Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules

[Bomb#20]

...
All that is fine as far as it goes. The problem is, although you say you think it is a basic human right to be treated under the law without regard to skin color, race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin, you do not act like you think it's a basic human right. You keep having conversations with other posters in which they argue in favor of the law treating every human without regard to race, sex and so forth, and you keep replying to their arguments with trumped-up ad hominem attacks in which you insist, without evidence, that they are insincere and actually want the law to treat some race or other as a positive attribute. I think I counted nine times in this thread you did it just to Loren. That is not the behavior of a person who takes seriously a basic human right to be treated under the law without regard to skin color, race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and country of origin. That is the behavior of a person who uncritically believes the anti-infidel slanders her ideology supplies its believers with to delude them into not applying critical thought to the double-standards the ideology uses to try to justify advancing the interests of ingroup members by violating the human rights of outgroup members, all the while hypocritically insisting it cares about human rights and the infidel do not. Ideologies are destructive parasitic memes. They're religions. Free yourself from them.

What an interesting take you have on my pov and my posts.

I really don’t like it when threads devolve into one poster criticizing another poster for how they respond to a third party. This seems to have become rather a hobby of yours.

Thank you Ms. "Here is me, jumping in to respond to a post that you directed towards bilby ( and others). Guess what? This is a discussion board and whoever so desires can chime in". So I'm chiming in, sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. I get that you don't like what I'm doing. Well, I don't like what you're doing -- I really don't like it when posters accuse one another of racism without just cause. It's unethical on a level with falsely calling someone a communist during the McCarthy witch hunt. But you don't intend to change your ways to accommodate my preferences, do you? Why then should I change my ways to accommodate yours?

I view all posters here as intelligent t human beings capable of reading and reasoning and observation and of understanding points of view other than their own.

Quite so. The problem is not capability but willingness. Several of the pro-AA posters here appear to be quite determinedly unwilling to exercise their capability to understand the points of view of anti-AA posters. Either that, or they do understand those points of view, which is worse, because that would mean they are deliberately strawmanning them.

Loren is one poster I frequently disagree with regarding Affirmative Action, DEI, the intent behind that the degree of utility in using SAT scores to determine which applicants are the best for any particular school or medical school ( although Harvard seems to be seen as THE standard, which I’ve always found an interesting to be held as the most prestigious by engineers and computer scientists). I respect Loren almost always as well as other posters within I frequently disagree.

Do tell.

"My dear Loren, it is you who is living in a fantasy world where all the best things are rightfully in the hands of white men because that’s the way it has always been and therefore white men must be the most qualified."

"I know that it is very difficult to share center stage when one has held that position for so long, one assumes it is because that is how God intended it to be."

"What did Harris do wrong, aside from being born female with dark skin? The fact is that some white people just cannot get over not being first in line for any and all good jobs."

"So it is better to continue to discriminate against the groups who have been traditionally discriminated against? Why? Because they are used to it?"

"My God the privilege you live in! You poor little baby who cannot face the possibility of having to compete in a world where what’s between your legs and what color you skin dies not give you the loooongg head start you think you are entitled to because. Just because."

"Grow the <expletive deleted> up."

"Please take your head out of your ass"
​

If you think that's respect toward Loren, you don't quite grasp the concept.

What I refuse to tolerate are the slurs hurled at me as though you somehow are privy to my ‘ideology’ and have determined it to be a religion.

Your option -- nobody is making you stay on IIDB, and if you choose to stay, nobody is making you post your endless stream of faith-based claims that prompt others to make inferences about your ideology. I'm curious, though.

"Every post you make just reconfirms that your anti DEI bias is rooted in sexism and racism and the firm belief that the best leaders are white men."​

Why do you feel entitled to not have slurs hurled at you as though others somehow are privy to your ideology, when you so enthusiastically hurl slurs at others as though you somehow are privy to what's going on in their heads?

This, in fact, is a point I have specifically made to Loren who has in the past been fond of calling anything I believe that he does not ‘my religion.’ He doesn’t do that anymore

That is kind of him. How have you repaid his kindness?

and I fully expect you to knock it off as well.

