Richard Dawkins

[zanahoria]

He is similarly despairing about the tenor of the debate around trans rights. “The idea seems to be that it doesn’t matter what’s objectively true, what matters is the way you feel. That’s ridiculous. Just because you feel you’re a woman – I guess you can have your delusion if you like, but if you’re 6ft 4in and you go to swimming competitions and walk away with all the medals, that’s just dishonest. That’s cheating.”
What he particularly hates is the way the trans debate is sometimes framed as something unworthy of debate at all. “I really despise the tactics of the trans people, the way they won’t actually argue the case but just cancel people. That’s contemptible,” he says. “It’s horrible that they can’t actually just have a civilised conversation… You can’t discuss it. You just get people cancelled, get publishers bullied into cancelling books, and women forced to change in front of fully intact males. They’re put in female prisons… It’s a scandal.”
What does he make of the claim that vulnerable trans people might be nudged towards taking their own lives if their rights are not extended or defended? “Nonsense. That’s a great myth. These so-called suicidal people – they’re mentally screwed-up anyway.”

https://archive.ph/BXlJr

What's being 6'4" got to do with it?

Biological sex isn't the silver bullet you think it is

?

Can I use this the next time I want a more convenient parking space?

"Having a blue badge isn't the silver bullet you think it is. Ultimately, proportionality/ rights balancing applies to the individual circumstances involved that are largely determined by the prevailing culture of the country involved."

Or perhaps to the DWP

"The fact that I am not over 66 isn't the silver bullet you think it is. Ultimately, proportionality/ rights balancing applies to the individual circumstances involved that are largely determined by the prevailing culture of the country involved, so I want my pension now!"

I wonder how far I will get...

As I understand it, for the last couple of days, some trans identifying men have been attempting to argue the Akua Reindorf lives as a man because she has short hair.

How they think this will help their case is less clear.

All trans people are saying is they have more in common with the typical behaviours of one sex than the other

That's all they are saying?

Are you saying that a typical women who is told 'No' will shout, scream in the person's face, yell at them, threaten them, follow them, harass them, get them sacked, get them dehoused, debanked, send smoke bombs to their meetings, stand in front of their meetings with drums and loudspeakers, stop them going to their own meetings by blocking staircases, take down their websites, hack their emails and social media accounts, call pizzas to their houses at 3am, send taxis to their houses, fake posts to make them look like perverts, report them to the police over and over and over again, get them arrested at airports, get them arrested in front of their kids and held in cells with not even basic sanitary protection, nail dead rats to the doors of rape shelters, and tell them to 'reframe their trauma'?

Gosh.

I've seen this "proportional" argument twice from different TRAs.
A claim you're under 18 doesn't mean any adult over 18 making that claim can partake in exclusive under-18 activity.
A claim you're physically disabled doesn't mean you can make claims that treat you as one.
And in both cases acquire the advantages to your sense of worth, wellbeing and identity that transgressing these boundaries would afford you, but would massively compromise the correct individuals in those groups.
And we're not to also conclude that male bodies in female spaces, sports, prisons etc don't also compromise the females there?
Individual preference and temperament can't be any wedge to be able to be used because transwomen feel a particular way.

Yes.

I believe this has been explained to this poster many times now. But the same argument keeps coming as if it will somehow become a useful tool for anything but observational interest since the previous time a poster pointed it out to this poster.

We almost need a cut and paste answer like, ‘yes, there are overlaps in behaviour between the sex categories and there are some behaviours with a higher % of being attributed to one sex. It is not a diagnostic tool for a reason and that is because it is completely unreliable for that purpose.’

You haven't heard?
Oh, in the most batshit crazy rewriting of history by the liberal class in favour of TRA, trans were recognized and revered in the past. Bigotry was at the margins.
Therefore there was no drive to suicide, because the trans community was loved and uplifted.
And had the liberal arrow of history carried on, trans would have flowered with full self ID rights, remaining bigotry banished.
I kid you not, the liberal groupthink whitewashes transvestisism and it's almost total non acceptance by society.
And yet, in the real world where it was socially unacceptable to flaunt male paraphilia transvestic behaviour, there was <still> no mass suicides of men who were kept in their box (almost no record of women IDing as men back then, and thus no female suicides).
The whole suicide ideation moral panic is one of the most shameful aspects of TRA, those making the claims directly and their useful idiots in the aisles.
There were no significant suicides over transvestites kept at the margins.
Life was way harsher for those men back then, why would suicides peak today, when society has chosen to make trans the golden minority, every single doctor, teacher, social worker etc is professionally inculcated to hold these individuals up?

I have heard so much nonsense from Helen Webberley that it is hard to take anything she says seriously. I do try to judge people's views and arguments on their merits, but she doesn't often argue coherently. I think she may have persuaded herself that she is righteous because the alternative, that she has damaged people through her prescribing of hormones for her own profit, is too mortifying to contemplate.

It's a not particularly helpful rhetorical flourish. Many of us (humans) are prone to this type of language usage.

She has been using her medical credentials to find loop holes to sell drugs (and getting into trouble for doing so) for a long time.

She used to have a sideline selling NHS drugs to the US.

In the UK, the number of women this height is vanishingly small.

According to this calculator Height Percentile Calculator, by Age or Country - Tall.Life, in the UK, 1 in about 178,000 women are over 6'4", while 1 in 121 men are over this height.

