Don’t bother applying for a job if you think people can’t change sex, NHS trust tells health official

The discussion I was having with DadJoke upthread was a bit off-topic perhaps; it was about the scientific status of gender identity. I hope people might bear with us … it does seem worth sorting out, I think.

Anyway, no response from you, DadJoke ? I hope you are OK.

-- Your suggestion that we can detect gender identity in the same way as sexuality turns out to be untenable, based as it is on an egregious but elementary error to do with the scope of privileged access to one's own mental states.

-- Apart from a ‘gender-identity-detector’ machine you hope to invent, you offer no other method of detecting the presence of gender identity, albeit that lacking such a method there can be no science of gender identity.

-- An article you link to purporting to illuminate the science of gender identity clearly and obviously does not, lacking as it does any reference to a causal rôle for gender identity per se , or to any way of detecting the presence of the same.

The challenge set implicitly by Professor Byrne remains unmet.

... We are forced to accept we have no reason to think there is any such thing as gender identity, any more than we have reason to think there is any such thing as a guardian angel.

(Of course, as I told my children – and tell my grandchildren – this is no reason to deny respect to those who believe in guardian angels. We think them mistaken, is all – though with good reason, it must be said. Perhaps we might add, too, that we should not base law or general societal mores on such a mistake)

[I thought a (final?) summary might be useful, DadJoke. It has been interesting discussing these matters with you.]

It is also a major concern when the next graduation of clinicians are also so unwilling to listen to arguments outside their ideology that they work to get members of a balanced panel removed at a conference.

Of course, Dr Cass was also due to speak and I wonder if this is Mermaids way of stopping that from happening too? Because Dr Cass in her interim report has pointed out deficiencies in the treatment plans valorised by Mermaids.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/19/great-ormond-street-cancels-trainee-doctor-conference-trans/

Great Ormond Street Hospital has been forced to cancel a top trainee doctors conference after trans activists protested that speakers would make Zoom attendees feel “unsafe”, The Telegraph can disclose.

All trainee child psychiatrist finalists from across London were due to attend the day-long video conference on March 16 on how they can support gender-questioning young people.

High-profile speakers from across the trans debate were invited by a group of trainees at the hospital to speak on panels, including major trans charities, academics and gender-critical groups.

And posters simply cannot see the depths of harm that comes from not having people who are more focused on improving the standard of health care delivered to our young people than being focused on delivering ideologically driven treatment.

And exactly who benefits from that?

For any reader seeking to understand just how far wrong hiring only people who follow the doctrine as laid down by people such as dadjoke can go, I recommend reading the transcripts of the employment tribunal of Maya Forstater. There are three threads listed, it may well go to four or more.

Here, Maya was hired by a think tank. Yes. A group that comes into being where people are hired to think outside the box supposedly. And it has become very clear, she had her employment opportunities limited because she supported women's rights to single sex spaces.

Her employer, based in the USA, even got in outside consultants to help guide their decision. And it is worth understanding, these consultants were also USA consultants (I believe), but consultants that were only of the opinion supporting senior staff's own opinions that any discussion of women's rights that did not include transitioned males was offensive.

However, a number of the witnesses cannot even explain a) why it is offensive and b) cannot provide any way of discussing the issues that we discuss here regularly where it would NOT be deemed as offensive and c) at least two of the witnesses agreed that fighting for women's rights to single sex spaces was NOT transphobic, but again could not structure any sentence that would fit the criteria of not being offensive.

This is what happens when an organisation prioritises ideological thinking ahead of rational, evidence based thinking that also reflects material reality.

And we have had posters come onto this thread to state that GIDS who in the Cass Report linked up thread, has been described as being not up to the needed standard, should not hire anyone who believes that sex cannot be changed in their staff.

At the same time, not once has any poster addressed the fact that GIDS already hires staff, even clinicians, that share the belief that sex cannot be changed but that all people deserve the best health care possible.

