Cambridge University ignoring the Supreme Court ruling?

[yoursweetpotatoesarebland]

Dd is going to the Cambridge open day coming up, I got an email through about the colleges and was having a read through. There’s a section about “gender identity” and how it impacts on what colleges you can apply to. There are two women’s colleges but both accept anyone who identifies as a woman!

This is from Murray Edwards:
“At the admissions level, we will consider any student who, at the point of application, identifies as a woman“

How can this still be allowed? It’s self ID too so has NEVER been legal for the purposes of the eqA.

You know the staring contests* that they had on Big Train? Maybe crashing bore contests could be a thing? Two blokes sitting a a table droning on and on, the first to pause loses. I would imagine that saying something interesting would get you banned for life.

*Link for those who have no idea what I am banging on about.

I've hung out in many a female dominated & male dominated social settings & the two couldn't be further apart in behaviours. It's absurd to me that people claim there's no difference but I guess maybe it's the company I keep?

You're totally missing the point. I have interests which are male dominated, so most of the people I meet who share those interests are men. Of course a social gathering of these mainly male people is completely different from a social gathering of a group of women. But at no point have I thought that sharing interests with men makes me a man (or a non-woman).

The main problem with your view is that it mixes up biological sex, general patterns of behaviour, and individual personality, as if they all point to the same thing.

Even if there are some average differences in how men and women tend to behave, there is still a lot of overlap, so behaviour is not a reliable way to define what someone is. It can also easily lead to stereotypes, where people start assuming how men and women “should” act rather than recognising individual variation.

More importantly, behaviour doesn’t determine sex category, people of either sex can show a wide range of traits, so noticing patterns is not the same as defining what someone is.

We also tend to recognise whether someone is male or female instinctively, and this is not really based on behaviour.

For example when my mother, bless her, was very ill she was put in the gender surgical ward ( I did not know the ward type at the time) at Charing Cross hospital as there were no other beds available. On one visit as I approached her door I heard her screaming “Get that fxxcking man out of my room!” The door was open and I could see in the distance a slim woman with waist length hair. I was just about to apologise and explain that my mother had dementia, when I realised that this person was actually a mam. He then behaved just like an entitled male by not leaving and insisting on us hearing the details of his “bottom” surgery. My point is that even with dementia, she immediately reacted to his sex rather than his behaviour or appearance cues like hair or clothing, and that recognition seemed automatic rather than learned.

Not a mam but a man!

OldCrone
I have interests which are male dominated, so most of the people I meet who share those interests are men.

Until really quite recently people claimed women just were not interested in playing instruments in symphony orchestras.

Then some orchestras started holding auditions with the players behind screens so that their sex couldn't be observed by the people doing the hiring.

Guess what? There are now lots of women playing in symphony orchestras.

Until the 1870s people claimed women just weren't interested in higher education or going to Cambridge or Oxford.

Then Newnham College opened, with Lady Margaret Hall following seven years later.

Guess what? Lots of women have gone to those colleges (and others) every year since.

@Baileyonice

A trans person is in essence simply saying 'I have more in common & as such identify with the opposite gender category I was born as.'

Huh. Well then, I guess I'm doing trans really wrong...

I dunno, I've hung out in many a female dominated & male dominated social settings & the two couldn't be further apart in behaviours. It's absurd to me that people claim there's no difference but I guess maybe it's the company I keep?

As a transman, I rather agree, but back when I was still in the trans community, hanging out with transwomen was an awful lot like hanging out with men, and hanging out with transmen was an awful lot like hanging out with women. And the social relationships between transwomen and transmen very much replicated the men/women one in society at large.

Y'know, I can't help feeling that like women, trans people are not members of a hive mind. It is good to be reminded of this once in a while. Thank you.

