Believing in Biological Sex - a Sacking Offence

And the respect for women. Where is that? It hurts women every day when men are included in the definition of women. So far this has resulted in rape, sexual assault, the loss of womens privacy and dignity, girls loosing scholarships in sport, I could go on. It also hurts people when they are made to lie.

How is it lying to respect the. term someone wants to be referred to as? Would you call someone a name they didn't want to use? Why is it hurting women to use the pronoun someone prefers. There are a number of young people now who choose "they" is that wrong?

Compelled speech and compelled lying is awful. The man referred to in mayas tweet uses they. It is deeply damaging to women to not be able to say that the person using the term cunt to address women is a man. Blurring womens boundaries and language when describing mens abusive behaviour is cruel.

All I can say is that the young people `I meet have a much more open attitude than some on GN and I was in a workshop recently when we were asked what pronoun we preferred to be called. Some of the people I would have called "she" actually wanted "they". There seems to be a misconception here that it is all about men wanting to be women, it isn't.It is simply accepting that people have preferences and respecting those choices.

There seems to be some deliberate misreporting on this case.

It is not true in the account I read that she was behaving badly to people at work.
She forgot a certain person referred to themselves a female. This person has a beard and dresses as a man.
She did this in a personal tweet.

The most important part of this though is that our speech is being made illegal.
Why should the right of a self ID person trump the right of a woman to call a person by their sex...not their gender?
Also why are the rights of some now more equal than others?
This is a dangerous law change for it's implications.

Also this is not really a transgender issue....it is much bigger than this.
Sex and gender are not the same thing.

I am deeply concerned where this gender situation is taking us. We need, as biological women, to decide how many rights we give away, if any. But no one is asking. Instead, as kind and reasonable people,we wondering about not causing offence by misgendering or dead naming.

And quietly, stealthily, our rights and expectations of privacy and dignity are being eroded.
I discovered recently that Marks and Spencer had opened up the female changing room criteria to anyone who considered themselves to be female. And while most men, being normal, compassionate, respectful human beings wouldn't be seen dead in the female changing room, others will. Those boundaries have become blurred. Once social convention kept men out, now we are inviting them in. So there we are-you are trying on clothes or your young daughter or granddaughter is being measured for a bra and in the next cubicle is a transwoman who is doing the same or may be someone wishing to photograph or get some thrill being a curtain away form women and girls undressing. How do you tell the difference? Who will police it. Will the young assistant at the door challenge the bearded man taking his chances or will M+S policy ask staff not to question anyone.

In a sense, the changing room/loo thing sounds trivial. But the wider issue threatens to change the life of over half the population. Our very dignity, privacy and safety are being handed to others without question in the name of ideology. This means that the less than 1% of the population who identify as trans will be able to access the spaces of over 50% of the population without us ever saying “hold on a minute, can we talk about this?” And along side the genuine transgender individuals, who is to say who else may take advantage

All this before the GRA reform has been debated. Will there be a debate at all or will those flimsy boundaries become none existent?Where is the women's voices in all this. Is this what we want. If it is, that's fine, but no one asked me

I take it that in the context of the newspaper article "biological sex" means either pronounced and unambiguous male or female genitalia from soon after conception to death .

To believe in such a state of affairs without due regard to the evidence makes such a person unfit to teach science or to be a minister of religion.

However such a belief makes little difference to terms of employment if the believer is doing work unrelated to personnel.

According to the Green party, women are now 'non-male' or 'non-men'. Just as we are getting rid of terms like 'lady doctor' or 'manageress', we get this nonsense.

I am not a non-man. I am a woman, and whilst I have every sympathy with an adult who wishes to transition from one gender to another, I see no reason to de-gender/unsex 50% of the population in order to protect the sensibilities of a small number of people.

I also object strongly to men being able to Self-ID as female as and when it suits them. It is my understanding that the case we are discussing involved someone who wore a beard, routinely dressed in a shirt and tie, and would be assumed to be male by anyone who did not know which gender was being assumed on any given day. Up to them, of course, but it seems very like cherry-picking to me. I have seen a photo, but as I can't be 100% certain that it is of the person in question, I won't share it. The principle still stands, though.

Yes petunia my thoughts too.
I think I heard of a man who identified as a woman being sent to a woman’s prison where he assaulted (raped ?) some inmates.
I can’t google well. Not savvy enough yet.
This is frightening.