To put that another way, out of 178,000 women, one will be 6'4" or taller and out of 178,000 men 1471 will be 6'4" or taller, so the odds that the 6'4" person is male is 1471:1.

"Gender & sex are two very different concepts & noone is suggesting gametal or chromosomal sex is changed."

Then tell us why they treat gender like it's a sex? Why do they want their GENDER as their SEX markers on official documents?

Why do they pretend to be actual women ala "transwomen are women", cause what they are saying here is that they identify as women and should be equal to those people whose sex makes them a woman. Some TiMs even claim to actually be female and that they get periods.

If gender and sex are not the same thing, then the trans movement needs to stop acting like they are the same thing.

I've got a son who is 5'8" DH has a niece who is 6'3.5"so close enough. If Dawkins is deciding sex on height he's very deluded. Would he ban DHs niece from a race?

He does make a fool of himself with this sort of thing. I can't hear his name without remember him making a fuss about Christians not knowing the full name of a book of the bible and then when he was challenged to give the full title of Darwin's The Origin of the Species not only couldn't do it but the well known atheist called on God when he couldn't.

Yeah, and my Auntie's hairdresser's gibbon has a friend who owns a unicorn. What exactly is your point?

Did you actually read my post? If you did, you don't seem to have understood it. Let me know if you would like me to explain it to help you to understand.

Edited to correct typo

By my reckoning that means there are only about 190 women in the UK who are 6'4". I have never met any of them. The tallest female I have ever met was one of my university lecturers who was 6'3". For this 6' tall man it was initially a very odd experience. Subsequently I have met & worked with a couple of women as tall as me but never any taller than me.

Bailey

And save the 'no debate' accusations for those who use law fare as a silencing tactic.

Women suing to have their rights enforced isn't lawfare, you dissembling ninny. It most certainly isn't a silencing tactic, either, as it gives the abusive, bullying transvestites a chance to put their ludicrous views to a public court. It's the opposite of silencing.

On the subject of silencing, that's the purview of the abusive, bullying Trans Extremist Zealots, who have shrieked "No debate!" and bullied women into silence and out of jobs.

Lawfare is what those zealots have used to silence women, (and the odd man) when they have tried to stand up for their rights, or simply pointed out the fact that men cannot become women.

There are so many cases where Trans Extremist Zealots have coerced tame Police into arresting, or harassing sex realists, in order to intimidate them into silence. You truly are a Lord of DARVO.

I took Richard Dawkins "6'4" swimmer" comment to be a reference to Lia Thomas, the American swimmer who first drew the attention of many people to the unfairness of biological men in womens sports. Although his Wikipedia page states his height to be 6'1" other reports state up to 6'4" and the photos of him with the female competitors were stark.

Amnesty didn't offer anyone a debate or discussion. They just libelled orgs in a way that would impact their work if allowed to stand. Sex Matters (a more appropriately resourced org to get involved in discussions than a women's sexual abuse support centre) had offered to meet and discuss with amnesty long before their libellous report and generously reiterated the offer after the report was withdrawn. It's clear who is anti debate here and it's not the GC side.

He doesn’t have to be a perfect individual to make those points. Most of the silent majority - ordinary rational people - think the same things.

For those struggling to keep up.

Males pose a threat to females in two ways.

1. Males are responsible for almost 100% of the violence that females experience
2. Males are significantly stronger than women regardless of their height, meaning that when males attack females, females are unable to defend themselves in the way a male would be able to.

As a majority of attacks on females happen in situations where females find themselves alone with males. The risk is increased as most violence towards women is sexually motivated. It makes sense that, for females to safely participate in society, any public space where they might a) find themselves alone with a male, b) be in a private setting, especially if there is only one entrance, or c) especially when removing their clothes, should exclude males.

The issue is whether trans women pose the same level of threat as other men in society.

1. Trans women commit violence towards women at similar or at increased rates depending on where your data is from, i.e. those who already attack women are much more likely to self-ID as a trans woman than the general population.
2. Trans women lose 9-11% of their body strength only if they transition using medication. Even with this loss of strength, they are still too strong for women to defend themselves against.

Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that transwomen pose the same level of risk as other men to women in private spaces such as homes, toilets, changing rooms, hospital wings, etc. In other words, a person's gender identity has no value when assessing the risk to women by including transwomen in female single-sex spaces.

I'd just like to point out that the vast majority of transwomen have no surgery and take no drugs.

Also, as gender identity is such a vague concept, the only way to include men who identify as women in women's provision is to include everyone in women's provision, so whether or not a man identifies as trans becomes rather a moot point.

Completely agree. I have no understanding of what a "Gender Identity" is. The only people who seem to have one are the people for whom it is an advantage, i.e. gives them permission to not behave respectfully towards other people's boundaries.

The issue isn't with trans people who, in my view, just don't want to be the sex they are. This issue lies with the idea of Self-ID, which gives people social license and reward to behave without respect for other people.

If we put back the controls of proper therapy- affirmation does not meet a criterion for therapeutic intervention- where people are challenged on their beliefs, it will become very clear that the people for whom being the sex that they are requires further support, and those who are just struggling with themselves or bullshitting. We are not helping people by telling them we believe them when they say they are their feelings.

I thought strawman might be a new gender identity...