The two questions they all need to be asked

[OhSister]

In the midst of the backlash over the Supreme Court decision and EHRC guidance, self-proclaimed 'progressives' who support gender ideology at the expense of sex-based protections need to be asked two simple questions. The 'what is a woman?' question was used to very good effect and in my view, it's time to move on to these:

1.  Do you accept that being born with female reproductive anatomy is a characteristic on the basis of which people have been marginalised, disadvantaged and abused?
   

2.  If the answer to question 1 is yes, can you explain why you take the view that this particular marginalised group is one that is not deserving of explicit protection (by 'sex' meaning 'sex') in the Equality Act?
   

I have been involved in these discussion since before 2015 and I know that these points have been made many times over by people more articulate than I am. But like many here, it is particularly frustrating to me when the likes of Amnesty International or the ACLU in the USA position themselves as the defenders of Human Rights while championing such a regressive, misogynist, homophobic movement.

I have rarely if ever heard the question put to anyone in that way, or heard them challenged on why their enthusiasm for intersectionality doesn't at the very least include female reproductive anatomy as a valid intersection with their new definition of 'woman' (but rather re-casts being part of that uniquely marginalised group as possessing 'cis privilege'). I don't subscribe to the idea that there is such thing as a 'woman' gender, but even if I did, logic would suggest that, just as it's reasonable for there to be specific groups or programmes for those who are both women and disabled, or both women and black, or both women and Muslim, it is also reasonable for some things to be for 'women' as genderists would like to broadly understand the term, and others to be for those who are both 'women' and also of the group born with female reproductive biology. But no, oppression on the basis of biological sex has to be completely disregarded as a valid axis of oppression. If JKR had set up a service specifically for women who also had a disability, or were also immigrants, would that service be branded 'anti-rights' by Amnesty?

Sorry for the rant. What do you think of the questions, how would you improved them, and how do we get them asked of the right people?

No idea why the questions formatted in that way. Not intentional on my part.

To me it's even simpler then this. I got into a rant argument with my brother about this and the question that I asked a dozen times that he just could not answer was.

What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?

He deflected and deflected and I kept asking.

There is no difference.

If segregated spaces exist then there is no reasonable argument that transwomen can enter and any other men can't.

If JKR had set up a service specifically for women who also had a disability, or were also immigrants, would that service be branded 'anti-rights' by Amnesty?

If, in doing so, anything related to this service had meant that women were allowed to say no to men, then, yes, it would have been on Amnesty's hit list.

OP, because of the way the questions are formatted (unintentionally, as you have said) I can't read the entire questions. Perhaps you could type them out?

You have to move the slide bar under the question to read the rest of it.

Thank you Bridget, I didn't realise they were actually unreadable. The question are:

Do you accept that being born with female reproductive anatomy is a characteristic on the basis of which people have been marginalised, disadvantaged and abused?

If the answer to question 1 is yes, can you explain why you take the view that this particular marginalised group is one that is not deserving of explicit protection (by 'sex' meaning 'sex') in the Equality Act?

Ta!

I think the problem with these kinds of arguments is that a lot of people are not arguing in good faith. I've read lots of online comments from TRAs and allies, and the discussion might go like this:
You: What's the difference between a transwoman and a woman?
Ally: A transwoman is a woman - she knows that she's a woman, and only the person themselves can know who they are and have the right to say who they are. A transwoman feels like a woman and thinks like a woman, and just is one.
You: What about the male anatomy?
Ally: Well it's her anatomy, so it's not male, is it? It's female. Yes, she was born with a penis, which is why we're so privileged compared with her. Having a few body parts which are more commonly found in people who identify as male doesn't make her a man. Besides, she takes loads of female hormones and has grown her own breasts. She looks fab in a dress and make-up too. I'd say she's more feminine than you are. She's welcome in my toilet any time.

But you didn't address MY question.

What is the difference between a MAN and a transwoman??

It isn't clothes
It isn't surgery
It isn't 'looking' feminine
It isn't behaviour

What is it then???

Thanks for typing it out. Honestly, OP, these questions are probably

a. too complicated for those who are already determined to be on TRSOH, because if they could, or were willing to, think more deeply about this issue, they would never have come to the conclusion that women don't deserve their own rights in the first place (if that makes sense?); and

b. too open to "manipulation" by those who don't want to, or pretend not to, understand the questions or the need to ask these questions.

I'm not saying these questions shouldn't be asked, I just don't think they'll get you much further than "What is a woman" ever did.

There's one of the usual suspects on another thread, talking about "subjective reality" as though that's not an oxymoron. That's the level of "intelligence" or wilful ignorance/stubbornness that we're dealing with.

I hope that makes sense of what I thought. It's too hot for me to think about this any other way!

It's obvious to us, and I'm with you, but a lot of people seem to have downgraded these kinds of "women's issues" as trivial in the great scheme of things. Young woman haven't consciously experienced them yet, men don't notice them and don't care, or actively want to bring women down a few pegs and enjoy their natural born superiority. Transwomen not being fully acknowledged as women is far higher priority to them. That's where the brownie points are.

