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

[ZiprHead]

Going to the extent of putting curtains in her car and making other unknown arrangements to urinate there without making a mess must have been quite an undertaking. That is what makes her a prude in my book.

So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?

What a patriarch.
Tom

I have seen no evidence she was traumatized by anyone. Do you have some? Her parents could have been prudes and taught it to her.

I've seen no evidence about why she decided to go pee in a car.
Only that she did.

Why do you assume that you know why she did that?
You specifically called her a prude. I'm saying I don't know why she did it.
Tom

Sure looked like you did.

 

[TomC]

Going to the extent of putting curtains in her car and making other unknown arrangements to urinate there without making a mess must have been quite an undertaking. That is what makes her a prude in my book.

So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?

What a patriarch.
Tom

I have seen no evidence she was traumatized by anyone. Do you have some? Her parents could have been prudes and taught it to her.

I've seen no evidence about why she decided to go pee in a car.
Only that she did.

Why do you assume that you know why she did that?
You specifically called her a prude. I'm saying I don't know why she did it.
Tom

Sure looked like you did.

Bullshit.
You called her a prude. I said I don't know why she did that.


Here's the thing. I know that women get traumatized by men, all too often. Dismissing their feelings and concerns is all too common amongst men who think that they know how women should feel, if they were smart enough to understand what the men folks are telling them.

Which is what is going on in this thread. A bunch of dudes are telling women how they should feel and act.

Yeah, no.
How about you guys just shut up and sit down for a few.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

Going to the extent of putting curtains in her car and making other unknown arrangements to urinate there without making a mess must have been quite an undertaking. That is what makes her a prude in my book.

So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?

What a patriarch.
Tom

I have seen no evidence she was traumatized by anyone. Do you have some? Her parents could have been prudes and taught it to her.

I've seen no evidence about why she decided to go pee in a car.
Only that she did.

Why do you assume that you know why she did that?
You specifically called her a prude. I'm saying I don't know why she did it.
Tom

Sure looked like you did.

Bullshit.
You called her a prude. I said I don't know why she did that.


Here's the thing. I know that women get traumatized by men, all too often. Dismissing their feelings and concerns is all too common amongst men who think that they know how women should feel, if they were smart enough to understand what the men folks are telling them.

Which is what is going on in this thread. A bunch of dudes are telling women how they should feel and act.

Yeah, no.
How about you guys just shut up and sit down for a few.
Tom

As opposed to the dude telling us authoratiatively what women think, supposedly on their behalf but obviously and transparently using them as props for a political agenda? You're not exactly modeling "shutting up and sitting down", my man.

 

[TomC]

As opposed to the dude telling us authoratiatively what women think, supposedly on their behalf but obviously and transparently using them as props for a political agenda? You're not exactly modeling "shutting up and sitting down", my man.

I'm saying that the guys, like you, who are telling women what to do and accept are not in any position to do so.
So shut up and listen to women when they talk, even if they say things that are not what you prefer to hear.
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

Going to the extent of putting curtains in her car and making other unknown arrangements to urinate there without making a mess must have been quite an undertaking. That is what makes her a prude in my book.

So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?

What a patriarch.
Tom

I have seen no evidence she was traumatized by anyone. Do you have some? Her parents could have been prudes and taught it to her.

I've seen no evidence about why she decided to go pee in a car.
Only that she did.

Why do you assume that you know why she did that?
You specifically called her a prude. I'm saying I don't know why she did it.
Tom

Sure looked like you did.

Bullshit.
You called her a prude. I said I don't know why she did that.

So when you said "So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?" Makes it sound like you did.

Here's the thing. I know that women get traumatized by men, all too often. Dismissing their feelings and concerns is all too common amongst men who think that they know how women should feel, if they were smart enough to understand what the men folks are telling them.

Which is what is going on in this thread. A bunch of dudes are telling women how they should feel and act.

Yeah, no.
How about you guys just shut up and sit down for a few.
Tom

Do you deny the existence of prudes, either female or male?

 

[TomC]

So when you said "So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?" Makes it sound like you did.

Probably because you need a strawman rather than discuss what I actually did say.

You are the one who referred to her as a prude. I pointed out that, whatever you meant by prude, there are other explanations for why a woman would want a man free place for personal business.

