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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth

1000 replies

IwantToRetire · 21/01/2025 18:51

Purpose.

Ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.

This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

This will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.

Policy and Definitions.

The policy is to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality:

(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”

(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

(g) “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

Recognizing Women Are Biologically Distinct From Men.

Full statement text at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

Every news outlet is reporting this as anti trans legisliaton.

Not one has reported it is about women's rights.

That's why I started this thread, although there are others as hoping the search engines will pick it up.

Seems that women's rights are so unimportant to anyone, that even when there is a political statement about them, the media reports it is about something else.

Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government – The White House

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

OP posts:
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14
Runor · 26/01/2025 10:25

illTempered, you posted this while I was writing - that’s hilarious! You can always rely on the grauniad to mangle the logic - if we define women then we can discriminate against them, so best not to define them???? That way at least we won’t be able to discuss the discrimination 😆

Alternatively, if we define women, then it is possible to discuss women’s rights - arguably making it easier for women to organise and fight against discrimination. And importantly, not have marches for women’s rights diverted so they appear to be all about supporting trans rights….

The definition is a tool - it doesn’t intrinsically define how it is used, that’s up to us as a society. WPATH is only too aware of the importance of definitions.

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 10:26

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 09:59

People seem to have very strong reactions to my characterisation of this EO as “fascist”. This is understandable.
However, this is indeed a reasonable descriptor of a piece of legislation whose core purpose is to eradicate / make illegitimate the existence of a group of people (and does so under the rhetoric of restoring the “Truth”).

Edited

The group of people to which you refer, are still and always will remain, one of either of the two biological sexes. Not one person has ever changed sex. Signing legislation confirming this doesn't make them disappear in a puff of smoke.

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:28

theilltemperedqueenofspacetime · 26/01/2025 10:11

Did anyone else notice that the Guardian has at last caught up with this discussion, and supplied exactly the tropes one expected of them:

Sex is really complicated, too complicated for you plebs to comprehend.

Now we're all female, because early embryos are not yet morphologically sex-differentiated , ha ha ha!

If Trump is allowed to say male and female are different, it gives him carte blanche to take away female's rights, just like the Taliban.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/25/trump-executive-order-sex

It was the most read opinion piece this morning but not open for comments. Nor did they solicit letters for the letters page.

I fail to understand why there’s this constant dismissal of these points as “tropes” rather than actually considering them/ taking them on board?

Sex is complicated. This is just science and it’s vital to understand this.

If Trump is allowed to say male and female are different, it gives him carte blanche to take away female's rights, just like the Taliban.

This is a compelling and important argument to consider.

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:34

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 10:26

The group of people to which you refer, are still and always will remain, one of either of the two biological sexes. Not one person has ever changed sex. Signing legislation confirming this doesn't make them disappear in a puff of smoke.

It eradicates being trans as a category of person/ human experience. You think this is fine because you believe “being trans” is made up/ a fiction / an ideology.

But thought experiment- let’s imagine for a minute that it’s not. That being trans is a real state of being - like being gay, disabled, being black, being female (!). If this were the case (I understand you don’t accept it is) how would you view the intentions of this legislation? Would you still say it’s not eliminating their existence because they still exist as non-disabled, straight, white people?

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:37

Runor · 26/01/2025 10:25

illTempered, you posted this while I was writing - that’s hilarious! You can always rely on the grauniad to mangle the logic - if we define women then we can discriminate against them, so best not to define them???? That way at least we won’t be able to discuss the discrimination 😆

Alternatively, if we define women, then it is possible to discuss women’s rights - arguably making it easier for women to organise and fight against discrimination. And importantly, not have marches for women’s rights diverted so they appear to be all about supporting trans rights….

The definition is a tool - it doesn’t intrinsically define how it is used, that’s up to us as a society. WPATH is only too aware of the importance of definitions.

It’s not defining women that’s the problem, it’s attaching ultimate importance to this definition (sex differences) in shaping the entire person/ their humanity.

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 10:50

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:34

It eradicates being trans as a category of person/ human experience. You think this is fine because you believe “being trans” is made up/ a fiction / an ideology.

