Gender Critical Feminists

"I don’t think it's kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman."

"[W]hat's the point of even having a category of woman in law if it's not defined as 'biological adult human female' if it's just a category any man can become. [...] It's meaningless."

"[N]ever in my wildest nightmare did I think there was anyone saying men are actually women if they just say it."

"[Giggle was intended to be] a little corner of the Internet where women from all over the world could have a refuge away from men. It could be for serious reasons, very superficial reasons, or very practical reasons. It would be a place without harassment, 'mansplaining', 'dick pics', stalking, and aggression, and other male patterned online behaviour. A place to vent and get advice from other women and find out what was happening in the real world in a female-only environment."

"My goal is not to strip anyone of their rights. My goal is to make everybody's rights clear. If we can get clarity on this hopefully it will stop the fighting between women and trans activists. Let's try and find positives to move forward."

"It's always been you can't discriminate against anyone except when you can … (because it is) for a positive reason for that group. Female only spaces have existed for such a long time and there has been no controversy in it."

"We wanted to do equity crowd funding, which would allow women to have ownership in a start-up and have investment in the financial world. No equity crowd funding company would work with us, saying the trans issue was like an open wound."

"It's terrifying and I've had to navigate it all through nine months of ­pregnancy. I created a social network for women, myself included, where we can relax on the ­internet away from death threats and toxic male behaviour."

"Not everyone’s gender identity matches the reproductive organs they were born with therefore you have been reclassified as a birthing person rather than a mother. Now are you ready to try chest feeding?"

"AI and technology can be transformative to the whole of the law and order space.When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we’ve already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there’s big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we’re trying to do."

"[On her decision not to serve in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet] I don't like anything that smells of fundamentalism in any way, religious or political or ideological, it doesn't really matter what it is, in the end. It's quite authoritarian in nature, and in my own life experience of people that are most intransigent and the most prescriptive about what everyone else can say and think and do tend not to be the best of people themselves."

"My faith is the centrepoint of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I life my life and I see my life.I believe that life is a gift from God, but it's also a test. I feel like I've been very blessed in my life. But every blessing is a test. It's not just something you bank for yourself. You should almost fear your success because now you have to answer for it. You have to use it for good. And that's how I think about my political career."

"Mine is the patriotism of Orwell. Pride in a country that is forever changing, while also, ineffably, always the same. It is a love of this country as an open, tolerant and generous place. But that broad vision of who we are is increasingly disputed. Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller. Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British."

"I know what a Muslim looks like. A Muslim looks like me. I know what Muslim values are. Muslim values are mine."

"Hashtag movements are sometimes used to shut down debate and often many women have had to go to court, usually in employment tribunals, in order to clarify their rights to free speech.To clarify their right to believe that for example because you referenced JK Rowling, clarify their right to say that biological sex is real and is immutable – a position that I also agree with."

"There are many of us within the LGBT community who fully support trans rights but who do not support the trans extremism which is currently being advocated by Stonewall and others. I emphatically object to any formal association with Stonewall."

"There were assertions made during that meeting that anyone who identifies as a woman could be a rape counsellor or join a group session. And when survivors asked how a woman may feel if she unknowingly disclosed details of her rape to a male counsellor on the telephone… No adequate answer was provided. It shocked me then as it still does now, that given 100 per cent of rapes in Scotland are committed by men this appeared to not be an issue for the head of Rape Crisis Scotland."

"It is feminists influenced by this second wave who question transgender ideology. They speak the uncomfortable truth that men have a statistically higher propensity towards violence including sexual violence — no matter how they identify — and our laws and public institutions must recognise that brutal truth."

"The [Scottish] government said its proposal will not diminish the rights of women. However, its own draft equality impact assessment evidenced this by citing Bristol University research which . . . suggests that a woman catching sight of a male body in a changing room should be no more distressing than seeing another woman with a mastectomy. Does the government regret citing this research, and do they agree that the comparison is insulting to breast cancer survivors?"

