One area where I think there is more nuance than many views expressed on here, however, is that there are known exceptions to absolute biological sex categorisation. There is research to support this and it has long been established that what are now called ‘intersex’ conditions exist. The role of epigenetics in the expression of genetic code is also only just beginning to be understood, and I believe that in future this will help us to understand sex and gender identity much better.

Gosh, intersex. That's a new one!

Meanwhile, @UnintentionalArcher I can help you with understanding sex and gender identity.

There are two gametes and humans are genetically programmed down one or the other route to production. Sometimes things go wrong. But that doesn't mean there are more than two sexes.

Gender identity is utter nonsense. If you want to pin it down, it is clothes, hair and behaviours, possibly make up and what sort of welly boots you own. If these two words were never uttered again nothing about any human would change one iota.

Essentially people who are very likely to still be biologically men.

I did not know that and I think that is absolutely horrendous regarding men in the Scottish prisons. They allowed people who claimed to be transwomen in the womens' prison. Essentially people who are very likely to still be biologically men. That is just wrong. If it comes up again I will have that as an example of why I was so glad about that legal decision.

I am just sick of the absolute dismissal of womens' concerns about being possibly harmed by transwomen when anyone can wake up one day and identify as a transwomen. It's the self identification factor.

Not down for transwomen playing in womens' sport. It's not fair. Does that make me anti trans? I do not think I am anti trans. I just think your gender dysmorphia does not trump womens' rights that have been fought so hard for.

I think children who think they have been born in the wrong gender ( and really how many people can this really be in a typical population) should wait till adulthood before they start hormones etc but I have to keep that view to myself as I know people whose kids are on that train and I just do not think at 12/13/14 you can be making that decision but it's like this sea change has happened and a significant majority of people are going along with it.

It’s great to see someone expressing nuanced views about this and asking questions. When I consider my own circles - professional, friends etc - I’ve been shocked at the strength and seeming homogeneity of the views I often see expressed on Mumsnet. Despite agreeing with elements of those views, there seems to be an astoundingly monolithic way of thinking here about the ‘trans issue’. I’m not sure that some posters always fully understand the limits of the Supreme Court ruling, or where even JK Rowling would caveat or circumscribe her own arguments.

I’m an older millennial - a little bit older than Emma Watson. What I will say first is that I don’t align myself with one individual or think it’s helpful for anyone to be seen or positioned as any kind of ‘spokesperson’ on these matters. These are my views:

