Hampstead Pond - Brave woman speaks

I'm not sure how 'I don't believe women should have rights or disobey men' is ever going to stand up really on a feminist board, but whatevs.

Surely basic fairness should say, if there's a mixed sex pond, and it's known that some woman can only use a facility at all if there's a female only provision, and this is part of their diversity, intersectionality, identity, culture, all the stuff the TQ+ lobby bore on for England about, only total bastards who are MRAs would exclude those women.

There is no need for this to happen. It is down to the extreme selfishness of those from the TQ+ political lobby. And it's unjustifiably grim, colonialist behaviour.

As far as I can see @DadJoke , you don't have ANY definition of "woman" other than they say so.

That's hardly a definition

The word 'think' here (as opposed to 'know') is key, isn't it.

And your point is?

Honestly let’s just go to the non-men category and be done with the term ‘woman’ full stop. Men. Non-men. NB’s can keep being NB (although they may be happy being non-men?). We need to know our place. As non-men.

Deleted, but hilarious!

plural trans women
: a transgender woman : a woman who was identified as male at birth

And remains male because they are.

But why are they “identified as male at birth?” 🤔

By medical professionals who we trust to weight, measure and accurately state time of birth.

It comes down to whether you consider man and woman to be biological categories or a philosophical concept.

Most people go with the former.

Else you may as well say “my kid was born on a Friday but it felt more like a Wednesday so I’ll be changing their date of birth accordingly.”

Fuck "the debate". Men are men and ever more shall be so. Come up with an actual reason why people should think men are women that isn't just pontificating nonsense. I dare you.

But they aren't women Dadjoke. Women are female. In the absence of any rationale why would anyone care about your bizarre assertions that some males are women merely because they say so?

@negeme you are tying yourself in semantic knots for absolutely no reason. It’s you, not me, who is using and defining “transwoman.” I don’t use that term. Trans woman is the term I use and only to differentiate them from non-transgender women. Transgender (adjective) woman (noun). I mean, really, look it up in a dictionary.

trans woman

plural trans women
: a transgender woman : a woman who was identified as male at birth

I cannot believe that you are so ignorant of the debate that you would think otherwise.

@theilltemperedclavecinist: "I can't believe we're wasting our time like this....."

Indeed. Me neither. But, well, the internet ...

I'm amused and somewhat disconcerted you find it complicated. It's really very simple.

We both know what "woman" and its plural "women" mean. We disagree about whether trans women (sometimes 'transwomen') are women, which we couldn't if we didn't agree as we do about those meanings. (It wouldn't make sense to say we disagreed: what would we be disagreeing about?)

So what is a trans woman (a transwoman)? Of course this question is related to the question, "What does "trans woman" ("transwoman") mean?" in that if you know what "transwoman" (I'll stop with the alternative; fill in if you like) means, you'll very likely be able to answer the question as to what a transwoman is.

Simple enough?

OK, so let's think about what a transwoman is. The word "transwoman" is something of a neologism (OED has 1994, which seems recent to me, don't know about you), so it's probably worth getting clear about at least a part of what it might mean (which will help us get to grips with the metaphysical question about what a transwoman is, as I said just above).

OK? Well, some people (often perhaps misled by the "woman" occurring in "transwoman") have wrongly thought a transwoman is a woman who is trans. But that's not the case at all. No, actually "transwoman" doesn't mean that: actually a transwoman is a man who is trans. Hmm. (I note that we don't need to know what it is to be trans (or what "trans" means) to know that about what a transwoman is.)

So there you go. A transwoman is a man.

You know what "woman" means, @DadJoke. And you know (don't you?) at least the relevant part of what "transwoman" means. (I just reminded you.) So you know full well about transwomen being men.

But you want to say transwomen are women. OK, say it. Just don't ask me to take you seriously when you do.

And, back where we came in: I'm sure you now realise talk of "us[ing] different meanings for the same word [sc "woman"]" was just a silly mistake on your part.

Oh, and one more thing. Notice I haven't talked about definitions. Ime, "definition" comes with too much baggage of various sorts. Nothing I have said depends on definitions of words. That's something you might think about too.

Mainly, though @DadJoke, you should think about stopping being so silly.

