Help me to verbalise my feelings on the trans movement/new law

Was that reported in the press (male questioning SA victims if they orgasmed during rape). Someone needs to go to jail for asking that question.

. Lots of people cite Anne Fausto-Sterling, a Professor of Biology and Gender Studies. She falsely claimed that 1.7% of the population is intersex, and that therefore sex was not binary

Was this the one that included women with PCOS as intersex?

Professor Robert Winston, the pioneer of fertility treatment and IVF, said: "I will say this categorically. You cannot change your sex. Your sex is there in every cell in the body. You have chromosomal sex, genetic sex, hormonal sex, all sorts of different types. Psychological sex and brain sex. We have unfortunately got very confused about this. Regrettably, we have got into this argument." The scientist who developed the medical treatments that allow infertile couples to have children knows a thing or two about hormones, genetics, and the differences between male and female bodies.

Some people - some of them scientists, some of them philosophers - argue that sex is not binary, but a "continuum" or "spectrum". Lots of people cite Anne Fausto-Sterling, a Professor of Biology and Gender Studies. She falsely claimed that 1.7% of the population is intersex, and that therefore sex was not binary.

But she started with the idea, and then tried to find evidence to justify it. She included conditions which clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome and Turner syndrome. These are conditions where someone is still obviously male or female, but they have an extra chromosome, or one of their chromosomes is not functional. Thsese are malfunctions that cause unforunate health conditions. They are not extra sexes, or intermediate states between male and female. She included late-onset adrenal hyperplasia, where a lack of a certain enzyme causes hormonal problems. In fact, her criteria were so wooly that a woman who lost an ovary or who had a hysterectomy would be counted as intersex!

In reality, conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female, occur in 0.018% of the population. A hundred times lower.

If you test the DNA of any random indivudal trans person, there's a 99.92% chance that they are not "intersex" or have some chromosomal abnormality. Over the past 30 years there has been loads of studies, and if there was a tendancy for trans people to have biological abnormalities compared to non trans people, that would have been discovered and been big news! People that identify as the opposite sex are no more or less likely to have one of these rare medical conditions. You could test one thousand trans women and the liklihood is that every single one would have male chromosomes, XY. In fact genuine intersex people have gotten angry and told trans people to stop bringing them into their arguments, because they have nothing in common.

The fact that there are a very small number of people that do have such abnormalities who are not trans does not mean there is a spectrum or continuum of sex. Even if the false claims were true, and it was the much bigger number of 1.7%. As professor Kathleen Stock points out, “hard cases are not a special fact about the categories of male and female,” and “difficulty about borderline cases is absolutely standard for biological categories”. Kathleen Stock is a philosopher, not a biologist, but her statement was based on gathering research from biologists, and it is a correct biological point.

There are people that are born without arms or legs, or with 6 fingers, or who have their heart on the right side of the body. Yet we can confidently say that human beings have 5 fingers on each hand, and that the heart is on the left side of the body. Human beings do not have a "spectrum" or a "continuum" of arms and legs - normally humans have 2 arms, 2 legs, and occasionally there's an abnormality.

Unlike sex, it is actually reasonable to argue that "race" (white, black, native american, etc) is a spectrum or a continuum. If someone has a black parent or a white parent, are they black, white or mixed race? Barack Obama identies as black despite having a white parent. Yet a white person identifing as black or asian is considered unacceptable.

And in fact, it is reasonable to argue that "species" (homo sapiens) is a spectrum. Long ago, all lions, tigers, panthers etc evolved from the "Proailurus". But as evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins likes to point out, animals don't just suddenly evolve from one specides into another overnight, there must be a continuous sequence of intermediates. So in the fossil record you might find animals that have traits that are somewhere inbetween Proailurus and a Lion. So deciding exactly where Proailurus ended and the fist lion began is tricky, there are edge cases.

And yet it is possible for biologists and zoologists to define what a modern-day lion is. Lions and tigers can mate with each other, and can produce fertile offspring, and yet they are considered seperate species because they each have their own subset of genes that they share within their species. There are certain traits that all lions have, that tigers do not.

By comparison, in Kathleen Stock's words, "the sex division is one of the most stable and predictable there is". It is easier to be certain about sex than it is about species!

Or, in Richard Dawkins's words, race and species are spectrums, but "sex is a true binary".
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/07/biological-sex-binary-debate-richard-dawkins
https://richarddawkins.com/articles/article/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary

Or, you know, just women who want single sex spaces because they don’t want to change or be in a loo with men?