But thought experiment- let’s imagine for a minute that it’s not. That being trans is a real state of being - like being gay, disabled, being black, being female (!). If this were the case (I understand you don’t accept it is) how would you view the intentions of this legislation? Would you still say it’s not eliminating their existence because they still exist as non-disabled, straight, white people?

Can you define this real state of being?

What has a confused correctly scared of men and their violents tendencies 13 year old girl got in common with a middle aged man hooked on cissy porn who masturbates on women's underwear in M&S, posts about it on their own review forum and masturbates again at the shock horror responses that the review gets?

Anything! Just one thing they have in common. Please.

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 11:11

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:37

It’s not defining women that’s the problem, it’s attaching ultimate importance to this definition (sex differences) in shaping the entire person/ their humanity.

That's the first thing you've said that I agree with. But you don't understand that that is not what we are saying. That's how people who are NOT gender critical think.

Sex differences are caused by and are evidence of whether you are male or female, like species differences between dogs and rabbits enable us to tell a dog from a rabbit.

But to your point, if you actually couldn't tell the difference between women and men and there were no significant strength, height and weight differences, if women produced gametes the same size as men's and babies were gestated in a pod, not women's bodies, there probably wouldn't be any sex-based oppression. We don't live in that world.

Male and female are different. That is just a fact.
TA legislation takes away females rights, most fundamentally the right to be identified as a separate group from men and our rights to privacy, dignity and safety. But you seem fine with that removal of rights.

We can't pretend not to know what women are. Everybody knows who the women are.
Do you honestly think that men rape women less in Canada than they did before the gender laws were passed? Has the pay gap disappeared for women in Spain? Is pornography or MVAWG a thing of the past in California?
The only question is whether women have the means to name our oppression, and fight it.

It's the oppression you need to fight, not the physiological differentiation between the sexes, which you cannot change. I am proud to be a woman. We are different from men in some ways. That does not make us lesser. We don't have to pretend to be exactly like men in every way to be equally valued as human beings.

AIBot · 26/01/2025 11:25

Why is there so much Republican energy from the US being directed to a UK based message board?

Chersfrozenface · 26/01/2025 11:25

Let's take those examples of a "real state of being".

Gay - being sexually attracted to the other sex, of the two.

Disabled - now this is genuinely more complicated, but it has a definition under the Equality Act 2010 in Britain, i.e. having a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

Black - in UK equality legislation, the relevant characteristic is 'race', which can mean your colour, or your nationality (including your citizenship). It can also mean your ethnic or national origins, which may not be the same as your current nationality. In the US 'black' is defined as "having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.

Female - belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces large gametes.

Now let's have a workable, practical definition of 'trans', capable of being evidenced.

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 11:32

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 10:50

Can you define this real state of being?

What has a confused correctly scared of men and their violents tendencies 13 year old girl got in common with a middle aged man hooked on cissy porn who masturbates on women's underwear in M&S, posts about it on their own review forum and masturbates again at the shock horror responses that the review gets?

Anything! Just one thing they have in common. Please.

Right, exactly. Again- these are the propositions on which your support of this EO rest. Being trans cannot be defined as it is not real, you think of trans women as “middle aged men hooked on cissy porn” lots of things about masturbation and being a sexual pervert.

You are transphobic and you support this legislation because it aims to eradicate being trans as a category of person.

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 11:34

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 11:11

That's the first thing you've said that I agree with. But you don't understand that that is not what we are saying. That's how people who are NOT gender critical think.

Sex differences are caused by and are evidence of whether you are male or female, like species differences between dogs and rabbits enable us to tell a dog from a rabbit.

But to your point, if you actually couldn't tell the difference between women and men and there were no significant strength, height and weight differences, if women produced gametes the same size as men's and babies were gestated in a pod, not women's bodies, there probably wouldn't be any sex-based oppression. We don't live in that world.

Male and female are different. That is just a fact.
TA legislation takes away females rights, most fundamentally the right to be identified as a separate group from men and our rights to privacy, dignity and safety. But you seem fine with that removal of rights.

We can't pretend not to know what women are. Everybody knows who the women are.
Do you honestly think that men rape women less in Canada than they did before the gender laws were passed? Has the pay gap disappeared for women in Spain? Is pornography or MVAWG a thing of the past in California?
The only question is whether women have the means to name our oppression, and fight it.