I suggest that anyone who has been reading the many threads on this section of the board would know why those questions remain unanswered. It is because it is inconvenient to acknowledge the truth. Because if you are so entrenched in ideological thinking, that is without robust evidence, you allow situations to occur as they have done with the UK gender clinics. Where lobbyists and activists pressure our clinics to adopt non-proven treatments for ALL patients.

On so many threads, we have had the very same discussions, many times with the same posters. Every time we point out that it is females, our daughters, who are being harmed here. That females are being treated as if they are MALES for these treatments, which cause females greater lifetime long health issues. That are significantly less than males.

But that there is one particular group that is pushing for these treatments because to acknowledge the very existence of sex differences in these treatments is to have to acknowledge that a) sex cannot change and b) there are significant differences between sexes that don't fit on the ideological argument of 'sex is a spectrum'.

There is a reason why the NHS needs a balance in their senior staff. And I think that reading these transcripts is very enlightening as to why.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4505825-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-2

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4507443-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-3

Some people believe they are being guided by internal voices, do these voices exist in reality?

www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/auditory-hallucinations

If you asked me that question I would say 'yes' because I am an adult female human. This is nothing to do with having a 'gender identity', it's a statement of biological fact.

DadJoke is always making this argument, that knowing your biological sex is acknowledging your "gender identity". It's no truer or more convincing now than it ever was. There is a sleight of hand between "know what sex you are" and "have an ineffable free floating sense of conforming to a set of sex based stereotypes".

[quote DadJoke]@9toenails

First the analogy with guardian angels is just silly. Guardian angels are not well established objects of research and scientific consensus.

A better analogy is sexuality. You can observe behaviour and assume sexuality, or, the most common way of finding out - you just ask.

Before that nomenclature existed, gay people were treated as abnormal and suffering from a mental condition. Straight people were just "normal," and many of them objected to the nomenclature because it assumed that homosexuality was not pathological.

I think we all accept that when a person with gender dysphoria says that there is a mismatch between their body and their sense of being a man or woman, that that internal sense is something real, not like a "guardian angel". So, gender dysphoria brings that sense to the foreground, because of the conflict between their gender identity and their sexed characteristics just as issues with proprioception do.

So, we probably agree that in the case of gender dysphoria there is something real going on, and we label that inner sense as "gender identity." You just disagree that people without gender dysphoria have that inner sense.

How do I detect gender identity? The same way you "detect" sexaulity. You just ask.

Are you a woman?

If you answer the question "yes," a researcher would mark you as having a gender identity of being a woman, definitionally. It makes no difference what you attribute that to, or whether you "feel" like a woman, any more than you have self-knowledge of your proprioception. There is no inner conflict between your gender identity and your body.

My statement about gender identity being detectable was not facetious. If I could invite a device and point it at someone and it returned their gender identity (which they confirmed verbally), would you accept that gender identity was real?

If it makes any difference to you, gender identity, like sexuality, has a hereditable component, and cultural factors are negligible.

www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2018-polderman.pdf[/quote]
Hello again DadJoke . Thanks for the thoughtful response and well done for sticking with it.

It is getting far too long. Matters ramify. This is why I tried to simplify to a particular single challenge. Oh well.

DadJoke First the analogy with guardian angels is just silly. Guardian angels are not well established objects of research and scientific consensus.

This just seems wholly question-begging, DadJoke. Do you see why? The question at issue is whether gender identity is a scientific notion. Your remark here just assumes it is. But you know I say it is not; so how does your assertion here move the discussion on?

– For any logic/philosophy neophytes reading: to beg the question is to assume the conclusion of what you are trying to argue for as part of the argument. [ DadJoke I assume you understand this, but please ask me for more explanation if you need it.]

[Btw we do have some evidence, if not of the existence of angels, at least of belief therein: 77% of Americans think angels are real, see Angels. People are strange. ( ‘Nowt so queer as folk,’ perhaps more appropriate just here?) It is difficult to assess the popularity of belief in gender identity for comparison, partly I hazard because the latter notion is less definite in sense (to put it mildly) than the former. But I suspect the proportion of true believers, as it were, is anyway rather less, even in the land of the free gullible. No matter. (This is just an irrelevant aside, btw.)]

