Amnesty International say - 'no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’'

Can I add two things to this debate.

I qualified as a midwife in 1982. Never once in my entire career did I assign any baby male or female. The sex of the infant was observed and recorded on medical notes and birth notifications.

Also,the midwives at my place of work were encouraged to allow the mother and partner to discover the sex of the baby if they did not already know. We passed the baby to the mother and let her see for herself. Incredibly, 100% of parents got it right!

Biology is the very core of our existence. We are not able to change our biological sex. It is impossible. Changes to the body are merely superficial and gender becomes a costume, a performance even.

I'm with JK Rowling on this one. And Keira Bell

Oh and for the record, I don't hate transgender individuals, I don't wish them harm, I don't want to kill them. But equally, I want to see women and particularly children, safe and unharmed by institutions who have embraced the woke agenda.

GillT57

I find it distressing that there is only one allowable opinion on the subject of trans/gender dysmorphia, and if it wasn't so frightening ( rape threats etc) it would be funny. To have people so angry about what are often perceived insults about trans individuals that they threaten sexual violence is beyond irony. I read an interesting thread on Mumsnet about the recent case; several people pointed out that you cannot have a tattoo until you are 18, but are somehow deemed capable of making a decision with lifelong implications, and one cited a case of a friend, mentally capable, intelligent 25 year old who was told she could not be sterilised until she was 30 in case she changed her mind It was also pointed out that a teenager has no idea of the lifelong implications of the process of puberty blocking drugs and then surgery; in all cases the individual will be sterile and possibly unable to have an orgasm. Is any teenager really capable of making that decision? I too shall no longer be supporting Amnesty International as I always thought they were a voice for political prisoners, not supporters of those who wish to silence people who do not bow down to the new orthodoxy.

I thought I would make use of the quote facility to highlight your really excellent comment Gill...needless to say I agree with all of it.

Sparklefizz Info about Viking warrior woman www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-reaffirm-famed-ancient-viking-warrior-was-biologically-female-180971541/
And evidence about "Amazonian warrior" allthatsinteresting.com/amazon-woman-warrior
The limitations put upon women today are the product of society and nothing to do with what their physical abilities could be

Of course male and female are not competing against each other in marathons and of course there are differences between the extremes of achievement. But factor into your views that women have been actively involved in marathon running for less than 60 years (Google Katherine Switzer if you want to know more), that the women's marathon only became an accepted Olympic event in 1984 and then consider how much they have achieved and what they may achieve as time goes on. The first mens marathon was 1896.

The idea that children can give informed consent to puberty blockers or surgery is just wrong.
Women seeking sterilisation are often asked to wait several months to avoid making irreversible decisions.
Men seeking a vasectomy similarly often asked to wait, especially if the request comes either during their partners pregnancy, or soon after.
Far North, thanks for the statistics on marathons. I do not want women to be disadvantaged by competing against biological males.

trisher
Percentage of participants finishing marathons in under 4 hours : females 27% males 65%
That is a significant difference.

Percentage of participants finishing marathons in under 3 hours : females 1% males 4%
Even more significant with males four times more likely than females to achieve those times.

I noticed, also, that in the statistics you linked higher percentages of the female participants are in the younger age groups, while the males have higher percentages in the older age groups.
Comparing females and males of more similar ages would no doubt show even greater differences in achievement.

I believe that in marathons, in any case, females and males are not competing against each other as there are separate 1st, 2nd & 3rd awards for each sex.

Behaving as you want and outwith gendered stereotypes is fine - it doesn't alter your sexed biology.

Galaxy

Are you saying we remove sex as a protected characteristic from the equality act astral?

What?

I'm not sure where that came from

I just asked a couple of questions

Thank you to those who replied, it's an interesting and as yet poorly understood topic

Alexa

Is it true there are humans who have equal amounts of male and female hormones?

This would not surprise me.

In any case I believe every person should be at liberty to behave 'masculine' or 'feminine' whenever and whatever they choose to do so. As long as they are not harming others by their behaviour.

Whichever gendered behaviour my friends choose is none of my business.

It's all a concept of a property owning society anyway. Most historians now think when we were nomadic and there was nothing to be inherited women had much more autonomy and behaved as they wanted. I would assume much the same went for men. If you wanted to fight or shoot arrows you did it.

I was wondering how I would feel if somone asked me to produce my medical records to take part in anything? I'm afraid I would tell them to "get stuffed"!

Is it true there are humans who have equal amounts of male and female hormones?

This would not surprise me.

In any case I believe every person should be at liberty to behave 'masculine' or 'feminine' whenever and whatever they choose to do so. As long as they are not harming others by their behaviour.

Whichever gendered behaviour my friends choose is none of my business.

