So the court has ruled that intersex people don’t exist? This is the complete opposite of “reason and evidence”. This is pure hatred and bigotry. Totally against science and reality.
The court was ruling on how the 2010 Equality Act defines the terms “woman” and “sex”. They ruled that the definition *in the 2010 Equality Act* was one of biological sex. The *Act* applies only to biologically female people. The court was not stating that “woman” and “sex” are categorically defined as biological sex – only that that is how the Act intended them to be used.
That doesn’t mean that we cannot have a new Equality Act that extends the use of “woman” and “sex” to include transgender women.
Kokako raises an important and extremely difficult point… How the heck do we define “biologically female” or “biologically male”? Nature isn’t so neat.
Even the general rule of XY Chromosome = Male and XX = Female isn’t 100% There are (rare) cases of XY’s who develop as female, and XX who develop as male.
Perhaps we shouldn’t assign sex/gender identities until a child is old enough to answer “Is you a boy, or is you a girl, or is you what you am?”
Why not assign sex as we did it for millennia and still do for our Dogs, horses and other mammals? Sex is what you see in the flesh between the legs, all other niceties as identity, sexuality, gender and all that is between the ears. The former you can see, touch, verify, the latter you must believe.
All other is nice for jesuits, talmud students and other hair splitters, but hardly of any day to day use.
I myself would make things even easier: male is “he that pisseth against the wall”. All others are not.
@Shaughn
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it’s not real?”
Sure, you can insist on a “biological” definition of sex – although as per my previous post, nature isn’t so neat as that – but it’s ALL “between the ears”. That’s where “we” exist. In our brains. In our minds. And I am 100% convinced that some people are “female” in their minds even if their biological sex is “male” and vice-versa.
(Fully aware of the irony of using the words of JKR in this context)
A working definition that is 98 times out of 100 applicable is not that bad for daily use, isn’t it arbeyu? And for this ‘nature’ character it’s pretty neat, I think.
And it wouldn’t stand in the way of having a male sex and a female mind. Unless one sticks to the assumption that sex and mind are unseparable and a male sex must come with a male mindset/identity/gender/whatever. If anything, 100 out of 100 people show different.
(Genitals do not happen in your brain, unless the brain is located somewhere near the pelvis. Although some males do seem to think with their dicks.) 🙂
It’s closer to 99.99%. Sex is binary (gametic definition, which tracks nearly perfectly with both genitalia and sex chromosomes), no matter what some politically inclined people would like to have us believe. No one has any trouble with this when it applies to horses or birds, and human exceptionalism has a religious foundation, which I’m pretty sure most people on this site would reject.
Wokies forcing us to believe that “trans women are women” (with XY chromosomes!) is little different from Big Brother forcing us to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Both are instances of power ignoring truth if favor of exercising humiliation (if one actually does knuckle under to them).
I have a request for Author. The next time you do a strip on this topic could you please give us a bit of advance warning? I would have very much liked to have had some beer and popcorn on hand when I started to read the comments. Your consideration is greatly appreciated.
Does seem to inflame. I wonder if folks who set their hair on fire over these matters, are really hurting their own cause? I mean, if we just quit paying any attention, would there be more trans, or fewer? Let God impose his or her own will.
Sex is biological, and highly bimodal, with a few exceptions. Gender is psycho-social, multi-dimensional, and multimodal. Confusing the two is a category error.
Transwomen and transmen exist, but definitions are fuzzy. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a taco? Is a sofa a chair? Is Pluto a planet? For some reason people get passionate about these semantic questions.
My tinfoil-hat theory is that since transgender identity is mainly psychological, and since Americans worship sex, it follows that transgender identity is protected under the First Amendment’s protection of religious faith.
The vast majority of “intersex” people are in fact clearly male or female, albeit with some sort of abnormality. For example, XYY men are routinely counted as intersex, in order to inflate the number of intersex people, yet XYY men are unambiguous males in a phenotypical sense, and in fact are often unaware that they have any sort of abnormality. People who are intersex in the sense that it is genuinely difficult to tell what sex they belong to are extremely rare! In any case, intersex is irrelevant, because there are only two functional sexes, and that’s what matters. There are no “sexes” aside from male and female that have any biological function.
As for the idea that sex is “all between the ears” because “we exist in our brains”, I would argue the exact opposite! A person’s sex is entirely about the body, because we only ever interact directly with people’s bodies, not their minds. I don’t care how deeply and sincerely you identify as a bird. Your inner identity changes nothing for me and is therefore of no interest; what matters is whether you have feathers and can fly.
