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November 28, 2024 - 11:15am
Westminster
Yesterday, I made my way to court to witness a case that will hopefully establish in law an important question: what is a woman? If we lose the case, we lose our rights as women, in law and in policy. The work of decades could be undone all too quickly.
The case began in 2018, when the Scottish Government passed a law which took as its definition of “woman” anyone who identifies as one. An advocacy group, For Women Scotland, challenged this in court and won. But then the Scottish National Party replaced this with guidance suggesting the definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 is not just a person born female, but is also changed “for all purposes” by the Gender Recognition Act. Last year, For Women Scotland went to court once again to challenge that definition — but lost. The group’s appeal will now be decided by the Supreme Court.
Inside the packed courtroom were a range of women’s rights groups and associated activists, all of whom have been attacked and labelled “terfs” for their beliefs in the past. Sex Matters, Scottish Lesbians, the Lesbian Project — which I co-direct with Kathleen Stock — and the LGB Alliance were all present. Meanwhile, Amnesty International and the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) have lent their support to the Scottish Government.
Much of the build-up to the case has focused on a particular detail in the Scottish Government’s submission, which claims that maternity provisions can be extended to “pregnant men”. Aidan O’Neill KC, representing For Women Scotland, said in court this week that those two words are a “legal fiction”. And yesterday, far away from the Supreme Court in London, O’Neill received support from an unexpected source. During a press conference in Edinburgh, Scottish First Minister John Swinney stated, in response to a journalist’s question, that males cannot become pregnant. Seated next to me in Courtroom 1 yesterday was former SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who noted online: “I am pleased that John recognises this biological reality, but I’m presently sitting in the UK Supreme Court watching his Government’s lawyers argue the opposite.”
Yet there is another important aspect to this case: namely, the right of lesbian clubs to legally exclude trans-identified males. A lawyer representing the Scottish Government, Ruth Crawford KC, denied that obstructing this right would create a “chilling effect”. On top of this, she claimed that the “inevitable conclusion” of a For Women Scotland victory would be that male-born holders of a GRC — who, she argued, are seen as having changed sex in the eyes of the law — would “remain men until death for the purposes of the Equality Act”.
High comedy was on offer amid arguments about heterosexual men with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) becoming lesbians, while those without a GRC remain heterosexual men. The utter absurdity, sexism and homophobia of the gender identity argument is being clearly exposed in Britain’s premier court. Regardless of the result inside the courtroom, more people will surely be convinced that the Scottish Government’s case is a ludicrous — and dangerous — fiction.
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SubscribeWoman = Adult Human Female. The term ‘terf’ is used in ‘captured’ and irrational people’s vocabularies to attack those who assert and affirm biological reality. Trans people have the right to live without persecution in their preferred gender identity, but wishful thinking to make their assumed identities ‘real’ in every way to fulfil their fantasy does not supersede the rights of actual women. This case is important.
So would that include using the public toilets allocated to their chosen gender? Or would they have to use the gents, even though presenting in all ways as a woman? Wouldn’t that put them at risk? Or would we all go gender neutral?
And if they can’t use the ladies, would we challenge them in public if they tried to? What about masculine presenting women who do not identify as trans? Or just women who look a bit masculine? Might we not end up challenging them too?
Strange how these problems didn’t seem to occur before the last decade of gender ideology. If we saw a masculine-looking person in the ladies we assumed it was a woman.
However, it’s not the toilets that matter because, in the ladies, we all have the privacy of a cubicle. It’s all the other places where women are vulnerable, at a disadvantage and/or undressed: changing rooms without cubicles, refuges, women’s hospital wards, prisons, and sports.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who focus on toilets are deliberate trying to trivialise the problem trans women’s extra rights pose for biological women.
True – but over the last few decades all sorts of new issues have arisen because our societies have been in flux, and many of the old certainties of social behaviour and classification have gone out of the window.
For good or ill, this is just what it is like to live in a rapidly changing society. And comedic as it may seem, areas of conflict have to be resolved.
In my experience it is the gender critical side which seems to obsess about toilets.
Some things, like cubicles in changing rooms, could easily be changed, and people expected to show a reasonable amount of discretion.
But activists (of all kinds) love a fight, and hate compromise. So here we are.
is it being an activist not to want the opposite sex in a single-sex changing room? One side is being intruded upon; the other side is intrusive. They are not the same.
The issue is not as trivial as you pretend.