• I agree with the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the 2010 Equality Act; the nature and provisions of the act made this ruling inevitable.
• I agree that biological sex is at present immutable, and that it is coded at a genetic level.
• One area where I think there is more nuance than many views expressed on here, however, is that there are known exceptions to absolute biological sex categorisation. There is research to support this and it has long been established that what are now called ‘intersex’ conditions exist. The role of epigenetics in the expression of genetic code is also only just beginning to be understood, and I believe that in future this will help us to understand sex and gender identity much better.
• The above means that, in principle, I cannot wholly support absolutist arguments on biological sex, which many of posters seem to make, although I agree that the overwhelming majority of people are either biologically male or female. For this and other reasons, I also cannot support absolutist arguments about gender (which I will come to).
• What also seems to be missing, to me, from most discussions on Mumsnet is that the judges clearly stated that the ruling did not have reach into wider societal and cultural discussions about what it means to be and live as a woman. To me, the ruling was very far from definitive in its views on gender. Rather than doing away with that debate, it very clearly signposted that there was no simple answer to those questions and that biological sex was only one element of that discussion.
• While my views on biological sex are as outlined above, I do not hold that sex and gender are necessarily the same thing. What I will say is that I cannot definitively say what gender is - I acknowledge that it’s an ephemeral concept - and I do not know what proportion of gender identity (whether one feels male or female regardless of biological sex) might be culturally constructed and what might be somehow innate or biological. Neither, however, does anyone else - this is an area where I believe science and research will one day catch up to some degree and we will all become more enlightened as a result.
• Nonetheless, where I find myself strongly disagreeing with many posters who might fall into the JK Rowling-supporter camp is that just because it’s an ephemeral concept, I don’t think that means therefore that it doesn’t exist, or is ‘all in their head’, as I saw one poster claim of trans women’s feelings about their gender. Looking at historical record, for example, people who feel that they have a gender identity misaligned with their apparent biological sex have always existed. I do not think that the vast majority of these people have invented their feelings or experiences in order to commit crimes against women.
• What strikes and troubles me about many of the views expressed is the bundling together of valid if narrow areas of the debate about spaces like female prisons with the denial of trans identities. This, of course, is not everyone, but I believe we need to separate out valid debate from the frequently sweeping denials of the experiences of a minority group who are themselves vulnerable, and which so often seem to accompany these discussions.
• Next, while I believe that discussions about female spaces have validity - I speak as someone who has been a victim of violent male physical and sexual assault, for example - I believe that the vast majority of trans women are not, to use your helpful term, ‘bad actors’. There are of course a small number of examples of individual bad actors, including some from prisons. While I agree that is problematic and a solution is needed, I believe these examples to be the absolute exception and not the rule, as in any walk of life.
• I believe, therefore, that this aspect of the discussion, while important, has become overblown and in many places so emotive that it is damaging wider rational debate about these two groups. As I understand it, there is no large-scale or robust evidence that transwomen as a population pose a risk to biological women. Until there is, I will hold my view that the overwhelming majority of threats to women come from outside this group, and that most trans people are sincere in how they experience gender orientation. Some people my age and younger may agree more readily with these views because they have grown up with more open discussion about trans identities.
• Where I think the above creates the largest risk is in its potential to pit two oppressed groups against one another. I fully understand, from personal experience, the visceral fear that women have of violent men and the anger about them. That threat and anger should never be ignored or minimised. However (and here we come to the potential sources of some of the views you’ve mentioned likening it to racism), a bit like when politicians like Farage pit the most vulnerable in our society against the most vulnerable from others (e.g. many immigrants) anything that sets biological women up in opposition to trans women (most of whom are ‘good actors’) is to me a potentially dangerous straw man which detracts from a far greater threat posed by still-prevalent patriarchal structures which permit widespread male violence and oppression of women. Trans women do not conform to traditional ideas of masculinity or fit within approved patriarchal categories - far from it - and while they are different from biological females, they are also inevitably generally disadvantaged within patriarchal structures, and hence are vulnerable.
• Taking Rowling’s belief that Gender Recognition Certificates were the biggest threat to female rights in her lifetime, for example, to my mind hugely overestimates the population-level threat posed by trans women, risks demonising them as a group and sidelines much more serious (and very significantly evidence-based threats) like low rape reporting and conviction rates.

TLDR: I think lots of millennials (and other women) would agree that issues like female spaces matter but would feel that the threat many argue is posed by trans rights (e.g. Rowling’s belief that GRC’s were the biggest threat to women’s rights in her lifetime) is overstated and potentially even dangerous for both women and trans women.

Other societies faced the issue of gender-nonconforming men and dealt with it by acknowledging a third category, with names meaning things like "in the manner of a woman."

What they don't seem to have done is insist that transwomen "are" women, and hound anyone who questions that statement in any way, or try to insert transwomen into any and every space set aside for women.

In other words, the conflict of interest here was created by trans activist insistence on a strategy of appropriation and colonisation of womanhood and women's rights. If they had gone for a third category- third spaces approach this would have been avoided and I suspect most women would have supported them.

It’s great to see someone expressing nuanced views about this and asking questions. When I consider my own circles - professional, friends etc - I’ve been shocked at the strength and seeming homogeneity of the views I often see expressed on Mumsnet. Despite agreeing with elements of those views, there seems to be an astoundingly monolithic way of thinking here about the ‘trans issue’. I’m not sure that some posters always fully understand the limits of the Supreme Court ruling, or where even JK Rowling would caveat or circumscribe her own arguments.

