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

[seanie]

Asking males to stay out of female spaces, is not the same as “sending them off to the camps”.

Get a grip.

 

[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.

$*&(^#@*(*&(^*^%#*&

1 in 5 women in the US has been subjected to an attempted or completed rape - including both me and Toni.
80% of women in the US have been sexually assaulted - and that doesn't include the ones who don't count having their boob grabbed by a total stranger as a sexual assault, and see it as just the cost of being a woman.
90% of the victims of sexual assault are female, and 98% of the perpetrators are male.

But sure. Go ahead and mansplain to us silly old hens that our concerns and fears are irrational.

*)%^$&^^%@!$

You keep referring to rape in general without distinguishing the circumstances.

Oh boy...

Yes, your fear is real--but you haven't established that trans are an actual threat. We are taking the position that fears should be evaluated, society should only enforce protection from realistic fears.

How can you say Emily Lake's "fear is real" but then discard it as not a "realistic fear"?

Fear of rape: real.
Fear of rape by fake trans in the bathroom: not realistic.

And yet it’s happened. More than once.

 

[Toni]

In other words, you are totally unwilling to acknowledge that women have any legitimate fear of rape. Certainly nothing that would require any adjustment of behavior in the part of makes or society as a whole.

Of course you have a real fear of rape.

The question is whether any given situation is a threat.

Personally, I’m not particularly afraid of being raped. I’ve been successful in defending myself so far. The first time was luck: He didn’t expect me to fight back. Actually, it was all a matter of luck, but that luck was informed by me being alert enough, primed, so to speak, to not allow someone to be in a position to hurt me. Which meant being very vigilant and not hesitating. Once, I was sufficiently convinced someone I worked with meant me serious harm that I preemptively made certain he knew not to even think about laying hands on me. Probably a violation of most workplace HR policies but every day at that job was a workplace HR violation. I’ll spare you the details. It was gross but the only job I could find at the time,

So someone who has been attacked might be like me and already primed to react to a perceived threat. Someone like me would almost certainly see threat and not trans woman when confronted by a naked body with a penis in a woman’s only space. Depending on the circumstances, someone like me might make a hasty exit, or call for help, or might confront the individual with a penis or if they seemed like they were about to touch me, might preemptively strike out.

Which would all be justifiable if the individual were not a trans woman.

And horrific if they were.

There is no way for a girl or woman to be able to accurately assess that situation in the case of an unknown naked person in a shower in a woman’s only space.

Assuming someone is safe is how a lot of girls and women end up being raped by family members, coaches, teachers, medical professionals, friends and intimate partners.

In none of the instances when I was assaulted did I think the other person meant me harm. Until it was obvious that they did.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

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.

$*&(^#@*(*&(^*^%#*&

1 in 5 women in the US has been subjected to an attempted or completed rape - including both me and Toni.
80% of women in the US have been sexually assaulted - and that doesn't include the ones who don't count having their boob grabbed by a total stranger as a sexual assault, and see it as just the cost of being a woman.
90% of the victims of sexual assault are female, and 98% of the perpetrators are male.

But sure. Go ahead and mansplain to us silly old hens that our concerns and fears are irrational.

*)%^$&^^%@!$

You keep referring to rape in general without distinguishing the circumstances.

Oh boy...

Yes, your fear is real--but you haven't established that trans are an actual threat. We are taking the position that fears should be evaluated, society should only enforce protection from realistic fears.

How can you say Emily Lake's "fear is real" but then discard it as not a "realistic fear"?

Fear of rape: real.
Fear of rape by fake trans in the bathroom: not realistic.

And they can differniate this in the moment how?

I would also add that lewdly flailing genitals at someone is a sex crime. Women shouldn't be beholden to a statutory lower limit of rape.

Ultimately any crime that a faux transgender person could commit is likely to be uncommon based on simple statistics. Is this the boundary to use and tell women that their thoughts on this matter are irrelevant?