Quite soon, probably, a woman taking part in sport is going to be killed by a man masquerading as a women. Already many thousands of women have been denied sporting victories by men masquerading as women.
You are also overlooking the political role that these post-modern ideologies play in the war between the state and the family. Sure, feminists are greatly to blame for the distortions of reality that have brought us to this – but there has to be a line in the sand.
Yes, young women playing soccer in Australia have been injured by male-bodied players on the opposing side. One young woman was so badly injured she will never be able to play again.
You are correct, the trans activists are always looking to pick a fight and refuse to compromise and persecute people who do not go along with their agenda.
You did just, unintentionally, illustrate my point.
Not unintentionally…
The answer to men-who-identify-as-women not being safe in the men’s toilets is for men to be more accepting of different types of men. Not forcing women to act as if men-who-identify-as-women are a type of woman.
At work we have men’s, women’s and gender neutral toilets. I have no objection to this but the only people I have ever observed using the gender neutral toilet are men. Turns out women just aren’t that keen on sharing such facilities with us.
Interestingly the building we work in is a tech hub with a younger demographic than I have encountered in any other workplace (other than university).
We need to get past the idea of “gender”. It’s a 19th century Victorian euphemism created because saying “sex” was too racy. Gender doesn’t exist for humans. There is only sex, and there is a wide range of male and female behavior patterns that in no way change the persons sex.
I think we agree. I think loosening gender norms a bit was a good idea. Sex should not be a straight jacket. But the idea that sex does not determine anything beyond the physical is clearly nonsense.
There are gender neutral lavatories so ‘challenging’ people is not an issue and focusing on this rather trivialises what this court case is actually about.
Where I worked some forty years ago we had a uni-sex toilet. One thing I learned was that men never wash their hands after emerging from a toilet cubicle.
I do. Even after just using the urinal.
All this talk about toilets reminds me of the time I took my three-year old niece to a park. She wanted to go to the toilet and ran ahead of me as we made our way there. To my dismay she ran into the entrance labelled “Gents”. However I did not have to follow her inside to rescue her- she quickly re-emerged. “Why did you run back outside?” I asked and she replied “Yeeeww, the smell. It stinks in there!”
Roxanne Tickle (of the Tickle vs Giggle court case) has explained the decision to undergo trans surgery because of inability to tolerate the smells in male change rooms and so forth.
Not all trans identified people present as the gender they claim to be, nor have they all had relevant surgery. All they have to do is say they are so.
Scrap Gender Recognition Certificates. If men want to wear dresses and call themselves Susan (or vice versa) that’s up to them. Nobody else should be forced to accommodate their delusions.
Once you say in law that a man can become a woman, then women cannot have separate rights, services, space etc. Because men will always be able to define themselves in such a way as to claim entitlement to access.
That this ludicrous situation has been allowed to proceed to the point where the Supreme Court is involved is appalling. I can only wish Julie Bindel and her fellow campaigners the best of luck in their fight.
This is bunk. Trans men, some of whom insist they are gay, are not being recognized as being literal men, gay or not. Gay men are allowed to reject them, and keep trans men out of their clubs and bathhouses. The difference? Trans men are actually women, and gay men are within their rights to reject women. (I think they should be able to reject women.) Trans women, who are men, are behind these court battles. They insist they are literally women. And lesbians, for God’s sake? Most of these men are autogynophiles., aka heterosexual men. They are the militant ones. For the record, I am not bashing all men in general. I rather like men.
That’s ok. Most of us understand and agree with you.
I rather like men – Just don’t be proud of it, okay?
Very good. Imagine finishing a post with something like: I rather like black people.
You know, sometimes you get tired of virtue signaling. You open YouTube, watch a video about voting in the US, glance at the comments and see at the top “I, as an African American, voted for Trump…” Or in a video on another topic you hear “My black woman/gay/lesbian/old fart (choose the right one from the list) experience…”
I don’t give a shit about you and all your experience, even if it’s an enviable experience of a breeding stallion. Say something sensible and get out of here.
I know. I agree. It drives you up the wall. If they were honest they would say as a relatively stupid person I am incapable of engaging in rational argument without referring to my identity.
Truly a test of the sobriety of British judges. Can they keep a straight face?
Nothing is more amusing than watching the Left choke on its own indigestible Critical Theories. Bon appétit!