Of course this brings up the issue of what to do when someone engages in such extreme body modification that they become physically indistinguishable from the opposite sex. They haven’t really changed sex, but requiring that they use the “proper” locker room is going to lead to some uncomfortable moments for everyone. I don’t have a good solution for this, but I do think that in at least some circumstances there should be serious penalties for misrepresenting your sex.
Anyone using the term “woke” as an insult should be aware that it comes from the American Civil Rights era, and therefore what kind of person it is dog-whistle language to.
“African Americans need to wake to the injustices, and stay woke”.
PS. If you wish to argue that the negative use of the word “woke” has now lost its original racist meaning, then at least allow that it is inevitably an ad-hominem attack. It’s a sweeping dismissal of what a person is saying “because they are ‘woke'” rather than an argument against what they are saying.
@Shaughn
98/100 (or 99.99/100) is fine – IF you’re the 98%. It can suck to be the 2%. IMO, a society is judged on how it treats the minority.
My point is that “biological” sex is not definitive. Sure, you can look between the legs – but that’s not the whole story. And you can look at the chromosomes – and that’s not the whole story either. Foetal development is incredibly complex and depends on bursts of hormones from the foetus triggering bursts of hormones from the mother triggering developmental pathways. There’s a lot that can go “wrong” (in the non-judgmental sense of the word).
I can dig out some references, but various studies are strongly suggestive that there are neural pathways that define whether a person feels male or female. These are usually – but not always – associated with a person’s “biological” sex – whether you define that by visible genitalia or by chromosomes.
I don’t need to define the “(fe)male mind”. Like everyone on the planet, I have knowledge of exactly one mind – my own. I can only gain knowledge of another’s mind by asking them about it. And if someone tells me that they feel male or female or neither or both , then who the heck am I to argue?
@Abreyu
Aye, aye and aye – you’re making valid points.
I agree with ‘biological sex is not definitive’, but let me add “unless you choose it to be'”. Definitions are not matters of eternal truth that must encompass everything. They serve a purpose and come in handy, or not. And for the legal purposes at hand, the Court decides the biological sex comes in handy. Not that it’s absolute truth forever, or as handy for other purposes. And if necessary one can add appropriate niceties to a definition.
Who the heck you are to argue – that’s easy. You’re the one known here as Abreyu. Perhaps you know your own mind and I sure hope you do as do I mine, but the world is full of those who don’t or at least not as much as they ‘think’ they do. That’s the Dunning-Kruger effect, ‘know thyself’-Socrates would have loved it.
If you don’t define (fe)male, you haven’t clue what you’re talking about (or they, for that matter). You may not know, but you apply your definition.
How do I know? Because I know I do, and I have what’s called a”Theory of mind” about others. So do you. But then, so has my Dog, and by times she happens to fool me, to our joy.
@Shaughn. Likewise. And thank you for remaining polite.
To be sure, in order to function, laws have to have absolute definitions – even if these are somewhat arbitrary or subjective. We have to define what a “woman” is if we are to have e.g. “women-only spaces”. And don’t get me wrong for a second – we need women-only spaces.
Our laws define that a “woman” is a person whose birth certificate says that she was born “female”. What’s on the birth certificate, I guess, is on the say-so of the obstetrician attending the birth. Fair enough. It’s a definition. We needed one.
But some people want the definition of “woman” to be extended to a person whose birth certificate says that she was born “male” but who has transitioned.
And that makes some people very, very angry.
Some people dismiss the idea outright as “woke” to which I say “piss off and come back with an actual argument rather than ad-hominem bullshit”.
Some people dismiss the idea “because there is a simple biological definition of sex” – and I say to that “Are you sure about that?” And, even if there is one, why in principle cannot a person who has transitioned sex never, ever, ever be reclassified as their transitioned sex?
When you see a banner saying “No man can be a lesbian”, what it’s really saying is “No man can become a woman”. And I think that’s debatable.
@Arbeyu
Thank you too for remaining polite, Arbeyu. I think it’s clear we don’t differ that much on the subject. Perhaps in resuting choices, but not fundamentally, I’d say.
