“Transwomen are women”

The answer to that Jess is 'I am Spartacus'.

Labour is about to make itself unelectable.

Jess Phillips is being pushed on Twitter to repeat the mantra: Transwomen are Women.

She's wriggling.

The only thing I can think of that would meet that requirement is sex-role stereotypes, whereby 'woman' comes to mean, 'person who conforms to current culturally accepted standards of feminine presentation.' Which would be shit for obvious reasons.

Except that would exclude a whole bunch of natal women.

You'd to have to have, 'conforms to cultural stereotypes and/or is an adult human female'.

But, then again, transactivists say they are perfectly entitled to walk around conforming to male stereotypes and still be considered a woman.

Or what Donkey said.

In fact, does anyone want to start a new thread with "Things Donkey has said" as the title - every single post from Donkey has been fanfuckingtastic over the last few days

LauraMipsum, I think it is impossible to redefine "woman" in such a way that it includes all women plus transwomen, but excludes all men. If you can come up with a new definition, that would be great - no-one has managed it so far.

It's not like redefining marriage - that was between a man and a woman, it's now between two adults, which is clear.

I don't think it is impossible to redefine "woman" - after all, looking back over the last 300 years "marriage" did indeed get redefined and in a good way - but it needs Acts of Parliament and judicial oversight, not wishful thinking on Twitter.

How would you redefine it though to include men, without using sex-role stereotypes? It isn't the same as redefining marriage to include same-sex couples IMO, because the word 'woman' only exists in the first place in order to distinguish adult human females from adult human males. So if you want to make it able to encompass any adult human, you are still left with needing some objective qualities for this set of adult humans that distinguishes them from other adult humans.

The only thing I can think of that would meet that requirement is sex-role stereotypes, whereby 'woman' comes to mean, 'person who conforms to current culturally accepted standards of feminine presentation.' Which would be shit for obvious reasons.

Then of course you are still left with needing a word for the set of people previously known as women, for medical and other purposes - what could we use? Female? Not precise enough, as that also includes other animals. What if we came up with a new word? Snarflblart? We all know what would happen next. Trans-identified males would immediately abandon the word 'woman' and start identifying as trans snarfleblarts. And we're back to square one.

It surprised me when I read it. The scale of the difference, I mean. But it is there. Physiological sex differences are marked in this respect

But you're quoting a figure of 90% to prop up an argument that ANY man is stronger than ANY woman. You are proving the opposite.

I don't think it is impossible to redefine "woman" - after all, looking back over the last 300 years "marriage" did indeed get redefined and in a good way - but it needs Acts of Parliament and judicial oversight, not wishful thinking on Twitter

Marriage is a man made institution, a concept, It can be changed at will. Woman is a biological fact, which cannot. They are not comparable.

Even the weakest men can out grip the strongest women

I think that might be an overstatement, to be honest.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17186303/
"Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects."

It surprised me when I read it. The scale of the difference, I mean. But it is there. Physiological sex differences are marked in this respect.

(Not at all saying that you said legal fictions are wrong in themselves Laura) just that i was thinking that it’s probably how the legal fiction is then used, which is crux.

lauramipsum I think that some legal fictions are ok. (Not a lawyer so bear with me please)

Like the very old concept of ‘the child of the marriage’ that creates a (rebuttable) assumption of paternity. It still works OK i think- it holds even where you both know you used a sperm donor- it recognises intention to be a parent and usefully weights that higher in legal paternity terms, than the biologically key (but socially fleeting) role of the sperm donor.

But in the case of the TW=W, that legal fiction is being used to encroach which is wrong. there are such obvious harms and power imbalances.

I can imagine given the plasticity of the brain that there could be various m/f differences. Like- I’m a woman. I spend a lot of time on every journey I make pretty much- on public transport, in a crowd, or when walking alone, calculating risk (of unwanted attention, harassment or attack), it’s a constant background hum in my mind. Particularly if i’m out after dark. That’s probably developed my brain in ways most men don’t need to develop theirs.

But even if a ‘male’ or ‘female’ brain is somehow proved, and then is shown to have any relevance to people’s perceptions of their own gender identity- that doesn’t solve any of these deeply problematic issues.