Do you deny the existence of prudes, either female or male?

No, I just don't see any reason for you to decide that she is one. Which you did.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

As opposed to the dude telling us authoratiatively what women think, supposedly on their behalf but obviously and transparently using them as props for a political agenda? You're not exactly modeling "shutting up and sitting down", my man.

I'm saying that the guys, like you, who are telling women what to do and accept are not in any position to do so.
So shut up and listen to women when they talk, even if they say things that are not what you prefer to hear.
Tom

Are you not a guy, cynically using hypothetical women (for whom of course you speak) as a prop?

 

[TomC]

As opposed to the dude telling us authoratiatively what women think, supposedly on their behalf but obviously and transparently using them as props for a political agenda? You're not exactly modeling "shutting up and sitting down", my man.

I'm saying that the guys, like you, who are telling women what to do and accept are not in any position to do so.
So shut up and listen to women when they talk, even if they say things that are not what you prefer to hear.
Tom

Are you not a guy, cynically using hypothetical women (for whom of course you speak) as a prop?

Nope.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

Which half?

 

[ZiprHead]

So when you said "So, a female woman who has been so traumatized by a male that she'd go out to her car to pee is a prude, by your standards?" Makes it sound like you did.

Probably because you need a strawman rather than discuss what I actually did say.

You are the one who referred to her as a prude. I pointed out that, whatever you meant by prude, there are other explanations for why a woman would want a man free place for personal business.

Then maybe you should have said that to be clearer in your communication.

Do you deny the existence of prudes, either female or male?

No, I just don't see any reason for you to decide that she is one. Which you did.
Tom

Your wilfully blindness is not my problem.

 

[TomC]

Which half?

I'll assume that you put your vague accusation about hypothetical women after the insult to my masculinity for a reason.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

There is a HUGE difference between "ought not" and "ought not be allowed". If Emily and Seanie understand that distinction, we'd have nothing to discuss in this thread.

What did Emily and seanie say that implies they don't understand it?

I have no problem whatsoever with those two or anyone else thinking in the privacy of their own mind that trans and intersex people should be excluded from the bathroom of their choice. If those thoughts manifest as a forum post, they should expect negative replies, since their right to have those feelings is counterbalanced by the right to have different feelings. If those beliefs manifest as laws aimed at the persecution of intersex persons, there's going to be a constitutional crisis sooner or later, and all of us have a reason to care about that.

This thread is about a law.

So you have a problem with them manifesting their thought in a forum post and you feel the laws they advocate for are aimed at persecution; and you think from these facts about you it follows that they must not understand the huge difference between "ought not" and "ought not be allowed"? You appear to be implicitly relying on the premise that you're some sort of expert whom everyone of understanding would defer to.

You wrote "They are free to do as they like within their congregations or in their kitchens, but not in a public sociology class." and "You cannot teach those beliefs as facts." If you intended to express "nothing about censoring it", but only "ought not", well, the way to do that was to say "They are free to do as they like within a public sociology class, but ought not." and "You ought not teach those beliefs as facts." Are you unfamiliar with what "free to" and "cannot" mean in English? And why do you keep bringing up their congregations and kitchens and "a private school that teaches your wacky religion", except to contrast a place where you ought be allowed with one where you ought not be allowed? After all, you "ought not" teach your wacky religion even in a private school. Wacky religions are parasites on the human nervous system, so you ought not to infect people with them any more than you ought to give a guy tapeworms to help him lose weight.

You're the one bringing allowance into it.

No. You're the one who brought allowance into it, and I proved you did, and now you're just repeating your already disproven claim without bothering to make a case. You literally said they're not free to do as they like in a public sociology class. That's a claim about allowance.

At present in the US, the federal government has no say over curriculum, for any reason, and things should stay that way.

The federal government has had some say over curriculum for as long as it's been paying the bills. It is no more reasonable for modern academics to expect permanent tithing from the rest of society without allowing it any influence over what they teach than it was for the Catholic Church to expect the same thing from the people of England in the 1500s. You can each teach what you please; but if you collectively teach too much postmodern literary criticism and too little physics, don't be surprised when the taxpayers stop paying for it.

