Europe must not erase sex - We must resist the imposition of activist fantasies

[IwantToRetire]

When, in mid-October, MPs from the broad left-wing bloc Nouveau Front Populaire tabled a proposal in the French Parliament to remove sex from national identity cards, they prefaced it with an explanation: having one’s sex recorded on identity documents, they claimed, is bad for equality, bad for women, and especially bad for those who identify as transgender. “It is common for an individual’s appearance not to correspond to the stereotypes associated with the sex recorded on their official papers,” they argued, followed by a non sequitur of the highest order: that sex itself is an outdated stereotype.

Feminist discussion groups exploded. One woman asked, “What happened to the French? Have they gone mad?” Truth be told, the same question could be asked of many nations today: have the Irish, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans and others gone mad? And if they have not, what explains why legislators across so many states are suddenly deciding that biological sex — not only a basic fact of human reproduction but a cornerstone of equality and non-discrimination law — is a relic of the past to be discarded like phrenology or geocentrism?

The almost 70 left-wing MPs who backed the proposal in the French National Assembly also claimed that, unlike a person’s height — also recorded on ID cards — recording a person’s sex is not in line with international human rights standards set by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union. Considering recent developments in these institutions, it seems, at least on the surface, difficult to argue against that claim.

Article continues at https://thecritic.co.uk/europe-must-not-erase-sex/

Here is another interview with Faika with WDI.

That's not what the SC judgement said or meant. The SC said that EA2010 meant biological sex, not certified sex. Thus a transwoman (a man) is excluded from a woman's ward/prison/refuge on grounds of sex, nothing to do with proportionate, if it is sex segregated and for women (which means biological women) then transwomen cannot legally enter. That's what the SC meant. Stonewall went on about proportionality and case by case bases because it suited the trans agenda. That veil has now been torn away. Transmen are women, transwomen are men. The proportionality bit in the SC's judgement refers to transmen who may cause alarm in female only spaces.

There are times when I miss the laugh reaction. 😀

I must say I wish it wasn't called Athena for the simple reason that there are already loads of networks, groups and organisations called Athena. I was trying to Google it after hearing about it on the SEEN in Journalism podcast and if there were any results they were completely lost.

An excellent and heartening initiative, though.

I'm glad you turned up. It reminded me that my DGD might enjoy 'Howl's Moving Castle' that I saw in Waterstones last week. Howls is a perfect fit.

Gametes define sex. However, mostly we don't need to see them (or anything private) to know someone's sex.

Well of course people don't 'see the gametes' durr. Is it a 12 year old making this argument? It certainly sounds like it.

However the pathway taken to produce one gamete or the other results in a vast range of physiological differences which are easily recognised as male or female by the human eye.

'...manage competing rights which we clearly can by laws that allow for discrimination if compelling reasons exist.'

This is an interesting post. It seems to approve of the exclusion of transwomen from women only space/sports etc., and the reaffirmation of 'sex' as meaning 'biological sex' by the UK Supreme Court.

Am I reading the post right as a massive leap towards biological realism? A crack in the TWAW monolith? A pragmatic response to seeing that, as court decision after court decision rules against gender ideology, the game is up?

This is the situation on Terf Island, where the rule of law is tending to side with verifiable scientific reality.

However, the thread is about Europe, and the sensible workaround and exclusions and "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim" can only exist where biological sex is officially recognised and explicitly mentioned in legislation.

Where the category 'sex' has been replaced by the word 'gender', women have no status as such in law, and cannot claim discrimination on the grounds of sex.

Biological males who say they are women must be treated as women under the law. There are no women-only space protected as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, because 'woman' also means 'men'.

When the protected characteristic under equality legislation is 'gender' not 'sex',
a women's prison, a women's society, a women's refuge must admit a man who defines his gender identity as 'woman'. His right to be considered as a woman is protected by equality legislation which is based on gender not sex.

Howse's comforting 'laws that allow for discrimination if compelling reasons exist.' can only operate if there is something to discriminate about, i.e. women and men having status as separate social groups under equality legislation.

So Howse's suggestion that there is no conflict between trans rights and women's rights, because look how we're muddling through working things out in the UK, does not apply in jurisdictions where the category of biological sex has been eliminated from legislation.

"The thing is trans people aren't denying the biological reality of sex. And they also aren't denying the socially gendered reality."

But they seem to think everyone should bend to their wishes, however terrifying or dangerous or uncomfortable that makes it for a huge number of people. It's the forcefulness of it for me. Trans people just don't seem to be able to accept that it's ok not to believe the same things they do. The horror and condemnation if you have a difference of opinion is off the scale. So violent and alien, it presents as very male behaviour to me which probably reinforces my belief that trans identified males remain male regardless of how they present themselves to the world.

I fully accept they wish to live their lives in their own way. Why can they not accord me the same? But no, it's seems their reality is the only reality that matters and everyone else must be assaulted until they give in and accept re-education.

Sex matters for procreation and multiple other reasons. Gender is entirely separate and to me is irrelevant, but I accept that for other people that isn't the case. Imo, it is not possible to change sex. You can be as gender fluid as you like, which is a personal choice and no-one else needs to engage with that if they don't want to.

So then we arrive at consent, and the simple fact that I do not consent to any of this. I do not consent to sharing single sex facilities with males. I do not consent to compete in sports with males. I do not agree that a man who thinks he is a woman is a woman. I do not agree that cis describes me, I am not a subcategory of my sex. I do not agree to my protection being removed in law, in policy, and in society. Let those that believe in gender sort out new laws, policies and societal rules without impinging on those that already exist.