Re ‘woke’, the modern use of it is in my not-so-humble opinion, a matter of hostile take over from original Afro-Americans use, a form of cultural appropriation. That itself is very unwoke. By now woke stands for a diffuse bunch of notions and ideals, by no means as defined as its origine. Calling someone woke may be ad hominem, but not more so than calling someone fascist (the usual reciproke woke ‘tu quoque’ fallacy) or democrat, republican, socialist, jew, protestant,catholic. Aside from that it’s also a metaphore for all the opponent stands for that is wrong. All container concepts, so to say.
Last, your last remark is debatable indeed. ‘No man can be a lesbian’ (i.e. a woman sexually attracted to women) is true. It emphasizes not that a man cannot become a woman, but that to be a lesbian the man must become a woman. 🙂
Whatever its origins (the meanings of words do change!), the term “woke” is now commonly used as a name for an aggressive and quasi-religious left-wing social movement that very much does not wish to be named.
@Shaughn
I think we differ in our interpretation of the intention behind the “No man can be a lesbian” poster.
It is literally true: Only a woman can be a lesbian (the two statements are equivalent). It is so literally true that it doesn’t need said at all – so much so that there must be a reason for the protestor saying it.
The intention behind the poster can only be to imply that “No man can become a woman (and thence a lesbian)”.
“Sex” is a legal definition – currently effectively “whatever the doctor decided you were when signing the birth certificate”. Legal definitions can change.
Same-sex marriage is an example of this. Previously, the legal definition of marriage was restricted to being between a man and a woman. Protestors against same-sex marriage claimed that this was the only possible definition of it (often for religious reasons). They said that marriage as an institute would not survive a change to the definition; that same-sex marriage would deprecate the specialness of hetero-sex marriages. They said that gay couples should be given an equivalent-but-definitely-not-the-same legal status called a “Civil Partnership”. Hey, the bus is going to the same place, so what does it matter if you have to sit at the back?
That’s where we are now with trans rights.
And then the legal definition of marriage changed. And the world didn’t come to an end.
PS – I should have pointed out that the protestors weren’t seeking to change the legal status of trans people – they were seeking to block an attempt by the Scottish government to give a trans person that same rights as those of their transitioned sex. The poster has to be understood in that context.
The term “woke” is now commonly used indiscriminately to refer to any advocacy for the welfare of others.
Yeah, there is in it a reference to extreme positions, but the label just allows the extreme fringes to hide in the crowd, as everyone with a shred of conscience becomes “woke.”
@Arbeyu
“I think we differ in our interpretation of […]” – agree! And within that context I agree on your point of view also.
Enough of this, I thank you for a pleasant and informative exchange of thoughts and wish you happy Easter Days in heathen, heretic or reliqious sense, as you wish! 😀
What about the people who wish to be identified as He on a Friday. She on a Saturday They on a Sunday and a purple Aardvaak from Monday to Thursday? Just askin….
Every time I’ve heard the word “woke”, it’s been in the context of the politically conservative dismissing some progressive movement or “advocacy for the welfare of others” as you so well put it.
It’s used to avoid censure for overt bigotry. Don’t think that children should be “exposed” to black or gay or transgender people, but don’t want to be called a bigot? Then call Doctor Who “woke” and we’ll all know what you mean. And call Blue Peter “woke” because you don’t like that one of the presenters is a wheelchair user and the children in the studio are ethnically diverse.
Or just call something you disagree with “woke nonsense” and avoid having to construct a meaningful argument as to WHY it is nonsense. It’s pitiful.
Sex is, quite obviously, binary. There are only two sexes: you are either a member of the sex class that produces large gametes (eggs) or the sex class that produces small gametes (sperm). Occasionally people are born with disorders of sexual development (DSD), but even they belong to one of the two sex classes. If you don’t believe me, look up what Professor Richard Dawkins’s explanation. He knows more about biology than anyone posting here.
In any case, the Equality Act – which is what the Supreme Court ruling is clarifying – outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex. If sex really were a spectrum, or there were multiple different sexes, how would that work? How could you possibly say that you were being discriminated against on the basis of sex if you didn’t even know which one of the multiple sexes you were?
In my home US state of Washington, legislation is accompanied by definitions where deemed necessary, because legislation is written in common language, and common language does not support precise definitions. I hope this is done elsewhere (though of course there’s no guarantee anywhere that it’s done well.) If we had a law that referred to “sex”, hopefully that would come with an adequate definition that the courts can refer to (and of course that definition can be changed in the same way as the law that refers to it.)