DadJoke A better analogy is sexuality. You can observe behaviour and assume sexuality, or, the most common way of finding out - you just ask.

This is interesting, not least in light of how many people have questioned the addition of T to LGB. Is T relevantly similar to LGB? DadJoke thinks so. Let us have a look.

Let us take it, first, that I have a particular relation to how I feel. I just know how I feel, you might say. So if I sincerely say I feel so-and-so, it will be true that I feel so-and-so. (Wrinkles here about making sense, perhaps Freud , and so on … let us ignore such wrinkles for now.)

Now sexuality is about sexual attraction. And if I feel that I am attracted to someone, it follows that I am attracted to them. To feel attracted is to be attracted.

There are other states like this. If I feel that I am hungry, or afraid, it follows that I am hungry or afraid. Why? Simply because to feel hungry is to be hungry; to feel afraid is to be afraid.

OK, now self-descriptions of such states as these are indefeasible; we might say they are self-validating , in the sense that, if I sincerely say I feel that I am hungry, for instance, it must be true that I am hungry. And likewise, since self-descriptions of sexual attraction self-validate in this way (because to feel attracted is to be attracted), if I sincerely say I am gay, for instance, it must be true that I am gay.

Thus a sincere self-description of sexuality is indeed determinative of sexuality, as you say, DadJoke : just ask.

But of course not all self-descriptions are self-validating in this way. To feel that one is Elvis is not to be Elvis. To feel that one is the coolest dude in the joint is not to be the coolest dude etc. So we need another way of determining whether someone who (even sincerely) claims to be Elvis is, in fact, Elvis, other than just asking. (He may be just a guy who works down the chip-shop and not Elvis at all.)

And of course you will see how this goes now. To feel that one is a woman is not to be a woman, although to feel that one is attracted to a woman is , precisely, to be so attracted.

So, DadJoke , your analogy with sexuality fails. We can indeed detect your sexuality by asking and assuming sincerity in your answer. But, as with you being Elvis or being cool, so with gender identity: we need another way of detecting your gender identity apart from just asking. Some self-descriptions are self-delusions.

Do you see, DadJoke ?

Interesting, perhaps, that this has arisen out of a soupçon of analysis of that very privileged access to mental states you were surprised to miss in Alex Byrne’s little piece. Interesting, too, I think, in a wider sense, in that it is grist to the mill of those who suspect that T does not really belong with LGB.

DadJoke My statement about gender identity being detectable was not facetious. If I could invite a device and point it at someone and it returned their gender identity (which they confirmed verbally), would you accept that gender identity was real?

I am wary of talk of things being real : ‘real’ means too many things to too many different people. But if you just mean to ask whether I would accept the existence of gender identity in such a case, yes, of course I would. Why not? (You help yourself to a lot in ‘they confirm verbally’, but you are entitled; your thought experiment, your rules.)

Of course even following such a determination-by-machine, we would still have the task of finding out what this strange thing the machine detects actually is , what people mean by their confirmations, and whether it has any connection with sex etc. But, well, good luck with the invention.

DadJoke If it makes any difference to you, gender identity, like sexuality, has a hereditable component, and cultural factors are negligible.
www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2018-polderman.pdf

Thanks for the link. I had a look. Nowhere do the authors, or as far as I can tell, the studies they consider, offer a way of detecting the presence of gender identity, although they do assert its existence and offer, albeit somewhat warily, some suggestions of things they claim correlate with it.

A few (fairly typical) extracts to illustrate:

About half of the studies investigated “masculinity” and “femininity.” … Masculinity and femininity are usually measured with items reflecting sex-specific behaviors, feelings, or even cultural stereotypes as part of personality questionnaires (e.g., “I am often the leader among my friends”, or “I am a kind and gentle person”)

In a large longitudinal study in 7 and 10-year old Dutch twins, two items of the Child Behavior Checklist were summed (i.e., ‘behaves like opposite sex’ and ‘wishes to be of opposite sex’) to measure cross-gender behavior and cross-gender identity (van Beijsterveldt et al. 2006).

