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

[Toni]

I think we need to take a step back from ideological generalizations. The real issues surrounding locker rooms and restrooms are far messier than the binary narratives we often impose. Before even bringing trans identities into the conversation, we should ask: What assumptions do we make about safety, comfort, and identity in shared spaces? Too often, we fall back on a simplistic rule—penises here, vaginas there—but that framework erases the wide and complex spectrum of lived realities.

Consider just a partial list of individuals who might occupy these spaces:

• Gay, straight, or intersex minors (male or female)
• Adults across all those same categories
• Survivors of sexual assault (male and female)
• People with body dysphoria, trauma, or anxiety
• Individuals with developmental or psychiatric conditions
• And yes, trans men and women

Do we really believe that every person in these overlapping groups will feel safe, comfortable, and unthreatened simply because they’ve been sorted into one side of a binary?

Speaking personally: I'm a cisgender male, I go to the gym almost every day, and I still don’t feel fully at ease in locker rooms. I’ve witnessed behavior that crossed boundaries, individuals lingering who clearly aren’t just there to change, and others visibly uncomfortable but silent. When I was younger, there were moments I genuinely felt afraid. I’m older and stronger now, less likely to be intimidated—but that doesn’t mean other cis men feel safe. Our identities don’t erase our vulnerabilities.

Fear, discomfort, and vulnerability in intimate public spaces don’t follow neat gender lines. A straight woman might feel uneasy around lesbians. A gay teenager might fear harassment from other boys. A trans person might worry about mockery or violence from both cis men and women. A Black man might feel watched or judged in a predominantly white locker room—and the reverse can also be true, where white individuals harbor unjustified fears about sharing space with Black people. These dynamics are real and shaped by personal history, culture, and context. They cannot be solved by rigid identity rules or simplistic bathroom policies.

And once we start excluding people based on perceived threat or discomfort, where exactly do we draw the line? If trans individuals are singled out today, will lesbians or gay men be next? Will racial minorities face renewed exclusion tomorrow? We’ve seen this slope before—where fear is used to justify segregation under the guise of safety, morality, or tradition. Again and again, political actors seize on these anxieties not to address real issues, but to manufacture outrage, divide the public, and distract from systemic failures. It’s a pattern we should all recognize—and refuse to play into.

We have to stop pretending there’s a “perfect” locker room arrangement that will eliminate all fear, discomfort, or risk. There isn’t. People are complicated. Public spaces are messy. If we truly care about both inclusion and safety, we should be expanding privacy, rethinking spatial design, and acknowledging individual variation—not drawing harder lines between groups. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it seems the best solution may be a return to individualized facilities. Maybe the 18th-century outhouse had one thing right: a private space, used one person at a time, avoids a lot of these modern identity battles.

But in the meantime, there’s little serious effort to redesign public spaces with privacy or inclusivity in mind—because solving these problems isn’t the point. Too often, those in power gain more from fueling cultural division than from pursuing practical solutions. By turning deeply personal issues into public battlegrounds, they deflect attention away from structural inaction and redirect public energy toward infighting. What we’re left with is a cycle of manufactured outrage, where fear is weaponized but never resolved. This isn’t about protection—it’s about control. And the longer we accept this kind of political weaponization, the further we are from anything resembling safety or peace of mind.

You are right. There will never be a perfect locker room.

But barring males—or rather, continuing the bar of males in female only locker rooms WILL prevent almost all women from being raped in the women’s locker room. Because some male will violate that ban. Moreover, it doesn’t put girls and women in the position of having to evaluate/perform an instant risk analysis for every single person who enters the locker room.

Girls and women are not afraid of being raped by lesbians in the locker room. Girls and women do not start out being afraid of being raped by men in the locker room.

Men teach us that fear.

#NotAllMen of course but given that most rape victims know their attackers and indeed, most don’t believe there is any reason to be afraid or even cautious around their neighbor, teacher, coach, doctor, father, stepfather, brother, friends of brother, uncle , cousin, grandfather. Until they find out.

Unfortunately that’s not a small number of girls and women.

 

[Emily Lake]

Good education, good food and healthcare and decent, safe housing and decent jobs are not naturally evolved plants growing wild in the forest; they are engineered products of human economic activity. They only exist at all because individual humans have reasons to produce them. The systemic barriers to equal access that your childish cartoon claims are unjust are in fact essential components of the social machinery that creates good education, good food and healthcare and decent, safe housing and decent jobs in the first place. That's not feudalism. Heck, that's not even capitalism -- it's just reality. Even Lenin figured it out, after less than a year in power. You are proposing to beautify a skyscraper by dynamiting its first floor, because you find it ugly.

Exactly. The world runs on productive effort. The system needs to be set up such that it is rewarded. Every attempt to do anything else above the small community level has gone badly. And an equity approach inherently strips away such rewards.

Bit of a derail, but I've been thinking on this lately. I've generally taken the communism is dumb, because it doesn't take human nature into consideration. For it to work, it requires that all humans stop valuing themselves and their family more than they value strangers, and it requires that there are zero freeloaders or exploitative opportunists at all - and both of those are simply irrational expectations.