But I won't apologize for having strong feelings about whether or not pseudoscience should be taught in a science classroom...

Yes, you've already made it crystal clear that you're for it; but this probably isn't the right thread to discuss that.

 

[Politesse]

You appear to be implicitly relying on the premise that you're some sort of expert whom everyone of understanding would defer to.

There's no need to "defer to me" just to understand an obvious fucking fact. This isn't rocket science. I would expect anyone over the age of twelve to be able to understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

You literally said they're not free to do as they like in a public sociology class. That's a claim about allowance.

I have an incredibly low opinion of those who would teach things in the classroom they know to be untrue, and I would hope there were some sort of informal professional ramifications for them, but there's no law against teaching whatever you like provided state standards are somehow met. Nor do I think there should be. The ironic thing is that by seizing executive powers to directly define "acceptable" curricula or face defunding, these Trumpers are creating the very situation the news media has been telling them already exists: direct national control over the universities. They never plan ahead to what that might mean for them if the political Left ever comes back into power, and has a different definition of "gender" or "racism" than Trump has.

It's a little bit different in the UK, but that really is a different discussion.

The federal government has had some say over curriculum for as long as it's been paying the bills.

They most certainly have not. What the Trump admnistration is doing is entirely unprecedented, especially in higher education. It is such a novel crime that the courts are spinning in confusion as to what category of law, let alone specific laws, might apply to what he is doing. If nothing else, it is an obvious violation of the Constitution's promise to let the states have the primary control over education within their territories, and stuffed with hand-picked cronies or not, I think convicing the Supreme Court otherwise will be a hard sell at best.

You can each teach what you please; but if you collectively teach too much postmodern literary criticism and too little physics, don't be surprised when the taxpayers stop paying for it.

Are you really so ignorant of the nature of national politics as to think that removing power from a local school or college board and giving it to the White House is somehow giving you more power over what's taught in your schools? Right now, the bodies that have always defined curricula, whose public meetings you are free to attend and whose members you elect, are being handed over to an office that is filled by national election no more often than every four years, and which is currently being filled by a guy that asks for two sentence summaries of complex documents before signing them because he "doesn't like to read". Good luck presenting him with your argument for why x needs to be included in the state Engineering 50 guidelines.

Yes, you've already made it crystal clear that you're for it; but this probably isn't the right thread to discuss that.

Only to people for whom the "science" of sex omes from sketchy right-wing youtube videos and 19th century armchair speculators, and "pseudoscience" refers to the reasonably established consensus of professional scientists of biology, reproductive science, sociology, and psychology.

 

[Bomb#20]

You appear to be implicitly relying on the premise that you're some sort of expert whom everyone of understanding would defer to.

There's no need to "defer to me" just to understand an obvious ... fact. This isn't rocket science. I would expect anyone over the age of twelve to be able to understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

The non-rocket-science obvious fact at hand is the fact that it's perfectly possible for somebody to understand the distinction between "ought not" and "ought not be allowed" and yet still reach different conclusions from yours as to the specifics of what ought not be allowed. Inferring somebody doesn't understand merely because he thinks you're wrong is pure arrogance. You have no basis for imagining seanie and Emily don't understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

You literally said they're not free to do as they like in a public sociology class. That's a claim about allowance.

I have an incredibly low opinion of those who would teach things in the classroom they know to be untrue,

Oh for the love of god! Do you have evidence that "H. sapiens has no true hermaphrodites" is a claim that all professors who make "know to be untrue"? Or are you just libeling them for rhetorical purposes?

The federal government has had some say over curriculum for as long as it's been paying the bills.

They have not.

Uh huh. Liberal arts departments have been shrinking relative to STEM departments ever since WWII because the universities wanted that? Sure they did.

What the Trump admnistration is doing is entirely unprecedented, especially in higher education.

There's precedent: Henry VIII seizing the monasteries.

It is such a novel crime <snip>

That what Trump is doing is wrong is not evidence that what the progressives are doing is right. A plague on both your houses.

You can each teach what you please; but if you collectively teach too much postmodern literary criticism and too little physics, don't be surprised when the taxpayers stop paying for it.

Are you really so sytupid to think that removbing power froma local school or college board and giving it to the White House is somehow giving you more power over what's taught in your schools?