Not forgetting that in this particular case the predatory man was an SNP equalities officer

Some rape crisis centres are so supportive of trans people that they allow non binary male rapists to use their womens services

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/17/predator-cameron-downing-trans-inclusive-rape-crisis-centre/

In order to tackle male violence, though, we need to be able to define it in law. Without a clear, coherent definition of what a man is, it’s impossible to pass legislation that tackles it or to discuss it in a coherent way.

We don’t need to define ‘male’ because all men are bad, but because men as a class have characteristics that can potentially make them especially dangerous to women as a class. There’s no difference between the argument that most trans women aren’t violent and the argument that most men aren’t violent. We all know this. But the fact you acknowledge male violence is a distinct issue from female violence suggests that you appreciate why it’s important to be able to define ‘male’.

Similarly with women’s services - we need to be able to define the class of ‘woman’ before we can protect the people in it, because if you can’t define a class of people, how can you possibly argue that the people you’re talking about have shared needs and characteristics distinct from people outside of that class?

It doesn’t mean that you can’t have shared spaces for biological women and trans women, and obviously that will make sense in lots of situations (e.g. to collaborate on a campaign against male violence, the same way two charities representing different disabilities that cause similar needs to arise might collaborate to campaign for something to benefit both groups).

Also, one of the things the Scottish government would have achieved had they won would be that trans women without a GRC would be deemed men and trans women with a GRC would be deemed women - is that something you’d want to see?

there are a couple of things with this

1. refuges and domestic violence charities generally get their funding from either the government (national or local) the NHS or charitable trusts. All of these bodies have been captured & have made it a condition of funding that they provide support to TW (oddly they never seem to worry about TM). So if they wanted money they had no choice but to offer support
2. It is absolutely fine to offer support to trans ppl suffering sexual and domestic abuse provided that it’s not done by pretending the service is single sex. So a women’s support group containing a TW is by definition not single sex. Truly inclusive organisations offer LGBTQ services alongside those for women and those for men
3. there are some that are completely captured as we saw with Edinburgh but I expect that after a few weeks/months of loud performative TWAWing in most cases it will fade away

‘Why is inclusiveness not for them?’ Because for people like @CosyTaupeShark men are centred at every opportunity and women should just comply. I will never understand how this ideology isn’t seen for what it is, a men’s rights movement.

‘Only men could oppress women for thousands of years, then turn around, put on a dress, and complain that they are the most marginalized group in society." Kara Dansky

‘Recognising that some women are trans doesn’t erase or harm anyone else.’

😂 you may ‘recognise’ this but the law and biological fact doesn’t. People can’t change sex, it’s immutable and binary. Believe what you want but you can’t force others to believe it, and you especially can’t demonise women when we choose to follow facts and not some ridiculous ideology.

There are so many falsehoods in your post I don’t know where to start. I genuinely can’t decide if you are being goady or if you really believe this.

TIM commit sexual offences at a much higher rate than men in general, there is Home Office data that confirms this, they are every bit as much of a threat to women because they’re men too, not a harmless, gentle, subset of women, but men. The law has been clarified, not changed, but clarified that sex in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, and not some feelings in a TW’s head.

If you really care about women’s rights you wouldn’t be supporting an insidious ideology that encourages young ND girls to remove their healthy breasts, that advocates children being prescribed irreversible medication and that fundamentally sets back women’s rights by decades. It is regressive, misogynistic and dishonest.

Trans people have exactly the same rights today as they had a week ago, nothing has changed. Women are not responsible for the fact that you have chosen to believe Stonewall law instead of UK law.

Furthermore, the law needs to be clear so everyone’s on the same page as to what it actually means.

Everyone, of either sex, and every organisation subject to the Equality Act, has a right to understand what the law actually means, otherwise there’s no point in having it as it’s completely unworkable (which is where we had got to before the judgment).

Everyone in society deserves legal certainty. Now we all know where the line is drawn, and trans activists can be far more specific about their needs and what organisations can do to meet those needs.

ALL women deserve access to single sex spaces, this isn’t a faith or an abuse issue, it’s a woman issue.

@CosyTaupeShark

So women must bend over backwards, change language, give up single sex spaces, put themselves at increased risk of physical harm if play contact sports or face never winning in all sports, reject their cultural or religious beliefs re being alone with unrelated men, reframe their trauma if past abuse makes them triggered by a male presence in certain spaces, consent to searches, intimate care etc being carried out by a man or a woman when they request a woman just so trans women can feel included.

