Most people agree with us.

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/supreme-court-trans-public-opinion-b2753173.html

'[A] YouGov poll of 2,106 adults in Great Britain found that 63 per cent believe the Supreme Court made the correct decision in its April ruling.
The survey also revealed that 52 per cent of respondents now feel the law regarding women’s rights and their application to transgender people is clearer following the decision.
While 13 per cent said the ruling would have a positive impact on them and 6 per cent said it would be negative, more than three quarters of people (77 per cent) said the ruling would make no real difference to them.
The poll also addressed the issue of transgender women's participation in sports. Nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of those surveyed agreed with the decisions made by some sporting bodies to ban transgender women from women’s competitions following the ruling.'

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/national/25172574.survey-suggests-people-think-supreme-court-gender-ruling-right/

Yes, WithSilverBells, you're right. The SC ruling does establish that binary, at least in relation to the Equality Act, though not with other legislations such as Gender Recognition Certificates (which capture a change from male to female) or even basic ID like passports (mine says 'F'). And with all that additional admin not covered by the Equality Act and the SC ruling, I think it's important to realise that trans people slip between that binary.

I don't want to come across as being argumentative or disrespectful for the sake of it, by the way. I'm not a troll, just a trans woman feeling quite exhausted by everything. And I don't speak for other trans women, unfortunately. I just came here wondering if dialogue and compromise was possible. Maybe it isn't, although if it makes you feel better, I think the SC ruling is leading to lots of adjustments and compromises now on the trans side, in order to be legally compliant. I think generally, women-only spaces will only be for women in more and more ways, once the infrastructure is constructed to enable trans people to use gender-neutral facilities.

Gwen, it was my understanding that most trans people don't want gender neutral spaces because they want the validation of using the men's or ladies'.

Transing children is child abuse.

Children cannot consent to losing their long term sexual function and long term health issues.

And the research seems clear that social transition increases the risk of medical transition.
Puberty blockers end their development and condemn children to continue towards risky surgery.

GRCs are a legal fiction used in limited circumstances where trans-people interact with the State. Since pension ages have been equalised and same-sex marriage legalised their main purpose seems to be that the person is recorded as the opposite sex on their death certificate. There is no 'slipping between the binary' when it comes to sex I'm afraid.
Akua Reindorf KC says that although the biological definition of sex applies to the Equality Act, the fact that it was clearly stated by the highest court in the land means that it will be a very low bar to get it accepted for other pieces of legislation.
You might be interested in an existing thread we have that was started by a trans-identified male and has some trans-identified people commenting on it. I will find you the link

@GwenEdinburgh www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5336462-tw-who-supports-the-sc-ruling-ama?page=14&reply=144418923

CapitalAtRisk, I think you're right, some of it is validation. Some need it more than others, some are more relaxed about using gender-neutral spaces while others see it as their right. Most trans women see themselves as women, they think it's normal to use women-only spaces, if needed (which generally means toilets, and some changing areas, e.g. retail shops).

But the fact is, in work places and in places that are easy to control/police, adjustments are being made in response to the SC ruling and I don't think choice is going to come into it. if we're talking about trans women. I still think public toilets especially will be a sticking point, depending on the building. But if a woman were to complain to management about a trans woman using their women-only facilities, then my honest answer is that this would be stopped pretty quickly. I don't think any management wants to receive a visit from the EHRC for breaking statutory requirements concerning women-only spaces, or to receive a lawsuit. Honestly, when it comes to lawsuits, the gender-critical movement has a pretty terrifying record of success, everybody's aware of this.

And for my part, I'm working at my institution to find ways of navigating the SC ruling and the fact that trans women are no longer allowed in women-only spaces. Nobody's talking about challenging the ruling. We are talking about supporting trans people during this very difficult 'transition' (no pun intended).

Maybe trans women should support women by not insisting on going into their spaces?

A gay man is still protected by the PCs of sex and sexual orientation even if he acquires the PC of GR by virtue of an intention to "transition" (wear women's clothes).

Thank you, WithSilverBells.

"Akua Reindorf KC says that although the biological definition of sex applies to the Equality Act, the fact that it was clearly stated by the highest court in the land means that it will be a very low bar to get it accepted for other pieces of legislation."

