Women's rights general conversations - Thread 9

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 8.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

Got to my main workplace today, the garden of a country house. The electrician, who we've met before, was working indoors and when Mr Veg went to go in he found that the bloke had locked the doors from inside and left the keys in the locks, meaning no one could get in. Given that all staff have keys to the house so we can get in for the loo/feeding the cat/whatever, it was annoying. Mr Veg asked him why he'd locked himself in and he said that 'You never know who might be about'. The only people about in general around there are middle class dog walkers but if anyone dodgy had been about, being outside, I'd have been on the front line while he was safe indoors.

After a while, the electrician comes out saying he's finished the job and we have a quick chat. I said to him 'You really don't need to lock yourself in, but the next time we're both here you can work assured that there is a WOMAN between you and any danger'. He gave me a shit-eating grin and we changed the subject, but it was so satisfying to say that.

You are Rosemary and Thyme, and I claim my fiver!

Rosemary's quite a nice name, actually...

I thought there was a thread on Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart's fuckwittery but I can't find it. Did I imagine it?

I wanted to post this article from the Telegraph

https://archive.ph/Doj2D

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/13/jk-rowling-shouldnt-talk-to-to-alastair-campbell/

Written by Tom Harris and pretty good except I think (hope) he's got something wrong. He says a female prison warden has been raped by a TiM. I know there have been sexual assaults, threats and women have been ordered to strip search and observe men claiming to be women, but I hadn't heard there had been a rape. Unless he was talking about this happening outside the UK.

They should invite Helen Joyce. If they're hard enough.

They wouldn't want to talk to Helen Joyce. She's not as famous as JKR: she wouldn't get the clicks for them. They really are a prize pair aren't they?

I've just come across this woman who summarises trans issues for beginners really well:

x.com/larusselll/status/1856972350962483236?s=61

I think this is the thread you mean @lcakethereforeIam ?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5207457-rosie-duffield-nails-it-again-on-x?

Thanks for that link, @PoppySeedBagelRedux . She's so articulate and amazing!

Isn't she! But of a successor to Magdalen Burns.

So I came across this post on Quora today, which is obviously bullshit since it makes no mention of the other physical advantages men have - what's the best way to counter it?

"Why do so many transphobes claim/assume the community has an "unfair advantage" in sports?
Because it makes intuitive sense. There’s a verisimilitude to the claim that makes it very easy to believe… if you don’t actually know the effects that hormones have on your body - more specifically, the effects that testosterone has on your body. Heck, I’ve seen transphobes say with a straight face that it’s the Y chromosome that gives men the advantage in sports - not testosterone, not the better training that men have access to that women do not, but the fact that men (overwhelmingly) have a Y chromosome.
Needless to say, their understanding of human biology is severely lacking.
The science is quite clear that after medically transitioning (not surgically transitioning, despite transphobes also believing there’s some magical quality to the penis and testicles that give men their superior athletic potential… somehow), trans women are actually at a disadvantage compared to cisgender women. Yes, men tend to have a massive advantage over women in sports, and trans women tend to go through male puberty prior to transitioning (ideally, we can transition before our puberty completes, but transphobes are trying to make that impossible too) - but that’s the furthest that transphobes’ understanding of how human biology actually works goes. Without that last piece - the understanding of the role that testosterone plays in building and maintaining muscle mass, the hemoglobin that carries oxygen throughout our bodies, how quickly our muscles build up lactic acid and how quickly it clears it from our muscles, and on and on - it makes sense to believe that trans women have the same or similar athletic potential as cisgender men. It completely fails when you actually understand human biology and how both testosterone and estrogen affects us* - but bigotry relies on an emotional kneejerk reaction, not a calm and rational understanding of the facts.
*Incidentally, this leads to another misunderstanding that transphobes tend to have. Yes, trans women can and do grow natural breasts and can even produce milk as part of medically transitioning. No really unnatural chemicals, nothing freakish or unnatural - just our bodies reacting to estrogen running through our systems the same way that every other woman’s body does. It’s entirely natural and expected once you actually understand how our bodies work and the role that hormones play in our bodies."

There was loads about ongoing male advantage post male puberty in the discussions about the women's boxing at the Olympics, I'll have a quick look now to see if I can locate any of the more scholarly posts on the subject, Britinme.