Why would you think I think it gives me power? Nobody on either side gives a rat's ass what I think. Why are you trying to make this about me? What the hell has my powerlessness got to do with the political dynamic at play and with whether your cronies should expect to keep receiving their tithes endlessly? You guys have been collectively biting the hand that feeds you for decades and you finally got bitten back. Cut to Loretta Swit playing the world's smallest violin.

But I won't apologize for having strong feelings about whether or not pseudoscience should be taught in a science classroom...

Yes, you've already made it crystal clear that you're for it; but this probably isn't the right thread to discuss that.

Only to people for whom the "science" of sex omes from sketchy right-wing youtube videos and 19th century armchair speculators, and "pseudoscience" refers to the reasonably established consensus of professional scientists of biology, reproductive science, sociology, and psychology.

Which part of "isn't the right thread" didn't you understand? That should have clued you in that I was referring to your views on a topic other than sex.

 

[laughing dog]

You appear to be implicitly relying on the premise that you're some sort of expert whom everyone of understanding would defer to.

There's no need to "defer to me" just to understand an obvious ... fact. This isn't rocket science. I would expect anyone over the age of twelve to be able to understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

The non-rocket-science obvious fact at hand is the fact that it's perfectly possible for somebody to understand the distinction between "ought not" and "ought not be allowed" and yet still reach different conclusions from yours as to the specifics of what ought not be allowed. Inferring somebody doesn't understand merely because he thinks you're wrong is pure arrogance. You have no basis for imagining seanie and Emily don't understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

You literally said they're not free to do as they like in a public sociology class. That's a claim about allowance.

I have an incredibly low opinion of those who would teach things in the classroom they know to be untrue,

Oh for the love of god! Do you have evidence that "H. sapiens has no true hermaphrodites" is a claim that all professors who make "know to be untrue"? Or are you just libeling them for rhetorical purposes?

The federal government has had some say over curriculum for as long as it's been paying the bills.

They have not.

Uh huh. Liberal arts departments have been shrinking relative to STEM departments ever since WWII because the universities wanted that? Sure they did.

To most academics, curriculum refers to the structure and content of courses. The federal gov’t doesn’t tell institutions of higher learning what or should be taught. It does say what it will subsidize in terms of research.

The shrinking of liberal arts is due to a number if factors including a change in the view of the appropriate goal(s) and purposes of education, changes in demand, and reductions in state funding. That is not an exhaustive list.

 

[seanie]

Only to people for whom the "science" of sex omes from sketchy right-wing youtube videos and 19th century armchair speculators, and "pseudoscience" refers to the reasonably established consensus of professional scientists of biology, reproductive science, sociology, and psychology.

Sex is an evolved reproductive process.

It is binary.

People are either male or female, and it is not remotely difficult to recognise that in all but rarest situations.

 

[Politesse]

The post above is a nice, apt little demonstration of a rhetorical strategy common among TERFS, Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, and other pseudoscience pushers, wherein one starts with a simple claim that no one actually disagrees with, but then piles on a spiral of increasingly implausible additions to it without offering any meaningful evidence to justify their gradual slide away from the materially demonstrable and towards a gleefully fictive world purely defined their ideological commitments.

Only to people for whom the "science" of sex omes from sketchy right-wing youtube videos and 19th century armchair speculators, and "pseudoscience" refers to the reasonably established consensus of professional scientists of biology, reproductive science, sociology, and psychology.

Sex is an evolved reproductive process.

This is entirely correct and completely uncontroversial. No one would disagree with it. It is, in fact, pretty much the definition of "sex", unless you actually are a Creationist, in which case I suppose the "evolved" part would be something of a sticking point.

It is binary.

This is sort of true, but seanie clearly either don't understand what binary means in a complex system, or doesn't want you to. Nearly all people who know something about genetics and reproductive biology would rate this one as "misleading, despite having a grain of truth". Sex is normally binary (another completely uncontroversial claim), but that doesn't mean that either the sex of any given individual or the expression of that sex is always straightforward, let alone that it should be so in some moral, religious, or legal sense. Evolution is not a god. Anatomy is not a god. There is no "should" or "must", only the trends and clines that typify nearly all natural systems.

