Restoring Sanity Takes Time - Helen Joyce

Your friend's identity is based purely on philosophical belief and that philosophical belief has been protected by law as being protected to have. It does not mean that your friend is to be treated as if they are materially female for occasions where they should be treated as male.

And your friend is only 'socially' treated as a female by people who choose to allow your friend to socially be treated as a female.

Your friend's identity does not mean that they are female. Regardless of how many people treat them as a female.

How is a male who looks like a male and does traditionally male coded things "socially a woman"? It's all so ridiculous.

I'm no expert. I was born a woman and have always felt like a woman, despite that being an often unpleasant experience. People have a sense of self in all sorts of ways that aren't rooted in tangible, biological facts. The current battle, surely, is between people like yourself who feel that biology is the overriding consideration, and people like myself who feel that people's subjective sense of self is more important.

You don't need to be a scientist to know that sex is binary, that's just silly. There is no third gamete in humans, that's observable to anyone.

How do the Taliban know which people need to be shut in the house and denied agency over their lives, and which are allowed to participate in society? If I wear trousers and like football and work in IT, and have breasts and a vagina, will they let me go about my day freely or beat me for not covering my hair?

A trans woman I know is a butch lesbian into many traditionally male pursuits, who dresses in androgynous clothing.

How would anyone know this person purports to be a woman? If they walk into a female space, why would women know they claim to be a "woman"? They just sound like the average man, with special pronouns. How is this person a woman?

I think that you are conflating, or at least failing to separate, types of discrimination that leads to oppression.

Sex is absolutely real and it is proven.

There is the negative discrimination based on sex that feminists have long fought against such as female people being excluded from employment, education, activities etc based on their sexed body.

There is also the necessary form of discrimination that is used for calculating safeguarding risks which is also based on sexed bodies but the only 'negative' impact it has is to exclude one sex from a space designated as single sex for safety purposes. This discrimination has been the basis of sex segregated spaces since those spaces became available to public life.

What do you mean by 'gender roles' ? Weren't they premised in the past on sexed bodies?

Right, forget anthropology and theology.

Should 13 year old girls at Guide Camp be sharing tents with boys, and should their parents know?

Your friend is a biological male. If your friend has a GRC then the current position is that your friend is "legally" female. If your friend does not, your friend is legally a man.

In some. Not all.

A trans woman I know is a butch lesbian into many traditionally male pursuits, who dresses in androgynous clothing. But she is a woman, socially and legally. You can choose to deny that she is a woman, but her identity has nothing to do with stereotypes.

If "gender roles" are the basis of "women's oppression" what is a woman, and what is "woman gender"?

You're quite sure that menstruation and childbirth (specific to the female sex) play no part in some society's religious practices?

That's complex and varies hugely according to geographical and historical context.

LOL. "Complex" though it is, what are "gender roles" based on?

That's complex and varies hugely according to geographical and historical context.

That is not why there have been separate spaces for men and women historically in some societies. That was due to religion, not biology.

As the statutory guidance says

No. The EHRC has provided guidance on this specific issue.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/separate-and-single-sex-service-providers-guide-equality-act-sex-and

This is the example they give of lawful provision:

Many feminists, myself included, believe that gender roles, not biology, are the basis of women's oppression.

Where did the "gender roles" come from, do you think?

The question is not whether the sex binary is real (I'm not a scientist so won't comment) but whether it actually matters. Many feminists, myself included, believe that gender roles, not biology, are the basis of women's oppression.

Half the population can potentially get pregnant. The other half does the impregnating. That's why we keep them separate in certain specific situations. Our illiterate peasant ancestors knew this. Why do educated adults affect to find it startling news?

I've only known a few trans people but I wouldn't say that they conformed to gender stereotypes in the slightest.

The whole ideology is based on sex stereotypes what else do you think there is?

I've only known a few trans people but I wouldn't say that they conformed to gender stereotypes in the slightest.

Whether or not someone's inner personal "identity" is also grounds for discrimination is quite another issue.

Because women are discriminated against, harassed, disadvantaged and sexually assaulted on the grounds of their SEX. Hope that's clear.

"... which match their gender identity ..."
As has often been pointed out, 'gender identity' is not mentioned in the UK Equality Act. So this isn't a statutory right, is it?

In fact, and further, there is no such thing as gender identity, as spelled out, for example, in some detail long ago on this very discussion board: no such thing as gender identity.

Looking back, you had no answer to the challenge posed on that thread ... as the OP's first quote had it,
'If there is some kind of “gender identity” that is universal in humans, and which causes dysphoria when mismatched with sex, it remains elusive. No one has yet found a way of detecting its presence, and verifying that it is causally responsible for dysphoria.'
--You couldn't find a way of detecting its presence back then, @DadJoke. Have you since found one? If so, what is it?

If there is no way of detecting it, it surely can't be a basis for a human right, can it? This applies a fortiori, of course, if - as indeed is the case - there just is no such thing as it.

Another challenge: where in UK statute law does the phrase 'gender identity' appear?

For example (to be clear I'm not denying that some experiences are unique to biological females. What I'm asking is how those experiences define us in any way that is meaningful, and requires society to be organised around those differences.)