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Gender critical obsession
Someone asked me why I wrote an article about Maya Forstater, and it set me thinking about why my personal focus has shifted over the last year onto gender critical beliefs. My honest answer is that as a research academic I am better placed than most to deconstruct their evidence, critique it, and provide a cogent response. Yet, this is only part of the story. In reality my personal identity also comes into play, that I feel the more I engage with gender critical feminists the more I feel impelled to do and say something. It is this compulsion that sucks my time of X, has shaped how my research is unfolding, and what I want to do post-PhD. In some respects I am obsessed, yet I also believe that given my personal academic privilege if I do not do this, who will?
There are plenty of trans folk on the socials who feel the same, a burning need to fight back against the gender critical beliefs that have poisoned the public space over trans identities. That we spend our precious time doing this speaks as much to the desperation many of us feel as it does the urgency of the situation. Being trans is not an innately alienating concept, we are not by nature shunned or demonised. It is the manner in which gender critical believers have shaped the discourse that drives that alienation. For trans folk this narrative is both harmful and materially wrong, a recycled laundry list of all the old anti-Semitic and…