It is important to note the limitations of the instruments used to measure gender identity. We must recognize the possibility that they may conflate true gender identity with gender expression.

– Indeed we must.

A gender diagnosticity score is computed … gender diagnosticity is a Bayesian probability that an individual is male or female on the basis of gender-related indicators.

– But we might note that neither the Bayesian priors nor conditions include gender identity.

I do not have time to give a thorough critique. There is lots to say. Too much.

Just one thing, as follows. The notion of gender identity as used by DadJoke and others is essentially causal (hence the claim to scientific status, of course): ‘gender identity causes dysphoria when mismatched [how? hmm ] with sex’ etc. But in none of these studies cited by Polderman et al on behalf of the International Gender Diversity Genomics Consortium (or any others I have seen) does it ever get a specific mention in any causal role. Claims are made for its heritability, but it is only the heritability of ‘behaves like the opposite sex’, ‘sex-specific behaviours’, ‘cultural sterotypes’, ‘I am a kind and gentle person’ and the like that are even claimed to be measured.

Why not measure gender identity itself in a study purporting to be about gender identity? It must be because we have no way of detecting its presence. But, then, this means we have as much reason to believe in its existence, DadJoke , as we do in guardian angels and all the rest.

Or, DadJoke , prove me wrong. Show me where someone claims to have found a way of detecting its existence. We still have no satisfactory answer to the question, How do we detect the presence of gender identity?

[I apologise, DadJoke , for not considering your stuff about ‘inner’ states and so on. Can of worms, ‘inner/outer’. Easy to get confused. If you want to have a bit of a think about it, maybe have a look at Candlish and Wrisley’s Private Language in Stanford Encylopedia: Private Language You might find it interesting. (This is a fairly authoritative source)]

How do I detect gender identity? The same way you "detect" sexaulity. You just ask.

Are you a woman?

Bollocks.

You keep forgetting that a male’s perception as to whether they are a woman, is based purely on their own perception on what a woman is. It is not based on the living reality of dealing with a female body which is the only thing women have in common.

Therefore the real question is, are you your own personal interpretation as a male as to what a woman is?

If you cannot acknowledge that, you are very dishonest.

You could measure sexuality by evaluating physical responses to images. The results of this would usually, but not always, agree with a persons own description of themselves. I think in those cases were there was conflict, you could argue that the physical response gave the more truthful answer to the question of sexuality. What test would you perform to evaluate the truth of someone’s self description of gender identity?

This👆

You could measure sexuality by evaluating physical responses to images. The results of this would usually, but not always, agree with a persons own description of themselves. I think in those cases were there was conflict, you could argue that the physical response gave the more truthful answer to the question of sexuality. What test would you perform to evaluate the truth of someone’s self description of gender identity?

I think we all accept that when a person with gender dysphoria says that there is a mismatch between their body and their sense of being a man or woman, that that internal sense is something real, not like a "guardian angel".

It may be real to them, but it's not something that you can describe to someone who doesn't feel this, nor is it something which can be observed by someone else. So in that respect it is similar to a belief in guardian angels, or any other religious belief.

What do you mean by a 'mismatch between their body and their sense of being a man or woman'? Is this a similar feeling to that experienced by people who think that some of their body parts don't belong to them?

What sense does someone have of being a man or a woman other than recognising whether they have a male or female body?

How do I detect gender identity? The same way you "detect" sexaulity. You just ask.

Are you a woman?

If you answer the question "yes," a researcher would mark you as having a gender identity of being a woman, definitionally. It makes no difference what you attribute that to, or whether you "feel" like a woman, any more than you have self-knowledge of your proprioception. There is no inner conflict between your gender identity and your body.

If you asked me that question I would say 'yes' because I am an adult female human. This is nothing to do with having a 'gender identity', it's a statement of biological fact.

