Question Time right now!

[Seeingadistance]

Prof Robert Winston has just stated very clearly that it is not possible to change sex.

In relation to freedom of speech and Kathleen Stock.

The theatre student trying to lecture Professor Winston on biology was a particular highlight. The only thing you're qualified to debate on are the themes of Starlight Express, not developmental biology.

Maybe they should have had an interpretive dance off. That would have been on tik tok and everything.

@Blessex

And why aren’t people challenging statements such as ‘science has shown people can be born into the wrong body’. If I was on there - these are the statements I would to.

Imagine saying that to an actual scientist??

I don't understand how anyone can assert this when gender is widely regarded to be a social construct, so not something to be supported by science anyway.

@KittenKong

Maybe they should have had an interpretive dance off. That would have been on tik tok and everything.

🤣🤣🤣

Really? She just stated on national television “Transwomen are women and transmen are men” and also that “the law protects gender identity”. She didn’t need to say either of those two things. She could have fudged along a neutral sympathetic line without parroting TRA mantras and lying about the current law.

Massive disappointment. I always admired her.

@NancyDrawed

Thanks for this.

I thought it was great that Prof Winston not only got to state 'I will say this categorically - that you cannot change your sex' but also that prior to that he said 'I'm about to say something that'll probably mean you'll want to edit the programme when I've finished' which I took to be a way of trying to raise the bias and silencing as a huge part of the issue.

However, I do just want to get my head straight on something that he said, which I have heard elsewhere regarding different aspects of sex.

Prof W said 'You have a chromosomal sex, you have genetic sex, you have hormonal sex and psychological - brain sex'

My understanding of the above is that these are all different aspects of the same thing in terms of biology. In other words, you could NOT have a human with XY chromosomes and therefore biologically male, having the hormonal profile (hormonal sex?) of a female? So yes, there is more to being male or female than chromosomes alone, but they are all linked - with the exception of 'psychological brain sex' which I assume is where the born on the wrong body narrative is from. But I have seen it being used as if you could have XY chromosomal sex but XX hormonal sex.

As I understand it (and I am not a biologist, so take all this with a pinch of salt), your last point is where intersex comes in.

So, normally XX = female hormones = female body. And the same but opposite for XY.

But, in rare conditions, something goes wrong. So CAID individuals (like the runner Semenya) are XY. They make male hormones, but their body doesn't respond to those male hormones. So they look superficially female but don't have ovaries or a uterus, and are sterile. At puberty, more hormones are released, which they may respond to somewhat, hence why some of these individuals develop the broad shoulders and increased muscle mass of men.

Semenya has then had her testosterone blocked to (somewhere approaching...) the normal female range. So is someone who has been brought up female, who's pudenda looks female, who is XY with male hormonal levels to which she does not respond, and which have been artificially lowered to female levels.

But, yes, at least 99.99% of the time you can look at someone and be confident of their chromosomal makeup. Just the same way I would bet with reasonable certainty, without even seeing you, that you only have one liver. I might be wrong, but it's vanishingly unlikely. The fact I'm able to name (I did have to google the spelling) an individual where that correlation is broken illustrates its rareness.

What I've never quite grasped is 'psychological-brain sex'. At least, I don't understand whether it's inborn or culturally conditioned. I say that as a woman with a stereotypically male career and interests. I'm also well aware that one of the arguments for denying women the vote was 'their girl brains can't handle it'. So I have an instinctive twitch against the concept of gendered brains. But, if Winston says it, I'm happy to listen.

@MsMoody

The theatre student trying to lecture Professor Winston on biology was a particular highlight. The only thing you're qualified to debate on are the themes of Starlight Express, not developmental biology.

The theatre student trying to lecture Professor Winston on biology was a particular highlight.

This is where we are.

Freedom of Thought is the Right to be wrong, to hold divergent and controversial opinions, perhaps disturbing to some.

We have now reached the stage where people claim the Right to be right, to have their beliefs officially recognised and validated, however bonkers.

@Cwenthryth

Really? She just stated on national television “Transwomen are women and transmen are men” and also that “the law protects gender identity”. She didn’t need to say either of those two things. She could have fudged along a neutral sympathetic line without parroting TRA mantras and lying about the current law.

Massive disappointment. I always admired her.

I'm trying to think where I saw something along the lines: Repeating a mantra will not changes anybody's chromosomes.

Alison Labour was absolutely creamed on WH two or three weeks ago on the issue of TW in sport. If, as @Fariha31 says, she is privately GC it's such a shame she doesn't feel able to give an honest opinion. For her, she'd come over as much less of a vacuous numpty. Plus knotty debates need people of integrity speaking on all sides if we are to make progress.

Winston knows how many fingers are being held up :)

In the words of Sir Terry Pratchett “Universities are truly storehouses for knowledge: students arrive from school confident they know nearly everything, and they leave five years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? In the university, of course, where it is dried and stored.”
We can only hope that knowledge is rapidly extracted and stored under lock and key.

