As a book that I'm currently reading (Gender-Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford-Smith) puts it, there are two camps: those who see gender as personal identity and those who see gender as social norms & expectations. One is a positive interpretation of the word and the other is often negative, or at the very least, comes from a critical stance. It's fascinating to me how, for decades, the critical group has seen the word as meaning a kind of trap that hurts many women and men, while another group rooted more in Judith Butler & postmodernism & of course wokeism has reimagined the word to be a freeing concept. Has the word "gender" itself been redefined by the later, much like words like "racism" have been reimagined by DiAngela et al?

Not sure exactly where I land, although modern gender-critical ideology is where a lot of my thoughts & opinions tend to be. I really dislike most of what I've read by Butler and Foucault, but I also reacted strongly against proto-gender critical feminists like Dworkin & MacKinnon.

It looks to me that you & Adhib fall in the gender-as-social-norms group and Noaim falls in the gender-is-my-identity group? It's a challenge having conversations when two groups aren't using the same definitions LOL. That said, I agree that that was an incredible slam dunk. I wonder if my reaction places me in Adhib's camp.

Reading Gender-Critical Feminism has been very illuminating for me so far, even when I disagree, and it has clarified my own thoughts on this topic. Highly recommended, and I haven't even gotten halfway through it!