I really do hope this challenge in the Supreme Court succeeds, but i fear it may require a change in the Gender Recognition Act (and possibly the Equality Act) before the case that JB outlines becomes possible.
The Supreme Court can only interpret the law as it stands, not create legislation.
Not true. The SC can and frequently does create new law. In its Spider Lady activist phase, it did so rather too much. This is because it is often called upon to adjudicate in cases where pieces of existing law appear to conflict. As well as this case, the current furore over police carrying out intimate searches brings PACE into conflict with the GRA.
It was a bizarre spectacle. The first thing to note is that not a single person in the court challenged that a person can change gender. The counsel for Women for Scotland gave the example of a trans woman (a biological man) who will face discrimination for being a woman! Their own counsel gave this example, thereby agreeing with all the dogma of Gender Ideology.
Then a few minutes after that one of the Supreme Court judges asked the counsel what gender would that man/woman be asking “Does she have a third gender?” No. Answered the counsel.
I will repeat myself.
No one has a clue what ‘gender’ is. This is because no one will explain it. This is because Gender Ideology is the creation of Feminism. And Feminism is untouchable.
Another article in Unherd repeating and validating the same devalued, politically loaded concept, and no one can refute it because no one knows what it is. Who benefits from this? Only those who support and promote the ideology.
Wasn’t Gender Id Theory cooked up primarily by men like Robert Stoller and John Money in the 1950 and 60s? Freud and Jung also touched on gender in their work in the early 20th century.
And, incidentally, you’re right when you say no-one can define what gender means. It’s because it’s whatever the beholder wants it to be.
Just because you hear the phrase ‘gender identity’ does not mean that it has one meaning or that you are referring to one theory.
Money proposed his own definition of ‘gender identity’ in the 1950s. He said gender identity is imposed by society in the first two years of a child’s life. He then disgracefully castrated a boy, persuaded the parents to bring him up as a girl, all in order to confirm his theory. The boy grew up and then killed himself, not accepting he was a girl. Money is infamous not just for the castration but because he hid the data and the results of the case, and published in articles that his theory had been proved.
Money is now discredited, along with his gender identity theory.
Feminists developed their own gender theory, quite apart from this.
Feminists developed their own gender theory, quite apart from this – That doesn’t mean they did anything less idiotic.
Which feminists were they?
I’ve said it before. If you are interested, look up a reading list for any Gender Studies course.
Exactly Re Money.
Actually on the money Re Money.
Some of these people probably don’t realize what “gender” is, and others don’t want to learn. It’s a grammatical feature of some languages, such as the Indo-European ones, and is a left-over from earlier, more complex classificatory schemes. See Bodmer’s Loom of Language for an interesting and clear explanation. Now, when one applies the term “gender” to people, one is making a figure of speech– not expressing a literal truth. When a beautiful woman is called a “bombshell,” we understand something about her appearance, but we do not think she’s literally explosive. But when we are expected to take a figure of speech literally, we are asked to accept as a fact something that is not a fact. There are, of course, absurd consequences, as we see here.
I am guessing that you are fairly old. Gender was used in English that way, up until the 1950s. Then it began to be used to refer to men and women, and then Feminism shaped it into its current, little known, meaning,
Out of interest I have never seen its current meaning set down in writing in a newspaper or digital magazine. Anyone care to try to say what gender means to a feminist?
I am guessing that you are fairly old – Or maybe he’s read a little more than you think. This story has been circulating on the Internet for a long time.
You are way behind the times. Now the boys rate girls as “rapeable” or not. No metaphors needed in this literal-minded age.
I don’t think it’s that. Most terfs are highly critical of ‘gender’ as having a meaning beyond cultural norms associated with a given sex.
That definition is fairly straightforward – gender is behaviours or activities commonly associated with a specific sex. To use a common example – wearing lipstick isn’t a matter of biological sex. But it is something associated with women, therefore, a gender norm. TBH, in this context, gender is essentially just an umbrella term for masculine and feminine.
Where ‘gender’ becomes stupid is when people insist gender is something you are , rather something people do . It’s a linguistic switcheroo – gender norms and gender identity are two completely different ideas. Most terf feminists would deny gender identity is real.
That being said, the reason it isn’t mentioned in court is because its not relevant. The Gender Recognition Act exists. This is an appeal. You can go to the supreme court and argue until you’re blue in the face that it shouldn’t exist because gender identity is BS, but in itself that’s not going to win you the case. The case is about the relationship of ‘gender identity’ to sex and whether it can legally supersede it.
