Doctors have branded the Supreme Court transgender ruling as “scientifically illiterate”.
The British Medical Association’s (BMA) resident doctors – previously called junior doctors – have voted to “condemn” the judgment, which ruled that trans women were not legally women.
The doctors passed a motion at a conference on Saturday criticising the ruling as “biologically nonsensical”.
The doctors claimed a binary divide between sex and gender “has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people”, according to a motion seen by The Times.
Who has a prostate and who has a cervix is a different quetion from who presents in lippie and a dress. If even the doctors aren’t making that distinction…..
A lot of it about.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14382039/Trans-doctor-tells-tribunal-used-female-changing-room-think-Im-woman.html
And Dr Upton told Ms Cunningham: ‘I am biologically female.’
The medic, who said the terms biological male and female had ‘no defined and agreed meaning in science’, told the tribunal: ‘Biological sex is a nebulous term and it doesn’t really mean anything, because nobody can accurately or usefully define biological sex because pretty much every human I’m aware of is at least in part biological and many of them have a sex characteristic.’
Dr Upton, who has worked for NHS Fife since August 2023, claimed gender is a ‘rough binary’.
The tribunal was told by Dr Upton: ‘I am quite aware of the impacts and implications of somebody’s biological makeup, and as a trans person I’m quite aware of the implications of someone’s biological makeup.
‘There are very few people who don’t think understanding some aspect of somebody’s biology is important in some situation, but there is no agreed definition of biological sex.
‘It’s a nebulous dog whistle.’
A particularly instructive exchange via https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/10/im-biologically-female-insists-trans-nhs-doctor-born-male/
Ms Cunningham said: “You say you’re a trans woman. It follows that you’re not someone who has a biologically female body?”
Dr Upton replied: “The term biologically female or biologically male is completely nebulous. It has no defined or agreed meaning in science, as far as I’m aware. I’m not a robot, so I am biological and my identity is female. Without wanting to appeal to the dictionary too much, I’m biologically female.”
… The doctor went on to claim that the term biological sex “doesn’t really mean anything” as it was impossible to “accurately or usefully define” what it meant. “We would have to explore all the different things that make up one’s sex,” Dr Upton added, saying this could encompass “endocrine sex”, “primary and secondary sexual characteristics”, “reproductive sex”, “societal, cultural and assumed sex” and other factors.
Dr Upton added: “Not all those things are what you might call concordant with the other. There are very few people who don’t think understanding of some aspect of somebody’s biology is important in some situations. But there is no agreed definition of biological sex. It’s a nebulous dog whistle.”
The tribunal heard that Dr Upton, 28, is 6ft tall, while Ms Peggie, 50, is 5ft 4in.
See also the Endocrine Society:
https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2024/statement-in-support-of-gender-affirming-care
Someone wants to borrow my old books on animal physiology and vertebrate anatomy? Bit dusty, but nice, solid hardcovers.
They’re pretty hefty, and it seems some junior doctors need some….. percussive maintenance… on their basic knowledge.
These people are *MEDICS*???? And are somehow allowed, licensed even, to practise medicine?
All the “doctors” that voted for that must be immediately struck off the medical register as unfit to practise.
“Dr Upton replied: “The term biologically female or biologically male is completely nebulous. It has no defined or agreed meaning in science, as far as I’m aware”.
As pointed out by someone else, “if you put one hundred women and ten man on a desert island, in a hundred years you would have a thriving community of people.
If you put one hundred women and ten ‘trans men’ on a desert island, in a hundred years you would have the skeletons of one hundred and ten women”.
And this person studied medicine?
Most doctors are bureaucrats who follow what the Blob tells them. Because the whole system is built on getting licensed by the Blob, not on whether you’re shit hot at diagnosing people’s problems.
Always diagnose yourself (with Google etc) before going to see them. If it doesn’t align, get a second opinion.
Who’d have thought that in the 21st century science was invented by a fictional character created by a 19th century author who advanced the sophisticated theory of words; “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
This theory was implemented by Dr Mohammed Goebbels in his famous ruling of 28 April 2025 that differentiating between the sexes using anatomy was unscientific and preposterous. The vicious rumour that he later added “Anyway, some of our members really enjoyed castrating little boys and eventually cutting the breasts off little girls.” was strenuously denied…
What WB said. Covid showed us what doctors are – paid mouthpieces for State propaganda. Its just in the trans SC case, the State has moved the goalposts and these good little parrots haven’t caught up with the new ‘line to take’ yet.
I’d say we need to organize something along these lines for everyone pushing this fiction:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-doctors-trial-the-medical-case-of-the-subsequent-nuremberg-proceedings
These people are either wilfully ignorant or criminal – either way, their medical degrees needed to be rescinded.
I doubt if many of them actually believe this; the problem is not one of biological ignorance, but of pre-emptive social cowardice. If I had to deal with a hefty male nutcase who was likely to throw a spectacular tantrum and then call the lawyers, I’d probably play along with his delusions in order to just get the job done.
“Well, Ms. Burley, I’ve just removed some fecal matter from under your, er…clitoral foreskin, and I’ll give you some cream you can rub around the shaft of your vagina. As for the tenderness of the breasts, the mammogram suggests you should just give them a wash on slow spin cycle, and pop them back in…”
A lot of the “it’s just common sense, innit?” crowd thought that a simple piece of legislation would magically put everyone in their place and boys would be boys and women would be women again.
How’s that working out?
Now a guy with a beard can walk into the ladies loo and claim to be (or actually be) a trans man, and Tim appears to be suggesting that the issue of toilets can be solved by a simple cervix test at the door. “Excuse me madam, can you prove you don’t have a prostate?”
In that, the junior Doctors are correct – “biological sex fixes things”… doesn’t actually fix things. Ignoring the whole complication over intersex and other blended chromosomes, the law is still an ass, and the toilet police still don’t have a nice easy answer.
You know you’re in trouble when even Wetherspoons are putting out statements that their toilets are safe spaces.
Yeah, because a number of loons are in denial of reality, it means said reality is meaningless.
You know you’re in trouble when even Wetherspoons are putting out statements that their toilets are safe spaces.
All that means is there’s some junior marketing tit in ‘Spoons who needs sacking.
Also, as you well know, no one really cares about some ‘trans man’ pissing herself trying to use a urinal. Still, all these things can be, erm… ironed out now, like in the good old days before perverts were empowered by a broken society.
Mentioning intersex people (all six of them) in this context is a dead giveaway BTW.
Men’s toilets have cubicles as well as urinals and when there’s queues for the ladies’ toilets you’ll often them nipping in to use them.
So what’s the problem for blokes with beards using said cubicles and leaving women alone?
AndyT – A lot of the “it’s just common sense, innit?” crowd thought that a simple piece of legislation would magically put everyone in their place and boys would be boys and women would be women again.
