New Zealand: Bill on transgender birth certificates creates big issues

Women just don't want men in their private spaces, uninvited. How difficult is that to understand or appreciate? It is to do with the need for dignity and privacy, as well as safety.

i didn't say that there is no such thing as sex, but rather that sex isn't binary.

This is a bold claim and as such needs evidence to back it up. Do you have any (I bet you post that nature Op Ed piece, in which case go for it, but do explain WHY you feel it shows sex is a spectrum and then I’ll explain why it isn’t.)

Sex is a binary. Do you know what proved this? Sperm and eggs. If sex wasn’t a binary, there would be other sex cells. There aren’t.

Some organisms actually do have multiple sexes (which I’m sure you know as a scientist.) but not humans.

Of course if you e got proof of a third or fourth etc gamete, you’ll be up for a Nobel, because thatvis major, major stuff.

Intersex conditions are errors of sexual development. they are NOT ‘other sexes’.

May I ask what your field is, as a scientist?

Honestly I always saw the MAIN reason being reducing sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies that result form it if you have a bunch of teens or adults of both sexes in the same space, naked (when it comes to changing rooms)

It is. But the TRAs tend to get a bit angsty if you say that so I find it helpful to remind them/others that there are physical needs arising from our unique male and female biologies too.

No point putting sanitary bins in male toilets or inviting men for cervical smears after all...

These range from some relatively minor conditions like hypospadias

Hypospadias are not an intersex condition.
TRAs are wanting to include them to bump up the numbers of people classes with intersex conditions, but they do not fall within this bracket (neither does straightforward clitaromegaly.) I’ve also seen TRA arguments that everyone with pcos should be included.

This is not correct though

(A hypospadia is a slight abnormal development of the penis where the urethra opens somewhere on the shaft.)

*Why do we separate by sex in the first place?

We separate for dignity, privacy, safety, to accommodate biological/physical difference and to meet biological/physical needs.*

Honestly I always saw the MAIN reason being reducing sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies that result form it if you have a bunch of teens or adults of both sexes in the same space, naked (when it comes to changing rooms).

I don’t understand why men/male-bodied people wanting to access women’s changing rooms trumps my want to not have them there?

I know. We are constantly being told that, in issues of consent, no trumps yes.

Sex? No trumps yes.
Babies? No trumps yes.
Cup of tea? No trumps yes.
Men in women's spaces? Be rude not to.

I don't want to get undressed in front of my father-in-law, or share a changing room with my son's friends. None of whom are a threat

Yy, and if men/male-bodied people are allowed access to women’s changing facilities, then a lot of women will no longer be able to go to the gym or swimming or wherever. I don’t understand why men/male-bodied people wanting to access women’s changing rooms trumps my want to not have them there?
Although it might be a bit of an own goal for TRAs, if the women’s changing rooms no longer have any women/female bodied people in them (except the ones who were born with male bodies)

I don't want to get undressed in front of my father-in-law, or share a changing room with my son's friends. None of whom are a threat.

Quite.

I'd much rather be seen in my underwear by a woman I don't know very well than a man who is a friend and with whom I've been on holiday.

As always, stunningly good post from Datun.

This / especially struck me as such a good point, makes the problem with shared-sex spaces so clear.
I don't want to get undressed in front of my father-in-law, or share a changing room with my son's friends. None of whom are a threat.

I've made this handy sheet so everyone can join in the fun!

would you mind looking at my question from 7:45 last night please? Apologies if I've managed to overlook your answer.

Yes, my points seem to have been overlooked too...

Funny that. When there is no response to points made and only some tired old tropes to be wheeled out, there is a deafening silence.

Julj70, would you mind looking at my question from 7:45 last night please? Apologies if I've managed to overlook your answer.

Surely the most accurate description of sexing a newborn is "assumed female/male with 98.4% accuracy" (using your statistic of intersex prevalence - I think you've overstated the prevalence there, it's generally accepted to be more in the region of 99%, but that's not material for these purposes)? This is certainly more accurate that "assignment", which implies a large degree of choice and discretion on behalf of the assignor. I suppose that the very tiny minority of intersex babies that have genuinely ambiguous genitalia might be assigned a sex pending further investigation, but extrapolating that process to the 99.9% of people where that is not the case is pretty odd.

You've also raised the issue of where the 1.6% of people who are intersex should use the bathroom. I don't mind where they wee. I think that a 1.6% deviance from strict sex segregation will only fractionally, if it all, undermine the objectives of sex segregation. I am happy to accept that fractional difference in order to accommodate intersex people (to my mind, this is the key difference between intersex use of bathrooms and trans use - a space that is segregated for 98.4% of the population is still segregated for all practical purposes, a space where that percentage is substantially reduced is not). As a further example of this, I also accept that my husband sometimes needs to use the female facilities when he is out with our baby and the only changing facilities are in the female toilets. Again, because I don't think that a small number of men attending to tiny children materially undermines the objective of sex segregated spaces.

For a scientist, you're not using any logic.

This odd appeal:

We don't (well, we shoudn't) make sweeping assumptions about the likely behaviour of a group based upon the behaviour of individuals within it. Any other conclusion takes you into some rather dangerous territory.

Immediately collapses with:

and yet you would put transwomen in the dangerous position of using male facilities.

As ever women can't make 'sweeping assumptions' about men, but transwomen can.

What I won't do is change my position on the basis of rhetoric. I haven't seen much compelling evidence. I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind here, just provide some balance.

Let me tell you something julj70 misogyny and entitlement seems to be something that goes wholly unrecognised by the person demonstrating it.

