"Trans women ARE biological women"

I know several trans people. They're all very nice, I want them all to be safe and happy and they're all male or female until they die, and actually even after that. Can't change it. They're human, after all.

And they've all got the perfect right to use single sex facilities that align with their sex, or mixed sex facilities. Like every other human in the world. Access to naked women and girls isn't a human right for a man. The feeling in his head and his personal wishes about it are entirely irrelevant. Gender isn't sex, in fact nobody has ever actually defined what gender is (but by God they know who the women are when seeking who to intimidate and control). Think what you want about it, but stay out of the single sex spaces to which you don't belong.

Another thought, dear lurkers: If, as our esteemed educator (who knows more than Profs Winston and Dawkins) really means that male and female sexes are so ineffably impossible for anyone to discern... the logical conclusion would not be that persons-of-gender could barge into opposite sex spaces but that no sexed spaces could be defined at all.

Just like to say I fully believe in what Professor Lord Robert Winston has to say about the nature of the mammal species we call human beings, and that is that we are divided into two distinct sexes. Female and male. Incidentally and not coincidentally like most of the other mammalian, insect, avian and plant life on this planet. And until he is actually proven wrong ( don’t worry PLRW it isn’t going to happen 🙂) then I will also believe in the truth that when human beings are dead and reduced to nothing but bone , no hair, no clothing, just bone, archaeologists can tell at a glance if an adult skeleton belonged to a man or a woman, no dna or chromosome investigation required, because it is that fucking obvious.

You said "concept of male and female is reductive and a social construct" did you not?

Do you accept that, regardless of whether you think being female is a "social construct" or not, and extreme minority DSDs notwithstanding,

• pretty much half of humanity does meet the simple, observation-based definition of female that has been used since before humans could even talk
• people who meet that simple definition have been structurally disadvantaged in almost every human society, and also (should they reproduce) carry a higher share of the repeoductive burden

And therefore because of these challenges and inequities, regardless of whether you think being female is a "social construct" or not, and extreme minority DSDs notwithstanding, the half of humanity that does meet the simple, observation-based definition of female that has been used since before humans could even talk still needs sex-based rights, albeit based on an in your opinion partial and flawed understanding of sex, because it is exactly under that partial and flawed understanding of sex that they are being disadvantaged?

Thanks, FlowchartRequired, I was just looking for that!

Case in point: 'the concept of male and female is reductive and a social construct.'

A poster on here once compared this type of thinking with epicycles. I find that I cannot disagree.

Bit like the Labour Party definition of a woman, tee hee...

Unfortunately, you are making a category error. To say that ‘we don’t know everything’ is not the same statement as ‘we know nothing’.

Similarly, to argue that because genes are complex the concept of male and female is reductive suggests that you need to re-examine the concept of ‘foundational knowledge.’ There’s a difference between an over simplified concept and one that is basic to, say, reproductive biology.

And you keep saying ‘social construct’.

I do not think that phrase means what you think it means.

Yes!

I can't even...

Science and biology is messy and complex, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.

Sex is measurable and observable via biological markers of various kinds, and these markers were not constructed by society. The markers would still be present even if society disagreed. It therefore fails the test as a social construct.

How sex is treated by society and how we have expectations of each sex is a social construct.

Two different things.

Individuals with DSD have asked not to be brought into this debate but just very briefly, they are still either male or female, but with differences in their development. The name was changed from intersex to DSD because intersex implies they’re between sexes, and that’s simply not the case.

Thank you for the summary. Having lost an hour of my life revisiting this is tedious rehash of pseudo scientific whataboutery, rhetorically this is the fundamental flaw of their argument.

It's weird reading all these Reddit/TRA talking points now. They were always bollocks, but now they just feel so terribly dated and old fashioned in a 'people really did once think that the Sun orbited the Earth' kind of way.

I just know that science and biology is very messy, we humans don’t fully understand it
While that is certainly the case it doesn't mean you can make shit up and claim it is true without any supporting evidence.
Back to those experts other than Prof Winston and Richard Dawkins: why did the Scottish government not call on them for witnesses in this court case?

Yeah thats not my argument 🙄 Remove the rights of ‘female’ people.

False equivalence.

We don't remove the rights of, oh, let's say blind people because some people have red hair. But apparently we should remove the rights of female people because some people have DSDs?

I can feel the Fausto Sterling 'common as redheads' nonsense coming. I can just sense it....

You obviously don't know enough but think you do. You keep saying "we" instead of "I".

Based on your posts I (as in me) definitely know more than you. Stop saying "we"

Exactly. All this focus on the incredibly tiny exceptions as if that justifies ignoring the fact that for 99.lots% of humans, our sex is obvious and for women especially, our sex has physical and social consequences that if not mitigated for put us at a disadvantage in society.

The argument that because 1 in 80,000 people on the planet might have Swyer syndrome, 4 billion people on the planet don't deserve sex-based protections even though that 4 billion people certainly do suffer sex-based inequity is mind blowing.

I wish there was an eloquent patient person on my LinkedIn feed to do this!

Dear lurkers, can you see how you're being snowed?

Also they are not one offs or increasingly rare 🥸

The minority argument is never a good one. Gays or red heads are in the minority - does that mean they don’t have equal rights?

I'll just keep bumping this periodically to remind readers that all the clouds of whataboutery are not relevant.

No I don’t. I just know that science and biology is very messy, we humans don’t fully understand it - we pretend we do and like nice neat categories and definitions. Genes work in messy complex ways that we dont fully understand - and the concept of male and female is reductive and a social construct.