Can't believe I'm writing this, but disappointed in JK today

[RobynMiller]

I know she is just one person but her tweets today are really undermining the whole GC argument.

Link: https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2046948644373274709

'Nothing's changed. I was being honest about how I feel about an individual trans woman I know, who was a gay man pre-transition, and who I met for the first time post-transition. Objectively speaking, she has physical characteristics that make it fairly obvious she wasn't born female, but she's a gentle, funny person I've never referred to as anything other than 'she' and 'her'. I find it perfectly easy to reconcile my fond feelings towards her, and my experience of her as someone with very female-coded energy, with a belief that she hasn't literally changed sex (and incidentally, she doesn't believe she's literally changed sex, either).'

Basically, someone asked her about the trans identified male she mentioned in her 2020 essay and this was her response.

Does she not realise there can be NO EXCEPTIONS? Give an inch they'll take a mile and all that. It doesn't matter that he is gentle and funny or that he has very female-coded energy whatever the hell that means.

This does make it seem like when she calls TIMs out she is now doing it maliciously as she is perfectly happy to play pretend if she likes them enough.

Just so frustrating as it basically says that 'we could all play along with TRAs just fine and are choosing not to because we're such meanies 😡'

Trouser ARE female coded clothing. Women have worn them since early 19th century. Why this denial of history to suggest that wearing trousers is in some way gender nonconforming? It is creating a false story to pretend that women wearing trousers (which are gender-conforming women’s clothing) is some way equivalent to men wearing dresses as a fetish.

I'm not sure why you're focused on trousers. The post of mine that you quoted doesn't include the word.

Hormones don't change your skeleton. Your hips and shoulders and ribs and arm length don't change. Your gait doesn't change.

I've met a few "ladies" who made me think "that person looks really odd" and then the penny dropped. The things you can't alter give the game away and the mismatch between those and what you can alter cause an "uncanny valley" effect that makes you more noticable, to me at least, than if you were an unaltered man in a dress.

That study from 1993 has been confirmed by later work. Facial sexual dimorphism in humans is deemed scientific fact by everyone working in computer vision.

It's not really surprising. We've evolved accurately to determine with whom we should mate.

And women in particular are better than men are at sexing someone based on face, because our safety depends on it.

And now I have to fight search engines to dig out that study.

Believing you're Napoleon Bonepart isn't a protected characteristic, or associated with one. But if they were qualified for the job and their belief did not lead them to cause any harm or trouble, they might still have a discrimination case against you, under the PC of belief (or possibly disability, if they hold this belief due to a mental illness). And I can't see that it would fundamentally or inevitably cause a problem to have someone in the workplace who believed they were Napoleon Bonepart, it would depend on how they behaved. I feel a lot during this conversation you have been confusing or conflating belief with behaviour - if someone's belief leads them to behave badly, then yes they're a problem and an employer is entitled to take action against them, but this is true for any belief, including GC beliefs. You've made the assumption, I think, that a trans person who believes they have changed sex will automatically therefore behave badly, but I think this reflects a negative stereotype that you hold about some trans people and therefore is a discriminatory position.

You mentioned above legislators aren't idiots and worded the law the way they did for a reason. The law is worded thus: “A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.”

Two points about this are interesting, I think. One, the definition is extremely broad, and deliberately so (as you say, legislators are not idiots), I suspect in order to prevent employers from trying to find loopholes to discriminate against some trans people, as you are doing. And secondly, and relevant to our conversation, the wording: the law recognises that trans people can undergo a process which reassigns their sex physiologically - ie to change at least some characteristics of sex. So as such I think it would be very difficult to stand up in court and say that it's unreasonable for a trans person to believe they can do what the law says they can do - physiologically change aspects of their sex.

And you still haven't at any point addressed how an employer might go about determining a trans person's beliefs about their sex without intrusive questioning. Because I can assure you that would be a slam-dunk discrimination case if you were interrogating trans people about their beliefs about their sex at interview stage.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923004001017

You say: "the law recognises that trans people can undergo a process which reassigns their sex physiologically". It doesn't say that. It says "changing physical or other attributes" "for the purpose of" reassigning their sex. It purposefully avoids saying the sex has been actually been reassigned, and even if it did (as in the GRA) reassigning something that is immutable is merely a convenient legal fiction. Canute stood on the beach and reassigned the tide and lo, it was reassigned, and his courtiers clapped. But the water didn't actually move.