That is not the statutory guidance, and it is never likely to be.

@DadJoke You can argue that transwomen are women until you are blue in the face but the Equality Act doesn't agree. If TW are W there would be no need for Schedule 3, Part 7, Paragraph 28 in that act.

Talking of the Equality Act, you have been trying to persuade us that excluding transwomen from the Ladies' pond would be unlawful under the EA and its associated statutory guidance. This is link to the EHRC guidance on sex and GR exceptions for service providers:

www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/guidance-separate-and-single-sex-service-providers-equality-act-sex-and-gender-reassignment-exceptions.pdf

Careful reading of this guidance reveals that:

1 - excluding people with the PC of GR from a single sex facility is a proportionate means to achieve the legitimate aim of allowing access to people who would otherwise be prevented by their religion if a mixed sex facility is also provided.

2 - excluding people with the PC of GR from a single sex facility is a proportionate means to achieve the legitimate aim of protecting the dignity and privacy of that sex if a mixed sex facility is also provided.

3 - excluding people with the PC of GR from a single sex environment without providing a mixed sex alternative is not necessarily unlawful providing that there is a reasonable balance of impact on competing protected characteristics. If exclusion would cause a detrimental impact on 1,000 people with the PC of GR but cause a positive impact on 4,000 people with the PC of religion (practicing Moslems or Orthodox Jews) then that exemption would be lawful. The service provider would need to conduct an accurate survey to justify exclusion on this basis.

4 - there is no requirement to show that a majority of service users would benefit from the exercise of an exemption to exclude people with the PC of GR. A single letter or email from a woman who believes that including men with the PC of GR would remove her dignity or privacy or from a single Muslim or Orthodox Jewish woman who states that the presence of a biological man prevents her from accessing the service is enough for the provider to review their policy.

5 - any single sex provider who fails to justify their policy of allowing people with the PC of GR to use the facilities that they choose when challenged by a user from 4 will probably be acting unlawfully.

Readers may find it useful to retain the link to the guidance for the next time somebody tries to use Stonewall Law to justify men's access to women's single sex spaces.

Ffs

Ah ok, thanks. I wonder what the reasons were for voting the way they did.

Loving her reply even more than her brilliant post

Again, it’s your belief, but of course factually, men are not women.

It's intentionally confusing. Think of other common words that end in -woman, many of them now sounding rather old-fashioned:

Policewoman
Laundrywoman
Frenchwoman
Countrywoman
Congresswoman

The common factor here is that all the people these words describe are female.

If trans rights activists had settled on the terms trans-identifying male and trans-identifying female, they'd have encountered a lot less pushback, and it would have been far, far clearer to the rest of the world what they were talking about.

'Trans-identifying males should be included in women's sports.'
'Trans-identifying males should be housed in women's prisons.'
'Trans-identifying males should be included in group counselling sessions for female victims of sexual violence.'
'Trans-identifying male teenagers should be housed with girls on overnight school residential trips.'

I wonder what possible reason they had for choosing transwomen instead.

I think trans women are a subset of women. You do not. We are not going to change each other’s minds. The purpose of this aside (which I did not instigate) was to suggest that in order to discuss transgender issues, people who support trans rights and gender critical people will need to accept that these two groups use different definitions.

I am not interested in a further derail into definitions of women.

Because it obviously isn't going to happen, is it?

It's just making us have to spell it out more bluntly @Froodwithatowel

Men cannot be women and no one is going to make me pretend that they are.

Look at JKR go.

The point is that transwomen are not a subset of women.

But in ‘trans women’, the adjective ‘trans’ to the noun ‘women’ wrongly makes it seem as though they are.

Transwomen are a subset of men.

It is all confusing. I am sure a lot of people can’t make head or tail of it. I had to get an explanation here and memorise the answer. You sort of have to reverse what your brain assumes.

JK Rowling has a message for Dadjoke and all men like him

"This is nonsense. 99.9% of the world knows it's nonsense. The emperor is naked. He might be wearing lipstick, but his balls are swinging in plain sight."

x.com/jk_rowling/status/1765822003246768198?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

Yes- it does imply that they are a subset of women - but they aren't.

Don't give up the day job.