"Policy capture is at the root of this fankle, as with many issues around gender identity. Officials only take advice from LGBT stakeholders. They never consider that women might have something to say about legislation which erases them as a biological sex class. In this case they didn't consult statisticians either."

"The thing that finally turned me to my current position was the government’s decision to expand the definition of transgender identity to include cross-dressers who are not trans identified ... It will seem bizarre to many people that men who enjoy cross-dressing are protected from hate crime, but women are not."

"We learnt that the government decided in 2011 that the census's sex question should be answered according to self-identification, even if the respondent had no gender recognition certificate. This advice was hidden on the website and was never subject to democratic scrutiny. That's shocking when you think that for almost 200 years sex was uncomplicated, binary and biological. For most people it still is."

"That a gay rights charity stands accused of discriminating against a black lesbian illustrates how wrong it is to assume the rights and interests of all LGBTQ+ people perfectly align. Of course, that has not stopped white men telling Bailey that her concept of womanhood is not only wrong, it makes her a bigot."

"Lesbian Visibility Week starts today in the UK. A good moment to salute the resilience and courage of my inspirational friend. #IStandWithAllisonBailey"

"Any ideology that cannot be questioned is dangerous and yet that is how Stonewall have infiltrated so many of our institutions. In picking on Bailey they have found a woman who has fought her entire life. Is this really a good look, Stonewall? Trying to destroy a black lesbian? We watch agog. Bailey, like any other woman, gay or straight, can think what the hell she likes. Is she really your enemy, Stonewall? Seriously, who do you represent now?"

"This win demonstrated the discrimination and aggravated discrimination to which I personally was subjected by a set of barristers who define and present themselves as defenders of human rights, but it also demonstrated the institutional approaches and beliefs that cause that discrimination to arise - as is now being demonstrated in other cases brought by other women against other institutions."

"It is really difficult to spot a sick child."

"If a family can walk out of the hospital having lost their child and say that they couldn't have been better supported, then I can go home and feel OK."

"Children are well one minute and very sick the next. So you have much less time than you have with adults."

"Half the kids in A&E outpatients need not be in hospital and, if you come to hospital, you are more likely to be admitted."

"Someone will bring in a baby because the baby has green poo, but grandma could have been able to say 'that's normal'."

"I have been disappointed by the lack of evidence on the long-term impact of taking hormones from an early age; research has let us all down, most importantly you. The reality is we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress."

"We've got it locked into this focus on medical interventions. And certainly some of the young adults said to us, they wish they'd known when they were younger, that there were more ways of being trans than just a binary medical transition."

"Because of the toxicity of the debate, [children have] often been bypassed by local services who've been really nervous about seeing them. So rather than doing the things that they would do for other young people with depression or anxiety, or perhaps undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder, they’ve tended to pass them straight on to the Gids service."

"We've made Freedom of Information requests going back to 2009 about men's fatal violence against women. From this we've identified that 62% of women killed by men are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and that at least a third of these women were in the process of leaving, or had left him; that teenage girls, as well as women in their 80s or 90s, can be killed by men who were supposed to love them; that 92% of women who are killed by men are killed by someone they know. One in 12 is a woman who is killed by her son."

"All women are controlled by men's violence. Whether or not they are the ones on the receiving end, it affects every one of us."

"Young, professional, conventionally attractive, white women who are killed by strangers get the most attention but we must stop perpetuating this hierarchy of victims."

"The figure of eight per cent of women killed by men in the UK being killed by a stranger is consistent with the average since our records began in 2009. So ask me whether anything has changed since Sarah's murder, and my answer is no."

"This is a rapist who lied about raping these two women and who was found to have lied about it in court. So I don’t think we can rule out that he might be lying about his feelings of being a woman. But in any case, that is what the policy allows. The policy allows a man who feels like he is a woman or thinks he is a woman to apply to be housed in the women’s prison. So it’s inviting that kind of gaming."

