Coming Out as Gender Critical

By Claire

It was only a little over a year ago, at the tender age of 30 years old, when I came out as bisexual and announced my same-sex relationship. What was the most intense and revelatory romance of my life was found to be practically boring for, well… almost everyone. Though it was not so long ago that this moment would have been rife with drama, it would not be crazy to say that society has mostly accepted same-gender (ahem, same-sex) attraction.

As easy as it was to announce my same-sex relationship, coming out as gender critical could not have been more different.

Beginnings

I’ve known I was gender critical since I first realized that boys were different from girls. This moment is hard to pin down, as I was quite young, but I think you get the picture. In high school I tried to deny this and attempted to fit in with compulsory queer activism. I once or twice even repeated the dogma, “transwomen are women,” but underneath it all I knew I didn’t believe. There was something different between me and boys (and me and boys who wanted to be girls.) I just had to do some digging to figure it out. This involved investigative measures such as looking at boys and men, looking at women and girls, and observing their differences. For example, I noticed that one had breasts and a vagina and XX chromosomes that were innate, and one did not. One had biology built around the capacity to give birth, and one did not. One had penises that didn’t come from surgery, one one did not. It seemed to me like those differences meant we lived life differently.

I knew, deep down, that women’s biology mattered and that women were a vital category to be able to recognize, name, and address within society. This was true even if they decided to attempt to look less like women through clothing, surgery, or synthetic hormones. I knew that a woman on testosterone supplements was a woman on testosterone supplements, not a man, and that it was a lie to pretend otherwise.

While I noticed my discomfort with the movement in high school, it wasn’t until I began to research feminism in depth that I came to terms with the manipulation. I began to save feminist writings in a collection, which I eventually deleted for fear of someone finding it. I created an anonymous Twitter to follow radical feminists and gender critical feminists, which I eventually stopped using out of fear that someone would connect me with them. I secretly looked at TERF blogs and pages, and I eventually began opening up to the people closest to me about it.

I knew that I must move in secret. No one was being fired for saying “transwomen are women,” but people were fired for saying that they weren’t.

For many closest to me, the idea that men and women were different seemed a rational enough thought. For many others, to say this was paramount to murder.

Coming Out

Many thought I was deliberately excluding trans-identified males from female spaces, which is a fair argument because it is correct. Abusive men will see this as their golden ticket past all safeguarding, and they have already demonstrated their desire, ability, and comfort with doing so. It is not inaccurate to point this out. While men and women may live in their fantasies within like-minded communities and within their private homes, societal structure should be based in truth, not subjective belief systems.

However, bringing up these concerns is often seen as violence. In my early days of being publically gender critical, a private disagreement was publicly shared without my consent and I was called a pedophile for caring to protect young girls’ single sex spaces and sports. This was by someone who had once been a friendly acquaintance whom I had known for years. I was told I was a direct reason trans-identified individuals, including children, were committing suicide.

I began to realize that If I spoke, I would be shamed, threatened, and punished into silence. Far from engaging with the ideas I placed upon the table, I would be slandered and publicly dragged through the mud. (This behavior made me at once more amenable to their arguments, grew my respect for their side, and resulted in my immediate conversion to their belief system. It is nothing but my dearest ambition to be threatened by those who want me to silence myself. Naturally I tucked my tail between my legs and fled. Or at least this is what, I assume, they imagine from their adversaries.)

But we have not fled. We have been organizing and planning. Building, creating, loving, and opening. We have been uncompromising in our commitment to females and same-sex attraction. We have been vicious in our defense of children.

And now it is time to bare my fangs. If I believed that the trans movement respected child safeguarding, believed in informed consent, respected female-only spaces, and supported the dignity and rights of same-sex attraction, things might be different. But I have seen little, if any, evidence of this from within the movement.

For so long we were barred from communicating and from organizing. We were kept apart and isolated, fearing what would come. We were told our fears were crazy, illegitimate, and that same-sex sexualities were an abomination and an offense. We were censored, in-person meetings were threatened, and organizations struggled to maintain access for those who wanted to join.

I spent many years split in half, desperate to not let the raw vulnerability and defensiveness of being gender critical consume me. My truths never wavered, my knowledge never altered, and my conviction to the cause was consistent, but how I engaged within my advocacy changed and shifted with my personal life, society, and politics. Now it feels it is time for me to speak out publicly, and to reach out to the other gender critical community members who feel lonely, isolated, and abandoned. Who feel, deep in their heart, that something is very wrong.

My journey to coming out as gender critical has been much more complex, difficult, and terrifying than coming out as same-sex attracted. The division within the community has been heartbreaking, pushing me farther away from those with whom I have so much in common. I sense that so many women are stuck in pain, desperate for community and yet holding truths within that they know will mean instant rejection.

Today, we are grateful for those who stood up, are standing up, and those who will in the future. While dating women has required me to lose nothing, being gender critical has lost me friends, acquaintances, and my reputation. It has required that we sacrifice a sense of safety in the world, our professions, and opens us up to threats. It is truly brave to risk this, though some may say that the truth is not brave or courageous to speak, it is not the truth of which we are afraid, but of our own, loving community.

This is what makes coming out as gender critical such a violently loving act. This Pride month, my second as a bisexual, is special to me. It is an honor to connect with the gender critical gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who have come before me. Their courage, conviction, and sacrifices deserve to be acknowledged and celebrated.

A Note of Pride

To the LGB individuals who have come before me- you have been unwavering in your documentation of the emperor’s lack of clothes, the canaries amongst coal mines, and the prophecies of Cassandras. This Pride, we are proud to consider ourselves amongst you. And to the LGB individuals coming after, we welcome you with open arms. And to those in this fight with me, I wish you a very happy Pride, and to know that you are amongst friends and loved ones.