I do not believe in gender identity.

[SernieBanders]

There are two sexes: male and female. Occasionally, that matters.

There is no such thing as an innate gender identity—no internal essence that makes someone more inclined to wear dresses and sip wine, or football boots and down pints. Those are cultural stereotypes, not proof of some mystical gendered soul.

The idea of gender identity is sexist, misogynistic, and regressive. It reinforces outdated norms instead of challenging them. Women do not need an inner feeling of womanhood to be women. Men do not need a gender identity to be men. Sex is real. Stereotypes are not.

I hope with the flurry of cultural changes, legal challenges, scientific findings and executive orders in the last ~12 months, more people feel able to stand up and be counted, and say - No More.

Quite

How do you prevent from sexual assault on an individual basis in a mixed sex prison?

I can only assume this is based on some utopian thinking that if we are nice to everyone, they'll be nice right back to us.

Jeannette, I very much hope you never have cause to lose that optimistic naivety.

Most of us are very well aware that the world presents various specific risks to women that we attempt to lower by using some basic safeguarding.

There is also privacy and dignity, but I'm going to guess those aren't things that you consider important.

I am sure it could be extensive re-education programmes, single occupancy cells and an abundance of prison guards, could be remote zapper collars that when an assault is started on camera the camera operator zaps the about to be sexual assaultist, or maybe just believing the best of people and using the justice system that we have so if the person assaults someone they will get punished (and the victim just needs to understand that they got justice so no hard feelings about the lack of ability to protect each person because the priority is equality or categorising humans into either sex and so no sex segregation.

Less intellectual here - I was thinking of Charles Kingsleys the Water Babies which was core to my childhood. I was terrified of Mrs BeDoneByAsYouDid and encourage to emulate Mrs DoAsYouWouldBeDoneBy, who was depicted as an ethereal beauty in a stunning colour plate in my edition of the book. Whilst I raised my children (childminded 50 others, taught more and herded brownies and beaver scouts) with the ethos of ‘kindness first’, I am afraid my recent exposure to this ideology has rather tarnished my naivety. I’d still ask any child in my charge to question - is it kind? They were always encouraged to ask next is it safe?

I love the idea of a utopia where everyone is compassionate and considerate of others - isn’t this was most religions seek to achieve?- but the fact is that if compassion, consideration, honesty, etc were natural states of human being, we would neither have created religion nor legal systems in order to control and direct behaviour - and of male persons in particular. Yet we have, over and over again, across millennia, and across cultures.

Humans are as flawed and dangerous as they are complex and remarkable in their creativity and ingenuity. They have shown repeatedly that man, and males especially, cannot be trusted to put the needs of others above their personal wants and desires - there is always an extrinsic driver at play even where a person seems altruistic.

There's also a blind spot in that a predatory abuser will deliberately, by definition, seek out weak spots and exploit opportunities. So it's not, as some imagine, that women warning about predators are saying there are so many of them they are bound to turn up everywhere, it's that we are saying they will seek out and use any loophole they can find. If you create a situation that allows an abuser or predator to access victims, you can pretty much guarantee they will turn up sooner or later.

Agree. I have been howled down for saying this.
If they no longer have a penis and testicles (and their male hormone levels are down as a result) I don't see why they can't be allowed in women's spaces (not all women are safe to be around either).

I disagree that 'there are only two sexes' because there are intersex folks and in a civilised society we need to find ways to accommodate those people.

Sarah Jane Baker castrated himself in prison.

He was in prison for torture and kidnap and attempted murder.

He is a man without testicles. You think he should be in a women's prison?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66676737

And 'intersex folks' is a term that many people with Disorders or Variations of Sex Characteristics dislike.

It does not mean there is a third sex.

Here is NHS info on DSDs.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/differences-in-sex-development/

https://www.dsdfamilies.org/

Humans are dichotomously sexed mammals. There are only two sexes, male and female.

