evidence for this. No-one has ever come up with evidence that g-c feminists campaign against rights for women, or against rights for lesbians and gays. Once again, the piece is so vague that it is useless as a source for Wikipedia.

3) Where does Sex Matters make this comment?

4) Anti-gender views and gender-critical feminism are opposites:

i) The anti-gender movement says:

a) Gender stereotypes are natural and derive from biological sex.

b) Everybody should conform to the gender stereotype of their biological sex.

ii) Gender-critical feminism says:

a) Gender stereotypes are not natural, they are social constructs whose function is to oppress women.

b) No-one should be obliged to conform to the gender stereotype associated with their biological sex. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

3) the times and their own twitter page.

The rest is non-policy based opinion and has nothing to do with improving the article LunaHasArrived (talk) 18:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I don’t have access to the Times. Please set out the exact wording you are referring to. I searched for Twitter, and all I got was: This #InternationalWomensDay will you sign the petition to make the Equality Act clear and protect women's rights in the UK?.

Regarding your comment: ‘The rest…' is actually about the source being used. It is necessary to use sources properly, according to what they actually say, and don’t say. I don’t understand your comment about 'non-policy based opinion' – are you saying that ensuring that Wikipedia articles are properly based on the content of sources is against Wikipedia policy?

Sweet6970 (talk) 21:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

For their twitter thread, search for the sex matters account and search UN women, it's a post from 3 days ago.

This is one quote from the times:

"Labelling the grassroots campaigners and groups who are defending women’s rights against a global tidal wave of gender-identity ideology as an ‘anti-rights movement’ is outrageous."

Said by Fiona Mcanena, director of campaigns for Sex Matters. Is just one quote from the times.

It's clear that the UN peice labels mens rights movements, the anti-gender movement and the Gender critical movement as anti-rights movements. It is also clear that gender critical feminists disagree with this grouping, but not that they are being grouped

For your point of 2) we don't on Wikipedia require our sources to cite their sources. This peice defacto says that the gender critical movement works against these rights, whilst gender critical feminists would disagree this is unfortunately a situation where Mandy applies. For the rest, gender critical feminists argue against conversion therapy bans in the UK, this is unlike every other feminist or gay rights organisation in the UK.

The entirity of 4 is your own opinion heavily OR and goes against what this source, the council of Europe and what our entire first section of controversies states.

LunaHasArrived (talk) 21:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

whilst gender critical feminists would disagree

Which is why basing this entire article so heavily on critical sources has ended up here. We need to say what gender-critical feminists say, clearly, in their own words, and then line up any criticism, and let the reader see if it makes any sense whatsoever.

The fact is that both positions see the opposing one as "anti-rights" because it is zero-sum. In order to demonstrate that to a casual reader, we need to have shown what gender critical feminists actually say about this.

Which we don't because the entire section on "sex-based rights" is really tenuously sourced to opponents who claim such a thing is ridiculous, rather than, say, the extensive and well-sourced chapters in "Sex and Gender" which tell you what their position actually is.

this is unfortunately a situation where Mandy applies

Given the polarizing and zero-sum nature of this, WP:MANDY goes both ways and does not help at all.

The entirity of 4 is your own opinion heavily OR

No, this is described accurately in eg. the Lamble source, above.Void if removed (talk) 08:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Lamble does not describe them as opposites, in fact based on lamble it would be quite difficult to do so. Lamble says the gender critical movement is a single issue project, and that the anti-gender movement agrees on that single issue. If your a single issue project, it's difficult to be the opposite of a group that's doing the same thing as you on a single issue. As with your specific example it seems ok, just weirdly layed out. Parts of the article (in layout at least) assume an international element that just doesn't seem to exist.

I want to say I did an edit on layout as well but apologise if I messed anything up, it was trying to fix where your signature was appearing. LunaHasArrived (talk) 11:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

We need to say what gender-critical feminists say, clearly, in their own words, and then line up any criticism, and let the reader see if it makes any sense whatsoever. - No, that is not the purpose of Wikipedia. The encyclopedia is not here to promote the WP:FRINGE theories of people.

We accurately summarize topics and represent the WP:MAINSTREAM view of people.

Since gender-critical views are a fringe “movement”, we thus have a lot of content that highlights it as such, to which criticism by the United Nations, being the largest worldwide socio-political body, that represents human rights, plays a large role and thus is also given a prominent view when they share criticism of groups that promote hate speech and discrimination of other humans, such as is the case with the gender-critical movement. Raladic (talk) 14:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

to Raladic: No, you have misunderstood WP:FRINGE. To repeat – WP:FRINGE says: Fringe theories in a nutshell: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea. More extensive treatment should be reserved for an article about the idea, which must meet the test of notability. If an article is about subject A, then FRINGE views on that subject are not given much prominence. But, as has already been explained on this Talk page many times, an article on a subject which some may consider fringe – subject B - should be described as subject B. Some space should be given to criticism of it, but this should not predominate. An article on subject B should be about subject B. And, of course, there is in any event no agreement that gender-critical views are fringe, rather than mainstream.

I see you have not replied to my query about why you think that WP:NOTCENSORED is relevant to this matter. It isn’t.

And as regards discrimination – the evidence of the legal cases in the UK is that it is people with gender-critical views who have been subject to discrimination.

Sweet6970 (talk) 16:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

The TERF or "gender-critical" movement is widely regarded in scholarship and by humans rights and UN bodies as an extremist hate movement. Holding anti-trans views is not being discriminated against, it's the other way round. It's a classic example of playing the victim ("the fabrication (...) of victimhood (...) to justify abuse to others"). Institutionalized transphobia in the UK or Russia is not the standard we go by here, we write about transphobia and a transphobic movement. The very claim by some anti-trans people or bodies in the UK that anti-trans activists are "discriminated" against despite no evidence of that is in itself an example of transphobia, in the UK. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

we write about transphobia and a transphobic movement

We are writing about gender-critical feminism.

despite no evidence

Half a dozen successful discrimination claims is not "no evidence". Void if removed (talk) 22:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

It is misusing WP:FRINGE to avoid actually describing what gender critical feminism is according to reliable sources, through the circular logic that any source which doesn't describe it in a sufficiently hostile way is WP:FRINGE and unreliable.

As has been said time and again When a textbook gets published by a respectable academic press, we are well out of fringe territory.

As you say, wikipedia is WP:NOTADVOCACY. The encyclopedia is not here to prevent people from reading the views of gender critical feminists by prioritising the views of their critics. Void if removed (talk) 22:13, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

To LHA: The search I did was for sex matters and UN women, and all I got was what I quoted in my post of 17:43 17 June above. So I still don’t know what the twitter post you are referring to says.

Thank you for providing an extract from the Times report. If we are to include the UN Women comments in body, we should also include the rebuttal from Sex Matters. But the extract you have given is very short and doesn’t mention UN Women, or Sex Matters. Can you please provide more text from the Times?

Sweet6970 (talk) 11:07, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

twitter

archive of the times article LunaHasArrived (talk) 11:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok the above twitter link is linking only to the one post, not the thread (I'll see if I can fix) LunaHasArrived (talk) 11:13, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

this should be the entire thread LunaHasArrived (talk) 11:16, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Luna: Thanks for the links – I am looking at this and will comment further. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:01, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I have now added comments by Sex Matters to the article. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

"No-one has ever come up with evidence that g-c feminists campaign against rights for women, or against rights for lesbians and gays." This is patently false. Gender critical feminists openly campaign against rights for transgender women, transgender lesbians, and transgender gays. Read the first sentence of the article. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 15:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@The Midnite Wolf: The first sentence of the article is Gender-critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or TERFism, is an ideology or movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology": the concept of gender identity and transgender rights, especially gender self-identification. This says nothing about campaigning against rights for women, or lesbians and gays. Your comment that I should read the first sentence of the article is nonsensical. I suggest you strike it. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

If you oppose transgender rights and gender self-identification then that means you oppose rights for transgender women, transgender lesbians, and transgender gays. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 17:51, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

If we assume that transgender people are of all religions and none, then, according to your argument, if you oppose transgender rights, then you oppose rights for (in alphabetical order) agnostics, atheists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims. And that’s just silly. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:48, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes if you oppose transgender rights, you do oppose rights for (some) agnostics, atheists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims. I think you're starting to understand intersectionality. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

What Luna said is correct, but the important distinction is that gender-critical people specifically target trans women and trans lesbians for "invading" certain spaces, hence the UN piece, as well as the council of Europe saying that gender-critical movements attack the rights of LGBTQI+ people. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 19:04, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, the content is well sourced and issued by a very reputable source, being the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The removal by the other user squarely fell afoul of WP:NOTCENSORED and is appropriate to be included in the article. Raladic (talk) 19:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@Raladic:See my comments above. And please explain how WP:NOTCENSORED has anything to do with this. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

This continual shoving of every new negative thing straight into the lede no matter how woolly or tenuous has to stop.

By all means add it to the body and discuss, but this new UN statement has nothing to do with "gender critical feminism" and is, at best, an expansion on the disputed territory of where gender critical feminism, gender critical, gender critical movements, anti-gender tendencies overlap (or don't). Void if removed (talk) 13:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree I was surprised to see it instantly in the lede, I disagree with this not being about gender critical feminism just as sex matters self identified this as about women's rights compaigners and the like. So at the very least some gender critical feminists think this is about them. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, my "just as" was incorrect should have been only "as", the language also matches up at least with some primary views of gener critical feminism. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

It's specifically about the topic of this article (gender-critical), it a clear statement by a huge and influential UN body and it has also received significant coverage in RS. All the "GC" organizations are up in arms about the statement and say it is about them/their ideology, so it has clearly made a huge impact. It clearly belongs in the lead and the attempts to remove it are wholly inappropriate (WP:IDONTLIKEIT, basically). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 16:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Re "The ‘Un Women’ piece mentions ‘gender-critical’ once. It does not even refer to gender-critical feminism, so it is questionable whether it is relevant to this article at all. I left part of your addition in the article in a spirit of compromise": This is not really worthy of a response, it has been debated to death, and the bizarre claim that gender-critical (movement) doesn't refer to the topic of this article is entirely without any merit whatsoever – in fact we have frequently debated moving the article to gender-critical movement. This article is about the ideology or movement known variously as gender-critical feminism, gender-critical movement, GC, trans-exclusionary radical feminism, TERF, TERF movement, TERFism, and so forth. It has been this way since the article was created. "Gender-critical feminism" is not the most common term but was chosen as a compromise for other reasons. The fact that a source doesn't use that specific term is irrelevant. The UN Women article discusses three movements specifically, at length, and the entire article is about them, as also seen from RS coverage[7] The rest of your comment (e.g. "So obviously it does not make sense to include g-c feminism in this, since it is well-known that various prominent g-c feminists are lesbians. This damages the credibility of the whole piece." is not really comprehensible to me and seems to be based solely on personal opinions (WP:IDONTLIKEIT) rather than Wikipedia policies relevant to our articles and how we assess sources. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 16:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