Recently, I've changed my mind a little bit. I still think communism is dumb, but I don't think it's dumb for quite the same reason.

I think communism probably works pretty well in small, isolated, undeveloped social groups. I would even go so far as to say that communism could even be the norm in that circumstance. If you've got a small group of people who are all directly mutually dependent, existing in a pre-agricultural society, it actually makes sense. Nobody can survive on their own - they need the assistance of the rest of the tribe to avoid dying. And they're small enough that pretty much everyone has to be a generalist - they all have to be able to hunt and gather, to build basic shelter, provide clothing or other body covering to protect from exposure, to make and maintain fire, etc. That doesn't mean that nobody is a master at some skill or another, just that the tribe can't survive if any of them are exclusive specialists.

In that kind of a situation, everyone is going to contribute as much as they can toward the survival of the tribe as a whole, because they actually *need* everyone they've got just to survive. Anyone who shirks or is selfish and greedy will get dealt with very quickly, because their slacking endangers everyone. And even short-term ostracization or deprivation imposed by the rest of the tribe would increase the likelihood of death for the slacker, so there's a built in safeguard against such behavior.

But I think this would only work when the group is small enough that nearly everyone knows everyone else pretty well. I'm guesstimating up into the mid hundreds population size, maybe up to a thousand but I'm not sure. I can't remember that many people, but I'm bad at names and faces, and I don't know what a normal number of people to know well would be for a normal person.

When the group gets too big, then it leaves room for freeloading and opportunism. At some population size, there are going to be some people who aren't well known to some other people - no person knows everyone pretty well, there are some people that Bob only recognizes visually, or has only interacted with a couple of times and is just a loose acquaintance. I think that's probably where the inflection point is. At that size, people begin to have the opportunity of slacking off and still taking a share of the community goods without people noticing. At the earlier stages, it might even be noticed but tolerated. So what if Monique didn't go hunting today with the rest of us, even though she's perfectly capable? Yeah, it's a little bit unfair that she decided to just hang out at the fire and nap all day - we have enough, it's not that big a deal. It's only this time.

If the village is big enough and successful enough, then the surfeit is enough that even with the occasional freeloader, everyone gets enough. But at some point the freeloading will be noticed enough that it will start to chafe. Despite how much we might wish it, people aren't actually equal - some people are more successful at survival than others are, regardless what form of that survival takes. That doesn't mean or imply that I think any people are without worth or value - not at all. Just that there's always going to be a Cindy, who gets angry and thinks it's unfair that Monique keeps skipping out on hunting. Cindy always tries as hard as she can when they go on group hunts, but she's just not good at hunting, she just hasn't got the necessary hand-eye coordination, or she's just smaller and weaker than everyone else, or similar. Cindy is putting in a lot of effort so that she can contribute to everyone's well being, and there's Monique, just hanging out smoking and drinking around the fire and not doing her part at all. Why should Cindy continue to work so hard, when she could just chill like Monique and still get a full plate of food every night - it's not fair.

At some point, that innate sense of justice is going to kick in - and that's where communism stops being functional.

That's where distribution of goods becomes positively correlated with production of goods.

At that point, people aren't receiving from the community according to their needs, they're receiving from the community according to their productivity. This is more fair for the village as a whole - it optimizes the equation between individualism and self interest on one side, and conformity and collective-interest on the other. It minimizes the risk of freeloaders, and maximizes the the degree of freedom.

I think there's a fairly natural progression based on the size of the social group from hunter-gatherer level "jack of all trades" best served by communism to highly specialize-able "master of one" with a labor market best served by capitalism. That doesn't mean that capitalism is all good and without problems, it just means that communism isn't a better solution than capitalism. I'm fairly confident that some better balance than we have today can be achieved by some as-yet-unknown system... but that system sure as heck isn't communism unless you knock us back to the stone age.

 

[Emily Lake]

Disclosure: I am not currently sober. I just realized I wrote a massive off-topic dissertation that's not relevant to this discussion at all. I think it makes sense... but I wouldn't bet money on it being insightful or useful or even feasible.

 

[Emily Lake]

Wore a skirt. That's not presenting as female to me.

Uh huh. And what do you, oh all knowing man unaffected by this... what do you think constitutes "presenting as female" to you?

I mean, what if it's a pink skirt, and he's got butterflies on his shirt? What convinces you that a given male is "woman enough to you" that women should be obligated to accept your determination of what we are expected to accommodate.

 

[bilby]

But barring males—or rather, continuing the bar of males in female only locker rooms WILL prevent almost all women from being raped in the women’s locker room.

I guess it might, if any such bar existed.

But it doesn't.

There are no bars, locks, swipe-cards, retina scans, etc., etc.

There is a sign that says "WOMEN" or "LADIES" or has a stylized sillhouette on it.

This is effective in stopping rapists from entering, in exactly the same way that having the question: "Are you entering the USA for the purpose of committing a terrorist act?" on immigration applications is effective in preventing terrorists from entering the USA.

