Homophobia in the Gender Critical Movement?

What do we think is going on here?

Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash

The recent surge of virulent homophobia among a subset of individuals identifying themselves as gender critical feminists has been the subject of much consternation and argumentation on X in recent weeks. It’s really not at all ambiguous.

I have had a couple of threads on this issue making what are really quite basic liberal arguments against the collective demonisation of gay men on the grounds of some mythical ‘gay sex culture’ that is the epitome of misogyny and sexual depravity and apparently responsible for everything from women having anal sex to the development of the concept of gender identity to anorexia.

Andrew Doyle, himself recently a target of some particularly nasty homophobic abuse, has been a solidly liberal voice in all this, consistently condemning the behaviour of homophobic GCs while stressing that this is a handful of toxic individuals who do not represent principled feminists or their goals to protect women’s rights which he continues to support. However, between the principled gender critical feminists who have straightforwardly condemned this development and the virulent homophobes who unapologetically defend it are a worryingly large number of gender critical feminists who, while not spewing homophobic bile themselves, seem inclined to prevaricate about the ethics of it on illiberal collectivist grounds. Andrew has pointed out correctly the similarity between these tactics and those of the Critical Social Justice movement.

He followed this up with a thought experiment,

and when it went unanswered, with this post.

I am not one to be able not to weigh in on a question like “What do we think is going on here?” I see two main drivers underlying the recent surge in gender critical homophobia - authoritarian social conservatism and radical misandry - sometimes operating independently and sometimes, bizarrely, overlapping.

Extreme Authoritarian Social Conservatism.

The gender critical movement has, over the last couple of years, attracted a sizeable contingent of old-fashioned extreme authoritarian social conservatives. This is an odd development as they seek to enforce gender roles & gender stereotypes and so represent the opposite values to those typically held by gender critical feminists. The difference looks like this:

Gender critical feminism - "We believe 'gender' to be a harmful social construct which perpetuates roles & stereotypes which teach men to be domineering, aggressive & regard women as sexual objects & women to be submissive, self-effacing & servile to the desires of men. We reject these stereotypes and roles and believe there is no right way to be a man or a woman. Men who have traits more typically associated with femininity and women who have traits more associated with masculinity should simply embrace these rather than believing they have a gender identity at odds with their biological sex that they should identify with rather than their biological sex. Because we believe gender to be a harmful oppressive fiction that perpetuates these roles & stereotypes, we do not believe gender identity to be a real thing & to be, instead, another iteration of these roles & stereotypes that empower male sexual predators & present a threat to women. Gender nonconformity and same-sex attraction are naturally occuring phenomena which are enabled to thrive when pressure to conform to gender roles is reduced, and we support people who fit into either or both categories.

Extreme authoritarian social conservatism - Gender roles & stereotypes are good, actually. Men should be men & women should be women as defined by the most rigid gender roles & stereotypes which we should tie even more firmly to biological sex & enforce more strongly. Because we believe that men & women have a moral responsibility to uphold gender roles & stereotypes, we object to anybody who does not fit within a norm of stereotypically masculine men & stereotypically feminine women being attracted to each other and having monogamous relationships based on these stereotypical gender roles. We object to gender identity as the ultimate form of gender nonconformity that betrays this ideal and it’s convenient to piggyback on a well-established gender critical movement that has support due to its concerns for women’s rights and children’s bodies. However, our end goals are opposed and this becomes most evident when we do things like verbally abuse women with minds of their own in the public sphere by telling them they’re too fat, ugly & unfuckable to have a worthwhile opinion or send pictures of bunches of sticks (faggots) to men who are attracted to men.

Liberals reject authoritarian social conservatism because of its authoritarianism and support gender critical feminists’ goals to liberate people from restrictive gender roles and stereotypes that they do not wish to be in. We also support same-sex attracted people’s right to pursue their consensual romantic and sexual lives without interference or harassment. We may differ with gender critical feminists on the extent to which psychological differences between men and women are socially constructed. There is significant evidence that differences in our evolved brains and hormones has resulted in psychological sex differences between men and woman on average and that this influences what they choose to do in life. However, these are simply differences in distributions of traits on average which do not apply to every individual and do not justify constraining anybody into a gender role or making stereotypical assumptions about them.

