Trans women are women answers to Terfmore's questions

Based on a sample size way larger than most studies about transgender people, and the fact that 100% so far have disagreed with the notion that transwomen are actual women, I am confident when I say that only a tiny fraction of people buy into the TW=W claim

Good point. Most of the studies that Mermaids et al cite are less rigorous than a Pantene "tens time more shiny" shampoo study. I've also discussed the issue with a variety of people (ages, nationalities, social backgrounds) and not one has suggested that they really believe that TW = W. I will admit, though, that this doesn't include any woke young uni students, so maybe that's the missing piece in my anecdata

Great responses, everyone, it's interesting how desperate some of the TRA arguments are starting to sound.

Just wanted to say on the question how do you know that most people don't think TW actually = W. That's quite simple for me. For the last six months or so (since I got wise to this issue), I've been talking about it with everyone I meet.

I don't actually know any "woke" people, anyone into postmodern thinking or gender studies, no one in the LGBT scene who's not at least middle aged. Just loads and loads of average joes, of all classes, professions and education levels.

And in all that time, on this subject the question people ask the most about self-id is "who the fuck thinks that's a good idea" closely followed by "our politicians really are useless twats these days".

I might have only met hundreds and not millions of people in this time, so it's definitely anecdotal, but not a single person thought transwomen were actual women. And by TW they meant post-op transsexuals. The information that even crossdressers get called TW now was met with universal disbelief and derision.

Based on a sample size way larger than most studies about transgender people, and the fact that 100% so far have disagreed with the notion that transwomen are actual women, I am confident when I say that only a tiny fraction of people buy into the TW=W claim.

And on the petition - it's completely opaque to the people I've met. It's a feminist request regarding the intended change of a law most have never heard of. Of course they don't know about it.

Adoption and/or sperm or egg donation does require a legal fiction but this legal fiction is not analogous to a transgender GRC. Its purpose is not to validate the identity of the parent as a parent: it is to confer statutory duties onto a person legally responsible for a child. Apples and oranges

Quite

And just to clear up the misconception that adopted children are given new birth ceritficates, they aren't. They are given an extract from the register of adoption, which looks incredibly like a birth certificate and you would need to know what you were looking at to twig that it isn't a birth certificate, but it isn't. My DD has a birth certificate which states her biological parents' details, and another document which states that DH and I are her parents. It implies but does not say explicitly that we are biologically related (because most people will assume that "mother" means "person who gestated and birthed the child")

No other details are changed on the certificate, BTW, so the fact that DD was born on X date and in Y place is included even though I wasn't even in the country at that time.

But, as others have said, modern adoption practice is to recognise the situation not try to pretend it didn't happen and we are all biologically related, even if we very much wish that were the case.

RunRabbitRunRabbit that was a brilliant post

Imagine if a father said that clinicans must assume his child has inherited his genes because the birth certificate says he is the father. The clinicians point out that this will lead to poor outcomes. The father shouts about how they are donorphobic, they want to erase him, he truly feels like the child's father, he will be suicidal if anyone denies he is the child's father. Then he reports the clinicans for being bigots. The birth certificate says he is the father so then lawyers get involved. Then similar things happen with lots of parents who used donated sperm/eggs. People would start saying we'd maybe better roll back the birth certificate thing

YY. Great analogy.

Apologies to everyone else. Im not going to indulge this derailing any more,

As for Venice and Lily, Venice (who is 24 years Lily's senior) engaged in very immature behaviour online.

In a group she thought was private which was invaded by a TRA who impersonated a gender critical feminist and doxxed her and other women on Twitter. If you bug my private meeting with my friends can you blame me for the things I said when I thought I was among friends?

She then went up to Lily at a party and made her feel uncomfortable by saying that she hoped she was okay and that it 'wasn't personal', while she was handing out flyers about the GRA at the party.

She can't win, can she? And it wasn't actually Lily's party, it was a Labour "feminist" party.