Societies having rigid gender roles that are highly stereotyped is a recipe for trouble in general.
Then letting the bigger, stronger, way more statistically violent people into the private spaces of the smaller, physically weaker people at vulnerable times for them (like being partially undressed or using the toilet or receiving medical care) is a recipe for trouble.

@BertrandRussell I think it comes from a misunderstanding of the law, which I find quite interesting as a lawyer.

At the moment the definition of a woman is adult human female, plus the GRA 2004 creates the legal fiction that an adult human male with a Gender Recognition Certificate is female.

The EA 2010 then goes on to say that there must be no discrimination, harassment or victimisation of anybody on the grounds of gender reassignment, including those who are proposing to have it or in early stages rather than those already in possession of a GRC. Sensible enough, and that also protects those like me who are sometimes mistaken for a trans man (I'm not).

EA also says that someone undergoing gender reassignment should be treated as a member of their preferred sex unless the provision of a single sex service is in proportionate pursuit of a legitimate aim (s.28 to Schedule 2). It does not as far as I can see say that that person IS a member of their preferred sex (unless they have a GRC in which case the GRA 2004 kicks in).

The accurate legal proposition of "trans women with a GRC are legally female" has been modified to the catchier, but inaccurate, "trans women are women."

I don't think it is impossible to redefine "woman" - after all, looking back over the last 300 years "marriage" did indeed get redefined and in a good way - but it needs Acts of Parliament and judicial oversight, not wishful thinking on Twitter.

There's an interesting debate in the comments where someone tries and fails to make an argument against Cantor's conclusion and then resorts to dismissing the views of TIM Anne Lawrence about autogynephilia because he googled and it said Anne was "a controversial figure".

Ahhh Ereshkigal

The reason this matters is that, in the MRI study Russo describes (Zubiaurre-Elorza et al., 2013), all of the male-to-female transsexuals were attracted to men, but all of the control males were attracted to women, and all of the female-to-male transsexuals were attracted to women, but all the control females were attracted to men. That is, although the subject groups differed from the control groups in their gender identity (as they must), they also differed in their sexual orientation.

Something of a rookie error, there.

Strewth.

Surely they would get a huge difference between a raging heterosexual with a cross dressing fetish and a homosexual with gender dysphoria?

YY. And when they have taken sexuality into account, they found differences between homosexual and heterosexual MTFs in line with Blanchard's theory. www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/on-russos-is-there-something-unique.html?m=1

Yes, Dodo. Time for my favourite plot (I hear a collective sigh from the FWR regulars who have seen this time and time again): the d-value.

For physical characteristics like height and strength and running speed, d-values between the male and female distributions are typically between 1 and 2. For cognitive characteristics, in the few studies that actually find them, the d-values are typically below 0.5. (And given early brain plasticity and the social differences in the upbringing of girls and boys from newborn onwards, it's impossible to design and experiment which would tell you whether any tiny differences between the sexes are due to nature or nurture).

TL:DR - if all you know about person A is that they are 6'2" tall, it's worth punting a fiver on them being male. If all you know about them is that they have an IQ of 140 it isn't.

Those are the sorts of plots you don't get for mental abilities, such as maths, incidentally:
www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm

I can well believe that, Pocket. I'm a (largely in abeyance) female rock climber, so much time spent crimping on tiny holds. My nearly 80-year-old father can still open jars I can't. (Where's the frustration emoticon when you need one).

It's something you learn when you're into sport seriously and play a lot of mixed sport (in my case rock climbing and 5-a-side football when I was younger before my knees got knackered). Muscular strength is even more obviously dimorphic than height. I always find this set of graphs of weight-lifting records by weight category for men and women very illuminating - there is pretty much no overlap - the men in the lightest weight category can lift more than the women in the heaviest category for bench and deadlift (there's a bit of overlap for squat).

www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost_all_men_are_stronger_than_almost_all_women/

Beautiful graph and a discussion on grip strength

A really really big one. There are plenty of women that are stronger than plenty of men.

Even the weakest men can out grip the strongest women

I think that might be an overstatement, to be honest.

the last paper I looked at on the subect had about 30 samples, spread between men, women, transmen, transwomen. Massively affected by one outlier.

I'd like to know how they pick their transwomen sample.

Surely they would get a huge difference between a raging heterosexual with a cross dressing fetish and a homosexual with gender dysphoria?