Triple backticks?

 To create a fenced code block in Markdown, wrap your code in triple backticks (```) on separate lines before and after the text.

Yes, absolutely, and this.

Sorry, I missed that! A man knows that he isn't a woman. A transwoman knows that she's a woman. She feels like a woman and thinks like a woman. She's on female hormones, etc etc.
I saw a man online who said that he'd just started taking hormones and had made no other changes (he still presented as a man). He reckoned that starting taking hormones already made him 10% female.

The formatting thing seemed to happen because I numbered the questions I think. Didn't happen when I re-typed them without the numbers.

I agree with the feedback that my wording is open to manipulation, too complex, etc. I guess what I want to get at is confronting the 'progressives' with having to state whether people-with-female-reproductive-biology are worthy of protection, so that they either have to acknowledge that no, they don't think so, or experience the cognitive dissonance of saying yes of course, but no they can't be protected on that basis.

Like the 'what is a woman' question, I think the value of asking questions along these lines would be less in the challenge to the entrenched captured mind of the person being asked, and more in the potential to peak the audience.

But what is the difference between a man and a transwoman?

I realise I'm asking you to steelman here but what would they actually say? I'm sure they would think 'but I just am' because they think they are the most special and aren't like the other (trans) girls. What argument would they present?

...other then 'I just feeeeel like it'

Michelle Dewberry and some woke bro, he has no answer to the question that she puts to him repeatedly and just resorts to chanting the holy mantra.

https://x.com/michelledewbs/status/2075207784346296379

I've seen different arguments online. There's probably fuzziness around whether people see a distinction between gender and sex. I suspect that lots of people don't think about it too deeply.

1. The only way you can know whether someone is a man or a woman is to ask them. They are the only authority on that question and whatever they say must be accepted and acted upon, including allowing them into a naked women-only spa.
2. Sex is very complex. It's made up of lots of different things, and there's probably a lot we don't know about yet, which would help us to understand transness. Our chromosomes are only one part of it, and we know that there are loads and loads of people who don't have the standard chromosomes, so chromosomes are pretty meaningless really. Our sexual organs and functions are only one part of it, and there are lots of people who don't have some of those anyway. Our brains are more important, and we know that in scans transwomen have been found to have brains resembling cis women's brains. Transwomen are very different from men - they're softer, kinder etc and I always feel safe with a transwoman. They're on female hormones, have breasts, may have had surgery, wear dresses and makeup and are interested in female pursuits. They feel more at home with the girls than the boys. They are physically weaker than men (because of the hormones). All of this adds up to them being closer to cis women than to men. We should respect who a person really is, and not focus on their sexual organs like Terfs do.

Turquois I'm interested in your responses to Luckydog's question (understanding that you're intentionally projecting the presumed response of the TRA).

The reason I think the questions in the OP are more effective is that they don't centre or even concern themselves at all with the subjective, twistable criteria of what makes a person believe they are 'trans'. Instead, they're asking the TRA whether they believe that female reproductive biology truly counts for nothing in terms of privilege, imbalance of power, oppression etc., or whether they accept that it does have those implications, but isn't worthy of specific protections.

Do you have any thoughts on how the TRA voice would respond to those two questions?

It seems an academic has written on this, but this is just an introductory essay: CIS-WOMAN-PROTECTIVE ARGUMENTS - Columbia Law Review

However it happened.......... its really clever!
Im so so tired of all this nonsense.
Women = adult human female.
Men = adult human male.
Facts are facts. End of debate.
<gavel>

There's a discussion on Reddit on whether women who don't want transwomen in their spaces genuinely feel threatened by the presence of transwomen. Some interesting trans perspectives:

When cis women try to exclude trans women from their spaces, citing safety, do you think their fear is genuine, or do you think they're pretending to be fearful of trans women? : r/AskFeminists

From "The New Feminist": Who gets to be a woman? Why the politics of exclusion in women-only spaces is a problem - The New Feminist

As far as I can see, the argument is that transwomen are more marginalised and at risk than "cis women" and they are truly women, so should be accepted into single sex spaces.

Maybe they would accept you having a menopause group open to "cis women" only, since transwomen don't go through the menopause - who knows. But if it's anything more general than that, I doubt it. A key point is that these people are coming from the position that transwomen really are women, and are no threat to "other women", or not in significant numbers. And remember - transwomen suffer more than cis women, so in arguing to keep single sex spaces single sex, you're using your "victimhood" to oppress a more vulnerable group.

Why is being a woman or man the only thing a person can have an inner sense that they are? Why can I not have an inner sense that I am black, or Tibetan, or disabled, or twenty-five, and have that accepted as reality, since I am the only person who can know who I am truly am?

The answer is: because, duh!
The other answer is that if enough men with enough money and power behind them wanted to be treated as black, they would make that happen in the same way as men have got people to accept that they are female. But there are different power dynamics at play, so it would be interesting to see how an attempt to do this would pan out.

Actually, Mapletree, I once saw a well-known TRA get asked that question. The answer was something like "gender is the only thing you can identify into, obviously".