You are arguing for the deconstruction of sex segregation. Based on criteria of your choosing. I believe you are trying to make a distinction where the criteria appears to be whether someone is genuine or not.

Leaving aside the actual criteria which determines whether you are genuinely female, you are expecting women to budge up on the basis of what a man, or many men, say.

What is repeatedly so striking about this is your inability to see this from anything other than the male gaze. It's all about what kind of men, how, why. None of this is about the fact that many women don't want any men in their space. Irrespective of how that man is thinking at any given time.

Partly because we don't know if someone is a threat or not (and never will - see Schrödinger's rapist), but also because given how many women are subjected to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence, the presence of a man when vulnerable is discomforting, irrespective of his intentions.

I don't want to get undressed in front of my father-in-law, or share a changing room with my son's friends. None of whom are a threat.

I certainly wouldn't expect other women to, based on my say so!

Your attitude to women is that their autonomy and boundaries are up for question. Because you see women as 'lesser than', it's obvious and normal to you that their boundries can be challenged for your benefit.

You are demanding 'evidence and balance'.

You demand justification for why women are refusing to allow men in situations where they are disrobing.

You're taking this up with the wrong people. You need to direct your energies to the cause of the problem. Male violence.

But no, let's use that millennia of male entitlement to bang on at women on the Internet about nonsense intersex arguments to force them to give up their hard won single sex spaces.

In the meantime women's boundaries and consent are not subject to your made up balance and evidence.

Julj70 Over the last few years, my area has seen an increase in the number of sexual assaults by strangers. It is terrifying.

All of the perpetrators had one factor in common. Without exception.

All of the victims had one factor in common. In every other way they were quite different from each other.

What do you think those factors were?

Yeah some do disrepesctful

Especially as that boosts their figures

women with PCOS

Please don't tell me that some TRAs drag us into the whole intersex nonsense. I am a woman - you know, adult human female - who has had ovaries on my cysts. This makes me no less female.

When dd was born i was absolutely positive i was having a boy

For weeks after i used to open her nappy and double check that she still had a vagina and not a penis

Slightly concerned that i may have had it wrong all these years, though mollified by the idea that if i got it wrong so have all the doctors and the midwife...and the health visitor, though she only glanced

So if you can potentially wrongly assign someone’s sex, that means you can correctly assign, that there is actually a ‘correct’ way.
Or are you saying the gentleman in the pink scarf was wrongly recorded as male at birth? And through the thousands of nappy changes? And through puberty?

And if you say it isn’t the pink scarf that makes him a woman, what is it exactly?

ove the fox picture btw, but I got that you think transwomen are men without the need for visual aids.

I love that meme as well

Lots of people post on here for lurkers and other posters

Its not all about you....

Yes I find the hypospadias thing very offensive too.

I get it now. Biological sex is binary, except in cases where it isn't.

Julj can I just confirm that you're a scientist? That you make a living from science and yet you believe that in categorising something, you should be able to account for every abnormality that occurs, otherwise the definitions of the category aren't valid? That medical conditions which affect a tiny proportion of people and are just a sign of biology (and all life on earth) being messy all need to be included and accounted for before categorisations are valid?

I don't mean to be personal but do your employers know this?!

People forget what medical science has achieved. Go to any country where many people can't afford healthcare and you will see an extremely wide variety of humans. Children with grossly swollen heads, conjoined limbs, extra limbs, extreme deformities....... Biology is not neat. If the science worked the way julj thinks it does, we would be unravelling such a huge mess we'd have achieved pretty much zilch.

I knew Jul would bring up hypospadias. These people always do. It's the only way they can get the percentages as high as they quote.

Most medics don't classify it as intersex - boys born with it have normal fertility, normal tested, normal male phenotype, just a minor cosmetic difference in their penis.

It would be like me saying that because I have a tongue tie which mildly affects my ability to roll my "r"s I should be placed in the same category as a friend's child with a chromosomal trisomy which has led them to have severe language delay.

I suppose I should just be thankful Jul stopped short of that other piece of medical nonsense, which is including women with PCOS (yes, I've seen some of the more fringe TRAs do that).

Genuine intersex conditions are a lot rarer.

And in any case, being intersex has nothing to do with being trans, and intersex people have repeatedly asked that their medical history not be appropriated and weaponised in someone else's political battle.

I've been assaulted too many times to assume the good intention of any man, sorry

Same here.

We absolutely do assign sex at birth. You know that moment when a medical professional looks between the infant's legs and says. "It's a..."?

Assign = allocate

Allocate - distribute (resources or duties) for a particular purpose

Biological sex is actually recognised or identified at birth based on present genitalia.

Recognise = identify (someone or something) from having encountered them before; know again

A real life situation;

As you are aware, China had a single child policy for many years. Males were the preferred sex child and females were often abandoned. Chinese parents had no difficulty identifying which sex their children were. They didn't randomly assign a sex to their children, they recognised them as male or female at birth and responded accordingly.

The result of that is that, in 2016, there were over 33 million more men than women in China society.

The impact of that has been that fertility and birth rates in China have remained low resulting in an ageing population and shrinking work force due to there not being enough women to produce babies.

This situation cannot be rectified by determining a required quotia of females and assigning the allotted number of babies 'female'.

Ergo, sex is not assigned.

julj70 actually my intention was to show that development disorders existing doesn’t make usual characteristics of humans a spectrum, be it sex or number of legs, as you had stated ”the existence of one [grey area] undermines the concept of neat binary boxes for biological sex”

The rest was partially to illustrate that I think being transgender is dependent on having dysphoria, and it seems as though we may have found common ground on this. Do you think all instances of transgender people arise from dysphoria?

I've been assaulted too many times to assume the good intention of any man, sorry.