What you have described are male and female stereotypes of behaviour. The problem is if you say these are gender roles, you are mimicking Butler’s terminology, of gender roles as performative gender, which became mainstream in academic feminism in 1990s. You are sanctioning her queer theory even if you don’t know you are doing that.
Language is important, especially concerning an Ideology, It is why the concepts themselves must be understood, so that they can be challenged and refuted.
In 1990 Butler’s main weapon to disrupt the male – female binary was Drag. This was the beginning of the little known queer theory which has since become incredibly influential. By 2000 she had shifted position and adopted transgender as her weapon of choice. Transgender was enacted in law in GRA 2004. Change your gender, you change your biological sex. Gender already supersedes sex in law.
Queer theory is the reason why children are taught LBGT in primary schools, and end up learning and identifying as non-binary, then end up on the conveyor belt to drugs, and being desexed, in gender clinics.
All of this is connected. You can trace the language and the ideology and watch its malign influence.
No one calls this out. Not in mainstream media, not in the courts. The Supreme Court this week accepted every facet of Gender Ideology. That makes it a defender of Gender Ideology.
The feminist view is that there is a clear line between sex and gender. Sex is wholly physical. It’s the body. Gender covers all other observed differences: personality, behaviour, roles. Gender is wholly social. it is not determined by sex in any direct way. For feminism the two can be separated out conceptually and factually.
The view opposed to this is that, to a greater or lesser degree, sex determines average differences in personality, behaviour and roles. For most this involves a subtle interplay between nature and culture.
Trans ideology also separates out sex and gender, though some trans activists are biological realists (and materialists) – they believe that in a very real sense the brain can be of a different sex to the body. In a lighter version they might believe that the brain identifies differently to the body it inhabits.
Why use ‘terf’ terminology? ‘Terf’ is an acronym only used by misogynists and those ‘trans activists’ who resent women, and using it debases your commentary.
I am tired of reading posts, always by men, that gender ideology is the creation of feminism. Having been a member of the feminist movement throughout the 1970s and 1980s (before retreating to a rural setting) I did not encounter this phenomenon. Give it a rest, please!
Do you don’t have to read what I am saying. I personally think the only way to remove Gender Ideology from the law and from school education, is first to understand it. If it is a problem for you that I am a man, I can’t help you.
Whatever you did or didn’t encounter, the author of this piece is a self avowed believer in the social construction of gender. How you missed it I really don’t know.
One of the odd things I have noticed over the years is that lots of people are ignorant of the origins, implications, even the nature of the things in which they believe. Perhaps it’s even a necessary condition of belief. Finding out can be liberating if you can handle the disillusionment.
I wasted years as a scientist. Politicians and judges are far better qualified to solve the mysteries of the universe.
It is nice to see Amnesty International speaking out against women’s basic rights.
Degenerates are always on the “right side of history”
The spirit of Monty Python lives on!
The Equality Act created certain “protected characteristics” and then made it unlawful to give anyone “unfavourable treatment” because they had one or more of those characteristics. If someone can obtain membership of one of these protected groups at will (i.e. self-ID – and even obtaining a GRC under the current law is not that difficult), the Equality Act ceases to have meaning.
Why is so much time effort and money wasted on insanity like this? There’s only two sexes, men cannot become a woman and vice versa. A man cannot become pregnant, trans is a freak show a mental illness , what will it take for the world to become sane again? Just how little have these people to do but to bore the rest of us ?
Hmm… do you think kids need a mom? If so, then should gay men be allowed to adopt? The ‘freak show’ you refer to goes much further and much deeper than just trans rights. It’s the inherent conflict between the idea that feelings (even persistent ones) determine what is right, and the idea that living in conformity with the natural order yields the best results. It’s the conflict between Western individualism and traditional family structures. It’s the declining birth rate, increasing anxiety suicide and addiction, and an epidemic of elderly left in homes to be cared for by immigrants we import to save us having to deal with the mess ourselves. It is all of these strange problems of the modern world. The freak show will never go away. We have all of us made a thousand little choices to usher in and continue the show.
Feminists like Bindel spent over a century insisting that sex differences barely exist, that there should be no such things as traditional sexual roles, that suburban wives live in “more comfortable versions of concentration camps,” that women are morally superior to men, and that “women need men like a fish needs a bicycle.”