I'm not on TwiX, but the article linked to here might be useful?

sourdoughismyreligion · 12/04/2024 23:00
Ross Tucker is always good for analysis.
^https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1778507508769862096^
If you're not on twitter.
He points out that the only qualification was to a) take part in competitive sport and b) train at least three times a week (self-reported). It doesn't compare 'matched percentiles'. I'm assuming that means athletes who are at the same level, for example, elite athletes only.
All this study has done is demonstrate something we already know, that there is a big overlap between male and female athletic performance, and that there are women who can out perform men.
^https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1778507508769862096^

There is a lot of commentary on the poor quality of some research into trans athletes here:
Page 2 | New research regarding transgender athletes | Mumsnet

That's all I can find from previous discussion on this topic, which is annoying as I remember being very impressed by the levels of medical knowledge on display in some of the posts!

However, I did come across this, which looks useful:
transgender sport science studies | Fair Play For Women

Hope you find something useful in all this.

Thanks folks - I’ll check those out.

This is very clear: https://boysvswomen.com

@Britinme Unfortunately, if anybody Righteous is posting that kind of nonsense at you, you just have to apply the maxim "You can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to."

"You can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to."
That's such a wise observation, Kucinghitam, thank you.
Wise, but depressing.

Britinme

As a result of what the review found, the Guidance concludes that the inclusion of transgender people into female sport cannot be balanced regarding transgender inclusion, fairness and safety in gender-affected sport where there is meaningful competition. This is due to retained differences in strength, stamina and physique
between the average woman compared with the average transgender woman or non-binary person assigned male at birth, with or without testosterone suppression.

This quote is from The UK's Sports Councils Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport, published in September 2021. Full documents can be downloaded from here:
https://movingtoinclusion.co.uk/our-joint-work/transgender-inclusion-in-sport-guidance/

That's a good one - thanks.

Last night, by chance using a search function for something else, i found my self in a folder called "Transgender2" on an Aussie site. What the hell, I thought, I'll have a quick browse. And what a scary place it is! They are all convinced (esp the mods) that it's only a matter of time before all the transphobes and terfs all die off, and then the wonderful future will be theirs. But more than that, they believe, somehow, that The Science is on their side too. It's like walking into Bedlam. Or Jonestown. Clearly there's large parts of the public space in Australia that are lost to all reason. The guys in the rugby league folder where I usually post had warned me abut the nutters 'over there', and that it's a place best avoided, and they're not wrong.

Just read this

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/19/baby-girl-registered-wrong-sex-mansfield-registration-office

What a headfuck. And the poor parents felt they had to apologise to the transgender community for any perceived offence.

[Another mother], however, was [previously] able to get a new, corrected birth certificate for her daughter after the registrar directed her to a GPO form. The Home Office, however, say this is no longer an option. ‘The local registration service was advised earlier this year not to issue [corrected] certificates in this way,” they said.

It looks like there's been a recent change, so that the register entry can still be corrected by way of a marginal note, but it's no longer possible to obtain a register extract (='birth certificate') that incorporates the correction other than by reproducing the entry verbatim ie with both the original error and the marginal note.

This is sometimes needed (perhaps rarely now) in case of a late-diagnosed DSD.

Why must the victim of an error or misdiagnosis put up with this, when people with GRCs are issued with pristine documents that completely conceal the very existence of the original registration?

Why indeed. So unfair on those parents. Sounds like the registrar had some kind of brain-fart, said girl, but wrote boy. These things can happen, but for it not to be fixable is ridiculous.

Not sure where to put this but Pilgrim Tucker has announced that a mutually agreed resolution has now been reached with the OU re her discrimination case.

https://x.com/pilgrimtucker/status/1858903383022641525?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

Olympus Spa decision postponed.

(US Korean Spa told they must allow men into the women's [naked] spa, handmaid of a judge said not doing so was like segregation. Another judge argued forcing them to go against Korean tradition of single-sex bathing was cultural discrimination.) threadreaderapp.com/thread/1858611351901663550.html?utm_campaign=topunroll

“There is currently no facility in law that allows for correct certificates to be issued that show the correct information only, without reproduction of the marginal note,” they added.

Well, unless you're called Kevin, but claim to be a woman called Sharon, of course.