That's lovely trisher I am very happy for you. That doesnt really answer my question about the councillor in the maya case does it. How as women are we to describe the abusive behaviour of men if we cant refer to sex.

PS I wrote before I read Petunia's informative earlier post
Petunia's takes the discussion to the larger level of the difference between what 'sex' means and what 'gender' means.

While toilets and changing rooms are difficult issues it makes no difference to many work skills which biological sex a person is or claims to be.

Looking to the future there has to be an end to sexual aggression, ( which mostly pertains to males) an end to gender roles in social life including work environments, and there has to be an end to prudery.

It was Karen white, quaintirene, placed in a woman's prison for 3 months despite being on remand for charges of rape and sexual assault oh and being a convicted paedophile. In those 3 months karen white assaulted 2 inmates. But let's be kind and call karen she.

Thanks, Galaxy
Yes, let’s.

I agree with all petunia has said. It is deeply worrying that women and girls are losing their safe spaces away from possible predatory men or boys. I find the idea of mixed gender toilets in schools just awful. A shy 12 year old girl who is coming to terms with her periods needs a safe space away from boys.

Far north I keep meaning to say thankyou to you for the information you post on this forum. It is so helpful for people to see the issues on this topic. You are one of the many brave women who are speaking up.

It seems to me that in most cases a person is born with either male or female genes and organs. There are some people who have a mixture of both but this is relatively rare. So if a person is born physically male but feels mentally they are female then surely the issue is in their brain? I feel more should be done to investigate and understand the disconnection between brain and body.

Petunia Every cell in body carries the XX or XY chromosome and is impossible to change. Nope. You are wrong. Soooooo much evidence out there disproves your opinion.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-mixed-sex-biology/

www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/science/mosaicism-dna-genome-cancer.html

trisher
I think refusing to use a person's preferred pronoun is just as intolerant as refusing to recognise their race or religion. Is it really feminist to insist you are right and others choices are unimportant? I don't think so. Feminism has always been about finding other ways to do things that are not patriachal. And refusing to recognise other people's differences is always what the patriachy has done.

Yes! 100% this Trisher.

Trisher & Galaxy. My daughter is mixed race and has skin much darker than me (I'm white). When she started school in the USA, they used the mothers racial identity to identify the child. Therefore my child, to all intents and purposes an African American child, was officially white. The system dictated to her what she was and was clearly and visibly wrong.

Around 2% of the population do not medically fit the criteria some on here are pronouncing as biological fact (therefore NOT a fact). If you add to this, those that are trans to some degree (around 1% or slightly less), that makes about (sorry to be so vague, I'm checking different online sources) 3% of people who do not fit into nice neat sex/gender categories. In world-wide population, that would be about two hundred and forty million people that don't fit the biological sex/gender FACTS. In the UK that would be about two million people. Are you denying A) That they exist or B) That they are not important because they're a minority?

Gender is SUCH a fixed, concrete part of most cultures. It is immutable as far as a lot of people are concerned, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.

I have no issue with anyone wanting to change their own pronouns. I have no issue with anyone changing their gender on their passport or driving licence. I have no issue with gender neutral toilets, as long as there are separate cubicles. We share bathrooms in private houses. Disabled people share by their physical ability, not their gender. Yes, M&S may allow people to use their changing rooms based on their own gender identification. But M&S changing rooms have lockable doors. HOW are you at risk?

I'm referring back to old US sources now, but when the 'trans/gender/toilet' battle was raging in the US, the right-wing argument was that little girls weren't safe from attack using toilets with big hairy trans 'women'. (Can you provide evidence of your claim, Galaxy So far this has resulted in rape, sexual assault? ) Despite there NEVER having been a report of any such event, it was what was posited by the right-wing MSM.

I can only give you statistics for uk I am afraid. The times did an investigation on sexual assaults in changing rooms, they showed that mixed sex changing rooms were much more dangerous for women. In 2017 - 2018, 120 assaults took place in mixed sex facilities compared to 14 in single sex facilities.
I cant believe you think sharing a bathroom with your family is the same as sharing with strangers. Words fail me.
I am not sure why you think intersex is anything to do with being trans , particularly when the intersex community has begged to be kept out of the trans debate.
At what point do you think transwomen change sex, you surely dont believe that actually happens. Why do transwomen need to be monitored for prostate cancer if that is the case.
I am very happy that you are comfortable sharing facilities with men, you cant give consent for the women who arent comfortable. Women who have been assaulted and abused but hey what do their feelings matter.
In addition to the statistics above on mixed sex changing I have already mentioned karen white, in addition there was the case in morrisons kirkcaldy in Feb this year. It was a very distressing case involving the assault of a 1o year in the public toilet by a man claiming to be a women. What number of assaults on women do you think is acceptable? Why do you think we currently segregate facilities where women are naked and vulnerable.