Richard Dawkins:

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/07/biological-sex-binary-debate-richard-dawkins

Lowering testosterone is not removing the male physical advantages though. And there are other ways to assault and sexually abuse people if you no longer have a penis and testes.

Sadly, there is no evidence that male people at any stage of transition commit sex crime at a lower rate than the general male group in the UK. That is likely why people push back on your suggestions. Your suggestion means the female people the exclusion of all male people over about 8 years old was meant to protect are back in a situation of increased risk of harm again.

There are only two sexes. People who have differences of sex development can reliably be sorted into male or female sex categories, with the use of modern technology for testing to investigate chromosomes and genetic markers, anatomy and some other indicators. The human sex categories are determined around what gametes the person’s body has been formed around producing. And no person can produce both.

I used to feel that fully/surgically transitioned persons were welcome too - but the fact is that (as we REALLY do not want to look at people’s genitals) we have no way of knowing whether we are sitting with a formerly or currently penis-ed person. And on this basis we have absolutely no choice but to exclude both varieties from our spaces. They can blame GI for that as it would never have crossed my mind 10 years ago (when I did happily share a hairdryer and mirror in the local David Lloyd with a stunningly made up trans woman). Never crossed my mind for a second that the small, delicate, mixed race TW might still have her bits down below and thus be a threat. However if I allow ‘her’, not knowing whether ‘she’ has a GRC or not, how can I then exclude Dr Upton? All 6ft 6 of him? Or any other self-identifying, physically intact male who more likely has a sexual fetish that requires my participation?

And I am sorry, I always know instantly that a person is trans and not a natal female (or natal male, if a TM). Possibly have a heightened radar due to childhood experiences (CSA and DV), but I am never wrong.

If I recall there've been a few random posters on here in previous years with the uninformed "sex segregation restricts everyone's freedoms" claims.

It always seems to represent a type of incel thinking given the lack of insight & knowledge of VAWG & child safeguarding.

If they no longer have a penis and testicles (and their male hormone levels are down as a result) I don't see why they can't be allowed in women's spaces (not all women are safe to be around either)

Because removing your penis doesn't make you a women.

i find it extraordinary that this has to be said

Yes. If one is focussed on the male's desire (to access women's spaces) it seems almost reasonable that he should get what he wants if any potential threat is neutralised.

If one considers women's desire (to have a space free of male-bodied people, whether for privacy, dignity, safety, religious reasons, past trauma, whatever), it's clear that it's not fair to foist a male on those women, whether or not he has a penis (how are they to know?).

Did we get an answer to whether Jeannette thinks sports should still be segregated or should sport just be abolished if it is not just fun and everyone playing together?

We don't have a justice system. We have a legal system.

Justice would look quite different to what is actually handed out.

I agree it does not make you a woman. But it does at least show commitment to wanting to be female. Since over 90% of MTF don't remove their cock and balls they def should not be allowed in. The minority I can go either way with.

It would be better for all if there was a third option, to suit all trans.

As I have said before, the one who worries me is the FTM trans I know of who is clearly suffering from an excess of testosterone. If you go by natal sex, he definitely has rights to the ladies rooms. Is this what we want?

I am deadset against allowing anyone access on the basis of self identifying. I would only extend that courtesy to someone who has fully transitioned. Not all women are safe to be around either.

What do you think about a FTM trans with full beard and showing aggressively forward behaviour towards others? Does he get access to women's rooms too? Granted he doesn't want to, but under the 'natal sex' rule, he would have to, wouldn't he?

Still no useful answer to how to determine sex.
1 Some intersex folks can't produce any gametes. How do you sex those folks?
2 What about someone who has XY chromosomes and a female body?
3 How do we record which sex they are (drivers license?) and who will gate keep their entry into women-only spaces?
4 If you are going to wait until puberty when they produce gametes, are you going to impose surgery on someone whose gametes don't match their appearance?

