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

[seanie]

So you are getting on board with the argument that one's birth certificate is the proof of your "biological sex", and that one should have to either provide it, or submit to further medical testing if your biological sex is challenged in a legal context?

A birth certificate is not proof of a person’s biological sex.

It is however, an extremely reliable guide as to a person’s biological sex.

 

[TomC]

The common derogatory term for these notorious stool pigeons is "obstetricians".

So you are getting on board with the argument that one's birth certificate is the proof of your "biological sex", and that one should have to either provide it, or submit to further medical testing if your biological sex is challenged in a legal context?

What would it take to convince you that an individual person is trans?

Part of the problem I have with this issue is the lack of any standards concerning trans. If a cis-het male who wants access to the women's changing room simply declares himself trans, does that work for you? It doesn't work for me.
Tom

 

[TSwizzle]

Eight pioneering nurses who formed their own union to defend the rights of women have won a landmark battle for a female-only changing room.
The Darlington nurses launched a legal action saying transgender policies put them at risk, deprived them of dignity and breached their human rights. They claimed a biological male colleague identifying as a woman called Rose stared at their breasts as they were getting undressed and lingered too long in the changing room. One nurse had a panic attack after Rose repeatedly asked when they were alone, ‘Are you getting changed yet?’
Now, with their case heading to the courts, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has intervened, ordering Darlington Memorial Hospital to give the women their own room.
One of them, Bethany Hutchison, said they ‘hugely appreciate’ the action ‘to restore our safety and dignity in the workplace in line with the law’. Their victory comes after it emerged last week that NHS chiefs have been forced to rip up their pro-trans guidance after it was rendered illegal by the Supreme Court.

Daily Mail

Female nurses elsewhere actually lost their jobs when objecting to males in the female changing rooms.

 

[seanie]

OK how how would this work in practice?

Legally?

The organisations with decent legal advice seem to be changing their policies and signs, to provide female only, male only, and gender neutral facilities.

 

[Bomb#20]

This, from the guy who called binary sexes "the biblical view". So now wanting males to respect female boundaries is an "alt-right cause", is it?

No, supporting anti-trans legislation is, and has been for as long as there has been an alt-right movement. I didn't say anything about Nazis, that's you, though they certainly put as many trans and intersex people to death as they could find also.

Did my point fly over your head? "Alt-right" served as a functional equivalent to "Nazi" in your ad hominem argument.

As far as "supporting anti-trans legislation" goes, the various laws at issue are supported by a broad range of the U.S. and British public, not just the "alt-right" and indeed not just "conservatives". Moreover, "anti-trans" is a slanted description. The female boundary stuff is anti-male, not anti-trans. In the case of medical legislation what's at issue is whether children are capable of giving informed consent to irreversible life-altering surgery and chemical interventions, and, if they aren't, who among the various adults contending over whether to carry out permanent body modifications are doing a better job of judging of what's in a given nonconsenting trans child's best interests. One disputant labeling the other disputant "anti-trans" is not evidence he's a better judge of child welfare; it's only evidence he has a taste for ad hominem argument.

The common derogatory term for these notorious stool pigeons is "obstetricians".

So you are getting on board with the argument that one's birth certificate is the proof of your "biological sex", and that one should have to either provide it, or submit to further medical testing if your biological sex is challenged in a legal context?

You appear to have a taste for melodrama to go with your fanciful inference procedures. No, of course birth certificates aren't "proof"; they're as susceptible to human error as any other legal document. They're evidence, same as a possibly forged signature on a contract.

In the event that someone's sex becomes a factual question in a legal dispute, say, if a younger son of a nobleman claims his so-called "elder brother" is actually his elder sister so he should inherit his father's title under primogeniture rules, then the elder child of course does not have to submit to further medical testing. She always has the option of withdrawing her claim to the title; alternately he can show up in court with his birth certificate and belly laugh at the false accusation of femaleness until the younger child's solicitor is too embarrassed to further press his client's blatantly counterfactual claim. In cases of actual medical ambiguity he can submit affidavits from his own physicians reporting medical testing that has already taken place. All those outcomes are more likely than the parties agreeing to settle the issue with further medical testing; as for a court-ordered "have to submit", that's an impossibility. At worst a court might rule that the elder child has burden of proof and if she refuses to back up her claim to maleness with further medical testing the court will award the title to her brother, but in no case is anyone going to hold her down and either pull down her pants or swab her cheek by force.