Almost no school in the US will have a gun massacre, but all schools still practice massacre drills. Sex crimes are about the worst crimes that are committed. That and double parking on Broadway.

 

[Toni]

Loren is viewing this purely from an anti-septic POV, straight up statistics. If the likelihood of an attack is unlikely, then it isn't a 'realistic' threat, period, end of statement. IE, the final outcome of crime or no crime is how he envisions this.

"Unlikely" is far too fuzzy a word. Standard risk analysis is probability * consequences. Low probability events can be bad enough that they warrant addressing. And you don't compare the risk to zero, but to the alternatives. Note the flip side to this--focusing on the unlikely events drives people to choose the common but dangerous path. And it diverts protective effort away from more beneficial things.

I think he is asking the wrong the question in his analysis. This isn't about a 'realistic' threat, but a 'realistic' perception.

I don't think it's the wrong question. Yes, there is a perception of risk--but I don't believe that a false perception of risk justifies a law.

I agree, the perception is muddled in an ugly amount of unfairness to a transgender woman as some the presumptions are based on intolerance of transgender women (mainly by men, but certainly some women). However, there is a lot rooted in personal trauma as well as a natural (and should be expected) innate reaction due to what would have otherwise been lewd behavior at the very best. A reaction / perception that is precipitated by an aggregate of well documented sex crimes (and undocumented sex crimes) against women by men.

Emily has even admitted the situation existed for a long time without a problem.

What's changed is the reich wing stirring up hatred. They can't ship them off to the camps until they've sufficiently demonized them.

No one in a shower is going to do a rational point by point risk analysis. Women already do that by going into a women only space. They assume and should have the right to assume that they are safe from assault or PTSD. They should have a right to that.

All women. Cis and trans.

Unfortunately I think you correct that any non-white, non-Christian or ‘Christian’ since none in that camp can properly call themselves Christian’ non straight non-English speaking ( irony explodes!) non US citizens who bleed MAGA are safe from being sent to camps, eventually.

 

[ZiprHead]

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.

$*&(^#@*(*&(^*^%#*&

1 in 5 women in the US has been subjected to an attempted or completed rape - including both me and Toni.
80% of women in the US have been sexually assaulted - and that doesn't include the ones who don't count having their boob grabbed by a total stranger as a sexual assault, and see it as just the cost of being a woman.
90% of the victims of sexual assault are female, and 98% of the perpetrators are male.

But sure. Go ahead and mansplain to us silly old hens that our concerns and fears are irrational.

*)%^$&^^%@!$

You keep referring to rape in general without distinguishing the circumstances.

Oh boy...

Yes, your fear is real--but you haven't established that trans are an actual threat. We are taking the position that fears should be evaluated, society should only enforce protection from realistic fears.

How can you say Emily Lake's "fear is real" but then discard it as not a "realistic fear"?

Fear of rape: real.
Fear of rape by fake trans in the bathroom: not realistic.

What makes you think this is true?

 

[Bomb#20]

I won't claim it's a scientific conclusion.

But look at Project 2025. Presenting as trans = pornography. If a minor sees you that's showing pornography to a minor, which is already illegal.

Why in the world should I think they don't intend to implement Project 2025?

Dude! You think you can make an ad hominem argument not be a fallacy by name-dropping? What the hell do the Project 2025 people have to do with us on iidb? Do you sincerely believe "We should take women's single-sex spaces away from them because I can find somebody really bad who doesn't want us to." is a sound argument? What, do all the women in America who're creeped out by co-ed bathrooms deserve to be punished for Project 2025's sins?!?

It's the P2025 people that are stirring up the crusade against the trans. So far they have shown they mean it with what they said in P2025, why should I think they don't mean the rest of it? Just because it's horrendous doesn't make the threat not real.

Dude! Do you have any idea how crazy your theory sounds? Read the thread title!