People are either male or female, and it is not remotely difficult to recognise that in all but rarest situations.

This is pure ideology, and does not reflect the real sciences of human biology or sociology in any way. Seanie knows full well that this statement contradicts the perspective of the vast majority of scientists, or at least has been told this many times and refuses to believe it no matter how much evidence is presented to them.

 

[Politesse]

You appear to be implicitly relying on the premise that you're some sort of expert whom everyone of understanding would defer to.

There's no need to "defer to me" just to understand an obvious ... fact. This isn't rocket science. I would expect anyone over the age of twelve to be able to understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

The non-rocket-science obvious fact at hand is the fact that it's perfectly possible for somebody to understand the distinction between "ought not" and "ought not be allowed" and yet still reach different conclusions from yours as to the specifics of what ought not be allowed. Inferring somebody doesn't understand merely because he thinks you're wrong is pure arrogance. You have no basis for imagining seanie and Emily don't understand that legal rulings are likely to have legal consequences.

Oh, I think they absolutely do understand that. Obviously they want to coercive power of the law to win for them what they know honest public debate never could. What they don't understand is that believing something does not give you some inherent right to silence and belittle your neighbor for disagreeing with you. Or just for, like having a body you don't like for some stupid reason. Just because you fucking BELIEVE something real hard doesn't mean it's a good idea to make a law about it. I believe a lot of things, but I don't try to silence people for disagreeing with me.

You literally said they're not free to do as they like in a public sociology class. That's a claim about allowance.

I have an incredibly low opinion of those who would teach things in the classroom they know to be untrue,

Oh for the love of god! Do you have evidence that "H. sapiens has no true hermaphrodites" is a claim that all professors who make "know to be untrue"? Or are you just libeling them for rhetorical purposes?

It's certainly a statement that for at least two reasons does not belong in a science classroom. A debate class, perhaps.

If they teach a subject that is relevant to human sexcuality and biology, then they have at least been exposed to the consensus of their field on the matter and have a moral responsibility to present that consensus honestly, even if they disagree with it. This is something we must routinely do, in the teaching profession. I teach plenty of things that I disagree with, you do not have to endorse information to present it. But you do have a moral imperative to correctly describe what you and your colleagues have learned about the subject, and do your best to correctly describe and contextualize any standing debates.

The federal government has had some say over curriculum for as long as it's been paying the bills.

They have not.

Uh huh. Liberal arts departments have been shrinking relative to STEM departments ever since WWII because the universities wanted that? Sure they did.

You're going to have to connect some dots, because I don't see what that has to do with the subject we're discussing?

What the Trump admnistration is doing is entirely unprecedented, especially in higher education.

There's precedent: Henry VIII seizing the monasteries.

If that's how far back you have to go, it's the exception proving the point.

It is such a novel crime <snip>

That what Trump is doing is wrong is not evidence that what the progressives are doing is right. A plague on both your houses.

Who said it was?

Progressives are only slightly less rare in academic circles than they are in general public life, and rarely have much influence on state boards of education or college boards, which tend to be either elected positions or direct appointments by an elected public official.

Which part of "isn't the right thread" didn't you understand? That should have clued you in that I was referring to your views on a topic other than sex.

Fine. I have no idea what you're talking about then or why you thought it was relevant to this thread in the first place, and don't especially care, but if you want to start some other thread on some other topic, be my guest, and feel free to drop me a line. I respect you a lot more than I do either of the other two activists we've been discussing, and if you think you have a worthwhile argument to make about higher education, I would be interested in hearing it.

 

[Bomb#20]

There is a cluster of positions that generally travel together and can reasonably be considered anti-trans.

No doubt; but what does that have to do with the discussion here? Do you see anybody in the thread defending Trump's order to kick people with gender dysphoria out of the military? People are called anti-trans here for not agreeing that the progressive stack is the correct way to decide public policy and matters of fact. It is not anti-trans to say transwomen aren't women any more than it's anti-Muslim to say Mohammad wasn't God's Prophet; it's simply failing to pretend to believe and uncritically recite some subculture's intellectually vapid loyalty oath. Likewise, it is not anti-trans to say trans people have exactly the same rights as the rest of us but no extra rights on account of being trans, any more than it's anti-black to say black students have the right to be considered for college admission based on the same standard of qualification as everyone else, but no right to favoritism on account of being black.