It's the oppression you need to fight, not the physiological differentiation between the sexes, which you cannot change. I am proud to be a woman. We are different from men in some ways. That does not make us lesser. We don't have to pretend to be exactly like men in every way to be equally valued as human beings.

We can't pretend not to know what women are

I agree. I do not want to pretend this. We should not pretend this.

Nor should we pretend not to know what trans people are. Or what people with variations in sex development are. Or how complicated sex really is. Which is what this executive order is doing.

duc748 · 26/01/2025 11:36

Lostcat sure clocked up some hours on this thread. Is it double bubble on Sundays?

Runor · 26/01/2025 11:40

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:37

It’s not defining women that’s the problem, it’s attaching ultimate importance to this definition (sex differences) in shaping the entire person/ their humanity.

Wrong - everyone exist in numerous categories - sex, age, ethnicity, religion (or none), gender identity (or none) And, for people with DSD’s, sex may be complicated, but regardless, everybody knows knows precisely which sex they are

Myalternate · 26/01/2025 11:46

AIBot · 26/01/2025 11:25

Why is there so much Republican energy from the US being directed to a UK based message board?

I think it’s self explanatory.
It concerns women and we are allowed to discuss women’s issues worldwide.
Just as discussion about the horrific treatment of women in Afghanistan is not something to dismiss just because we don’t live there.

DeanElderberry · 26/01/2025 11:57

I fail to understand why there’s this constant dismissal of these points

[Sex is really complicated, too complicated for you plebs to comprehend.

Now we're all female, because early embryos are not yet morphologically sex-differentiated , ha ha ha!

If Trump is allowed to say male and female are different, it gives him carte blanche to take away female's rights, just like the Taliban. ]

as “tropes” rather than actually considering them/ taking them on board?

That would be because they are fatuous piffle, the first two of which could only be repeated by someone who has decided to not believe in and/or understand science, as has been explained over and over again.

hihelenhi · 26/01/2025 12:10

Why is there so much Republican energy from the US being directed to a UK based message board?

It isn't "Republican energy" - more a commentary on current events which relate to what UK feminist members of this board have been discussing for years.

Women on these boards have been discussing the issue of sex-based rights in depth for almost a decade now, in terms of legislation and the UK's very own Equality Act. Of course we take an interest in legislation worldwide as this is a global issue - women don't only exist in our country, and America is not the centre of the universe. Other countries have their legislation and different histories of it too.

Perhaps our more zealous American friends who make false accusations about the political sensibilities and "influences" of the women on this board might want to consider that the discussion in the UK really took off when there was a UK Conservative government consultation in 2018 (under Theresa May) on a proposal for Gender Self-ID. This is how this debate really came front and centre in the UK and why UK women talk about it so much. And how we came to be "TERF Island" as we have a long history of reality-based legislation against sex discrimination and for women's rights. It isn't and has never been random, or something that "randomly started", and it certainly didn't start as a result of "Republican influence".

As a result of the 2018 public consultation and her discussion of it online, Maya Forstater (who was already known for running a feminist campaign called Let Toys Be Toys, opposing the pink and bluification marketing of children's toys in shops) lost her job contract with a US company, prompting outrage and the intervention, famously, of JK Rowling. Forstater, of course, later won big against her former employers in an employment tribunal for their discrimination against her, which contravened UK Equality Law.

Hope that helps.

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 12:23

AIBot · 26/01/2025 11:25

Why is there so much Republican energy from the US being directed to a UK based message board?

Excellent point. Absolutely standard TA to apply US politics and history to the UK. Reflects where GII originated.

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 12:25

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 11:32

Right, exactly. Again- these are the propositions on which your support of this EO rest. Being trans cannot be defined as it is not real, you think of trans women as “middle aged men hooked on cissy porn” lots of things about masturbation and being a sexual pervert.

You are transphobic and you support this legislation because it aims to eradicate being trans as a category of person.

Prove us all wrong and define it.

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 12:26

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 11:34

We can't pretend not to know what women are

I agree. I do not want to pretend this. We should not pretend this.