It’s really interesting because traits such as the type of clothes I wear are generally because of my biology not because of my mind.
For example, I prefer to find suit jackets that have room at the bust but go in at the waist. I also prefer trousers with zips on the side and no fly because I have a typical round tummy after childbirth so would rather not have buttons accentuating that area and I don’t need a zip fly to pee.

I also find that chatting in a group of women can sometimes have a different vibe than chatting in a group of men. This is not due to some organic brain function but to do with biology and societies expectations. Perhaps talk being centred around children, or problems juggling caring for elderly family members as well as young kids. Or perhaps male conversation might centre quite a bit around male sport. None of these traits are an organic function but a result of biology and society.

Even if there are some average differences in how men and women tend to behave, there is still a lot of overlap,

Not when it comes to consumerist, employment, special interest & life choices where vast differences are measured in what is fundamentally the biggest parts of peoples lives.

More importantly, behaviour doesn’t determine sex category, people of either sex can show a wide range of traits, so noticing patterns is not the same as defining what someone is.

Same with biological reproductive traits. Individuals vary in morphological, hormonal & genetic characteristics that can be sexually ambiguous in outcomes they are socially perceived.

so behaviour is not a reliable way to define what someone is.

That's why self-identification matters. People come in all different mosaic forms that don't strictly meet social categorisations so its ultimately upto them to decide who they are. While I appreciate the structural necessity for reliable methods of assigning people to categories that doesn't also mean we get to tell them who they are. Only they can. Self identification gives an individual the power to define their own beliefs or identity (which is a core human right) rather than having it assigned to them by others or by institutions .

And let's not forget freeing women from the limitations of being defined by their reproductive traits was a necessary part of how feminists advocated for their self determination.

We also tend to recognise whether someone is male or female instinctively, and this is not really based on behaviour.

A naturalistic fallacy/is ought problem.

It is not ‘liberating’ women from being defined by their reproductive systems to pretend that those systems don’t exist or are actually just like men’s. It is sexist.

@Baileyonice

Self identification gives an individual the power to define their own beliefs or identity (which is a core human right)

Sure, you can identify as whatever you want, and you can believe whatever you want, but you have NO human right to have others agree with you on those matters. For example, furries have no human rights to be recognised and accepted as animals, no matter how convinced they are of their self-ID. Similarly, a man can believe he's a woman all he wants, he can self-ID as a woman all he wants, but that doesn't mean that anyone else has to agree he's a woman.

Baileyonice I think suggests that there is an underlying 'master' criterion for being a woman that has the effect of "tends to like feminine things" for some (unspoken) meaning of "feminine".

I think this is profoundly sexist, because it requires the fundamental existence of "feminine things" before a woman can be defined.

It's also circular: women are the people with some kind of innate tendency to "femininte" things, while "feminine things" are all the things that women have an innate tendency towards.

As a third issue, what liberal western society might view as "feminine things" don't exist in many cultures. Curiously, women do exist in all cultures. So that's a bit of a (dis)proof by contradiction.

"I've hung out in many a female dominated & male dominated social settings & the two couldn't be further apart in behaviours. It's absurd to me that people claim there's no difference but I guess maybe it's the company I keep?"

The basis for this concept being pushed is getting weaker and weaker.

I work in a male dominated industry and I have hung out with groups where I am the only female and I have hung out with groups that are only female people. What 'behaviours' are supposed to be different between the two?

I have not noticed 'behaviours' that are different.

Trying to make an argument for male and female people to be categorised by 'behaviour' really is very weak. So much to be meaningless. Hence, as a society we do not segregate based on 'behaviour' group categories.

yes. Amplesheep

This has been discussed so many times with this poster since about August 2025.

There has never been a remotely coherent and cogent argument put forward for this argument of theirs. Because it excludes so many female people from the category of 'female' whenever they attempt to do it.

"Not when it comes to consumerist, employment, special interest & life choices where vast differences are measured in what is fundamentally the biggest parts of peoples lives."

Bollocks

Right 😂 !? I didn't comment on this bit because it's so utterly bonkers I wouldn't know where to start. I'd love for @Baileyonice to give just ONE example of such "vast differences".