This article is about gender-critical feminism. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The topic of this article is the ideology or movement known as gender-critical feminism, gender-critical movement, gender-critical, GC, GC feminism and related terms, or trans-exclusionary radical feminism, TERF ideology, TERFism, TERF and related terms. Gender-critical and gender-critical feminism refer to the same thing and very few sources use the full expression gender-critical feminism, which is not the most common title. Gender-critical is mentioned specifically in the sources, in fact it's the main take of the RS[8] and all the GC organizations are up in arms about it and saying the statement is about them. The idea that it isn't about them is laughable. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 17:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Please can you stop referring to a UK charity which campaigns on a non-feminist basis as a "TERF group". This is simply reinforcing that "TERF" is a meaningless and derogatory epithet. Unless you're seriously suggesting that Simon Briscoe is a "trans-exclusionary radical feminist"? Void if removed (talk) 08:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

No, I'm not going to do that. I'm an American living in Germany, in both countries TERF is the common term. It is the term used in scholarship (including many sources in this article) and by feminist activists to refer to this fringe anti-trans movement. I'm not going to use a UK-centric euphemism. Note that in this article the terms are equivalent, and editors may use either of them both in the article (often depending on which term that the sources use) and in the discussions. I don't understand your comment about "non-feminist" basis. Mainstream feminists don't view TERF ideology or the TERF movement as feminist at all; which is one of the reasons we are still debating whether the title should be gender-critical movement. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 12:27, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

• The group is categorized as a TERF group in academic sources; see eg. [9]. --Aquillion (talk) 22:24, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

@The Midnite Wolf: On this Talk page, the justification for including the UN Women’s comment in this article, which is about gender-critical feminism, was that the response by Sex Matters was an admission that the comments were about gender-critical organisations. If you think that the response from Sex Matters is not notable, then the whole paragraph should be deleted, because the material is not relevant to this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 14:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The UN piece directly states "Movements encompassing 'anti-gender', 'gender-critical', and 'men’s rights' have taken this to new extremes, tapping into wider fears about the future of society and accusing feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements of threatening civilization itself” (emphasis mine). I’m not sure how else you can read that other than as a condemnation of gender-critical movements. And I’d argue that the UN having any opinion about the movement would be worth including. The Midnite Wolf (talk) 15:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The comment by UN Women does not make sense if it refers to g-c feminism, since g-c feminism is a feminist movement, and the so UN Women would be claiming that g-c feminists were campaigning against themselves. As I have said, the whole comment by UN Women is so vague as to be useless as a source. The only justification for including it in the article is that Sex Matters, a g-c group, has complained about it. So the comments by Sex Matters should be included, because otherwise the Un Women comments have no place in this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Your top point almost sums this up in a nutshell, because people do argue that gender critical feminism is anti-feminist and not really a feminist movement. The term 'feminst' as a descriptor here seems more to be about someone's background and how they present their gender critical ideas, more than wether they actually do any feminist work. LunaHasArrived (talk) 17:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Feminism is a philosophical view point, not a job. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I mean one can clearly do Feminist work. I also just want one non gender critical but still feminist source, that describes gender critical feminism is a feminist movement. Because we have plenty saying that they aren't and are using feminism as a cover. That you then argue that because they appropriate feminism they can't campaign against feminism (despite sources clearly saying that they are) and we can't include sources that say this because it's illogical seems very misinformed. LunaHasArrived (talk) 13:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The justification was the UN said something about GC feminism, you argued they weren't talking about GC feminism, so GC "feminists" were quoted saying "this is about us" so you'd stop that line. The basis for including it was not "GC feminists said this is about them", it was "the UN said this about GC feminists". The sex matters quote was undue. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 16:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, Sex Matters is a fringe group, doesn't even have an article but just redirects to the anti-trans activist who founded it. It's completely undue in this context. Sex Matters commenting on it is not the justification for including this notable statement by UN Women, the statement doesn't mention Sex Matters and all the TERFs are up in arms about it. It was just mentioned on the talk page as an example. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 18:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Academic sources

I can see multiple comments above arguing for the pre-eminence of academic sources on this subject. We need to take a closer look at this. WP:SOURCETYPES tells us:

When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources.

Usually. Not always. It particularly doesn't mean that academic sources have a monopoly on significant viewpoints.

GCF is not the physical sciences, where scientific consensus is widely discussed and results are widely believed to converge on an objective truth. It is a type of social science or philosophy, where ideas diverge and proliferate and different schools of thought emerge. Part of the reason why Wikipedia favours academic sources is because of their objectivity. Scientists, for the most part, take a neutral stance in their publications, and they are kept in check by empirical reality. Not so for ideas where there is no recourse to experiment to settle disputes. There is no apparatus that can objectively answer whether GCF is transphobic, because that is a question about society and its values, not about nature and the universe at large. Without objectivity, academic statements are rigorous opinions. They should not be waved on through to wikivoice just because they are academic.

I also note WP:SCHOLARSHIP's advice on POV and peer review in journals:

Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view.

We have at least one of those being used, where academics wear their POV proudly on their sleeve. That's OK, that comes with the territory. POV sources can be mined for facts and relevant attributed opinions. What it means for us as Wikipedia editors is that we cannot venerate this type of academia as authoritative in the same way as an academic paper on gravity or geology or genetics. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:36, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

So, the general idea that academic sources aren't necessarily the most reliable in every situation I agree with, but it's not really about objectivity.

Wikipedia doesn't really have the concept of an objective source. Arguably, reality doesn't either. There are mainstream and WP:FRINGE points of view but no "objective" point of view.

Which is to say, the question here is whether or not it's the mainstream POV that GCF is transphobic, not whether the sources that say that are "objective". Sometimes academia agrees on things that are politically controversial. If they're reliable otherwise, we just say what they do: not trying to impose a point of view on the sources is a core part of WP:NPOV. Loki (talk) 21:57, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I do agree that the key factor is mainstream versus fringe, but I argue that mainstream should be evaluated with regards to all reliable sources, without academic opinions having a supervote on the matter. This is unlike the article on, say, organic chemistry, where academic sources definitely should carry higher weight than others. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:13, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

That's not really how this works. WP:FRINGE is defined relative to the mainstream within a particular academic field. If the mainstream of an academic field and the political mainstream have different views on an issue, WP:NPOV demands that we describe both, at a minimum. In some cases WP:PSCI, WP:MEDRS, or other similar policies might require us to give the academic view precedence, but I don't think any of those are relevant here. Loki (talk) 00:05, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

This isn't an academic field - feminism has never been a wholly or even majority academic endeavour. This is a broader subject about which some academics in various fields have strong opinions in opposing directions. Privileging one specific academic POV and claiming that that is the mainstream perspective on this subject and that every other viewpoint is WP:FRINGE is not remotely the way to approach this. Void if removed (talk) 09:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we should absolutely rely on academic sources. The scholarly consensus is that TERF ideology is a WP:FRINGE, extremist ideology, and a form of transphobia. It started as a fringe movement within radical feminism, which is already quite marginal, even within feminism, and is now increasingly linked to various far-right ideologies and movements. The claim that "There is no apparatus that can objectively answer whether GCF is transphobic" is as inaccurate as saying we should treat antisemitism in a "both sides" way, giving equal validity to antisemitic viewpoints, because scholarship on antisemitism is not physical science but social and historical science. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 17:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Antisemitism is fringe not just in academia but in society at large. If it were fringe only in academia, but widely accepted everywhere else, we would bothsides it, because academia does not have a monopoly on significant viewpoints, and this brand of academia doesn't have an empirical trump card that gives it access to a higher tier of truth claim than mainstream dialogue. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

TERFism is fringe in society at large. There isn't a single established, old feminist organization supporting it. (The TERF organizations are all new hate groups and described as such). Why do you think all those big corporations—from Apple to Mercedes-Benz[10]—support queer people? It's the mainstream perspective, the only accepted view in polite society. Apple or Mercedes-Benz wouldn't touch terfism with a barge pole. So this isn't a case of academia vs. society at large. It's a case of academia PLUS society at large, from gender studies scholars to Mercedes-Benz, vs. a fringe group that is considered hateful by academics, international resolutions, think tanks, big corporations etc. So it's really quite similar to the antisemitism situation. Note that the existence of some countries that promote transphobia doesn't change this; those countries rank lower on relevant indices and have poorer reputations regarding democracy, human rights, and civil society. For example, the Russian government promotes all sort of extremist positions and conspiracy theories, but that doesn't make them mainstream or accepted from our perspective. Since people like to mention the UK: It's less than half the size of Russia by population, has left the EU, has a government now considered far-right and populist by many observers (an unpopular government that is likely to loose power soon, to boot), and has the very worst reputation regarding LGBT+ rights in all of western Europe, being compared to Russia by the Council of Europe; in this field it's not really a Western democracy, its policies are more similar to authoritarian countries. So if we don't place much emphasis on the Russian point of view on LGBT+, there is even less reason to give much weight to British transphobia in this context. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 01:23, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

in this field it's not really a Western democracy, its policies are more similar to authoritarian countries

Given that is a completely absurd claim, all the more reason not to take "this field" seriously.

the only accepted view in polite society

Today we saw yet another (absolutely scathing) employment tribunal judgment in the UK in which someone with gender critical views was found to have been subject to unlawful discrimination. It is firmly established that gender critical views in and of themselves are not bigoted and transphobic, and that employers cannot act as if they are, or call their employees transphobic on the basis that they believe sex in humans is binary and immutable. The likes of Apple and Mercedes are not calling employees with these entirely mainstream views "TERFs" and sacking them.

The hyperbolic and discriminatory language used here is not an approach that is garnering universal respect, it is not mainstream outside of a particular academic niche, and it is categorically not one respected in UK law. Void if removed (talk) 08:52, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Why would UK law be relevant to Wikipedia, a global encyclopedia? Why would employment tribunal judgments matter in a discussion about the relevance and weight given to academic sources? TucanHolmes (talk) 16:43, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't care less about UK or Russian laws; they are not our laws. I care about reliable sources. It's firmly established in academic reliable sources that "gender-critical feminism" is a specific form of transphobia and attempt at rebranding TERF ideology, an extremist, fringe ideology. There is no "right" to subject others to discrimination and prejudice regardless of the context; many employers of the world don't accept antisemitism, transphobia etc. No, TERFism is not mainstream. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 20:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Your opinion showing much? Wikipedia is not meant to be your soapbox for your opinions. 86.187.165.42 (talk) 03:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Amanda, the idea that GC views are fringe is ridiculous (and I say this as someone who doesn't share them, I should note). Every one of your arguments can be turned on its head. You argue that big corporations wouldn't touch "TERFism" with a barge pole. Well, featuring a trans celeb in their advertising worked out really well for Bud Lite and Nike! But really, why are you even suggesting Apple or Mercedes-Benz might take a position on GCF. MB's "the company's commitment to fostering a culture of diversity, appreciation and respect for all employees, including those who belong to the LGBTQIA+ community" is nothing more than their legal obligations under the law. As are their legal obligations towards women, even women who hold GC beliefs.

As others have noted, societal beliefs are something that academics can study and analyse but we must never ever think that academics are the ones we should look to to determine what to think about each other or as examples of what correct societal thinking is. Academics have a really awful track record on this. Whether it is oppression of gay people as being a mental illness or the eugenics movement, which was a set of beliefs hugely promoted by the very brightest and most academic in our countries, but not in the wider population, who were kept in the dark about sterilisation programmes and such. It was academics who performed the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. I suspect if you looked to academia on how to get around or how to heat our homes, and followed what they recommend, one might think driving a car, taking the plane on a foreign holiday, and heating one's home with gas were FRINGE activities. But the opposite is true. A tiny minority in our countries cycle to work or have installed heat pumps or would take a long distance bus or train. We here might agree that the latter is the Right Thing To Do, but Wikipedia couldn't possibly suggest this is actually what people in 2024 think.

