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

[Politesse]

Yes, I know. Men rape and kill women. That fact is reinforced daily in news accounts. That, exactly, is what some of the female responders in this thread are concerned about. Violence at the hands of men.

Then why did you write that men "instinctively" defend trans women, in blatant denial of any sort of reality, and therefore the very real suffering of those targeted by anti-trans propaganda? It gives the impression that you want to control where the camera points, to have everyone focus only on the things you are concerned about. But these policies affect more than just you, so you cannot be the only cameraman.

 

[Toni]

Yes, I know. Men rape and kill women. That fact is reinforced daily in news accounts. That, exactly, is what some of the female responders in this thread are concerned about. Violence at the hands of men.

Then why did you write that men "instinctively" defend trans women, in blatant denial of any sort of reality, and therefore the very real suffering of those targeted by anti-trans propaganda? It gives the impression that you want to control where the camera points, to have everyone focus only on the things you are concerned about. But these policies affect more than just you, so you cannot be the only cameraman.

In the case of this particular discussion, yes, I think that men have defended trans women’s rights to access women only spaces for a couple of reasons: It means they don’t have to deal with transwomen in their men’s only spaces. They don’t have to deal with the fact that some men and boys ‘choose’ to become women. Yes, I know being trans isn’t a choice and for many/most the healthiest actions involve transitioning. No disagreement. Those scare quotes are there for a reason—no one decides or chooses to be trans anymore than they choose to be gay or straight, their skin color, and a host of other characteristics that are a matter of genetics, not choice.

But as you have pointed out, trans women face rape and death at the hands of men—as do all women. At least some of the crime against transwomen is likely caused by the fact that transwomen make some men feel uncomfortable and angry. Which is also one of the reasons cis women are killed by men. Also other men and children, probably a fair number of animals, too. Of course women have our Kristi Noems….

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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. 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.

And this makes it clear why we say that we can't unequivocally classify everyone into male or female.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The person who attacked a girl ( twice, in two separate schools) in a school restroom was female presenting enough that two different schools allowed them to access a girl’s restroom at school.

You say "allowed" when there normally are not guards to allow/deny. And the report said it didn't appear to be a trans issue.

I do not care one whit about your personal criteria for ‘female presenting’ to determine access to a girl’s restroom. The FACT is that girls are being attacked—raped—in a girl’s restroom which, btw, they are required to use in schools they are legally required to attend.

A guy in a skirt raped two girls.

When you go by biology you're letting in male-presenting people. How can you be sure they're trans and not rapists using it for access? You're actually enabling the very thing you're trying to prevent.

I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you.

You keep focusing on keeping penises out of the women's room--but the flip side of this is you're keeping vaginas out of the men's. Thus you have male-presenting vagina-bearers in the women's. I keep trying to point this out, it keeps basically getting ignored.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Doesn't need to be undeveloped. Just needs small groups + voluntary association.

Marriage is basically communism.

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.

150. This has been studied.

 

[Toni]

The person who attacked a girl ( twice, in two separate schools) in a school restroom was female presenting enough that two different schools allowed them to access a girl’s restroom at school.

You say "allowed" when there normally are not guards to allow/deny. And the report said it didn't appear to be a trans issue.

I do not care one whit about your personal criteria for ‘female presenting’ to determine access to a girl’s restroom. The FACT is that girls are being attacked—raped—in a girl’s restroom which, btw, they are required to use in schools they are legally required to attend.

A guy in a skirt raped two girls.

When you go by biology you're letting in male-presenting people. How can you be sure they're trans and not rapists using it for access? You're actually enabling the very thing you're trying to prevent.

I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you.

You keep focusing on keeping penises out of the women's room--but the flip side of this is you're keeping vaginas out of the men's. Thus you have male-presenting vagina-bearers in the women's. I keep trying to point this out, it keeps basically getting ignored.

Loren, I’m not at all certain you actually understand how real people work. In the US, if someone with a male appearing body wants to use the girls bathroom, the school will allow ( based on claims of being transgendered) or disallow.

No, the Indy usual who raped two different t girls was likely NOT actually transgender but their claim was taken as valid. I don’t know what criteria was used to evaluate this claim, what, if any medical documentation was used or whether it was just their claim.