What you seem to be missing is that the "progressive" approach is what's been done in reality without undue consequences. The anti-trans position is about rolling back the clock, not defending the status quo!

In the first place, no, the "progressive" approach is what's new. The old permissive status quo approach to men in women's single-sex spaces was based on the old situation, when the men using women's rooms were mainly pre-op transsexuals fulfilling their psychiatrists' requirement that they try living as women for a year before being approved for bottom surgery. The cultural change within transgender circles, where people then called "non-ops" became the tail wagging the dog, is what led to the politicization of the issue. Those seeking to promote the interests of non-ops started demanding as a right what was then being extended to pre-ops as a courtesy, and demanding that transgenderism no longer be classified as a mental health problem, and demanding that progressives rank trans people higher than women on their stack. Going along with the upped demands puts society on a track straight to self-id, which will mean far more men encroaching on women's boundaries than in the status quo.

And in the second place, even if you were right about the status quo it wouldn't support your contention. It is not anti-trans to say trans people have exactly the same rights as the rest of us but no extra rights on account of being trans, whether granting extra rights for trans people is the status quo or not. Affirmative action for black people is the status quo. You argue for color-blind practices, so you're trying to roll back the clock, not defending the status quo. Do you think that makes you anti-black?

And it's not that some opponents made a weak argument, but that basically all of them use the same flawed argument. When everyone trying to establish X makes the same mistake in the process it's highly suggestive that X is false.

Dude, I already asked you which argument you're calling "the anti-trans argument" that you propose to kick a pillar out from under. "X" is not an answer! What is this flawed argument that you claim basically all of them make? Emily at least has repeatedly made it very clear she thinks intersex conditions have no bearing on trans issues; as for me, I never claimed sex is a strict binary; and I'm guessing you classify both of us as "anti-trans".

That everyone is unequivocally male or female.

Loren, you keep just repeating yourself on autopilot. Turn off your autopilot, read the question, think about what the word "argument" means, and address the question you were asked. What ==> argument <== are you attributing to the people you label "anti-trans"? "Everyone is unequivocally male or female." is not an argument. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition.

Remember, the point of this exchange was to find out why those who keep assuring us sex is a spectrum and the DSD patients commonly called "intersexed" really are literally and not just metaphorically intersexed believe their being right about it has any implications for trans issues. Merely finding someone to point at and saying "Well, she's anti-trans and she says intersexed people aren't really intersexed." explains nothing.

And you're still not getting it--it's not saying the trans exist, but that the argument of why they don't is invalid.

Oh for the love of god! Stop getting your understanding of people's viewpoints at second-hand from the ad hominem propaganda of their opponents. You aren't willing to believe Ukrainians are Nazis on barbos's say-so, are you? So go to the source. Who the heck here has argued that the trans don't exist?!? Of course they exist! But their existence doesn't prove they are what they think they are, any more than a Hindu's undisputed existence proves she's the reincarnation of a sacred cow.

If they exist what is supposed to be done?

What is supposed to be done?!? Why are you bringing that up as though opinions about what is supposed to be done have any bearing on whether "Transwomen are women" is true, or whether "Parliament meant biological sex" is true, or whether "Intersex conditions prove gender ideology is right" is true? Facts don't depend on policy preferences.

But to answer your question, what is to be done is something reality-based, not something make-believe-based. First let's get the facts, then we can decide what to do about them.

Since we don't know how it manifests in the brain we can't establish that it's wiring and thus "anatomy" might not be relevant.

I lost you. You don't believe in souls, do you? What else is there besides brain wiring to account for the physical phenomenon of a person thinking she is or isn't a member of some set? I'm not seeing a whole lot of metastable cross-coupled Nand-gates in there.

The brain is more than connections. We know hormones have major effects. We know other things exist without being able to find anything in the hardware that's related. Perhaps you are considering such thing as "wiring", I was picturing the neural connections as "wiring"--hardware, not software.

Okay, that's a fair point in principle. But in practice it seems implausible to me that anyone's belief that he or she is the other sex depends on hormone levels rather than on wiring. Psychiatrists have been experimentally messing with their patients' hormones for like a hundred years. If hormones controlled transgenderism then psychiatrists would have reported they know how to "cure" it by now.

