"Trans women ARE biological women"

It really is!

And they still don't get that all this "I am biological!" "I am a woman!" misses the point anyway.

They are assuming that if they can twist a word to include them now, it somehow gives them the natural right to claim whatever already exists for the use of "women". The biggest tell that TW really do not get (or choose not to get) womanhood at all is how they seem to believe it's all just a matter of semantics, as if "women" were a bloodless concept with no connection to anything real.

But it doesn't work that way.

Women's spaces and women's rights didn't come into being in a vacuum. They didn't just weirdly pop into existence fully formed for no reason at all, like a big bang of newly formed rights looking for some people to glom on to.

Every single women's space and women's right that exists, from the ladies changing room to the girls' STEM club to maternity rights to women's officers to the menopause support group, exists because of a real and material problem faced by female people because of our sex or because of how society treats us because of our sex.

The real world needs of women preceded the rights of women.

The rights we have today are what they are because that is what women needed, so that is what women worked to create. Women's rights are not given or arbitrary - the rights of women are shaped by the real world needs of women.

And these rights were called women's rights only because we were called women. Our needs, our rights.

Genderists are twisting the word woman or biological now, after all that, to chsnge its meaning to include a group of people who were never part of that, and by that sleight of hand to claim women's rights. But those rights only exist in the first place because of the needs of a group of people that Genderists also say are not what "woman" means.

What they miss, or perhaps chose not to see, is that "woman's" rights don't belong to the word woman, they belong to the people that word signified. And when they change the meaning of the word, break it from the original group of people to mean someone else, they in doing so also break the link between the word and the rights.

Saying because someone is a "woman" now, under a new way of defining women, they have the right to everything created then, under a definition they don't even consider valid, is like swapping the words for blind and deaf and insisting it means white canes are for people who can't hear and hearing aids for people who can't see.

It’s because it’s a silly TRA gotcha. As pp said on another thread earlier, I first remember Rachel McKinnon using in about 2016/17.

all this flim flam arguing round the edges for the exceedingly rare situatuions where someone may not quite fit the reporoductive mould.

and yet, what is the point. These one offs are increasingly rare and more than likely are not under the gender umberella anyway. We know 99.9999 of all these men larping as women are exactly that. DNA swab the cheek and they are going to come up as your common-or-garden man.

and all this 'oooh you dont know, you might not be a woman' nonsence. Well on a site like MN, where the clue is in the title, its pretty likely there is a pretty big bit of evidence that shows that we mums are.

God those posts are horrendous.
BeKind indeed.

Absolutely.

Otherwise known as we humans know everything 😁The arrogance!

Male and female are reproductive categories. The terms and concept applies across sexually reproducing species. They refer to the producers of small gametes and large gametes respectively.

The point is precisely that humans are not different. The categories apply to them as consistently as they apply to all others.

The person arguing for human exceptionalism is you.

As a one time sci fi geek, "Butlerian" always makes me think of the Butlerian Jihad... which I guess is a pretty good name for the quasi-religious TRA crusaders.

My sex based rights aren't conditional on how trans people feel.

This. All day, every day.

Winston focuss on one aspect fertility - most genetics expert disagree.

Which genetic experts, can you name one?

Chromosomally they are not - they are XY or very very occassionally some derivative of that.
Reproductively they are not - they would have produced the small gametes, not the large ones, even if they have had their testicles removed (which very very few have)
Hormonally they are not - they do not naturally produce hormones in the range which is considered normal for females, they have to take hormones and hormone suppressants to get in any way near to the female range, again, even if they remove their testes.
Physically they are not - they have not naturally developed the primary or secondary physical characteristics that differentiate between the sexes, not without surgery or taking hormones. If they have gone through puberty they will have a mans body, strength, and physique.
Immunologically they are not - interesting programme on R4 about immunological response, comparing men, women and trans men and women. No amount of hormone taking or suppression changed the immune advantage that women have.
There are over 1600 biological differences between the male and female body and simply messing with the hormones and some surgery, is not going to come close to altering evein a tiny percentage of that. Its writ deep in our cells and set down at point of conception.

Credit for that one goes to @SionnachRuadh, I love it.

That’s my point - XY gene doesnt always equal male - its much more complicated than

Yes. Because X and Y are chromosomes so you need to consider genes specifically the SRY gene

I asked you what is the third sex, you haven't answered.

Butlerian flapdoodle! 😆 love it!

Although I should perhaps say instead 'one can only be convinced of such arguments of the nature of the symptom called 'love' by individual bystanders if one first considers the history of the condition of love and the definition of the word it'.

That's all very interesting, and I can imagine having a good conversation about it with you, but it would just be chit-chat between me and you, as neither of us would claim to be an expert in biology or genetics or anything like that - at least, I wouldn't.

But at this point we are beyond chit-chat, we now have a Supreme Court ruling that sex in equality legislation means biological sex, and that means either male or female. We don't have to keep fighting over definitions any more.

I'm prepared to accept the definition of male and female given by people who - unlike us, user1492538376 - have spent decades studying subjects like genetics and biology and so on.

I know it all gets a bit nebulous when you look at fish and the likes, there's nowt as queer as clownfish for instance, and we could have an interesting conversation about all that.

But for now I'd rather stick to human beings, and the significant and provable distinction between male humans and female humans, and how the law deals with that reality.

Send all the TRAs and TW off to the USA. The word "sex" is a naughty word there, so only "gender" is allowed. They will be happy there so.

Oh wait a minute.....

I've not RTFT but it's just flat earthism. Kind of fascinating in a batshit kind of way.

What in the Butlerian flapdoodle are you talking about?

I clearly remember my university professor saying to me:

”Remember that just because you don’t understand how something works, it does not mean that it is not very well understood by those who are experts in the topic”.

I know but they will ALWAYS have the missing piece of the puzzle...the XX chromosome

I genuinely wish I shared your confidence.

However, having seen not only these sorts of arguments made in court but also read the first instance judgment in Maya Forstater's case I am very nervous about leaving this kind of nonsense sitting there unchallenged.

Gems from that judgment include referring to Maya's "belief" in the fact that sex in humans is immutable as "absolutist" and when considering whether her views met the test of cogency and coherence states,

"Her belief is that a man is a person who, if everything is working, can produce sperm and a woman a person who, if everything is working, can produce eggs. This does not sit easily with her view that even if everything is not, in her words, “working”, and may never have done so, the person can still only be male or female. The Claimant largely ignores intersex conditions and the fact that biological opinion is increasingly moving away from a absolutist approach [...] On balance, I do not consider that the Claimant’s belief fails the test of being “attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance”; even though there is significant scientific evidence that it is wrong." (Truncated so as not to bore but all the bits in between are astonishing too).

That was the level of understanding in the Employment Tribunal of this land just a few short years ago, apparently. The judge who wrote that now sits on the Employment Appeal Tribunal and in the Crown Court.

So I take your point, but I struggle!

That is a remarkable post on reddit OP.

How is it I. The animal and plant kingdom we can correctly identify male and female but for humans it’s apparently more complicated?