Radical Misandry

Radical misandry has always had a presence in the feminist movement - a movement concerned with advancing or maintaining women’s equal rights and social status - and always been opposed by other feminists. Feminists are defined by their opposition to patriarchy - legal and social systems which give men all the power in society and especially power over women - but some of them expand and distort this to the demonisation of men. It is much the same pattern as seen in opposition to racism in which all anti-racists are defined by opposition to white supremacy - legal and social systems which give white people all the power in society and especially power over people of other races - but some of them expand and distort this to the demonisation of white people. This is, of course, bigotry that is rejected by the majority of people who recognise that patriarchy and misogyny can be and are opposed by people of both sexes and white supremacy and racism can be and are opposed by people of all races and that unified opposition to such unjust systems and horrible beliefs has been and remains the best way of overturning the systems and marginalising the beliefs. Some people continue to argue that misandry and anti-white racism are justifiable due to prejudice and discrimination against women and people of racial minority having been a far bigger problem for much longer. However, consistently principled people recognise this illiberal collectivist mentality to unhelpfully replicate the fallacious and morally abhorrent reasoning that justified and sustained systems like patriarchy and white supremacy in the first place, and this kind of ‘retributive justice’ to be no justice at all and reject it as both unethical and counterproductive.

Nevertheless, feminists who take a radical misandrist position continue to exist and to insist that the problem with society is men, men, men. Men’s depravity, men’s entitlement, men’s fragility, men’s aggression, men’s misogyny, men’s endless quest for domination. They take this position despite an abundance of evidence that many of the people promoting patriarchal systems and restrictive gender roles are women and many of those opposing them are men. One particularly revealing UK study from 2016, (just before Critical Social Justice became so culturally dominant that it melted a lot of people’s brains and sent them into tribal warfare mode) found that 86% of men and 74% of women supported equal rights for women. The evidence that men are at least as likely to support women’s rights as women are is neglected because misandrist feminists have a collectivist mentality which defines ‘men’ and ‘women’ as sex classes with specific sex class interests as defined by them and not as living, breathing men and women with diverse individual political and ideological views.

But why would misandry cause this subset of feminists to engage in virulent homophobia? Even if men were all violent, domineering sexual predators perpetuating a misogynistic rape culture to satisfy their own depraved sexual appetites, surely the men we’d have to worry about least are those whose appetite for sex with women is non-existent? My observation of this odd phenomenon suggests that this is related to a strong streak of puritanical opposition to male sexuality as something dark and inherently dangerous alongside a belief in the gentle purity of female sexuality. As I was informed following one of my threads, “Female sexuality DOES act as a breaker for male depravity, and it is absent here.” I was also informed in this thread that gay male sexuality is all about men publicly urinating on each other, engaging in public anal sex, walking about dressed as dogs with dildos protruding from their anuses and performing drag acts that feature fake vaginas. Rhetoric about ‘gayman culture’ (it seems a ‘gayman’ is something different to a man) and ‘gay male sex culture’ abound in these threads as do claims that all gender non-conforming men are autogynephilic sex offenders while autoandrophilia is absolutely not a thing.

Heaven help any gay man who ventures into these threads to suggest that being a same-sex attracted small gamete producer may not actually be the same thing as being a fetishist exhibitionist and/or that he, personally, has objected to such public displays and argued that they subvert the purpose of Gay Pride to advance acceptance of same-sex relationships. This will not exempt him from being accused of complicity in the behaviour of other men who hold entirely different views and values and may be gay. May God have mercy on the soul of any lesbian who expresses a liking for anal sex and points out that it does not require a literal penis or suggests that anybody take a look at the genre of lesbian erotic fiction associated with terms like ‘stud’ or ‘packing’ before declaring too confidently that autoandrophilia is not a thing. She is likely to be accused of being a fake account run by a man. Any heterosexual woman objecting to the “vanillafication” of her sex life and pointing out that the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon was not driven by male consumers (it certainly wasn’t inspired by the quality of the writing, captivating plot or compelling character development) or daring to say that she finds male sexuality…..well, sexy, is very likely to either disappear under a pile of ‘pick-me, dickpanderer’ accusations or be held up as an example of what gay male sex/porn/orgy culture does to poor, innocent women.

