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

[Toni]

For the most part, for most individuals, sex is binary in terms of procreation potential. But that’s not an all inclusive way of looking at sex, whether it is an action or a way of being.

 

[Emily Lake]

Your position is founded on nothing that has anything to do with women, their privacy, their dignity, their rights. It has to do with your ignorance and distaste of transgenders.

Nothing seanie has posted has suggested any ignorance or distaste of people who are transgender.

Referring to people with a transgender identity, or who have gender dysphoria as "transgenders" is generally regarded as denigrating, by the way.

 

[Emily Lake]

by 1886 in American English in reference to a type of hound bred in the South, with a red or red and tan coat, used especially to hunt raccoons and fugitives. The name probably has some connection to the term Redbone as used in 19c. southern U.S. to denote a mulatto or mixed-race culture.

From here.

Bold by me.

And here, in the 21st century, we have Derec using the word to describe … the woman who ran for president.

How pathetic. And how utterly unsurprising.

I know nothing of the history of the word, never having run into it before.

But: here we have Derec using the word to describe someone who is of mixed race. Exactly as your quote defines it. Your quote does not say it's a derogatory term.

It's a term I was also unfamiliar with, but I presume that it has connotations similar to those related to "coon". In and of itself, it isn't racist, it refers to the type of dog that was predominantly used to hunt down runaway slaves - coon hounds.

 

[Emily Lake]

I mean women as opposed to females. That includes women who used to men but are no longer men. That includes anyone who seriously and truthfully considers themselves a woman. It does not include males pretending to be women for ulterior purposes.

I understand the desire to be empathetic.

How do we tell the difference? How do we actual female women tell whether the random male-looking male in our intimate space seriously considers themselves to be female-on-the-inside, or whether they're just pretending for ulterior purposes? What's the distinguishing feature that we should look out for?

 

[Emily Lake]

A female is not necessarily a woman. If you don't know the difference, you really have no business in this thread/

A sexually mature female human being is literally a woman.

A sexually mature female human being might not be figuratively a woman.

 

[Emily Lake]

The legal position isn't that sex is "assigned at birth" . It's that sex is a material fact that can be established. For the vast majority of people that will simply be their sex recorded at birth, but even if that isn't the case, and a person has a DSD, their sex can still be established, because sex is binary and immutable.

And since the law has long recognised there are situations where single sex spaces or services are required, for reasons of privacy, safety, dignity, or fairness, then sex in the Equality Act 2010 has to be understood as biological sex.

Otherwise the Act would be produce unworkable and perverse results.

And what do you do when faced with a guevedoce? While it can be detected at birth that is by no means guaranteed to happen.

5-ard is a male disorder of sexual development; only males can have the condition. At birth, they can sometimes appear with ambiguous genitalia - but in developed nations, it's something that doctors are aware of, and it can be accurately diagnosed in infants. For those in undeveloped countries they're often FORCED to be treated as females in childhood, because they're viewed as "failed males" or "not completely male" and they're relegated to a second class status along with all the women. Which sucks when puberty rolls around and they develop along a pretty normal male body form, even if they have a smaller than normal penis.

 

[bilby]

How do we tell the difference? How do we actual female women tell whether the random male-looking male in our intimate space seriously considers themselves to be female-on-the-inside, or whether they're just pretending for ulterior purposes?

How do you tell whether the random male-looking male in your intimate space is a transwoman or a ciswoman with masculine features?

Perhaps you should just leave other people alone, unless and until they actually cause a problem.

The whole thing reminds me of people attacking a person for parking in a disabled spot with a "fake" permit, just because at a casual glance they don't seem to be disabled.

Who are you to judge?

 

[Emily Lake]

Extremely rare DSD conditions have no relevance at all as to whether obvious biological men should be allowed into to women’s spaces if they “seriously and truthfully” believe they should be.

There seems to be a prevailing perspective that anyone who isn't "male enough" to meet the cultural standard of manhood should be tossed out of the ranks and dumped in with women. As if women are secondary, and serve as a dumping ground for those not man enough to hang with the real men.

It's men who attack transwomen, it's men who aren't accepting of men in dresses in their intimate spaces.

 

[seanie]

It’s not usually that hard.

You look.

Or hear them speak.

Not foolproof be any means, but it mostly works.

 

[Emily Lake]

And do you feel that stoking a "gender war" and taking out trans people as the first targets is going to reduce femicide and misogyny?

Nobody wants to take out trans people as targets.

But please at least try to be honest enough to recognize that by forcing women to accept males in our intimate spaces on the basis of them saying that they feel like women, you're creating a gigantic gaping loophole that allows for INCREASED risk to women from men across the board.

Women shouldn't have to serve as human shields so that some men with gender identity issues can feel better about themselves.