Seriously; If somebody wants to assault a woman in a bathroom, locker room, or change room, they need not put on a dress in order to do so. In fact, dressing up as a woman makes almost exactly zero difference to their ability to commit crimes against women in these locations.

And when they do, those crimes are no less punishable, and no more difficult to prosecute. I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that: "I raped her in the bathroom, but I was wearing a skirt when I did so", would not be a very effective defence in a court of law.

This here is the problem with banning transwomen from women's spaces "to protect women": Even if transwomen in women's spaces were an actual threat, such a ban would be completely ineffective in mitigating that threat.

Literally no rapist has been deterred by a sign that reads "LADIES".

Banning transwomen from ladies rooms is as effective at preventing sexual assaults as having an "employees only" sign on the open safe door would be at preventing bank heists.

So even if the folks who have wasted thousands of posts in this thread arguing about how dangerous transwomen might be were 100% correct; Even if every transwoman were not only a manly man, but also a vile rapist and sexual predator; Even if these unsubstantiated slurs were completely true in every regard - banning transwomen from women's spaces would achieve absolutely nothing to protect against that threat.

The defining feature of criminals is their disregard for the rules.

 

[Emily Lake]

If there were any why aren't the anti-trans crowd pointing at them rather than at the ones they are pointing at.

Because the ACTUAL anti-trans crowd gains more advantage by pointing out the absolute horseshit insanity that is the dogma that transwomen are actual women. I mean, seriously, how detached from reality does a person need to be to actually believe that a male human that likes women's clothing and has a fantasy of what being a female is really like is somehow indistinguishable from a female human. And the more the activists insist and demand that any male human being that says they are transgender must be accepted in all situations as being indistinguishable from actual women.

As long as a die-hard contingent can yell "Transwomen ARE women!" loudly enough, it's an all-you-can-eat-buffet for the ACTUAL anti-trans crowd.

If the activists would just give over on the egregious violation of women's boundaries and come to the table on a third space as a solution, support for acceptance is almost entirely guaranteed. The vast majority of us who object to granting men access to female single-sex spaces and services are NOT doing so out of hostility or enmity, we're doing it out of a desire for safety and dignity in a space free of males.

The overwhelming majority of majority-female organizations that oppose fiat self-id genuinely don't care how people dress or present, nor do we care what modifications adults choose to make to their bodies. We absolutely support the freedom of everyone to present however they choose (provided such presentation doesn't endanger others) - we think gender norms are some bullshit all the way around! If we just get to keep those spaces and services where sex matters, we're behind everything else.

 

[Emily Lake]

Only if you were raised that nudity was shameful. Obviously, I have no way of knowing for sure how I would react, but that's not too far from what happened at 16 and beyond the initial shock it didn't bother me at all.

...

Occupational hazard of being a programmer--always looking for edge cases that break things.

I'm snipping these two paragraphs very specifically, because I'm going to give you an edge case that I think a reasonable person would think constitutes "breaking things" that directly negates your assertion that prudishness is the only reason we're not all hunky-dory about mixed-sex spaces.

As a child, about 9 or 10, I had an experience that has stuck with me in a really visceral way. This would have been in the eighties. I was with my bio-dad for the summer, and one of his friends was hanging out. He had on extremely short shorts, the kind that were a bit loose around the thighs, late 70s to early 80s style running shorts. I was sitting on the floor playing with my 1-year old brother, and this guy was sitting across from me with his legs spread, and his penis visible. He kept looking at me and bobbing his penis. This guy was getting sexually aroused from showing his penis to me as a very young child.

I wasn't raised to think that nudity was shameful. Up until about 5, I would take group showers after being at the beach with my parents. We weren't nudists, but I was raised to think that nudity was natural and nothing to be ashamed of, but also to be respectful because nudity isn't always appropriate.

Even though I didn't, and still don't think that nudity is shameful, I do think that nudity can present a risk... and that risk is greater for women than it is for men. That experience was intensely creepy at the time, even though I didn't completely understand why it was so creepy and intimidating. It's stuck with me my entire life.

Does that qualify as a "thing-breaking-edge-case" for you when it comes to views on whether or not mixed-sex nudity in some limited situations is a bad idea?

 

[Emily Lake]

I’m sorry that your understanding is so limited. That’s not a problem I can fix for you but indeed it is a problem,

That's such a bitchy thing to say that I actually and genuinely laughed out loud. I'm sure you weren't trying to be funny, but the stereotypical "mean girl put down" in this thread has me rolling.

 

[Arctish]

Caster Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.

She was assigned female at birth, was raised as a girl, identifies as female, but was banned from competition because she has a DSD which has resulted in her body naturally producing more testosterone than is a typical for a female, and she refused to take drugs to suppress it.

World Athletics, led by its president Sebastian Coe, has said its rules maintain fairness because Semenya has an unfair, male-like athletic advantage from her higher testosterone. Semenya argues her testosterone is a genetic gift.