I’m an older millennial - a little bit older than Emma Watson. What I will say first is that I don’t align myself with one individual or think it’s helpful for anyone to be seen or positioned as any kind of ‘spokesperson’ on these matters. These are my views:

• I agree with the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the 2010 Equality Act; the nature and provisions of the act made this ruling inevitable.
• I agree that biological sex is at present immutable, and that it is coded at a genetic level.
• One area where I think there is more nuance than many views expressed on here, however, is that there are known exceptions to absolute biological sex categorisation. There is research to support this and it has long been established that what are now called ‘intersex’ conditions exist. The role of epigenetics in the expression of genetic code is also only just beginning to be understood, and I believe that in future this will help us to understand sex and gender identity much better.
• The above means that, in principle, I cannot wholly support absolutist arguments on biological sex, which many of posters seem to make, although I agree that the overwhelming majority of people are either biologically male or female. For this and other reasons, I also cannot support absolutist arguments about gender (which I will come to).
• What also seems to be missing, to me, from most discussions on Mumsnet is that the judges clearly stated that the ruling did not have reach into wider societal and cultural discussions about what it means to be and live as a woman. To me, the ruling was very far from definitive in its views on gender. Rather than doing away with that debate, it very clearly signposted that there was no simple answer to those questions and that biological sex was only one element of that discussion.
• While my views on biological sex are as outlined above, I do not hold that sex and gender are necessarily the same thing. What I will say is that I cannot definitively say what gender is - I acknowledge that it’s an ephemeral concept - and I do not know what proportion of gender identity (whether one feels male or female regardless of biological sex) might be culturally constructed and what might be somehow innate or biological. Neither, however, does anyone else - this is an area where I believe science and research will one day catch up to some degree and we will all become more enlightened as a result.
• Nonetheless, where I find myself strongly disagreeing with many posters who might fall into the JK Rowling-supporter camp is that just because it’s an ephemeral concept, I don’t think that means therefore that it doesn’t exist, or is ‘all in their head’, as I saw one poster claim of trans women’s feelings about their gender. Looking at historical record, for example, people who feel that they have a gender identity misaligned with their apparent biological sex have always existed. I do not think that the vast majority of these people have invented their feelings or experiences in order to commit crimes against women.
• What strikes and troubles me about many of the views expressed is the bundling together of valid if narrow areas of the debate about spaces like female prisons with the denial of trans identities. This, of course, is not everyone, but I believe we need to separate out valid debate from the frequently sweeping denials of the experiences of a minority group who are themselves vulnerable, and which so often seem to accompany these discussions.
• Next, while I believe that discussions about female spaces have validity - I speak as someone who has been a victim of violent male physical and sexual assault, for example - I believe that the vast majority of trans women are not, to use your helpful term, ‘bad actors’. There are of course a small number of examples of individual bad actors, including some from prisons. While I agree that is problematic and a solution is needed, I believe these examples to be the absolute exception and not the rule, as in any walk of life.
• I believe, therefore, that this aspect of the discussion, while important, has become overblown and in many places so emotive that it is damaging wider rational debate about these two groups. As I understand it, there is no large-scale or robust evidence that transwomen as a population pose a risk to biological women. Until there is, I will hold my view that the overwhelming majority of threats to women come from outside this group, and that most trans people are sincere in how they experience gender orientation. Some people my age and younger may agree more readily with these views because they have grown up with more open discussion about trans identities.
• Where I think the above creates the largest risk is in its potential to pit two oppressed groups against one another. I fully understand, from personal experience, the visceral fear that women have of violent men and the anger about them. That threat and anger should never be ignored or minimised. However (and here we come to the potential sources of some of the views you’ve mentioned likening it to racism), a bit like when politicians like Farage pit the most vulnerable in our society against the most vulnerable from others (e.g. many immigrants) anything that sets biological women up in opposition to trans women (most of whom are ‘good actors’) is to me a potentially dangerous straw man which detracts from a far greater threat posed by still-prevalent patriarchal structures which permit widespread male violence and oppression of women. Trans women do not conform to traditional ideas of masculinity or fit within approved patriarchal categories - far from it - and while they are different from biological females, they are also inevitably generally disadvantaged within patriarchal structures, and hence are vulnerable.
• Taking Rowling’s belief that Gender Recognition Certificates were the biggest threat to female rights in her lifetime, for example, to my mind hugely overestimates the population-level threat posed by trans women, risks demonising them as a group and sidelines much more serious (and very significantly evidence-based threats) like low rape reporting and conviction rates.