 

[Politesse]

Did my point fly over your head? "Alt-right" served as a functional equivalent to "Nazi" in your ad hominem argument.

My ad hominem argument? You're the won who dragged Nazis into it, Godwin.

You appear to have a taste for melodrama to go with your fanciful inference procedures. No, of course birth certificates aren't "proof"; they're as susceptible to human error as any other legal document. They're evidence, same as a possibly forged signature on a contract.

And yet you've conflated this with scientific evidence? Laughable, and it shows how much you actually know about science that you think some untrained clerk or nurse checking a box on a screen constitutes scientific investigation.

In the event that someone's sex becomes a factual question in a legal dispute, say, if a younger son of a nobleman claims his so-called "elder brother" is actually his elder sister so he should inherit his father's title under primogeniture rules, then the elder child of course does not have to submit to further medical testing. She always has the option of withdrawing her claim to the title; alternately he can show up in court with his birth certificate and belly laugh at the false accusation of femaleness until the younger child's solicitor is too embarrassed to further press his client's blatantly counterfactual claim. In cases of actual medical ambiguity he can submit affidavits from his own physicians reporting medical testing that has already taken place. At worst a court might rule that the elder child has burden of proof and if she refuses to back up her claim to maleness with further medical testing the court will award the title to her brother, but in no case is anyone going to hold her down and either pull down her pants or swab her cheek by force.

I disagree that any rights should be contingent on proving themselves sufficiently male or female to meet some arbitrary and inconsistent standard of same. Why should anyone be put through special tests on the basis of their sex, that another citizen would not? Let alone to the point of having blood drawn, and their private business made public. If you would have to submit to invasive medical tests to claim a right or privilege, so should I, regardless of what either of our birth certificates says, or what some uninformed asshole thinks we "look like". You only think it is "reasonable" to discriminate against intersex people because you assume you aren't one, though I assume if you'd ever actually had a genetics test done on yourself, you'd know more about them.

 

[Politesse]

The common derogatory term for these notorious stool pigeons is "obstetricians".

So you are getting on board with the argument that one's birth certificate is the proof of your "biological sex", and that one should have to either provide it, or submit to further medical testing if your biological sex is challenged in a legal context?

What would it take to convince you that an individual person is trans?

Part of the problem I have with this issue is the lack of any standards concerning trans. If a cis-het male who wants access to the women's changing room simply declares himself trans, does that work for you? It doesn't work for me.
Tom

I can't think of any reason why I would need or want to do that. Who am I to tell someone else whether or not they are trans? The very idea of it is ridiculous.

And I am not in the business of gatekeeping changing rooms, either. If I were, perhaps because I owned a gym, I'd define some clear policy for my customers, and stick to it.

 

[seanie]

Male and female are not arbitrary classifications. They’re well defined, and the vast majority of people are unambiguously male or female.

For those with rare DSD conditions, which may make their sex ambiguous at birth, identifying the condition is actually an important healthcare issue.

And identifying a person’s sex does not require invasive examination.

 

[seanie]

There are some situations where a person’s sex does actually matter, so, as a matter of policy and law, we need to make a distinction between a person’s sex and how they may identify.

 

[Politesse]

Male and female are not arbitrary classifications. They’re well defined, and the vast majority of people are unambiguously male or female.

For those with rare DSD conditions, which may make their sex ambiguous at birth, identifying the condition is actually an important healthcare issue.

And identifying a person’s sex does not require invasive examination.

And yet you run in circles from one strategy to another in trying to consistently define them, and every method you've some up with requires you to ignore of throw out data you consider "unimportant" due to being rare.

I can think of few more invasive tests than demanding physical proof of a person's sex. Just asking the question, you're asking them questions about their genitals, and accusing them of lying. How could one get more invasive than that? Most people don't like discussing their genitals with strangers at all. I suspect you don't like discussing yours either, it's only when it's "someone else" that you consider it an aceptable thing to interrogate a stranger about, and somehow think you aren't being rude as fuck when you do it. I bet eveeryone you've ever challenged the sexual identity of fucking hates you now, whether or not you realize it, and they have every right to. If you did that, you were unaccountably, unforgiveably rude.

