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

[seanie]

And, in practical terms, even if the higher rates of male violence and sexual offending are purely a product of society, how does that impact on safeguarding policies?

Because the most pressing issue is do males pose more of a threat as a class, not why they might do so.

 

[Politesse]

Laws that punish a class for the crimes of individuals are bad law, and history has proven that time and time again.

 

[seanie]

Requiring all males to stay out of female spaces, in some circumstances, is not punishment.

 

[Emily Lake]

is no such thing as a "sex-divided bathroom", as bathrooms are not a function or attribute of sex but rather of society and thus a gender issue by definition. But I am certain we are referring to the same rooms, whatever you wish to c

Not if the basis for separations is agreed by society to be on the basis of biological sex.

It’s a choice.

I don't agree with that, it's a contradiction in terms. Any behavior or identity whose basis is what has been "agreed upon by society" is gender by definition, even if its rhetorical justification is some particular generation's understanding of sex. Biology does not change as quickly as social attitudes, and can advance no particular opinion on "correct" society, culture, or law. Thd social sciences are not possible unless the distinction between the objective and the subjective is first grasped. Even before we adopted the convention of using sez and gender to refer to these concepts, sociologists and anthrkpologists used "biological sex" and "social sex" to refer to essentially the same distinction. You unintentionally reference that era and now-extinct convention when you talk about biological sex, which by the modern definition of sex is actually a redundancy. If it is not biological, it is not sex as we now commonly use that term.

Poli, you write a lot of posts that use good language, and at a glance they seem like they're logical. But you regularly swap out words in ways that result in your posts being incredibly irrational. I'm not generally a fan of line-by-line snipping, but I feel like it's kind of necessary here.

I don't agree with that, it's a contradiction in terms. Any behavior or identity whose basis is what has been "agreed upon by society" is gender by definition

This is a wrong statement, because nobody has said or implied that intimate facilities have identities, nor that they're behaviors. You're foisting in something completely unrelated to the actual statement, and even though it sounds intelligent, it's actually inane.

Facility use is separated on the basis of the SEX of the people using them. There are no behaviors or identities involved, just bodies - actual physical real bodies, which have a very real and very meaningful sex.

Furthermore, it's the social expectation of which sex uses which facility that has been agreed upon by society - it's part of the social contract that up until quite recently has not needed any laws, because there was an understood convention for use. The social contract isn't gender, and you slipping "gender" into this statement makes the entire thing meaningless.

even if its rhetorical justification is some particular generation's understanding of sex.

The only "rhetorical justifications" here are yours. You're the one using narrative framing and the conflation of meaning to try to turn something very straightforward into something intentionally obfuscated.

The understanding of sex isn't some social fad that changes generation to generation, it's not a fashion. Sex has been a stable aspect of anisogamous species for hundreds of millions of years. If whatever current generation you're referencing has a "different" understanding of sex that somehow means that the usage of bathrooms is not generally based on actual physical real sex, then that generation has a made-up imaginary humpty-dumpty understanding of sex, and they're quite simply wrong.

Biology does not change as quickly as social attitudes, and can advance no particular opinion on "correct" society, culture, or law.

You're right - the biology we're talking about here is sex, and that biology has had no material alterations in primates since our order first appeared over 90 million years ago. Furthermore, that biology is very consistent across mammals, and has had essentially the same structure for about 200 million years.

You're using this observation to somehow imply that the convention of separating intimate facilities on the basis of sex is somehow fluid and fashionable, and therefore that it can be changed on a whim. You attack the standing convention by implying that seanie (and I) are trying to force a "correct" view on society. This is backwards - society has had sex-separated intimate spaces in most cultures for as long as we've had recorded history. There are some occasional situations where bathing is not separated by sex, and those are almost always a matter of practicality. Aside from that, almost all societies in recorded history have had either fully private single-use toilets and similar facilities where people are naked, or they've been separated by sex.

You're framing this as if the status quo is that intimate facilities are mixed sex, and that seanie and I are trying to change that. You're framing it as if no fence currently exists, and Chesterton is trying to build one for no good reason.