How’s that working out?
Amusingly well. It’s got you scrambling to pretend this is an L for the normies, while Carrie is having melties on the daily now.
Now a guy with a beard can walk into the ladies loo and claim to be (or actually be) a trans man,
Nobody thinks pooners are men.
and Tim appears to be suggesting that the issue of toilets can be solved by a simple cervix test at the door. “Excuse me madam, can you prove you don’t have a prostate?”
We don’t have a “toilet issue”, it’s a tranny issue. They just need to stay out of the ladies’.
In that, the junior Doctors are correct – “biological sex fixes things”… doesn’t actually fix things. Ignoring the whole complication over intersex and other blended chromosomes,
And the intersex, lol. Not the intersex! Noooooooo…
the law is still an ass, and the toilet police still don’t have a nice easy answer.
The answer to their question is fuck off. Any follow up questions can see the response I made some moments ago.
You know you’re in trouble when even Wetherspoons are putting out statements that their toilets are safe spaces.
“Trouble”. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Time to take a serious look at med school curricula.
@AndyT
The medics may well be “socially correct” but the level of biological denial is absurd. Quite often society forces us to go along with silly ideas or traditions because that’s what is necessary for us all to rub along (one reason autistic people find social stuff hard) but when physical reality actually matters for the purpose of your supposedly scientific profession then it’s important you acknowledge it. Social etiquette might make it hard to say a trans woman is anything other than 100% woman, and a trans man is anything other than 100% man, or suggest someone who is cupcake-gender is not, in fact, a cake.
You might even happily go along with flying your cupcakegender pride flag to show your solidarity with xenogender and gastrogender people. https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/Cupcake gender (Absurd? Yes. Something someone made up on tumblr one day? Yes. But the genderqueer scene on tumblr was extraordinarily influential among Obama admin staffers and helped frame a lot of official policies about gender affirmation. Norms about declaring your pronouns in your email signature in many professions started to come in during the era of peak tumblr and that’s not a coincidence.)
The thing is, medically and biologically, sex matters. A medic should be able to say so, and maintaining a distinction between sex and gender helps with that. Telling your doctor you’re a cupcake doesn’t help them diagnose you other than in terms of mental health. Even if etiquette forbids doctors to suggest a trans woman is anything other than woman, they could couch it in less stark language like “assigned female at birth” instead of “biologically female” – the point is you need some mechanism to admit the reality of the situation, instead of pretending that biologically a cis woman and trans woman are indistinguishable. (Though when it comes to people who are intersex or DSD, “AFAB” as a designation of “true” sex can be misleading, since it’s not uncommon for a mistake to have been made at birth. One of the reasons it doesn’t always make sense to rope in intersex and DSD people when talking about how to deal with trans people – their cases are not identical.)
You’re correct about the toilet police based on cervix/prostrate being a bad idea, but I’m not sure that’s what “common sense” calls for. Some trans women, post surgery, would clearly be far more out of place in a male bathroom than a female one, and vice versa. I think plenty of “common sense” people are happy to accept that. The issue is people taking the mick, eg someone who doesn’t even make any effort but simply claims to “feel” the opposite gender to how they present.
There are undoubtedly people who will go to the “wrong” bathroom for a sexual buzz, but I think the majority of people who are doing so are driven more by seeking validation. It’s a thrill to do a “female only” or “male only” thing, especially when so much stuff in society is now designed to be gender neutral. It’s exciting to feel like you are “passing” or being socially acknowledged for your “true” gender. Similar reason they get very excited about the chance to declare their pronouns, get themselves on a lesbian dating site as a trans woman, go swimming in a women’s-only pool, and so on.
Most of the “common sense” brigade would rather they treated their gender as a more personal, private affair and adopted a “don’t scare the horses” approach for the most appropriate bathroom to use. If you’re going to make women feel uncomfortable but you don’t feel safe or comfortable in the gents, then just use the gender-neutral loo (at least in the UK this choice is usually available as the “disabled and baby-changing” loo). How in practice you enforce that other than by social disapproval I’m not sure, and even that does rely on people not being total arses about it.
All that means is there’s some junior marketing tit in ‘Spoons who needs sacking.
I doubt it. ‘Spoons relies heavily on the student and young crowd, and they see all this stuff as old men shouting at clouds. See Steve’s kneejerk ramble for a nice example.
What’s amusing is that the same people who (rightly) point out that Labour are a bunch of incompetents who are over reliant on badly thought out legislation are now cheering that Labour have produced yet more badly thought out legislation. The cognitive whiplash is remarkable.
They could have done a much better job of sorting this nonsense out, but reactions from groups like the BMA suggest the whole debate is just going to keep rumbling on endlessly. I guess it’s a handy distraction from them fucking up the economy…
A brief point re cupcakegender. “Something someone made up on tumblr one day? Yes.” But they made it up because they genuinely felt that’s who they are. They “knew” they were cakegender, but also that term wasn’t specific enough to describe their gender identity. So +1 more gender identity into the mix, and then other people “realised” that’s what they identify as too. There will never, ever be a cupcakegender toilet (except perhaps at a cakegender convention) and a degree of common sense will have to be employed over which toilet gets used.
https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Random
Press that link a dozen times. Try not to laugh, or cry. Remember that some people genuinely believe in this stuff. This is the social context that young medics grew up exposed to. That might make their claim that “there’s no such thing as biological sex” more comprehensible.
But it’s a stupid move since the proliferation of “genders” that don’t even align on a male/female axis (a surprising number of people identify as “non-binary” or “genderfluid” these days) makes some means of talking about your “actual” sex rather more important, not less.
AndyT – What’s amusing is that the same people who (rightly) point out that Labour are a bunch of incompetents who are over reliant on badly thought out legislation are now cheering that Labour have produced yet more badly thought out legislation. The cognitive whiplash is remarkable.
Why you always lying, Andrew?
Stop pretending you don’t understand the Supreme Court decision, it’s tedious.
but reactions from groups like the BMA suggest the whole debate is just going to keep rumbling on endlessly.
Ah, you mistakenly think this is a debate. No, tranny rights were imposed on the public by Parliamentary fiat. There was no “debate” when they were full of piss and vinegar at having every British pubsec institution pulling for them, merely loads of insane troons with the local police on speed dial. And coppers who shamefully whored themselves out as the official enforcement arm of Big Tranny, bravely descending 8 at a time on various lesbians or conservatives who disagreed with men in dresses on social media.
There’s no “debate” now either, because “trans women” are men and the public has rejected this stuff. Simple as.
Embrace the superpower of not caring about the toilet complaints of niche perverts. Unless…
@anon
The medics may well be “socially correct” but the level of biological denial is absurd.
