CRT and GCRF as essentialist theories

CRT, as many people know, is Critical Race Theory. GCRF? Gender Critical Radical Feminism.

They're both essentialist theories in the roots of their identity. I believe that this is in part due to their roots in critical theory, which itself has roots in Marxism, an absolutist Continental European philosophy.

But, there, the parallels end, because the essentialism has different bases.

I don't fully reject either one. Between reading Derrick Bell's "Silent Covenents" and being involved with the Dialogue not Expulsion group of Georgia ex-Green Party leadership and allies, I have familiarity with CRT on the former and GCRF on the latter.

But, I believe both go overboard, and I think it's the absolutism from Marxism, and the essentialism related to that, that is a key issue.

With GCRF,  it's genomic, two sex chromosomes, to be precise. Another word for it, besides an acronym I won't use, is Sex Essential Radical Feminism. And, this essentialism is purely genomic. No room is allowed for inadequate or mistimed maternal sex-related developmental hormones, or fetal insensitivity or oversensitivity to those hormones, even though we know this can cause tendencies to homosexuality on the issue of sexual attachment orientation, or intersexuality, or sexual "misidenfication," etc. Nor is any room allowed for "XO" fetuses who may be intersex because of that.

CRT has the opposite issue. None of its espousers hold to a genetics-based theory of race, at least as far as I know in modern America. (I'm setting aside people like Marcus Garvey, who flourished before CRT developed, if he or his likes DID have such holdings.)

So, especially if CRT theorists recognize that skin color is only skin color, and controlled by many genes, and ditto for hair curliness etc., they have to become, in essence, phenotypic essentialists. Of course, the likes of Blake Griffin and his twin brother show the folly of that in action, while adopting one's racist adversaries' definition of race comes off as Br'er Rabbit and Tar Baby.