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

Do you seriously expect us to take your word for it that the British people and the British courts can't figure out for themselves whether they like the consequences of having put gender ideologues in charge of policy unless they can find a cabal of Americans to pull their puppet strings for them? That's really not how the British think. There is no "crusade against the trans" that's having any significant impact on anything; the crusade with traction is the one to subject society at large to the moralistic dictates of the progressive stack. Inevitably there's pushback, not just from conservatives and centrists who always objected to progressivism, but also from feminists who stopped being fans of stack-based rule the minute women got bumped a few notches down the stack. Why the heck would a TERF be the least bit influenced by P2025 nuts? You do know what the RF in TERF stands for, don't you?

I agree, the perception is muddled in an ugly amount of unfairness to a transgender woman as some the presumptions are based on intolerance of transgender women (mainly by men, but certainly some women). However, there is a lot rooted in personal trauma as well as a natural (and should be expected) innate reaction due to what would have otherwise been lewd behavior at the very best. A reaction / perception that is precipitated by an aggregate of well documented sex crimes (and undocumented sex crimes) against women by men.

Emily has even admitted the situation existed for a long time without a problem.

Methinks the situation you have in mind when you say "the situation" is not the same situation Emily agrees existed for a long time without a problem.

What's changed is the reich wing stirring up hatred. They can't ship them off to the camps until they've sufficiently demonized them.

Oh please. Nobody is going to be shipped off to the camps for being trans. It's the people speaking out against gender ideology who are getting persecuted by the legal system. Hatred is being stirred up by the left wing with the hateful and insane policies they impose on a largely unwilling public.

After 18 months, this case has come to a conclusion

A nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor has been cleared of gross misconduct following disciplinary proceedings by NHS Fife. Sandie Peggie was suspended from her role last year after she objected to Dr Beth Upton, who is a transgender woman, using female facilities. The nurse had faced allegations of misconduct, failures of patient care and misgendering Dr Upton. NHS Fife said an internal hearing found there was "insufficient evidence to support a finding of misconduct". Ms Peggie, who has worked at NHS Fife for more than 30 years, told the tribunal she had felt uncomfortable around Dr Upton in a changing room at Kirkcaldy's Victoria Hospital on three occasions between August and December 2023. She said the issue came to a head on Christmas Eve when Dr Upton started to undress in front of her. Ms Peggie told the tribunal she had felt "embarrassed and intimidated". The pair then exchanged words - although the details of their conversation are disputed.

BBC

Do you really despise the common people so much you think we're all too stupid to figure out on our own that "the process is the punishment", and that the nurse was punished for 18 months for the "crime" of petitioning the government for redress of grievance, and that the UK could really use a good First Amendment, and that rulers who abuse their authority to punish dissidents are rulers who deserve to be hated, without a "reich wing" to tell us?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sure, it is a "free country", but unless someone has a particular insight into how someone else thinks, going with the original birth gender is nothing short of judgmental.

What the heck has "how someone else thinks" got to do with it?

A discussion about self-perception and how others perceive that perception would seem heavily important here.

If a transgender woman didn't feel like they were the opposite gender, this wouldn't be a discussion. If some (most?) women didn't have a propensity to regard a transgender woman in a private space in such a way, this wouldn't be a discussion. How we think and feel is a keystone to this conversation.

Some want to ignore the psychology and just hold directly to visible biology (certainly ignoring neurology), but that would seem daft.

I don't need to know how Tenzin Gyatso thinks to judge that he's not anyone's reincarnation, and if you find that judgmental of me, that's nothing short of judgmental of you.

Reincarnation is a spiritual concept invented by people. Gender is a taxonomical like concept based on a broad baseline of outwardly obvious and inwardly (to organ level) discernable attributes. We know now that gender isn't as simple as that, because neurology.

What I don't take seriously is the religious belief of gender ideologues that an individual's inner feelings trump reality. Gender is a social construct. What the criteria for the genders are are up to society collectively.

That is a peculiar statement for you to use. It admits that "gender" isn't steadfast and carved in stone. That it is possible to adapt with better understanding on what provides a gender beyond organs.

