“What is a woman?” is the political “gotcha” question of the moment, sometimes paired with its less respectful companion “Can a woman have a penis?”
I think it’s for Robin to demonstrate that this is not a respectful question because for most people it’s a banal and technical one. Stating that something is non respectful in the absence of any acceptance of that or demonstration of the validity of that can appear very much to be rhetoric – an attempt to control the views of the reader through subconscious desires to respect people. What this debate should be taping into is more overt debate with proper explanations and justifications for statements made.
The political answer
The question is used as an anti-trans “dog whistle”. Any perceived failure to answer promptly with equally dog-whistly “adult human female” or “biological female” is seized on with a suggestion that the interviewee “does not know what a woman is” or cannot be trusted to support women’s rights.
Yes and the evidence for this is what has happened to women’s spaces over the last few years. Robin just wafts over this point without addressing it. Why?
The practical answer
For 98% of the population, these questions are banal, even absurd. They have never questioned their gender and probably would not ever think of having a gender identity different from their sex. But for those with gender incongruence the answer is not so simple.
Where is the data suggesting that 98% of people don’t care? I am not sure that only 2% of people care about women’s rights. People should not be able to state this sort of data without references and justification. If there is some study which shows the 98%, people need to be able to examine it’s reliability and validity.
Furthermore, Robin’s language here presupposes that people have a gender identity. For some people (I believe many people but I can’t show data to suggest that because there are forces at play which stop the appropriate questions being asked) it’s not that their gender identity matches their sex, it’s that they don’t have a gender identity at all. They simply call themselves ‘men’ or ‘women’ because they have the body parts which used to be required for such a label.
The medical profession has moved away from regarding gender dysphoria as a medical condition that can be cured or treated, but rather view “gender incongruence” as a feature of the rich tapestry of human experience that needs to be understood and accommodated.
I’m not sure that is the case in the simple way which Robin has described. Has Robin read ‘time to think’? has Robin listened to detransitioners? Robin is making broad generalisations with no justification.
This is just the same as the change more than 40 years ago when variations in sexual orientation were similarly recognised as normal and efforts to alter a person’s sexuality moved to the lunatic fringe. Society is a few years behind with gender identity but the journey leads to the same destination.
Patently a false comparison because the question is not ‘is it OK for men to present in ways which in the 1950s were reserved solely for women’ (which IMHO is OK) but ‘is it OK for a person who has a male biology/ grew up with male privilege/ has been through male puberty to access spaces formerly reserved for women’. The conflation of the two issues appears deliberate as a way of winning hearts and minds – rather than generating critical thinking. One can accept a person’s gender identity whilst continuing to protect women’s spaces.
So the sensible answer is to recognise that “What is a woman?” is a complex question for a small proportion of society. That is the real answer as veteran campaigner, Labour’s Emily Thornberry, demonstrated so well when faced with ‘the question’. To deny the complexity is to deny trans people’s legitimacy, even very existence. And that denial is often the point of asking the rhetorical question.
Complex questions still need answers. If it is too complex for some people to answer, then they will need to accept the answers which those who don’t find it complex at all provide. As Einstein said “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. I, and many others, do not believe it is acceptable to simultaneously say that something is too complex to explain whilst also relying it on as the foundation stone of a way to divide up limited resources and protect vulnerable groups. From my point of view, Robin would be very welcome to go away and think about it and re-engage in the conversations when Robin can answer the question.
The legal answer
The law in the UK – fortunately for trans people – engages with the complexity. The Gender Recognition Act provided in 2004, under pressure from European jurisprudence, a method for the state to recognise a change of legal sex. From 1999, discrimination on the grounds that someone was undergoing or had undergone a process to reassign their sex was made unlawful. So for 20 years, the legal definitions of sex or gender have accommodated complexity.
Reassigning sex is a concept which itself needs definition. Discrimination on the basis of being trans is clearly unacceptable but that does not mean that males should have access to women’s spaces and Robin has not demonstrated that it does. This is more emotional manipulation at the expense of fact and meaning.