• Where Americans stand on 20 transgender policy issues
• Americans’ Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues

Pick a GC view? 60% say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, which is actually a number that's been increasing. 58% insist athletes compete on teams according to their sex assigned at birth. 46% favor making it illegal for health care professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition, and 37% consider their parents should be considered child abusers. 41% want to ban elementary schools teaching gender identity. 46% oppose even allowing schools to use a child's prefered gender pronouns. 50% oppose allowing trans people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity and only 31% support it. 54% oppose puberty blockers and only 19% support their use. And on and on and on.

The majority of US population share some GC views. Many US states have laws that are more aligned with GC views than trans activist views. Your next president... Remember, at least for now anyway, the US is a democracy. That half the population are happy to vote Trump, who wants to lock up physicians offering youth gender affirming care, does not in any way suggest to me that this is a FRINGE view in society. It's time to drop that argument.

The FRINGE idea is actually the idea, expressed by some on this page, that GCF should be treated like white supremacists or child abuses, when greater society, and the law in some countries, requires us all to get along with each other, and agree to disagree with each other. -- Colin°^Talk 13:05, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

What I've observed in opinion polls on trans issues (in the UK and US, especially) is that if you pose questions in generalities, like "do you support trans rights" or "do you have a positive or negative view of trans people", the polls usually come out favorable to the trans cause; who wants to say they're against rights or that they hate a group of people, particularly when a lot of the media keeps hammering in the idea that this group is highly marginalized (which kind of contradicts the idea that all of mainstream society favors them, but never mind...). However, when more specific questions are asked, like whether male-born people identifying as women should be allowed in women's sports, changing rooms, rape crisis centers, prisons, etc., you see a different story. *Dan T.* (talk) 13:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I think it depends on the way the question is framed massively, if one says should trans women be able to access women's sports, changing rooms or whatever (especially if you consider more nuanced positions allowing some requirements) the results change massively. LunaHasArrived (talk) 14:09, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

According to a Survation poll for MurrayBlackburnMackenzie, a third of people don't understand what trans man/woman even mean or get them the wrong way round. Less than a half of Londoners get these terms right.

https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/08/07/clarity-matters-how-placating-lobbyists-obscures-public-understanding-of-sex-and-gender/

Any poll that doesn't either test this basic understanding or clearly explain its terms up front can't really be considered a reliable guide IMO. Void if removed (talk) 14:23, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyone interested in the new tribunal ruling can see the full ruling here. It's very interesting reading. *Dan T.* (talk) 13:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

This is all irrelevant. Even if it were relevant, you would need citations to back up every one of your non-consecutive claims. TucanHolmes (talk) 16:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I also disagree with your Anglo-/US-centric point of view in general. I believe it has no place on a global encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Selected quotes:

• A tiny minority in our countries cycle to work or have installed heat pumps or would take a long distance bus or train.
• Pick a GC view? 60% say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth
• but Wikipedia couldn't possibly suggest this is actually what people [!] in 2024 think. [Sources:] Where Americans [!] stand on 20 transgender policy issues [/] Americans’ [!] Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues

I especially take issue with your argument that

The majority of US population share some GC views. Many US states have laws that are more aligned with GC views than trans activist views. Your [whose?] next president... [...] That half the population [again, the world is not America] are happy to vote Trump, who wants to lock up physicians offering youth gender affirming care, does not in any way suggest to me that this is a FRINGE view in society.

This way of discussing a topic has no place on an encyclopedia and is more appropriate to a web forum. TucanHolmes (talk) 16:41, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The majority of US population share some GC views

No, the majority of the US population share some anti-trans views. Gender critical views specifically are very much fringe in the US.

Trump is by no means a gender-critical feminist or a trans-exclusionary radical feminist because he's not on the left nor does he claim to be on the left. The left in the US is overwhelmingly trans-supportive, and this is the key reason why, while transphobia certainly exists in America, GCF really doesn't. The biggest American GCF organization is WoLF, who are tiny and unambiguously fringe.

You can't just decompose a whole ideology like GCF into a bunch of policy positions. If that worked, I could take polls saying that Americans overwhelmingly support universal healthcare and other European-style welfare policies and claim the average American is a socialist (or at least a social democrat). But that's just not true, because you can't just shove a bunch of policy positions in a trench coat and claim it's a full ideology. Loki (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

@TucanHolmes, Amanda has repeatedly claimed GCF views are fringe and certainly not mainstream. I just quoted one GC view, that person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth (i.e. fixed) and cited a well established polling organisation's findings. These views are mainstream. That some think they are held mostly by Republican supporters in the US seems to provide some here some strange cop-out as though such people don't actually count in a civilised society. But those people seem to have forgotten all the liberal journalists who also hold those views.

Wrt the accuracy of polls, I agree they can be very influenced by the sorts of questions asked and even what is in the news that week, but one of the polls I cited asked a question and its opposite in order to try to remove some bias. The point really isn't whether it's 60% agree with the GC view that sex is binary and fixed or 40% but Amanda would have you believe it is 4% and all those 4% are in prison for Evil Beliefs. This is what matters on this page and I wish it didn't have to be debated or people wouldn't persist with ridiculous arguments that the UK is just like Russia. The amazing thing about actual democracies like the UK is that people are free to believe things that you or I utterly detest. And we have to go to work with them, or teach them or fix their teeth. I think one or two people here are so immersed in their silo literature that they think other views don't exist or aren't held by anyone in significant numbers. To that I ask them to offer actual proof of what people believe, not just some ivory tower academic writing to their friends about what they themselves and their friends all believe.

As far as people dismissing legal rulings in the UK go. Well the UK is a bit different to the US. These findings aren't just playing the odds of whether you got a Republican judge or a Democrat judge. And in several cases, the judgement has found an organisation has developed exactly the same silo thinking that is appearing on this page, that All Correct People believe X and all other Heretics Shall be Burned. And a judge has had to remind them that's not how a free democracy works.

Loki and other's comment suggest to me that this article needs to work better to explain what GC and GCF views actually are. Because on the one hand we have people claiming there are no GCF in the US and on the other hand we have people moaning about all the TERFs in the US media and politics. I'm not going to list names, but go on one of those websites that list who the Bad People are in the trans debate, and most of them are mainstream writers in mainstream US publications. Many are liberals. I don't know really where this idea comes from that this is a UK only thing can thus can be dismissed. -- Colin°^Talk 07:43, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Bit of an aside, but I don't think this is actually a GCF belief: gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth (but it is a conservative belief). Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:59, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, and I think this is the crucial distinction between "gender critical feminism" and the far more varied grab bag that is "gender critical" which (perversely) doesn't actually require any critique of gender.

From Chapter 6 of Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader:

One of the second wave's most important achievements was to develop an important distinction between sex - in the words of British sociologist Ann Oakley (1972) the biological differences between male and female' - and gender, which she described as the social classification into "masculine" and "feminine"' (16). [...] Decoupling sex from gender enabled feminists to successfully argue that women required certain rights and services by virtue of their sex and challenge the sexist assumptions that justified women's inequality with men. They explained that women's biology, particularly their ability to bear children, means they required specific rights and resources. But they used gender to argue that women's biology does not make them inferior to men. They recognised that women's specific needs were neglected by policymakers and medical practitioners not because women's needs were inevitably less important than men's but because the world was male-dominated. They also showed that women's inequality is often justified by the claim that women are best suited to perform 'feminine' roles. Feminists demonstrated that there was no evidence to substantiate this notion that gender is innate. They also showed that masculinity and femininity are not simply different from one another but also inherently unequal (which explained why, for example, 'women's' work was paid less than men's). As Angela Philips (1974) wrote in the feminist magazine Spare Rib, ending women's oppression relied on creating a new relationship between the sexes 'which is not built out of domination [commonly perceived as masculine] and submission [widely defined as feminine]' (31). Feminists therefore critiqued and sought to eradicate gender.

new groups emerged, such as Woman's Place UK (WPUK), founded by socialists and trade unionists in 2017 to campaign for women's sex-based rights. WPUK's conscious debt to the second wave is evidenced by their 'Five Demands' (WPUK 2018), and their distinction between sex as biological - which underpins their emphasis on women's bodily autonomy - and gender as a restrictive construction that feminists must challenge.

Void if removed (talk) 09:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Clearly I have much to learn/remember about this topic! -- Colin°^Talk 10:47, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The GCF page is extremely biased. It equates GCF with transphobia and anti-trans rights. All the GCFeminists I have ever heard believe that trans people deserve the human rights they already enjoy as humans. If they want the right to enter women's groups and spaces, that is another matter! And the article equates the belief that trans women are not women but rather TRANS WOMEN, with transphobia. That is not at all accurate. Believing that trans women are trans women is a sign of being well-grounded in reality and has nothing to do with thinking that trans people should not exist. 71.235.161.214 (talk) 18:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any specific parts of the article you want to improve. Remember these improvements would have to be backed up by sources using Wikipedia policy. I'll kindly remind you that Wikipedia is Wikipedia:NOTFORUM LunaHasArrived (talk) 19:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

ill-suited discussion

This is pointless. Without considering specific sources, this discussion is bound to go off-topic, as is already happening with discussions of polls, arguing about the prevalence of various sentiments towards trans people in the Anglosphere. I invite editors who take issue with the sourcing in this article to consider relevant policies of Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia is written from a global perspective. In particular, an Anglo-American focus is contrary to our neutral point of view policy. To someone not from the Anglosphere, it appears like issues and debates prevalent in certain regions of that sphere are imported to and enacted on Wikipedia, which is unhelpful. The legal status and proceedings surrounding Gender-critical feminism in the UK and elsewhere in particular are irrelevant when it comes to determining the due weight (or "fringeness") of Gender-critical feminism in the wider discourse.
• Wikipedia does not care about the prevalence of beliefs in certain parts of the world when it comes to determining reliability, due weight or balance given to different sources. Wikipedia only cares about those sources, and what those sources have to say. In particular, surveys like Where Americans stand on 20 transgender policy issues are irrelevant for determining these aspects. These are also irrelevant for determining whether a viewpoint is WP:FRINGE. An academic field and the wider population can disagree about the relevance of different aspects of a field, even in the much-heralded "physical sciences": string theory was still widely believed to be a useful candidate for a Theory of Everything by many people long after mainstream physicists had abandoned it as a path to TOE. So, even if, for example, Gender-critical beliefs were prevalent, e.g. in Britain, that would still only mean that a huge part of the British population subscribes to beliefs on the fringes of the academic mainstream.
• Wikipedia is not a British encyclopedia. The more discussions on this talk page revolve around the UK, the more it seems like this article is a regional POV fork in disguise. I particularly distrust the premise of this discussion, which in my opinion veers dangerously close to asking for special exemptions from Wikipedia's general policies on the reliability, weight and quality of sources, just because some editors don't like the academic viewpoint on this topic. TucanHolmes (talk) 14:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

fringes of the academic mainstream

The original point is very much whether what is being called the "academic mainstream" actually is, or is in reality an incredibly niche and opinionated part of academia, and whether that should actually dominate this page (as it presently does), and how we establish what terms even mean or what is balanced and neutral.