Thank you for your succinct posts, Petunia. They reflect eloquently what I think on this topic. By the way, did you know that in at least one M&S store anyone may use the women’s fitting rooms but only men are allowed into the male fitting rooms. They have a notice outside the gents telling women not to enter.

Gagajo intersex and trans are two very things and you are muddying the waters by trying to conflate the two. The intersex community is very angry with people like you who are using them to try to prove an unprovable point about trans - that people can change sex.

two very *different things

I am not sure why you think intersex is anything to do with being trans , particularly when the intersex community has begged to be kept out of the trans debate.

MY POINT was that there are a range of people with gender/sex related life experiences. Sex and gender are NOT the fixed immutable thing our cultures tries to pretend they are. So for some people, their sex/gender dichotomy is in their genitalia. For some, it is in their chromosomes which are NOT necessarily fixed as you stated Galaxy, as proven by the links I provided. For some, it is the biology of their brain. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681519/
If you can't see that these issues are linked, you are being deliberately obtuse.

At what point do you think transwomen change sex, you surely dont believe that actually happens. Why do transwomen need to be monitored for prostate cancer if that is the case.

Rolls eyes. My gender isn't located in my vagina. It is located in my brain. For someone that has both top and bottom surgery they would retain some of their original biological features (prostate, ovaries possibly). If you see gender as directly related to the physical body, then maybe you would think I am not a real woman, given that I've had all reproductive tissue removed, in an attempt to avoid more cancer. Personally, I feel like a woman. But maybe that isn't enough for you?

Gender is NOT related to genitalia. If it were, you would be slipping back down the slippery slope towards seeing those with variants of genitalia as not normal. Given that the percentage of people with this is around 2%, it seems fairly normal to me.

Gender is not a binary opposite. Neither is sex. As long as society continues to try to force this system, their will be fractures along the fault lines. You can't deny away biology and HUGE amounts of evidence.

I am very happy you believe you have a gendered brain however in terms of facilities we segregate by sex so not sure what gender has to do with it. I dont feel like a woman ( and no one has ever been able to explain to me what that means) so where should I go if we are now segregating facilities by gender. How do you propose segregating by gender would even work? What does a woman's brain involve gagjo?

You sum this difficult dilemma up very well Petunia. Funnily enough, we were discussing this at Christmas, and I have to admit to be angered by the intolerance, rigidity, complete failure to appreciate any other opinions, shown by the trans community and their vociferous followers. I care not a jot for someone's gender, sexual tastes ( as long as legal), or how they care to dress, but I absolutely will not accept that a trans woman knows how a 'woman' feels ( see how difficult it is, I don't even know how to describe someone who was born and remained a woman). I do not know how a trans woman feels, I do not know what difficulties they have gone through to get where they are now, and I will not offend said person by pretending to do so, thus I was very angry when Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour was dragged into a nasty complaint because she suggested that Kaitlin Jenner ( formerly Bruce) could not know how menopause felt. Jenner could wish all they like, have all the surgery they like, but they do not have periods,do not go through the menopause. A bit of reality is needed I think.

Gagajo, can you provide the exact link, please, which shows that someone’s sex chromosomes changed from XX to XY or vice verse? I can’t see that in the links you’ve given so far.

Feminism has always been about finding other ways to do things that are not patriachal.

It doesn't come much more patriarchal than referring to women as 'non-men' or 'non-male'.

The default has been male for so long, in language (very important, as language defines concepts) and in society. As I said upthread, we are moving away from 'lady doctor' (as opposed to just a doctor') or 'manageress' (rather different in connotation from 'manager') only to find that out of some strange sensitivity to a minority of men who want to self-ID as female we are subsumed into a category of 'non-men'. Men can be men in their own right, but women (cis or trans) are defined as what they are not. If that is not patriarchal, I really don't know what is.