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

[Toni]

Where’s the humour?

Some jokes are to make people think, not so much laugh. Like all jokes, some fall flat to some audiences.

 

[TomC]

Seanie claimed that Albania is the only culture in the world where there is a tradition of "women identifying as men".

That's not what he said.

Maybe you should reread the thread and put more effort into seeing what's there than finding reasons to mind read and pretend that you know what the rest of us mean.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

Yes. In Shakespeare, you have women dressing and (successfully) acting as men, taking on male names and accomplishing male roles. In short, "identifying as men". Which was your goal post. Do you need to shift it?

So now pretending to be the other sex for ulterior purposes counts as "identifying". Got it.

Viola called herself Cesario and passed as male because she needed freedom of movement and needed a job, not because she actually thought she was a man.

"Ulterior purpose"? That phrasing says more about how you see women than how Shakespeare did. Viola is the unquestionably the heroine and main protagonist of the play, and everyone understands by the end of it why she did as she did. There was no crime, nor is there any punishment unless you count marriage to Orsino as one. Her needs were practical, yes. But she most certainly identified as a man, for several months. No, she is not a "trans man" in the modern sense, and I didn't claim that she was. Cultures change. But the basic facts of sex and gender - that both are bimodal in distribution but fundamentally fluid in nature to some degree, obliging every culture in history to deal with the exceptional cases somehow - do not change. Nor do those facts vary from culture to culture or over time, but cultural and religious attitudes about those facts certainly do. The question is, what kind of culture do we wish to be?

I choose freedom, and always will. To that ideology, I am very really loyal, as loyal and "ideological" as I am generally accused of being about whatever other stupid culture wars you all are fighting today. I will be damned before I let the government define how I am "allowed" to identify or on what terms.

 

[Toni]

From the Talmud:

• Androgynos: Refers to someone with both male and female sexual characteristics.
  
  
• Tumtum: A person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured, possibly due to a congenital condition or other factors.
  
  
• Aylonit: A female who does not develop secondary sex characteristics at puberty and is considered infertile.
  
  
• Saris: A male who does not develop secondary sex characteristics at puberty, or has them removed either naturally or through human intervention.
  
  
• Zachar and Nekevah: The traditional Hebrew terms for male and female, respectively.

Indigenous cultures in the US recognized feminine females, feminine makes, masculine makes and masculine females as well as intersex individuals. European invaders squelched such terminology and understanding imposing their version of Christianity, forming in who the invaders were.
I know this is not exhaustive but to suggest that the recognition of humans as not confined to make and female certainly dates back thousands of years .

 

[Politesse]

Seanie claimed that Albania is the only culture in the world where there is a tradition of "women identifying as men".

That's not what he said.

Maybe you should reread the thread and put more effort into seeing what's there than finding reasons to mind read and pretend that you know what the rest of us mean.
Tom

That is very literally what seanie wrote:

"The only country I’m aware of that has a tradition of women identifying as men is Albania."

That's a direct quote. How else could it possibly be interpreted?

 

[TomC]

Seanie claimed that Albania is the only culture in the world where there is a tradition of "women identifying as men".

That's not what he said.

Maybe you should reread the thread and put more effort into seeing what's there than finding reasons to mind read and pretend that you know what the rest of us mean.
Tom

That is very literally what seanie wrote:

"The only country I’m aware of that has a tradition of women identifying as men is Albania."

That's a direct quote. How else could it possibly be interpreted?

Really?
You can not understand the difference between that and "Female people have no rights to a man free place to change a Kotex in modern western society"?
Because that's what you are arguing. Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and "separate but equal " policies.
Tom

 

[seanie]

There is no cultural tradition in the UK of a third gender, though it does exist in some societies.

Women pretending to be men is not a third gender.

Nor is men, pretending to be women, pretending to be men.

 

[Politesse]

Seanie claimed that Albania is the only culture in the world where there is a tradition of "women identifying as men".

That's not what he said.

Maybe you should reread the thread and put more effort into seeing what's there than finding reasons to mind read and pretend that you know what the rest of us mean.
Tom

That is very literally what seanie wrote:

"The only country I’m aware of that has a tradition of women identifying as men is Albania."

That's a direct quote. How else could it possibly be interpreted?