Semenya has 5-ARD, which is a DSD that ONLY males can have. Semenya is a male of the human species.

Sex assigned at birth is central to this controversy.

Sex at birth isn't assigned, it's observed and documented. Sometimes the observation is inaccurately, but it's still an observation. Hell, in developed countries it's usually observed several months prior to birth!

Realistically, sex isn't "assigned" at all. It's determined. And in humans, it's determined when the sperm breaches the egg wall.

You might think Semenya is male, but she is/was declared female on her birth certificate, was raised as a female in her family and society, and identifies as a female.

I believe it is more accurate to say Semenya is an intersex female rather than to simply declare her to be male.

You can believe whatever you want. 5-ARD is a condition that can ONLY occur in males. It cannot occur in females. Most infants with 5-ARD have a very small penis and a divided scrotal sac at birth, but some will have internal testes and a blind vaginal pouch. During puberty, their penises will grow, even though they're often materially smaller than is typical for a male. In many 5-ARD males, their testes will descend during puberty, and most are not sterile - they may have reduced sperm count and other related complications that reduce fertility, but they're not actually sterile, and their fertility can be boosted through treatment if desired.

What would be factually accurate would be to say that Semenya is a male with a disorder of sexual development that resulted in ambiguous or misleading genitals being recorded at birth.

So you think it's more accurate to say she's a male with a DSD that resulted in female appearance at birth, which led to female legal status and female upbringing. Whether that is why she has a female self identity is unknown/unknowable. Either way, it's her intersex traits at the heart of her legal case.

Is Semenya's XY chromosome pairing the definitive trait that makes her a male? Heather Heyer has the XY genotype and you said she's female since she was able to give birth.

 

[Emily Lake]

Fear, discomfort, and vulnerability in intimate public spaces don’t follow neat gender lines. A straight woman might feel uneasy around lesbians. A gay teenager might fear harassment from other boys. A trans person might worry about mockery or violence from both cis men and women. A Black man might feel watched or judged in a predominantly white locker room—and the reverse can also be true, where white individuals harbor unjustified fears about sharing space with Black people. These dynamics are real and shaped by personal history, culture, and context. They cannot be solved by rigid identity rules or simplistic bathroom policies.

And once we start excluding people based on perceived threat or discomfort, where exactly do we draw the line?

That was a very well written post. But it rests on a false premise - that the actual risk of sexual violence is uniform. From that you've built a fallacy of the beard argument and some other fallacies that I can't remember the name of.

The beard fallacy comes into play when you argue that because we can't draw a bright line along a spectrum from one end to the other, we're therefore unable to distinguish between the ends of that spectrum. Light has a spectrum from green to blue, and of course that means that we can't pick a single definable point at which everything on one side is green and everything on the side is blue, we therefore can't distinguish between chartreuse and navy.

The second fallacy shows up when you step further and further way from the topic under actual discussion, essentially transferring your argument to a different proposition. You start from the proposition of women wanting single-sex spaces that allow exclusion of males, then you skip over to sexual orientation. Then you skip from there to an argument around age. You bounce over to racism, and you even slip in an argument toward an entirely different premise altogether (whether or not white people are capable of being a victim of racism).

Another fallacy arises when you substitute "rigid identity rules" for the premise of sex-based separation of intimate spaces. My fundamental position is that intimate spaces should be separated on the basis of sex. Gender identity is not sex. Those seeking acceptance of transsexuals in the past have argued quite strongly that gender identity is NOT the same as sex - it's fundamental to the entire purpose of advocating for acceptance! If gender identity is NOT separate from sex, then transgender identities are fictitious. But here, you've swapped in "gender identity" as the focus of the argument rather then sex - and I've been quite unambiguous that I am talking about sex.

And you round this out by reframing the risk under discussion as being perceived rather than real. This follows directly from your false premise. When you frame your argument around the perceived risk, you have implicitly asserted that the perception is not reliable, that it is not an accurate assessment of actual risk. And that would only be a sound argument *if* the risk of sexual offenses were not statistically significantly different. And that reduces to a uniform distribution of risk exposure by category of sex.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Your premise is false - the risk of sexual offense is NOT uniform by sex, and it's not even remotely close. In the US, 1 in 6 women is subjected to an attempted or completed rape. Around 90% of the victims of rape are women, and 98% of the perpetrators of rape are males. Over 80% of women in the US have been sexually assaulted, and the majority of those happen when we're quite young.

The risk is NOT the same, and it's considerably better now that it has been in the past (although some parts of the world are getting massively worse). Pretty much for all of recorded history, women have been subjected to sexual violence at levels that eclipse those experienced by men. Why on earth do you think we should just set aside all of our instincts and roll the dice? Why should we be expected to pretend that maybe this time it'll work out for us, maybe this time will finally be when the disparate risk will magically evaporate into nonexistence.

 

[bilby]

In summary:

1. Everyone is either male, or female.
2. There is one definitive test that tells us which category a particular person falls into.
3. Which test that is varies from case to case...

