Well, hello Emma Watson

I'd say that child has a parent problem. Leave them alone to develop how they want and stop gender stereotyping would be a good start. My sister liked Action Man, war films and dressing like a boy. She had tantrums if her hair wasn't short enough. She is a woman in her 50s now and has no desire to be anything else, in fact she grew out of it around 14-15 years old.

Exactly. I'd love them to explain.

The explanations based on exceptions proving rules don't negate the need for the language to describe the rule.

And the arguments based on ethics? They're fundamentally arbitrary.

One thing that gets me is that somewhere, out there in the spiderverse, there's a world in which it's seen as utterly utterly offensive to women to even use the term "transwomen". Where this concept is viewed as the very worst of the worst - like blacking up, like cultural appropriation, like asking a 2nd gen. immigrant where they come from or a teen calling something they don't like "gay".

Because this is a valid argument.

It really, truly, could have gone this way.

That it didn't speaks to our values. Nothing more - just values.

And, specifically (with wrenching irony) how we value the two sexes - their contrasting positions in our social hierarchy.

There must be a book series in the pipeline and this is part of a pre-emptive "why can't we just all get along?" PR strategy.

Some people get into Oxbridge because they've been extensively hothoused.

I've seen a fair few gushing articles about how Emma Watson managed to get straight As in her eleventy-billion GCSEs and A-levels whilst working full time on the set of Harry Potter.

But that actually sounds to me like a pretty ideal environment for a girl with reasonable academic ability to ace her exams. There will have been legal limits on the number of hours of work she was allowed to do on any given day whilst still a minor. So she had plenty of "free" time in which to study, and if I understand correctly she was taught by private tutors on set, possibly on a one to one basis. I'm pretty smart (but also have ADHD and struggle to focus) and I managed to get almost straight As at my local comprehensive and sixth form college, with lots of distractions. I'm sure I'd have got better exam results with three hours a day of intensive one-to-one private tuition. I also think that anyone who has the necessary grades can get into Oxbridge if they're properly coached for the interview, and being a celebrity probably makes it even easier.

Thanks for your response, and apologies for retrospective editing.

Putting my arguments into words helps me test them out. Seeing that such as Tandora typically don't put theirs into words in reply further confirms my thoughts.

It's all about the words, and the freedom to use them responsibly - Orwell knew it!

Oh fuck I can’t believe I clicked a daily mail link just to read that she’s actually not changed her mind at all.

Human beings cannot change sex - it is encoded in every cell of our bodies. Men have different skeletons (different angles at the hip joints, different shaped pelvis, for example), musculature, endocrine system etc etc from women. No amount of hormones or surgeries can change these, and no surgeon can create an actual, functional vagina from an inverted penis or from bowel, or a functioning penis out of arm skin and muscle.

Ergo, trans women are not, and NEVER can be women.

@Catiette, once again, you are so clear. Thank you!

Here’s what I don’t get. Do people who think that men can be women genuinely not understand that the only - like, seriously, The Only - reason that we have men and women is because humans are a sexually reproducing species? All the rest - the size and speed and hair and behaviour stuff? Those are just ways that evolution came up with to ensure that the gametes in one body type got together with the gametes in the other body type. Humans exist to make more humans. The fact that we get to do other stuff too is kind of by-the-by.

I don’t get why people can’t see this.

I don’t think she’s autistic. Nor do I think she’s the brain of Britain. Nor especially talented ant acting. She last had touch with reality before HP when she was a kid. Since then she’s lived in a bubble.

Posters on here massively overestimate how clever you actually have to be to get into Oxbridge. You just need to be good at exams. The majority of students at a 2:1 and may well have got a 2:1 at other red bricks.

Tandora simply states that TWAW and anything else is <<list of bad things>>. Then, when you explain why men can't be women, just like shoes can't be ships and cabbages can't be kings, Tandora accuses you of being reductive etc. And when you explain that this is science and reality, Tandora claims that science and reality are matters of opinion.

It really pains me to see posts as intelligent and articulate as yours up against this intellectually cannibalistic slobber. Still, I appreciate it. And if Tandora thinks their thoughts can shape reality, one wonders why Tandora can't just respect women's right to single sex spaces, and go and think that they're not single sex spaces. That way, Tandora gets to live in the pretend reality they want and we don't have to have knobs out around little girls.

Again, to pre-empt the get-out (I've not overlooked it!), I think you can argue for "female spaces", the other item in your list, as being "reductive, false and based on prejudice", just as I think, above, you can argue for trans rights superceding women's rights. I don't agree with either, but I can see you could argue them.

But to say that the concepts of - the words - "male" and "female" are "reductive, false and based on prejudice"? To me, that's another, "I believe there's no conflict of rights".

Reading it feels like reading "2+2=5" again.

Reductive: "the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought" (No! to "male" and "female" as opposed to Yes! to additive language)

False: "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." (No! to "male" and "female" as opposed to Yes! to the ability of those who believe in it to say so)

Prejudiced: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four" (No! to "male" and "female" as opposed to Yes! to freedom of speech).

I know a good number of people who have gone through Oxbridge - all very intelligent. But they are nearly all lacking in ‘common sense’ and social understanding - they are nearly all autistic. If you are selecting intelligent individuals with a single minded focus on their subjects the way Oxbridge do then you are actively selecting for autism. As such I find it uncomfortable to have people say they are not intelligent as what people are actually describing is autism. That is not to say there aren’t issues there and it certainly provides another link in the transideology/autism pairing.

Ah. So it's the cynical manipulation one.

Cos I don't honestly believe that farmers are prejudiced as heck and their ability to manage animals for food supplies certainly suggests otherwise.