And that's very hard when people glibly compare the UK to an authoritarian state like Russia. Hence everything goes in circles.

Without agreement on what the following words at their base actually mean and who they apply to, we get nowhere.

• TERF
• Trans-exclusionary radical feminist/ism
• Gender critical feminist/ism
• Gender critical

And different sources can be assembled to give different renderings of each of these, and if you favour one particular - unabashedly partisan - academic perspective as "the only accepted view in polite society" you end up with a highly POV article that does a poor job of educating the reader what any of this is all about.

When people talk about "the academic mainstream" what they're actually referring to is the subset of academia that considers itself an authority on the relationship between sex and gender and is now axiomatically opposed to the notion that sex in humans is binary, immutable, and sometimes important.

So it becomes circular. Once you decide that the subject of this article is not actually "gender critical feminism" or what "gender critical feminists" say and believe and write and publish and campaign for, but actually what academics who hate them say about them, you can't begin to approach a neutral POV, and I seriously think (again) there's a case for splitting by WP:SUBPOV. This is not an academic subject, but a subject about which some academics have opinions, and those opinions should be given their due weight, and no more, because much of this is in the realm of subjective opinion. Void if removed (talk) 15:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Once you decide that the subject of this article is not actually "gender critical feminism" or what "gender critical feminists" say and believe and write and publish and campaign for, but actually what academics who hate them say about them, you can't begin to approach a neutral POV. If that is your view of this subject, or the sources used in this article, and your solution is to explicitly advocate for a content fork, I must remind you of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. If you can't gain consensus for your point of view, or it seriously differs from other points of view, content forks are not the solution. TucanHolmes (talk) 16:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Here is the point of view this article prioritises:

• Trans-exclusionary radical feminism is a fringe transphobic belief that trans women aren't women and should be excluded from women's spaces and lesbian sexuality, and is exemplified by lesbian separatists in the 1960s and transphobic works like Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire in the 70s. Modern attempts to rebrand this as "gender-critical feminism" are mere cover to attempt to make transphobia more palatable. They spread conspiracy theories about "gender ideology", and are biological essentialists who uphold cisnormative, conservative gender roles and think everybody's gender should be determined by sex assigned at birth, and that sex and gender are the same. They are generally called TERFs, which is derogatory but apt, and they spread disinformation and overlap with the far right. Despite being a fringe minority, they are dominant voices in right-wing media.

This relies on academic works by eg. Clare Thurlow, Cristan Williams, Ruth Pearce etc.

Here is the point of view that gender critical feminists advance:

• Second-wave feminists theorised sex and gender as distinct in order to recognise and critique the social construct of gender as an oppressive force on the female sex. With the decline of womens studies and rise of gender studies in academia, especially post-Butler, this straightforward distinction fell out of fashion, especially in the US. By 2008 any feminist that maintained this sex-based analysis was given the newly coined label "TERF", which quickly became a derogatory term applied to anyone - feminist or otherwise - who did not agree that trans women are women, to the point it arguably became a slur. In response, the phrase "gender critical" was used by some feminists to attempt to make clear the analysis was not "trans-exclusionary", but was fundamentally a critique of gender, and covered a range of feminists - radical, socialist, marxist, liberal - who, whatever their analysis, maintained the immutability and importance of sex as a foundation. This has created a number of social, political and legal conflicts over the recognition of self-identified gender identity in place of sex, most notably in the UK.

This relies on academic works by eg. Holly Lawford-Smith, Jane Clare-Jones, Selina Todd etc.

Multiple GCF sources say, it is not about trans, it is about sex, but that just means it conflicts with current political demands for specific forms of recognition of transgender identities. Critical sources say it is about being transphobic, really, and harks back to transphobic feminists who emerged in the 1960/70s.

We have two contradictory, subjective POVs on the same subject and the same history. That is fine, I have no problem trying to balance that - but that means actually striving for balance, whereas what keeps happening is the POV advanced by gender critical feminists is claimed not merely to be an unpopular minority, but actually WP:FRINGE to the point it should not be permitted to speak for itself, but instead given less priority than the opinions of critics when it comes to defining even what the beliefs are in the first place - which renders this page largely useless when you want to link to it from other contexts, eg. any article mentioning the protection of gender-critical beliefs in UK law .

I think we need to revisit some of the sources used on this page. For example, the very first citation on this page is Claire Thurlow's "From TERF to Gender Critical", and that sits at the heart of the claim that TERF/TERF ideology/trans-exclusionary radical feminism/gender critical feminism are all the same.

But it is not so straightforward, since Thurlow actually draws some distinctions between the various terms:

First a word on terminology. I use ‘TERF’ as a representation of what might be called the original trans-exclusionary feminist view, which I outline in the following section, and ‘gender critical’ to represent more contemporary presentations of feminist trans- exclusion. I use ‘trans-exclusionary feminism’ as an umbrella term encompassing both. As will be discussed, the application of these terms is complex and political. They represent positions that are interconnected and often interchangeable, indistinguishable and/or contradictory. Acknowledging these enmeshments as I advance, there is enough of a separable figurative TERF position from that of a figurative gender critical one, at least in how they are presented, to be usefully employed.

Thurlow gives an account of what "anti-trans feminism" looks like, via a reading of Janice Raymond from the 70s:

Raymond’s conclusions can be distilled as (a) trans is a manifestation of patriarchy and is caused, at least in part, by sex-role rigidity, (b) trans people are either delusional or deceiving and to think otherwise is to ‘collude with the falsification of reality’ (1994: xxiii) (c) trans women are violators and penetrators, of space, of bodies, of true womanhood.

Thurlow specifically talks about the attitudes of Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys in the context of the word "TERF". None of this, yet, is about "gender critical feminism":

It was individuals with the type of trans-exclusionary opinions outlined in this section that would retrospectively be termed TERFs (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and it is these types of sentiments I intend to capture in my use of ‘TERF’.

Thurlow talks of the shift in the late 80s to poststructural and queer theory becoming dominant in academia. Again, nothing yet about "gender critical feminism":

the late 1980s onwards saw increased focus on differences within womanhood, including the work of power dynamics in privileging and marginalising voices and experiences. There was an increasing focus on a critique of categories such as woman, man, straight, gay and the policing they accrue. This came not least from poststructural scholarship and, particularly in this context, queer theory. This combination of events led to growing understanding and inclusion of trans people within feminism

This is absolutely in line with the narrative set out in eg. Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader. The assertion there though is that with this shift in the academy towards a model dominated by trans inclusion, especially in the US, absolutely every feminist that did not follow this shift became "trans-exclusionary" by default, regardless of theoretical/practical lineage. Thurlow accepts TERF has become widely applied as an insult:

While it remained accurate to a subsect of trans-exclusionary feminists (some radical feminists), TERF came to signify trans-exclusionary views more generally. [...] Moreover, once the term was popularized, being trans-exclusionary and therefore liable to being labelled a TERF did not necessitate being a feminist at all, with the term also being used to describe trans- exclusionary positions from right-wing or religious perspectives. This diffusion of the application of ‘TERF’ coupled with the overt transphobia of earlier feminist writings on trans-exclusion, promoted the terms pejorative use by some. It has been argued that TERF now meets the definition of a slur

Thurlow describes the coinage of gender critical by feminists as a response to being denigrated as TERFs (which multiple sources concur with), but suggests it is a rebranding. This latter is Thurlow's opinion, but this is absolutely the key of the dispute at the heart of this page’s scope:

Amidst the melee of controversy and connotations attached to ‘TERF’, the term ‘gender critical feminism/ feminist’ began to be used by proponents of trans-exclusionary feminism. While this constitutes a late 2010s renaming of TERF, it would be more accurately described as a rebranding.

Are "gender critical feminists" really the "fringe transphobic feminists" allegedly referred to as "TERFs"? Or was TERF applied to everyone who maintained sex is binary and immutable, including a wide range of feminists, who coined "gender critical" to refocus discourse on what feminism is supposed to be about? Thurlow even agrees "gender critical feminism" is a tautology:

Leaving aside that the term ‘gender critical feminism’ is tautology

Something that gender critical feminists have also said (ie, to them, all feminism is gender critical, and they are simply feminists, see Holly Lawford-Smith "Gender Critical Feminism"), and also why some radical feminists (especially those at the Sheila Jeffreys end of things) never accepted or used the term, regarding it as completely redundant. This again fits with the narrative that it was the poststructuralist/queer theory shift inside academia towards prioritising transgender identities which ended up creating conflict with a wide range of second-wave continuity feminists for whom sex remained a material, immutable binary and gender was still something to be critiqued/dismantled.

So while Thurlow frames everyone not on board with this shift in academia as being because they must be part of a purported "TERF" lineage, the alternative is very much that many feminists of different schools of thought entirely independent of Raymond and Jeffreys were branded TERFs - a widely used insult - because they continued to maintain the sex/gender distinction of the second wave in some form or another, and that was sufficient to be regarded as "transphobic".

Thurlow then describes the language shift as one that cannot possibly be good faith:

its adoption represented the beginnings of a pivot by trans-exclusionary feminists towards language which obscures their trans- exclusionary focus. Alongside a shift from TERF to gender critical, ‘anti-trans’ became ‘pro-women’ and ‘trans-exclusion’ became the protection of ‘sex-based rights’ (‘We defend sex-based rights’ (Fair Play for Women, 2021: para.6)). These rather innocuous- sounding terms have been transformed into the language of division; exemplifying dog- whistle politics whereby the phrases act as a coded message of anti-transness to those initiated, while appearing ‘reasonable’

No evidence is given for any of this - it is entirely Thurlow's opinion.

Frankly, the piece as a whole is somewhat confused, simultaneously conceding TERF and gender critical feminism are not the same, but sometimes saying they are, and accusing the latter of recycling the "tropes" of the former. Regardless, we should be including this as a critique but to call it definitively true in wikivoice is a result of the privileging of this sort of academic text from a specific section of academia above all others - and that is what is questionable, and at the basis of this section's discussion. I think a reasonable rundown is:

1. TERF was coined around 2008, to (allegedly) describe a specific strain of radical feminism, with most common named figures being Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys

2. TERF became widely used as an insult and applied to everyone deemed transphobic, feminist or not

3. In the mid 2010s, some feminists coined "gender critical feminism" as a tautological response to being branded TERFs that feminism’s priority is a critique of gender, and it became used by a wide variety of feminist thought, whose only real commonality was some level of continuity with the second wave sex/gender distinction

4. Gender critical feminists insist that gender critical feminism is not about "trans" it is about "sex", which simply brings it into conflict with current "trans-inclusive" approaches in academia that are largely predicated on gender identity

5. Critics insist gender-critical feminism is just a rebranding of TERF to whitewash longstanding anti-trans antipathy

I think you can absolutely tell this narrative neutrally with both hostile and non-hostile sources in balance. Points 1 and 2 aren’t really debatable, they are very well supported. 3 is murkier, and we can give a good balanced opposing account of both 4 and 5.

Once you get into things like the protection of "gender critical beliefs" in UK law you absolutely need that neutral rendition of what those beliefs actually are as a starting point - but none of that is possible if you start from the POV that opinions like Thurlow's are fact which override the reliable sources stating the actual beliefs of GCFs by claiming WP:FRINGE.