Understanding transgenders, their mindset, how/why they think, their experience will help provide a better manner in which to move forward with inclusion and how best to achieve it.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't give a good goddamn about anybody's gender identity. I accept that some people have a mental condition that causes them distress about their sexed bodies, and I even accept that in some few cases it might be a congenital condition. But I think the entire notion of gender identity is bullshit - it's adopting regressive social stereotypes as a badge of honor.

If you don't give a good goddamn about anyone's gender identity, then why do you get into arguments about it?


You think gender identity is bullshit. Psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and people who study the neurobiology of gender and identity think it's an important aspect of human health and socialization.

I don't necessarily think it's entirely bullshit, I think it's a personality trait at best and a mental health issue at worst. What it is NOT is a replacement for sex. That's why I get into arguments about it - because it's being used in policy to supplant sex in situations where sex matters. And I very strongly object to that policy approach.

I agree with you, but let's be real here. Having a vagina is not a trivial matter.

Sure, I suppose.

 

[Emily Lake]

Better, more precise categories are not limited to height and weight categories. They can be based on age, experience, or something else. College football programs compete in divisions based on their size and resources. The Mount Marathon race recently added a non-binary division.

We don't have to hold on to something that isn't working just because that's how we've always done it. We can make improvements.

Why do you think it isn't working? It works very well to divide sports on the basis of sex. I don't know what you think would be improved by making the rules massively more complicated just so that some males can feel better about themselves. I don't see how that's an improvement for anyone other than some mediocre male athletes.

Semenya's sense of self is not defined by how well she conforms to the sex classification system you use. If you don't care about pronoun use, then I don't see why you're being rude about it.

Here's a genuine disagreement between us. You seem to view pronouns as being something self-defined, based solely on self-declaration and self-perception of how well a person aligns with one or the other sex-based regressive stereotypes. In other words, you view pronouns as being based on a person's gender identity.

I don't. I view pronouns as being externally-applied, based on the observer's perception of the object's sex. That's how they've been used throughout the history of the English language, and I don't see any compelling reason to change that usage. Especially when doing so does not result in better clarity and understanding, but serves instead to generate confusion and mistakes.

I also don't think it's rude to use sex-based pronouns in reference to someone who isn't even present.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't care what Semenya's "gender identity" is,

That, imho, is the problem.

Why should I care what Semenya's gender identity is?

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't give a good goddamn about anybody's gender identity

That sounds like another problem. Everyone has a gender identity. You have a gender identity.

I do not.

This is tantamount to saying that "everyone has a soul" and insisting that atheists must also accept that souls exist even if they don't believe in them. It's the gender identity religion's version of "god believes in you though".

 

[Emily Lake]

Even if we only recognize two sexes and sort everyone into one or the other, that does not mean there are only two genders, or that gender is immutable.

Gender identity can be whatever the heck you want it to be. It's irrelevant to me, and if it makes someone else happy no problem.

This isn't about want, it is about what. Your statement reads as if you don't think transgender actually exists.

I think it's a who, not a what. "Transgender" may represent an aspect of who a person is, but it has no bearing at all on what that person is.

I think that the mental health disorder of gender dysphoria exists. I think there are people who genuinely believe they should have been born the opposite sex. I think there are people who don't feel any alignment with the regressive social stereotypes applied to their own sex, who do feel alignment with the regressive social stereotypes of the opposite sex, and even some who feel no alignment with any regressive social stereotypes at all. I also believe there are people with some very particular paraphilias.

What I do NOT believe is that the label of transgender in any way supersedes or supplants the reality of sex, nor that it implies that a person can have an inner essence of the opposite sex. I don't believe in souls of any sort, much less in a cross-sexed soul.

 

[Emily Lake]

Even if we only recognize two sexes and sort everyone into one or the other, that does not mean there are only two genders, or that gender is immutable.

Gender identity can be whatever the heck you want it to be. It's irrelevant to me, and if it makes someone else happy no problem.