Maybe I misread their statement, but they don’t seem to be claiming people with prostates can get pregnant. It seems they’re saying basing equality laws on biology (which is difficult to determine in most social spaces) is inherently stupid. I think they’re right. You can’t just look at someone and magically count their chromosomes.
The thing is, medically and biologically, sex matters. A medic should be able to say so, and maintaining a distinction between sex and gender helps with that.
100% agree – but this statement is about equality legislation, not biology isn’t it? The legal change doesn’t actually make much difference at all to how a Doctor (junior or otherwise) will treat or talk to their patient. Again, I can’t be too surprised that they’ve responded essentially with “Don’t bring us into this.”
You’re correct about the toilet police based on cervix/prostrate being a bad idea, but I’m not sure that’s what “common sense” calls for. Some trans women, post surgery, would clearly be far more out of place in a male bathroom than a female one, and vice versa. I think plenty of “common sense” people are happy to accept that.
I think you’re right here too – people with genuine common sense really don’t care about this stuff. The problem (again) is that the legislation is not actually common sense. It’s imposing a rather arbitrary distinction that we can all see will actually run completely counter to common sense in quite a few situations.
And seeing how frothingly angry some people here are at the very thought of a trans person, demanding that they share the same toilet as (say) some of the posters in this thread is probably putting more people at risk than the imaginary threat of perverts going to the lengths of a shop at M&S just to get into the ladies.
Most of the “common sense” brigade would rather they treated their gender as a more personal, private affair and adopted a “don’t scare the horses” approach for the most appropriate bathroom to use.
And again, I agree – so far as I can tell this was pretty much the British approach to this (and all things) for years. Yet Labour have come up with legislation that goes exactly against that – it panders to the nut jobs who want to check other people’s genitals. Those are the ones who loudly claim it’s “common sense” that they should police other people’s identity because… um… something.
Kick ’em on the goolies and if they yell and clutch they are male.
AndyT – Again, I can’t be too surprised that they’ve responded essentially with “Don’t bring us into this.”
More lies. These junior doctors have deliberately inserted themselves into a political controversy that has nothing to do with medicine, because they’re cunts.
Yet Labour have come up with legislation that goes exactly against that – it panders to the nut jobs who want to check other people’s genitals.
Name this legislation.
Those are the ones who loudly claim it’s “common sense” that they should police other people’s identity because… um… something.
Not at all, we’re not even slightly interested in their identities. We’ve just decided to keep men out of the ladies’ toilets. You seem to be upset by that, but nobody’s stopping you from inviting Carrie to use your toilet. Pull up a chair and eat an orange.
For amusement, here’s Carrie’s opinion:
The bigots are furious with doctors who dare to challenge their primary school-level understanding of human biology. Resident doctors of the British Medical Association approved a motion yesterday that called the Supreme Court verdict – which repeatedly used the term “biological women” but seemed unable to say what that actually meant – “scientifically illiterate” and “biologically nonsensical”.
Carrie is pretending to believe the Supreme Court doesn’t know what a woman is. Many such cases!
The anti-trans groups have of course lied about what the motion said, claiming that doctors said there was “no basis” for biological sex. But that’s not what the text said. It said:
We recognise as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people.
“Attempting to impose a rigid binary” isn’t a medical definition and as such, this complaint has no basis in science or medicine. It does have a basis in wank, though. Because it’s verbal masturbation by idiots.
From the Telegraph article:
The BMA motion, responding to the ruling, said: “This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term ‘woman’ with respect to the Equality Act as being based on ‘biological sex’, which they refer to as a person who was at birth of the female sex, as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical.
“We recognise as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people.”
It added that the BMA is committed to “affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected”.
It’s the “biologically nonsensical” bit which suggests this is going further than “gender is more complicated and less binary than biological sex, and should matter more than sex for most practical purposes” (the factual element is pretty much beyond dispute and the “should” bit is at least an arguable case) and towards “there’s no such thing as biologically male vs female” (an odd take from medics).
Why you always lying, Andrew?
Every accusation is a confession, eh, Steven?
For amusement, here’s Carrie’s opinion:
Who the fuck is Carrie? Is she important to you?
Andy – Every accusation is a confession, eh, Steven?
More squid ink. You’re good at squirting out deceptive word clouds, not so good when people pick you up on your bullshit.
Yet Labour have come up with legislation that goes exactly against that – it panders to the nut jobs who want to check other people’s genitals.
What legislation?
What legislation?
Yes, I’m aware that the origins of this decision is the SNP’s attempt to pick a fight with England with their Gender Recognition Bill, and that the challenge to that bill was a Scottish group funded by JK Rowling (wanting to pick a fight with a group who wanted to pick a fight… they’re an angry lot, it seems).
The end result is Labour’s mess though – the Supreme Court case was encouraged by them as a way to answer their internal divisions over gender without having to get their hands dirty, and has resulted in amendments to the existing Equalities Act legislation. You could see the look of relief in Starmer’s face when he declared the issue had been solved – which pretty much shows what a crap lawyer he was.
The end result is a legislative mess (still) that Labour are completely responsible for. As I said earlier, they could have actually thought through the consequences, but they didn’t, so we’re going to get a whole bunch of challenges and fights with the EHRC, and frothing loons on both sides making stuff up about who is allowed where and who’s rights are being trampled on.
Andy – The end result is Labour’s mess though – the Supreme Court case was encouraged by them as a way to answer their internal divisions over gender without having to get their hands dirty, and has resulted in amendments to the existing Equalities Act legislation. You could see the look of relief in Starmer’s face when he declared the issue had been solved – which pretty much shows what a crap lawyer he was.
It’s Labour and the Tories’ mess.
Firstly, the Equality Act (lol) should have been abolished as soon as we got rid of Labour in 2010. Nobody voted for 14 years of sniggering Tories allowing the public sector to gold plate their stupid “equality” laws.
Secondly, it was a unanimous decision in the Supreme Court because they simply read the Act and found it did not contain the tranny goldplate British public sector orgs falsely said it did. The ‘Scottish government’, NHS bodies, councils, and our idiot policemen were lying the whole time. Whodathunkit eh.
Secondly plus one, I tried warning people that Two Tier doesn’t actually give a fuck about trannies. Why would he? No doubt he is relieved the Supreme Court gave him an excuse to back away from a deeply unpopular position that’s electoral cancer.
so we’re going to get a whole bunch of challenges and fights with the EHRC, and frothing loons on both sides making stuff up about who is allowed where and who’s rights are being trampled on.
The ‘EHCR’ also shouldn’t exist.
What’s annoying about your Centrist Dad concern troll shtick is the false insinuation that you’re floating serenely above the “frothing loons” on a warm updraft of sweet reason, when in fact you yourself think men should be using the wimmins toilets. You yourself think “trans women” are somehow women. So you yourself are one of the “loons”, because you hold an unpopular fringe opinion most people have flatly rejected.