Yes, fair point, I think so too, on reflection. I think the SC ruling will act like a kind of 'synecdoche' in the same way the Cass Review did, it will represent something more than it actually says, and attains a symbolic significance. You could see it in the press the next day: 'Trans women aren't women,' or 'Trans women are male.' Nobody was limiting it to the Equality Act. It was very frustrating for legal people who support trans rights, but if the Cass Review shows us anything, the SC ruling (with the EHRC statutory guidance) will have huge cultural significance now. It might even influence the Digital ID bill, either this time or through amendments, and make trans people's sex-at-birth even more central to their legal and public identity.

"You might be interested in an existing thread we have that was started by a trans-identified male and has some trans-identified people commenting on it. I will find you the link."

Thank you for the threat - I'm really interested!

All the best. G

I think that a survey like this is WORTHLESS without the questions having absolute clarity.

For the purposes of this survey you need the word TW to be followed by "(a biological male who identifies as a TW and who may or may not have taken hormones or had surgery, and given the proportion who have surgery is likely to be able to father children)"

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/SexMatters_Results_250509_w.pdf

Looks like they did define terms; YouGov usually do in these surveys

I don't think we can hope to eradicate transness as a phenomenon, nor that, in a liberal democracy, we should even try. I see it as a metaphysical belief, that should not be forced on non-believers, but nevertheless requires us to treat believers with respect and dignity: if that means providing more unisex toilets, that seems like a price worth paying.

Women are statistically less safe in mixed sex toilets (or do you literally mean single occupancy unisex toilets which open directly onto a corridor and are single sex when in use)?

If you do mean unisex then (1) can companies and government afford them, and (2) if trans people get unisex single occupancy then why the hell should normal men and women be disadvantaged in mixed sex spaces with less privacy?

If you do mean mixed sex toilets, then please explain why women (as a group, including some women who think it is kind to put themselves at risk or who are unaware of the statistics) should face increased risk, simply because a tiny number of people cannot accept reality?

Sorry, not good enough... there are a lot of people who are not very bright or not at all clued up. It needs to be clearer - "the group TW includes people who look like a stereotypical heavyweight boxer, only in a wig and heels, which they've been wearing since they came out yesterday. Most TW are perfectly capable of fathering children"

Thanks! Pretty clear.

I’m saying the ideology to which you subscribe feeds off inculcating into kids a feeling that they need to modify their perfect bodies through drugs and surgery. That is abusive and morally wrong, I reject it.

Aside from the occasional Quentin Crisp type, just living their own lives without harming others IMO, kids weren’t doing this to themselves 20 years ago. Why? Because this ideology had not been promoted as salvation to vulnerable kids, particularly gay autistic kids with black and white thinking.

In their own surveys (as opposed to the ones carried out on behalf of other orgs) they usually ask the toilets etc question twice, once without and once with the following:
Some transgender people have gender reassignment surgery. This is surgery by which a transgender person's physical attributes are altered to match the gender they identify with (e.g. breast and genital surgery). Do you think a transgender woman who has not had gender reassignment surgery should or should not be allowed to...
It is interesting to compare the two sets of data (though I do wish they would bold and underline the 'not').

Hi Jamie. You've got a really negative image of trans women, and you seem to be focusing a lot on fathering children. I know this is an anonymised forum, but for my part, I've never had children, I've been on HRT since 2016, and had my surgery back in 2022. Most - maybe all - trans women I know (not that I know that many, we're not a big demographic) want or are on HRT and surgery, though the waiting lists for both on the NHS are huge. I'm sure there are 'boxer' like trans women out there (some women also box, to be fair), but HRT seriously affects your muscle mass, your libido, and lots of other things about you.

I think most trans women don't wear high heels either, except for special occasions (walking around Edinburgh in high-heels sounds like torture).

I think you should read some biographies by trans women: I've just finished 'ReadMe' by Chelsea Manning and I loved it (lots about being a whistleblower in the US army, very tense), while 'Tomorrow Will Be Better' by the US senator Sarah McBride is very wholesome (actually, a bit too wholesome, but still).

Ooh yes. I mean, if TW were women and wanted to be seen as women, surely they do what a woman does when she makes someone uncomfortable and change their behaviour. The fact they don’t care that they are making women feel uncomfortable and unsafe speaks to their male social conditioning and just proves they are not women

No, I agree classic sex-segregated multiple occupancy provision with door gaps is the gold standard: mixed-sex provision is dangerous for women. And the ruling has made 'single-gender' provision almost certainly illegal. So I'm just talking about what we could additionally do to accommodate trans people. I don't have fixed ideas about it, but I do think it's worth going to a bit of trouble, rather than just say "use the gents".