 

[seanie]

You can discuss a person’s sex without mentioning genitals.

The genital thing seems to be your obsession.

 

[Politesse]

You can discuss a person’s sex without mentioning genitals.

The genital thing seems to be your obsession.

You cannot accuse someone of lying about their sex without broaching the most intimate of topics. You most certainly have not avoided talking about genitals ad nauseum in this thread, which on this entire forum you singularly post in, so accusing me of a genital obsession is pretty rich...

 

[seanie]

No, a person’s sex is a matter of basic reality, and readily observed.

It is not a matter of incredible privacy.

It’s a material fact that matters in some situations.

 

[seanie]

The simple thing would be for people to not lie about their sex, and recognise that in some situations the reality of their sex matters more than their gender identity, to other people.

Because other people have rights too.

 

[Bomb#20]

Just asking the question, you're asking them questions about their genitals, and accusing them of lying.
...
If you did that, you were unaccountably, unforgiveably rude.

You do know the entire point of a court of law is to accuse people of lying and to decide whether they did, don't you? Funny story about that. So it turns out that in the late Middle Ages, courts mostly stopped deciding who was lying by seeing how people stood up to the various ingenious physical torments they called "ordeals" and by seeing whether they could afford to employ a better fighter than the other litigant's "champion", based on the theory that God would endow the righteous with valor, and took up deciding by asking them unaccountably, unforgivably rude questions. Was that a cultural development you consider regrettable?

 

[Politesse]

Was that a cultural development you consider regrettable?

Good god, no. I think you're forgetting that you are the one arguing for legal over-reach, here. I am against it. You want new law, to discriminate against a certain class of people and provide the means for others to legally harass them. Through, as you say, ordeals.

I am not arguing for any such thing. I do not think the law should be changed at all. The government does not need to comment on whether I am man enough to call myself a man, and I am most certainly not asking it to, not by ancient or modern style ordeals.

 

[TSwizzle]

Forget about the toilets for a minute, a 17 year old male gets to pitch against high school girls.

Marissa Rothenberger — born Charlie Dean Rothenberger until he began transitioning to a she at just 9 years old — is now 6’0″ tall junior and the No. 1 pitcher for Champlin Park high school girls softball, which on Friday morning defeated Bloomington-Jefferson 6-0 in the 4A Minnesota State Championship. On Friday, the towering 17-year-old with long blonde hair pitched a complete-game shutout and held Bloomington Jefferson to just 3 hits, bringing Marissa’s 2025 pitching statisticsto a rest at 94 IP, 0.74 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and .176 BAA. That allowed Rothenberger to pitch five straight games for Rebels, where the biological male – turned transgender female gave up just 1 earned run in 35 total innings (and struck out 27 batters) between the section finals (best of three vs Rogers) to their state title victory on Friday over Bloomington-Jefferson, earning Rothenberger All-Tournament Team honors.

News

ONE earned run in 35 innings. An ERA of less than one over 95 innings pitched.

 

[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.

You realize plenty of people don't want to have bottom surgery because the results are poor?

Yes. What's your point? Are you suggesting that their having a good reason not to get the surgery changes the fact that letting non-ops in will increase the number of men in women's rooms many times over? The gender ideologues are in no way sticking to the status quo.

And self-id is about you being able to go to DMV without a psychiatrist's sign-off, not about simply deciding you're going to be female.

I.e., it's about simply deciding you're going to be female and going to the DMV.

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?

The thing is it's mostly a strawman attack.

Exactly. When AA fans call you anti-black it's a strawman attack, and when gender ideologues likewise call gender critical people anti-trans it's a strawman attack, for one and the same reason. What is or isn't the status quo is beside the point -- that's determined by history and power, not by the principles at issue.

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.

Ok, you can quibble about "argument". It's still a matter of asserting something the evidence doesn't support.

It's not a quibble; it's essential! You might as well claim Newton's Laws of Motion are wrong because Newton believed in alchemy. Well, so what? Everybody's wrong about something; it doesn't magically make him wrong about the question at hand. As long as you go on telling me about their erroneous assertion and never tell me about their erroneous argument, you will go on failing to explain how intersexed people tell us a bloody thing about trans issues.