Really?
You can not understand the difference between that and "Female people have no rights to a man free place to change a Kotex in modern western society"?
Because that's what you are arguing. Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and "separate but equal " policies.
Tom

What are you talking about? Your post has nothing to do topically let alone specifically with the one we're discussing.

 

[Politesse]

I've also said nothing at all like "Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and separate but equal policies." Nor would I.

 

[Bomb#20]

Biological sex came with some restrictions in Shakespearian times.

Women weren’t allowed to be actors.

Wait, you're telling me Shakespeare in Love wasn't a documentary? Nooooo!

How about we stop referring to old cultures, like Shakespearean England, as any sort of benchmark here in the 21st century?
Tom

And I reiterate: Nooooo! Shakespeare will always be our benchmark!

(Or Bacon, if you're into that sort of thing.

(Francis. Or Kevin, if you're into that sort of thing.))

 

[seanie]

I've also said nothing at all like "Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and separate but equal policies." Nor would I.

But you’ve suggested they’re akin to Nazis.

 

[seanie]

I've also said nothing at all like "Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and separate but equal policies." Nor would I.

So what is your attitude to single sex spaces?

 

[seanie]

When you say “women” and “man”, what do you mean?

 

[Politesse]

I've also said nothing at all like "Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and separate but equal policies." Nor would I.

So what is your attitude to single sex spaces?

I don't accept the alt-right ploy about them. They invented a problem nearly out of whole cloth for the sole purpose of stirring up paranoia and violence over an issue people were managing just fine at the community level before and until the national government got involved. Which is their usual playbook, and it is their playbook because it works. Communism, the Panthers, gays at the beach, the Satanic Panic, cocaine drug lords, Islamic terrorism, there's always some new universal threat they can throw out to make people more afraid of their neighbors than they are of the owning class. "Hill by hill" as we say in the US, they are using social-media fueled hysteria to place more and more of our lives under direct governmental control, even as they depopulate the government and centralize its power, making it less just and effective at actually administrating anything. You can call a hotline and talk to a robot if you want to waste some time, but actually appealing a bad decision is increasingly impossible to do, while the consequences of getting caught in such a legal vacuum escalate. But now people want the government to have sole authority to tell them where they are or not allowed to pee? Fuck that. I'm cis, mostly, but I don't think Donald John Trump has either the right nor the expertise to tell me what rooms I'm allowed to be in or not.

 

[Politesse]

I've also said nothing at all like "Women who want a man free place for personal business are just like racists and separate but equal policies." Nor would I.

But you’ve suggested they’re akin to Nazis.

I said very explicitly that you are not. You're being played for fools, though, and the neo-Nazi movement is most definitely and not very secretly connected to the anti-trans movement, merrily funding and platforming these memes and videos that spread anti-trans rhetoric because they rightly understand that it will benefit their own causes and initiatives if they can succeed in driving a wedge between the LGBTQ alliance and the governmental Left. And between academia and the government.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

You're not establishing that they are forced to be raised as females. If it's not diagnosed what else would they do??

How about not treating girls as if they're second-class citizens in the first place? Not forcing regressive social roles on either girls or boys? That seems like a reasonable starting point.

How about answering the question?

So you are saying there are people who were considered female at birth but which are truly males.

You seem to be laboring under the notion that all infant males with 5-ard have external genitals that look completely female at birth. Some very, very, very few have divided scrotal sacs, and extremely small penises that are mistaken for clitorises. Most, however, have smaller than average penisis with a misplaced urethral opening and incompletely fused scrotal sacs. They're labeled as "female" in backwards ass, sexist countries because they don't meet the standard of a "real boy". But they remain 100% male.

If some are missed they are raised as females.

There goes the notion of gender being known at birth.

Sex is not gender. Gender is entirely a social imposed construct, with no material reality independent of that social conditioning.

Again, non-responsive. I'm presenting a case where it has historically been gotten wrong.

 

[ZiprHead]

I know a woman who installed curtains in her car windows so she could go out to the parking lot to pee in privacy, because her workplace in its infinite wisdom decided to make the women's restroom "gender neutral".

There were no doors on the stalls?

I can't even.

Why not?

Why did you ask "There were no doors on the stalls?"? Was that a serious question? Do you genuinely think "The stall doors were missing." is a more likely explanation for why a woman would pee in a jar in the parking lot than that it's psychologically less awful for her than having to pee with a man she doesn't know right outside the stall? Or was it a rhetorical question, intended to convey a sentiment to the effect of "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"? Either way, for you to write something that tone-deaf makes me wonder if you even know any women.

