Dear Garwhoungle

In which I launch into a series of long-winded answers of dubious relevance to readers' burning gender identity related questions.

Dear Garwhoungle,

I would like to know what to do as a gender critical feminist if I meet up with a 4th wave intersectional feminist. For instance what topics we should talk about?

NZ feminist

Dear NZ feminist,

Indeed! You have in two pithy sentences got to the meaty heart of the issue, you are in the lions’ den, you are deep in the fiery concentration of imploding molten gases, you are at the rusted hinge of Pandora's box: these, these are the questions of our times. 

I am presuming you, like me, are bewildered by what is happening under the guise of feminism. That one day you were cheerily walking along thinking feminism was all about mana wāhine, believing girls and women deserved to have control over the decisions that affect them, believing girls and women are equally as clever as boys and men, that girls and women deserve protection from those that would hurt or control them and that girls and women have the right to state their boundaries and have those boundaries respected. Then, next minute, you’re told feminism that doesn't centre on men who ‘identify as women’ is not real feminism, that women who state their boundaries are bigots, and that women who want to organise stuff by themselves without men (i.e. exercising our right to freedom of association) are actually genocidal fascists.

This men-are-actually-the-most-vulnerable-type-of-women-and-we-must-prioritise-their-needs-over-other-women is, in my view, the most perplexing aspect of 4th wave intersectional feminism and kind of my bag so I will focus on it.

Centering males in feminism is such an odd thing to believe that one has to wonder if the 4th wave of feminism is the goodbye feminism wave, or possibly the magic wand wave, whereby feminism is turned into the exact opposite of itself while still calling itself feminism. Extraordinary acts that intrigue and amaze!

How did feminism turn into something which elevates the desires of a few people with penises above the needs of all of those without? How did it start declaring that young women hating their bodies is a human right and we must celebrate and affirm their self harm? How did it become about imposing such rigid stereotypes about what it means to be a boy or a girl that if a girl breaches 1950s sexist girl code she is actually a boy and needs drugs? How did women’s safe spaces get likened to apartheid by people who think they’re progressive? And back to the question at hand, what on earth do you talk about with those who think this weirdness is the true feminism, women who appear to have utterly betrayed feminism while stealing its name.

There are, I believe, three explanations for 4th wave gender-addled feminists. 

1. They are particularly stupid;

2. They are particularly evil; or

3. They are in a mind-altering fundamentalist cult or cult like thing.  

It seems unlikely that there has been a massive rapid onset of stupidity or evilness among women so I think we can dismiss 1 and 2.

We're left with 3. And...the more you look into it the more gender identity devotees, like those represented in 4th wave feminism, appear to be in a fundamentalist cult like thing. It has almost everything any good cult has: 

• black and white thinking (either you believe kids can be literally born in the wrong body or you want trans genocide); 

• thought stopping phrases (trans rights are human rights; trans women are women); 

• shutting down of dissent or questions (trans women are women, no debate);

• us and them mentality (anyone who does not support male sex offenders in female prisons and medicalising young gay men is a fascist hate filled transphobe);

• weird ideas about sex (you can change it);

• instilling fear into cult members in order to compel them to stay (you need to transition or you will kill yourself; Do you want a dead son or a living daughter? TERFs want to erase your existence).

So what conversation topics can you have with someone in a cult? Apparently kindly telling them they're in a cult and offering to help them leave tends to go down very badly.

The general idea is that you find common ground, build trust and help them understand that there is a safe path out of the cult. 4th wave feminists are, at least, feminist identified, so something about women having rights must appeal to them, and they probably see themselves as bright, critical thinkers. We can work with those things. Here then are my top three ideas if you find yourself in a corner of the kitchen at parties with one or more 4th wave feminists and you are struggling to not yell HOW COULD YOU? YOU UTTER UTTER FOOLS.