We can measure physical anatomy, we can't measure the mind. But there unquestionably is something in the mind because of how badly things tended to go wrong with surgical "correction" of the intersexed.

Huh? We already knew there unquestionably is something in the mind -- trans people think they're the other sex! Where else would that be coming from other than something in the mind?

Thus clearly we can't unequivocally state whether the mind is male or female. And I find the idea that the mind must inevitably follow the genetics preposterous.

Of course it's preposterous. The body doesn't inevitably follow the genetics. There are people with clearly female reproductive anatomy and XY chromosomes; it's called complete androgen insensitivity. So why would the mind follow the genetics any more reliably? Are you another of those folks who's always going to great effort to prove trans people exist?!? That's not what's in dispute!

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.

You aren't establishing that it isn't a spectrum.

Dude! Do I need to reach through the computer screen and shake you? Turn off your autopilot! It's serving you badly. You are not an Eliza program; stop answering like one. Read what I write and address that.

Of course I'm not establishing that it isn't a spectrum! I never said it isn't a spectrum! That's Emily's and seanie's fixation, not mine. I'm saying whether sex is or isn't a spectrum is irrelevant.

This discussion is surreal -- it's like if TSwizzle wrote a post saying gender ideology is a rapture-like cult just like climate change, and then you spent the rest of the thread trying to prove to me over and over that the greenhouse effect is real. Whether climate change exists is irrelevant to trans issues. Are you now going to tell me "You aren't establishing that climate change isn't occurring."?

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.

The question is what course of action produces the least harm.

Well, does the existence of intersexed people tell us what course of action produces the least harm? Does lying about whether Parliament meant biological sex produce the least harm? Does lying about whether transwomen are women produce the least harm? I'm skeptical about whether make-believe is an effective harm-reduction strategy.

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.

Why should what group others think I'm in even be relevant?

Should?!? "There can be a gender to the mind" is an "is" claim, not an "ought" claim. Gender is determined by what others think, not by what the individual thinks. That's what "socially constructed" means. There's a reason it has "social" in it's name: the same reason "socialism" has. If you aren't talking about how society categorizes something you aren't talking about a social construct, which means you aren't talking about gender. What's individually constructed in one person's mind is gender identity; it isn't gender.

If you're arguing what group others think you're in shouldn't be relevant, that's not an argument for gender being up to the individual; it's an argument for abolishing gender altogether. We could do that -- we could simply stop basing any decisions on whether someone is a man or woman. But that would not make transwomen women.

I'm openly atheist, to some that puts me in the category of evil. Does that make me evil?

Why do you offer that analogy? Is evil a social construct?

Adulthood is a social construct. Fifteen-year-olds were adults in ancient Rome, children in modern America. It's even an undisputed spectrum -- a twenty-year-old is an adult for voting but a child for drinking -- and a lot of fifteen-year-olds would vote more responsibly and informedly than a lot of thirty-year-olds. Do you think any of that is grounds for supposing that a nine-year-old is an adult as long as he thinks he is?

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?

Or is it that we don't want people being prosecuted for blasphemy for contradicting the religious beliefs of conservatives?

A fair portion of the "liberal agenda" is removing legal protections for conservative religious ideas.

The heck are you talking about? Who the bejesus is going to get prosecuted for blasphemy for contradicting the religious beliefs of conservatives, apart from the people progressives charge with "hate speech" for contradicting conservative Muslims? What, you think if we as a society stop pretending we believe transwomen are women then we'll put progressives in jail for claiming they are? The worst that will happen to them is being the butt of jokes. Free speech is for everyone. What legal protections for conservative religious ideas do you think still exist, for anyone to have removing them still be on his agenda?

 

[scombrid]

Don’t worry. Dear leader will save us from the trannies after his grand military parade this weekend or maybe after he puts down the insurrection in California.

 

[TSwizzle]

it's like if TSwizzle wrote a post saying gender ideology is a rapture-like cult

I wouldn't say gender ideology is a "rapture-like" cult but I would say gender ideology (and white privilege) is cultish.