Thd social sciences are not possible unless the distinction between the objective and the subjective is first grasped. Even before we adopted the convention of using sez and gender to refer to these concepts, sociologists and anthrkpologists used "biological sex" and "social sex" to refer to essentially the same distinction. You unintentionally reference that era and now-extinct convention when you talk about biological sex, which by the modern definition of sex is actually a redundancy. If it is not biological, it is not sex as we now commonly use that term.

Here you've introduced a new term "social sex" and have left it undefined. I will infer from this that what you mean by "social sex" is actually gender role, or the roles and traditions within a society that are (nearly always) based on the sex of the person performing that role. But until you actually elaborate on what you mean, it's all guessing... which leaves you an easy out to say that anyone else has guessed wrong.

Define your terms, please.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

And, in practical terms, even if the higher rates of male violence and sexual offending are purely a product of society, how does that impact on safeguarding policies?

Because the most pressing issue is do males pose more of a threat as a class, not why they might do so.

I would add to that, are assaults more likely to happen in restrooms than in other places? There are so many things to consider when studying crime other than the sex of the people involved

 

[TSwizzle]

Because the most pressing issue is do males pose more of a threat as a class, not why they might do so.

Extremists, such as the BBC would rather not make these distinctions.

A former police community support officer (PCSO) with an "obsession" for weapons has been found guilty of trying to make a gun using a 3D printer. Zoe Watts, 38, of St Helen's Avenue, Lincoln, was found with parts for a semi automatic weapon, a machete, bladed article, crossbow and bow during a raid on her home on 11 December. During her trial at Lincoln Crown Court, Watts claimed she was making a "fidget" toy gun as a Christmas present. She is believed to be the first person in the UK to be convicted of attempting to manufacture a prohibited gun using a printer. She will be sentence on 8 August. Watts was previously jailed in 2021 after she was found with banned weapons and explosive substances and had also made an improvised explosive device. Judge Simon Hirst remanded Watts back into custody. "Given the previous convictions that Miss Watts has I would like a report on the issue of dangerousness," Judge Hirst explained.

BBC

At no point is it mentioned that Zoe Watts is indeed male. I wonder if the BBC will tell us whether "she" was sent to a female prison or a male prison.

 

[Emily Lake]

Toni, do you genuinely not get the concept here, or are you being contrarian?

Of course some few women have higher sex drives than the average man, just as some few women are taller than the average man. But the reality, which should be uncontroversial, is that men have materially higher sex drives on average, and that extremely few women at all have sex drives higher than the average male sex drive.

You end up sounding like you're insinuating that men and women have the same degree of sex drive and there's no observable difference in the degree of perviness, rapiness, and violence between the sexes. It's a silly thing to latch on to, given that the prevalence of paraphilias is significantly higher in men than in women*, the rates of rape and sexual offending are significantly higher among men than women, and that the volume of violent offenses committed by men is significantly higher than those committed by women. I mean, it's not like it's just a smidge different, it's a lot different.


*Re: paraphilias, the single exception is submissiveness as a paraphilia, which is a bit higher in women than in men.

I’m arguing against the notion that males are inherently more violent or more prone to sexual violence than women. We cannot overlook the role that society plays in assigning certain traits based upon sex/gender.

I think your argument is fallacious, and demonstrably so. I get it though - there was a point in time where I would have argued the same thing, thinking that it was the good feminist thing to do, and that it was necessary for equality.

Not every male is more violent or sexually aggressive than every female, but across the vast majority of mammals, males are more violent and sexually aggressive. Testosterone is a steroid that is present in all mammals. It's present in both sexes, but in almost all mammals it's much higher in males than in females. As a steroid, it has the same effect that all other known steroids have - it increases aggression. Interesting, some few species have evolved such that females have a higher amount of testosterone than male, such as in spotted hyenas - and in spotted hyenas females are more aggressive and violent than males.

In addition to the effect of testosterone, in almost all social mammals, males have a sex-based role that includes protecting pregnant and nursing females and their offspring. Having a higher tendency toward aggression and violence is a selected trait in those social groups.