A neutral rendition of this page starts from: what do they say, what do critics say.

Not the current situation which is: what they say is so awful and fringe, we should prioritise the critics explanations of it. Void if removed (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a very good explanation. I also agree that UK law (despite all the rants about Council of Europe and UK being no better than Russia) has not just suddenly decided transphobia is just fine. Being transphobic towards one's colleagues will still get you fired and legally fired. So what's the distinction that UK law has decided is a protected belief? Readers of this article should be able to find out. -- Colin°^Talk 11:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The UK has plummeted in its ranking of treatment of LGBTQIA+ rights according to ILGA, especially due to their sudden shift around transgender rights - The UK’s lower rating comes amid a delay on banning of so-called ‘conversion practices’, the government’s trans guidance for schools having the potential for forcibly out trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming student to their parents and the NHS announcing that trans women will be banned from female wards in England.

There is certainly a shift happening in the UK and the push of the TERF movement certainly has strong parts to do with it, since it is influencing some of the laws or actions of their government with regards to infringing rights. Since especially a lot of this movement is centered in the UK, this is something that needs to be taken into account with the weight given to some of the beliefs that the article discusses. Raladic (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm referring to our courts, which are proudly independent of government and have been a right royal pain in the backside to this Conservative government which has said and attempted all sorts of terrible things (but achieved very little). Perhaps other countries courts are more political and follow government wishes but UK's doesn't. The refrain of "UK Bad" on this and similar pages is disruptive and needs to stop. Reality is far more nuanced and the existence of a few hateful (now ex-) government ministers can't be extended to the population or our courts. Wrt your quote, the number of counties who have banned conversion practices is a handful,[11] so UK delay is hardly a solid argument. And the trans guidance for schools will in fact never see the light of day because of the announced general election. Newspapers have a habit of claiming that the government is to make this or that illegal or to give this or that guidance when in fact all that has happened is some consultation document has been drawn up. @User:Raladic, can you actually cite any "shift in transgender rights" in the UK that has actually come into law. I'm struggling right now to think of one, despite all the talk.

You mention "weight given to some of the beliefs that the article discusses". I'm afraid the "weight" given to GCF beliefs in this article is unquestionable, as that is what this article is about. What talk page do you think you are on? Perhaps you are confusing how much "weight" Wikipedia should give to the opinions of those who disagree. That's certainly got weight too. This article should fully explain GCF beliefs to sources with a track record of accuracy and fairness, per our RS policy, on describing said beliefs. Void has demonstrated amply that many anti-TERF trans-inclusive feminist sources are unreliable on this matter. I wish that weren't so but it's well documented that activism in this culture war has poisoned both sides into making false claims about the other side. I have no problem citing those sources for their negative opinions, however, and making it clear to the reader the extent of support of GCF beliefs. But let's not confuse that kind of weight with our encyclopaedic mission to accurately and fairly document those beliefs in the first place. -- Colin°^Talk 09:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

An excellent analysis by Void. Sweet6970 (talk) 14:55, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The Australian academic you mention is known for anti-trans activism, is exceedingly fringe in any academic context, and has faced major protests by faculty and students at her own university. She has taken part in "Posie Parker's" extremist anti-trans rallies attended by Neo-Nazis[12] Those other anti-trans academics are similarly primarily known for anti-trans activists, and are quite fringe in academia. We can not accept a WP:FALSEBALANCE here; TERF ideology, a form of transphobia, should not be treated as if it were any more accepted than white supremacism, antisemitism and other forms of prejudice. What we do have is a growing body of research on anti-gender movements (including the TERF movement/ideology), by mainstream academics in gender studies and the social sciences generally, including studies of democracy, populism, extremism, radicalization and related topics. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

When a textbook gets published by a respectable academic press, we are well out of fringe territory. You haven't responded to any of the points of substance that Void made, you are just repeating your GCF==transphobia theory. There's no consensus for that, and there's no consensus for it at Template:Transgender topics either. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:05, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Amanda, you keep repeating this but it doesn't make it so any more than Wikipedia can document conservative evangelical Christianity or Islam should be treated like "white supremacism, antisemitism and other forms of prejudice". There are lots of beliefs that you or I may disagree with and even find offensive, but simplistic rot like this isn't acceptable on Wikipedia any more than if you went over to the article on Islam and started banging on about how hateful Muslims are towards LGBTQ people, or an article on some African country that imposes a life prison sentence for being LGBTQ. The Australian academic is still an Australian academic, not languishing in some jail or refused a visa to travel. UK law requires GCF beliefs are permitted to be held and expressed without fear of sanction like losing one's job. That is not like "white supremacism, antisemitism and other forms of prejudice". So there's a disconnect between your world and the reality that other opinions exist. The world is a big place with many beliefs.

Did you actually read WP:FALSEBALANCE before citing it? Again it isn't about beliefs but about claims that can be tested and show to be wrong (or at lease, very unlikely). Is the earth flat? Were the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax? These are totally separate from whether Jesus is your Lord and Saviour or whether Taylor Swift writes great songs or whether marriage is for opposite sex people or healthcare should be funded through taxation or insurance or whether lesbians can be trans women. The numbers of people holding said beliefs are a statistic but not really any influence how how accurately we should describe them. -- Colin°^Talk 09:54, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Since you bring up the "Posie Parker rallies with Nazis" thing, a popular talking point used as guilt by association to smear her and by association the entire gender-critical movement, I must point out that the Nazis in question weren't invited or wanted by Parker, and that people at pro-Palestinian rallies have been spotted doing Nazi salutes, drawing swastikas, and chanting "Gas the Jews", so is Queers for Palestine to be labeled as having Nazis on their side? I hate to be put in the position of defending Posie Parker, who has some views that are on the fringes of the gender-critical side and have gotten her criticism from that direction (like a recent speech of hers advocating blatant employment discrimination against gender-non-conforming people), but that particular criticism is without merit. *Dan T.* (talk) 17:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I would say I agree (guilt being association is a nasty thing), however kjk does actively promote people that voice the "people founding the LGBTQ movement are all Jews" conspiracy theory and as time and time again had Nazis or at least far right presence turn up and not do anything. In this specific instance (let women speak Melbourne) kjk was warned in advance that they'd attend and there was no conflict when they did arrive. Whilst saying "there were nazi salutes at her rally so she hangs around with Nazis" is faulty logic it doesn't mean that kjk doesn't hang out with Nazis or promote some far right conspiracy theories LunaHasArrived (talk) 18:25, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Remember, we aren't even discussing kjk as a source. This x-degrees-of-separation stuff is the sort of unintellectual game that plays on Twitter but is nothing whatsoever to do with our reliable-sources policies. -- Colin°^Talk 13:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Adding to this a new, recent source which echoes a lot of the distinctions I think this article needs to draw. I note that this is a critical source, but it does actually seem to engage with the distinctions that many other critical sources deny exist - even if only to argue for more strategic ways of politically countering those positions.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10894160.2024.2356496 ("Confronting complex alliances: Situating Britain’s gender critical politics within the wider transnational anti-gender movement" by Sarah Lamble)

Some relevant quotes.

First, it is distinct from any "anti-gender movement":

While the British gender critical movement shares some characteristics with the international anti-gender movement, it also differs significantly.

On history:

It emerged in direct response to proposals by the UK Government to reform the Gender Recognition Act to remove barriers to acquiring a legal change of gender

On GCF vs conservative gender positions, and perspectives on gay rights:

Third, unlike the global anti-gender movement, which is deeply invested in patriarchal norms, the British gender-critical movement initially emerged as a feminist project

[...]

Anti-gender conservatives and gender-critical feminists both oppose what they describe as ‘gender ideology’, but from very different positions. Conservatives uphold ‘traditional’ gender norms, advocating for sex ‘complementarity’ (i.e., distinct roles and identities for men and women) and blame changing gender roles for a range of social ills. Whereas gender critical feminists view ‘gender identity’ as reinforcing stereotypes of what men and women should be (i.e., women as ‘feminine’ and men as ‘masculine’). They worry that ‘gender ideology’ encourages ‘masculine’ women and girls, particularly lesbians, to become men, and ‘feminine’ men and boys to become women instead of accepting a range of expressions and sexualities. Gender critical feminists also argue that shifts to replace ‘sex’ categories with ‘gender’ will hamper efforts to collect ‘accurate’ data on equality measures, such as unequal pay, crime rates and health—despite the fact that both ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ categories can be fraught with challenges in data collection (Collier & Cowan 2022). Fundamentally, gender critical feminists see trans rights as a threat to women’s equality and gay rights, whereas conservatives generally oppose gender and sexual equality altogether.

On non right-wing nature:

A fourth key difference is anti-trans politics in Britain defy conventional left-right divisions. Gender critical perspectives in Britain cross multiple constituencies as well as political and partisan lines (GATE, 2022). For example, there are gender critical sub-groups within every major political party across Britain

On claims within academia of silencing and no-platforming of GCF perspectives:

These distinctions between the British gender critical and the global anti-gender movements are not insignificant. Such differences pose challenges for developing effective counter strategies—not least of all because gender critical feminists appeal to left-wing and liberal audiences as much as right-wing ones. Strategies designed to push back against right-wing politics can backfire when applied to left-wing campaigners. “No platforming” tactics, for example, first used against fascist speakers, have not been especially successful when applied to gender critical feminists. In some cases, these tactics have brought gender critical voices far greater platforms, media attention and public sympathy than they would have had otherwise.

On distinctions between factions within the bread "gender-critical" umbrella, and overuse of "TERF":

In addition to acknowledging differences between anti-gender and gender critical politics, it is important to recognise divergences within the British gender-critical movement. Despite a tendency among commentators to treat gender-critical advocates as broadly similar (oscillating between branding them all ‘TERFS’ on the one hand, or right-wing, neo-fascists on the other), these campaigners occupy a range of political positions. For example, while there are right-wing women organising under the banner of gender-critical politics, for the most part they are not feminists (and therefore not ‘TERFS’).

On left-wing positions and politics:

Conversely, many of the leading gender-critical women’s groups in Britain—including those who are undertaking significant lobbying and policy work—come from left feminist positions. A Woman’s Place UK, for example, a key gender-critical group established in 2017, was set up by trade unionists and other left feminists. It explicitly describes itself as left-wing and has supporters from a range of left-groups

There are also a range of ‘non-partisan’ gender-critical women’s groups, such as Fair Play for Women, For Women Scotland, and Sex Matters, comprised of members across the political spectrum. Gender-critical campaigners also include groups of lesbians, gays and bisexuals who seek separate organising from trans communities (e.g., LGB Alliance) including those who publicly eschew both left and right politics (e.g., Get the L Out).