Thus it is unquestionable that there can be a gender to the mind.

No, it is unquestionable that there can be a gender identity to the mind. Gender and gender identity are not the same concept. An awful lot of trans ideology's arguments rely on equivocating them.

What is there to distinguish between them?

"Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.​

...​

Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth".​

- World Health Organization​

To oversimplify: your gender identity is the sex-linked category you think of yourself as being in; your gender is the sex-linked category other people typically think of you as being in. That's what "socially constructed" involves.

But how others think of you is based on how you present yourself. You're not showing off your anatomy. In environments where people don't see me and don't hear my non-electronic voice (I don't know what the telephone does to my voice, but it is very common for people to think it's female) I am routinely thought female. Does that make a mismatch between my gender and my gender identity?? (Not that I really have a personal sense of gender. I have male bits, I'm fine with that, but it seems rather irrelevant.)

Gah. I knew I shouldn't oversimplify. By "category other people typically think of you as being in" I didn't mean their first impression based on the least smidgen of input; I meant their final judgment based on knowing all they need to know. If the lion's share of those people who routinely think you female only because the phone hides critical information about you would change their minds and think you male once they saw your face and your junk and your ultrasounds, that means you're in the "male" noun class. The "gender" social construct is not pig-headedly committed to first impressions.

Argumentum ad suicide? Whether a person who thinks he or she is the other sex would benefit from drafting the whole population into his or her care team, and getting them all to help the person self-perceive as the other sex, medicinally, by making an effort to conceal contrary data, has no implications one way or the other as to whether he or she is, in point of fact, the other sex.

Who is being drafted?

I'm simply saying that allowing them to live as the gender of their choice has a better outcome than not. And the claims of a burden on society don't show up in the data.

What does "allowing them to live as the gender of their choice" mean? What would "not allowing them to live as the gender of their choice" involve? Banning women from cutting their hair short and wearing traditionally male clothing and getting traditionally male jobs and changing their names to male-sounding names? Nobody does that! That sort of thing went out of style over fifty years ago. Women get to do everything men get to do and don't even get considered trans for it, just tomboys. So getting to live as they please can't be what you're talking about. Surely what you're talking about must be how other people live -- whether other people alter their own behavior to pretend they don't know perfectly well that the male-identifying woman is in point of fact female.

That's who's being drafted. If the point of all this society-wide lying the trans-activists are demanding from the rest of us is for a better mental health outcome for their favorite oppressed group, that means we're being drafted into their care team. Well, if we're going to be part of their care team, shouldn't we be getting paid for it?

I think you don't realize that we are asking for basically the status quo, you are not.

The status quo used to be prosecution for blasphemy if you contradicted the religious beliefs of Christians. Now it's prosecution for blasphemy if you contradict the religious beliefs of progressives, at least in the UK -- and American progressives very much come off as lusting after that power here too. If the status quo you want to preserve is that infidels shut up about our infidelitude and pretend to believe progressives' unscientific dogma, for the sake of the greater good of their ingroup, is there also some unscientific dogma of the infidels that you're volunteering to pretend to believe, for the benefit of somebody lower down on the progressive stack? Or is all this pious fraud they're demanding from society a one-way street?

 

[seanie]

This is sort of true, but seanie clearly either don't understand what binary means in a complex system, or doesn't want you to. Nearly all people who know something about genetics and reproductive biology would rate this one as "misleading, despite having a grain of truth". Sex is normally binary (another completely uncontroversial claim), but that doesn't mean that either the sex of any given individual or the expression of that sex is always straightforward, let alone that it should be so in some moral, religious, or legal sense. Evolution is not a god. Anatomy is not a god. There is no "should" or "must", only the trends and clines that typify nearly all natural systems.

Sex is not just normally binary, it is binary.

That very rarely the “expression of that sex”may not straightforwardly correspond to what is “normal”, is neither here nor there.

There are only two developmental pathways: female and male.

And even if that weren’t the case, it has no bearing at all upon the question of whether people who are unambiguously biologically male, with no exceptionally rare chromosomal conditions, should be allowed into female only spaces because they really, really, really want to.