I already told the story of working at a concert venue and announcing my self before entering the women's restroom/shower area and a woman on the toilet in a stall told me to come on in.

Frankly, the woman in your story sounds like a prude. Does she think men think women don't actually urinate? Was she 14 years old?

Some people have more inhibitions around bodily functions. Some cultures do as well. In Japan, for instance, there are toilets that play music so that others cannot hear you urinate.

For myself, imagining a first date, for example, I would not be thrilled at sharing a public toilet facility with a guy I thought was cute and hoped would think I was cute, too. Especially if I needed to change a tampon. Of course I would know that the guy would know that I urinated and defecated and used tampons but that doesn’t mean I’d be thrilled about him actually seeing or hearing the evidence. My husband and I generally give each other privacy in the bathroom. We’ve been married for decades and there are zero secrets about our bodies. But we’d both prefer to go to the toilet alone and I certainly would prefer he fart in a different room.

So we should model society around the prudes? We already have assholes that want to ban pornography.

 

[Toni]

I know a woman who installed curtains in her car windows so she could go out to the parking lot to pee in privacy, because her workplace in its infinite wisdom decided to make the women's restroom "gender neutral".

There were no doors on the stalls?

I can't even.

Why not?

Why did you ask "There were no doors on the stalls?"? Was that a serious question? Do you genuinely think "The stall doors were missing." is a more likely explanation for why a woman would pee in a jar in the parking lot than that it's psychologically less awful for her than having to pee with a man she doesn't know right outside the stall? Or was it a rhetorical question, intended to convey a sentiment to the effect of "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"? Either way, for you to write something that tone-deaf makes me wonder if you even know any women.

I already told the story of working at a concert venue and announcing my self before entering the women's restroom/shower area and a woman on the toilet in a stall told me to come on in.

Frankly, the woman in your story sounds like a prude. Does she think men think women don't actually urinate? Was she 14 years old?

Some people have more inhibitions around bodily functions. Some cultures do as well. In Japan, for instance, there are toilets that play music so that others cannot hear you urinate.

For myself, imagining a first date, for example, I would not be thrilled at sharing a public toilet facility with a guy I thought was cute and hoped would think I was cute, too. Especially if I needed to change a tampon. Of course I would know that the guy would know that I urinated and defecated and used tampons but that doesn’t mean I’d be thrilled about him actually seeing or hearing the evidence. My husband and I generally give each other privacy in the bathroom. We’ve been married for decades and there are zero secrets about our bodies. But we’d both prefer to go to the toilet alone and I certainly would prefer he fart in a different room.

So we should model society around the prudes? We already have assholes that want to ban pornography.

And here I thought we were keeping the romance alive.

It’s not prudery to wish to have some privacy or some modesty.

Is it prudery that has caused men to have men’s only clubs? Locker rooms?

Is it prudery that makes men’s locker rooms unsafe for non-gender confirming males or females?

Is it prudery that drives women to be fearful of unfamiliar —or uninvited male bodies in the shower next to them?

I’ve said up threat at least once and I believe multiple times that I think there should be private shower stalls, private dressing rooms, private bathroom stalls. I believe that should afford sufficient privacy for most people.

I have zero interest in keeping any person, trans or otherwise from enjoying full rights, including rights to bathroom or locker room facilities that match their gender.

I have zero interest in expecting victims of sexual assault—including LGBTQIA people—to be fearful or reluctant to use public facilities. Or just those who fear it.

And I really really really have no interest in being called a prude for having enough empathy to recognize and accept that there are a lot of people who are more comfortable not sharing absolutely everything with random strangers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

98% is useless in this case. I've seen restrooms where that would cause an error every minute.

Oh goodness, we're only 98% accurate! Better just toss the whole thing and entitle completely male looking men with entirely normal male bodies and faces for whom there is no doubt about their sex use the ladies showers then! I mean, those men really, really want to use the women's showers, and it would make them unhappy to let women say no.

The problem here is you are so focused on the rules that you're completely ignoring how it will play out. What are you going to do, challenge that 2%? And if not, what's the point of the rule in the first place?

 

[Toni]

How it will play out is that some women will simply stop utilizing athletic facilities, something that I think will bother exactly zero men.

It’s not like women actually count as full citizens with equal rights so NBD.