Do you genuinely believe that girls are taught to not be sexually aggressive and that boys are encouraged to be so? I think this is monumentally wrong - girls are innately less sexually aggressive, and we as a society have invested a lot over the past few thousand years into teaching boys to be less sexually aggressive than they are inherently wired for. I happen to think that's a good thing... but I also recognize that we're actively combating instinct by doing so.

To me, that is as offensive and ignorant as saying that boys are better at math and science and girls are better at cooking.

The difference is that one of these behavioral tendencies (sexual aggression and violence) has a known mechanism (testosterone) and is observable with material significance throughout mammals in a highly consistent way. The other is a capability that has no identifiable mechanism, and which is observed to be untrue on a regular basis.

That said... the best of the best mathematicians are males. Actually, the best of the best of most skills are held by males. In almost every non-physical capability, the means for men and women are fairly close to each other, but the standard deviations are very different. Women have smaller variances, producing a "peakier" distribution with shorter tails, whereas men have larger variances producing a "flatter" distribution with longer tails. So while men might corner the market on the "top end" outliers... they also corner the market on the low end. The absolute smartest person on the planet is statistically far more likely to be male than female... but the absolute dumbest one is also going to be a dude.

None of that is proscriptive, which is important to note. Just because men are more likely to come out with a ground-breaking physicist doesn't at all imply that women can't be extraordinary physicists too. And it certainly doesn't imply that women shouldn't pursue physics as a career, let alone that women should be prohibited from studying physics.

 

[seanie]

I would add to that, are assaults more likely to happen in restrooms than in other places? There are so many things to consider when studying crime other than the sex of the people involved

But a person’s sex is a very relevant category in considering risk, given the vastly different rates of violent and sexual offending between males and females.

Where those assaults are more likely to take place is a separate question.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think the issue is describing the difference in perviness, rapiness and violence as “male instinct”, not that there are differences.

I think it depends on whether you're interpreting "instinct" to mean a driving power that cannot be overcome, or whether you're interpreting it as a tendency toward a particular behavior.

All of us* have an instinct for fight or flight. That doesn't mean that when facing conflict we will always fight or flee - we have higher brain function and can in most cases override that instinct.

*Except my husband. He seems to have been absent on the day the gods were handing out l's, and he ended up with a fight or fight** instinct.

**Just joking - it's an aspect of ADHD that's a lot more likely to occur in males than in females, where the flight instinct is pretty heavily suppressed. So startle and conflict responses end up being almost entirely fight

 

[Emily Lake]

Look, I know what biological sex is and I know what academic gender is. How about you give us a brief explanation of how you're using those terms, so we can figure out what you're actually trying to say?

By the current conventions of the sciences in the anglophone world, "sex" refers to anatomical and physiological aspects of all organisms in which sex distinctions occur. "Gender" refers to the social and psychological constructions that have been built around perceptions of sex in all known human societies. A tree can be correctly described in terms of sex, but not by gender. Menstruation is a phenomenon occasioned by sex, but is surrounded by a complex and diverse array of cultural perceptions, traditions, and behaviors: gender identity, gender ideology and gender roles, respectively.

While it is best not to confuse the two, the public still frequently treats the two terms as synonyms, so there is little to be gained by insisting on the distinction. I usually don't, unless it is very relevant to the topic of discussion. Similar situations are common whenever scientists try to make have tried to make useful distinctions between the emperical and perceived. Culture and society, ethnicity and population, disease and illness, the list goes on. Many terminological antonyms are in use by professionals but routinely conflated by the public, who after all usually have no need for such a distinction.

Thank you for the explanation. I generally concur with your description of sex versus gender.

 

[Emily Lake]

Laws that punish a class for the crimes of individuals are bad law, and history has proven that time and time again.

Within the context of this thread, your statement would imply that males should be given access to spaces and services where females are vulnerable or exposed as a matter of course, and should only be excluded after they've caused harm. It implies that women have no right to safeguard against harm - despite the harm falling almost entirely on women, and committed by men.