Baileyonice While I appreciate the structural necessity for reliable methods of assigning people to categories that doesn't also mean we get to tell them who they are. Only they can. Self identification gives an individual the power to define their own beliefs or identity (which is a core human right) rather than having it assigned to them by others or by institutions .

we get to tell them who they are -
In the context of sex, who is this 'we' telling people who they are?
'We' don't get to tell anyone whether they are male or female, because it is an observable biological fact.
And that negates your 'only they can', because 'they' are as incapable as 'us' of contradicting reality.

So nobody is 'telling' anybody what sex they are, nobody is being 'assigned' a sex at birth, and you can no more self-identify into the opposite sex than you can self-identify as a six-footer if you measure 5'4" [1m83/1m63].

Well, you [one] can, and people probably do on dating profiles, but you'd be wrong, as in accurate.

I think it speaks more to a poster’s personally self limited social interactions than anything else.

... Wow, I hadn't even considered that. I mean, with the internet these days, you just have to be willing to look to see that there are plenty of women who are into ~masculine~ stuff, and plenty of men who are into ~feminine~ things. The overlap between the sexes is just blatant.

But yeah, I can see how a highly curated social circle could lead to such conclusions. Sad, though.

Does anyone else remember Diesel the Donkey?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_(donkey)

Must have been an elk all along. Just born in the wrong body.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iG2LBN0Te7A

#allelkdonkeysareelk

What I don’t understand - what, in fact, I have never understood - is why TRAs seem so frightened by their biology. It’s like being frightened of gravity or something. It just is - there isn’t any value judgement about whether you have a penis, or ears, or a functioning digestive system or brown hair.

Men and women have different bodies. Male bodies are bigger, stronger, faster, and can impregnate female bodies.

All current research points to the fact that men and women have structurally and functionally identical brains. Men and women are capable of doing the same sorts of thinking.

Both of the above are biological facts. The second took a while for the world to come to terms with - and some parts of the world haven’t come to terms with it yet. But together, those facts explain why we (a) have separate spaces for men and women in any instances where women would be vulnerable to the physical effects of (bigger, stronger, impregnating) men, and (b) outside of those spaces we allow women to do all the same things men can do.

Men and women (boys and girls) are indeed socialised differently. Sometimes that socialisation means that children are discouraged from doing things that have traditionally been seen to be for the “other” sex. Sometimes as a result of us recognising this socialisation imbalance, we have “stacked the scales” to encourage, eg, girls to get an education at Cambridge. These things (sexed socialisation and subsequent adjustments to account for this) are downstream effects of people’s biases, and their assumption that stereotypes are in some way inherent. But acknowledging that stereotypes exist doesn’t mean that they actually have anything inherent to do with biology.

MyAmpleSheep
It's also circular: women are the people with some kind of innate tendency to "feminine" things, while "feminine things" are all the things that women have an innate tendency towards.

Just this. Badly written, like the classic Evil Overlord who somehow lacks any actual motive:
He is an Evil Overlord.
How do you know?
Well, because he does the things that Evil Overlords do.
Why does he do things like that?
Because he's an Evil Overlord.

Yay! I had 'is/ought' on my new bingo card!

Nearly there...

Self identification gives an individual the power to define their own beliefs or identity (which is a core human right) rather than having it assigned to them by others or by institutions .

So, my caucasian nan from Somerset always said she felt black, she wasn’t but she felt she was. Should she have taken on a stereotype of a black woman and should we have respected that as a human right?

Genune question.

If I didn’t know that @Baileyonice was male, and behaving just like a male on this thread, I would know after this answer.

@CoolBlueBear I’m so sorry for your mother’s – and your – experience with that man on the hospital ward. It must have been traumatising for her. And I find it almost unbelievable that the man on this thread, in his answer, has completely ignored that distressing experience you shared here.