Trans women are still women

[Lostcat]

AIBU to share what the Supreme Court judgement on the meaning of women in the Equalities Act does and does not do/say/mean.

Although there are now moves to take the ruling and embed discrimination against trans women into uk law, this was not the intention of the Supreme Court judgement. In fact, the judges made it very explicit that politicians, media and activists shouldn’t seek to weaponise the judgement for political gain. Unfortunately that is exactly what people (including a whole host of mumsnetters) are doing.

So what does the judgement do?

Myth: the UK Supreme Court says trans women are not women

Myth: the ruling means trans women can’t claim legal protection as women

Myth: the ruling says you can ban trans women from women’s loos or other women only spaces

What the ruling actually says:
“It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word ‘woman’ other than when it is used in the provisions of the [Equality Act] 2010.”

The ruling says that in sex-based provisions under the Equalities Act 2010, sex means “biological sex” and refers to one of two biological sexes.

The ruling reiterates that trans women are protected from sex discrimination as women - because they experience the same sexism as women do.

The ruling affirms also that trans people are protected under the law from discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.

As before (and as the law has stated since 2004) trans women, with or without a Gender Recognition Certificate, should be treated as women and given access to the relevant women’s services - as before, an exception may be made under limited circumstances where the need to exclude trans women may be proportionate (the law gives women’s refuges as an example of a space where this may be necessary, sometimes).

The ruling merely states that in legal references to “sex” the words “man” and “woman” in the sex discrimination clauses of the equalities act refer to “biological” women and men - it is merely about the use of language in legal cases of discrimination.

The very real impact of this on trans and non-binary people’s lives comes from misinterpretations of what is meant or intended by the ruling.
The trans community is fearful because of the inevitable spin manufactured by biased news media and the powerful gender critical lobby (including wealthy and high profile people such as JK Rowling who claim they are “silenced” by trans advocates).

Stop using people with rare medical conditions to try to prop up your ideology. People with DSDs have nothing to do with the male supremacist movement you are here trying to defend.

I think Mumsnet HQ should do the OP a favour and amend the thread title to

”trans women are still men” [thread titled amended by MNHQ at Supreme Court request]

don't be such a knob, literally.

FGS, people are trying to debate and understand an alternative perspective.

But perhaps, you, are a, bigot?

But yet , you probably haven't seen it all.

Yes.

I’m afraid when a thread asks ‘are tranwomen women’ it’s quite obvious you haven’t appreciated what the SC has said. So it’s great you are asking.

Women = sex
Trans women = gender

A trans women cannot call themselves a woman. They aren’t. It’s a biological fact! As the SC have said

PP has argued that she always knows when a transwoman is a transwoman. I've simply said that she cannot possibly know this to be true since if she was wrong she wouldn't know. Simple stuff @beetr00 (That's also incorrect use of the word literally).

SC didn't rule in what transwoman can call themselves, no.

Ready to give your definition of woman gender and man gender yet, or still running away from that simple question?

The prison service created a trans wing, none of them wanted to go there. And transwomen aren't the only vulnerable prisoners, there are old, young, learning disabled, ill, gay male prisoners, none of them got to go in the women's provision for their safety did they?

Because for TRAs this was never about safety. It's about using, dominating and controlling women. Once you see it, you see how much of a men's supremacist movement this is.

This is true.
Im talking of the legal logical conclusion

I can call myself a cat but I’m a human legally.
(I can even call myself a man If I want but I’m still not going to get equal pay)

Please don't try and tell me a trans person is a woman, they will not ever have a woman's experience, because they are in fact a man.

But you really shouldn't. You are projecting further than the ruling on no basis. Stick to the actual ruling of the SC.

If I'm close enough to see someone's face I absolutely do always know if someone pretending to be a woman us actually a man. It is always very obvious to me. I don't know why you find this so hard to understand.

Transwomen are women.

I have to stop you right there. The only absolute criteria to be a transwoman, is to be a MAN.

That is basically what it is with self ID, which the UK has by stealth, yes. They certainly don't need to take hormones or surgery just to access womens spaces. Actually, they don't even need to wear a skirt, a suit and tie and they'd get in.

Do you think that’s what being trans is, whacking on a skirt?
No of course not, There is makeup and hair and practicing to walk differently.

"she always knows when a transwoman is a transwoman"

it is, actually, obvious to those with eyes, literally, simple 😎

I have been considering the impact on schools since the ruling for no other reason than they appear to be in panic mode. Crucially, female is the term that refers to "sex", not woman, but this can relate to non human species too. A woman is an ADULT female human (check any definition). As the majority of school pupils cannot be legally classified as adults (18 in the UK apart from Scotland which is 16), I believe the ruling has no bearing on schools, save for catering for instances where there are adult females are present.

I am non-binary (I present in both feminine and masculine mode to the uninitiated) so am caught up in the current ruling, although I am generally in agreement with it.

I do however agree with a previous post that if my transgender community had spent the last 10 years using its "powers of advocacy" to further an independent need, it would be in a much better place now.

All that being said, everyone should keep in mind that the test of proportionality will be key to any changes. Time will tell.

Tbf a transwoman can call himself whatever he likes. He just can't make other people consider him a woman or let him into women's single-sex spaces.

If transwomen believe they are women, legally, then they will believe they can use women only spaces.

Its all in the wording.

Don't ever read the speeches of Donald Rumsfeld PP. Even if you get your face close enough to the text.

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

There's a really great and funny article by Kathleen Stock on UnHerd which slices through all the trans nonsense on this thread. It's a good read: five minutes. Enjoy:

https://unherd.com/2025/04/how-women-won-the-gender-wars/

I agree here. If there are two transwomen who pass me in the street, and I notice one is a man, that goes in my list of ‘transwomen I have recognised as male’. The other person would go on my mental list as ‘woman’ I may never be in possession of the information that they are a man.

There would be other circumstances where in relation to transwoman number two, I later realise, by being told or otherwise, that they are male. They would then go on my list as ‘transwoman who I did not realise was a man’.

However, the other useful data point is ‘people I have recognised as transwomen, vs based on best guesses of the total population of transwoman the expected number of transwomen I should meet.’

If in normal society I thought everyone I met was male, that would mean I wasn’t very good at spotting females.

But if, when out and about, I think I spot (say) one transwoman every 1000 people, then I can estimate how many I may be not spotting.