Fundamentally misunderstanding gender critical feminism

Maybe we could find common ground if you knew what we stood for.

It has been a while since I was sufficiently frustrated to sit down and write a bit by bit response to a piece of writing, but here I am baffled at how utterly misunderstood our position as gender critical feminists is. However, it is not my frustration nor my bewilderment that has me writing this tonight after sitting in Auckland traffic for over an hour. Nope. It is a pathetic skerrick of hope I have that if people who have expressed so much hate for us can be so fundamentally wrong about what we stand for then perhaps if they learnt the truth we could find just a little bit of middle ground.

Gotta love a trier, right?

The piece is What is ‘Gender Critical’ anyway? On essentialism and transphobia by Danielle Moreau — hopefully I can help her find out.

Transphobes are having a moment in Aotearoa. Attempts to pass a bill allowing transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificates without having to go through the courts have been met by vigorous opposition from a small but well-organised group of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) or — as they would rather be called — ‘gender critical feminists’. These activists, who probably number in the dozens rather than thousands, have been joined on social media and petition websites by a large contingent of overseas allies, most notably from the UK. In the process, we have learned of the existence in that country…