 

[Emily Lake]

There is a sign that says "WOMEN" or "LADIES" or has a stylized sillhouette on it.

This is effective in stopping rapists from entering, in exactly the same way that having the question: "Are you entering the USA for the purpose of committing a terrorist act?" on immigration applications is effective in preventing terrorists from entering the USA.

Seriously; If somebody wants to assault a woman in a bathroom, locker room, or change room, they need not put on a dress in order to do so. In fact, dressing up as a woman makes almost exactly zero difference to their ability to commit crimes against women in these locations.

Based on your argument here, those extraordinarily few men who commit sexual assaults against women must be *incredibly* busy going around assaulting and raping every woman they lay eyes on. Because, you know, clearly there are no men who are opportunists who will assault women when they think they can get away with it, or when they think that because they're not breaking bones or tearing skin they're not actually doing any "real" harm when they grab someone's boob in a crowded venue, or when they put hidden cameras in women's dressing rooms and showers and bathrooms and then upload the video to porn websites. It's not like social convention of sex-separation in intimate spaces has served to prevent opportunistic offending or anything, right?

Nope, it's just a really, really insanely busy couple of bad dudes out there, nothing to be concerned about ladies.

 

[Emily Lake]

So even if the folks who have wasted thousands of posts in this thread arguing about how dangerous transwomen might be were 100% correct; Even if every transwoman were not only a manly man, but also a vile rapist and sexual predator; Even if these unsubstantiated slurs were completely true in every regard - banning transwomen from women's spaces would achieve absolutely nothing to protect against that threat.

You're just going to get sexually assaulted anyway, you silly hens, might as well just give up and come to terms with it.

 

[Toni]

But barring males—or rather, continuing the bar of males in female only locker rooms WILL prevent almost all women from being raped in the women’s locker room.

I guess it might, if any such bar existed.

But it doesn't.

There are no bars, locks, swipe-cards, retina scans, etc., etc.

There is a sign that says "WOMEN" or "LADIES" or has a stylized sillhouette on it.

This is effective in stopping rapists from entering, in exactly the same way that having the question: "Are you entering the USA for the purpose of committing a terrorist act?" on immigration applications is effective in preventing terrorists from entering the USA.

Seriously; If somebody wants to assault a woman in a bathroom, locker room, or change room, they need not put on a dress in order to do so. In fact, dressing up as a woman makes almost exactly zero difference to their ability to commit crimes against women in these locations.

And when they do, those crimes are no less punishable, and no more difficult to prosecute. I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that: "I raped her in the bathroom, but I was wearing a skirt when I did so", would not be a very effective defence in a court of law.

This here is the problem with banning transwomen from women's spaces "to protect women": Even if transwomen in women's spaces were an actual threat, such a ban would be completely ineffective in mitigating that threat.

Literally no rapist has been deterred by a sign that reads "LADIES".

Banning transwomen from ladies rooms is as effective at preventing sexual assaults as having an "employees only" sign on the open safe door would be at preventing bank heists.

So even if the folks who have wasted thousands of posts in this thread arguing about how dangerous transwomen might be were 100% correct; Even if every transwoman were not only a manly man, but also a vile rapist and sexual predator; Even if these unsubstantiated slurs were completely true in every regard - banning transwomen from women's spaces would achieve absolutely nothing to protect against that threat.

The defining feature of criminals is their disregard for the rules.

Here’s the thing: Transwomen are NOT a threat. Persons pretending to be trans or exploiting the loophole that allows some make appearing bodies into women only spaces can be a problem—can be a threat.

When you are being attacked, you have seconds, at best, to decide your survival strategy. Fight back, submit, run. Call for help.

Back up: you have less than seconds to determine if something/someone is a threat.

Everyone operates in basic instincts: what belongs, what does not. What doesn’t belong is often a threat. A smile can so quickly become a grab. Or worse.

This is not something most men participating in this forum have had to think about.

Unfortunately, it is likely that every single woman posting here has had experience making this sort of evaluation.

I really really really do not need to read another man’s well thought out, well crafted argument for why it really isn’t a big deal.

I know you all mean well. But you haven’t got a clue.

 

[Emily Lake]

Caster Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.

She was assigned female at birth, was raised as a girl, identifies as female, but was banned from competition because she has a DSD which has resulted in her body naturally producing more testosterone than is a typical for a female, and she refused to take drugs to suppress it.

World Athletics, led by its president Sebastian Coe, has said its rules maintain fairness because Semenya has an unfair, male-like athletic advantage from her higher testosterone. Semenya argues her testosterone is a genetic gift.

Semenya has 5-ARD, which is a DSD that ONLY males can have. Semenya is a male of the human species.

Sex assigned at birth is central to this controversy.

Sex at birth isn't assigned, it's observed and documented. Sometimes the observation is inaccurately, but it's still an observation. Hell, in developed countries it's usually observed several months prior to birth!

Realistically, sex isn't "assigned" at all. It's determined. And in humans, it's determined when the sperm breaches the egg wall.