Where is the inclusion for all of the women that find the above unacceptable? The ones who don't understand 'cervix haver', the ones who have battles and campaigned for female sport, the ones who are religious, the ones who have been raped or beaten or even the ones who just want to be able to say no, to set their own boundaries. Why is inclusiveness not for them?

Thought it’d been wasted 😂❤️

Sorry no opposing view here - just a similar feeling about how some of my friends and acquaintances were happy about men invading their (our) spaces. 🤔🤔

😆

(butter ref!)

Exactly this.

I highly doubt the people who are saying the judgment is disgusting and transphobic have actually read it.

It makes many important points that support trans activists’ talking points - that a trans person without a GRC should have the same rights as a trans person with a GRC (whereas the Scottish government wanted to give extra rights to people with a GRC and effectively make self-IDing trans people into second-class trans people with fewer rights), that transmen are entitled to maternity rights, that transwomen can still claim sex discrimination if they are discriminated against because someone perceives them to be a woman, and so on.

OP, regarding your friend, I would approach it in the same way I’d respond to the claim that JKR is transphobic - ask them what the judgment actually said that they disagree with, and go from there. If they haven’t read it, there’s probably not much of use to discuss anyway!

Of course, it helps to have at least skimmed the judgment yourself (in case they have actually read it), and there is a summary of the main points at the end of it, so I would probably start there.

Perhaps you could ask her why the very fears that transwomen have are not allowed by biological women.

For example 'they could be strip searches by a man's. If that's allowed to be upsetting for them, why is it not upsetting for a woman to be searched by a transwoman (aka a biological man with no surgery or hormones). This was the case before clarification of the definitions in law.

If a transwoman feels uncomfortable in the gents, why is that? Is it because they find men threatening and intimidated. And if so, why do they not understand that their presence in the ladies has exactly the same effect on women.

If we agree that a transwoman who is raped would be uncomfortable in a men's rape therapy group, why do we think women in their most vulnerable state wouldn't find the presence of someone with a penis frightened in their group?

If transwomen needs to compete in women's sport because they are at risk of being hurt in the mens (if we buy the testosterone argument, which we don't but for the sake of debate) why is the same increases risk not there for women because of their presence in their rugby/ football team?

As far as I can see, every argument that applies in the 'poor marginalised transwoman ' arguments also applies to women. But apparently we should just shut up.

Can you believe, that I can’t believe it’s not butter, is not butter?

etc 🤷‍♀️😂❤️

Can you believe that so many thought men were women?

A PP on a different thread wrote this.. (thank you pp I can’t find you now!), it’s helpful. Take a look.

The Equality Act 2010 clearly always meant woman as biological women because it has its other categories of discrimination such as sexual orientation and gender.

It was the trans lobby trying to steal the clothes as it were of real women that was always the issue.

None of us have ever wanted to be unkind to trans people. It has simply been about protecting woman as woman, the biological person who gives birth etc.

The Supreme Court's own summary of the case makes it all clear including -
"As a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex [168]-[172]. For example, the provisions relating to pregnancy and maternity (sections 13(6), 17 and 18 of the EA) are based on the fact of pregnancy and giving birth to a child.

As a matter of biology, only biological women can become pregnant. Therefore, these provisions are unworkable unless “man” and “woman” have a biological meaning [177]-[188].

Interpreting “sex” as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of “man” and “woman” and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way [172].

It is important that the EA 2010 is interpreted in a clear and consistent way in order that groups which share a protected characteristic can be identified by those that the EA 2010 imposes obligations on so that they can perform those obligations in a practical way [151]-[154"

Can you believe that so many thought this wasn’t the law?

It’s not just single sex spaces it’s also the cast iron guarantee for women and girls that they will receive intimate care from females if they request it.

example: a physically and cognitively disabled young woman with limited ability to communicate, requiring many carers to provide all aspects of care.

this demographic are the most vulnerable to sexual abuse. There is a shortage of carers. Predators do know this. Statistically, any male is more likely to sexually assault.

fwiw, amongst trans identifying males in prison, the rates of them being there for sexual assaults convictions are far far higher than the rest of the male population.

@CosyTaupeShark

"Stop weaponising other marginalised identities"

Ha, nice try! Again, it did not occur to you that I might claim one of those "marginalised identities" and also be related to people who do, and that's why I know first-hand what I'm talking about when it comes to language.

Accessibility is a reason for clarity. Your sentence about close-mindedness does not make sense.

In light of what you wrote in previous posts, it's not the best look to paint posters on here with the same brush as a hive mind!