She then took a selfie with Lily clearly in the background and without asking Lily's permission. Her excuse was that Lily was 'famous' and she wanted a celebrity photo.

Not exactly Crime of the Century is it?

More like she was going to tweet it with some dumb caption about Lily invading a feminist xmas party or something.

That's just your unfounded speculation. And IMO Lily was. And fully knew it.

It does not look like that from an outsider's perspective.

It doesn't look like you are an outsider.

The only person with an automatic right to be on a birth certificate is the mother and her husband or wife. Unmarried couples can both be on the birth certificate if they register a birth together or complete a statutory declaration.

A surrogate mother automatically goes on the birth certificate and her husband or wife is automatically given parental status, unless a parental order is obtained showing that at least one of the intended parents has a genetic relationship with the child.

In all cases one person must have a clear genetic relationship to the child and the other person may or may not be related to the child. Nobody does a DNA test. Same sex parents aren't on birth certificates because everyone is being nice to same sex parents. They are on birth certificates because to do otherwise would be discrimination.

Adoption is a completely different process.

Great post Rabbit.

Great post rabbit

Seconded.

Great post rabbit

Nobody is agitating for birth certifcates to be true for children born of sperm donors because nobody is doing anything harmful with those certificates. If parents started behaving like transactivists then before long there would be a movement saying the birth certificate rules for donors must be changed.

Imagine if a father said that clinicans must assume his child has inherited his genes because the birth certificate says he is the father. The clinicians point out that this will lead to poor outcomes. The father shouts about how they are donorphobic, they want to erase him, he truly feels like the child's father, he will be suicidal if anyone denies he is the child's father. Then he reports the clinicans for being bigots. The birth certificate says he is the father so then lawyers get involved. Then similar things happen with lots of parents who used donated sperm/eggs. People would start saying we'd maybe better roll back the birth certificate thing.

Of course parents are not doing that. They are being sensible and pragmatic about it. For most purposes everyone around them behaves exactly as if the child were biologically theirs. When it matters the parent states the biological truth, e.g. medical treatment. If the child looks significantly physically different to the parents the parents will expect to get the odd question about it and will likely have a stock repsonse perhaps saying the child was from a donor. It's uncomfortable but nobody is massively offended. There's no claim of literal violence or bigotry or that biologically the child is the parent's. Everyone involved understands the unspoken agreement around how to behave and largely follows it. If someone keeps going on about the father not being the real father, the others find a way to tell them to shut up and stop being a dick mentioning it unecessarily.

Until a few years ago, transwomen would behave like that so it wasn't a problem. Now there are people breaking the unspoken agreement. A loud group are saying a transwoman is a woman so can be in female sport, female prisons, female refuges, female shortlists, female awards. The birth certificate says the transwoman is a woman so she is eligible. Then a bunch of other people start saying they are trans too now.

And so it all kicks off because now we have to go back and look at the law because some people are being dicks, loudly abusing the well-meaning law.

Can we clarify this one? What do you see as the offence here? Using a sweary pejorative? Or are you seeing it as a case of misgendering-by-swearing?

Both. At the time, Lily was a teenager and Venice was in her mid-40s. The word was used intentionally, both as an insult and as misgendering. There was also some horrific comment that Lily would fake a suicide. Seriously? What kind of grown woman writes that about a teen who has confessed to feeling suicidal before?

No, it isn't. It is clarifying to the world who has parental responsibility for the child; a responsibility that comes with a raft of statutory duties towards it. The purpose of this legal fiction is not to supplant biological reality but to assign the child the same legal status and protections as every other child.

It's not actually. If it were, there would be a new birth certificate issued if a child were adopted. It is simply a record. Adopted children use birth records to trace their birth families. They are also widely used by those wanting to trace their family tress. I think it's fine to have two women on the birth certificate even though it does not present an accurate record. i also think it's fine to allow people to change gender legally even if it doesn't represent biology.