FarNorth the reason women were prevented from running marathons was precisely the opposite it was considered that their bodies were unsuitable to stand the strain. In spite of their fairly recent access to marathons average times for women runners compare quite favourably with mens. marastats.com/marathon/

I think things have improved greatly in recent years in developing countries in regard to that, people in developing countries need to know their sex too for all the reasons I have mentioned. If you are talking about intersex conditions then what happened to caster semenya for example is unlikely to happen now because the understanding and diagnosis of intersex conditions has improved.

So what about developing countries where medical records may be missing or even altered to suit circumstances? Will they be accepted?

By their medical records trisher. In the way they call females for smears etc.

trisher that attitude prevented women from even trying to run marathons.
Attitude, now, is not preventing women from running faster / lifting heavier weights etc if they are able to do so.

That's fine as a theory Galaxy but then as a practicality how do you suggest that a woman who was born a woman is identified for the purposes of say sport? because it seems to me that any of the ways it has been done before have actually caused more harm than anything else.

Yes I bothered to read it trisher. It is why I posted about the conflation between intersex and trans and how the intersex community have begged people not to do that, which is what you were doing. It is vital for both transgender and intersex people that their sex is identified in order to provide adequate healthcare, it is very dangerous for both groups to pretend we cant identify sex. They would not get the healthcare they require it would be incredibly discriminatory and harmful.
The studies on unisex facilities particulary prisons show a increase in sexual assault in unisex facilities compared to single sex, some stores in america had to change back to single sex because of the assaults on women.

I find it distressing that there is only one allowable opinion on the subject of trans/gender dysmorphia, and if it wasn't so frightening ( rape threats etc) it would be funny. To have people so angry about what are often perceived insults about trans individuals that they threaten sexual violence is beyond irony. I read an interesting thread on Mumsnet about the recent case; several people pointed out that you cannot have a tattoo until you are 18, but are somehow deemed capable of making a decision with lifelong implications, and one cited a case of a friend, mentally capable, intelligent 25 year old who was told she could not be sterilised until she was 30 in case she changed her mind It was also pointed out that a teenager has no idea of the lifelong implications of the process of puberty blocking drugs and then surgery; in all cases the individual will be sterile and possibly unable to have an orgasm. Is any teenager really capable of making that decision? I too shall no longer be supporting Amnesty International as I always thought they were a voice for political prisoners, not supporters of those who wish to silence people who do not bow down to the new orthodoxy.

trisher A female skeleton bearing evidence that she was an archer has been found.

Interesting. We know that male and female bones differ, specifically in the pelvis. Genitalia are only part of the equation.

I think the root of the problem is the strict categorisation of people into boys & girls, men and women, when they are primarily human beings with far more in common than otherwise. Even now in 2020 we still have schools with a Boys entrance and a Girls entrance, different uniforms, separate Gym and sports. From an early age there is boys/girls clothing, toys, expectations, books, comics. There are Gender based names for occupations, eg Postman/ Postwoman, Head Master, Headmistress. etc. (In Scotland we tend to refer to these as the Postie and the Headie, both Gender neutral terms.

As to sports, there are many where gender, weight, height are irrelevant (thinking of Archery, Yachting, snooker, bowling, etc. where skill and expertise matter most) Boxers are divided into categories from Heavyweight to Bantam weight, so that the contest is equalised. In Golf at club level, people have handicaps to allow them to compete on equal terms. Why can other sports not grade people according to their size, strength, etc? This would be a bonus for small men as well as women.

It seems that most of the objections to Trans women are based on changing rooms and toilets - a dilemma which would be easily solved by having all such facilities unisex with cubicles, including sink and sanitiser, for all. As a denture wearer I would love this privacy

If we could eradicate the unnecessary divisions by gender and concentrate on treating people as individuals, free to adopt their own life style, eg clothing, activities, sexual preferences, occupations, etc. then people would blossom, free from being forced into a straight-jacket not of their choosing.

Amnesty International should concern themselves with the huge number of people in the world who are tortured and/or denied basic human rights by their government, or others. This was their original remit I believe. People such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who as we all know, has been imprisoned in Iran without proper legal advice or representation. As I understand it, this type of case was the original purpose of Amnesty International and there continue to be many other such cases throughout the world that need the campaigning of such a group. Getting involved in woke propaganda will not serve Amnesty well as people will stop contributing to the charity.

Galaxy did you bother to read my post about the impossibility of sex identification in professional sport? It really doesn't do a lot for the people you claim to be championing those born as women and it has done them a lot of harm. It isn't easy, so why pretend it is?

While we wait for this imaginary utopia of which there is no evidence, we will just watch women lose medals scholarships etc. And if there is no difference between male and female sport why on earth would transwomen need to compete in the womens category, after all there is no difference.

FarNorthI think much the same attitude was taken to women running marathons until the 1960s. I had no idea about this until I met the first woman to run in a marathon. She did so in Boston by registering with just her initials, when officials realised she was a woman they tried to pull her out of the race, her male runnng friends protected her. She still runs.