No debate is over at the Guardian

Good thread here pointing out the errors (and bonus bit at the end showing she should have known this!)
twitter.com/Getthelawright/status/1511827929961054209

There's a line between journalism and sensationalism. Zoe appears to not be able to empathise with anyone who has not been brought up with her privilege and in her culture and that may be why what she has written is definitely sensationalism. Using yoga classes as an example of an exercise class is ridiculous and does not test the point she is attempting to dismiss. It reflect really poorly on the guardian that they published such a silly piece. I can only imagine that they were trying to appear impartial and that in order to 'balance' Susanna's excellent piece, they wanted a pro-TRA piece. I guess there were no thoughtful or sensible pieces on offer though if that's the best they could come up with?

Zoe Williams is and always has been an idiot.

Bloody hell @Changechangychange

I had no idea. Christ

The blowback from the Guardian's American activist-journalists (perhaps the ones that broke the WiSpa story of The Lying Women and the Harmless Penis) will soon be furiously pumping their bile into its pages.

Or it may be left to one of their resident misogynists like Owen Jones.

I foresee mobs of angry young men yelling abuse outside Guardian HQ.

I think the problem is that Zoe has been reading the Equalities Act (her words) not the Equality Act that everyone else has been using.

I did not know that men swimming over women was a 'thing'. I swim regularly and it has happened to me more than once but I didn't realise I wasn't the only person it has happened to. I'm sitting here gobsmacked at my own stupidity.

It's that old quote about what feminism means, to me. The one about defending the rights of all women, even the ones you don't like.

This one?

Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who use to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with any more. It doesn't matter who the individual women are.
—Andrea Dworkin

It's that old quote about what feminism means, to me. The one about defending the rights of all women, even the ones you don't like.

I can despise the patriarchal bs of religions that say women's hair can't be uncovered in front of men which then relegates women to a sub-set of 'swimmer'. But my priority is going to be allowing those women the opportunity to be swimmers, rather than shoring up yet another sacred caste at women's expense.

And that's before you even think about women impacted by trauma. It's luxury beliefs - this doesn't bother me, therefore it doesn't bother anyone.

current legislation which says that trans men are men and trans women are women, regardless of whether they have undergone medical treatments.

Where did she get this utter hogswiffle?

And then there is the sexual comments (I switched to swimming purely during women only sessions when pregnant because I just couldn’t face any more offers “to put another one in there”, or requests to be breastfed). And the yelling whale comments at fat women.

This is all groups of men in their 20s, showing off to each other, and no of course the 18 yr old on lifeguard duty doesn’t dare tackle them/throw them out. They just sit there ignoring it.

Thank you for posting the article. The flood gates are opening by the look of it.

I would like to know why Williams and Starmer both use the term EqualiTIES Act instead of Equality. Coincidence or a specific reason?

Although being able to hold a women-only aerobics class would still be perfectly reasonable (and no-males very different from no-trans as pps have pointed out - more misinformation)

Well, if Williams has achieved one thing with that article it's a reminder that Labour has, since 2019, been consistent in its stance.

Good enough for me as a vote-loser in the next election and beyond. But this was a very interesting point:

When faced with the question of what defines a man or a woman, Labour is not only being implicitly asked to row back on its own policy, but also to backtrack on current legislation which says that trans men are men and trans women are women, regardless of whether they have undergone medical treatments.

Current legislation says that, does it? Or is this another case of inventing scenarios on the basis of the law as Stonewall et al would like it to be, not as it actually is?

It's certainly nowhere in the 2010 Equality Act.

Zoe Williams is a liar.

This was always going to happen to the no debaters

Debate would happen and they would exposed as idiot s with no arguments

Zoe Williams is an intelligent woman, so I can't believe she doesn't understand how spectacularly point-missing the following sentence in her article is: "‘I can’t even wrap my head around the person who doesn’t want anybody trans in their aerobics class."

It is the presence of men in women's spaces that is being objected to by the people Williams claims to find to mysterious . Not the presence of trans people.

NOBODY CARES about whether or not someone is trans. Especially now that the term has been so widened that it includes anyone who says they are trans and/or subverts gender stereotypes.

She must know that her sentence is a misrepresentation. So I can't help but think she has deliberately mispoken in order to smuggle in the idea that single-sex spaces are transphobic.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/swimming-pool-west-london-attack-b1875453.html

I found the swimming article.

because I was told that men swim over the top of you and push you under rather than overtake.

I now want to do a triathlon simple to grab the feet of any man who does this. I'm a strong swimmer and I give no shits.