We cannot do anything with reasoning that works like this. It begins with its conclusion that men and male sexuality are defined by something dark, dangerous and ugly and that gay men’s sexuality, unconstrained by the influence of an imagined pure and virtuous female sexuality, represents a particularly concentrated variation of this vile and contaminating depravity. It then works backwards from there. No amount of reasoned argument or evidence to the contrary will reach true believers in this narrative. They are prisoners of their own minds and the rest of us can only be thankful we do not have to live in such minds. Nor can we realistically hope to be able to do much with the mindset of extreme authoritarian social conservatives. They too have a distorted ideologically captured mindset that is impervious to any attempts to introduce it to the reality of men and women as demographics with differing distributions of traits but also much individual variation. Nor can we convince them that it is perfectly fine if some women are not particularly feminine and some men are just not that masculine, that some women will be ideal leaders in the public sphere and some men the most wonderful full-time parents and that some people will be attracted to others of the same sex and we can just accept this reality and treat them with the same dignity and respect as everybody else. (Failing that, you can just leave them alone).

Fortunately, the majority of people do not hold either of these extreme positions and acceptance of same sex relationships in the UK continues to increase. (We have more cause for concern in the US). Homophobia, blessedly, remains a fringe position. However, I would suggest that there is genuine cause to be concerned for young gay men and especially for boys who are or will soon be recognising themselves to be gay and who are particularly likely to operate more in the social media world of narratives than in the real one. For them, we must fear the homophobic narratives of the ‘queer theory’ brand of Critical Social Justice activism which will try to convince some of them struggling with their sexuality that they are actually girls and the rest that it is transphobic to be solely same-sex attracted. We must continue to fear the ever-present extreme social conservatives who will tell them there is something wrong and dirty and disgusting about the way their attractions and their romantic love works. And, increasingly often, now, it seems we must also fear for those who reject both of those narratives and find themselves in the gender critical space where a small but highly vocal minority of those gender critical women will inform them that their sexuality is the root of seemingly all evil.

We cannot ban these homophobes or seek to cancel or penalise them for their morally abhorrent views (provided they remain in the realm of ideas). We can only counter them and ensure that there is another stronger, more convincing, more ethical and more evidence-based stance on male homosexuality that is easily findable online. There must be a principled, liberal stance that reminds young gay men that their same-sex attraction is both important and irrelevant. Human sexuality is important on a personal level because it determines what our closest and most enduring relationships look like and who we love and are loved by on the most intimate level. To some extent, it shapes what our families, friendship groups and communities look like. Those close human bonds are possibly the most important thing to humans and this was why it was so important to achieve acceptance of same-sex love and attraction in the first place. It should never have been “a love that dare not speak its name” leading countless individuals to lead lives of secrecy, loneliness or shame. We must never allow that to happen again.

At the same time, we do not need homosexuality or bisexuality or heterosexuality to be speaking its name at all times and in all contexts. In most broader, cultural contexts, an individual’s sexuality is, or should be, irrelevant. It has no inherent ethical or political content. It does not make somebody virtuous or immoral. It does not make them stunning and brave or degenerate and depraved. It does not make them special (or not especially special). Our individual qualities, beliefs, values and actions determine whether we are people who make the world better or worse and those are the only things on which each of us can be rightfully judged. Whenever somebody says “You are <insert race, sex, sexuality, other characteristic here> and this means you must hold specific abhorrent views and values, are complicit in some harmful culture or community and should be held accountable for the behaviour of other individuals who share this characteristic” that person is being illiberal, unethical and simply factually wrong. That person really is complicit in a harmful culture or community and the rest of us should uphold a culture that tells them so and holds their views in low esteem.

Sadly, it seems to be necessary to do this in the gender critical space at the moment in relation to homophobia. Plenty of gay men have been doing so and their voices will be particularly valuable for younger gay men who are concerned about CSJ ‘queer’ activism. Unfortunately, some gay men who share these concerns have now decided that their presence and support is not wanted in the gender critical feminist space. This makes it particularly important that principled gender critical feminists are also seen to object to the homophobes among them. This matters for strategic reasons of not alienating their allies but, more importantly, it matters for ethical reasons that hurling homophobic abuse at people is simply an appalling thing to do. Many have been condemning homophobia and I have been encouraged to see many gender critical feminists “liking” my tweets on the subject. Unfortunately, some continue to prevaricate on the issue. This will not do. While I could understand and respect feminists’ wish to avoid a ‘pile-on’ of any individual or a wish to address the problem privately with another feminist who is behaving badly rather than publicly, there really is a need for feminists who recognise that homophobia is wrong to say so publicly and without equivocation. The time to do that is now.