I think this is one of the few critical sources that accurately renders the gender-critical feminist position that they oppose gender identity on the grounds that it is "reinforcing stereotypes". Void if removed (talk) 18:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this looks like a very useful source. (By the way, I think you mean ‘broad’, not ‘bread’.) Sweet6970 (talk) 19:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

For once, an opponent of gender critical ideas seems to be making a serious effort to pass the Ideological Turing Test in their arguments against it. This is commendable. *Dan T.* (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Whilst the above source is interesting, I think certain editors might be prone to "I just like it" kind of thinking and forget that this is just one academic source. It mainly seems to be a soft rebuttle to Butlers new book and describes the gender critical movement as a mainly English centric movement and a single issue movement. It distinctly mentions that the these views are a minority in the UK and specifically mentions that lesbians and bisexual women are the most trans inclusive in Britain (this should probably be mentioned in the gay rights sections of views). Also it mentions that safety concerns are a big pusher for the gender critical movement and "In conditions of fearmongering and resource scarcity, trans people

provide a convenient target to blame for wider problems" but that such safety concerns are misdericted and "there

is no credible empirical evidence that trans rights pose a threat to women" LunaHasArrived (talk) 19:01, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I also think that this paper's assertion that gender critical feminism is left-wing is very much incorrect in practice. Just common sense here: if it was left wing, do you think the Torygraph and the Daily Mail would put out articles almost every single day covering it favorably? Because they definitely do that.

What I would say is that GCF has historical ties to the British left that protect it from a lot of the ideological gatekeeping that the left would normally do. So it's less taboo, especially in the British center-left, than religious transphobia or overt homophobia would be. Loki (talk) 19:54, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it asserts that gender critical feminism is left wing, just that gender critical feminists can come from the left wing. I mean it specifically calls these feminists "white feminists" which is very against the intersectionality of modern feminism and the left wing. LunaHasArrived (talk) 20:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

if it was left wing, do you think the Torygraph and the Daily Mail would put out articles almost every single day covering it favorably?

You're asking if right-wing papers would gleefully publish stories about divisions on the left? Stories about mild-mannered left-wing academics and feminists and lesbians being cancelled by "the left"? You can't imagine they have anything to gain by making "the left" look like its eating itself in a deranged purity spiral? That "the left" has abandoned its own and only "the right" can be trusted to "protect women"?

Not only do I not find that hard to believe, I find it obvious that they would do that in the divisive and selective manner that they have.

Anyway, back before this was particularly mainstream, one of the few places that covered eg. the protests at Women's Place events was the Morning Star. Materialist, marxist left-wing feminists consider sex to be an important, material axis of oppression, and gender identity to be liberal idealism. These are quite predictable philosophical differences. Void if removed (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The source did not say once say that GC feminism is left-wing, it said it's taken hold of politics across the UK as a whole, initially championed by white feminists in the UK and more associated with the UK left. It says that the left and right GC camps agree on framing trans people as a threat, just provide different reasonings. It says leftists and feminists worldwide generally do not agree. "Some leftists say this thing in this country".

And as a materialist marxist feminist, who organizes in my community with other materialist marxist feminists, your claim that we "consider sex to be an important, material axis of oppression, and gender identity to be liberal idealism" is pretty off-base and pure unsourced speculation. For a start, it ignores that "gender identity" is an empirical/material thing that every single health organization agrees exists because conversion therapy doesn't work on trans people. One can be a marxist, materialist, and feminist and intersectional. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 23:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, the only survey I'm aware of on this topic finds that the vast majority of self-identified feminists are trans-friendly. Loki (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The original point is very much whether what is being called the "academic mainstream" actually is, or is in reality an incredibly niche and opinionated part of academia, and whether that should actually dominate this page (as it presently does), and how we establish what terms even mean or what is balanced and neutral. Well, then get reliable sources to back up that assertion.

And that's very hard when people glibly compare the UK to an authoritarian state like Russia. Hence everything goes in circles. It's not Wikipedians' fault that the European Human Rights Council named the UK in one breath with Russia et al.; this all goes to underscore that the views prevalent in some parts of the Anglosphere are minority views. The fact that people have to resort to random polls and surveys to argue their case of what is fringe and not fringe is at least one indicator that the academic consensus – not just in social studies – seems to go against gender-critical feminism. TucanHolmes (talk) 16:24, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

No such exemption is requested. Exactly the opposite in fact. I started the discussion in response to multiple comments elsewhere on the talk page which seemed founded in the misguided and simplistic notion that academic sources are always weightier or higher quality than other types of sources and are the only factor in evaluating due weight and fringeness. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Which sources? Again, without concrete sources to discuss and weigh against each other, this discussion will go nowhere, endlessly revolving in circles around abstract notions of weight and balance, which are already answered by the numerous policies and essays about those policies, by Wikipedia and Wikipedians. If the issue is with those policies, or interpretations of those policies, this talk page is not the appropriate place to discuss those, and the issue should be raised elsewhere. TucanHolmes (talk) 16:17, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Tucan, I don't agree with really anything you wrote. People here are misusing the word "academic" and what aspects of academic sources Wikipedia values. Honestly this debate is as facepalmingly embarrassing to watch as if a bunch of atheists had all got together and decided Christianity is a fringe viewpoint (because no real scientists believes in God) and any article on Anglicanism, say, must be written by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hichens and other haters of religion.

It is mildly interesting to note that in academic feminist literature, GCF views are in a tiny minority. One sentence in the article thank you very much. That fact also has a bearing on whether GCF views get a mention in our articles on feminism. But in the actual article on Gender critical feminism, I want to know what GCFs think. I really really do not want to know what people who hate GCFs think they think, which is what people seem to be pushing for here, and has ended up with this mess where it seems virtually no editor on this page actually knows what GCFs think other than that they are Really Really Bad People. And anyone playing the Council of Europe card, comparing UK with Putin's Russia, is IMO making a Godwin's law mistake and lacking self awareness of whatever their own countries populations actually think. -- Colin°^Talk 07:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

This is not how Wikipedia works. You have misunderstood the point of an encyclopedia. If you advertise your obvious point of view (that academic sources – which? – hate GCF) and can't get consensus for that (or provide citations for your opinion that we should discard those sources because they hate GCFs), then that is not a problem with this article. Wikipedia doesn't automatically give exposé space to ideologies; all ideologies are evaluated (critically), especially if they are deemed to be WP:FRINGE. You can't have it both ways: Either gender-critical feminism is a feminist / feminist-adjacent movement (in which case it gets a Wikipedia article but is evaluated accordingly), or it is part of a broader gender-critical movement, as your comments here seem to suggest. But in that case, this article will need to be folded into the bigger topic.

Wikipedia doesn't care what countries populations think when evaluating sources. This is only relevant when the actual point of contention is what those populations think (nevermind that I highly doubt that you could provide enough reliable sources to back up your assertions). TucanHolmes (talk) 09:24, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It matters what countries populations think when evaluating if a social concept is fringe. People are throwing around the WP:FRINGE guideline as though it can be used to insist only TERF-hating sources can be used. It can't any more than religion-hating sources can be insistent upon to write about the Free Church of Scotland.

A source written by a feminist who rejects/hates GCF is a fine source for what that feminist thinks, and I don't reject the idea this article should remind readers that most academic feminists think that way. I'm not quite sure how we've got ourselves into the mess of thinking it is an appropriate source for what a GCF thinks.

GCF is a set of beliefs. I think we should be able to write about those beliefs just as we write about the beliefs of the Free Church of Scotland or Mormons or what the Green Party of England and Wales thinks. Why on earth should it matter if most academic sources in the USA spare no time thinking about the Green Party of England and Wales? What's that got to do with the fact that it exists and has beliefs? It matters if one is writing an overview article on environmental issues or consumerism or whatever, and whether to mention the GPoEW viewpoint, but not when you are actually writing an article on that topic itself. The point of an encyclopaedia is to tell me about the subject of the article. If I only want to know about the views people who hate the subject of the article, I could go on Twitter. -- Colin°^Talk Colin°^Talk 10:46, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue is the rush to say this is not merely a minority but actually WP:FRINGE, a far stronger claim which relies on a) the prevalence of views hostile to gender critical feminism within a certain section of academia and b) ignoring all the reliable sources - including academic publications - that say it is not, but closer to a quite unremarkable continuity of second-wave feminism. The basis of claiming WP:FRINGE is that it:departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field.

But what is "the field"? Feminism is not a wholly - or even majority - academic subject, and it is a subject marked by splits and subdivisions. So per fringe: However, there are at least two caveats: not every identified subject matter has its own academic specialization, and the opinion of a scholar whose expertise is in a different field should not be given undue weight.

Academic feminism is a minority subset of feminism, and gender studies academics whose field is predicated on a particular interpretation of sex and gender do not have the final word on other feminist interpretations. These are different philosophical perspectives. This article has been approached by picking works in a field that foundationally understands sex and gender in one specific way, and saying "this is the entirety of the field, with the correct interpretation of sex and gender as its basis, all others are WP:FRINGE and transphobic bigots".

Yet we have multiple, reliable, respectable academic sources saying exactly what gender critical feminism is and it is a far cry from WP:FRINGE. We are not cobbling together incoherent ramblings from dubious sources as you would expect with a claim of WP:FRINGE, we have multiple, high quality academic textbooks and papers to draw from. This is not a hard science subject where theories that violate physical laws are being expounded, but a difference of philosophical opinion. WP:FRINGE does not mean a simple minority, nor is it revealed by strength of feeling of academic opponents.

Yet the speculation and opinion of some academics who take a contradictory view pervades the very premise of this article. Rather than what GCFs say being presented neutrally and offset with what other academics say about them, we start from the position that GCFs are WP:FRINGE to sideline what they say about themselves and give free rein to hyperbolic criticism at the outset.

There is an overreliance on overblown claims of WP:FRINGE to downplay or dismiss use of reliable, non-hostile sources as an accurate basis of what this belief even is, in order to write from the perspective of specific, hostile academic opinions. Void if removed (talk) 11:16, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE says:Fringe theories in a nutshell: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea. More extensive treatment should be reserved for an article about the idea, which must meet the test of notability. Additionally, in an article about the minority viewpoint itself, the proper contextual relationship between minority and majority viewpoints must be made clear.

Therefore, this article should be the ‘more extensive treatment' i.e. we need to explain in detail what g-c feminist views actually are, and the other viewpoints should only be mentioned to add context. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:35, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, in an article about the minority viewpoint itself, the proper contextual relationship between minority and majority viewpoints must be made clear. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:00, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see where the article doesn't follow this guideline. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:18, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Clarification: I am not saying that g-c views are fringe, but that anyone who seeks to rely on WP:FRINGE to say that g-c views should not be the main content of this article would not be following the guideline. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:19, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I think Void and Sweet6970 make good points here. Nobody here is campaigning for GCF to be given serious weight in our articles on feminism. Time to put the WP:FRINGE hammer down and walk away from that one. Just think of this like a minority religious denomination and you'll have a far better idea of how Wikipedia should deal with it. -- Colin°^Talk 08:34, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

That is not how WP:FRINGE works. If we start from the premise that GC feminism is a fringe theory in feminism, then how Wikipedia should cover it doesn't magically change just because it has its own article (that would be a POV fork). TucanHolmes (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I have stated what WP:FRINGE says. It seems you disagree with the guideline. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:16, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Also, what? Just think of this like a minority religious denomination and you'll have a far better idea of how Wikipedia should deal with it. (?) That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:11, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Here is an extreme example (from the article about Arianism, first sentence):

Arianism (Koine Greek: Ἀρειανισμός, Areianismós) is a Christological doctrine considered heretical by all mainstream branches of Christianity.