Nor should we pretend not to know what trans people are. Or what people with variations in sex development are. Or how complicated sex really is. Which is what this executive order is doing.

Edited

Address my points or don't bother replying.

DuesToTheDirt · 26/01/2025 12:31

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 10:50

Can you define this real state of being?

What has a confused correctly scared of men and their violents tendencies 13 year old girl got in common with a middle aged man hooked on cissy porn who masturbates on women's underwear in M&S, posts about it on their own review forum and masturbates again at the shock horror responses that the review gets?

Anything! Just one thing they have in common. Please.

They're people - and that's it. Unless, perhaps, they both have blond hair, or they both grew up in Cheltenham. We might as well start redefining society by hair colour, or Cheltenham vs not-Cheltenham.

WandaSiri · 26/01/2025 12:36

Ignore my post at 12:23, I misread the original comment and can't be arsed to request a withdrawal.

Runor · 26/01/2025 13:19

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 10:37

It’s not defining women that’s the problem, it’s attaching ultimate importance to this definition (sex differences) in shaping the entire person/ their humanity.

It’s absolutely defining ‘women’ which is the problem. Here, most of us agree with the EO definition that ‘women and girls’ is a sex category, not a feeling, not what you’re wearing, how you behave, not what your voice pitch and mannerisms are.

Transwomen are, by definition, male, so it’s appropriate, using the EO definition, to describe them as men. This does not affect what they are allowed to wear, their behaviour, voice pitch, mannerisms etc. It should not result in them being discriminated against. I hope that this EO means that anyone who states this in the workplace will no longer face disciplinary proceedings. I hope it means that women’s spaces, services and sport will be reserved for women. This is not anti-trans, transmen would absolutely be included in the women’s category, and transwomen would absolutely be included in the men’s. Nobody is excluded.

I hope we get similar clarification in the UK

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 13:23

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 11:32

Right, exactly. Again- these are the propositions on which your support of this EO rest. Being trans cannot be defined as it is not real, you think of trans women as “middle aged men hooked on cissy porn” lots of things about masturbation and being a sexual pervert.

You are transphobic and you support this legislation because it aims to eradicate being trans as a category of person.

If 'trans' is a 'category of person' then that category is what exactly?

How do you tell who is 'trans' and who isn't?

Or do you think all the rapists who suddenly find themselves 'trans' upon arrest literally came to this conclusion between the crime and the handcuffs?

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 13:30

AlisonDonut · 26/01/2025 13:23

If 'trans' is a 'category of person' then that category is what exactly?

How do you tell who is 'trans' and who isn't?

Or do you think all the rapists who suddenly find themselves 'trans' upon arrest literally came to this conclusion between the crime and the handcuffs?

So is it your position that :

  1. being trans is not real
  2. it’s not possible to identify people who are trans
  3. being trans is no more than a made up identity claimed by rapists after arrest?

?

Lostcat · 26/01/2025 13:34

Runor · 26/01/2025 13:19

It’s absolutely defining ‘women’ which is the problem. Here, most of us agree with the EO definition that ‘women and girls’ is a sex category, not a feeling, not what you’re wearing, how you behave, not what your voice pitch and mannerisms are.

Transwomen are, by definition, male, so it’s appropriate, using the EO definition, to describe them as men. This does not affect what they are allowed to wear, their behaviour, voice pitch, mannerisms etc. It should not result in them being discriminated against. I hope that this EO means that anyone who states this in the workplace will no longer face disciplinary proceedings. I hope it means that women’s spaces, services and sport will be reserved for women. This is not anti-trans, transmen would absolutely be included in the women’s category, and transwomen would absolutely be included in the men’s. Nobody is excluded.

I hope we get similar clarification in the UK

being trans is not about “what they [a person] are allowed to wear, their behaviour, voice pitch, mannerisms etc”. This is anti-trans stereotyping/ propaganda.

It is not at all “appropriate” to call trans women “men”; indeed it is completely incompatible with their right to dignity of the human person, right to privacy/ family life , right to protection from cruel and degrading treatment.

I hope we get similar clarification in the UK
God help us all if it does. I don’t believe that it will , but anything is possible I suppose - especially while groups like reform are becoming more and more popular.

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