"Trans women ARE biological women"

[TangenitalContrivance]

I see this argument and comment more and more the last few weeks and hugely over the last 3 days.

For example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1k1tliv/trans_women_are_biological_women/

This statement, and the comments underneath it absolutely baffle me.

The approach, one that I am sure will only work with a minority of the people who said TWAW, is to undermine the definition of words, yet again, and deliberately cloud the water when it comes to speaking clearly and using terms that everyone agrees with

I have seen it said in more places than Reddit however, and by respected people

Very well put, for any lurkers feeling puzzled by word-cloud obfuscation of gravity and biology.

Oh wow.

How thick do you have to be to be surprised that an evolutionary biologist doesn't believe humans can change sex?

After years of rape threats, punch a terf banners and being told we are all prehistoric dinosaurs who hord rights and will die out soon, because we are a tiny minority.... Enjoy our erasure and so on?

Not a chance of being quiet.

I have my doubts about the worthwhileness of engaging in batshit crazy arguments about biology.

It will never be the case that UK society at large or legislators will consider there to be more or less than 2 sexes or agree that it is difficult to categorise people. When most people entertain arguments about chromosomes not being visible, or mastectomies, hysterectomies and infertility undermining sex classification, they rapidly return to sanity once concrete examples set them straight.

TRAs will continue to flog arguments that sex is neither binary nor immutable as they get buy in from those who are desperate to undermine logical arguments for excluding males from provision that is only legally available to females. It won’t pass muster beyond this select group.

TRAs really need to start focusing on campaigning for provision that supports the dignity and safety of trans people and doesn’t require women’s single sex provision to become mixed sex, the sooner. In reality, this is only likely to happen once they accept that single sex provision has no role in validating identity.

I do feel sorry for those who are transgender. There is a focus here on trans women but trans men are in the same situation, they feel they were born in a body that doesn't match their brain.
Some of the females in this thread haven't thought through the effect of this supreme court ruling.

Trans men were born into a biological female body. Many trans men look like biological males, but they are not biological males. They will be welcome in women's safe spaces, as a result of being biologically female at birth. However you will judge them based on how they look and abuse them for being in biological born female changing rooms, despite the fact they will be complying with current society which dictates there are only 2 types of people, those born in one of the two biological sexes.

Therefore you still won't be happy, because you are now going to be reporting people who are doing nothing wrong and using the correct born biological sex changing rooms, toilets, and safe spaces yet do not 'look' how you expect them to. Maybe we should stop judging people by how they look or appear and instead look at their actions and intent of their actions.

One of the replies to the Dawkins comment:

Being an atheist and evolutionary biologist won’t necessarily lead to someone accepting us! As an atheist but not a biologist I assure you he is just a deranged hater, and an ignorant hater who is being blinded by hate before facts!

He knows but he won’t admit!

I kind of love this. They know they can't realistically claim Richard fucking Dawkins doesn't understand biology, so they claim he secretly knows that men are biologically female but is pretending they aren't. Because of his "deranged hatred".

I don't think anyone said that "biology" is binary. Sex, however, is indeed binary - there are two and only two sexes.

If you don't think that is the case, please tell us what the third (fourth, fiftth?) sex is.

Do you imagine you are the first person to have made this point today?

Christ, even Mermaids dropped the whole 'born in the wrong body' woo in 2020. And they're proper true believers.

Recycled arguments, over and over again.

The supreme court judgement was very important for transmen. It confirmed that they were covered by maternity and pregnancy protections in law. Had the judgement gone the other way and they were legally men then they would not have been

I'd encourage anyone who doesn't know any transpeople well or hasn't read a lot about their experience, as well as the many ways someone's gender and sex can fail to line up with each other well, to realize that you don't know anything about it at all. Your opinions are based on ignorance.

Again, if your opinion is merely something you pulled out of your own bottom, with no education or personal knowledge of the actual issue, you should realize that's what it is and stop strongly and loudly defending it.

Loud stupidity is unappealing.

An intelligent person doesn't need this explained to them. Their first response, in the above situation, would be to say, "I don't know." Not, "My foolish and massive outrage is the same as actually knowing a thing about it. Here is a dim-witted cliche' to back that up!"

Doing this would hugely improve the world.

You're welcome.

Just to add, the Scottish Government were well aware that transmen would lose maternity protections if they had won their case

At this point I would refer you to Dr Johnson’s reply to Bishop Berkeley - with the addition that we may not understand gravity fully, but we absolutely do understand what happens if a big rock falls on our head from a great height.

We also have a general understanding of what a chair is, in case you’re yet another first year philosophy student.

Social construct is something that doesn’t have an objective existence. Rocks, gravity and sex have an objective existence. They don’t care what we think about them; they will exist and continue to exist however we define them.

I agree, and would like to add my fav:

How, in the flipping flip, did we all manage to make babies for hundreds of thousands of years, if M/F sex is so confusing? Did we all just run around bashing privates randomly into each other until whoops?

It doesn't matter how sex and gender (personality) do or do not "line up" when the issue is single-sex spaces.

Holds up a mirror

You're welcome.

Aw bless. My niece used to say she was a horse, when she went for new shoes she stood with her back to the shop assistant and lifted up each hoof foot like a horse being shoed by a farrier. But she was four at the time and is now a fully grown adult female human. She knew she was not really a horse , but had a vivid imagination.

I haven’t seen any gloating. I have seen celebratation, and why would there not be? For many woman, the ruling has taken a lot of effort and sacrifice, which has finally paid off.

It baffles me as to why people are attributing the celebration as being about trans peoples’ ‘loss’ (perceived loss- as the ‘rights’ didn’t exist in the first place). It’s a celebration of the clarification that woman have the right to female only provision and services.

I have empathy for trans people for whom this clarification changed what they understood to be their ‘rights’. I think urgent action is needed to ensure that suitable provision is put in place so they can navigate society safely and with dignity. Hopefully, they can gain inspiration from the suffrage moment that delivered this for women. I’ll happily support their efforts.

It's good that you looked in a mirror and recognized yourself there.

More people should do that, rather than activating their childish "outrage" again and tossing out another dim insult.

It's okay. Now you can do better. :)

I remember an early episode of Friends where Phoebe said she didn't believe in gravity, but she still didn't follow that up by saying men belong in women's single sex spaces.

I agree loud stupidity is unappealing.

Ha ha.

We've frequently been told to educate ourselves over here. So we did.

We are probably better informed than you. Women's (the biological kind) legal rights have been clarified so why are so many people (men?) upset about that 🤔

Edit - Ooooo you edited your post to add in childish insults.

Jury award for the passive aggressive be-kind scold. Top notch effort. Run along now.

Maya Forstater has addressed this point here: https://x.com/MForstater/status/1913185931290460333

Main points being:

• no one is forcing them to use the female space
• they have made extreme life choices to look like a man. They need to accept that those life choices come with the possibility of being challenged if they enter a women's space.

Lots of people have to plan ahead regarding accessing public toilets for example. Women who disguise themselves as men may be one such group of people who need to do this - eg find out if there is a mixed sex facility.

Why? What do you imagine finding out more about trans people's experiences would change?

My sex based rights aren't conditional on how trans people feel.

The Supreme Court judgment confirms that, the matter is now settled and everyone is going to have to accept it.