They therefore have only themselves to blame for the sight of male genitalia in their locker rooms, and have no legitimate argument against monsters of their own making, though of course normal women very much do.
Totally agree. And they’ve directed so much hate at men, and even women who disagree with them, over the years that we shouldn’t be applauding them when they direct their bile elsewhere. Especially when, in their telling, that target is just “pervy” men. It’s the same old hatred. Men again. We’ve had it for decades and it needs to stop.
Yup. It’s very clear that the radfems brought this on themselves. Ironically, it is The Patriarchy that would like to come to the rescue but predictably they are too silly to accept the help.
“and have no legitimate argument against monsters of their own making,”
Good.
What happened, although no feminist will explain this in the mainstream press, is that the pro-trans feminists used exactly the same argument, involving the Patriarchy, against the so-called TERFS, and they won.
Why will no one write about that? Because it would pull out one of the pillars of the Feminist edifice. To counter the pro-trans feminists they would have to repudiate their own radical feminist dogma.
More amusingly feminists have been trying for decades to get men to behave less like men and more like women. They’ve done everything possible to disparage and denigrate masculinity. Now they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and there are men who want to be women.
And still they’re not happy!
“First they came for the women” to paraphrase an old story. Next we’ll be told there is no such thing as lesbians, because this crew is as anti gay as anti-female.
What we are being told by the trans lobby is that sex (female)has nothing to do with being a lesbian. According to trans, a lesbian is someone of a particular gender who is “attracted to” people of that same gender. Similarly being gay is all about gender. They are telling us that we have been redefined, by them, and that their definition is the correct one!
What a mess. Like I suspect most here, the extent of my investment in this whole area can be boiled down to:
1. FFS, fellow Human, do NOT cut off/out bits of your natural-born, healthy and functional bodily self, and do NOT pump it full of chemicals that can only make your bodily self less healthy and functional over time. If you truly do think you need to do either of these things to be emotionally complete, happy and fulfilled…it’s almost guaranteed that neither of them will in fact make you so in reality.
2. If you enjoy playing sports, just accept that your natural-born physical body is going to have to enjoy playing them alongside those whose natural-born body contains the same chromosomes as yours. Sorry, but that’s just…life. As for elite sports aspirants…sorry, most of us just don’t get to win Olympic gold medals or play Premier League, anyway. Again: refer to…’Life’. And deal with it.
3. Biological men and biological women are entitled to biological-men-and-women-only spaces. If that’s really some kind of problematic ‘issue’ for you to deal with, you have a whole bunch of wider personal matters to work through that really have nothing to do with the gendered life you happen to choose to live.
4. Don’t be a ‘gendered’ dickhead about 1-3.
Beyond that, this is such a monumental…bore now.
If any one wants to know what ‘gender’ is, a good starting place would be a Gender Studies, i.e. History of Feminism ,reading list.
Gender is not rocket science. But it is Feminism.
Why won’t any woman writer explain what ‘gender’ is?
Because that would involve repeating the arguments feminists made in its creation. And surprise, surprise they would not survive the light of day.
As far as I am concerned the word ‘gender’ confuses us all (that is why the trans people love it so much). I refuse to use it, preferring the term “sex-role stereotypes”.
Which is begging the question, of course.
I would say, “hoisted by your own petard” but it’s too far reaching to be flippant.
What a sorry state we are in that such things need to go to court. Any politician pushing this clap trap should never have been voted in.
Why. Is there not the same debate about those identified, at birth, as women, seeking to be identified as male?
Because they don’t fit into the feminist narrative. Those who move across to women become part of that oppressed group, and therefore need support. Those who move across to men don’t need support.
Have you had a look at the men claiming to be women and the trans-activists who support them? Have you seen the violent threats, and sometimes violent acts they direct at women who speak on behalf of their own rights. Have you ever read Reduxx?
TERF: tired of explaining reality to f**wits – saw these meme on X and it perfectly sums up the current ridiculous situation.
What we avoid talking often: trans women are threat to heterosexual men. The cismen need to look under the hood to learn the difference! Let men cloak them if they want but no thanks for me to prove my argh womanhood! Lolol
The court will not decide the definition of women cause it linguistic issue not law!
In what way? I think most me are completely unbothered. It’s older feminists who seem to have the issue.
The older feminists I know feel compassion towards those mostly young women who have been persuaded that they should get their breasts cut off and start taking testosterone. Every day brings more stories of the suffering those moves have caused to young women who hope to escape their ‘femaleness’.
