Womanhood is lived; it is not biologically given or legally bestowed. - Centre for Women's Studies response to Court ruling.

[IwantToRetire]

The Centre for Women's Studies joins other UK university centres, research groups and networks in gender/sexuality/feminist/women’s studies to issue a statement about the Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ’sex’ in the Equality Act 2010.

The statement reaffirms our commitment to trans-inclusion, and expresses deep concern about the judgment and its effects on trans, non-binary, intersex, and all gender nonconforming people.

https://www.york.ac.uk/womens-studies/news-and-events/news/trans-inclusion/

We reject the framing in the media and in public discourse that puts women, and/or feminists, at odds with trans people. This is especially the case in relation to the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces. Womanhood is lived; it is not biologically given or legally bestowed. The rights of trans people and the rights of cisgender women are inherently connected. As academic experts on sex and gender, we do not agree that biological sex is ‘self-explanatory.’ As feminists, we see the weaponisation of ‘women’s safety’ to vilify and exclude trans people as shameful.

From the full statement available at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTlPrVc6AjQSFRYgnpfggRZii7ee0LWmZUxH32cNojIExJzYUdqQLVLGbkIZwMi17UZDAijyiKB1Q9t/pub

(Can we blame Judith Butler for this word salad or is it inherently part of being an "academic expert on sex and gender")

Do you remember the evidence given in the Jo Phoenix case from the 'academics' there, where it seemed that no one knew who had written a open letter denouncing her, and the people who signed it apparently had no idea what they had actually signed or the ramifications of doing so?

All I can say about letters is that academics who signed the (perfectly legal) sex matters letter stating that biological

Pressed send by mistake!
People who signed that letter who said that biological sex is real have been put on a list of 'bad people' by members of my institution. And they won't work with anyone who signed the letter

So the discrimination is not always visible

There is a lawyer on X advising people to think carefully about signing open letters as it could be used by Gender Critical students, members of staff, to show a hostile environment- this happened in the Jo Phoenix / Open University case.

I have questions. Why are they called Centre for Women's Studies if they don't actually know what a woman is though? What are they actually studying? Why do women need studying? Have they actually studied the SC judgement, as it doesnt sound as if they understand it? Who made them the experts on 'womaning'? I'm going to stop now as this utter nonsense is, well, utter nonsense, and quite frankly I have better things to do, after all, a woman's work is never done. Hah.

Isn’t this exactly why these university departments should be approached for comment by journalists and others as if each had made the statement themselves?

As you rightly point out, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly who did once time has passed, but it would be pretty simple for a dept to identify who signed this letter on behalf of the university last week. And where whole depts have condoned the letter and breached the EA, they should be held to account for doing so.

Asking signatories individually to confirm whether they endorse the letter or not would put each uni dept on the spot to confirm whether they actually agree that women shouldn’t have the rights they currently have under the EA or whether they want to alter their position.

They were targeted by the political movement as was every other women's space or group with the word 'women' in the title. Every actual woman in the place who was not compliant has long since been disposed of, the whole point was to enforce on the world that woman and anything for women and about women was in fact all about men, and the witches who would argue that men weren't women were disposed of. The idea was to stamp out actual feminism and replace it, and to change the culture entirely from within, it was rather like the Americans did to the Native Americans, stamping out their culture and language and heritage and voices and enforcing the 'right way' upon them. And shunting them out of the way to take over everything they had.

The Universities equally sent out the graduates well indoctrinated with batshit who were employed for their batshit views by those who were recruiting to maintain the pure integrity of the batshit. No staff with diverse views would have survived in post.

Women's studies to them and anything else to do with women is all about and only about women being a mixed sex group where all the important ones are definitely men and the non-men ones are the servant class. They are a mens rights movement in deep cover, and probably in denial. This is rather like what the official vegan movement would look like ten years down the line if all the groups and policies and recruitment had been controlled by a cattle ranch baron. It would have about the same relation to actual vegans as this group do to women.

Colonialism in action.

Sack the lot of them. How can you study women when don't know what one is?

I wonder if they even think someone like me is a woman. I don't live in a particularly womanny way. I don't define myself by reference to social stereotypes of womanhood. Just a human being with a uterus getting on with life as best I can.

And hopefully Women's Studies will stand alone again, & will include lectures looking back at this period in world history, analysing & drawing lessons from it.

I'm so old that when I was at uni, we requested a course on Women's Studies, the female academics tried to get one started & the male department staff vetoed it. It boils my piss (as I believe the saying is) that as soon as women got Women's Studies going as an area of academia it was diverted from its true purpose. Some men just can't let women have anything of their own, freely chosen, can they?

One way in which I do find it culturally colonialist is the assertion that womanhood is by defined by "lived" experience in the light of eg. Afghanistan, FGM, sex-selective abortion, inaccessible contraception etc. This assertion unthinkingly imposes on these demographics, too, a conception of sex and gender that depends entirely on comfortable western privilege.