In the words of the master, I realize non-progressives are expected to just lay back and take it, but that don’t play anymore.

If you don’t agree with me, then please do feel free to disagree with me all you like. I refuse to accept or tolerate the weak sauce ‘argument’ or insult you like to hurl at me when your reasoning cannot find actual words.

Which of my accusations do you feel I have not supplied actual words for? That your treatment of others is religion-based?

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg​

I will stop slurring you as religious when you stop reciting the same shrink-wrapped bigoted slurs progressivism typically uses on infidels, or else when I hear a better explanation for why you behave the way you do. If it isn't because of religion, why do you keep trumping up baseless racism accusations? Are you a bad person?

I respect Loren enough to believe he can defend himself and argue effectively to back up his POV. I wonder why you don’t?

I too believe Loren can argue effectively to back up his POV. He has repeatedly done so in this thread; I haven't presumed to do it for him. And I too believe Loren can defend himself -- that he has not taken you to task for your vicious misrepresentations of him appears to be because he is a jaw-droppingly forgiving person. Perhaps he was raised Christian and took to heart Jesus' directive to forgive those who hurt us four hundred and ninety times; or perhaps that level of generosity just comes naturally to him.

 

[Toni]

I wonder how many men posting here would have been happy to have a trans man early in their transition, with a female appearing body in their shower rooms when they were adolescents?

I was distinctly unhappy about being required to shower with other adolecent boys. In no way was my privacy, dignity, or safety respected or protected.

The addition of women, clothed or otherwise, might have had a moderating effect on the misbehaviour of my peers; Maybe it wouldn't, but it certaiy couldn't have made me feel that I had any less privacy, dignity, or safety.

If privacy is respected, there's no way for any person to know, or at least no reason for them to care, what genitalia another person has, unless that person chooses to deliberately and explicitly show them off. At which point, a case can be made for harrasment, regardless of the details of those genitalia.

What do you think would have happened if an adolescent girl had been required to shower with the boys in your class?

I am not sure I understand your argument: Boys were mean to other boys in the shower when you were an adolescent therefore no girl or woman should be safe from having boys or men in the shower with them?

Because that’s so fucked up an argument that there needs to be a totally new qualifier than fucked up.

 

[Toni]

"If you define sex as strictly chromosomal". So who the bejesus is proposing to define sex that way? Your obsession with chromosomes is a "killer-amendment" you keep trying to graft into your opponents' position precisely to make it untenable. Neither British law nor any of the posters here define sex as XX vs. XY.

What rubric does British law propose?

The established legal position is that biological sex is a material fact that can be established.

It comes down to reproductive pathways, male or female, the binary of sex.

That is not an answer. That is a promise of an answer that neither you nor this ruling is capable of providing, because your confidence is based on ignorance of rather than knowledge about reproductive science.

Humans are gonochoric.

Everyone is either male or female, even those with rare chromosomal differences.

Rather than endlessly extend this Monty-Pythonesque "Yes it is. No it isn't." sequence, let me propose an alternate approach. How about if Politesse consults his knowledge about reproductive science and posts a link to a medical case-study of the intersexed person he thinks provides the single clearest example he can find to demonstrate that H. sapiens is not strictly gonochoric? Then seanie can read the case-study, decide whether the person's development went down the male or female reproductive pathway, and post an explanation for why that person does not qualify as "neither" or "both". You guys up for that?

Google works pretty well for this sort of thing. Wikipedia has a nice discussion.

 

[bilby]

I wonder how many men posting here would have been happy to have a trans man early in their transition, with a female appearing body in their shower rooms when they were adolescents?

I was distinctly unhappy about being required to shower with other adolecent boys. In no way was my privacy, dignity, or safety respected or protected.

The addition of women, clothed or otherwise, might have had a moderating effect on the misbehaviour of my peers; Maybe it wouldn't, but it certaiy couldn't have made me feel that I had any less privacy, dignity, or safety.