You might think Semenya is male, but she is/was declared female on her birth certificate, was raised as a female in her family and society, and identifies as a female.

I believe it is more accurate to say Semenya is an intersex female rather than to simply declare her to be male.

You can believe whatever you want. 5-ARD is a condition that can ONLY occur in males. It cannot occur in females. Most infants with 5-ARD have a very small penis and a divided scrotal sac at birth, but some will have internal testes and a blind vaginal pouch. During puberty, their penises will grow, even though they're often materially smaller than is typical for a male. In many 5-ARD males, their testes will descend during puberty, and most are not sterile - they may have reduced sperm count and other related complications that reduce fertility, but they're not actually sterile, and their fertility can be boosted through treatment if desired.

What would be factually accurate would be to say that Semenya is a male with a disorder of sexual development that resulted in ambiguous or misleading genitals being recorded at birth.

So you think it's more accurate to say she's a male with a DSD that resulted in female appearance at birth, which led to female legal status and female upbringing. Whether that is why she has a female self identity is unknown/unknowable. Either way, it's her intersex traits at the heart of her legal case.

Is Semenya's XY chromosome pairing the definitive trait that makes her a male? Heather Heyer has the XY genotype and you said she's female since she was able to give birth.

Semenya's sex marker on a birth certificate being inaccurately recorded does not make Semenya female. His upbringing and legal status might be argued to make him socially a woman in the eyes of a lot of people, and I genuinely don't care how Semenya thinks of himself, or how he likes to present (which, by the way, is as a very typical male). Whatever makes him happy is fine by me in situations where sex doesn't matter.

But sex DOES matter in sports. Semenya has 5-ARD, and at puberty, he got the same testosterone flood that all other boys get around that same age. He developed a male physique, he has a male skeleton, he has male femur angles, he has male tendon/ligament attachment points, he has male bone density and lung capacity and muscle density. He is male in every single way that matters when it comes to athletic performance.

You know what doesn't make a difference in sports? What gender stereotype a person feels they best align with.

 

[Toni]

But barring males—or rather, continuing the bar of males in female only locker rooms WILL prevent almost all women from being raped in the women’s locker room.

I guess it might, if any such bar existed.

But it doesn't.

There are no bars, locks, swipe-cards, retina scans, etc., etc.

There is a sign that says "WOMEN" or "LADIES" or has a stylized sillhouette on it.

This is effective in stopping rapists from entering, in exactly the same way that having the question: "Are you entering the USA for the purpose of committing a terrorist act?" on immigration applications is effective in preventing terrorists from entering the USA.

Seriously; If somebody wants to assault a woman in a bathroom, locker room, or change room, they need not put on a dress in order to do so. In fact, dressing up as a woman makes almost exactly zero difference to their ability to commit crimes against women in these locations.

And when they do, those crimes are no less punishable, and no more difficult to prosecute. I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that: "I raped her in the bathroom, but I was wearing a skirt when I did so", would not be a very effective defence in a court of law.

This here is the problem with banning transwomen from women's spaces "to protect women": Even if transwomen in women's spaces were an actual threat, such a ban would be completely ineffective in mitigating that threat.

Literally no rapist has been deterred by a sign that reads "LADIES".

Banning transwomen from ladies rooms is as effective at preventing sexual assaults as having an "employees only" sign on the open safe door would be at preventing bank heists.

So even if the folks who have wasted thousands of posts in this thread arguing about how dangerous transwomen might be were 100% correct; Even if every transwoman were not only a manly man, but also a vile rapist and sexual predator; Even if these unsubstantiated slurs were completely true in every regard - banning transwomen from women's spaces would achieve absolutely nothing to protect against that threat.

The defining feature of criminals is their disregard for the rules.

Rapists are not barred —but plenty are deterred by the words Women on doors. Surprise is an important tactical advantage. Appearing inside the locker room without a plausible reason ( fixing plumbing, there with your girlfriend) sets off immediate alarms and removes the tactical advantage of surprise.

Without the actual barring of males then females have ZERO criteria for evaluating whether someone with a male body in the women’s locker room means them harm. Right now, every woman knows that an unexpected male in the women’s locker room is not there for any good reason. Defenses are alerted. It’s not a guarantee but it helps.

 

[Emily Lake]

In summary:

1. Everyone is either male, or female.
2. There is one definitive test that tells us which category a particular person falls into.
3. Which test that is varies from case to case...

SRY Positive and has the ability to receive testosterone.

That includes all combinations of chromosomes that include at least one Y *except* CAIS (in my opinion), as well as de la Chapelle syndrome which has two X chromosomes with a translocated SRY gene. Some people will argue that CAIS should be considered male, given that their gonads differentiated to testicular tissue, but their mullerian ducts mature and their wolffian ducts dissolve, so as far as I'm concerned they end up having a female reproductive system. They also develop female secondary sex characteristics during puberty.

 

[Arctish]

Caster Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.

She was assigned female at birth, was raised as a girl, identifies as female, but was banned from competition because she has a DSD which has resulted in her body naturally producing more testosterone than is a typical for a female, and she refused to take drugs to suppress it.