I don't want to draw any comparison to Gender-critical feminism, this has nothing to do with the content of this article, I just want to point out that Wikipedia covers minority religious denominations in quite stark/drastic terms if the disagreement is serious. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:21, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I get that this article is overly critical and negative, but that's because the sources themselves are overly critical and negative. The only country where gender-critical feminism has some degree of mainstream acceptance (but is still very controversial) is the UK; in most other countries, it is virtually unknown, or only known negatively. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:25, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Tucan, you keep writing "that's not how WP:FRINGE works". I think this is an WP:UPPERCASE mistake of reading certain sources-one-agrees-with that claim GCF is a tiny minority belief among feminists (in their opinion and silo world view) and thinking that has anything at all to do with WP:FRINGE. The way we deal with "Do we, and how much do we, mention GCF beliefs in our articles on feminism, etc, is bog standard WP:DUE. How much do our sources, when discussing feminism, spend time on this or that branch of the subject. There's no need to consult WP:FRINGE to work out that this is a very minor part of feminism.

Please read WP:FRINGE from beginning to end. It is pretty much all about nutty scientific ideas or conspiracy theories. The problem is that beliefs are not theories. Wikipedia doesn't confuse the two. A belief that the concept of marriage should apply to same-sex partnerships is very very much a minority belief worldwide. Worldwide, most reliable sources will disagree with it and point out that it is illegal. Marriage is a concept we, as societies, decide among ourselves, and has changed in my lifetime both socially and legally. It isn't perpetually and universally true or false. It isn't something one can measure with a ruler or a scientific theory one can use to explain how the stars move in the sky. If we were to write Same-sex marriage the way people here want to write this article, the lead would be reminding readers of its illegality in 83% of the world and that it is an abomination in the eyes of God. This difference-of-opinions about what constitutes "marriage" isn't fundamentally different to the GCF idea that a lesbian couple cannot include a trans woman. What the word "lesbian" means and what the word "marriage" means, and the consequences for who gets included and excluded into parts of society, is a matter for our societies to work out. Confusing this sort of thing with conspiracy theories on moon landings or fringe science on vaccines is not at all what that guideline is meant to deal with.

That only small number of people hold a certain belief, and that a LOT of people hate them, is quite a separate thing from our Wikipedia WP:FRINGE article. There are all sorts of things that small numbers of people believe that we can write about neutrally and with respect. Some Americans have beliefs about walking about with guns, or arming primary school teachers, that make the entire rest of the world gape in shock. Scots think that men getting married wearing a colourful woolen skirt is great. The arguments used here would have us write an article on kilts by people who think men shouldn't wear skirts. Clearly that's daft. Which leaves us with the alternative that this is wikilawyering to prevent GCF's beliefs being sourced to actual GCF's. I have no doubt this is being done in good faith and deeply held beliefs about how terrible GCFs are, but they are wrongheaded. -- Colin°^Talk 10:48, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

You're comparing apples and oranges, and honestly, that makes it difficult to engage with your points. Your walls of text also don't make things easier.

A belief that the concept of marriage should apply to same-sex partnerships is very very much a minority belief worldwide. Again, I don't like that you constantly pull these factoids out of nowhere. You cannot know what the world believes, I cannot know what the world believes; the actual fact which your statement is adjacent to is that same-sex partnerships are treated as criminal activity in many countries. However, this doesn't have anything to do with fringeness, because these countries are no authority in the field, nor have their legal systems anything to do with how Wikipedia should write about same-sex partnerships (in the same way that UK court rulings have nothing to do with how Wikipedia should write about gender-critical feminism, I should point out). An actual useful comparison would have been how psychologists view/treat same-sex partnerships. Seventy years ago, Wikipedia would have treated same-sex partnerships as a form of mental illness (and actual physical encyclopedias did so). That was wrong, but only because psychologists at large were wrong. That homosexuality was benign and nothing to worry about was a minority view at the time (see Magnus Hirschfeld), and would have been considered fringe by most psychologists.

The fact that WP:FRINGE mainly uses conspiracy theories as example is probably because these are the most common fringe beliefs, and examples are meant to be useful. I shouldn't have to remind you that examples are non-exhaustive, and saying that "X is not Y" because "X is not in the list of examples of Y" is fallacious reasoning.

the lead would be reminding readers of its illegality in 83% of the world and that it is an abomination in the eyes of God. Incidentally, the second sentence in the article about same-sex marriage reads

As of 2024, marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 37 countries, with a total population of 1.4 billion people (17% of the world's population).

and the last paragraph of the lead

Opposition is based on claims such as that homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal, that the recognition of same-sex unions will promote homosexuality in society, and that children are better off when raised by opposite-sex couples. These claims are refuted by scientific studies, which show that homosexuality is a natural and normal variation in human sexuality, that sexual orientation is not a choice, and that children of same-sex couples fare just as well as the children of opposite-sex couples.

Why would Wikipedia care about the eyes of God? (unnecessary hyperbole)

The problem is that beliefs are not theories. What? TucanHolmes (talk) 09:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I think I see what your problem is. "authority in the field". You seem to think, that on the matter of how we view sex, gender, LGBTQ, etc, there is actually an "authority", and perhaps like Amanda, thinks it is academia we should look to to tell us what to believe. Western society decided "nah" to that game when we had the Reformation and people figured out that they would believe things for themselves, after reading things for themselves, not what some authority told them to believe. It continues to be so in our secular age.

We trust academics to document what society thinks about issues like this and in what numbers, if they are able to do so in a neutral manner rather than in opinionated polemics. You can see the difference in style when you look at a respecting polling organisation, which doesn't agree or disagree with one side or the other. The same is so with the best newspaper reporting vs opinion pieces. We absolutely do not care what academics themselves think about issues like this, other than to document that "Alice thinks..." much as we might document what politicians think or major religious leaders think. They are just another group whose personal opinions get written about and thus have weight to be mentioned. Wikipedia doesn't care if some minor Christian denomination is right or the larger Anglican church is right or Islam is right or socialism is right and similarly shouldn't care if GCF is right. It is a belief. There isn't a universal "right". We document what it is, who believes it, who doesn't, what the criticisms are, and so on. Editors using this page as a forum to demand Wikipedia documents how "wrong" GCF is, are on the wrong website. Your example of the shift in attitude wrt same-sex partnerships isn't really relevant to this but I think demonstrates your continued wrongthinking about the issue. Yes Wikipedia would have documented that shift in view, but Wikipedia doesn't, in wikivoice, express any view on what is correct. Go read Same-sex marriage. It doesn't tell the reader if it is right or wrong.

Tucan, remind me what your actual point is? Amanda and some others are advancing FRINGE to demand only their sources are used to describe GCF and to exclude sources that are actually published academics who have written books on GCF published by the most respected university press in the world. This is, to put it mildly, an astounding claim, and ridiculous for the reasons I have given. -- Colin°^Talk 13:59, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

When writing any Wikipedia article, you should not use sources that promote positions that are rejected in the academic community by experts on the subject. If someday in the academic environment among gender researchers the position begins to dominate that in 2024 “gender-critical” feminists promoted scientific views, and they were opposed by a sect of trans activists, then we will prioritize these sources. I'm sorry, but the days when the cisnormative approach was dominant are over. Nowadays, it is the articles in the Transgender Health Journal that are massively positively cited by representatives of a variety of sciences, but the works of “gender-critical” ones are ignored at best, and harshly criticized at worst. In a situation of such scientific consensus, if cisnormativists are supported by some media, this is an argument against the reliability of these media. Reprarina (talk) 04:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

As Colin has already explained, gender-critical feminism is not a matter of science, but of philosophical belief, so any arguments about science are irrelevant to this article, which should be setting out what this belief consists of. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Academic sources need not be scientific, they can be – to take one incidental example – philosophical, or legal. People can hold philosophical beliefs to their heart's content, but if these beliefs are wrong or can be proven non-sensical / internally inconsistent, or are rejected by experts in the relevant field on valid grounds, or even just evaluated critically across the board, Wikipedia notes that – prominently even, depending on the weight and breadth of the issue / contention. If a belief also imposes real-world issues or challenges, and academic sources point that out, well, that's a problem with the belief, not the sources. If somebody, e.g. believes that "women's human rights are based upon sex" and legal scholars point out that they obviously don't know what they're talking about, well, that's their problem.

(And if the actual activism that flows from this veers awfully close to transphobia or even explicit anti-trans activism, well, that's also a problem with the belief, and not the sources documenting and investigating it.) TucanHolmes (talk) 17:26, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

The problem there is that legal scholars say they do know what they're talking about.

The issue (at the heart of this topic on talk) is choosing the scholars who say "they don't know what they're talking about" and using that as the basis of the article, rather than putting forward what they actually say, and then adding in responsive opinion after.

And then when MacKinnon is cited in the context of a feminist opinion of US laws, and by implication this is some universal truth no-one can disagree with in any jurisdiction, that's bunk. The US is not some feminist utopia every other country aspires to emulate, far, far from it.

Consider our current section:

Gender critical feminists advocate what they call "sex-based rights," arguing that "women's human rights are based upon sex" and that "these rights are being eroded by the promotion of 'gender identity.'" Human rights scholar Sandra Duffy described the concept of "sex-based rights" as "a fiction with the pretense of legality," noting that the word "sex" in international human rights law does not share the implications of the word "sex" in gender-critical discourse and is widely agreed to also refer to gender. Catharine A. MacKinnon noted that "the recognition [that discrimination against trans people is discrimination on the basis of sex, that is gender, the social meaning of sex] does not, contrary to allegations of anti-trans self-identified feminists, endanger women or feminism", they expand by saying "women do not have 'sex-based rights' in the affirmative sense some in this group seem to think."".

The citations for this are: Sally Hines - who is critical of gender critical feminists and thinks there is a moral duty to call them TERFs - a blog by Sandra Duffy parsing the WHRC declaration, and a paper by MacKinnon which says at the outset that women don't have positive sex-based rights in the US.

This entire section is constructed from random criticism. Rather than educating the reader about what gender-critical feminists actually believe, and why, it is simply yet another opportunity to shoehorn in invective.

IMO, this can be scrapped entirely and rewritten using eg. Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader as a source, which gives an account of what they actually believe, but there is resistance to doing this sort of thing because of the insistence on privileging what critical scholars say.

You keep trying to defer to experts when there is no ultimate authority on feminism. Gender critical feminists are the experts on what they believe and stand for. And that is what this whole section of talk is supposed to sort out - we need to stop using claims of FRINGE and so on to privilege critical scholarship when there is ample reliable scholarship written by actual gender critical feminists that can be used as a basis instead.