If privacy is respected, there's no way for any person to know, or at least no reason for them to care, what genitalia another person has, unless that person chooses to deliberately and explicitly show them off. At which point, a case can be made for harrasment, regardless of the details of those genitalia.

What do you think would have happened if an adolescent girl had been required to shower with the boys in your class?

I am not sure I understand your argument: Boys were mean to other boys in the shower when you were an adolescent therefore no girl or woman should be safe from having boys or men in the shower with them?

Because that’s so fucked up an argument that there needs to be a totally new qualifier than fucked up.

My point is that the protection required is from (and to) everyone. Protecting girls from boys is all very well, but who protects them from the other girls, and how? And who protects the boys from other boys?

The best solution is privacy. A single user facility doesn't need to specify the sex or gender of its users, just "only one user at a time".

 

[seanie]

"If you define sex as strictly chromosomal". So who the bejesus is proposing to define sex that way? Your obsession with chromosomes is a "killer-amendment" you keep trying to graft into your opponents' position precisely to make it untenable. Neither British law nor any of the posters here define sex as XX vs. XY.

What rubric does British law propose?

The established legal position is that biological sex is a material fact that can be established.

It comes down to reproductive pathways, male or female, the binary of sex.

That is not an answer. That is a promise of an answer that neither you nor this ruling is capable of providing, because your confidence is based on ignorance of rather than knowledge about reproductive science.

Humans are gonochoric.

Everyone is either male or female, even those with rare chromosomal differences.

Rather than endlessly extend this Monty-Pythonesque "Yes it is. No it isn't." sequence, let me propose an alternate approach. How about if Politesse consults his knowledge about reproductive science and posts a link to a medical case-study of the intersexed person he thinks provides the single clearest example he can find to demonstrate that H. sapiens is not strictly gonochoric? Then seanie can read the case-study, decide whether the person's development went down the male or female reproductive pathway, and post an explanation for why that person does not qualify as "neither" or "both". You guys up for that?

Fine.

What’s it go to do with being trans though?

 

[seanie]

I wonder how many men posting here would have been happy to have a trans man early in their transition, with a female appearing body in their shower rooms when they were adolescents?

I was distinctly unhappy about being required to shower with other adolecent boys. In no way was my privacy, dignity, or safety respected or protected.

The addition of women, clothed or otherwise, might have had a moderating effect on the misbehaviour of my peers; Maybe it wouldn't, but it certaiy couldn't have made me feel that I had any less privacy, dignity, or safety.

If privacy is respected, there's no way for any person to know, or at least no reason for them to care, what genitalia another person has, unless that person chooses to deliberately and explicitly show them off. At which point, a case can be made for harrasment, regardless of the details of those genitalia.

What do you think would have happened if an adolescent girl had been required to shower with the boys in your class?

I am not sure I understand your argument: Boys were mean to other boys in the shower when you were an adolescent therefore no girl or woman should be safe from having boys or men in the shower with them?

Because that’s so fucked up an argument that there needs to be a totally new qualifier than fucked up.

My point is that the protection required is from (and to) everyone. Protecting girls from boys is all very well, but who protects them from the other girls, and how? And who protects the boys from other boys?

The best solution is privacy. A single user facility doesn't need to specify the sex or gender of its users, just "only one user at a time".

So single user prisons.

Sports where a single person competes against themselves.

And you’re gonna need bigger restrooms.

 

[Toni]

I wonder how many men posting here would have been happy to have a trans man early in their transition, with a female appearing body in their shower rooms when they were adolescents?

I was distinctly unhappy about being required to shower with other adolecent boys. In no way was my privacy, dignity, or safety respected or protected.

The addition of women, clothed or otherwise, might have had a moderating effect on the misbehaviour of my peers; Maybe it wouldn't, but it certaiy couldn't have made me feel that I had any less privacy, dignity, or safety.

If privacy is respected, there's no way for any person to know, or at least no reason for them to care, what genitalia another person has, unless that person chooses to deliberately and explicitly show them off. At which point, a case can be made for harrasment, regardless of the details of those genitalia.

