The Peakening ™ - Read this if you are new to Gender Critical (GC) Feminism by mambean in GenderCritical

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Men following GCF by woodrup in GenderCritical

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Not to go too ridiculous, but years ago back in the Harry Potter fandom we used to discuss whether you could have a Hufflepuff dystopia (imagining Voldemort being sorted into the different houses and still rising to power was very much the thing at the time), and what that would look like. A lot of people seemed to have the idea that you couldn’t have one: that values of equality and fairness and hard work and loyalty somehow couldn’t be corrupted this way. The power of friendship and niceness, right?

I not only disagreed, I was fairly sure it would be the hardest dystopia to fight against, and the most completely intrusive. If people value knowledge and reason, you can reason with them and find facts. If people value courage, you can impress them by standing up for something. If people value power and influence, you can convince them by appealing to their self-interest.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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Think of GenderCritical as more like a fansub for people super into the Lord of the Rings. You have maybe a dozen people in your group who have read all the books 20 times, and all the surrounding materials, and they want to be able to discuss that. But they are vastly outnumbered by the people who keep coming into their sub and talking about how much LotR sucks, or asking them what a Hobbit is, or saying they watched one of the films and isn’t Legolas super hot, or trying to start arguments about whether there are three books because they read it as a child and they’re sure it was just one book.

And if they left all those comments up, new people arriving in the sub would think that was what the sub was set up for, and that that is the sort of content that was welcomed. New people who actually had read the books 20 times and wanted to discuss them in depth from that perspective wouldn’t see that it was a place for them, and wouldn’t be able to see the people they could have that conversation with.

In order for them to build a community where they actually get to have the conversations they want, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say “In this sub we are not having arguments about LotR sucking, and we are not having basic arguments about the existence of the books, and we are not for really basic engagement by people who haven’t read the books. There are other subs for those conversations, and we will even set up a sub to have those conversations with you, but this space isn’t for that.”?

Can we bring back /r/trollgc and /r/itsafetish by deity in GenderCritical

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And that’s really weird: out of all of the GC-approved subs, if you were going by actual offense and actual rulebreaking, that seemed the most at risk (despite braver recent modding), and that was largely because it attracted men who were not even allies and just wanted to make fun. But how silly of me: that will have protected it.

Did y'all ever notice r/detrans was taken down for half a day, yet all the exclusively women's subs were permanently banned? by Anon123 in GenderCritical

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I think it’s more that “when GC gets banned” was always going to be the time to get out of Dodge, because it would only happen if the rules were ignored by Admins so it would be a sign that Reddit was not a good place to be. And then the way it was done (with no warnings at all for years, just pulling the plug): we weren’t asking to go back up, because we were done. All that was left was to make sure people saw it for what it was, try and protect some of the more vulnerable groups (like detrans: cutting off contact to that community for some of the most vulnerable, even for a few days, could be really bad news), and rebuild elsewhere.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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more about actual gender criticism, and was not primarily focused on trans issues

I don’t think you can really separate those two things anymore, sadly, which is why the subreddit had to be created. What had been perfectly normal feminist discussion criticising gender had become cast as transphobic and unacceptable in the existing feminist spaces, even when it wasn’t about trans issues, and discussions of trans issues kept ending up at sexist statements that you couldn’t criticise without being called a bigot.

Here is the sub in October 2013 already showing a mixture of the two, and being brigaded. You can see it in September, too. It’s very much a place for women (and see the emphasis in the sidebar on lesbians) to go and talk about what’s been going wrong in their existing spaces, so I suppose you could call that being about trans issues.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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I explained that I saw a difference in two different behaviours, and explained why. You responded that it was a “wall of text”, reiterated your initial statement, and did not engage with anything I had said. That’s not discussion.

If you walk into the cat-appreciation room, rather than the dog-appreciation room, and start going on about how dogs are much better than cats, I don’t think it’s censorship for you to be told to talk about it next door in the dog-appreciation room. It would be censorship to shut the dog-appreciation room, or make sure nobody could hear what you said in the dog-appreciation room, or whatever.

Not being able to talk about every single topic in every single space in any way you want isn’t censorship in the same way that shutting down easy access to spaces where you can discuss every single topic in any way you want is. I am fine with the former, and oppose the latter.

To all the newcomers - gender critical feminists are not biological essentialists, and we do not conflate sex with gender by [deleted] in GenderCritical

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No. That’s not what Radical Feminism generally says, it is not what “Gender Critical” means, and is not what most people I have met who would describe themselves as either of those would say.