I wholly reject the idea that passage gives someone licence to "believe" they have actually changed sex in the meaning of the word as I (and others use it.) If a reasonable person takes from that passage they have actually "changed" to the other sex, then they and I are using the word sex in very different ways. They may however reasonably believe they have changed "legal sex" and, I see that meaning of sex is closely connected to the PC of GR.

I take your point about it likely only becomes a workplace issue as a matter of behaviour. But if you're employing a developmental biologist to conduct some experiments on chicken embryos I think it would be reasonable to avoid a person who believed that their hormone treatment and surgery made them the opposite sex to the one in which they were born if they insisted that sex in that scenario meant the same as it does when referring to male and female chicken embryos in the experiements they were employed to conduct.

If you asked Dr. Upton - a man who swore in court that he was now a biological female - to tell you how many females were in a cohort of chicks, would you trust the answer he gave? Or would he just say "I can't tell, I haven't asked them how they feel"?

I keep seeing posts on SM from TW claiming they've shrunk 3-4 inches since starting HRT cross sex hormones. Surely shrinking that much would mean your bones have shrunk? So either they're lying, or we need to look at the ethics of giving medication that causes such drastic side effects!

If a trans person is treated worse than a non trans person of the same sex.

But if any other employee tried to force others to change their beliefs or rewrite the rules of English just for them, they wouldn't be employed for long.

And everyone else is described using sex based pronouns. So they're not being treated worse than anyone if they're subject to normal English pronoun usage also.

If someone pitches up for a job interview and comes across as a high-maintenance personality who won't be a team player then a reason will be found for not giving them the job (unless the role requires that sort of person😉)
That will apply to anyone, trans or otherwise.

You say: "the law recognises that trans people can undergo a process which reassigns their sex physiologically". It doesn't say that. It says "changing physical or other attributes" "for the purpose of" reassigning their sex. It purposefully avoids saying the sex has been actually been reassigned, and even if it did (as in the GRA) reassigning something that is immutable is merely a convenient legal fiction. Canute stood on the beach and reassigned the tide and lo, it was reassigned, and his courtiers clapped. But the water didn't actually move.

The wording is "for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex". That is a clear acknowledgement that physiological or other attributes of sex can be changed. If you said that Canute physiologically changed the attributes of the beach, then you are saying that he did change the beach. The water moved, whether you like it or not.

I wholly reject the idea that passage gives someone licence to "believe" they have actually changed sex in the meaning of the word as I (and others use it.)

You can wholly reject whatever you like, that doesn't change the law. As for the meaning of the word "sex" in this passage, FWS established in the Supreme Court that "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 always means "biological sex" so that's what it has to mean here. The law therefore acknowledges people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment can undergo processes to change physiological attributes of their biological sex.

But if you're employing a developmental biologist to conduct some experiments on chicken embryos I think it would be reasonable to avoid a person who believed that their hormone treatment and surgery made them the opposite sex to the one in which they were born if they insisted that sex in that scenario meant the same as it does when referring to male and female chicken embryos in the experiements they were employed to conduct.

Again, the law is not on your side here. Unless their belief changed the way they did their work with the chicken embryos (again, behaviour, not belief), it is irrelevant. I personally think believing in an omnipotent God is incompatible with science, but some religious people are scientists, plenty of them are perfectly good scientists, and if I refused to employ someone to a scientific role because of their religious beliefs, it would be - guess what - discrimination.

And once again you are refusing to address how an employer would even know their trans employee's precise beliefs about their sex, without engaging in intrusive questioning (likely discriminatory) or making assumptions (also likely discriminatory).

The wording is "for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex". That is a clear acknowledgement that physiological or other attributes of sex can be changed.

Tha attributes of sex can be changed is not in dispute; this law doesn't say that "sex" itself can be changed. The GRA sort-of says that, but again, as a legal fiction in certain circumstances (as FWS affirmed.)

None of that is relevant to changing biological sex and anyone who thinks they can actually change their biological sex is unhinged. Anyone who says they can is either lying or stupid.

I think it's reasonable that a creationist would never get a job as an experimental evolutionary biologist. You might feel otherwise.

As far as the law goes, EA2010 Schedule 9 Section 1(1) lists circumstances where it's reasonable to refuse to employ someone who holds the PC of GR, or who fails to hold a particular belief (such as the immutability of sex).