What do you think would have happened if an adolescent girl had been required to shower with the boys in your class?

I am not sure I understand your argument: Boys were mean to other boys in the shower when you were an adolescent therefore no girl or woman should be safe from having boys or men in the shower with them?

Because that’s so fucked up an argument that there needs to be a totally new qualifier than fucked up.

My point is that the protection required is from (and to) everyone. Protecting girls from boys is all very well, but who protects them from the other girls, and how? And who protects the boys from other boys?

The best solution is privacy. A single user facility doesn't need to specify the sex or gender of its users, just "only one user at a time".

You did t really reply to my question or perhaps I wasn’t clear: what do you suppose would have happened to an adolescent girl in that locker room?

Mostly what I’ve written has been from the female perspective and has taken into consideration the fact that girls and women have much more to fear from males than from female peers.

I’ve always advocated for privacy for those who wish it.


My experience in girls locker rooms is that girls are less likely to physically assault other people. In fact, I’ve never seen it happen in a girl’s locker room—anecdotal and ancient observations, yes, vs actual data. Very aware of limitations there. But sure, my sisters and I were occasionally in physical altercations with each other. Never with anyone outside the sibling group though and while it does happen, it’s less common than boys engaging in physical fights and roughhousing.


Adults need to supervise youth showers/changing facilities because some kids can be awful to other kids.

Some adults be awful to kids and other adults. Careful screening and eliminating the chance of any adult being able to pester any kid is a good start. So, no lone adult.

While privacy will protect the modesty of those who feel the need ( most adolescents and many adults) those individual showers/changing room/toilet stalls with doors can also provide privacy for those with nefarious motives. Less common than kids horsing around and being nasty about it, but not a non-zero chance.

Mostly people need to grow up respecting themselves and others, bodies included.

 

[TomC]

So single user prisons.

Sports where a single person competes against themselves.

And you’re gonna need bigger restrooms.

It's crazy the lengths trans ideologists will go to justifying their disregard for the rights and feelings of cis women.
Tom

 

[seanie]

I’ll give an example used in the original guidance to the Equality Act, and used in the recent Supreme Court ruling.

A group counselling session for women who’ve been raped.

Recognising the trauma that the presence of a male might cause, the guidance made clear that the exclusion of trans women could be lawful. Not that it was mandatory, but it was a legitimate way to operate the service.

That’s not to say that mixed sex counselling was unlawful, or that trans women shouldn’t have access to such counselling. Just that it was a service where an exclusive female space was lawful.

And what’s happened over the last 10 years?

Most rape crisis centres do offer women only services, but what most of them mean by women is anyone who says they are.

Instead of sensibly applying the law they’ve adopted self-ID, which has no legal basis at all in this country. Encouraged by lobby groups like Stonewall, and forced to by Government that tied funding to the same notion.

I think there should be counselling available
to anyone who’s gone through the trauma of rape. But c’mon, excluding all males from a space for women who’ve been raped is hardly an affront to the dignity or privacy of males who identify as female.

 

[Derec]

No, sex is binary. It’s an evolved reproductive strategy with only two roles. Large gametes/small gametes, female/male.

Normally yes, in mammals at least.
But it does not apply to every individual.

Every human is either male or female, regardless of rare chromosomal differences and DSDs.

Every human starts out the same. There are homologous parts, such as glans that either develops into the glans of the penis or the clitoris and the gonads themselves. Then there are two lines of tissues, the Wolffian and Müllerian ducts that develop into male and female reproductive parts respectively.

We all start out with ability to develop into male or female phenotype depending on certain signals. Usually, these signals are clear and you get the common binary development. But sometimes the signals cross and you get intersex individuals. I think trans individuals, at least those truly trans and not just those who take on a "nonbinary" persona because it's trendy, have something similar happen regarding brain, rather than urogenital, development.