Ok, maybe I'm being stupid here, I'm trying to flick through the programme and can't find it.

I can see:

Energy crisis
Pigs
Infant mortality
Social media censorship (I thought maybe in here but can't see it)

@Moonbabysmum it's right at the end, go to around 20 minutes before the end.

Half way? Its a 41m show.

But, yes, at least 99.99% of the time you can look at someone and be confident of their chromosomal makeup.

Indeed - you'll note the assumption that women are expected "know" they have a cervix. But the same people who believe that will say "how do you know what chromosomes you have"?

Please make it make sense.

So, yes, 99.99% of the time, the body forms correctly, and all of these things align. The person with clearly visible female external attributes also has every internal female attributes.

Separating these "sexes" is only to describe the anomalies. And may be necessary to pin down exactly where we draw the male/female line for individuals in DSDs in certain cases, like sports. That cares about physique, not reproductive system.

I think we can't underestimate the importance of having it clearly stated on a mainstream programme like Question Time that 'there are obvious clashes here.'

I am so relieved to see an end to the 'rights are not pie' era.

Sounds like you’re on a different show

Ok, just realised I was looking at newsnight not question the. Absolute muppet that I am.

It was on from 10.35 to 11.35 so an hour not 40mins.

I don't think Winston was suggesting a psychologically sexed brain I think he meant more physical as in the brain gives messages to the body according to your sex.

Alison talked about the weighing if rights. I don't really understand that. When gay marriage came in what did it take away from heterosexual people who wanted to marry?

Chapeau to the editor that cut from drama student waffling about “people can be born in the wrong bodies, there’s loads of science on that” straight to Robert Winston with his head in his hands
Yes, that was great.

Also, when the man in the audience asked what KS had said that was so dangerous, and FB ummed and ahed and then reread the snippet "Trans people are trans people, we should get over it. They deserve to be safe, to be visible throughout society without shame or stigma." How could that opinion be transphobic, and how confusing that must have been to those who knew nothing about this debate!

Academics are not there to make students feel comfortable - they are there to advance knowledge.
Well said

Both students seemed a bit gormless to me.

Both the students were awful. The constant banging on about feeling ‘safe’ when then actually meant ‘not being exposed to different viewpoints that might make me feel uncomfortable. Yet when it was pointed out that Stock had actually faced threats of violence and death threats, I almost got a sense from the theatre student that Stock had brought it upon herself.

Yes. The saddest thing is that both students were female and the only way they can be safe is by buying into the ideology. Yet they are clueless of the chains imposed upon them.

I do worry that the clever, sensible people are getting on in years. Whatever will we do without them?

Kornbluth's scifi story, Marching Morons comes to mind. Overall the story is often used, inappropriately, to deprecate others. The revolting over-arching premise is that a man wakes from suspended animation. The contemporary world seems mad to Barlow until he discovers the 'Problem of Population': the outcome of intelligent people not having children coupled with the development of more sophisticated machinery that makes it less relevant to possess intelligence in order to work or function, so the world is full of marching morons, except for an elite and resentful few who work endlessly to maintain some form of order.

Kornbluth describes that some of this was possible because the propaganda succeeds by undermining people's memories and certainties.

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233

One of the characters, Mrs Garvy, remembers that rockets crash so she is sceptical when she sees references to trips to Venus as a desirable vacation destination. Nonetheless, well-planted media propaganda undermines her certainty. As does her husband's certainty that she's wrong because women are unlikely to pay appropriate attention to current events.

Start quotation

Well, I thought ya couldn't get to Venus. I thought they just had that
one rocket thing that crashed on the Moon."
"Aah, women don't keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously,
subsiding again.
"Oh," said his wife uncertainly.
And the next day, on Henry's Other Mistress, there was a new character who had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot of the Venus run.
On Henry's Other Mistress, "the broadcast drama about you and your
neighbors, folksy people,ordinary people, real people." Mrs. Garvy listened with amazement over a cooling cup of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy convictions.
...
She was a stubborn woman, but it occurred to her that she
was very sick indeed. She didn't want to worry her husband. The next day she quietly made an appointment with the family freud.
In the waiting-room she picked up a fresh new copy of Readers
Pablum and put it down with a faint palpitation. The lead article, according to the table of contents on the cover, was titled "The Most Memorable Venusian I Ever Met."
...
Like many cures of mental disorders, Mrs. Garvy's was achieved largely by self-treatment. She disciplined herself sternly out of the crazy notion that there had been only one rocket ship and that one a failure. She could join without wincing, eventually, in any conversation on the desirability of Venus as a place to retire, on its fabulous floral profusion. Finally she went to Venus.
End quotation

She was, of course, by participating in the trip, also participating in the propaganda programme (the travellers didn't know the trip hadn't left Earth). And, it's used to persuade people to compete for space on Venus colonisation transports that are the cover for an extreme eugenics and depopulation programme.