We don’t need to look under the hood. Usually it’s pretty obvious that they’re men.
Meat and two veg = Male. No meat and two veg = Female. The midwives always knew the score
.
Parliament could, should it choose to do so, pass a law that the earth does not move round the sun. It could indeed pass a law to punish those who have the temerity to suggest otherwise. Eppu si muove.
As was the fiction ancestral to this one: that a woman was a woman (gender) because that was what was assigned to her at birth (based on cursory physical examination) and her parents and society then colluded in turning her into one.
Cursory physical examination is indeed all that is needed
David is alluding to De Beauvoir
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
The basis of so-called second wave feminism.
Amusing that its two men who seem to both know and understand feminist history and the history of feminist ideas.
I made no such claim, but what if I had? Is such knowledge and understanding beyond male comprehension?
Actually I wasn’t being sarcastic. But I understand that you’ve developed the reflex from being too much around feminists.
and de Beauvoir also said that she becomes a woman by having her wings clipped!
Exactly. By men. By the Patriarchy. Thus began second wave feminism. First wave feminists wanted and got equality with men in the eyes of the law. Second wave feminism said women were an oppressed group, oppressed by the Patriarchy, from the moment they were born.
Early on these 1980s feminists were called ‘gender feminists’, ‘gender’ meaning then, what is imposed on women by the Patriarchy.
Mary Beard, in a recent Times interview, said she teaches classes on gender in ancient Rome. She means by this that she teaches how women were oppressed by men in those times and how that manifested in women’s lives. That meaning of the word ‘gender ‘ is still used today, alongside other uses of the word.
It’s interesting that the question could just as easily be “what is a man?” since biological women seem equally keen on transitioning. But it isn’t.
Leaving aside some marginal (unproven and unquantified) increase in the risk to women, there is really no difference.
Men, in typical style, are completely relaxed about the whole idea and you can’t help wondering why. Could it simply be that men have no privileges, or special treatment to lose.
Women seldom pose a threat to men
The reverse is also true, at least in a country like the U.K. The increased threat posed by gender neutral toilets, say, will be very small indeed.
I sit on the fence on this issue – but I don’t think it helps to exaggerate the actual risk.
Putting men in women’s prisons is not exaggerating the matter. It’s interesting, isn’t it. Despite fighting this case at the SC, and wasting huge amounts of tax-payers money in the process, the SNP have categorically stated that they will not allow biological males into women’s prisons. Go figure! These two things (fighting this case, and stopping men from going into women’s prisons) do not logically fit together. There is a gross inconsistency here, indeed suggesting that this is a hopeless legal ‘fiction’ designed to appease left-leaning voters (i.e., it’s totally cynical!). ALl right-thinking people can see straight through it.
How would men eel about having ‘transmen’ ,i.e. women, in their toilets and changing rooms?
Not that bothered.
If men were to be bothered about anything, it would be about homosexual men in men’s changing rooms. And doubtless this does make some men uncomfortable. But massive political bunfight over it? Not likely.
Not happy because the men’s toilets are, duh, for men!
There are other types of violence than physical.
Unfortunately, men have had to get used to perverts invading their change rooms. They generally are well known, and likely were subject to be beat down on occasion during the previous era.
It’s not something I believe anyone should have to deal with so I support “women’s spaces”.
Are you saying that men participating in women’s sport is a marginal risk?! The risk of serious, even life threatening, injury is very real and a GREAT risk, particularly in sports where contact (or possible contact) is the norm. It’s simple, just keep anyone who is a biological male out of women’s sport.
My view is that we need to be pragmatic, fact based, and prepared to compromise. I’m an old fashioned believer in tolerance, which means I get less hung up on nonsense questions like “are trans women real women?”
But do you believe in reality and truth?
You say we need to be ‘fact based’ and yet you say it is a ‘nonsense question’ to ask ‘are trans women real women?’ which rather contradicts yourself. That ‘nonsense question’ is what ‘trans activists’ insist on as their ‘truth’ – most people in this country believe in tolerance and civil behaviour and act accordingly, but unfortunately many trans people and their allies who are ‘trans activists’ are totally intolerant of any questioning of their agenda. Not so long ago, people who were ‘trans’ just got on with their lives and there was no animosity between them and women – it was usually men who were seen as a threat to those who identified as ‘trans women’.