Sorry, but you lose! You STOLE fizzy lifting drinks. Good day, sir! (And/or madam)
“Who has a prostate and who has a cervix is a different quetion from who presents in lippie and a dress. If even the doctors aren’t making that distinction…..”
What if you’ve had a hysterectomy or prostatectomy, and have neither? Do you think doctors should be classifying you as asexual?
We play this game endlessly. It’s said that the definition is obvious. A challenge to define it precisely, then, is issued. A single defining characteristic is identified. The (frequently obvious) exceptions are pointed out, demonstrating that the proffered definition leads to obviously wrong and ridiculous answers. The angry response is that you’re just being pedantic and silly, and the definition is obvious.
The sexes are statistical clusters that overlap. There are hundreds of mutually-correlated biological characteristics you can pick from, but they all have exceptions (even before we get to all the man-made complications like surgery and organ transplants and so on). For example, it’s a biological fact that women are shorter than men. So you can just define sex as being above or below a threshold height, (which makes it easy for the toilet police to check). It makes as much sense.
If the rule is having a prostate/cervix, we can easily deal with that. When the toilet police turn up and ask to see my cervix, I can say ‘sure’ and just show them the one I bought on the internet, floating in a jar of formaldehyde…
🙂
Mick Dundee knew how to solve this conundrum:
https://www.tiktok.com/@cheeky.laughs/video/7239375776297012506
The whole madness has come about by the insane nutters using the same terminology for cocks in frocks and for blokes without cocks, and also insisting that they are indistinguishably identical, and screaming down anybody pointing out reality.
Now a guy with a beard can walk into the ladies loo and claim to be (or actually be) a trans man, and Tim appears to be suggesting that the issue of toilets can be solved by a simple cervix test at the door. “Excuse me madam, can you prove you don’t have a prostate?”
Murder has been illegal for quite a while, but still murders take place. It’s a mystery, innit? What has changed is that though the guy with a beard can still enter the ladies (at work, say, or at the gym), now the ladies can demand his removal and not be faced with refusal by management because he claims to identify as female.
NiV – When the toilet police turn up and ask to see my cervix, I can say ‘sure’ and just show them the one I bought on the internet, floating in a jar of formaldehyde…
Serial killer vibes.
“What has changed is that though the guy with a beard can still enter the ladies (at work, say, or at the gym), now the ladies can demand his removal and not be faced with refusal by management because he claims to identify as female.”
Actually, no they can’t.
The Equality Act makes it illegal to discriminate based on protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. You cannot offer different services or opportunities on the basis of any of these characteristics without giving an objective reason for why such discrimination is necessary.
Thus, the Equality Act bans single-sex spaces of all types, unless you can give an objective reason for having one. Thus, if ‘sex’ in the Equality Act is defined as ‘legal sex’ which can be changed with a certificate, you can’t discriminate on the basis of ‘legal sex’ but (arguably) you can on ‘biological sex’. If you redefine ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to mean ‘biological sex’ then you can no longer divide toilets on the basis of biological sex without giving an objective reason for doing so.
There is no law that bans men from women’s spaces, or vice versa. There is a law that bans having women’s spaces, without giving an objective reason. The rules are defined by the owner of the property, who can set conditions on the permission they give other people to be there. Thus, you can have a “staff only” area, or an “executive suite for senior managers” or a “members only” area. A pub landlord can throw you out of his/her pub. You can’t sneak into your neighbour’s garden to get your ball back. If you breach the rules set down by the owner, that’s trespass. Except for a few rare exceptions, it’s a civil tort, and all they can do is ask you to leave, and if you refuse, claim compensation. It’s not a criminal matter.
You can ask the management to change the rules to whatever you like, as can the trans lobby, but the management doesn’t have to pay any attention. They can make what rules they like, but they can’t make the rules based on any protected characteristics without giving an objective reason. If you want to make biological sex a protected characteristic underthe Equality Act, that only makes it harder to have toilets limited to one biological sex.
So you yourself are one of the “loons”, because you hold an unpopular fringe opinion most people have flatly rejected.
You’re an old man shouting at clouds, Steven. The reason the BMA voted the way they did is that junior Doctors are part of the younger generation that see all this gender stuff as no big deal. Same with most colleges, which is why we see the old fossils demanding that teaching goes back to
the old waystraditional doctrine. You can’t put that particular genie back in the lamp, Grandpa.And where do you get “most people” from? Are these people in the room with us right now, because the Supreme Court decision was made by a handful of people in response to a previously unheard of activist group. “Most people” have absolutely zero faith in any of the political parties that are standing by this mess. Or is this another one of your Trumpian “winning bigly” statements that doesn’t hold up?
My unpopular opinion is that trying to control who goes into a toilet based on their internal organs is bloody stupid. Another unpopular opinion is that Labour have messed this up. And yet another unpopular opinion is that so long as you act like a decent human being, it’s none of my business what you look like. It’s funny how the people who bang on about their personal freedom jump through hoops to justify intruding in other people’s lives.
What’s annoying about your Centrist Dad concern troll shtick..
You really cannot cope with someone who has a different opinion from you, can you? Wait, do you think you’re “most people”??? That would be hilarious.
This equally applies to this trans nonsense.
Theodore Dalrymple quote:
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
AndyT: But this isn’t about gender, however irrelevent da yuuf think it is, it’s about sex
AndyT
‘Spoons relies heavily on the student and young crowd
‘Spoons has two target markets: 25-34 yo and pensioners. So I think I’d go with a junior marketing wazzock exceeding her brief.
Why the need for Toilet Police and/or checking internal organs?
We’ve had separate toilets for male and female for a great many years, and it’s only recently that some people have chosen to blur the distinction.
It’s rarely hard to tell the difference between male and female, regardless of what they’re wearing. If, in one of those rare cases, a male actually does look like a woman, then no one will notice him using the ladies
Andy – You’re an old man shouting at clouds, Steven. The reason the BMA voted the way they did is that junior Doctors are part of the younger generation that see all this gender stuff as no big deal. Same with most colleges, which is why we see the old fossils demanding that teaching goes back to the old ways traditional doctrine. You can’t put that particular genie back in the lamp, Grandpa
Good, good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.
Junior doctors confirming that their union is full of student union fuckwits doesn’t change the fact that NiV will never be a woman, according to the terms defined in the Equality Act and the Supreme Court decision. A line was inevitably going to be drawn somewhere between “biological reality and its consequences” vs “telling transgenders what they want to hear”. Ironically, the cruellest cut came through senior judges doing their legal best to rescue the Act itself from farcical incoherence, and by employing the cunning judicial trick of simply *reading the bloody statute*.
(Sorry, NiV, but where would you put the foetus? And please don’t say formaldehyde again.)