But the whole point is that the school allowed someone who dressed in skirts to use the girl’s rest room because they claimed they were transgender. If they had not been allowed, the administration would have put a stop to it immediately when notified. Or at least most schools would. I’m typing most only because there might be an outlier.

The concerns expressed about transwomen using women’s and girls facilities are some individual(s) making false claims in order to access victims. This has happened. The other issue is whether some girls and women are traumatized by seeing an unexpected exposed penis in female only facilities—something that is not unlikely fur someone to feel if they have been victims of sexual assault or rape. And of course, how girls and women are supposed to be able to evaluate the risk while potentially being undressed in a female only space.

You think the risks are small and should simply be tolerated as part of the cost of being female.

Which is easy because you are not female.

 

[Toni]

Seriously, men in this thread are absolutely discounting fears and concerns of women.

And they are right to do so.

People should discount fears and concerns, in the absence of evidence that those fears are based on actual threats.

Many fears are utterly irrational.

That you want to spin this as men discounting the fears of women is an effort to obscure the point that people discounting the irrational fears of other people is normal, healthy, and reasonable.

Show that your fear of transwomen in bathrooms is more reasonable than a fear of spiders, or you should expect to be asked for more than just fear as a grounds for changing law, custom, and practice.

Should anyone wanting to enter a bathroom be searched for spiders, or sprayed with insecticide, just because some users of that facility are utterly terrified of spiders?

That fear is real, and genuine, and utterly without merit as a reason for doing anything.

Here’s the thing you are not considering: Survivors of sexual assault and rape often experience some degree of PTSD as a result of the trauma of the assault.

The fact that you and other men in this thread are discounting the effects of PTSD and the severity of those effects does not help you make your case or make you seem to be the rational person I am certain you consider yourself. Instead, it’s just one more instance of men not actually giving a shit about women or their concerns because you, personally, are not concerned by the same things.

Sexual assault and posttraumatic stress disorder: A review of the biological, psychological and sociological factors and treatments - PMC

Sexual assault occurs with alarming frequency in Canada. The prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in assault survivors is drastically higher than the national prevalence of the disorder, which is a strong indication that the current ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The US National Comorbidity Survey Report estimates the lifetime prevalence of PTSD among North Americans to be 7.8% (9). The lifetime prevalence of PTSD for women who have been sexually assaulted is 50% (10). Moreover, sexual assault is the most frequent cause of PTSD in women, with one study reporting that 94% of women experienced PTSD symptoms during the first two weeks after an assault (9).

It is one thing to expect that women will learn to overcome PTSD enough to function in a world that contains men and quite another to insist that they should not have any qualms about strangers with penises in female only spaces, while they are not clothed

If this is not something you are willing to consider and acknowledge then there is no reason to continue discussing this issue with you.

Women are frequently told their concerns are no big deal. Fuck that shit, and everyone who espouses such shit

 

[Toni]

The person who attacked a girl ( twice, in two separate schools) in a school restroom was female presenting enough that two different schools allowed them to access a girl’s restroom at school.

You say "allowed" when there normally are not guards to allow/deny. And the report said it didn't appear to be a trans issue.

I do not care one whit about your personal criteria for ‘female presenting’ to determine access to a girl’s restroom. The FACT is that girls are being attacked—raped—in a girl’s restroom which, btw, they are required to use in schools they are legally required to attend.

A guy in a skirt raped two girls.

When you go by biology you're letting in male-presenting people. How can you be sure they're trans and not rapists using it for access? You're actually enabling the very thing you're trying to prevent.

I have no idea what you are talking about and neither do you.

You keep focusing on keeping penises out of the women's room--but the flip side of this is you're keeping vaginas out of the men's. Thus you have male-presenting vagina-bearers in the women's. I keep trying to point this out, it keeps basically getting ignored.

In fact, afaik, no one has expressed fear or concern over trans men anywhere they are.

Im concerned for them not by them.

 

[Bomb#20]

And why are you calling Semenya "he"? She's got a vagina.

Cite? I can find any number of medical sources saying guevedoces are born with "pseudovaginas" or "what appear to be vaginas", but none saying they have "vaginas". Perhaps your google-fu is better than mine.

Semenya is a guevedoce. That literally means "testicles at twelve".

Guevedoce means "penis at twelve". The testicles can remain underdeveloped and undescended.

