I think everyone should be gender critical. There are so many things wrong with the way that gender is policed and enforced on every single person on the planet. Here’s a simple definition of gender:

Gender (noun): The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

These social and cultural differences are used to keep people in their assigned place. People are both the oppressor and the oppressed when it comes to how gender is enforced on each other. No one is exempt in their role in continuing the harm of gender.

Sexist Gender Advertising in Times Square NY

We buy our clothes based on how we were taught what looks good and makes us attractive to the object of our desires. There  are many, many fashion designers and clothing distributors that are complicit in making sure that you and I know what is appropriate for our gender and/or sexual expression. They want a guaranty on their profits by making sure that we stay within the narrow confines of the gender expression that our culture has proscribed for us.

Likewise, there are almost countless magazine, television and online advertising campaigns structured to make us feel inadequate until we fall in line and purchase the gender appropriate product they are selling.  The fashion magazine industry is solely created to push concepts of “sexy” and “beauty” that is harmful to all six billion people on the planet. These magazines work to make sure that gender expression is enforced with severe cost for trying to escape them.  Just ask any gender variant or transgender/transsexual person about the pain of those cost. In the end, the people who manage and work in the fashion and advertising industries are people that are also subject to the same oppressor/oppressed dynamic as those they work to reach.  This is how the cycle works.

The reason I needed to write about gender criticism is from what I’ve seen on various tweeter feeds the are using a hashtag #gendercrit.  This twitter hashtag is a great way to comment on the harm that gender causes.  However, the hashtag was created by those who wanted to move away from being known as trans critical.  To me, this means that they are ready to move beyond working against the rights of trans people and broaden their efforts and focus to where the real problem of gender exist.

So, when are we going after the fashion and magazine industries? The real upholders of gender. Six billion people follow the fashion industry and gets told how to express their gender and/or sex. Then how about the magazine publishers of both lad and girlie ones. Sounds like they have a large audience to educate.

Trans people are just as vulnerable to the fashion and magazine messaging as everyone else. Vogue Magazine has a total readership of over 11 million people per month. That is more than there are trans people worldwide. That is just one of dozens of fashion magazines.

Children are working in sweatshops to create gender appropriate fashions.  That is just one horrible example of the production chains that supply us with the clothing we wear. Our desire for cheap gender appropriate clothing makes us the oppressor of these children.

Those are just a few of the reasons that everyone on the planet should be gender critical and there are so many others than I can write at this time. However, those on twitter who use the #gendercrit hashtag are mainly concentrating of the evils of trans people in the women’s spaces.  So, if your sole effort in being gender critical is to work against transgender/transsexual rights then you are a liar and a transphobe.