And where do you get “most people” from? Are these people in the room with us right now, because the Supreme Court decision was made by a handful of people in response to a previously unheard of activist group. “Most people” have absolutely zero faith in any of the political parties that are standing by this mess. Or is this another one of your Trumpian “winning bigly” statements that doesn’t hold up?
“Transgender” is extremely unpopular irl with voters, which is partly why President Trump is back and largely why Nicola Sturgeon no longer has a career. It cuts across all races, religions and age groups as being one of those things that brings normal people together. Politically, what was a cost-free way of signalling elite avant-garde moralising to dim, Yooni-educated, childless white women has become as toxic as that red kryptonite Richard Pryor invented that turned Superman into a violent alcoholic dick:*
The biggest single shift that has taken place since 2018 is over trans women’s participation in women’s sports. While this was already unpopular – back in 2018 Britons said such participation should not be allowed by 48% to 27% – sentiment is even more negative now: 61% now say trans women should not be allowed to take part in women’s sport, with just 16% believing they should.
Look at the direction those lovely red arrows are pointing in, this was from YouGov in 2022 btw, public attitudes to transgender keep hardening, the more they learn about transgender:
More Americans now say they favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:
Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (up 10 percentage points)
Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
Require trans people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
Make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (up 6 points)
At the same time, fewer Americans now express support for laws and policies that:
Protect trans people from discrimination (down 8 points since 2022)
Require health insurance companies to cover medical care for gender transitions (down 5 points)
These shifts reflect changing views among both Republicans and Democrats. For example, 79% of Republicans now support making it illegal for health care professionals to provide medical care for a gender transition for minors. This compares with 72% in 2022. On the same question, 35% of Democrats now express support, up from 26% in 2022. (These figures include independents who identify with or lean toward each party.)
Poll after poll after poll shows that support for this stuff is rapidly declining across the Anglosphere, which is why politicians from Two Tier to Gavin Newsom have been desperately backing/pirouetting away from the They/Them stuff of late. That, me mucker, is what we call a trend.
My unpopular opinion is that trying to control who goes into a toilet based on their internal organs is bloody stupid. Another unpopular opinion is that Labour have messed this up. And yet another unpopular opinion is that so long as you act like a decent human being, it’s none of my business what you look like. It’s funny how the people who bang on about their personal freedom jump through hoops to justify intruding in other people’s lives.
My popular opinion is that men shouldn’t be around my wife or daughter when they’re naked in the girls’ changing room.
You really cannot cope with someone who has a different opinion from you, can you? Wait, do you think you’re “most people”??? That would be hilarious.
I’m fine with opinions, it’s dishonesty that annoys me. I think I’m on the money about your concern troll style, but I’ve been wrong before. Me Deanna Troi nips are tingling. Ooh.
Am I “most people”? Good heavens, no. I’m a mental patient who gets to talk to normal people every day. They tell me things, no doubt because my poor tortured brain has given me the kind, serene countenance of an iconic Orthodox saint by way of scant compensation. Or possibly because I bring doughnuts.
*Accidentally, because Richard Pryor was a lovely guy
I Sneeze x 3 – the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate
But enough about the BBC.
“Sorry, NiV, but where would you put the foetus?”
I refer the honourable lady to my previous question about defining the sex of people who have had hysterectomies.
“And please don’t say formaldehyde again.”
Clearly I didn’t need to. 🙂
““Transgender” is extremely unpopular irl with voters”
But for most of the public, the debate isn’t gender, but about freedom. What people don’t like is all the petty hitlers telling other people what they’re allowed to do and what they’re allowed to say and how they’re allowed to live their lives. When transgender activists argued for being left alone to live as they choose so long as they weren’t harming anyone, ordinary people were sympathetic. When transgender activists turned into petty hitlers themselves, and started policing what other people were allowed to do and say, they became unpopular.
Nobody really cares about transgender rights but the transgender themselves. What people in general care about is freedom generally. Freedom to smoke, to drink, to eat foods high in salt and sugar and fat, to run gun clubs, to express unpopular opinions on the internet, and so on. It’s the same principle by which we allowed women to wear trousers, cut their hair short, and get a job as the managing director.
‘Tradition’ isn’t even an excuse. ‘Because it makes us uncomfortable’ leads on to woke snowflake ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ’emotional harm’ being used to ban speech and behaviour they don’t like. `Because we’re right and they’re wrong’ is used by both sides equally. There are authoritarians on both sides of the aisle, and they’re identical in their methods and principles – they only differ in the particular choice of rules they’re trying to impose on other people. Whether it’s the trans-activists or the toilet police, you’re both the same.
“The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
Writing as a very recently retired health care professional, I can only quote Colin Wright on the biological definition of the sex binary:
“In biology, the definition of male and female has never been arbitrary or culturally relative. It is grounded in the concept of anisogamy: the existence of two distinct types of gametes—sperm and ova. This fundamental reproductive asymmetry defines the two sexes across all sexually reproducing anisogamous species. An individual that has the function to produce small, motile gametes (sperm) is male; one that has the function to produce large, immobile gametes (ova) is female. This is not a social construct or a philosophical preference—it is a basic principle of evolutionary biology, established long before today’s cultural debates.”
The differences in behaviour, expression, dress, social norms, sexual desire or thinking isn’t the basis of a biological definition of sex. There is no third gamete (or 72nd). Which isn’t to denigrate or be biased against people’s differences, but to acknowledge reality – which has never been a social construct.
It’s saddening that a group of health care professionals can be so profoundly ignorant.
@britinkiwi – ” the definition of male and female..It is grounded in the concept of anisogamy: the existence of two distinct types of gametes—sperm and ova”
So what is this definition?
My popular opinion is that men shouldn’t be around my wife or daughter when they’re naked in the girls’ changing room.
Bugger me, it’s the rotting corpse of Mary “just think of the children” Whitehouse, brought back to life! It’s an Easter Miracle!
Seriously, how exactly do you think this legislation relates to your fevered fantasies about the women in your life?
I’m fine with opinions, it’s dishonesty that annoys me. I think I’m on the money about your concern troll style, but I’ve been wrong before.
And will be again. Your leap to accusations of dishonesty really reflects the honesty of your own arguments. Maybe you should speak to your wife and daughter rather than making up stories about them – there’s a reasonable chance they’ve experienced sexual harassment or worse, and it won’t have been from someone who dressed up as a woman to get into their private space. Hell, there’s a higher chance it will have been a local politician or church member.
But of course you know that – and you know that opinion polls that rely on fear-mongering are mainly designed to appeal to the sort of pearl clutching hypocrites who believe you can pray away the gay and immigrants stole their jobs. It’s great for getting a minority voting group out when most people don’t trust politicians as far as they could throw them, but that’s about it.