I think we should respect individuals without changing the entire society to conform to this small minority, as some of the activists demand. I do not think everybody should have to put preferred pronouns in their bio. I do not think biological men should compete against women in sports. I do not think texts should refer to "people with uteruses" instead of "women".

 

[seanie]

No, sex is binary,

“Intersex” is an umbrella term for a number of DSDs (Differences of Sexual Development). Many of these do not result in any ambiguity about a person’s sex. Some do, but are extremely rare. And that individual’s sex can still be determined.

This has no relevance to letting any male who identifies as female into female spaces.

 

[Derec]

Ah, birth certificates. Finally something concrete.
So when you are talking about a "biological sex" (a property somehow known definitively only to the government), what you and the courts actually mean is what actual scientists refer to as one's "sex assigned at birth"?

Are you really claiming that "sex assigned at birth" is a scientific, rather than political-activist language? "Biological sex" is scientific, "sex assigned at birth" is a phrase purposely constructed to imply that there is something arbitrary about that assignment and that it lacks biological reality.

 

[bilby]

You did t really reply to my question or perhaps I wasn’t clear: what do you suppose would have happened to an adolescent girl in that locker room?

Why would my opinion matter? It's fairly obvious that she would suffer indignity at the very least, and whether and how seriously she would be assaulted would depend on a number of factors.

None of which has any relevance whatsoever to what I was saying when you went off on this tangent.

I am saying that if we, as a society, wish to protect people from indignity, assault, or abuse when they are naked and vulnerable, then separating males from females is a weird place to stop, throw up our hands, and say "we've done enough".

Separating women from men might reduce somewhat the number of assaults and indignities people suffer, but it sure as shit doesn't eliminate them. Rapes and sexual assaults occur in male only and female only spaces; And any protection sufficient to eliminate such unisex assaults will, necessarily, also eliminate assaults by men on women, too.

The strange idea that men don't humiliate, abuse or assault men, and women don't humiliate, abuse, or assault women - or the stranger idea that such abuses don't matter, and need not be protected against - is at the heart of this entire stupid debate.

I don't care if you are male, female, transsexual, intersex, or an alien from Tau Ceti. I don't want you staring at me or making rude comments while I shower. I certaiy don't want you to sexually assault me. And the only way to prevent that is to provide privacy.

Communal locker rooms and showers are a cost saving measure. They don't prevent sexual harrassment or assault of users, even if they are 100% segregated, and regardless of the criteria used to enforce segregation.

Segregation by sex, and sex alone, is a hangover of a C19th mindset in which boys are expected to find sexual harrasment from other boys "character building", while girls are considered incapable of sexually assaulting other girls. Neither is true.

 

[Politesse]

Ah, birth certificates. Finally something concrete.
So when you are talking about a "biological sex" (a property somehow known definitively only to the government), what you and the courts actually mean is what actual scientists refer to as one's "sex assigned at birth"?

Are you really claiming that "sex assigned at birth" is a scientific, rather than political-activist language? "Biological sex" is scientific, "sex assigned at birth" is a phrase purposely constructed to imply that there is something arbitrary about that assignment and that it lacks biological reality.

Both are real terms daily employed by scientists.

You'll forgive me if I don't quite follow your argument? We don't check CNN or Fox to tell us what we're allowed to call things today, terminology exists to facilitate conversation about a given area of study, not serve the needs of any particular party in any particular country. Certainly, your implied definition of sex assigned at birth is not correct. The sex assigned at birth is... the sex assigned to a child around the time of their birth. It is an extremely straightforward concept. Biological sex is not simple, and requires a bit more of a discussion to explain in full. Right-wing morons liek to claim that it is simple, and corresponds to their Bible somehow, but they usually get angry and start spluttering and contradicting themselves when specifics are asked for.

 

[seanie]

You did t really reply to my question or perhaps I wasn’t clear: what do you suppose would have happened to an adolescent girl in that locker room?

Why would my opinion matter? It's fairly obvious that she would suffer indignity at the very least, and whether and how seriously she would be assaulted would depend on a number of factors.

None of which has any relevance whatsoever to what I was saying when you went off on this tangent.