Otherwise, you have to refer to a dictionary of the English language. What I get, for “sex”:
The sum of the anatomical and physiological characteristics that make an animal or plant distinctively male or female.
or,
one of the two divisions into which higher higher forms of life are groupeded as being distinctively male or female.
Do any particular “anatomical and physiological characteristics” form a part of that definition? No. Perhaps they would if we were using the word in some technical context, but to be relevant to jurisprudence, that technical context would have to be legal terminology that is shared by people who make and enforce laws. How much they know about biology is utterly irrelevant.
When I WOKE this morning I was with a lovely lady in bed. When I got home later and read the above I could clearly see it for the bullshit it really is.
@Eliza Dolittle
Biological sex, as you so ably define it is indeed binary, with only two sexes: male, female and intersex. OK, to stick to two sexes, you have to define intersex as “male of female but done wrong”, even if the intersex have neither or even both of the defining qualities of male or female that make there to be so obviously only two sexes.
But all that is to ignore sex in humans with our special qualities of consciousness and culture, found to the same degree in no other animal of which we are aware.
Humans are not only male or female – they are self-aware that they are male or female, and when you ask them which they are, you can get answers that don’t match their biological binary sex of male, female or intersex. Maybe you say that those people [who answer incorrectly as to what sex they self-perceive themselves to be] are psychologically damaged or perhaps even mentally ill. Not somewhere I’m ever going to go, but feel free. Or you could say that sex in humans isn’t quite so binary but has to be viewed as a matrix (not as a continuous spectrum, note).
Humans are also cultural animals with laws and legal definitions. All cultures recognise only a binary split between male and female, including those cultures that recognise a third option, such as the “hijras” of South Asia and “two-spirit” indigenous peoples of North America.
It’s very true that laws such as the Equality Act require absolute definitions of sex in order to function – I said as much in an earlier post. A continuous spectrum couldn’t work (“I’m 68% female so I should get in female changing rooms 68% of the time”) – but a matrix would.
And please note, that it was you who first used the word “spectrum” here – I’ve been saying that it’s “not as simple as a binary choice” – nothing about a “spectrum”. OK? You’ve set up and knocked down a straw-man.
The great thing about cultures laws and legal definitions is that they can change. We could change the legal definition of “female” to include people who have transitioned to female from their birth sex.
@Paradoctor – I’m quite stunned that no one’s gotten back to you on your tinfoil-hat theory! Having lived in the States, I think the term ‘worship’ for Amercans’ attitude towards sex might be … distracting, even dissembling. They are obsessed with it, and largely in a bimodal distribution, with peaks at the Victorianesque ‘supress the hell out of it/God is watching where your hands are ALL THE TIME’ at one end, and ‘build and nourish a multi-billion dollar porn industry with it’ at the other.
On the other hand, in America money is God and shopping malls (& websites) are its cathedrals, so perhaps you’re right!
arbeyu — It appears to me you start off speaking to two separate issues:
— sex is binary, and not some other set of possible values.
— sex values are defined by biological science,
And generally relegating both points instead to the cultural and personal realm, am I close? That’s sure how it seems to me, anyway.
In that case, whether sex is binary or more complex, is a question about western/European culture, am I right? Where the existence of setups with more variety elsewhere might make us feel more free to consider the possibilities, but it seems fairly clear to me that culturally, our system is a simple male / female dichotomy.
Into which, some don’t fit, and in our society that tries so hard to be inclusive, there’s a strong urge to remodel the culture. Rapidly and without a clear consensus on where we’re going. My feeling about this, is that the public sphere should touch this with a light hand if at all. Let popular consensus evolve through its own ferment. It will, and you’ll have a much more robust society. When legislative social justice moves out way ahead of popular consensus, it breeds resentment and disaffection, and the US isn’t the only place in the west where the nasty consequences seem to be springing up.
Current cultural mores have religious fervour at their base. To boot, the wafer literally changes physically to the flesh of christ and the wine to christs Haemoglobin….and If I decide to wear a pair of my wife’s frilly knickers, every cell in my body will morph into.XX chromasomes and I will look into the Mirror and Megan Fox will be staring back at me….
and isn’t wanting to change your genitalia just another sexual fetish taken to it’s ultimate conclusion? Sexual fetishes are probably unique to homo sapiens? However that might be a dangerous assumption as isn’t a bower birds art installation driving a bower fetish in Female bower birds?