According to wiktionary:

from Dominican Spanish güevos a los doce (“testicles at twelve”).​

(Actually "güevos” literally means "eggs", but it's common slang for testicles, rather like "balls" in English. Have you ever heard of Spanish-speakers using "güevos” to mean "penis"?)

Not that which part of male genitalia it refers to matters one way or the other -- the point is that on reaching puberty Semenya's genitalia became visibly male.

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.

Want it or not, English has gendered singular pronouns, and Semenya's gender is male, so using "he" is correct English.

Semenya has male sex traits. She also has female sex traits. Her gender is female.

What evidence is there that Semenya's gender is female?

What grounds do you have for implying that telling the truth in correct English is being a dick and isn't cool?

It's not the truth. It's Emily Lake imposing her ideas about Semenya's gender on Semenya herself,

Emily Lake hasn't imposed anything on Semenya. She's expressed an opinion. Why on earth do you regard opinions as impositions? You claim Emily expressed an untruth -- is that you "imposing your ideas about Emily's accuracy on Emily herself"? (And at least Emily is here on iidb -- AFAIK Semenya isn't a member and is in no position to be affected by Emily's words.)

despite Semenya having stated her gender very clearly.

That sounds like an argument from authority. Can you offer us any reason we should accept Semenya as an authority?

Tell me something Bomb#20. If you asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina could ever be a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

You mean random Western guys? Probably about twenty-five. Ten of them would be left-wing gender ideologues who'd take it to be a question about self-id transmen, and another ten would be normal people taking it to be a question about female-to-male bottom surgery, and another five would think of DSDs on their own without prompting. If you mean random guys from all over the world, I have limited experience with how non-Westerners tend to think about subjects other than electrical engineering so I won't venture a statistical guess. But that wasn't really the kind of answer you were looking for, was it?

Your question appears to be based on some implicit unsupported assumptions. First, that what Semenya has is in fact a vagina. Second, that it's reasonable to ask a jury to reach a verdict after hearing only one litigant's witnesses. And third, that judging a territory based on a map is a reliable strategy. So let's turn it around. If you asked 100 random guys to examine 100 random adult guevedoces' genitalia and say whether they thought what was behind the person's penis was an actual vagina, how many of them do you think would say "yes"? If you referenced DSDs and asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina and a penis and testes and a prostate and no ovaries and no fallopian tubes and no uterus and no cervix could ever be a man, how many of them do you think would say "yes"? And if you asked 100 random guys if Semenya is a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes or vaginas or penises or any conceptual map at all, and instead just asked them to examine Semenya's naked body (with Semenya's consent of course), how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Who died and put the gender ideology subculture in charge of defining "dick" and "cool" for the whole Anglosphere? ... Is there some way you're an iota different from the Christians of my childhood? Do Emily and the other gender critical people here have some unscientific opinion of our own that you're volunteering to pretend to agree with for the sake of politely respecting our sensibilities? This "cool" non-"dick" lying you're advocating -- is it a one-way street? Is it a mission you'd send your troops on but wouldn't go on yourself?

What about Emily imposing her belief about Semenya's gender on everybody else, including Semenya?

Setting aside the language abuse involved in calling opinions "imposing", what makes her saying 'he" any more an imposition on everybody else than you saying "she"? Quite the reverse -- Emily didn't call you an uncool dick for saying "she". Looks to me like Emily's the one exhibiting the live-and-let-live attitude here. She uses the pronouns she wants to use; you use the pronouns you want to use; what's the problem? It's a free country. You're still sounding like the Christians of my childhood, telling me atheists shouldn't impose atheism on others while thinking it was perfectly hunky-dory for them to tell me to bow my head and say Our Father with them.

Emily Lake can think what she likes. She and I agree on a lot of things, and she has very good information on the biological aspects of sex and sexual development. But she's very rigid when it comes to gender, and I believe she's pretty conservative about gender norms.

Are you serious? Emily the "Agenderist"? Emily who expresses contempt for gender roles six ways to Sunday? Emily who named herself after a sci-fi character who violated every gender norm known to her Victorian background? That Emily Lake?

That's fine for her to believe and advocate. But it's disrespectful and IMO pretty fracking arrogant to declare someone is mistaken about their own gender, especially when their self image conforms with social norms.

Yeah, and the Christians of my childhood figured it was pretty fracking arrogant to declare Jesus was mistaken about being the Son of God. I think it's pretty fracking arrogant to declare people are dicks because they won't accept an argument from authority. Do you have any substantive reason to think a person cannot be mistaken about his or her own gender?

