Being openly ‘gender critical’ is a choice I’ve made and I’m happy to defend my position to anyone who asks me. I don’t think male people can ‘literally’ become women, and I don’t think their declaring themselves as such should entitle them to be perceived as female in every situation – for example, sports, prisons, data collection, women-only panels and shortlists, women-only safe spaces like refuges. I find the idea that ‘woman’ is a costume you can put on a bit insulting, so while I support everyone’s right to dress however they like, I don’t support the idea that wearing a dress and lipstick magically makes you female.
Because of this, I’m aware I have one area upon which, if I sat down for a beer with Trump, the late Charlie Kirk, or maybe even Tommy Robinson, we would agree on.
Just one.
I very much doubt we would share any common ground whatsoever other than agreeing that people can’t change sex.
There would be many of their views that I would and do find abhorrent. I support their right to hold those views but I want to live in a world where it will always be safe for me and the people who come after me to disagree with them.
Their reasons for reinforcing the reality of biological sex are, I suspect, mostly to do with their deeply conservative, and often religious ideas about the family, heterosexuality, and the kind of binary gender roles – ‘men adventuring out in the world’, ‘women in the home’ – that feminism has sought to challenge.
To be clear: there is a sex binary. There are two sexes, male and female.
But the gender binary beloved of the extreme right seeks to reinforce the oppression of women on the basis of this biology.
Trans ideology – the extreme version – reinforces the exact same regressive ideas about gender that the far right adores: man = tough, short-haired, leader; women = weak, long-haired, nurturer; historic women who wore trousers and led battles can’t have been female at all; being a ‘woman’ is all about spinny skirts, lipstick, long hair and heels. Both trans and far right ideology seek to put men and women in regressive restrictive boxes: the prison of gender.
The support of Robinson, Trump, Kirk and Musk from high profile gender critical women is worrying. I don’t understand why women would support far right extremists any more than I understand why women would support trans ideology extremists. Both want that gender binary reinforced; both undermine same-sex attracted people’s reality; both are a threat to women’s rights.
So here is my one small voice. I am gender critical, but that is where my common ground with these extremists ends. Hatred, intolerance, racism, incitement to violence – no matter if you see yourself on the left or the right, they should never be supported. Look to history. None of this has ever ended well.
Source: Right or left, I want no part of extremism – by Milli Hill
I suspect you haven’t listened to unedited or unopinionated versions of who Charlie Kirk was or what he said. He is a conservative Christian. What he says is either objective truth or an opinion based on his ideological beliefs. Is that hateful? Have you really watched him to form your own opinion? I support freedom of speech and we must be willing to let others speak so we can all speak.