There are some who argue that one of the more high profile forms of transgenderism — adult men, often highly masculine, refashioning themselves as women (e.g., Bruce Jenner) — is an expression of a sexual fetish called autogynephilia, i.e., sexual arousal at the thought of having a female body. I’m not entirely convinced of this, but yeah, maybe… 😀
The number of Straight men who enjoy cross-dressing and even wearing culturally defined female underwear under their clothes is suprisingly high. I myself would never risk either practices…what if I enjoyed it? 🤣
Strange though it might seem. I went to see the “BigYin” on that very same tour. Every word the truth…I only wish I had his punchline delivery skills…🤣
And dont get me started on “Loose Women” (my wife’s favourite telly) with their…”You can’t tell me that Ghosts and Spirits don’t exist”…followed by anecdotal bullshit of the highest magnitude imaginable…christ their fucking stupidity is only surpassed by their gullability…
@Donn Cave
You’re right in you most recent comment here. I agree with pretty much all you say. Thank you.
Though actually, I don’t think that biological sex is strictly binary – because there’s intersex. And intersex can fall into both or neither strictly-biological definitions of “male” and “female”. Sex is “pretty damned binary” to use Dawkin’s expression, but only “absolutely binary” if you ignore intersex or lump it with either “male” or “female” depending on which you think an individual case is closer to.
But you’re spot on that I think that it is a cultural issue… We’re a cultural species!
Western/European culture, as you say, has a strict dichotomy between male and female.
So to get trans rights, we’ve either got to extend the definitions of “male” and “female” or define two additional sexes – “trans male” and “trans female” and give them equivalent rights to their biological counterparts.
The latter would be problematic. Trans people aren’t going accept what will inevitably be seen as a “lesser” status of “not real man” or “not real woman”. Also, it’s going to create a practical problems: Will venues be required to have four sets of facilities, one for each legally-recognised sex?
You’re right about the difficulties of trying to force through legislatively something that the public aren’t ready to accept. Push too hard, and it could have some very negative consequences – especially seeing as how various societies seem to be lurching to the (far) right.
I actually think that we may be heading into some dark times for LGBTQ+ people. Maybe things are going to get a lot worse before they can get better.
But I would not want that to be used as an excuse for not trying. We cannot allow our society to be defined by the worst elements in it.
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So the court has ruled that intersex people don’t exist? This is the complete opposite of “reason and evidence”. This is pure hatred and bigotry. Totally against science and reality.
Has the court defined what it means by “biological female”? DNA, hormonal expression, visible genitalia, …?
I’m wondering how many of the judges have any knowledge of biology beyond XX and XY?
@TheCatLady
The Court didn’t rule anything about intersex people. They are mentioned nor defined. See for yourself: https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
@shaughn
They said sex was binary. It isn’t.
Pernickety point…
The court was ruling on how the 2010 Equality Act defines the terms “woman” and “sex”. They ruled that the definition *in the 2010 Equality Act* was one of biological sex. The *Act* applies only to biologically female people. The court was not stating that “woman” and “sex” are categorically defined as biological sex – only that that is how the Act intended them to be used.
That doesn’t mean that we cannot have a new Equality Act that extends the use of “woman” and “sex” to include transgender women.
@kokako
The court follows the birth certificate, as does EA2010, to define biological sex.
(page 9 of the ruling).
Are you referring to that minor fraction of intersex newborns?
@Alverant that was.
Kokako raises an important and extremely difficult point… How the heck do we define “biologically female” or “biologically male”? Nature isn’t so neat.
Even the general rule of XY Chromosome = Male and XX = Female isn’t 100% There are (rare) cases of XY’s who develop as female, and XX who develop as male.
Perhaps we shouldn’t assign sex/gender identities until a child is old enough to answer “Is you a boy, or is you a girl, or is you what you am?”
Why not assign sex as we did it for millennia and still do for our Dogs, horses and other mammals? Sex is what you see in the flesh between the legs, all other niceties as identity, sexuality, gender and all that is between the ears. The former you can see, touch, verify, the latter you must believe.
All other is nice for jesuits, talmud students and other hair splitters, but hardly of any day to day use.
I myself would make things even easier: male is “he that pisseth against the wall”. All others are not.
You need a certifying authority.
@Shaughn
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it’s not real?”