World Athletics, led by its president Sebastian Coe, has said its rules maintain fairness because Semenya has an unfair, male-like athletic advantage from her higher testosterone. Semenya argues her testosterone is a genetic gift.

Semenya has 5-ARD, which is a DSD that ONLY males can have. Semenya is a male of the human species.

Sex assigned at birth is central to this controversy.

Sex at birth isn't assigned, it's observed and documented. Sometimes the observation is inaccurately, but it's still an observation. Hell, in developed countries it's usually observed several months prior to birth!

Realistically, sex isn't "assigned" at all. It's determined. And in humans, it's determined when the sperm breaches the egg wall.

You might think Semenya is male, but she is/was declared female on her birth certificate, was raised as a female in her family and society, and identifies as a female.

I believe it is more accurate to say Semenya is an intersex female rather than to simply declare her to be male.

You can believe whatever you want. 5-ARD is a condition that can ONLY occur in males. It cannot occur in females. Most infants with 5-ARD have a very small penis and a divided scrotal sac at birth, but some will have internal testes and a blind vaginal pouch. During puberty, their penises will grow, even though they're often materially smaller than is typical for a male. In many 5-ARD males, their testes will descend during puberty, and most are not sterile - they may have reduced sperm count and other related complications that reduce fertility, but they're not actually sterile, and their fertility can be boosted through treatment if desired.

What would be factually accurate would be to say that Semenya is a male with a disorder of sexual development that resulted in ambiguous or misleading genitals being recorded at birth.

So you think it's more accurate to say she's a male with a DSD that resulted in female appearance at birth, which led to female legal status and female upbringing. Whether that is why she has a female self identity is unknown/unknowable. Either way, it's her intersex traits at the heart of her legal case.

Is Semenya's XY chromosome pairing the definitive trait that makes her a male? Heather Heyer has the XY genotype and you said she's female since she was able to give birth.

Semenya's sex marker on a birth certificate being inaccurately recorded does not make Semenya female. His upbringing and legal status might be argued to make him socially a woman in the eyes of a lot of people, and I genuinely don't care how Semenya thinks of himself, or how he likes to present (which, by the way, is as a very typical male). Whatever makes him happy is fine by me in situations where sex doesn't matter.

But sex DOES matter in sports. Semenya has 5-ARD, and at puberty, he got the same testosterone flood that all other boys get around that same age. He developed a male physique, he has a male skeleton, he has male femur angles, he has male tendon/ligament attachment points, he has male bone density and lung capacity and muscle density. He is male in every single way that matters when it comes to athletic performance.

You know what doesn't make a difference in sports? What gender stereotype a person feels they best align with.

In almost all sports, sex matters less than size and muscle mass. If the men's and women's divisions aren't working to keep the competitions fair, then they can be adjusted. Boxing has several weight classes. So does wrestling. Why not have better, more precise divisions in other sports than just using what a legal document lists as an athlete's sex?

And why are you calling Semenya "he"? She's got a vagina. She calls herself a "different kind of woman". If you want to get rid of gendered pronouns, that's one thing. But if you're just being a dick, that's not cool. Guys like you are a huge problem.*

* see what I did there?

 

[laughing dog]

Nope. Any policy that prevents a trans who has undergone a complete transformation is hurtful.

Tell you what - you come up with a way to allow males who have had penectomies, orchiectomies, vaginoplasties, tracheal shaving, electrolysis or laser hair removal, exogenous estrogen supplements, and whatever else you want to toss into the bag of "complete transformation" into female spaces while ALSO excluding males who have NOT had all of those things OUT... then we can talk.

Because right now, you're effectively arguing for policies that allow ALL MEN OF ANY SORT into female spaces. Come up with a reliable way to sort them out, a way without giant gaping loopholes, and maybe we can make some progress on this topic.

No, I’m not. For example, I’m not saying I should be allowed into female spaces.

At the current time, there is no protocol to insure a priori that female only spaces stay female only. Common courtesy and social convention keep issues at a minimum. Any enforcement occurs after discovery. Seems to me that changing expectations and social conventions is the less intrusive and historically accepted approach.

I'm trying not to bristle, because I respect you and I think you're trying to be reasonable here.

On the other hand... what you think is a "better approach" isn't better for female human beings. You're essentially taking the position that women (female humans) should change our expectations with respect to single-sex facilities, and that we should just roll over and start expecting that males will be in our female spaces - regardless of whether we want them there or not. You're implying that women should relinquish our social conventions regardless of how uncomfortable or intimidated or at risk it makes us, in order to ensure that some males are more satisfied. And you present this as being "less intrusive" even though it's incredibly intrusive for women to be put into a position where we are expected to let strange males look at our nude bodies without consent, or where we're expected to tolerate being exposed to the penises of strange males without consent.

At the end of the day, whether you intend it or not, you're taking the position that women should surrender consent in favor of the desires of men.