Eunuchs also sometimes remove their penis/balls. In those cases it's a fetish. It's not always about 'being a woman'.

Third spaces are a perfectly reasonable solution, though, I agree.

I know several FTM, my daughter having been socially trans masc for 7 years (recently desisted) and, as they tend to flock together, have met several FTMs. They are all about 5ft 5, where DMs, checked shirts, wear their hair in rainbow colours and a variety of unflattering undercut/fauxhawks/mullets, have a tiny amount of facial hair and are usually significantly overweight and highly acne afflicted from the T… and yet still obviously female.

The toxic environment created as a response to TW in female bathrooms mean that they are all very very self conscious and, actually, never use the M or F bathrooms. They all go in the disabled one to avoid being challenged and because on some level they know they do not pass enough and it is not safe enough to use the male bathrooms (fancy, a natal female not feeling safe in the mens room… wonder why that my possibly be? 🤔).

I live in an arts uni town where the young, tall, anorexic and longhaired boys in frocks also hunt in packs. I literally see a dozen trans persons every day. Two other peers within 15 doors of ours are trans - a young boy who won a royal ballet school scholarship in junior school, who is deeply into drag; and a once stunningly beautiful girl, extraordinarily gifted pianist, only days younger than my child who was started on T and had her breasts removed at 19 (long story, but complex inpatient psychiatric history and no sign of GD prior to 18). but let me repeat: three teens within 15 houses of each other…

But in answer to your question: I think each and every one of these individuals should have the right to use the bathrooms of their natal sex and feel safe doing so. However, due to the fall-out from all this stuff, none of them do. As it stands each and every one of them is ND, so the fact that they use the disabled loos as third space is both valid (ND is an accepted, but not visible, disability) and ironic because a third space is not what the trans lobby wants, is it?

Still no useful answer to how to determine sex. - not true, I’m afraid.

1 Some intersex folks can't produce any gametes. How do you sex those folks? We are organised around our potential to produce large or male gametes - that a woman is infertile because she in anovulatory does not make her any less a woman (or an infertile male, less male)

2 What about someone who has XY chromosomes and a female body?
a person with an Y chromosome (XY, XXY etc) does not have a female body. They do not have a womb, ovaries, or a vagina - they simply have unformed male and/or ambiguous body parts that in most societies would warrant a chromosome test at birth. The penile tissue enlarges when male puberty begins, and testicles tend to descend, or surgery performed if they have not descended (AFAIK).

3 How do we record which sex they are (drivers license?) and who will gate keep their entry into women-only spaces? Simple - we make it illegal for natal males to enter a female space and allow women the right to question them - if they do not have ID that evidences their sex, they may have to leave. We’ve managed for decades, centuries even, prior to recent legislation without it being an issue. There is no reason why it should not revert to business as usual. Masc looking/gender non- conforming women have used female facilities for years without issue because men were not allowed into those spaces so NO ONE assumed they MAY be male…

4 If you are going to wait until puberty when they produce gametes, are you going to impose surgery on someone whose gametes don't match their appearance? See above - in modern day medical settings (and not in remote, rural, undeveloped conurbations such as where Imane Khelif or Casta Semenya were born), ANY child whose physical presentation at birth is ambiguous, would be examined and tested. In all cases, individual expert care and advise would be offered on how to treat them, surgically or otherwise. Remember these individuals with DSDs represent 0.0018% of the worlds population.

It really isn’t that contentious.

They are all about 5ft 5, where DMs, checked shirts, wear their hair in rainbow colours and a variety of unflattering undercut/fauxhawks/mullets, have a tiny amount of facial hair and are usually significantly overweight and highly acne afflicted from the T… and yet still obviously female.

Same. In real life FTM don't pass any better than MTF.

Thought I did. Yes I'd share with a man, or woman, or nonbinary person, and I'd expect to be safeguarded in any situation if the other person hurt or threatened me in any way.