I am saying that if we, as a society, wish to protect people from indignity, assault, or abuse when they are naked and vulnerable, then separating males from females is a weird place to stop, throw up our hands, and say "we've done enough".

Separating women from men might reduce somewhat the number of assaults and indignities people suffer, but it sure as shit doesn't eliminate them. Rapes and sexual assaults occur in male only and female only spaces; And any protection sufficient to eliminate such unisex assaults will, necessarily, also eliminate assaults by men on women, too.

The strange idea that men don't humiliate, abuse or assault men, and women don't humiliate, abuse, or assault women - or the stranger idea that such abuses don't matter, and need not be protected against - is at the heart of this entire stupid debate.

I don't care if you are male, female, transsexual, intersex, or an alien from Tau Ceti. I don't want you staring at me or making rude comments while I shower. I certaiy don't want you to sexually assault me. And the only way to prevent that is to provide privacy.

Communal locker rooms and showers are a cost saving measure. They don't prevent sexual harrassment or assault of users, even if they are 100% segregated, and regardless of the criteria used to enforce segregation.

Segregation by sex, and sex alone, is a hangover of a C19th mindset in which boys are expected to find sexual harrasment from other boys "character building", while girls are considered incapable of sexually assaulting other girls. Neither is true.

Now do sport.

 

[seanie]

Ah, birth certificates. Finally something concrete.
So when you are talking about a "biological sex" (a property somehow known definitively only to the government), what you and the courts actually mean is what actual scientists refer to as one's "sex assigned at birth"?

Are you really claiming that "sex assigned at birth" is a scientific, rather than political-activist language? "Biological sex" is scientific, "sex assigned at birth" is a phrase purposely constructed to imply that there is something arbitrary about that assignment and that it lacks biological reality.

Both are real terms daily employed by scientists.

You'll forgive me if I don't quite follow your argument? We don't check CNN or Fox to tell us what we're allowed to call things today, terminology exists to facilitate conversation about a given area of study, not serve the needs of any particular party in any particular country. Certainly, your implied definition of sex assigned at birth is not correct. The sex assigned at birth is... the sex assigned to a child around the time of their birth. It is an extremely straightforward concept. Biological sex is not simple, and requires a bit more of a discussion to explain in full. Right-wing morons liek to claim that it is simple, and corresponds to their Bible somehow, but they usually get angry and start spluttering and contradicting themselves when specifics are asked for.

Sex is determined at fertilisation.

It’s commonly observed at the 12 week scan.

At birth it is recorded.

With an accuracy of around 99.98%.

What has this to do with trans people?

 

[Politesse]

Rather than endlessly extend this Monty-Pythonesque "Yes it is. No it isn't." sequence, let me propose an alternate approach. How about if Politesse consults his knowledge about reproductive science and posts a link to a medical case-study of the intersexed person he thinks provides the single clearest example he can find to demonstrate that H. sapiens is not strictly gonochoric? Then seanie can read the case-study, decide whether the person's development went down the male or female reproductive pathway, and post an explanation for why that person does not qualify as "neither" or "both". You guys up for that?

We're trying to understand seanie's claim here. Why would such an exercise be relevant? The most striaghtforward answer we've gotten from seanie so far is that their legal sex ought to be their biological sex, and that their biological sex is that which is on someone's birth certificate regardless of whether the government later acknowleged a change in their gender. I don't see how a "medical case-study" of a person who transitioned later in life would affect their birth certificate, so why would it matter one way or the other to the discussion at hand?

 

[seanie]

You switched terms from sex to gender.

Why?

 

[seanie]

What do you mean by a change in gender?

 

[laughing dog]

No, sex is binary,

“Intersex” is an umbrella term for a number of DSDs (Differences of Sexual Development). Many of these do not result in any ambiguity about a person’s sex. Some do, but are extremely rare. And that individual’s sex can still be determined.

This has no relevance to letting any male who identifies as female into female spaces.

Then why insist on that sex is binary” when it isn’t?