You haven't explained what you mean by 'gender identity'. What is it?

their sense of being a man or woman

How do you form that sense if you take the words 'man' and 'woman' as purely descriptors of a physical body? (Is it similar to 'phantom limb' where people feel nerve activity relating to a body part they no longer have?)

You can't unless you absorb sex role stereotypes to some extent.

You are disingenuous stating that replying 'yes' to 'are you a woman' means you have a gender identity. If you, as most people have, have spent your life believing that 'woman' means 'female-bodied' you will believe that you are affirming that you have a female body.

If you are arguing that, because some people interpret the definition of a word differently from its dictionary definition (but won't say what their definition is) that anyone using that word also subscribes to it, or is somehow identifying themselves as being that alternative meaning, you are not making a logical argument.

I could ask 'is your starsign Capricorn' and then say 'ah some people believe Capricorns are terrible cooks, so you must be a terrible cook'. It's the same as the ridiculous sleight of hand used around the word 'woman'.

I notice you didn't reply to my question further up.

@9toenails

First the analogy with guardian angels is just silly. Guardian angels are not well established objects of research and scientific consensus.

A better analogy is sexuality. You can observe behaviour and assume sexuality, or, the most common way of finding out - you just ask.

Before that nomenclature existed, gay people were treated as abnormal and suffering from a mental condition. Straight people were just "normal," and many of them objected to the nomenclature because it assumed that homosexuality was not pathological.

I think we all accept that when a person with gender dysphoria says that there is a mismatch between their body and their sense of being a man or woman, that that internal sense is something real, not like a "guardian angel". So, gender dysphoria brings that sense to the foreground, because of the conflict between their gender identity and their sexed characteristics just as issues with proprioception do.

So, we probably agree that in the case of gender dysphoria there is something real going on, and we label that inner sense as "gender identity." You just disagree that people without gender dysphoria have that inner sense.

How do I detect gender identity? The same way you "detect" sexaulity. You just ask.

Are you a woman?

If you answer the question "yes," a researcher would mark you as having a gender identity of being a woman, definitionally. It makes no difference what you attribute that to, or whether you "feel" like a woman, any more than you have self-knowledge of your proprioception. There is no inner conflict between your gender identity and your body.

My statement about gender identity being detectable was not facetious. If I could invite a device and point it at someone and it returned their gender identity (which they confirmed verbally), would you accept that gender identity was real?

If it makes any difference to you, gender identity, like sexuality, has a hereditable component, and cultural factors are negligible.

www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2018-polderman.pdf

The majority of patients' families likely think gender is another word for sex and don't understand the ideological information being said by their young family member. Having someone who can see the family perspective and confusion on hearing about the 100s of floating genders would help them. Someone who can explain that some young people have different feelings, but also this can change (transition and detransition), so the need to take a cautious approach is vital.

I think the Cass interim report has plenty to go on as to why hiring only someone who believe that ‘affirming only’ is the only treatment plan or the final outcome of any treatment plan that should be considered is harmful and has been harmful.

What is needed is a senior team that is actually patient focused and in this case ‘child patient’ focused and can assess the needs of the organisation with balance.

As I have said before, there is already people who believe that sex cannot be changed, that these patients are very vulnerable and need the very best care plans working there.

I have not seen anything plonked down so far that is compelling enough to discriminate against Kate or the Baroness being part of a balanced senior team at a NHS gender clinic.

It is clear, and sorry if I am repeating myself, that some posters have their own deeply held prejudices and political agendas that are reflected in their posts though. I believe if the senior team was only sourced from people all believing the same politically aligned beliefs, it is the patients who will miss out.

For entertainment, try rereading Ides' screed replacing all references to "transwomen" with "men called Keith".

It makes just as much sense - special pleading for a self-salami-sliced subset of men who deserve to be treated specially because they then become a minority via the artificial salami slicing.

(And we don't care whether they're called Keith or not, this is not Keithphobia...)

Recommend this!

Even if that were true, if the majority of scientists are Christian, or meat-eaters, or Labour boters, that is not a scientific consensus.