Nice try with the centrist bit BTW. Wrong again!
Charles, ffs
@Charles – “An individual that has the function to produce small, motile gametes (sperm) is male; one that has the function to produce large, immobile gametes (ova) is female.”
If you have testes you are ……..male or if you have ovaries you are…..female. If you’ve lost them/had them lopped off it doesn’t change the definition – you are still that sex.
Check Jerry Coyne, Colin Wright (or even Richard Dawkins) blogs for more from a biological science perspective.
“An individual that has the function to produce small, motile gametes (sperm) is male; one that has the function to produce large, immobile gametes (ova) is female.”
Great. So what is the sex of infertile people who are not able to produce either?
This is exactly what I was saying above. Gamete size is only one of hundreds of mutually-correlated characteristics, and like all of them has exceptions. Any ‘biologist’ who is not aware that some individual organisms are infertile is not to be taken seriously.
What I think he is referring to is how biologists define which sex is which in other species, where the characteristics associated with each statistical cluster is different to humans. (In many species, the female is bigger than the male, for example. In sea horses the males give birth. In birds, the males have similar ZZ chromosomes and females have different ZW chromosomes, thus the other way round from mammals. And so on.) There isn’t generally any exact correspondence, so the assignment of male/female labels to clusters is arbitrary, and they picked gamete size as a convenient cross-species convention, which is therefore culturally relative, (and which has exceptions too since it doesn’t apply to isogamous species). Any real biologist would know this.
NiV – But for most of the public, the debate isn’t gender, but about freedom. What people don’t like is all the petty hitlers telling other people what they’re allowed to do and what they’re allowed to say and how they’re allowed to live their lives.
No, they love that shit (see COVID). This is a more visceral reaction, which really went nuclear when people started to realise the LGBTQ were coming for their kids. People wil politely tolerate a lot of strangeness in others, but when they see a spate of Emilies getting their tits cut off and schools handing out “binders” to girls, they get concerned. And when they see a drag queen in demonic makeup reading to tots, they get annoyed. When they see a girl lose to a boy in the girl’s sports thingy, they know that’s unfair.
AndyT – Bugger me, it’s the rotting corpse of Mary “just think of the children” Whitehouse, brought back to life! It’s an Easter Miracle!
Seriously, how exactly do you think this legislation relates to your fevered fantasies about the women in your life?
This is what I mean by your dishonesty: bad faith arguments. In one paragraph, you’re concern trolling about the purely imaginary toilet police and the equally phantasmagorical commode kerfuffles you hypothesise might happen as a result of the Supreme Court’s startling finding that woman means woman. In the next, “Cor Blimey wot are you Mary Whitehouse or sumfing lol” in response to a real world scenario that can actually happen. (See: the NHS Fife court case)
Jon Stewart can do this, you’re not very good.
But of course you know that – and you know that opinion polls that rely on fear-mongering are mainly designed to appeal to the sort of pearl clutching hypocrites who believe you can pray away the gay and immigrants stole their jobs.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Nice try with the centrist bit BTW. Wrong again!
Ze self awareness, it burns!
@NiV – There are two – count ’em – two gamete sizes. As biologists define sex in animals – including humans, plants etc (isogamous species is a red herring, surely? Unless you’re analogous with a bacterium, fungi or algae?).
Intersex people possess rare developmental conditions that result in ambiguous genitalia, affecting only 0.018 percent of all births. Some cannot produce sperm or ova. How does this suddenly create more sexes?
The reality is that the vast majority of humans are easily classifiable as either male or female. The existence of rare intersex conditions for some does not suddenly call everyone’s sex into question in the same way that variance in height, weight, size, or hair colour do not.
And male sea horses? They have a brood pouch into which the female deposits her eggs during mating for maturation. She still produces eggs, and he still produces sperm.
“This is a more visceral reaction, which really went nuclear when people started to realise the LGBTQ were coming for their kids.”
Generally speaking, the accepted medical convention is that parents give informed consent on behalf of their children while they are underage. My view is it should be a very high bar before you mess with that.
But part of the issue is that some parents are giving consent for their children to transition, and then other people who are not the parents are outraged that this should be allowed, and seeking to overrule them. “Coming for their kids” as you put it. What then?
This is what I mean by your dishonesty: bad faith arguments. In one paragraph, you’re concern trolling about the purely imaginary toilet police
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I’m accusing people like you of wanting to police the usage of toilets and other spaces. Something that you’ve explicitly confirmed by going on about your wife naked in the changing rooms. I’m not the one clutching at pearls here, am I, Mary?
And funnily enough, you can be fully right wing and not believe all the Christian Right nonsense designed to appeal to midwits and Mumsnet.
Because some parents are narcissistic, Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, right on twats (ala Brian Ghey’s mother Esther) who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions that fuck up their kids.
In much the same way that social services were so keen to remove lots of kids from Satanists in the 90s.
“How does this suddenly create more sexes?”
Because that’s your definition! “An individual that has the function to produce small, motile gametes (sperm) is male; one that has the function to produce large, immobile gametes (ova) is female.” An individual not able to do either is therefore neither.
Anyone past menopause is no longer a female, by your definition, and that’s lots of them!
This is how it always goes. A definition is offered. The exceptions are pointed out. The definition changes to something else. Round and round.
“Anyone past menopause is no longer a female, by your definition, and that’s lots of them!”
FFS. This is idiot level discourse, which you bloody well know, you’re not a cretin.
the nut jobs who want to check other people’s genitals
Projection, projection, projection. The only ‘nut jobs’ in this debate are the hairy shouldered pervs in frocks trying to get in the ladies’ lavs and their supporters.
The sexes are statistical clusters that overlap.
Hilarious. It’s the way you tell ’em.
The Beach Boys song “California Humans with a certain set of over-lapping characteristics” was renamed to appease the Religious Right
Andy – You need to work on your reading comprehension. I’m accusing people like you of wanting to police the usage of toilets and other spaces. Something that you’ve explicitly confirmed by going on about your wife naked in the changing rooms. I’m not the one clutching at pearls here, am I, Mary?
Let me break it down for you again:
* Men in the ladies’ = real shit
* Your theories about the crapper constabulary = silly shit
You eject word clouds to try to give the impression this is a desperately complicated issue and you’re the White Man who’s dispassionately rational about it all but it’s not convincing.
Because as you mentioned, I’m old and can remember the antebellum period of 2009 when this wasn’t a thing.
And funnily enough, you can be fully right wing and not believe all the Christian Right nonsense designed to appeal to midwits and Mumsnet.
You’re right wing, but you love trannies and immigration and hate Donald Trump.
Sure thing, Rishi.
Btw I don’t like the Christian Right either. There shouldn’t be a Christian Right or Left, just Christians.