Garwhoungle’s top three conversation starters when talking to 4th Wave Feminists (who think men can be women)

1. Introduce the topic of cults. Everyone loves a good goss about cults. Don't, whatever you do, mention gender cults. Talk about other cults. You could talk for example about Auckland's Centrepoint where really clever well-educated people managed to persuade themselves that child sex abuse was actually a more elevated, intelligent way of being but that the rest of the world wouldn't understand if you told them about it because the rest of the world was a bit thick and hadn’t caught up with the cult’s sophisticated way of thinking. Talk about how cults always start out with beautiful ideas about a more caring, loving and free society but that group think can take over and corrupt everything. People’s fear of ostracisation from the group, coupled with the demonisation of those outside the cult, is so powerful that people concede to things they would never have agreed to outside of the cult. Talk about how cult members aren't to be blamed, that often it’s very intelligent, compassionate people who get involved.  Say something like ‘Hmm, I wonder if there’s anything like that going on now?’’.

2. Assume their feminism starts from a place of compassion and care and an understanding of the particular difficulties facing women. Be a reminder of their gutsy and gut instinct feminism. I find you can often get consensus with all sorts of feminists by talking about women having an utterly shit time in countries a long way away. These are countries where men are unlikely to identify as women because the disadvantage of having female biology is abundantly obvious. For example, you can talk about Afghanistan where girls over 12 haven't been able to go to school for more than 900 days. Or you can talk about Iran where, in 2022, Masha Amini a 22 year old woman was shot for not wearing her head scarf correctly and women are legally under the control of men. If you get really brave talk about how girls in Africa are missing school because they aren’t given access to female bathrooms. Lack of female bathrooms means lack of privacy, especially important during menstruation, a justified lack of feeling safe, and greater likelihood of actual violence. Faced with all that, some girls just won’t turn up to school. You and the 4th waver can rage together at the evil distant forces of patriarchy keeping down girls and women.

3. Talk about LGBTQ+ friendly topics. For example, talk about whether they saw Benedict Cumberbatch play Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. From there talk about how tragic it was that homosexuality was seen as an abhorrence. They will, of course, agree. Mention that the drug he was given to cure his homosexuality was Lupron designed for chemical castration. You can chat about how terrible that is. After a suitable period of discussing the horrors of conversion therapy you can mention, as if in passing, that it’s weird how Lupron is the same thing that's used in puberty blockers. Quickly change the subject as if bored by your own ideas and ask if they saw that really disturbing film about Seaworld on Netflix, and how an actual person got eaten by an actual killer whale in front of a crowd¹.

You might not change any minds in one conversation but you might plant small seeds of discomfort that will niggle away at them on sleepless nights. They might, one day realise that they can’t reconcile gender ideology with their gut desire to support women’s freedom. Your compassionate approach to their confusion, and your appeal to their better, more intelligent selves, might just persuade them to leap over the walls to freedom and rationality.

Good luck out there,

Garwhoungle

Got an urgent gender related question for Garwhoungle? Message me and expect a tardy verbose smart aleck reply sometime this side of the downfall of gender ideology.

Selected reading/watching/listening

Commune: Listen to this most excellent podcast series about Auckland’s Centrepoint commune. One of the survivors goes on to study cults.

Cult chat: is a podcast about cults put together by three New Zealand women, one of whom lived at CentrePoint as a child, one who was born and raised as an Exclusive Brethren and one who helps those leaving Gloriavale.

Afghanistan: Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues: RNZ (republishing a BBC story), 24 March 2024.

Zan, Zandegi, Azadi | Women, Life, Freedom an international movement in solidarity with Iranian women has some useful background on the topic.

Bathrooms and girls’ education in Africa, The Borgen Project, 2020. For more on the bathroom issue see my earlier article: In favour of female-only bathrooms

The Imitation Game is a 2014 movie directed by Morgen Tyldum based on the life of Alan Turing. Not currently on Netflix NZ but you can get it on Google Play or AroVision.

Blackfish: on NZ Netflix at the time of writing, stars a killer whale called Tilikum and features corruption, cruelty and deceit by those who keep killer whales in captivity.

Gender-Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford Smith, OUP, 2022 has a great analysis of 4th wave feminism and has ideas for a different approach.

1. The captivity of killer whales is, as far as I know, unrelated to gender, but still interesting. The idea here is to pivot quickly away from the topic of gender to something universally fascinating.