Sex has nothing to do with comparators for gender reassignment discrimination. It would be like saying the comparator in a disability discrimination case must be someone of the same sex that isn’t disabled. It’s just not how the equality act is written.

@MyAmpleSheep If you asked Dr. Upton - a man who swore in court that he was now a biological female - to tell you how many females were in a cohort of chicks, would you trust the answer he gave? Or would he just say "I can't tell, I haven't asked them how they feel"?

I imagine she would simply tell you how many females there were, and I have no idea why you'd think she would do otherwise. Honestly, all you're successfully proving here is you have a bunch of deeply entrenched prejudices about trans people and some very weird assumptions about how they behave.

I hope for your sake you're not actually an employer, though I've got to admit it would be deeply satisfying to see some of your peculiar ideas about discrimination law tested in court.

As far as the law goes, EA2010 Schedule 9 Section 1(1) lists circumstances where it's reasonable to refuse to employ someone who holds the PC of GR, or who fails to hold a particular belief (such as the immutability of sex).

Oh dear. No. No, it doesn't. Schedule 9 allows you to apply a requirement to have a particular protected characteristic if it is a genuine occupational requirement (such as requiring a vicar to be Christian); the bar for it to be a genuine occupational requirement is high, and the onus is on the employer if challenged to prove it, and it specifically states this exception cannot be used for discriminatory purposes. This schedule absolutely does not justify refusing to employ a trans person because you have weird prejudiced ideas about how they might approach sexing chickens.

I can only say again, I hope for your sake you're not an employer.

Mate, it’s all just blah blah blah and you know it. But well done on actually acknowledging what the Supreme Court said about what biological sex means, unlike virtually all of your reality-challenged peers.

What it does allow is for certain jobs to be sex based, which as you acknowledged, is based on biological sex, isn’t it?

Mate it's all just blah blah blah

Sorry to hear that you're struggling to follow the conversation.

I know, sad times.

Do feel free to refute with anything other than that cheap shot though 🤷‍♀️

'with a belief that she hasn't literally changed sex (and incidentally, she doesn't believe she's literally changed sex, either).'

Well this is how it used to be isn't it? We'd all bumble along accepting each other , at the same time knowing a person can't change sex. Everyone knew and no one pretended. Until... the gender woo bollox, Stonewall disaster, trying to manipulate language, eradicating women's rights etc.

So it's sensible to keep to the way it should always have been, the way it should have stayed without these rampant male pattern violence TRAs, ruining it for everybody.

EA2010 Schedule 9 Section 2 is about religious employment. I wasn't refering to that.

Schedule 9 Section 1 is more general. Schedule 9 section 1(3)(a) meas explicitly that people who hold the PC of GR can legally be refused employment for certain positions. What positions do you think those are? Parliament obviously had something in mind.

Going back to the belief of "I've changed sex", the same section 9(1) applies to other PC's, including belief. Are you quite quite sure it could never be a genuine occupational requirement to believe in the immutability of sex?

I note your concern about my status. The I hope for your sake trope often gets introduced into an argument by a side that's running out of ideas and wants to play the (wo)man instead of the argument. Let's not get personal.

Honestly, all you're successfully proving here is you have a bunch of deeply entrenched prejudices about trans people and some very weird assumptions about how they behave.

I don't think trans identifying people are monolithic in their beliefs or behaviour; but watching Upton swear under oath that he was a biological woman was quite an eye-opener. For me and I suspect mny others it made it very clear that some trans identifying people have some ideas so strange as definitely to call into question their individual suitability for certain kinds of employment.

If it helps - some non trans-identifying people did exactly the same: Isla Bumba is a name that comes to mind. I don't think I'd employ her to sex my chickens either.

That's a good question, isn't it? Given that she isn't trans-identifying, am I allowed to rule her out of a position because she thinks other people can change sex? Is that still disccrimination on the grounds of the PC of GR, when she doesn't hold that PC nor is thought to hold it?

No, I get it. It's easy to say you will only use sex-based pronouns, but real life isn't so simple. I don't believe transwomen are women, and I don't think they should be treated as such in law. But having to actually interact with them in real life is different than interacting with random awful ones showing off their perversions online. I know a transwoman and I am simply not going to bring my personal ideological stance into our interactions.