"Transwomen should be legally considered women" - debate

Nope. They're blokes.

Quite interesting - if only to see someone hearing their own arguments flounder in public. No wonder the younger woman was embarrassed.

Obviously very muddled thinking - talked about a pregnant woman’s right to refuse treatment - when in fact if she did not declare she was female she might well get treatment that was completely unsuitable for her.

Talked about women being refused the right to an education as comparable to men not being allowed access to incarcerated women. And she’s ignorant about her own history, because the first women students were threatened & assaulted.

But maybe she’ll go on thinking & try to reason it out.

Yeah, but I remember feeling like this as a young woman. I wanted to believe in other people's good intentions and, even though I read a lot of rad fem writing, I just couldn't bear to face up to the awfulness of a male-dominated society.

It's what Dworkin said: women resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships

It was interesting that she retreated to 'you must all hate me' when the only heckle appeared to have been directed at the other woman.

100%. When on the losing side of a debate, toss logic out the window and reach in desperation for the emotive hyperbolic language while painting yourself a victim. Just like the group she's defending. It's all they've got.

Fair play to them all for participating in a recorded debate like this, however.

Very disheartening from the younger woman, who seemed particularly naive about the intentions of men. The molecular geneticist was a powerhouse. You could feel all her concern as she spoke the truth.

I enjoyed the random bloke thinking it'd be perfectly fine to arbitrarily label some men female on driving licenses (swiftly corrected when the molecular geneticist brought some much-needed critical thinking to the debate) -- and these are supposed to be smart people?? Goodness me.

Dear me. "I'd like to know why, legally, it matters." After hearing about the effects of having men in women's prisons, women's changing rooms... She really wasn't addressing the arguments from the other side at all.

Obviously not. But she did only say opt out of medical procedures. I would hope she wasn't deluded enough to think that would include a non-medicalised labour.

It might be possible to opt of out medicalised labour but you can't then opt out of labour.

Labour doesn't have to be medicalised so you could opt out of a medicalised labour. However, I wonder how quick they would be to sue if medicines unsuitable for pregnant women were prescribed? I know some meds require girls and women to take a pregnancy test before they will prescribe them.

Also slightly puzzled that as a scientist she can't see any legal evidence that the issue is black and white. Does molecular biology not involve any understanding of biology?

Particularly loved the idea that a pregnant person can decline to take part in medical procedures.

I mean identifying out of labour is a nice idea...

I don't think he needed to challenge them because giving them chance to put across their views was enough. The older woman gave clear answers grounded in fact and stuck to her position. The man tried to find a bit of middle ground but was defeated by logic. The younger woman tied herself up in knots trying to justify her position and was clearly very uncomfortable. It was interesting that she retreated to 'you must all hate me' when the only heckle appeared to have been directed at the other woman. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the start of her own journey of realisation.

It did seem like the younger woman had really not thought through any of her beliefs.
I was particularly confused about her attempt at reasoning that men should be allowed into women's prison's because it is the same as when women were allowed into universities; ie it is just about everyone accepting that previously excluded groups should now be included becasue it is a nice thing to do.

Really good to see the older woman putting things so clearly and getting support from the audience.

The example given at the end by the young woman was not comparable. Women being at risk as they move into previously male spaces is completely different from moving males into women’s spaces. In both examples it is the women who are at risk, but in the first the women are choosing to take that risk, because they perceive it as worth taking in order to get an education. In the latter case, women are not given a choice and there is no advantage to be gained.

I wish he’d challenged her on it. Maybe it’s coincidence, but I think he does similar in other videos, closing on a false argument from those arguing for gender ideology. Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen to be challenging these people’s false arguments too intensely, but I do find it frustrating when there’s an obvious loophole in their argument.

Big respect to Berkeley for hosting this. Really surprised! And respect to all the participants for being willing to publicly discuss these things (especially the 'strongly disagree' scientist who was so courageous).
I enjoy PG's experiments - they help me to firm up (or dismantle, as the case may be) my own judgements.

No.

Women as a political class are adult human females. We need to be recognised as this in order to protect our rights.

Trans women do not share any of our needs. We have nothing in common with them. They are gender non conforming males. It is men who need to be kind and accept the multitude of variations of male that can exist.

Do we have anything in common? No. Our healthcare needs are completely different because they are male. Any abuse they receive is not because of misogyny, it is because they are gender non-conforming males. We do not have any other same medical needs as males and females are built differently. We do not have the same social needs as they cannot gestate foetuses in a box.

Be polite, use the names they want, but there is no need for any of them to be considered women in any sense and doing so will only weaken our defined role as a political class.

I wish they'd get someone like Helen Joyce to talk on the BBC. It's frustrating that she and others are sidelined to outlets like GB News when clearly (from the applause) mainstream audiences respond to direct message and facts. There's so much pussyfooting around.

I watched this yesterday. I thought that as well as being angry the geneticist was scared. I think it's possible that the younger woman was too. Who in their right mind thinks housing convicted sex male offenders with women is a good idea.

Some people seem to think that a man who has inverted his penis is less of a risk to women but some months ago I found a case dating back to 2006 (I think) where a post op convicted sex offender brutally sexually assaulted their female cellmate with whatever they had available to them.

Peter Bogossion has taken on "woke" academia at great personal cost. I listened to an interview with him, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay about the Grievance Studies Affair. It was part hilarious (the details of the "dog park" paper) and part terrifying but it does give some insight into how, allegedly, progressive ideologies have taken hold in universities and why the younger female in this experiment is so confused.

One thing I often find interesting about these debates is that it always seems to be about the rights of trans women. The rights of trans men simply do not get the same amount of attention and I wonder why.

1. Because it is about women who feel they are men - and that's deemed less important or is less visible than the other way around

1. Because I wonder if many trans men are more circumspect about their rights to access men's spaces than is the case with trans women (because they are genuinely more vulnerable by virtue of having been born female)

1. Because the issues about supremacy in sports don't apply (because trans men don't have the advantages that trans women have re male puberty etc)

Am I making any sense?