This whole trans live matter thing and the literal genocide narrative. Are trans people's identities and mental health so fragile that they must have such volumes of external validation to bolster them? This reinforces my opinion that this is a mental health condition and it's a huge safeguarding concern for young and vulnerable people.

My point is that if you don’t record the data you cannot correlate with what affects outcomes.

Did the immigrants rioting in the banlieus live in poverty because they were refused jobs or because they were inadequately educated to get jobs? If they could not get work, why was this headlining? If education levels were low, was this a result of family attitudes or poor provision? If provision was poor, was this because resources were divided in strictly equal amounts to all regions, despite the fact that certain regions needed more resources teaching French language and literacy? How would they know that some regions needed more support with language and literacy? If they recorded language and literacy outcomes, did they also record demographics?

If you live in an area that keeps such records, or if you yourself are from a migrant community, you will know that migrant families are often highly supportive of their children’s education. Some migrant communities, however, prioritise their boys’ education over their girls’. Th is can lead to reduced integration in society.

If governments do not record this information because doing so does not fit in with their philosophy of equality how can they ensure genuine equality for all?

When, in mid-October, MPs from the broad left-wing bloc Nouveau Front Populaire tabled a proposal in the French Parliament to remove sex from national identity cards, they prefaced it with an explanation: having one’s sex recorded on identity documents, they claimed, is bad for equality, bad for women, and especially bad for those who identify as transgender. “It is common for an individual’s appearance not to correspond to the stereotypes associated with the sex recorded on their official papers,” they argued, followed by a non sequitur of the highest order: that sex itself is an outdated stereotype.

Feminist discussion groups exploded. One woman asked, “What happened to the French? Have they gone mad?” Truth be told, the same question could be asked of many nations today: have the Irish, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans and others gone mad? And if they have not, what explains why legislators across so many states are suddenly deciding that biological sex — not only a basic fact of human reproduction but a cornerstone of equality and non-discrimination law — is a relic of the past to be discarded like phrenology or geocentrism?

This really is madness. How is having 'one's sex recorded on identity document' bad for women?

Groundhog day again I see.

I agree Marie.

When any female single sex provision is left up to someone's interpretation of a definition and their evaluation of some person's intention, then the protection of women is significantly reduced by compounded human error.

The use of stereotypes (as it seems the French have now used as leverage) is one that inherently reintroduces risk into the protections needed for female people.

I think societies have to decide if they want single sex spaces or not. If they are aren’t going to have them then it should be a free for all. No single sex changing rooms, loos, schools, hospital wards, prisons, dormitories, sports, hostels. children’s care homes, clinics, gym sessions etc. People need to wake up to the scale of what they are actually asking for. If people are allowed to choose then you are effectively saying that single sex spaces don’t exist.

"This poster exhibits a remarkable facility with language, deploying an intricate and ostentatious vocabulary in a manner that, at first glance, might impress the untrained reader. However, a closer examination reveals that this rhetorical flourish serves less as a conduit for insight than as a deliberate mechanism of obfuscation. The author consistently substitutes syntactic extravagance and lexical ornamentation for substantive engagement with empirical biological principles, creating the illusion of intellectual rigor while systematically evading verifiable fact. This pattern of behavior suggests not mere misunderstanding, but a calculated reliance on linguistic complexity to distract from fundamental errors and unsupported claims. Repeated invocations of abstruse terminology, convoluted sentence structures, and excessive metaphorical framing appear designed to intimidate or confuse, rather than clarify. Indeed, the central assertions of the work — particularly those concerning evolutionary processes, cellular mechanisms, and physiological realities — are persistently untethered from established observation, reflecting both a profound misapprehension of foundational science and a deliberate rhetorical strategy aimed at masking this deficiency. In sum, the author demonstrates a singular combination of delusional confidence and performative eloquence, wherein the ornamental deployment of language functions as both a shield against scrutiny and a surrogate for genuine understanding. The text stands as a testament not to erudition, but to the seductive power of verbosity when wielded to conceal cognitive vacuity."

yep.

I want to add something to this:

How is having 'one's sex recorded on identity document' bad for women, when the country cannot even adequately remove the issues in that country that make it 'bad' for women to have their sex recorded? If a country has such a significant issue with negative sexist discrimination against women, removing sex from identity documents is not going to improve the lives of women.

This is just ignoring the issues and trying to bandaid over those issues.

This is a great point

Trans people absolutely deny the biological reality of sex. The argument now is “I am a woman and I am biological so therefore I am a biological woman.” And all the effort which goes into arguing that DSDs prove that sex isn’t binary (they don’t), that other species can change sex so therefore it’s a thing for us (because we are basically the same as clownfish and sea slugs) and that if biology really mattered, women who have hysterectomies wouldn’t be real women any more and they clearly are, so therefore it can’t just be about body parts……that’s before we even get started on the transwomen who argue that they experience PMS.

Removing all official acknowledgement of sex (other than behind the closed door of the doctor's surgery) will teach us all to be sex-blind. So we will be pansexual, and put a stop to all misogyny. FTFY 🙄

That seems to be the thought....

The logical next step, which actually trans people would hate, but gender theorists might go for, is self-ID for all, at all times. Woman in the morning, man in the afternoon.

You can’t oversimplify something that’s binary. Conflating sex and gender is the problem. Gender? I don’t give AF, do what you like. Sex: you can’t change it no matter what society thinks progression looks like.

Eddie izzard?

I didn't name anyone in my post.

Why was it deleted?