If you actually mean "male humans", "female humans etc., then right there you have my first argument for you actually being "reductive/false/prejudiced", because you'd be acknowledging that "male" and "female" only function meaningfully as qualifying adjectives, and we do indeed need nouns to describe the human variants - the human equivalents of "cow" and "bull".

Reductive - why shouldn't humans have these words too, in addition to other words, phrases, qualifiers and additives that describe the more expansive human experience?

False - where's the evidence that humans are sufficiently different not to have them?

Prejudiced - this is a justification for depriving the half of the human race uniquely disadvantaged by a physically weaker body of a word

And if you're saying that humans are too complex for this dichotomy to apply? Well, how the heck are we managing to reproduce?!

And if you're saying that it's the outliers that matter and which require the removal of these words? Well, I'm right back to "reductive, false and based on prejudice".

Reductive - because to say exceptions to a rule disprove the rule is to reduce language and meaningful categorisation to something unconvincingly arbitrary, while to say that exceptions render the rule unethical is to reduce the rights of those with a strong argument for retaining those words to describe themselves (an argument that is based on reason, evidence and judgement).

False - see, well... human existence?!

Prejudiced - see reductive.

Behaviour isn't sex. Internal feelings aren't sex. Sex isn't something you perform, it's a reproductive category.

That's literally all it is. It's nothing to do with clothes, hairstyles, makeup, hobbies, what colour you like, what books you read, what toys you play with, who your friends are... it is literally a classification of which reproductive category you belong to.

They absolutely do.

And often massively sexist and/or homophobic

football/soccer in the US is predominantly played by women and girls. I saw an interview with the father of a trans identified son saying the boy’s interest in soccer was one of the reasons he knew he was really a girl.

this ‘knowledge’ is always based on sexist stereotypes

Here you are Day - this is written by a clinical psychologist about the immense harm adults do to children when they tell them they're the opposite sex:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/childhood-social-transition/

I was saying what I've heard them say. Not what I am saying.

Correct. Behaviour isn't sex. Internal feelings aren't sex. Sex isn't something you perform, it's a reproductive category. A butch lesbian is a woman. A camp gay man is a man. An unconscious woman in a coma is a woman. If she dies, she'll still be a woman.

Anyone who says their boy is a girl is lying or insane or just so regressive and sexist, they think a boy who likes dolls isn't a boy. Whatever, they're wrong.

PS I recognise I've provided an an unintended get-out in favouring "the term transwomen" instead of saying that you favour using "the qualifier of 'trans' before the word 'women'". Please overlook this - I think we'd both agree that using it to avoid engagement with the substance of a post would be to fall into reason 3 (cynical use of language to shut down debate). Debate is better!

And that the only way that a gender inclusive space that is not single sex can function.

People are invited to use the facility where they feel most comfortable, because it isn't possible to judge something as subjective as gender identity.

The only two possible options are single sex and mixed sex.

Whether trans identifying men have a negative impact on women is by the by, because it's only possible to include all men or no men.

In practice, this was also the case before the SC judgement.

<Wonders why there are now so many pages on this thread>

<Sees Tandora is on the thread>

<Unwatches the thread to retain sanity>

But the extreme danger is when parents have swallowed the gender ideology wholesale to the point that they believe behaviour is somehow more important than their child’s embodied sex. And then go on to encourage blocking puberty, encouraging surgery and irreversible bodily changes that leaves their child permanently infertile, possibly anorgasmic and with life long medical issues. When they’re children. One of my DC insisted she was a rabbit. That’s children.

Using reason, judgement and evidence, Tandora, this I think is why we find it so hard to understand.

1. I assume you accept that transwomen are a distinct category to natal women, and that the difference here is typically "sex/gender assigned at birth" (as, if you think they're the same, I'm at a loss as to why you use the term "transwomen").

2. I assume that your definition of transwomen includes those who don't pass ie. are recognisable as male. To say otherwise would, to my mind, be transphobic (I say that not to be facetious - I genuinely mean it).

3. I assume that you accept that some females who have been victims of male sexual abuse have a trauma response so deeply engrained in them that they can't even engage with beloved male relatives. (To say otherwise would be to deny extensive evidence).

4. You say on this thread that "the actual disagreement... is about whether trans rights are a threat to women's rights" and you believe they're not a threat.

Now, I think that if 4) were, instead, that you recognise that there is a conflict of rights here, but that you favour transwomen's rights over women's (as would be your right!), then people would at least understand from where you're coming in theory.

But to deny the conflict in the first place is genuinely hard to understand - at least as a product of reason, evidence and judgement.

Because the conviction that there is no conflict must (using reason, evidence and judgement!) mean one - or more - of the following:

1. That you reject one - or more - of the four premises listed above (in which case, which, and why?)

2. That you believe that, when the presence of an individual in a recognisably male body invokes an involuntary trauma response in a female, that that male's self-perception can automatically override and negate - remove? - the female's trauma response so she doesn't suffer or feel unable to remain in proximity to the male (because, otherwise, you would acknowledge that there's a conflict of rights).

Or...

3. That you're rather cynically manipulating the words "man" and "woman" (and perhaps also "male" and "female") to prevent even the possibility of applying reason, evidence and judgement in the way that is necessary to process this issue logically and speak about it freely. (Which would be a fairly anti-democratic approach, preventing, as it does, our very capacity to describe and discuss a potential conflict of rights).

That's where some readers' (my own included) confusion lies. Feminist posters here typically at leats acknowledge that there's some conflict of rights. They may quibble about the term "rights", and they'll certainly argue in favour of females.

But they don't deny it outright, as this claim doesn't hold up logically any more than 2+2=5 does.