"The Scottish Bill tears up the UK’s criteria for awarding a gender recognition certificate based on medical assessment, and allows anyone to get a GRC based on a declaration, with no medical treatments or safeguards. This means there will be many more people able to get a certificate, and organisations will never be able to feel confident excluding someone who is clearly male from female-only spaces and services. A key question for the UK Government is whether they will accept people who have been through the Scottish system but were born in England and Wales to change the sex on their birth certificate. Scotland would in effect act like a 'haven' of light regulation that would then spill out across the UK. For schools there would be huge problems. Single-sex schools are allowed by law, but now schools would face having to admit a child of the opposite sex, and would be threatened with criminal penalties if teachers and staff 'disclose' the child’s actual sex to other staff, pupils or parents. The UK Government does not have to accept this outcome. It should refer the Bill to the Supreme Court and make sure that the Scottish Parliament only legislates within its own domain, and does not ignore women’s rights and child safeguarding."

"I do feel vindicated. The tribunal found that I was a victim of discrimination, and not a perpetrator, which is the story that has been told about me for the past three years. But it is weird, too. This case took on a life of its own a long time ago. It is both about me, and not about me. The implications of the judgment are going to have a huge impact. The most important thing I ever did, it seems, was to lose my job."

"This comes with an extraordinary state-sponsored invisibility cloak. It will be a crime to reveal information about a “person’s gender before it became the acquired gender”. This means their sex becomes a secret — or at least an open, unmentionable secret. The invisibility cloak starts working not at the point when a person receives a gender recognition certificate, but when they apply for it. And there is nothing to stop a person repeating the process: returning to their biological sex, with a new identity that has no public link to either of their previous identities. The opportunity for this personal shell scheme to facilitate financial or sexual abuse should not be dismissed. Undermining the organisational record-keeping systems which underpin safeguarding and "safer recruitment" of staff to work with children and vulnerable people is just one area of concern."

"It's not a huge thing to ask. It’s only the most egregious, violent, dangerous beliefs that are not protected, such as saying you are a Nazi or you are wanting to overthrow government by violent revolution or that you are a Holocaust denier. Ultimately, what it comes down to is an attack on my right to free speech. Can you really compare what I believe in – that sex is a biological reality – to the truly evil beliefs of the Nazis?"

"Males are people with the type of body which, if all things are working, are able to produce sperm. Women are adult human females. Men are adult human males. There are only two sexes in humans. No change of clothes or hairstyle, no plastic surgery, no accident or illness, no course of hormones, no force of will or social conditioning, no declaration can turn a female person into a male."

"From the earliest I can remember, I have understood that there is one sex or the other."

"What I am so surprised at is that smart people who I admire, who are absolutely pro-science in other areas, and champion human rights & womens rights are tying themselves in knots to avoid saying the truth that men cannot change into women (because that might hurt mens feelings)."

"Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill"

"The centre employed a man who wishes he was a woman as CEO and allowed that to corrupt the whole purpose of the organisation."

"Given all the effort feminists have invested in making language more equitable, you might expect that they would welcome use of the term pregnant people. But some, including me, are concerned that it obscures the social dynamics at work in laws surrounding contraception, abortion, and maternal health. The argument for the second wave’s language changes was that women fought fires in the exact same way as men, so one word should cover both sexes. That’s a different decision from whether we should keep gendered language to reflect heavily gendered experiences."

"Sturgeon's second challenge comes from debates over the rights of transgender women—an issue that is also causing disquiet and dissent among progressives across the world, including in the United States. In 2019, she received an open letter from women in her own party who claimed they were unable to discuss their rights without being called transphobic bigots. The other side accuses her of not doing enough to crack down on all those transphobic bigots. (In January, Sturgeon posted an unscripted video on Twitter, begging young activists who "consider at this stage the SNP not to be a safe, tolerant, or welcoming place for trans people" to stick with her party.)"