Semenya has a vagina. For a lot of people, that is the defining trait of a woman - not her ovaries, not her uterus, not her breasts. It doesn't matter if she's had a radical hysterectomy and itty-bitty man titties. If she has a vagina, men will treat her as a woman.

Setting aside the question of whether what Semenya has is a vagina, you seem to be saying men will treat a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina as a woman. If so, that appears on its face to be an argument that men tend to be misogynistic jerks instead of an argument that having a vagina is the correct criterion for womanhood -- it sounds like those men are relying on the "women are failed men" definition of womanhood. What makes how "men will treat" someone the truth-maker here? Do women typically consider a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina to match the criteria for womanhood?

In any event, you seem to be stereotyping men as more simple-minded and closed to nuance than we are. English common law -- a legal system based on precedent and on trust in the common sense of common people -- has been making rulings on the sex of intersexed people for at least eight hundred years, and "Is there a vagina?" has never been the legal criterion. It was "Which sex predominates?". The opinions of men weren't given any special consideration; quite the reverse. Before such issues all got medicalized around 1750-1800, there used to be a special custom, the "Jury of Matrons", wherein the men running the legal system would explicitly defer to female judgment, for any questions of fact relating to femaleness where the all-male lawyers and judges felt they might be out of their depth.

But it appears Emily Lake won't, even if Semenya makes it very clear that her gender is female and therefore, the correct pronoun in English to use to refer to her is "she".

What Semenya made clear was about gender identity, not about gender. Gender ideology equivocates between those constantly. Gender is a social construct. That means your gender is up to the collective, not up to you. People do not get their choice about what's the correct pronoun to use to refer to them.

Can you exhibit any language in the world where noun classes are based on personal choice and speakers are expected to learn and take into account the preferences of the referents of pronouns? For a language to work that way would defeat the entire point of having noun classes and pronouns in the first place -- languages evolve such features because they relieve the burden on memory.

 

[Bomb#20]

You keep focusing on keeping penises out of the women's room--but the flip side of this is you're keeping vaginas out of the men's. Thus you have male-presenting vagina-bearers in the women's.

Why do you believe that? It's absurd. There is no mechanism in the natural world by which the act of keeping penises out of the women's room stops any vagina from entering the men's room. Those two actions are two independent choices of policy-makers.

I keep trying to point this out, it keeps basically getting ignored.

No, it doesn't get ignored. I've pointed out upthread more than once that your premise is false.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Exactly. 100% security theater.

In theory it would prevent a man from loitering in a women's room looking for targets--but in an environment where there would be a reasonable chance of that working there's also a good chance of being interrupted. And, remember, this is the US--the odds someone stumbling on it is armed is less than 1%, but that's an awful lot more than 0%. And restrooms rarely have more than one door--escape would mean running towards the person who stumbled on it. Said person is not going to be able to distinguish escape from attack.

In practice what happens now is the creep watches from outside.

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.

Actually, that question (and the Nazi and Communist ones) is useful. Of course it does nothing to catch terrorists, it's actual purpose is to make it very easy to throw them out if caught. Does the offense warrant deportation? Can be challenged. Proof they lied on the form is an open and shut case.

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.

I would think it would actually pose a slight hindrance. Guy dressed as guy--maybe they made a mistake. It happens, especially if someone is nearsighted and not wearing glasses. I have seen "obvious" signs I'm not sure my wife could read because they were mounted up high. Guy very poorly dressed as female--they know they are in the wrong room.

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.

The point I keep trying to make. Zero actual benefit, lots of clearly wrong reasons--reminds me an awful lot of justifying why <insert minority> doesn't belong doing <insert job>.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

But you aren't describing a situation where nudity is the problem. Rather, sexual actions directed at a child. Very, very wrong.

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?

You're blaming nudity when that's not the cause.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Hidden cameras are an actual risk. But they certainly aren't going to be placing a camera when there's any possibility of being observed, so attire won't matter.

And, yes, there are those who would rape if they think they can get away with it. Often involving alcohol. Doesn't mean they walk into the women's to do it, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

That's not what he's saying at all.

Rather, that you are seeing that "women" sign as some sort of protection. Against creeps, probably. Against rape, no.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

And you're pushing for more male-appearing bodies in women's spaces.