St Peter had a strong Right, but I’m sure he was equally handy southpaw
You’re right wing, but you love trannies and immigration and hate Donald Trump.
I believe in personal responsibility and people’s rights to get on with their lives without interference. That includes telling people to fuck off when they start making up moral panics and false enemies. If I believe in freedom of speech (not the pretend bullshit Musk goes on about), then yes, I’m quite happy for people to express their sexuality, religion, taste in music or anything else however the fuck they like.
And I think Trump is a senile old fart who’s going to consign the Republicans to the same fate as the Conservatives here… and the people who continue to support him are either stupid or corrupt.
The capture of right wing parties by special interest groups has been the disaster story of this century (and I include Reform in that list). We’ve replaced sound economic theory and social conservatism with bullshit, corruption and hysteria. If you really think what Trump and his supporters are doing is the definition of “right wing”, you need to give your head a wobble.
This is why transgender is unacceptable to the majority of people:
Gender dysphoria diagnoses among children in England rise fiftyfold over 10 years
50 x in a decade isn’t a diagnosis, it’s an epidemic.
The team also looked at the prevalence of anxiety, depression and self-harm in children and young people with gender dysphoria, finding they were on a par with, or even exceeded, levels for children and young people diagnosed with autism or eating disorders – populations known to have high levels of these problems.
Mentally ill people are mentally ill.
@ AndyT
people’s rights to get on with their lives without interference – I assume that covers women and girls right not to have a mentalist male in a frock in their toilet or changing room?
“I assume that covers women and girls right not to have a mentalist male in a frock in their toilet or changing room?”
It’s not their changing room. It belongs to the property owner.
I assume that covers women and girls right not to have a mentalist male in a frock in their toilet or changing room?
This is the sort of hysterical bollocks I’d expect from Mumsnet. No-one – male, female, trans, Martian – has the ‘right’ to inappropriate or antisocial behaviour in public spaces. They never did, and the equality laws never gave them that right. This is the same brand of irrational fear we got in the 70’s about foreigners attacking our women, and the gays infecting our children.
Arbitrarily demonising a minority to feed the fear is nothing to do with making people safer, it’s all about distracting them and grabbing their votes. “We’ll protect you from the trans menace” is just embarrassing. Why are you falling for it?
I’m laughing at Steve quickly changing the subject away from Trump. 100 days to become the least popular President in history. Winning bigly – so right wing!
Andy – The capture of right wing parties by special interest groups has been the disaster story of this century (and I include Reform in that list). We’ve replaced sound economic theory and social conservatism with bullshit, corruption and hysteria. If you really think what Trump and his supporters are doing is the definition of “right wing”, you need to give your head a wobble.
Conservatives can always go back to their traditional approach of faggotry and failure, there’s just not a market for it among actual voters.
If there was, little Rishi would still be prime minister.
I’m laughing at Steve quickly changing the subject away from Trump. 100 days to become the least popular President in history. Winning bigly – so right wing!
But you’re not laughing, you’re coping, seething and dilating.
This is the same brand of irrational fear we got in the 70’s about foreigners attacking our women, and the gays infecting our children.
50 x increase in child “transgender” in just 10 years is not an “irrational fear”. You claim to be rational, yet have great difficulty with the idea that men aren’t women.
By the way, it turned out the foreigners were attacking our women and children. They still are, courtesy of the British government.
@ AndyT
This is the same brand of irrational fear we got in the 70’s about foreigners attacking our women, and the gays infecting our children. is a piss poor example.
As Steve points out, we’ve got rapey Pakistani’s who have made victims of 100,000s girls/women over maybe 50+ years.
Plus the children and dogs that magically got Monkeypox when shacked up with the gayists.
50 x increase in child “transgender” in just 10 years is not an “irrational fear”
Well yes it is, because it’s bullshit. I’ve got family working in primary education and this number is a nonsense, the same way midwits are going around claiming autism never existed before 2000 and is now spiralling out of control. Get a grip.
Before the 80’s the number of people who identified as gay was mysteriously zero…. when some tolerance and understanding emerged (and we stopped making it illegal), the figure ballooned by orders of magnitude. And here’s the thing – it didn’t hurt the children, and it didn’t end society. Yet we had people like you, Mary, telling us that the gays were coming for our kids. It was ignorant then, and it’s ignorant now.
But even if we accept your weird paranoia and constant moving of goalposts, WFT is the equality act going to do to stop all the kids turning trans? If we accept that this is a mental illness that must be eradicated, how do you think you’re helping these people get the treatment that you claim they need? Your own arguments are completely contradictory. It’s nearly at the level of third world countries calling in witch doctors to cure illness. “If we ban the trans menace, we’ll all be safe!”… have you heard yourself speak?
Hiding behind “this is right wing thinking” is laughable. Parroting idiot talking points is not even thinking, never mind right wing.
Andy – I’ve got family working in primary education and this number is a nonsense
But no wife or children of your own, right?
Before the 80’s the number of people who identified as gay was mysteriously zero…. when some tolerance and understanding emerged (and we stopped making it illegal), the figure ballooned by orders of magnitude
Bullshit.
Yet we had people like you, Mary, telling us that the gays were coming for our kids. It was ignorant then, and it’s ignorant now.
Yes, it’s amazing how anybody would think that: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/nbc-out-proud/re-coming-children-chant-nyc-drag-march-elicits-outrage-activists-say-rcna91341
Oh wait, they *boast* about it? Hahaha, stupid uptight straights, amirite?
But even if we accept your weird paranoia and constant moving of goalposts,
But that’s all you have to offer, weird paranoia about imaginary toilet police, constant topic-changing and irrelevant bullshit when your arguments are shot down, hand waving away information about how children and women suffer from this stuff, and clouds of peevish words designed to give the impression that it’s all very complicated but, AKSHUALLY, letting perverts into the women’s toilets is a conservative value.
Who are you trying to convince?
If we accept that this is a mental illness that must be eradicated, how do you think you’re helping these people get the treatment that you claim they need?
First, do no harm. That rules out tranny surgeries, which do only harm.
Second, reopen the residential mental hospitals. People like me shouldn’t be allowed to walk the streets, but care in the community innit?
It’s nearly at the level of third world countries calling in witch doctors to cure illness. “If we ban the trans menace, we’ll all be safe!”… have you heard yourself speak?
Are there any African witch doctors who slice off the healthy breasts of mentally ill young women? Do they ply children with cross-sex hormones designed to chemically castrate paedophiles?
No?!? Then you owe our noble African brothers an apology, don’t you?
Agent Smith – and some horrible, shocking cases when they’re allowed to adopt children.
One of the things that makes transgender different to the gay rights template is that the gays drove out the pedos from their ranks in the 70’s. Or at least made them shut up. PIE was at one point in good standing amongst the bummers, until they purged them.