I’m not a radical feminist, but over 90% of violent crime is committed by men. Males have 175% the upper strength that females do. Most men having a bad day can beat a women to death with their fists – a woman is much less likely to be able to do that to a man and less likely to express the physical aggression that might motivate her to try.
Additionally, and this is when I get bioessentialist, we have evolved around this disparity. Even when it is irrational, women empirically do feel significantly more fear around men than the reverse. And they will continue to do so. Frankly, I just think this is biologically hard-wired.
We aren’t blank-slates. There are times when treating men and women identically in the law and social norms is not the way to go, and risk management is one of them.
That fear is something society does need to make rules around. If a large proportion of rape and domestic abuse survivors are mortally terrified of being stuck in confined spaces with male humans – then there should not be male humans in that space. I don’t really care if no transwoman had ever hurt a fly (and for clarity, they have – paraphelias and sexual offences are far higher amongst this population than men as a whole).
Sure – but the actual occurrence of this is vanishingly rare. In the US an armed woman could easily shoot a man dead. But again it rarely happens.
I agree that female fears are exaggerated, and in part that might be innate (women are higher in trait neuroticism) but it isn’t helped by people with a political agenda exaggerating the risks. And can we base policy not on actual risk, but on an exaggerated perception of risk?
Writing in your comment above that ‘women are higher in trait neuroticism’ cements the impression gained from your many comments on this issue – that for all your patronising posturing as someone ‘above it all’, that unfortunately you are unable to suppress an inherently misogynist viewpoint.
Women have been found to score higher than men on Neuroticism as measured at the Big Five trait level, as well as on most facets of Neuroticism included in a common measure of the Big Five, the NEO-PI-R (Costa et al., 2001).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3149680/#:~:text=Women%20have%20been%20found%20to,et%20al.%2C%202001).
So segregated lifts, trains, buses etc. And you may not have noticed, but there is currently only social practice preventing any man from walking into the ladies.
I am not relaxed about trans identifying females as, just as TIMs, they are an assault on reality. And it is only due to that assault that there are consequences. So we need to stop trying to deny reality.
Most of the comedy is linguistic.
What trans activists are asking for is that the social category “women” be expanded to cover both cis and trans women. They are not claiming to be biological women. It’s only funny if you flip flop between a biological and social usage.
I’m not sure even this should be granted, but it’s important to be clear on what is being asked for.
If they are not biological women, then they are not women.
And just how many boxes of bicycles, cars and bridges must I check?
Eddie Izzard claimed to have “more girl DNA than boy DNA” which is a biological claim, albeit a nonsensical one.
Lots of men-who-identify-as-women lay claim to female biological functions (or attempt to anyway). Insisting that their “periods” are starting, or that they can breastfeed infants.
For many trans people and their activist fellow travellers, the line between inclusion and biology is much more fuzzy than you admit.
I’m guessing that Eddie Izzard is referring to the fact that we are all girls by default. It takes only a relatively small amount of DNA to turn us into boys. It doesn’t mean much though.
There are nut cases in most activist movements regardless of the cause. Just look at people like Andrea Dworkin.
“I’m guessing that Eddie Izzard is referring to the fact that we are all girls by default.”
If he is then he’s even more stupid than I thought because that statement completely misrepresents the scientific facts. Our sex is determined at fertilisation dependent on whether the sperm carries an X or Y chromosome.
It’s true that male sexual organs only differentiate at around 6 weeks, but they do so based on the presence of a Y chromosome at fertilisation.
You are obviously in your own rather patronising male bubble and unaware of the main demands of ‘trans activists’ who are in fact insisting on being accepted in every way as ‘real’ women and all the ‘rights’ proceeds from that – and that is what is causing most of the issues discussed here: the insistence on denying reality.
And who was it that first denied the reality of biological sex? Feminists.
What arguments are they using? Feminist arguments.
Most feminist women that I have encountered have not ‘denied the reality of biological sex’. They acknowledge the physical differences between men and women, but also want and expect to be treated equally in society.
Yes that’s exactly the self-deception that has created this mess — “men and women are different but it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter.” But it does matter very much. Men are much more likely to be violent criminals and self-made billionaires. Feminists want to argue the former is the result of men’s unique moral flaws… but the latter is the result of the ‘patriarchy’ or some such systemic discrimination. But rather obviously those two facts are opposite sides of the same coin. To pretend as the feminists do inevitably leads to the current absurd situation.