If you believe in a diverse, accepting society, or you are a forward-looking employer wanting your employees to bring their whole selves to work, this is your fight as much as any trans person’s”
This is true though you should be interested in equality to all groups. If you believe in a diverse accepting society you do not believe in silencing of debate and the removal of women’s rights. You, instead, believe in paying attention to the evidence suggesting that female oppression is very real and is rooted in biology.
The accommodation is not complete. Non-binary trans people are poorly served (apart from the advance obtained in 2020 in Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover) and the de-medicalisation of a trans status is only slowly being accepted.
Women are poorly served in society. This is also important.
When, for example, citizens use changing or toilet facilities in a shop, we do not provide our birth certificate or take a chromosome test. Rather we are judged on the outward expression of our sex category, our gender.
Yes and if we were to judge Robin, painful as Robin might find this, we would expect Robin to go to the men’s. This is true for most other high profile TW and many whom I have met in the community. Is Robin suggesting that only TW who pass should be in women’s spaces? If not, then Robin has expressed theirself badly.
That is why the statutory guidance says that service providers should normally accommodate customers according to their gender and why the non-statutory guidance, referring to biological sex, put out for apparently political purposes by the Equality and Human Rights Commission last month is both wrong in law and unworkable in practical application.
Accommodating people according to gender is unworkable as we’d need 100s of categories. Even if we just focus on the key groups – arguable ‘biological female with no gender identity’, ‘biological male with no gender identity’, ‘identifies as woman’, ‘identifies as man’, ‘non-binary’, then we’d need 5 different categories of toilets, changing rooms etc. (in addition to disabled facilities). There is no rationale for putting me in the same facilities as Robin because we have nothing in common.
he law also understands that discrimination is in the eye of the discriminator. So a trans woman perceived as a woman and discriminated against because she is a woman, will be a woman in the sight of the law.
Yes. Not a key part of the argument though given that most TW are clearly male.
And the cases of Croft v Royal Mail Group and A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police demonstrate very clearly that in discrimination law a time will come when an individual is to be accepted in their affirmed gender for discrimination purposes. Section 7 of the Equality Act 2010 refers to ‘physiological and other attributes of sex’ so Equality Act ‘sex’ is not biological, as the EHRC erroneously are now saying. Baroness Falkner, the EHRC’s chair, should read the Act
The accommodation and legal rights of trans people are now repeatedly under attack from those who would role it back, both in the UK and abroad.
If we need to be accepted in our affirmed gender, then please note that many people don’t have one. Re my point above, I believe that accepting me in my affirmed gender means not requiring me to share spaces with Robin with whom I have nothing in common.
A narrative that accommodating trans people is in some way a threat, particularly to women, now has shrill and persistent voices promoting it. Some on the right of politics have picked up on this as a useful political football, with little thought, it appears, on the effect that promoting that narrative has on vulnerable people.
Robin is ignoring the evidence of actual harm done to women when TW are accommodated in women’s facilities. No decent society should accept that. Neither should they accept the misogynistic use of 'shrill' to silence women's voices. This is particularly attacking from Robin who chose to keep the gravitas of a man's voice rather than attempt to further mock up a superficial semblance of a female body.
The old enemies of liberal western democracy are again on the march, shrouded in the sheep’s clothing of ‘sex-based rights’. Be in no doubt that gay rights or women’s bodily autonomy would be next on the agenda.
Many gay people do not agree Robin and I think Robin should not be speaking for others. Nothing about us without us also applies to women, gay men and lesbians.
A useful question?
So the ’What is a woman?’ question is useful because those who ask it, for effect or expecting a simple answer, ‘out’ themselves as adopting a reactionary position to the rich tapestry of human existence. If you believe in a diverse, accepting society, or you are a forward-looking employer wanting your employees to bring their whole selves to work, this is your fight as much as any trans person’s.
Robin is attempting to make a false equivalence between accepting the rich tapestry of human experience and opening women’s spaces to TW. This should be seen for the manipulation technique which it is. It is perfectly possible to protect women’s spaces and encourage the rich tapestry of human experience. That is a future which personally I would like to encourage and which I believe a just and true society should support.