This isn't about want, it is about what. Your statement reads as if you don't think transgender actually exists.

Perhaps if posters didn't misrepresent Emily and argue about strawman versions of what she actually posts she wouldn't get so testy.
Tom

Naw, she's always been like that.

Meh. Perimenopause has definitely made me testier than I used to be. I do my best, but my patience with BS has really waned.

Perimenopause being something that is explicitly sex-related, and which no male is capable of experiencing, no matter how strongly they feel themselves to be some version of "woman".

Also, I qualified my statement appropriately.

If "gender identity" actually had some clear and consistent meaning you might have a bit more of a point. As it is, it's such a nebulous humpty-dumpty tautological concept that it's effectively meaningless, really.

Cue someone saying "Gender identity is the gender that you identify as!" as if that makes it clearer.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don’t think any thinks Isaac Newton didn’t do physics, but neither did he have high precision nor lots of observations.

Newton did a crap ton of observations and had incredibly high precision in what he observed. His theories regarding light and motion weren't developed solely from a philosophical perspective, but began with a massive amount of observations, formulated into hypotheses, with testable predictions (which held out), then formalized with supporting mathematical functions that could be applied to predict future outcomes. We still use his actual hard science in our everyday lives.

How in the heck did this derail come about?!

Someone dissed social sciences and I defended them, although I’m not a social scientist. I chose not to reply to that post.
I’m into cell and molecular biology with a dash biochemistry, with outside interests in ecology and a strong interest in literature and visual arts. But I have friends who are in a variety of social sciences and even liberal arts. IMO, a lot of what is currently going wrong in the world or at least the US is the dismissal of the value of social sciences and liberal arts.

Knowledge is good and I cannot see the wisdom in pissing on other fields just to try to prove to yourself that ‘your’ field is the smartest.

Knowledge is good but wisdom is more important. And so is having an appreciation of beauty and light and other human being.

The interesting thing here is that you perceive this discussion as having "dissed" social sciences. That didn't happen. My saying that social sciences aren't actually sciences doesn't diss them at all. You seem to have overlooked me explicitly saying that they often have value and are often worthwhile... but they aren't actually science. You also seem to have overlooked where I stated that my own field is not actually science either.

You seem to read a lot of what you want to see, rather than reading what's actually there.

Seriously. Seahorses are really cool creatures, very interesting evolution, really different mating and gestational behaviors. Some of my favorite sea creatures (slightly behind cephalopods and tetraodontiformes). But they're not, you know, actually horses.

 

[Emily Lake]

Is it time to 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?

Go right ahead.

Apparently, yes, it is time.

Pseudovagina is not a vagina in ANY sense at all. It's an artificially constructed cavity that is made of external penile skin (if you're lucky) or with a section of the colon (if you're not so lucky). It does not function in the same way as an actual vagina does at all. It's as much a vagina as a hole in a person's skull is an orbital socket.

Vaginal pouch and blind vagina refer to congenital deformations, often in reference to vestigial structures found in males with disorders of sexual development. When they occur in males they generally do NOT function fully as vaginas, and are short and shallow, and lack elasticity. They are generally moist (nature of the tissue), but don't exude additional lubrication during sexual arousal. They very, very rarely occur in females - and when they do they are of normal size and elasticity, they are elastic, they enlarge at puberty, and they exude lubrication during sexual arousal as well as during ovulation.

"Vagina that does not terminate in a cervix" is a generalized phrase that could be used to refer to a vaginal pouch... but it more often refers to the vagina of a woman who has had a hysterectomy.

Those are not all the same things.

Meanwhile, the sources I have read say guevedoces have what appears to be a vagina between their legs. I take that to mean if the average person saw a guevedoce's groin, he or she would think they were seeing a vagina in there along with some rather small man parts.

Males with 5-ARD sometimes have a vaginal opening at birth. In most cases it atrophies considerably during puberty, and often closes up completely.