 

[seanie]

And the issue, as pointed out, is asymmetrical.

Women have more reason, for the most part, to want spaces free from males.

Females in male spaces? It’s not such a pressing issue, though that’s not to say it entirely unimportant.

 

[Emily Lake]

And once in the airport my wife was injured, walking was quite painful. I wheeled her into the men's room. Nobody seemed to care.

Alright, let's cut right to the heart here. WHY did you wheel her into the men's room, instead of wheeling her into the women's room?

 

[seanie]

Why can’t we expect males to accept gender non-conforming males, and males who consider themselves to be female, into male spaces?

 

[Emily Lake]

No more than you advocate double rapists getting raped in prison.

I advocated for segregation for their protection.

That is not advocating for anyone to get raped.

You're getting a little testerical.

You advocate placing them in a position where they could be raped, and have mocked any concerns about their safety as feelings.

And you advocate placing them in a position where many women could be raped! Not only that, it ends up advocating that a whole lot of men can make a verbal declaration of their unverifiable and subjective feelings, and thereby gain access to a captive population of women to rape!

Holy shit, are you unaware of the number of intact men in California, Washington, and a few other states who have been moved to women's prisons, sharing cells with female prisoners, because they declared themselves to be trans?

 

[Politesse]

But please at least try to be honest enough to recognize that by forcing women to accept males in our intimate spaces on the basis of them saying that they feel like women, you're creating a gigantic gaping loophole that allows for INCREASED risk to women from men across the board.

You have been unable to meaningfully demonstrate that in hundreds of pages of discussion... honesty requires clarity.

 

[Politesse]

Why can’t we expect males to accept gender non-conforming males, and males who consider themselves to be female, into male spaces?

Because people like you lose your goddamned minds whenever you meet a trans person.

 

[seanie]

I mean women as opposed to females. That includes women who used to men but are no longer men. That includes anyone who seriously and truthfully considers themselves a woman. It does not include males pretending to be women for ulterior purposes.

I understand the desire to be empathetic.

How do we tell the difference? How do we actual female women tell whether the random male-looking male in our intimate space seriously considers themselves to be female-on-the-inside, or whether they're just pretending for ulterior purposes? What's the distinguishing feature that we should look out for?

As Naomi Cunningham commented:

 

[Emily Lake]

Think about the implications. This cuts both ways--you're going to get some very male-looking individuals in the women's room. Is that what you really want?

It's not primarily about looks.

It's about a person's sex.

And how does someone make an accurate inference about someone’s sex without some invasion of their privacy?

With about 98% accuracy, based on clustering a whole host of sex-correlated characteristics:

• men have larger more pronounced brow ridges than women
• women have rounder orbital sockets
• men have wider and longer chins
• women have narrower jaws
• women have higher cheekbones
• men have adam's apples
• men's shoulders are wider than their hips, women's shoulders are narrower than our hips
• women's elbows fall more closely to our bodies when relaxed because we have different attachment points for our muscles
• women's waists are above our navels, mens are below their navels resulting in women having higher waists relative to our torso length
• men's femurs are perpendicular to the ground when standing upright at rest, women's are at an angle
• women's pelvises are wider and are tilted
• men carry excess weight predominantly through their midsection, women carry excess weight predominantly in our hips and buttocks
• women's buttocks are shaped differently due to the different shape of our pelvis, different angle of our femur, and different attachment points of our muscles
• men are generally taller than women
• men generally have larger hands relative to their forearm length than women
• men have longer feet relative to their shin length
• women have narrower heels
• even prior to male-pattern balding, men and women have different general hairline shapes
• men's hands are wider relative to the length of their fingers
• men's ring fingers are longer than their middle fingers, women's are shorter

Your turn: how do you make an accurate inference about someone's gender identity?

 

[Politesse]

Women shouldn't have to serve as human shields so that some men with gender identity issues can feel better about themselves.

THAT is rich. Your whole argument is that trans folks and others affected by anti-trans legislation should have to give up actual rights just so you won't have to feel scared at the thought of possibly meeting one in a changing room one day, even though you're more likely to be struck by lightning. There's definitely someone here, in this very discussion, who transparently expects others to shield her from her emotions, and it isn't "men with identity issues". You steal from others thoughtlessly for the supposed sake of gaining an emotional balm. That you will never receive anyway, because the fear and paranoia you feel will never go away no matter how many persecutions they dream up to punish trans kids for being different. You cannot extinguish fear by being cruel to others; it lives inside you, and every new infamy will just make you more paranoid that "they" will find a way to get you. Ten thousand trans women locked away in men's prisons will never make you safe from your own imagination.

 

[Politesse]

Your turn: how do you make an accurate inference about someone's gender identity?

You ask them.