The Guardian, on Trump's EO re: gender ideology

[theilltemperedqueenofspacetime]

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.

Well. It starts off weapons-grade batshit, and then manages to attempt a sober clarification. And comes up with this:

'...the more accurate answer is: No, although there is room to argue that the executive order decrees all humans, including Trump, are non-binary.'

😁

I'm happy to agree we are all nonbinary.

the term is meaningless.

Which means we can all agree that it's sex that matters.

And we can all go home.

Arwa Mahdami has been writing this sort of tripe for years.

She is interviewed here:

https://freerads.org/2016/01/16/levin-interview/

She seems serious about looking at cross-sex identity claims scientifically, and I doubt she has trouble telling her male and female birds apart (an implied allegation that she actually refers to!)

I was accused of feminist leanings consistently throughout my graduate career when I reported that females were starting all the duets. They said, “Of course you’d be the one who found that” and I said, “Are you saying that my surgical sexing was wrong?

Oh I loved that insertion of "non-binary" as though it's a type of sex.

Can you imagine - "so kids, to get pregnant you need two non-binary people. One with a penis and one with a vagina. "
"Miss, don't we call those men and women?"
"Oh no, those are just self-chosen identities, nothing to do with physical bodies".

Exactly.

Mind blowing and blood boiling that The Graun is back in the school yard using "girl" as an insult

They assume we all agree with this stuff. It is like a school magazine article imo, written by one of the in crowd for the in crowd.

I know we're discouraged from spamming, but I used the words 'fatuous piffle' on the other thread and I'd like (with your indulgence) to use them again here.

Fatuous piffle

And I would like to amplify your message and applaud your usage.

Fatuous piffle.

I may name change…

Abso fucking lutely.

There's a mischievous part of me that would like to see how the Graun would respond were Trump to self-ID as the first woman president.

Mahdawi has a first class degree from Oxford. And is a qualified solicitor. And wrote a book about feminism.

But she finds the idea of humans being dimorphically sexed mammals 'confusing'.

How the fuck did we end up here?

Mahdawi is surely an example of how clever people can talk themselves into the most absurd positions.

There's a mischievous part of me that would like to see how the Graun would respond were Trump to self-ID as the first woman president.

Me too.

It is in the cleverest echelons of society that gender ideology have taken hold. I think there must be some show-off desire to signal their elite status by being as fervent to the cause as possible in these circles. Zoe Williams and her "men only allowed women only sports because they didn't want to be beaten by women" is another example.

I read the article - low effort nonsense. 🤷 It's effectively just a slightly longer version of another ill-informed tweet. Not worth a second thought.

To be fair I wouldn't think of Zoe Williams as one of the world's great intellects.

I personally think its entirely likely that for a subset of trans identified people with settled gender dysphoria that there is a biological reason. I'm all for proper scientific exploration of this hypothesis anyway. (Note: settled gender dysphoria is just that - it doesn't make a man a woman).

Also to note that if scientists are debating the exact definition of the sexes, it is only that. Debating the definition of sex is not a debate over sex being non-binary. Its just debating over the precise definition of the binary categories. As sex is about reproduction, there would need to be a third sex with a role in reproduction, for sex not to be binary. And no-one, not even the most hardend gender ideologue is arguing that. Which leads me to conclude that I do not know what gender ideologues think the word ' sex' denotes, but it clearly is not what they think it is.

I think causal and explanatory accounts for trans identities should have little bearing on decisions about how society should manage the challenges that people face when not wanting to be categorised by their natal sex when sex categorisation is wanted/needed.

Nature, nurture, for good or for ill, how and why should this matter? I've not analysed the EO, but I believe that its focus is on categorisation by sex when sex matters.

When people speak to me about sex being difficult to determine, I always ask why this wasn't raised when governments all over the world were instigating sex education programmes. Why weren't people highlighting the impossibility of knowing which sex they or others were and how people would literally die unless this could be sorted?

Performative stupidity.

That is how we got here and how there is an article like this.

Amen.
This is definitely something that pushed me away from the left. I just cannot understand how ridiculous this all is.

Yes I’m hoping this is the nail in the coffin for a lot of people who can finally see the insanity that The Guardian has become. I used to love it ‘back in the day’ I know everyone hates that phrase but it was back in the day!

Which leads me to conclude that I do not know what gender ideologues think the word ' sex' denotes, but it clearly is not what they think it is.

Look at Mahdawi's assertion that 'there is room to argue that the executive order decrees all humans, including Trump, are non-binary'

'Non-binary' is a person who doesn't feel an affiliation with gender stereotypes.

It has absolutely hee-haw to do with sex. 'Non-binary' is about how a person feels about arbitrary and invented cultural tropes. It has absolutely zero to do with someone's sex, biology, body. Both men and women can be 'non-binary'.

To suggest a foetus is 'non-binary' is either to suggest that a foetus is conceived in a sex-less state, rather than with a set of chromosomes determined at point of conception (if she is saying that 'non-binary' relates to sex), or to suggest that a foetus has a gender identity (if she is saying that 'non-binary' relates to gender).

I wonder if 'arse' and 'elbow' is too binary a choice.

I think causal and explanatory accounts for trans identities should have little bearing on decisions about how society should manage the challenges that people face when not wanting to be categorised by their natal sex when sex categorisation is wanted/needed

I do agree with this.