 

[Arctish]

And why are you calling Semenya "he"? She's got a vagina.

Cite? I can find any number of medical sources saying guevedoces are born with "pseudovaginas" or "what appear to be vaginas", but none saying they have "vaginas". Perhaps your google-fu is better than mine.

Semenya is a guevedoce. That literally means "testicles at twelve".

Guevedoce means "penis at twelve". The testicles can remain underdeveloped and undescended.

According to wiktionary:

from Dominican Spanish güevos a los doce (“testicles at twelve”).​

(Actually "güevos” literally means "eggs", but it's common slang for testicles, rather like "balls" in English. Have you ever heard of Spanish-speakers using "güevos” to mean "penis"?)

Not that which part of male genitalia it refers to matters one way or the other -- the point is that on reaching puberty Semenya's genitalia became visibly male.

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.

Want it or not, English has gendered singular pronouns, and Semenya's gender is male, so using "he" is correct English.

Semenya has male sex traits. She also has female sex traits. Her gender is female.

What evidence is there that Semenya's gender is female?

What grounds do you have for implying that telling the truth in correct English is being a dick and isn't cool?

It's not the truth. It's Emily Lake imposing her ideas about Semenya's gender on Semenya herself,

Emily Lake hasn't imposed anything on Semenya. She's expressed an opinion. Why on earth do you regard opinions as impositions? You claim Emily expressed an untruth -- is that you "imposing your ideas about Emily's accuracy on Emily herself"? (And at least Emily is here on iidb -- AFAIK Semenya isn't a member and is in no position to be affected by Emily's words.)

despite Semenya having stated her gender very clearly.

That sounds like an argument from authority. Can you offer us any reason we should accept Semenya as an authority?

Tell me something Bomb#20. If you asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina could ever be a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

You mean random Western guys? Probably about twenty-five. Ten of them would be left-wing gender ideologues who'd take it to be a question about self-id transmen, and another ten would be normal people taking it to be a question about female-to-male bottom surgery, and another five would think of DSDs on their own without prompting. If you mean random guys from all over the world, I have limited experience with how non-Westerners tend to think about subjects other than electrical engineering so I won't venture a statistical guess. But that wasn't really the kind of answer you were looking for, was it?

Your question appears to be based on some implicit unsupported assumptions. First, that what Semenya has is in fact a vagina. Second, that it's reasonable to ask a jury to reach a verdict after hearing only one litigant's witnesses. And third, that judging a territory based on a map is a reliable strategy. So let's turn it around. If you asked 100 random guys to examine 100 random adult guevedoces' genitalia and say whether they thought what was behind the person's penis was an actual vagina, how many of them do you think would say "yes"? If you referenced DSDs and asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina and a penis and testes and a prostate and no ovaries and no fallopian tubes and no uterus and no cervix could ever be a man, how many of them do you think would say "yes"? And if you asked 100 random guys if Semenya is a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes or vaginas or penises or any conceptual map at all, and instead just asked them to examine Semenya's naked body (with Semenya's consent of course), how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Who died and put the gender ideology subculture in charge of defining "dick" and "cool" for the whole Anglosphere? ... Is there some way you're an iota different from the Christians of my childhood? Do Emily and the other gender critical people here have some unscientific opinion of our own that you're volunteering to pretend to agree with for the sake of politely respecting our sensibilities? This "cool" non-"dick" lying you're advocating -- is it a one-way street? Is it a mission you'd send your troops on but wouldn't go on yourself?

What about Emily imposing her belief about Semenya's gender on everybody else, including Semenya?

Setting aside the language abuse involved in calling opinions "imposing", what makes her saying 'he" any more an imposition on everybody else than you saying "she"? Quite the reverse -- Emily didn't call you an uncool dick for saying "she". Looks to me like Emily's the one exhibiting the live-and-let-live attitude here. She uses the pronouns she wants to use; you use the pronouns you want to use; what's the problem? It's a free country. You're still sounding like the Christians of my childhood, telling me atheists shouldn't impose atheism on others while thinking it was perfectly hunky-dory for them to tell me to bow my head and say Our Father with them.

Emily Lake can think what she likes. She and I agree on a lot of things, and she has very good information on the biological aspects of sex and sexual development. But she's very rigid when it comes to gender, and I believe she's pretty conservative about gender norms.