As for Venice and Lily, Venice (who is 24 years Lily's senior) engaged in very immature behaviour online. She then went up to Lily at a party and made her feel uncomfortable by saying that she hoped she was okay and that it 'wasn't personal', while she was handing out flyers about the GRA at the party. She then took a selfie with Lily clearly in the background and without asking Lily's permission. Her excuse was that Lily was 'famous' and she wanted a celebrity photo. More like she was going to tweet it with some dumb caption about Lily invading a feminist xmas party or something. Most people see her exactly for who she is and she is extremely damaging to the whole movement.

No, it's not great that Lily started an anti GC women group at all. But seriously, there is so much tit for tat between these two groups. Lots of you seem to think that the GC women have the moral highground and never do anything wrong while being hounded and silenced by TRAs. It does not look like that from an outsider's perspective.

My point is that you keep going on about how the GRA is ridiculous because it denies biological reality.

I don't think it's ridiculous, I think the way it is worded is dangerous to the legal protections of women and girls.

It is literally lying to the world that the father on the birth certificate is not the one who provided the sperm.

No, it isn't. It is clarifying to the world who has parental responsibility for the child; a responsibility that comes with a raft of statutory duties towards it. The purpose of this legal fiction is not to supplant biological reality but to assign the child the same legal status and protections as every other child. The absolute polar opposite of purpose to a GRC.

Some of us don't want those gender-based stereotypes to be validated and codified in law. It's extremely regressive.

Exactly.

The Scottish leader of the Conservatives announced that she and her wife are expecting a baby and it was just treated as a good news story by the press and politicians.

This didn’t happen because people accepted legislation that endorsed harmful stereotypes or because everyone accepted the status quo and hid.

eg calling Lily Madigan a dicksplash

Can we clarify this one? What do you see as the offence here? Using a sweary pejorative? Or are you seeing it as a case of misgendering-by-swearing?

Or Lily Madigan, for setting up a group to collect evidence of "transphobia" by mining female Labour Party members social media posts for often mildly gender critical comments? And at one dim point allegedly publishing their membership numbers, which is a huge breach of data protection law and potentially could cost Labour £££? Shouldn't the Labour Party have kicked Lily out for misogynistic harassment and bringing the party into disrepute?

@PeakPants "Okay actually thinking about it, you should start a campaign requiring that donors must be named on the birth certificate because of biological reality. I am sure it will be really popular among the many who have had IVF. But surely biology is all that matters? It is literally lying to the world that the father on the birth certificate is not the one who provided the sperm. Look forward to seeing the campaign."

I know you are being sarcastic but as someone who has had (unsuccessful) treatment with donor eggs and someone who has adopted a child not biologically related to me, yes biology does matter.

My pretending my son is biologically related to me at the doctors would do him no favours when the doctor asks "Does diabetes run in your family?"

And had my donor eggs taken then we would have been explaining to our child their genetic history in age appropriate language.

Personally, I think it is very harmful to attempt to write out of history the biologcal parents of any child.

I am fully supportive of gay and lesbian parents. However, you will see many children do have an interest in their genetic and/or biological make up.

Most who go through donor IVF or adopt will have thought long and hard about all this so don't appropriate their/our struggles for this argument.

Because adopters and people having IVF may well not want to deny biology at all. It is a route to parenting and no one really benefits by pretending that things are not the way they really are.

The fact that they are both able to call some trans women ‘she’ just shows their hypocrisy.

No. It's a polite courtesy. Its not a human right to make people lie.

Can I make a rule that say, Paris Lees, as someone who went to prison for a violent crime, and has both slandered feminist women and made extremely dismissive and hurtful comments about women's concerns, should be barred from being asked to be a pundit by the BBC, a supposedly balanced, public, licence fee funded organisation?

Of the Xmas party or the Labour party?

If Labour chucked everyone who might possibly have been a bit of a dick* to someone else out of the party there would be about 3 members left.

*Not my interpretation of Venice's behavior, but presumably yours.