A Gender Critical (GC) position is a metaphysical position about what a woman is. Here is one position held by many radical feminists. It holds that what it is to be a woman is to have a certain biological and reproductive nature, involving female sex organs and a female reproductive system, and to be economically, socially, politically, and sexually oppressed on that basis. This view therefore concludes (for reasons I have also outlined elsewhere, here and here, and which I do not know yet whether I endorse), that transwomen, though fully in possession of all basic human rights (obviously!), and also deserving of respectful treatment as if they are women in many social contexts, are not in fact women. Simply put: they don’t have the required biology, nor do they have the required history of oppression on the basis of that biology.
In contrast, there are those metaphysical positions which argue that transwomen are women. These usually argue that women’s biologies and reproductive capacities are not essential to their nature as women. People with penises and testicles and no female reproductive characteristics can be women.
Since I began to read up about this dispute, and started to write about it, I’ve been exposed to a lot of arguments, usually online, whose aim is to show that any GC position is not only wrong but bad, morally speaking. It seems to me that many of these arguments are not convincing. This isn’t to say that there are no good arguments against a GC position, but only that the ones I typically see aren’t particularly compelling. It’s also striking how difficult it seems for some people to see for themselves how unconvincing these arguments are, in the heat of the negative emotions, toxicity, and defensiveness that tend to accompany discussion.