TLDR: I think lots of millennials (and other women) would agree that issues like female spaces matter but would feel that the threat many argue is posed by trans rights (e.g. Rowling’s belief that GRC’s were the biggest threat to women’s rights in her lifetime) is overstated and potentially even dangerous for both women and trans women.

Yes I hope you did get my response Muraki.

No one is entitled to a response in this world, even you.

I tend not to engage with people when they are rude to be honest whether it be online or in the real world. Something to think about if you engage like that a lot in the world perhaps? Maybe it's just an online thing you do. It closes conversation down.

I am not a regular on these boards but I am aware of the controversy over J K Rowling's position as I have encountered so many young people who have become very hostile with me if I do not show that I do not go along with them in their views that she is the equivalent of a racist in her attitude towards racists. I try and stay neutral and not declare my views but that is not enough for them. They want tos ee you express the same vitriol that they have so they can be assured you are on the same side. I find it so anti democratic frankly.

Privately I was relieved with the British ruling that means trans women who may well still have a penis and all the bad actors who could then take full advantage of a law that allowed transwomen into women only spaces, are not allowed to access those women spaces. I appreciate that most transwomen just want to go about leading their daily lives identifying as women and using women spaces is part of that and they have no ill intent. But many do not have bottom surgery and so yes they still have a penis as do the men who can just wake up one day and say they identify as a woman and start using those women only spaces and not have good intent? What am I missing? Why don't the younger generation see this and get that it is a huge risk to women? Do they think that there will be no bad actors? I just do not get it. The law is not to punish transwomen. It's to protect women.

I am not without sympathy for transwomen who genuinely feel uncomfortable going into male spaces. I appreciate that they identify as female but I just feel it's a conflict of rights and that you cannot sacrifice the right of women to feel safe in a women only space so that the smaller % of transwomen do not feel uncomfortable. Safety trumps comfort.

I personally would not react to a transwoman being in a female toilet but then I am aware how do I know it is a genuine transwoman and not a bad actor so I appreciate other women not being comfortable.
Maybe we need additional gender neutral toilets in this day and age.

But when this topic comes up with many younger people I can tell that the fact that I do not join in with the hatred for JK Rowling, that it puts me in the pro JK Rowling camp and I do agree with her support of ensuring that law got passed.

I am not so sure about the comments she made about kids not being trans as I think some kids as teens do seem to think they are in the wrong gender, maybe not in the large numbers that we are seeing today but clearly some people do feel they were born in the wrong gender and as a society I think we do have to support them without sacrificing the rights of an other group.

Rowling has never expressed hate for transpeople as far as I am aware. I do think she can be provocative in how she expressed her views and that is her choice but I just do not understand how the younger generation claim she is the equivalent of a racist but with trans rights? The language they use about her is so strong and I really try to avoid conversations about her because it has become so divisive- it is hard to find a millennial who does not agree with Emma Watson's viewpoint.

I am not 100% up to date with all Rowling has said but what has she said that is so bad that the younger generation have such deep hatred for her? I am just trying to understand it better and be ready to respond to the vitriol I get from younger colleagues when it comes up as it does seem to.