A "scientific consensus" is a consensus about science, not the results of a poll of the non-scientific opinions of scientists.

Gender identity is just a politically-motivated distorted framing of gender dysphoria (which is clearly real, just like any other body dysphoria, but many/most current "trans" people don't have anyway).

But it's totally obvious to any outside observer that this purported "female gender identity" experienced by a male in no way resembles anything a woman has. Have you seen how transwomen act? They're nothing like women. Whatever this thing they experience is, it's obviously not what women experience. Women do not have a desire to be women, they just are. So how can you equate the male desire with the female being?

For gender identity to do what you want it to do, you need to prove that the "transwoman" identity is the same as the "woman" identity. (As well as falsely assert that sex doesn't matter).

This doesn't even pass a basic common-sense test, let along have any scientific backing.

Perfectly put.

DadJoke:
'Byrne is a professor of philosophy ...'

Hello DadJoke . Well done and thank you for looking at (at least part of) the Byrne piece. Of course, as I said, Byrne is a philosopher. But philosophers do have things to say about science.

I wonder if ‘the standard view’ he adumbrates is to be thought of as scientific, strictly so-called? (He delineates it in order to refute, notice: you think he fails to do so, although without overtly engaging with what he says; me, I think he does a pretty good job. But there you go.) -- I suspect that not, but no matter, anyway.

That could get a bit sticky, as could talk of privileged access to mental states. I am sure Byrne is familiar with related issues; you, maybe not so much, going on what you say. I might not wholly agree with Byrne about this, anyway. But let that stand, too. No need to get into it. Thoughts on privileged access in the philosophy of mind may differ, but no-one to my knowledge claims that all (even all sincere ) self-descriptions are necessarily true. ( ‘There’s a guy works down the chip-shop swears he’s Elvis.’ ? Hmm?)

Thing is, Byrne makes an implicit challenge I tried (and failed, so far, despite your apparent willingness to connect) to get you to attempt to engage with. Such engagement would simplify matters considerably, and give us a shot at clarity on the issue.

The challenge is, we might say, part of the philosophy of science. It rests on an assumption: that science deals exclusively with empirical matters. If this is right, things to which we have no empirically-based epistemic access just do not count – cannot count -- as objects of scientific study.

We can have no science of, say, guardian angels if we have no empirical way even of telling whether there are such things. Morals , another example: many would say we cannot have a science of morality since we have no empirical test for the existence of moral truth. (Others deny this … debate ensues.)

So: metaphysics, theology (pace Mary Baker Eddy!) and (interestingly to some) pure mathematics. Not science. OK? (Morality? – Moot, let us say.) Important to us, perhaps; just not science.

So, here is the challenge once again. How do we tell if there is such a thing as gender identity? Byrne says no one has managed to find a way of detecting its presence. If he is right, we can have no empirical way of studying it – we cannot do science with it, that is. You say we can do science with it; that is, we have an empirical way of studying it … so you are committed to the view that we have empirical epistemic access to it: a way of detecting its presence. Do you see?

The challenge, implicit in Byrne, explicitly from me: Byrne says, ‘No one has yet found a way of detecting its [ sc. gender identity's] presence.’ If you, DadJoke , are right and Byrne wrong, someone has found a way: Who, DadJoke ? And how? -- What way has been found of detecting the presence of gender identity?

-- We might note that ‘ask someone if he/she has a guardian angel’ will not do as a way of detecting the presence of guardian angels, whatever your position on privileged access; same for immortal souls, bio-energetic paranormal auras, reincarnations of Elvis and the like. [Why? I leave that as an exercise.]

So, DadJoke : Who has found a way of detecting the presence of gender identity? What is this way of detecting it?

Without an answer to this latter question, there cannot be any science of gender identity, no matter what ‘prominent clinicians and researchers’ may think, nor how many of them think it.

Simple enough? Simple enough. How do we detect the presence of gender identity ?

[Btw, your ‘Even if there were a way of "detecting" gender identity, you still wouldn't acknowledge its reality.’ is just abuse. I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you wish to convince rather than insult.]

