Graham Linehan on the chapter about him in Jon Ronson's new book

It is not possible to define or describe a transwoman without starting from the basic fact that he is a man.

This is nonsense.

Under all scientific, objective, verifiable criteria a ‘transwoman’ is a man.

People don't biologically change on their 18th birthday. They do biologically change at puberty. The point is that we no longer in our society consider that biology is the most important consideration. To insist that it is - but only in the case of transwomen - doesn't make sense.

To make the glaringly obvious point: age is a continuum, but sex is binary. A man can't become a woman, and vice versa.

But people do change age. (I can't believe I have to explain this.) A 15-year old will one day be a 16-year old, who will one day be a 17-year old, and so on and so forth. Children reach puberty at different times. They reach emotional and intellectual maturity at different times. (Some of them never reach it, mentioning no names.) Therefore the law has to make somewhat arbitrary decisions about the age when a person can consent to sex, vote, drive a car, get married etc.

The law doesn't have to make decisions about what constitutes a male or a female, however, because these are fixed states that don't change.

This really isn't difficult to understand, unless you are the sort of person who is determined not to understand it.

Every single “trans woman” is a man. Biologically and under the Equality Act 2010.

have you got bumping this thread on a weekly basis when it's fallen off the page yet again because everyone else has lost interest diarised???

smh

A man witha piece of paper saying he is a woman is still just a man with a piece of paper.

And why is it all genderists slip the old 'age is just a number' thing in? Very odd.

A transwoman with a GRC is legally "a woman" like a company is legally "a person".

It's a lgeal fiction to allow an entity to act in certain circumstances in a capacity that they would not otherwise have. It's not a redfinition of the reality of women and men in the lived world.

The only way a transwoman is a woman in reality and in his relatonships with other people rather than just in certain aspects of his relationship with the law and the state is if we change what the word "woman" means, from a fact of the body to a set of personality traits.

And even if you do that, (1) the word "woman" is not longer applicable to a very large number of the female people to whom it currently applies, and (2) said man STILL is in no way interchangable with or any more like the female half of humanity than he was before.

So all you've really done is moved a word around. Reality hasn't altered because of it. The existence of two sexes and the physical, historic and social outcomes that result from this doesn't change just because you changed what a word means.

Ultimately the only way you can make transwomen women, or even just not-men, in our lived reality as well as a legal sense is to force people to pretend reality is different to what it in fact is.

By the same metric, the law isnt interested in a mans identity. The EA applies to sex.

Please can we maybe not do the justifications for adults having sex with children?

The law doesn't class anyone as a paedophile. The law makes judgements on whether acts were/are criminal.

A transwoman isn't a man.

False. An adult transwoman is an adult male, that is, is a man.

What a transwoman is a matter of opinion.

True. People can hold any opinion they want. No one else has to agree with them, though.

They do biologically change at puberty.

Biological changes happen throughout life; some are quite profound. However, none of these change one’s sex at birth into the opposite. It’s impossible.

A transwoman isn't a man. What a transwoman is a matter of opinion. According to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 "her acquired gender is legally recognised as female, subject to statutory exceptions". According to the Equality Act 2010 "she is not a woman for the Act's provisions concerning the protected characteristic of sex".

The law is very good at making sweeping statements then making exceptions. A teenage boy or a man who has sex with a 17 year old girl is not a paedophile, for example, even though a 17 year old is supposedly still a child.

People don't biologically change on their 18th birthday. They do biologically change at puberty. The point is that we no longer in our society consider that biology is the most important consideration. To insist that it is - but only in the case of transwomen - doesn't make sense.

Still a digression but getting back to something a pp asserted. Many mammals, humans included, become sexually mature way before they become physically mature. In other species females rapidly reach adult size and/or are only in oestrus at specific times of the year which gives immature bodies some respite. They often give birth to litters of young which means each individual baby is relatively tiny. It's arguable that because humans don't have these mechanisms, we use our big brains (the cause of much of the birthing problems) to evolve cultural solutions such as an aversion to having sex with minors. Later codified into laws. It's notable that 'cultures' that still practice child marriage are widely considered backwards. Coincidentally(?) they often also seem to be backwards in women's rights.

Apropos of nothing I recently learned that lupron is used to prevent hormone induced feather plucking in parrots 🦜

Unless used for breeding, male pigs are slaughtered well before puberty

In decades past males pigs were also routinely castrated despite being slaughtered long before they became sexually mature allegedly to prevent boar taint when it was unecessary.

Boar taint is a very interesting concept. Fully in support of farming digressions here.

When these animals are castrationed - what happens to the testicles? Is there a big bucket of bollocks that goes to be made into cat food or so they just get composted?

Me too and I'm chilled about derails for the most part, particularly if the thread subject has been exhausted. They're often interesting and frequently hilarious.

I am loving the information about pigs. Because I grew up with cattle and horses. Pigs are really interesting!

If Glinner should read this thread 👋 then this might be the derail of the century 😃

You won't have eaten meat from a boar (adult male pig) in the UK.

Unless used for breeding, male pigs are slaughtered well before puberty precisely to avoid boar taint.

If you have eaten pork in the UK in the last 30 years you will have eaten uncastrated boar flesh as only 2% of male pigs are castrated but pork pigs are slaughtered much younger than pigs destined for bacon.

I think it could be said that someone who doesn’t analyse information, just superficially accepts something that someone or a group that they believe to be information leaders without question, is going to repeat misinformation as if it all makes perfect sense.

We keep seeing these false comparisons that some think are apt and insightful. But the reality is that the common denominator is that all these false comparisons are there to make the impossible appear credible.

I genuinely think some people believe in magic

this whole 'castrate a male animal and they become a different creature altogether' thing is so magnificently irrational

I’ve experienced boar taint in Norway, where they don’t castrate and sometimes slaughter quite late. It absolutely does exist.

I found myself wondering though, if a bull that’s castrated is a bullock, why don’t men who get themselves castrated call themselves mannock? Instead they chose the entirely inappropriate “transwoman”. And yes, they did choose that, until it crossed someone’s mind that inserting a space would make it easier to pretend “trans” is an adjective.

At least they've moved on from clownfish. It's good to switch things up every now and then.😀