You keep talking about this as if Semenya has a fully developed and incontrovertible female-typical vagina. That's extraordinarily unlikely. Also, I'm not really sure why you're so invested in ensuring that males get to compete in female athletics.

 

[Emily Lake]

You say there is no gendered mind but the bad results from attempting to surgically correct the intersexed clearly show there's something upstairs. We don't understand it yet but we can observe the bad outcomes of going against it so it must exist.

We understand some of it just fine. Hormones do affect the brain, after all. And people with disorders of sexual development generally produce and process sex hormones. The occasions where we see surgical alterations of infants with DSDs going wrong are when the doctor didn't bother to find out what the infant's actual sex was in the first place.

None of which has anything at all to do with transgender beliefs. The fact that some well-meaning-but-ultimately-idiotic doctors in the past got it wrong has no bearing on whether or not it's actually plausible (or possible) for a male of the human species, with a completely normal male body type, normal male karyotype, normal male reproductive system, and normal male development is able to somehow magically have a "girl mind".

 

[Toni]

I don’t think any thinks Isaac Newton didn’t do physics, but neither did he have high precision nor lots of observations.

Newton did a crap ton of observations and had incredibly high precision in what he observed. His theories regarding light and motion weren't developed solely from a philosophical perspective, but began with a massive amount of observations, formulated into hypotheses, with testable predictions (which held out), then formalized with supporting mathematical functions that could be applied to predict future outcomes. We still use his actual hard science in our everyday lives.

How in the heck did this derail come about?!

Someone dissed social sciences and I defended them, although I’m not a social scientist. I chose not to reply to that post.
I’m into cell and molecular biology with a dash biochemistry, with outside interests in ecology and a strong interest in literature and visual arts. But I have friends who are in a variety of social sciences and even liberal arts. IMO, a lot of what is currently going wrong in the world or at least the US is the dismissal of the value of social sciences and liberal arts.

Knowledge is good and I cannot see the wisdom in pissing on other fields just to try to prove to yourself that ‘your’ field is the smartest.

Knowledge is good but wisdom is more important. And so is having an appreciation of beauty and light and other human being.

The interesting thing here is that you perceive this discussion as having "dissed" social sciences. That didn't happen. My saying that social sciences aren't actually sciences doesn't diss them at all. You seem to have overlooked me explicitly saying that they often have value and are often worthwhile... but they aren't actually science. You also seem to have overlooked where I stated that my own field is not actually science either.

You seem to read a lot of what you want to see, rather than reading what's actually there.

Seriously. Seahorses are really cool creatures, very interesting evolution, really different mating and gestational behaviors. Some of my favorite sea creatures (slightly behind cephalopods and tetraodontiformes). But they're not, you know, actually horses.

Denying that a science is a science is in fact disrespect.

I’m sorry you don’t have a better grasp of what defines a field of studies a science or of what actual social sciences do.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don’t think any thinks Isaac Newton didn’t do physics, but neither did he have high precision nor lots of observations.

He didn't make them, doesn't mean he didn't have them. Namely, the observations of the positions of the planets in the sky. Centuries of data.

Newton took a huge amount of observations and measurements himself. He also collected observations and measurements from other natural philosophers of the time, including Halley.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don’t think any thinks Isaac Newton didn’t do physics, but neither did he have high precision nor lots of observations.

He didn't make them, doesn't mean he didn't have them. Namely, the observations of the positions of the planets in the sky. Centuries of data.

Then social scientists are a science because there are centuries of observations of humans in societies.

Do those social sciences make falsifiable predictions that are accurate to within a reasonable degree of error?

Seriously, microeconomics is very explanatory, and has a lot of good math behind it to explain the relationships... but could you, with all of your experience and knowledge, actually predict how much a given person is willing to spend on eggs with a straight face? Or even what the prevailing price of eggs will be in three months time?

Observations, absolutely. Explanatory, certainly.

Predictive and falsifiable are an entirely different thing.