But “transgender” as a movement is deeply intertwined with all manner of dangerous comorbid sexual fetishes. It’s the Q part of the LGBTQ. Most of these people are “into stuff”, and when you find out what that stuff is, it explains why the Nazis closed down the world’s first tranny clinic and burned their books.
But no wife or children of your own, right?
Your record of being wrong is unbroken.
Oh wait, they *boast* about it? Hahaha, stupid uptight straights, amirite?
You do know they’re making fun of you? How triggering.
Hardly worth engaging with the rest of your post, which is mainly talking points imported wholesale from the Christian Right and absolutely nothing to do with the Equal Rights act. It’s pure “just think of the children” drivel.
Though let’s just pause for a moment to admire the hubris of an armchair warrior who leapt into a thread about the British Medical Association to tell us all that he knows better than an army of Doctors what is best for trans people. Truly making being wrong a superpower.
This isn’t the “medical profession”, it’s a bunch of junior doctors who were shit at doctoring so decided being on committees was an easier way of making a living. Real doctors are up in arms at the ludicrous misrepresentation of medical and scientific thinking that they represent.
@britinkiwi – “If you’ve lost them/had them lopped off it doesn’t change the definition – you are still that sex”
That means your definition is a social one rather than a biological one. A biological definition of sex which cannot be changed would specify a biological property that could not change either.
The arguments about this are getting ridiculous.
As a mathematician, I agree that sex is not binary since there are exceptions.
The attempt to define biological sex by production of gametes fails because
1) This stops before people die
2) Some people are infertile from birth.
OK, let’s go with genes: XX=female, XY=male.
Objections:
1) Some people (with genetic defects) are X, XXX, XXY,XYY ( about 1 in 500 live births) or even rarer possibilities. In practice these individuals are mostly developmentally “male” or “female”, but the number of these (0.2%>0) is enough to say that the genetic definition is not quite universally applicable.
2) Intersex individuals: these arise
(i) because of unusual sex chromosome configurations (as above)
(ii) mosaicisation – here different cells in their body have different sex-chromosome configurations, or
(iii) some people, despite having a standard sex gene configuration develop differently because of the presence or absence of sex hormones while a foetus (or possibly during puberty).
These exceptions are edge cases. So maybe for legal purposes they are good.
IANAL.
Now what, in practice, is at issue?
Here’s a suggestion: there’s a good reason for separating the sexes in certain circumstances.
1) In particular where they may be particularly vulnerable to sexual predation/assault.
2) In those sports where the typical male body type/development advantages them.
The second issue is not addressed by testosterone tests post puberty since developmental differences start in the womb and really should not be a matter for argument. Some poor buggers are going to miss out but that’s just life.
The first issue is the most contentious.
It’s Steve’s “cocks in dresses” issue and it’s bloody important.
The vast majority of rape is perpetrated by adult males (what a surprise). The vast majority of “transgender” prison inmates are in prison for sexual assault or other crimes of violence.
A significant number of male to female transgender individuals have autogynephilia-they are sexually aroused by imagining themselves to be female. How much more arousing would it be for them to imagine that in a “female only” setting?
This is why it’s a real issue and, like most real issues, definitions are tricky.
A mathematician who leaves out numbers? I’m bored, so let’s Google that for you…
The vast majority of “transgender” prison inmates are in prison for sexual assault or other crimes of violence.
There are just short of thirteen thousand people in prison for sexual assault at the moment. The most recent count for trans identifying prisoners who’ve committed sexual assault is.. 79. .. or barely above 0.5%.
As a mathematician you’ll appreciate that the number of sexual assaults reported against the church of England (3,300) is over forty times bigger than that. In fact the number of MPs accused of sexual misconduct in the last decade is bigger than that.
You’ll also appreciate (as a mathematician) that “some politicians have been arrested for rape” does not mean “all politicians are rapists” – yet strangely you commit this equivalency error. There are more dentists in prison for sexual assault than trans people…. where are the cries of outrage???
My lazy Googling doesn’t show up accurate figures for physical assaults against trans people, but it appears to be somewhere around two or three hundred a year. Imagine what will happen when we insist ‘cocks in dresses’ share the men’s room with angry little souls like Steve… As a mathematician, do you think that number will go up or go down?
So… remind us again how much we must just think of the children? As a mathematician, are we sufficiently hysterical yet?
I know (I really know) I shouldn’t rise to this but AndyT has just committed the prosecutor’s fallacy (sort of in reverse) but never mind. I said what I meant.
Ah well.
Now what, in practice, is at issue?
Here’s a suggestion: there’s a good reason for separating the sexes in certain circumstances.
1) In particular where they may be particularly vulnerable to sexual predation/assault.
2) In those sports where the typical male body type/development advantages them.
Agreed! Already done.
1) We make sexual predation/assault illegal. You can do that without legislating against people who just want to pee.
The most likely locations for rape are the victim’s home (37%), the perpetrator’s home (26%), and public spaces like parks, car parks, on the street (9%). Sexual harassment is most common in public areas, in bars and clubs, and on public transport.
2) That’s already allowed for. Equality Act (2010) section 195, 1-4.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/195
The legislation also permits things like separate services based on sex and gender reassignment status so long as it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. Equality Act (2010) Schedule 3 paragraph 28. ‘Legitimate aims’ can’t themselves be discriminatory, they’re things like business goals and health and safety.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/3/paragraph/28
It’s generally accepted that some people are uncomfortable undressing in front of some/all other people, you’ll lose customers if you try to make them (so a legitimate business aim), and you can offer separate facilities to allow for that. However, you cannot do that for some of the people (e.g. women) and not others (e.g. the transgender). You have to provide somewhere for everyone to change that they’re comfortable with, or not at all. You also have the issue that according to one survey I’ve seen about 20% of men and 40% of women feel uncomfortable changing in front of people of the same sex, so if you’re going to use that as your reason, what about them?
The best answer, obviously, is to provide individual toilets/changing cubicles. They don’t have sex-separated toilets on trains, for example. It’s not complicated.
If that’s demonstrably disproportionate or impractical (e.g. if it’s expensive and you have no money) then you may be able to get away with some shared areas for people who don’t care and a few individual toilet/changing areas for the smaller number who do. Or maybe four equally-nice changing rooms for each combination of men/women and care/don’t-care. Or maybe you will talk to your customers/staff and negotiate a voluntary agreement.
The law doesn’t specify how you solve it. That’s down to the property owner, based on individual circumstances. But it’s not a hard problem to solve. Families manage to share a bathroom without needing to fight it out in court. The general principle used to deal with this in English law is “my gaff, my rules”. But the Equality Act says you can’t offer a worse service to people on the basis of a protected characteristic without a damn good reason.
The law already made allowance for the problem – it’s just that people don’t know the law.