The only place he is wrong here is that he says "Some" prominent clinicians and researchers, it's nearly all - in other words, a scientific consensus, which is the claim that I am making.

Even if that were true, if the majority of scientists are Christian, or meat-eaters, or Labour boters, that is not a scientific consensus.

A "scientific consensus" is a consensus about science, not the results of a poll of the non-scientific opinions of scientists.

Gender identity is just a politically-motivated distorted framing of gender dysphoria (which is clearly real, just like any other body dysphoria, but many/most current "trans" people don't have anyway).

But it's totally obvious to any outside observer that this purported "female gender identity" experienced by a male in no way resembles anything a woman has. Have you seen how transwomen act? They're nothing like women. Whatever this thing they experience is, it's obviously not what women experience. Women do not have a desire to be women, they just are. So how can you equate the male desire with the female being?

For gender identity to do what you want it to do, you need to prove that the "transwoman" identity is the same as the "woman" identity. (As well as falsely assert that sex doesn't matter).

This doesn't even pass a basic common-sense test, let along have any scientific backing.

A mismatch between sex and gender identity causes gender dysphoria.

Which sexes match which genders? Does "female" match "woman"?

Even if there were a way of "detecting" gender identity, you still wouldn't acknowledge its reality. Showing me articles written by such people does not change the fact that the science of gender identity is well established.

In this one section, Byrne is correct - this is the standard theory:

"We have just assembled three claims about gender identity which frequently appear in explanatory material about transgender issues intended for the general public. Together they form what we can call the standard picture, which we can set out as follows:

A: Everyone has a gender identity, which is usually stable. Non-transgender people have gender identities that match their sex.
B: Transgender people — in particular, MtF and FtM transsexuals, or transgender/trans women and transgender/trans men — have gender identities that do not match their sex.
C: A mismatch between sex and gender identity causes gender dysphoria.

Some prominent clinicians and researchers (although by no means all) endorse the standard picture. "

The only place he is wrong here is that he says "Some" prominent clinicians and researchers, it's nearly all - in other words, a scientific consensus, which is the claim that I am making.

I read the statement as being rather full of hatred. The source of that hatred could be coming from different angles, but it is aimed at women who have been attacked in any way, and at those fighting to retain single sex provisions and maintain adequate safeguarding levels.

It is also important to remember too that one person could have conflicting issues that would produce a sentence such as this. One that has been repeated as often as it has been here on MN FWR.

Women are so fragile and so delicate, it only takes one person, equipped with a dick and testicles, no matter how small and physically feeble that person may be, to be a menace to all the women around?

Yes, it's an interesting statement. Is Ides implying that if women only tried harder, they could repel assailants? Or trying to suggest that males are smaller and physically feeble, which is clearly nonsensical? As for 'all the women around' - is this implying a large group of women would be able to defeat a small, feeble male? Is this some kind of theoretical gender top trumps scenario?

Women are so fragile and so delicate, it only takes one person, equipped with a dick and testicles, no matter how small and physically feeble that person may be, to be a menace to all the women around?

As Ides has repeated this on this thread and over other threads.

I think though, that most readers will see that there are many layers of issues reflected in that one sentence. It is so enlightening really.

Women are so fragile and so delicate, it only takes one person, equipped with a dick and testicles, no matter how small and physically feeble that person may be, to be a menace to all the women around?

To be clear, 'fragile and delicate' has nothing to do with the risk of rape.

If a woman is raped it is not her fault, whatever her build or height. Statistically, males are larger and stronger than females. This is due to testosterone, for the most part. It is not casting aspersions on the moral strength or virtue of women to note that males have greater muscle strength.

This is a very simplistic argument sometimes misattributed to feminism. It's not about women somehow overcoming evolutionary biology to bionically overpower males. Feminism is about liberating women from the disadvantages faced by our sex; many of which are due to or exacerbated by or maintained by yes, biological factors. This can be achieved mostly by aiming for equity.