Utter bullshit. Not only did I not present anything as less intrusive at this time, but the notion of changing expectations and social conventions means voluntary acceptance on the part of women and men.

ETA: Just had a thought. When you talk about changing expectations and conventions, are you intending to say that the law should not get involved, and society should just work it out, and whatever society finally lands on will be okay, even if that ultimately ends up being the retention of sex-based separation? If so, that's an entirely different direction than how I'm reading this, and I have an entirely different set of counters to that, largely focused around the premise that vigilante justice is a bad idea all around.

But... based on my initial interpretation of your post...

Does it allow for rejection? That's my concern, LD.

You frame this as if women should over time come to accept physically intact males being in female single-sex spaces, alter our expectations and conventions in order to accommodate them. I get where you're coming from, I really do.

But you don't seem to be giving any credence at all to the idea that it would be acceptable for women in general to retain our current expectations and conventions.

You're a prior assuming that changing our expectations and conventions to allow for males to use spaces where we're naked or vulnerable is the right and appropriate outcome, and it's just a matter of it taking some time. I'm not convinced that it's the right outcome at all, and I'm not convinced that it can result in a situation that doesn't increase risk to women.

Like I said, it may not be your intention. But that's how it's coming across. I'm saying "no, I do not consent" and you're more or less saying give it enough time and you'll say yes.

I think social expectations either change or they don’t. Either people become more accepting and less fearful of trans or they don’t. Laws may change the speed at which expectations alter. If the laws are successful, the expectations change faster and wider. If not, the change moves in the opposite direction.

 

[Toni]

Nope. Any policy that prevents a trans who has undergone a complete transformation is hurtful.

Tell you what - you come up with a way to allow males who have had penectomies, orchiectomies, vaginoplasties, tracheal shaving, electrolysis or laser hair removal, exogenous estrogen supplements, and whatever else you want to toss into the bag of "complete transformation" into female spaces while ALSO excluding males who have NOT had all of those things OUT... then we can talk.

Because right now, you're effectively arguing for policies that allow ALL MEN OF ANY SORT into female spaces. Come up with a reliable way to sort them out, a way without giant gaping loopholes, and maybe we can make some progress on this topic.

No, I’m not. For example, I’m not saying I should be allowed into female spaces.

At the current time, there is no protocol to insure a priori that female only spaces stay female only. Common courtesy and social convention keep issues at a minimum. Any enforcement occurs after discovery. Seems to me that changing expectations and social conventions is the less intrusive and historically accepted approach.

I'm trying not to bristle, because I respect you and I think you're trying to be reasonable here.

On the other hand... what you think is a "better approach" isn't better for female human beings. You're essentially taking the position that women (female humans) should change our expectations with respect to single-sex facilities, and that we should just roll over and start expecting that males will be in our female spaces - regardless of whether we want them there or not. You're implying that women should relinquish our social conventions regardless of how uncomfortable or intimidated or at risk it makes us, in order to ensure that some males are more satisfied. And you present this as being "less intrusive" even though it's incredibly intrusive for women to be put into a position where we are expected to let strange males look at our nude bodies without consent, or where we're expected to tolerate being exposed to the penises of strange males without consent.

At the end of the day, whether you intend it or not, you're taking the position that women should surrender consent in favor of the desires of men.

Utter bullshit. Not only did I not present anything as less intrusive at this time, but the notion of changing expectations and social conventions means voluntary acceptance on the part of women and men.

ETA: Just had a thought. When you talk about changing expectations and conventions, are you intending to say that the law should not get involved, and society should just work it out, and whatever society finally lands on will be okay, even if that ultimately ends up being the retention of sex-based separation? If so, that's an entirely different direction than how I'm reading this, and I have an entirely different set of counters to that, largely focused around the premise that vigilante justice is a bad idea all around.

But... based on my initial interpretation of your post...

Does it allow for rejection? That's my concern, LD.

You frame this as if women should over time come to accept physically intact males being in female single-sex spaces, alter our expectations and conventions in order to accommodate them. I get where you're coming from, I really do.

But you don't seem to be giving any credence at all to the idea that it would be acceptable for women in general to retain our current expectations and conventions.

You're a prior assuming that changing our expectations and conventions to allow for males to use spaces where we're naked or vulnerable is the right and appropriate outcome, and it's just a matter of it taking some time. I'm not convinced that it's the right outcome at all, and I'm not convinced that it can result in a situation that doesn't increase risk to women.

Like I said, it may not be your intention. But that's how it's coming across. I'm saying "no, I do not consent" and you're more or less saying give it enough time and you'll say yes.

I think social expectations either change or they don’t. Either people become more accepting and less fearful of trans or they don’t. Laws may change the speed at which expectations alter. If the laws are successful, the expectations change faster and wider. If not, the change moves in the opposite direction.

I just want to be clear: I’m not afraid or unaccepting of trans people. I think that it is exceedingly rare for a trans person to attack a woman.

But it is not irrational or bigoted for women to be concerned about male bodies in female spaces.

We do not need more males telling us we will get used to it and that it’s no big deal.