Have things gone too far?

To be honest, it's quite exhausting at times watching people take the time to reasonably refute your atrociously weak arguments. There was a thread that talked about the mental drain of having to continually challenge falsely constructed realities, and I feel that is your purpose on these boards - to mentally drain those who patiently refute your nonsense.

The discrimination in the act can be about perception. But the protected characteristics are not defined via perception. Sexual orientation is defined as

(1)Sexual orientation means a person's sexual orientation towards—
(a)persons of the same sex,
(b)persons of the opposite sex, or
(c)persons of either sex.

Sex is defined as;
In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—
(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman
(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.

These are factual descriptions of both sex and sexual orientation. Discrimination claims can indeed be based on erroneous perceptions. However, the definitions in law are not.

"exist in the world."
Can we cut the melodrama, as today's episode in the house of lords shows, we know they exist. They are quite vocal, visual and highly represented, despite being supposedly a small section of society.

Whereas women's 'right to exist' actually is under attack.

I mean, if actual biological women can't name themselves, surely that's a threat to existence.
If lesbians can't define themselves, have their own spaces surely their existence and visibility is at risk of ceasing to exist.

I thought this was a discussion board? Does it always have to be about persuading people?

God no. But I was talking about achievements.

If you truly believe that TWAW OP, and you believe that heterosexual men are sexually attracted to women, then by default you beleive that heterosexual men are sexually attracted to TW.

If you truly believe that hideous rapists are men, and you believe that heterosexual women are sexually attracted to men, then by default you believe that heterosexual women are sexually attracted to hideous rapists.

This is how bad your logic is, jj. And it's not just in this particular instance. A large proportion of your reasoning is of this level.

Oh look JJ is signalling for a test case to prove that men can be considered lesbians. I think when the couple showed up at the b and b, they would know that the couple werent lesbians , no matter how they identify.

I've said many times Datun that I post here because I think it's good to counter some of the things said here which are often incorrect and as such are harmful to trans people.

The 'many' are busy keeping the significantly more prolific heterosexual sex industry going.

The sexual violence and harassment trans women receive comes near exclusively from straight men

Which every woman posting on this board to keep their single sex provision has confirmed and reaffirmed repeatedly. And given that a male who identifies as a lesbian woman is a heterosexual male by very definition (MNHQ, I am using this language because there is literally no other way to explain this, not to be offensive, so please can any complaints be taken in light of that?) why do women have to lose their single sex provision because of the predatory behaviour of heterosexual males?
It is entirely incoherent.

The Equality Act does know what a woman is :an adult human female or child. As transwomen are all male they do not form part of that group. Therefore transwomen cannot be lesbians as lesbians are women attracted to other women.

What do you think you're achieving on here, JJ? I've never seen you persuade anyone. All you do is give women endless opportunities to refute your daft arguments. Is that what you set out to do?

It's not based on the 'perception' that men are lesbians

It a trans women in a relationship with a woman was refused a double room in a B&B because the religious owner saw two women's names and didn't like lesbians sharing a bed then on what grounds would they have a case under the Equality Act?

Well, this thread went tits up, didn’t it?

not your fault, OP, you’ve fallen in to something that happens bafflingly often on here. you’re quite right to skip huge swathes of it, there’s some right bobbins.

Maybe if you tried rephrasing your question, we could all drag the thread back to what you wanted to know rather than act eleventy billion of Why The Feminsts of Mumsnet are Big Poopy Heads?

I think people are well aware that some men hide their bisexuality.

Only many aren't are they, in reality.

This is the third reason incidentally that the gender critical movement pushes this aspect of the debate so hard. The sexual violence and harassment trans women receive comes near exclusively from straight men, and as the gender critical movement seeks to downplay this violence or erase it completely it is convenient to have rigid defintions that mean straight men would never possibly sexually abuse trans women. Unfortunately pretty much every trans woman on the planet would tell you a different story.

There's a storyline on the american Shameless where a late teenage boy has just come out as gay, breaks off a relationship with an older man, then love of his life breaks up with him, then he meets attractive guy in club. Attractive guy takes it slow, boy finds out what a wonderful, community minded person he is and falls for him. Then attractive guy says he used to be female. Boy is confused, takes a day to think about it, while being made to feel like a total bastard for not immediately accepting it and ultimately decides it's fine, they start a relationship and he gets fully 'educated' about pronouns.
Found this bizarre and uncomfortable. The way he took so long to come out, it was a huge deal and then was portrayed as so wrong to feel strange about attractive guy actually being a girl. It seemed at odds with everything he'd been through to come out.
Sure, sexuality is sometimes shades of grey, except for people who are firmly black or white about it, and for the former, fair enough, the person might matter more than the pheromones and equipment, but... Its the emotional black mail of it for people who are maybe still confused and not confident enough in their sexuality to see they are not at fault.

jj1968
Just out of interest, what have you contributed to the world, the UK, society in general, to medicine, science, education, ecology, charity?
Compared to, for example, Robert Winston, Emma Nicholson, Shirley Williams, just to name 3 off the top of my head?

Tangentially, how did 'sexual orientation' become 'sexual preference'?

I've checked my diary entries and assorted witterings. In 2004 I always wrote/typed 'orientation'. By 2020, that had become 'preference'.

Is it just that the latter is a bit easier to spell?

But the Equality Act is quite clear in its definition of sex. And sexual orientation uses the sex definition AFAIK.