Additionally, males are not being punished by being excluded from female-only intimate spaces. If you think they are, I invite you to elaborate on exactly what makes it a punishment, and why you think males ought to be granted to right to look at naked women without consent.

 

[seanie]

Well regardless of the general public, if there is a difference between the two terms there should be some care in using them in a discussion concerning sex and gender.

You would think?

 

[Emily Lake]

And, in practical terms, even if the higher rates of male violence and sexual offending are purely a product of society, how does that impact on safeguarding policies?

Because the most pressing issue is do males pose more of a threat as a class, not why they might do so.

I would add to that, are assaults more likely to happen in restrooms than in other places? There are so many things to consider when studying crime other than the sex of the people involved

Sexual offending is more likely to occur in mixed-sex spaces than in single-sex spaces.

 

[Bomb#20]

View attachment 50990

I have no talent for cartooning so this will have to do. The baseball game labeled "Justice" would look more like this:

Really?

Well, that depends on how many "systemic barriers" "Justice" requires us to remove because they were the "cause" of "inequity", where "equity" is defined according to the game labeled "Equity". If you're talking about removing only that one barrier, then no, it wouldn't really be a Mad Max landscape -- it would really look like a homeless encampment or a Santa Fe sidewalk covered with people selling trinkets on blankets or whatever else various locals decide to use the space for. Why the heck did your cartoonist expect there still to be a baseball game going on there in the absence of any "systemic barrier" preventing every random person who thinks he has a better use for the land from using it as he pleases and making baseball games infeasible?

If you were talking about removing *all* systemic barriers to equity, then yes, it really would be a scene out of Mad Max.

Or do you think that humans aren't animals, and that a magical sky-daddy blessed us with super-powers and skipped the entirety of the evolutionary process?

Nah, socialists typically take their creationism retail, not wholesale.

 

[ZiprHead]

We should have to have laws about this. But some people are going to exploit goodwill and kindness for their own jollies or for nefarious reasons. So now we can't have nice things.

I hate it when I realize I mistyped way after the edit window has closed.

This should have said "We shouldn't have to have laws about this..."

I fixed it for you. Don't hesitate to PM me if it happens again. I'm always glad to help.

 

[Emily Lake]

We should have to have laws about this. But some people are going to exploit goodwill and kindness for their own jollies or for nefarious reasons. So now we can't have nice things.

I hate it when I realize I mistyped way after the edit window has closed.

This should have said "We shouldn't have to have laws about this..."

I fixed it for you. Don't hesitate to PM me if it happens again. I'm always glad to help.

Thank you so much!

 

[seanie]

So, should we organise athletic sports on the basis of biological sex, given the average male physiologal advantage making it unfair, or do we operate it on the basis of gender identity?

Because if we didn’t let the men who consider themselves women participate in women’s sports they’d be sad.

And we don’t want men being sad do we, eh guys ?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Let me get straight to the matter, shall I?

 

[laughing dog]

I think the issue is describing the difference in perviness, rapiness and violence as “male instinct”, not that there are differences.

I think it depends on whether you're interpreting "instinct" to mean a driving power that cannot be overcome, or whether you're interpreting it as a tendency toward a particular behavior.

All of us* have an instinct for fight or flight. That doesn't mean that when facing conflict we will always fight or flee - we have higher brain function and can in most cases override that instinct.

In all of the uses of "instinct" I have seen, there is a strong sense that it is natural or an innate part of behavior. In that sense, I think it is a mischaracterization that perviness, rapiness and violence is any more a "male" instinct than it is a "female" instinct. That doesn't mean that males or men are much prone to perviness, rapiness and violence, but IMO, that does not make an instinct.

 

[Politesse]

Well regardless of the general public, if there is a difference between the two terms there should be some care in using them in a discussion concerning sex and gender.

You would think?

Well of course, I would think, but I'm an anthropologist. No one listens to us.

Yes, I think it would be more correct and appropriate to describe restrooms as gender-divided, not sex-divided, just as I think gender reveal parties are misnamed. But me protesting these things doesn't change the language with which most people do and will describe them.