Are you serious? Emily the "Agenderist"? Emily who expresses contempt for gender roles six ways to Sunday? Emily who named herself after a sci-fi character who violated every gender norm known to her Victorian background? That Emily Lake?

That's fine for her to believe and advocate. But it's disrespectful and IMO pretty fracking arrogant to declare someone is mistaken about their own gender, especially when their self image conforms with social norms.

Yeah, and the Christians of my childhood figured it was pretty fracking arrogant to declare Jesus was mistaken about being the Son of God. I think it's pretty fracking arrogant to declare people are dicks because they won't accept an argument from authority. Do you have any substantive reason to think a person cannot be mistaken about his or her own gender?

Semenya has a vagina. For a lot of people, that is the defining trait of a woman - not her ovaries, not her uterus, not her breasts. It doesn't matter if she's had a radical hysterectomy and itty-bitty man titties. If she has a vagina, men will treat her as a woman.

Setting aside the question of whether what Semenya has is a vagina, you seem to be saying men will treat a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina as a woman. If so, that appears on its face to be an argument that men tend to be misogynistic jerks instead of an argument that having a vagina is the correct criterion for womanhood -- it sounds like those men are relying on the "women are failed men" definition of womanhood. What makes how "men will treat" someone the truth-maker here? Do women typically consider a person with a penis, testicles and a vagina to match the criteria for womanhood?

In any event, you seem to be stereotyping men as more simple-minded and closed to nuance than we are. English common law -- a legal system based on precedent and on trust in the common sense of common people -- has been making rulings on the sex of intersexed people for at least eight hundred years, and "Is there a vagina?" has never been the legal criterion. It was "Which sex predominates?". The opinions of men weren't given any special consideration; quite the reverse. Before such issues all got medicalized around 1750-1800, there used to be a special custom, the "Jury of Matrons", wherein the men running the legal system would explicitly defer to female judgment, for any questions of fact relating to femaleness where the all-male lawyers and judges felt they might be out of their depth.

But it appears Emily Lake won't, even if Semenya makes it very clear that her gender is female and therefore, the correct pronoun in English to use to refer to her is "she".

What Semenya made clear was about gender identity, not about gender. Gender ideology equivocates between those constantly. Gender is a social construct. That means your gender is up to the collective, not up to you. People do not get their choice about what's the correct pronoun to use to refer to them.

Can you exhibit any language in the world where noun classes are based on personal choice and speakers are expected to learn and take into account the preferences of the referents of pronouns? For a language to work that way would defeat the entire point of having noun classes and pronouns in the first place -- languages evolve such features because they relieve the burden on memory.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

It's something everyone has to think about when driving.

Twice now I've hit the brakes hard without any conscious awareness of doing it. The little kid is suddenly lying in my lane, I'm aware that I'm braking but no recollection of doing so.

 

[Arctish]

And why are you calling Semenya "he"? She's got a vagina.

Cite? I can find any number of medical sources saying guevedoces are born with "pseudovaginas" or "what appear to be vaginas", but none saying they have "vaginas". Perhaps your google-fu is better than mine.

Before we start splitting hairs over the differences between a pseudovagina, a vaginal pouch, a blind vagina, and a vagina that does not terminate in a cervix, perhaps we should first discuss whether someone who has what appears to be a vagina, functions like a vagina during non-reproductive penis-in-vagina sex, and naturally developed in the place where vaginas grow, can say they have a vagina? Then we can move on to listing what it is about her vagina that posters here think excludes her from the "has a vagina" category.

And then we'll talk about the women in my family who've had hysterectomies and now have "blind vaginas", "vaginal pouches", etc.

 

[Toni]

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.

It's something everyone has to think about when driving.

Twice now I've hit the brakes hard without any conscious awareness of doing it. The little kid is suddenly lying in my lane, I'm aware that I'm braking but no recollection of doing so.

Yeah, it’s not the same thing when you are in the shower. Especially if you’ve been sexually assaulted before.

It took me decades to realize that I had PTSD.

 

[Toni]

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.

And you're pushing for more male-appearing bodies in women's spaces.

No I’m not.

That’s your lack of reading comprehension combined with a pathological need to prove I’m wrong about anything at all plus an inability to comprehend that other people have experiences and reactions and feelings and thoughts a d needs and wishes hopes and dreams that are not the same as yours. And that is ok for people to be not you.