A firefighter has been accused of jumping the queue to qualify by becoming a woman during exams to take advantage of lower pass marks required by female candidates.
Named only as David L Y, the firefighter initially failed to pass the examinations when they were a man but then said they were changing gender. David was later admitted as a woman by Madrid city council.
It’s not the specific which is informative here, but the general.
A standard critique of new rules – any new rules – is that “But what if someone then did” to which the response, all too often, is “But no one would do that just to….”
No one would stop or reduce their working hours just because they are asked to, at the margin, contribute 80% of their income to society. No one would try to fiddle capital gains to reduce their taxes. No one would just claim a sex change in order to get to the Olympics. No one would……
And the answer is always, yes, yes they would. There’re 8 billion of us out here and there are some who will do almost anything. So, near anything gets done.
“None” isn’t going to happen among 8 billion.
Now, if the response was “Few, so few it doesn’t matter” then that’s a reasonable argument – one that could be true in mattering or not true. But None never is true.
I got to the end of the first sentence thinking “This is Spain!”
And the end of the second sentence confirmed it.
Bit behind the coach, the Torygraph, isn’t it? This isn’t even news here. Been going on ever since the legislation. Seems to be mainly in the public sector.
In a lot of things, though, “just one” usually shows the absurdity of the entire model.
A little story in this vein. The DVSA examiners in this neck of the world will run motorcycle tests early if you turn up accordingly. This works for all involved as tests can be run more efficiently instead of keeping people waiting around until the actual moment. The examiners like it as they get an early finish. Everyone is happy. Then they started to run to time. Orders from above.
It turned out some scallywag who was taking himself to test (instead of going escorted by a school) and booked a Module 1 at very late notice. Turned out, he had taken one that morning in Exeter and failed. He had planned a module 2 in Taunton. As he had run early, he went back into the booking system and cancelled the test he had failed because it was not yet time to take it. He then nipped up to Bristol, took it again and then went on to fail his Mod 2 in Taunton.
Creative, indeed. And none of us had seen the loophole, including the DVSA. But, yes, there is always someone looking to find an exploit. The initial reaction was to close the loophole. However, things have gone back to normal for the riding schools and they are a bit more wary of private runners, so a sensible outcome along the lines of the OP – the likelihood is so low, it’s not worth the bother to affect everyone else.
“Come on Baby, fight my fire!”
https://youtu.be/8Wx1s4g0lYg?si=ID5BzEzfhEgzEuYl
Probably not like this one.
Hold on, lower pass marks *for* *an* *exam*? What are they explying there, little women’s brains are feebler?
It doesn’t help their argument when they tell you that you aren’t to doubt someone’s claimed gender identity.
So who knows, maybe this bloke felt he was a sheila for a week or so and then ‘de-transitioned’? Who’s to say when ‘what is a woman’ means ‘anyone who says they are a woman’?
If a certain level of knowledge and resoning ability is necessa\ry to join the fire service, then the requirments should be the same for men and women.
Ditto the requirements for physical capability.
If the reality is that more men than women attain the required standard then so be it. Reality is reality