I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

This is JAGS? I wonder if the boys' school she is referring to is Dulwich College?

Completely agree nolove. Utterly ridiculous.

Although, I don't blame people for not understanding this issue. You only have to look at people on mumsnet, struggling to get their head around it.

Even if male and female brains are different at a cellular level, your brain isn't seperate from the rest of your body. So if you a male and have a female brain, your male body wouldn't impact on that.
The whole argument is a nonsense. Females are females because of biological characteristics. That's it.

Datun
I clicked on share by email, it then opened a new mail in my gmail account and there was the link in the body of the mail. I assume it works with any other email provider as well.

Igneococcus

How did you do it?

Thanks for that Igneococcus. I've only got to this point but am already exasperated:

Pupils are allowed to wear ­trousers, cut their hair short

Why is this considered either notable or that it suggests these pupils aren't girls? Plus I've never heard of a school requiring girls to have long hair

Igneococcus

Me too. I can't see the icon she was talking about. They only let me email it to someone or share on Twitter or Facebook.

They are identifying the woman (man) who works for action for trans-health and saying that the group were instrumental in advising the government. Despite now advocating violence.

The below the line comments are largely very sensible.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-girls-are-not-girls-says-leading-private-school-head-07zbrdddv?shareToken=5869c3f7bd713dc615cf12134561aaf7

Ok, fingers crossed this works

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-group-ath-condones-punching-feminists-n6mz06pj3?shareToken=77931e855851117ee3a9d7101c050ae8

I could share the articles but I haven't quite figured out how to do it. It only gives me the option for sharing on FB, twitter and by email.
Need to find errol's thread where it's explained.

One about the head of a private girls school who has said 'my girls are not girls.'

I'll read this with interest (or perhaps trepidation) when my parents get it later but have looked online and this is visible:

She said: “I try not to say ‘girls’, [but] when you have been teaching for 20 years it is very hard not to say ‘girls’.” Instead, she tries to use the term “pupils” and the pronoun “they”— in place of “she”— to be sensitive to the feelings of transgender students.

I just think as I've said in this thread the denial that girls are girls is very regressive.

Yay - the Times today - 2 articles .
"Trans group condones punching feminists' - excellent clear concise article.

One about the head of a private girls school who has said 'my girls are not girls.'

Both with interesting below the line comments.

I know arbitrary I come across it in homeopathy discussions and the like all the time too.
Something as big as "male and female brain cells differ on a cellular level" or "water has memory" or whatever with some real, testable data behind it would be all over the media, badly presented most likely, but it would be out in the public and certainly would be big headlines in the big science journals, and it just isn't.

It may be significant that the university didn't specify where they expected the hate mail to come from. Ms Turner implied that it was from trans-activists, but I suspect it is more likely to come from the anti-trans faction

That's your credibility shot to bits then.

The reasons for identifying as trans are multi layered and varied. And men transition for different reasons to women. Sexual orientation plays a part.

So yes, it would be very useful to identify the reasons and how gender stereotypes playing to them.

But terms of women's rights, despite there being absolutely no scientific consensus, it doesn't actually matter about brain structures.

Men commit 98% of sexual violent crime. Transwomen are no different.

We segregate on the basis of sex.

A violent rapist who uses his penis to attack women can have the brain of a unicorn, for all I care. What on earth difference does it make?

And how does your theory fit in with autogynephiles? Being turned on by imagining yourself as a woman is an exclusively male fetish.

Are you seriously suggesting that a man who fetishises women and their biology is actually a woman?

The definition of the word woman, as a basis for sex segregation, means a man who fetishises them?

It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so misogynistic and dangerous.

I meant St. Paul's seems to be well known for girls with issues mental health problems.
I was told by friends who attended that there was neglect from parents there (wealthy and with little spare time) and that didn't help.
Girls public schools are known to have an increased risk of anorexia but I have no idea why. My dd goes to one but it is a prep so I am not expecting issues just yet but it makes me nervous.

If you make a claim like this one you absolutely have to back it up with credible evidence if you want to be taken seriously.

I suspect that people who make these kind of arguments consider 'research says' to be more than sufficient. And the people they generally talk to require nothing more.

Brain structures develop at a different stage of pregnancy than genital structures, and there is solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level)

If you make a claim like this one you absolutely have to back it up with credible evidence if you want to be taken seriously.

Good article. There is not enough in-depth debate about transgender issues. There is so much lip service paid to it as a social issue when it is a relatively new phenomenon and only affects a tiny number of people (unlike homosexuality which has been accepted as a fact of life for millennia and viewed differently by different cultures over time). I'm entirely open-minded on the idea of transgender issues and genuinely have empathy for people who find themselves struggling with complex identity issues but surely something so significant and questioning of fundamental social values is at least worthy of open debate?

For me the difficulty lies in an inability to hold two contradictory values at the heart of society at the same time:

1. Gender is a social construct that is 'performed' and has no biological basis. There is no fundamental difference between boys and girls and their natural interests and aptitudes

1. Some people are 'born in the wrong bodies' and do not feel comfortable with the gender roles society assigns to them and so the only answer to this is to transition physically to the other gender. The answer is not to blow apart social convention and freely allow men to wear dresses and women to shave their hair off if they want to. The answer is to force everyone into ever narrower confines of some imagined biologically determined gender identity.

These two ideas don't match up at all.

Fundamentally, the root cause of most transgender issues is misogyny. It's pretty easy these days for a woman to live, dress, love and act in an identical way to a man. Women are even admired for doing so. It is still a major social barrier for men, however, to live their lives within the confines of a stereotyped female role e.g. wearing dresses, make-up, staying home with kids, prioritizing empathy and emotions, nurturing infants form birth. That speaks more to the deep level of misogyny at the heart of our society than any rigid gender identities or social oppression of transgender individuals. As feminists, we should be focused on fighting that rigid base of misogyny that underlies society rather than getting lost in battles over 'transphobia' with activists who represent a tiny minority of society.

@StrangeAdventure can you point me to the evidence that shows that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men please?

No, I'm afraid I can't.
Can you?

Adult female human. We are a sexually dimorphic species. As with other sexually dimorphic species, “female” is the sex that bear soffspring, or produces gametes which are fertilised by male gametes.

I know, I know. That seems mean and exclusionary. I too used to be lost in the liberal feminist world of “it means anything and nothing!” But no, no it doesn’t.

solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men.

So you’re saying that women are a biologically distinct group, but that difference lies in the biology of our brains, not our genitals? So my brain is more female than my uterus? Hmmmm. Sounds a bit not-very-feminist to me, tbh - I was always in the “your sex doesn’t determine your personality, intelligence or skill-set” camp.

I am not cis. I am female because I have female biology - I have a female body. I have breasts, I have periods. My brothers are different from me because they are MALE, they do not have periods, they do not have my body, they do not suffer street harassment, they just do not have the life experiences I do. No boy/man ever could no matter what HE thinks he is experiencing. I am not, nor ever will be, "CIS".

Defined by biology?
Which bit? Brain biology? or Genital biology?
Brain structures develop at a different stage of pregnancy than genital structures, and there is solid scientific evidence that male to female transsexuals have brain structures (at the cellular level) that are more like those of cis-gendered women than cis-gendered men.

Hormones?
Did you know that the average pre-menopausal woman has more testosterone in her bloodstream than oestrogen?

I can.............it's defined by biology.

Who is benefitting? Easy answer: people such as Germain Greer, Sarah Ditum, Julie Bindel, Jenni Murray, Stephanie Davis-Arai -- all the people who fill column inches and chat-show airtime complaining about being "no-platformed" (!)