It’s a belief that someone could hold, while also being a Radical Feminist and/or critical of gender, but I think in most cases it would be hard to sustain. I’d have to break down what they meant, what the various groups currently under Stonewall’s “trans umbrella” are and represent, and see if they were making a more nuanced point before I completely dismissed them, but generally it doesn’t sound like someone coming at this situation from a feminist perspective.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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If you’re not here to discuss, then that’s fine.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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I don’t disagree with much of this: I think there was a failure of transparency, and I think transparency is important.

When GC started as a subreddit, it was much more about in-depth discussion by women who had deep backgrounds in feminist theory. And it was supposed to supplement the existing feminist subs, because nobody expected them to turn so hostile to criticism of gender or of porn and prostitution. As it grew, a lot of people came drifting in for other reasons, because it was the only place openly discussing any of this. Some of the strict modding was an attempt to stop these newbies from diluting the original ethos, but it could only do so much. Waves would come in, and many would start to bed in or be sent elsewhere, but towards the end the influx of newbies was very high and not slowing down. The Peak Trans thread served to compile experiences, but it also served to keep those comments contained rather than making the entire sub about them because people always wanted to make a post about it early on.

There were a lot of discussions among older users about the impact this was having, and if there were ways to counteract it and restore the sub as a place to actually discuss things in depth. That’s where the creation of subs like radicalfeminists and radfemtheory (also banned) came in, and trollgc to try to move that sillier content out of gc, and actualwomen to try to move conversations not about feminism, and GCdebatesQT and ask_radical_feminists and gendercriticalguys and so on.

They may have been losing that fight, but it was absolutely what they were trying to do. In the most recent wave, for an obvious example, a lot of memeposts were getting through on GC (rather than trollGC), because the level was so high of newbies posting who didn’t know how it was supposed to work but had been told this was the place for terfs who agreed with Rowling: I hadn’t seen memes getting through in years, so this gives an idea of the battle the mods were facing.

It’s been Eternal September. The influx of young teenagers to Reddit during lockdown hasn’t helped, either.

12-Year Reddit veteran, sadly acknowledging the site won't return to the way it was 7+ years ago by neovulcan in Introductions

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Sure, but I think there’s a difference between “here is a site where we can all freely post, and in this one tiny part of it various repetitive comments will be removed (and the sidebar says this)” and “nobody can talk about this anywhere without being, at best, removed”.

Imagine people hated LotR so much, that they organised on Discord to disrupt and shut down any site that discussed LotR positively. Imagine knowing that people are openly talking about having followed the little group of people who want to talk about the books, that they are discussing what they post on Saidit now, and that they want to continue disrupting any attempt at conversation. If the GC subs were not proactive about removing that disruption, they always got derailed by organised groups who are open about using multiple accounts each to disrupt the subs and prevent normal conversation from taking place.

I am all for transparency in modding, and transparency about the rules, and people having the right to discuss things. I think as long as there is transparency (and I agree, the lack of transparency was an issue), it’s reasonable to have some spaces that are only about discussing something from a particular perspective, and to disallow the sort of basic questions and arguments that we hear all day every day, as long as that doesn’t impact the availability of other spaces to have those conversations: if you don’t do things like that, all spaces become the same having the same conversations dominated by the same loud people, and if nothing else that is incredibly boring. Nobody was saying anywhere else on Saidit shouldn’t allow those conversations, and places are easily available to have them.

From Abigail Shrier's new book "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters" by Radfem_the_Hun in GenderCritical

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I think she is, but I don’t want to give details. I’m sure you understand.

Conversations about Pornography? by JennyCritter in GenderCritical

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You’re talking to very young women, and sadly they will mostly not be able to see and hear until they have had their moment of realising how sexist the world around them is. You can’t have that moment for them: you have to wait. I don’t know why sexism works this way, but in my experience it does.

You could mention, though, that actually not all men watch porn, and any guy who justifies doing things that degrade and hurt women on the basis that lots of men hurt women is not going to be fun to be around.

From Abigail Shrier's new book "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters" by Radfem_the_Hun in GenderCritical

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I had a 13-year-old come out to me, who had tried being Bi and having a boyfriend, then when that clearly didn’t work identified as a lesbian for about a day before settling on transman with a lot of reasoning around the restrictive rules her parents had about her hair and clothes and behaviour.

It turns out, she didn’t even know being a butch lesbian was an existing option: she had never heard of it. She had heard that she could be trans, though.

Not my gendercritical by DustyKitten in GenderCritical

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Well, we had GenderCriticalGuys and GCdebatesQT, which were more like that. We just need a space where women can talk about this stuff without being shouted down, or having their socialisation exploited.

They banned R/ blatant misogyny by [deleted] in GenderCritical

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Woah. They weren’t even vaguely about trans people: I think I saw it brought up once, in the comments, and it clearly was mostly normie comments rather than people on a ‘side’.

Just banning subs about misogyny.