My husband and I were chatting about the whole issue recently. He said that he saw a trans woman sitting in a museum cafe a couple of decades ago, minding their own business, and wasn't it sad that TRAs had made it all so difficult for that trans person to quietlly live their life.

To which I replied yes, but which loo was that trans woman going to use in the museum? I watched his face change as he realised that "letting a trans woman mind their own business" meant that women had to change their feelings and life for that to happen.

The problem is that the trans umbrella is very broad and includes transsexuals, fetishists and autogynephiles - before you even consider men pretending to be trans for predatory reasons. Surely you cannot be unaware of this @GwenEdinburgh ?

edit typo

This might sound like I'm being defensive, but I think the AGP phenomena has been overdone. I'm aware of one famous example in the UK, and a few others in north America, but I don't think there are any organisations for AGP males, which I'm guessing is because there are so few of them. This isn't to say that some men don't cross-dress for fetishistic reasons, and if they were to use women-only spaces, I would be concerned. I would also imagine they'd be easy to stop, given that I don't think they'd be undergoing HRT (it's a serious medical undertaking if you're adding testosterone blockers, about £500 for an injection that blocks testosterone for three months). So again, I'm sure they exist, I'm even pretty sure there's a pornography market that caters for such people, but in the case of fetishists, I would imagine - and certainly hope - there aren't many.

For that reason, and if it is a problem that's been noted in women-only spaces, then of course I welcome the SC ruling, though I'm not sure how that would help with unpoliced public lavatories. The SC ruling is mainly bad for trans women in places like the workplace.

As for transsexuals, I think that's just an old-fashioned word for trans women (I know of trans women in their twenties who are reclaiming it as a word because of how it highlights the emphasis on cross-sex hormones and surgery). I would personally be comfortable being described as a transsexual, it sounds quite subversive and cool.

GwenEdinburgh when it comes to lawsuits, the gender-critical movement has a pretty terrifying record of success.

We have indeed. I think it helps that we try to operate within the law as it actually is, rather than the law as some groups eg Stonewall would like it to be.

The rise of the trans rights movement has been a very bleak and dispiriting time. Over a short space of time women found our spaces, our organisations, our identity, even the words that refer to us - things that we had fought for for centuries and believed we had secured for good - appropriated.

We also saw familiar things that we interacted with on a daily basis - the media, the medical profession, schools, youth organisations, political parties - adopt language and policies there were inimical to us.

Most distressingly from my point of view, as I am a very rational person, we saw science itself abandon fact for easily-disprovable opinions, like sex being a spectrum. And that version of 'science' was even taught in schools, so several cohorts of schoolchildren have been misinformed by the people who are supposed to educate them.

For some of us, possibly many of us, it seemed like the world had been turned upside down. A tiny percentage of the population had somehow gained so much power and influence that the rights of 50% of the population were sidelined, and we were dismissed as bigots, transphobes or dinosaurs when we objected. Those of us who objected too loudly were threatened with death or rape, and some of us were subjected to literal violence, as in literal violence.

There weren't many lights at the end of this dark tunnel of misogyny: this board was one, and the judicial system in the UK (or England and Wales, more accurately) was another.

The 'terrifying record of success' you refer to (possibly ironically) was a case-by-case acceptance by the courts that women exist as a social group defined by our biology, and that we have rights based on that identity, and that we have been deprived of those rights, in ways that, when exposed in court, often seem outlandishly groundless and unfair.

It was such a relief that at least one branch of the state saw what had happened to women's rights, and made rulings that have gone some of the way to tilting the world back to the horizontal.

The level of aggression and misogyny apparent in the backlash to the UKSC ruling on the definition of 'woman' shows that there are many more hurdles to face before we reach a balanced state - 'to women, our rights and no less; to transwomen, their rights and no more'.

The continuation of a society less balanced than that is terrifying to me.

@GwenEdinburgh are you saying TW would break the law and use women’s spaces though they have been told that they should not? Even though they have been told their presence makes women feel uncomfortable and unsafe? Just to validate their er…. Feelings? I’ll put it politely and say feelings instead of the other word beginning with F. Why do they believe their feelings trump those of women? Not very womanly if them is it?