And until that is agreed as a general approach, we can't really make progress on improving this page. Void if removed (talk) 18:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are written based on third-party sources and not sources affiliated with the subject. No, “gender-critical” feminists are not experts in “gender-critical” feminism for Wikipedia, and this principle works in other Wikipedia articles about other movements. Reprarina (talk) 22:25, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

This is completely untrue. For an example, the page on Communism uses primary texts from Communists to describe what they believe and advocate, and does not take eg. The Road to Serfdom as an authoritative basis and starting point for the article. Void if removed (talk) 09:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Let's just say that if some "gender-critical" work is a primary source, then some sentence in it may be important for its author, they may focus on it, but if it is not important for third-party sources, it is not important for Wikipedia. Reprarina (talk) 22:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Even in philosophy, one can be wrong (see, e.g. logical fallacy). This doesn't mean that gender-critical feminism is wrong; but claiming that something is a "philosophical belief" is no free-for-all, no magic wand to protect it from critical inquiry. TucanHolmes (talk) 17:30, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I was not claiming that something is a "philosophical belief" is a magic wand to protect it from critical inquiry. Please read what I actually said. Sweet6970 (talk) 18:35, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

No matter. We write Wikipedia prioritizing highly-cited academic sources. Other sources can be used if they don't contradict significantly highly-cited academic sources. No matter if the topic is theory of gravity, feminist movement or contemprorary pop music. If we have a huge number of highly cited academic sources on a topic, we use them in the article. If not, then we can refer to other sources, but provided that they do not diverge from the scientific picture of the world. In the case of “gender-critical” feminism, we have a huge number of academic sources, and the position in them is quite definite. Reprarina (talk) 21:55, 29 May 2024 (UTC) PS. By highly cited sources, I mean those whose citations are not caused by the fact that large numbers of scholars have written scathing reviews of them, as is the case with some of the work of “gender-critical” feminists on trans people, such as Raymond and Jeffries.--Reprarina (talk) 21:58, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

This sentence "When writing any Wikipedia article, you should not use sources that promote positions that are rejected in the academic community by experts on the subject" is the basis of frequent argument by Reprarina and Amanda and others. But what are they expecting these "experts" to tell us? They are expecting our experts to tell us what are Right^TM beliefs to hold. And what is the "position" that has been "rejected"? This isn't a position like "I think vaccines save many more lives than the small risk of harm" or "Driving too fast is a common cause of death and injury on our roads" or "Humankind is responsible for global warming" or "Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election". It is as fundamentally wrongthinking to consider GCF a "position" that "experts" can declare "accepted" or "rejected" as it is to consider if Anglicans or Baptists are right or if the UK should be a member of the European Union or if university education should be free or charge tuition fees. These are all things people can have an opinion on, and pollsters can measure the extent of those opinions, but no serious thinker would make the mistake that because there are more Anglicans than Methodists, the latter must be a wrong kind of Christianity. That because there are more theology academic papers written by Anglicans, their theology is correct, and Wikipedia must make sure any articles on Methodists are never sourced to Methodists. That because there are more countries that drive on the right, that this is the "correct" side and lefties are "rejected" and we must never cite any sources to the UK and Japan on road safety.

This is frankly the most wrongheaded argument I've seen on Wikipedia and I've seen some bad ones. We are concerned with whether our sources accurately and fairly describe gender-critical feminism, the aspects of the beliefs such people hold, and to document its acceptance or its criticism by others. Are our sources reliable with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy? We are not concerned with whether our sources are Right^TM. This isn't that kind of article. -- Colin°^Talk 17:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Trumpism is also a broad ideology or movement with multiple associated beliefs. And its article still predominantly uses academic and other reliable sources that those who subscribe to the ideology may disagree with. PBZE (talk) 21:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

All analogies are imperfect. To what extent is your analogy helping? Well that article is a good example of a subject written about, it seems, entirely by detractors of Trump, who's self-invented term "Trumpism" seems to be basically "All of Trump's characteristics and beliefs that I hate". I mean, anyone can write a listicle about "The characteristics of Trumpism" having done some basic googling and a dislike of the man. I can see some analogy with how some authors have written about TERFs, which, as we have discussed repeatedly on this page, is a term no longer any more specific than "transphobic woman that I hate". The term really just becomes a box that haters can fill with whatever they like, and no real need to figure out what actually is important to the subject one is writing about.

The analogy breaks down when one considers that GCF is not about the supposed beliefs or psychological analysis of some political/ideological messiah, which is then at the mercy of all the disconnects there may be between what many followers believe and what the messiah may have once said but also contradictorily said another time and all the possibly incorrect things others have ever said about the messiah. Instead GCF writers who are expressing and writing about their own GC beliefs and concerns are arguing their own case, and it is important we figure out what their shared (and perhaps disagreed) beliefs actually are. Only then can we decide what it is about their actual beliefs that we agree or disagree with. Deciding that one disagrees with invented supposed beliefs would seem to be a supreme waste of one's short time on earth.

This encyclopaedia should be able to source and write about this topic just as we write about Environmentalism. It's just a set of beliefs. -- Colin°^Talk 12:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

It's rather commonplace in many political camps for people to lump together everything they dislike in modern society and package it neatly as instances of whatever ideology they hate the most. It's all Cultural Marxism, or Late Capitalism, or Neoliberalism, or The Far Right, or Trumpism, or Biden's America, or Terf Island. It's the fault of the TERFs or the Zionists or Antifa or the Chinese Communist Party. *Dan T.* (talk) 12:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure people have always done that. I think the Trumpism article is really All the things liberals hate about Trump and his politics. And like any political game, those "things" don't really need to stand up to much scrutiny. They just have to sound plausible to like minded readers. It's a easy game to play, at all levels of competence, hence the multitude of sources that article can cite. I do think some editors here want this to be All the things activists hate about TERFs and the hateful things TERFs believe which similarly doesn't need to stand up to any serious scrutiny beyond sounding plausible to like minded readers. And can encompass anyone who's ever been called a TERF on the internet and anything anyone has ever accused a TERF of believing. It's really not what Wikipedia is about. That's what blogs are for.

To use the environmentalism example. It would be like if our article on that subject told us environmentalists are people who glue themselves on motorways to protest about cars, who throw red paint at banks to protest about oil, who always walk or cycle everywhere, who wear only natural fibres and eat vegan. That environmentalists want to take your car away, make your home more expensive to heat, stop you going nice places on holiday and are in league with China to bring down the western economy. When you write about a subject, sourcing only to people from the outside who hate people on the inside, you nearly always get a very distorted view. That's what some people are pushing here because, in good faith, they think that view is The Right One. And just as it isn't Wikipedia's job to say who is right, whether you should be vegan or enjoy a steak, walk or take the car, it doesn't matter which belief about feminism (or any other belief) has the majority in scholarly journals for us to agree to write about it accurately. -- Colin°^Talk 08:03, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The analogy breaks down when one considers that GCF is not about the supposed beliefs or psychological analysis of some political/ideological messiah, which is then at the mercy of all the disconnects there may be between what many followers believe and what the messiah may have once said but also contradictorily said another time and all the possibly incorrect things others have ever said about the messiah.

This is irrelevant WP:OR which misses the point. I'm not saying that Trumpism is the same as gender-critical feminism. I'm giving an example of an ideological movement, which is not exclusively focused on the hard sciences, and includes philosophical and social beliefs, whose article gives the most weight to academic sources, regardless of whether or not the movement's adherents agree with those sources.

Instead GCF writers who are expressing and writing about their own GC beliefs and concerns are arguing their own case, and it is important we figure out what their shared (and perhaps disagreed) beliefs actually are.

People who subscribe to what is called Trumpism also write about, express, and argue for their own beliefs. We don't give undue weight to them just because they are doing so. PBZE (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Re: "Once you decide that the subject of this article is not actually "gender critical feminism" or what "gender critical feminists" say and believe and write and publish and campaign for, but actually what academics who hate them say about them, you can't begin to approach a neutral POV": The article on antisemitism is not an article that presents what antisemites "say and believe and write and publish and campaign for." Instead, it's based on scholarship on antisemitism. Hence, the article defines antisemitism as "hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews [and] a form of racism." TERF ideology similarly is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against transgender people and a form of transphobia; this reflects the consensus in scholarship on the phenomenon. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 07:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Amanda, have have an article on transphobia. Please take your transphobia==GCF elsewhere. I don't think that's a basis from which an encyclopaedic article on GCF can be written in NPOV. I hear your frequent claims that GCF's are so horrible that we must treat them like antisemits or white supremacists or child abusers. I think you really need to go to the VP and start an RFC if you want that view to reflect the sources we can use. It is really odd, when I can pick ANY mainstream newspaper or magazine in the US or UK and find opinion columns by staff writers who are GCFs. What's going on there, Amanda. Which viewpoint is reality? -- Colin°^Talk 08:01, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The scholarly consensus is that TERF ideology is a form of transphobia, but one specific form of it. Not all transphobia is trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Also, both transphobia and homophobia, and in fact antisemitism, are "common" in many parts of the world. Even governments promote both antisemitism and homophobia in some countries, even newspapers in countries like Iran or various Arab countries publish antisemitic columns. In Russia columnists write the say things about gay people. So the situation is really quite similar. It's a form of prejudice and hatred, and this is how scholars describe it. This applies to antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia (including TERF ideology). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 12:18, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that is so at all. Whatever writers you are reading on that are confusing things to make their activist/political point or are just plain confused. It is as wrongheaded as to say conservative evangelicals are a form of transphobia or Islam is a form of transphobia or rightwing politics is a form of transphobia. It is a failure to understand the root beliefs of a set of people, which is typical of people writing about "others" they hate. Those root beliefs might tend or might even inevitably result in transphobia (at least from the POV of those who disagree with them) but to claim the root beliefs are instead a form of transphobia, and all these other things like sex is binary and immutable are merely fancy words and smoke and mirrors hiding one's underlying transphobia is exactly the sort of "You can't actually look inside people's heads" wrong thinking that results from reading too much written by "others" about "others".

The point of having this article is to educate our readers about what GCF is. Several on this page, myself included, would like to know that. I think you've got yourself unstuck by banging on about "TERF ideology" as though that is actually a thing that can be well defined. Instead, it is whatever haters want it to be and thus can be rejected by those who say, well, actually, I believe this instead. It is a clumsy concept that isn't helping.

Part of the problem with this culture war is those on the extremes of either side are utterly misunderstanding the other side. They so hate each other (I blame Twitter for a lot) that they have no wish to understand the other side. They end up writing stuff like we see on this page, comparing the other side to the most extreme hated kinds of humanity, which results in everyone outside of the war rolling their eyes. An encyclopaedia, rooted in NPOV, has a role to play in helping explain the positions accurately and fairly. Can you imagine, for a moment, if the articles on transgender we all being written using sources from the kinds of dunderheads that write in the Daily Mail? You'd be wondering how on earth such a hateful and wrongheaded person could possibly accurately write about transgender issues. We have the same behaviour here, were some people are insisting an article be written from a activist-hater POV. I really don't think that's Wikipedia's job. I have no problem at all in ensuring our articles make quite clear what academic opinion and societal opinion is about this group, or that our articles on feminism demonstrate how minority this belief is. But I think the same about the wee free church of Scotland. -- Colin°^Talk 08:28, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that is so at all. And here we have the problem with this discussion: Assertions, mere opinions without citations to back them.

The point of having this article is to educate our readers about what GCF is. And the whole problem is that there is disagreement about what that education entails. You have your version/vision, but you can't get consensus for it.

Part of the problem with this culture war is those on the extremes of either side are utterly misunderstanding the other side. They so hate each other (I blame Twitter for a lot) that they have no wish to understand the other side. Wikipedia isn't for writing great wrongs; if reliable sources are, in your opinion, biased, the solution isn't to discard or disregard those sources.

• Whatever writers you are reading on that are confusing things to make their activist/political point or are just plain confused.
• which results in everyone outside of the war rolling their eyes.
• We have the same behaviour here, were some people are insisting an article be written from a activist-hater POV.

These are just opinions – original research – and you shouldn't present them as facts; neither should we accept them as grounds to remove or disregard reliable sources. I also dislike that you claim to know what other editors are reading and/or thinking. You're not inside their heads. TucanHolmes (talk) 14:53, 23 May 2024 (UTC)