Would women suffering in these ways even recognise a definition of "womanhood" that disregards their biology to be inclusive of male lived experience? Or would it be unthinkable to do so (trapped as they are in their windowless homes due to that mystifying thing called the sex binary that we, over here, simply can't fathom).

For some demographics, to be a woman is inescapably life-limiting, in the most literal sense, in a way that - thank goodness - it no longer is for us. For the women in Afghanistan, it's to "live" in an externally imposed prison into which a majority most definitely don't "identify". And that's due to the biological binary that York relishes denying.

That statement represents some astonishingly limited thinking that, from this perspective, is also potentially deeply offensive.

Does York support campaigns for single-sex loos in the Developing World? How can they, if they "do not agree that biological sex is self-explanatory" and believe that expressing such needs is a "weaponisation of women's safety"? Or if they do agree that such facilities dramatically limit the risk of rape in rural India, then is that an acknowledgement that York thinks that the males of rural India are less civilised than our own, where such "segregation" is, apparently, no longer required? Or is it, rather, that Indian females are more deserving of protection than we are over here? Or would York argue, in suitably euphemistic terms, that those uncivilised country bumpkins have a long way yet to go before they reach the elevated level at which their society can at last transcend the concept of sex entirely as we sophisticated western nations do?

Which is it, people? Whichever it may be, it sure doesn't come across well.

Isn't York the one which offers a PhD in Transgender archaeology?
I have no more patience just cull courses and depts that descend to this level of drivel.

I don’t know, but the Uni of York also did a lot of the legwork for the Cass review, so I’m sure not every dept there thinks like this.

I know miss! I know!

"it's complicated"

Yes someone at York appears to have found a supervisor and funding to work on a PhD on the topic of 'Transgender Archeology'.

Now archeological evidence for gender roles in particular cultures and individuals departing from them could be a really interesting field of study. You'd need to work on cultures where there's a sufficient wealth of archeological evidence to establish a norm, then examine individual finds that depart from that.

Labelling people according to a modern cultural phenomenon seems anachronistic and to actively detract from understanding the cultures you are studying.

No. Just no.

There is a real acknowledged problem in the psych and behavioural sciences called the WEIRD problem.

WEIRD = Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic Societies. Some believe 50% of the literature doesn't replicate and we don't know if the other half replicates for the 88% who aren't in WEIRD societies.

I don't understand what any of that means.

If I have "lived womanhood" (?), I believe that I have only done so through my experiences of the biological realities of being female. I'm not really sure what else it could refer to. 🤔

IMO, anything that includes the term "cis" means that the people/organisation saying it have been bought and not worth listening to.

Exactly! I'm genuinely bemused by what else it could mean.

I'm just me - an individual! "Woman" refers to the half of the population to which I belong. It indicates that I'm in a group that typically shares certain physical characteristics (eg. it determines the ranges against my blood test is checked for abnormality). But besides the physical markers and experiences, there's honestly not much left. I suppose there are clothes - mine are gendered to a degree, but even that is as much about fitting my body shape as particular societal standards! Hair, OK, I have a cut that is seen as female and would feel strange in something more masculine, but it's very short and of little significance to me, really. Make-up - rarely, if ever. Behaviour, I'm certainly very conscious that I may have to ask for help to eg. open jars, and resent the knowledge that, were I a man, I'd be out walking in isolated forests at every opportunity, whereas as a woman, it simply doesn't feel like a sensible thing to do (that devastates and angers me when I dwell on it). But after that, I start running out of ideas. I'm just me.

I certainly don't "identify" with anything. I actually thoroughly dislike many of the markers of so-called femininity, both in terms of appearance (ugh, the hair and lips nowadays! the degrading poses of that all-female rocket crew!!!) and behaviour. Like so many of us here, I'd probably be calling myself non-binary were I at school now - and, OK, there may have been a degree of relief had I had that label to cling to when I was feeling bemused and insecure next to the sexy, cool girls... but I don't think it would have been a healthy relief, just, rather, a solidification of my insecurities: "I'm different to them, I'm not "girl-ing" right!" I worry, just as I worry about so-called non-binary kids now, that it actually could have stunted my natural development into the mature realisation that there is no such thing as "right".

Excellent long statement from @Catiette. It should be reproduced widely.

Exactly @Catiette . The assertion that womanhood is lived in a way that isn’t solely about physically being a woman creates a normative target, one that many women will no longer fit into. It’s regressive and misogynistic.

That's really well put.

It's a shame that the SC ruling didn't happen before my institution got rid of a load of people. It would have made deciding who to get rid of a lot easier.

D minus. Please try harder.

The thing with this letter is that individual academics haven't signed, heads of research units have signed on behalf of the entire research unit. I bet they didn't get everyone in the research unit to agree first. That top-down imposition of an opinion on an entire research unit crosses the line from academic freedom to creating a hostile working environment for dissenters within the unit, especially junior staff and students. It won't be possible for dissenters to have their academic freedom in such a unit.