Sure, you can insist on a “biological” definition of sex – although as per my previous post, nature isn’t so neat as that – but it’s ALL “between the ears”. That’s where “we” exist. In our brains. In our minds. And I am 100% convinced that some people are “female” in their minds even if their biological sex is “male” and vice-versa.
(Fully aware of the irony of using the words of JKR in this context)
A working definition that is 98 times out of 100 applicable is not that bad for daily use, isn’t it arbeyu? And for this ‘nature’ character it’s pretty neat, I think.
And it wouldn’t stand in the way of having a male sex and a female mind. Unless one sticks to the assumption that sex and mind are unseparable and a male sex must come with a male mindset/identity/gender/whatever. If anything, 100 out of 100 people show different.
(Genitals do not happen in your brain, unless the brain is located somewhere near the pelvis. Although some males do seem to think with their dicks.) 🙂
(That was me, again)
Arbeyu, if you find it extremely difficult to define ‘biological (fe)male”, try defining ‘(fe)male mind’…
as dawkins said “there are only two sexes, and some exceptions” very smort
@Anonymous:
It’s closer to 99.99%. Sex is binary (gametic definition, which tracks nearly perfectly with both genitalia and sex chromosomes), no matter what some politically inclined people would like to have us believe. No one has any trouble with this when it applies to horses or birds, and human exceptionalism has a religious foundation, which I’m pretty sure most people on this site would reject.
Wokies forcing us to believe that “trans women are women” (with XY chromosomes!) is little different from Big Brother forcing us to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Both are instances of power ignoring truth if favor of exercising humiliation (if one actually does knuckle under to them).
I have a request for Author. The next time you do a strip on this topic could you please give us a bit of advance warning? I would have very much liked to have had some beer and popcorn on hand when I started to read the comments. Your consideration is greatly appreciated.
Does seem to inflame. I wonder if folks who set their hair on fire over these matters, are really hurting their own cause? I mean, if we just quit paying any attention, would there be more trans, or fewer? Let God impose his or her own will.
Donn Cave: I concur. As my Russian grandfather used to say in a very thick accent: “What does any of this bullshit have to do with me”?
Sex is biological, and highly bimodal, with a few exceptions. Gender is psycho-social, multi-dimensional, and multimodal. Confusing the two is a category error.
Transwomen and transmen exist, but definitions are fuzzy. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a taco? Is a sofa a chair? Is Pluto a planet? For some reason people get passionate about these semantic questions.
My tinfoil-hat theory is that since transgender identity is mainly psychological, and since Americans worship sex, it follows that transgender identity is protected under the First Amendment’s protection of religious faith.
The vast majority of “intersex” people are in fact clearly male or female, albeit with some sort of abnormality. For example, XYY men are routinely counted as intersex, in order to inflate the number of intersex people, yet XYY men are unambiguous males in a phenotypical sense, and in fact are often unaware that they have any sort of abnormality. People who are intersex in the sense that it is genuinely difficult to tell what sex they belong to are extremely rare! In any case, intersex is irrelevant, because there are only two functional sexes, and that’s what matters. There are no “sexes” aside from male and female that have any biological function.
As for the idea that sex is “all between the ears” because “we exist in our brains”, I would argue the exact opposite! A person’s sex is entirely about the body, because we only ever interact directly with people’s bodies, not their minds. I don’t care how deeply and sincerely you identify as a bird. Your inner identity changes nothing for me and is therefore of no interest; what matters is whether you have feathers and can fly.
Of course this brings up the issue of what to do when someone engages in such extreme body modification that they become physically indistinguishable from the opposite sex. They haven’t really changed sex, but requiring that they use the “proper” locker room is going to lead to some uncomfortable moments for everyone. I don’t have a good solution for this, but I do think that in at least some circumstances there should be serious penalties for misrepresenting your sex.
Anyone using the term “woke” as an insult should be aware that it comes from the American Civil Rights era, and therefore what kind of person it is dog-whistle language to.
“African Americans need to wake to the injustices, and stay woke”.
Clarification: “what kind of person [its negative use] is dog-whistle language to”.
PS. If you wish to argue that the negative use of the word “woke” has now lost its original racist meaning, then at least allow that it is inevitably an ad-hominem attack. It’s a sweeping dismissal of what a person is saying “because they are ‘woke'” rather than an argument against what they are saying.
@Shaughn
98/100 (or 99.99/100) is fine – IF you’re the 98%. It can suck to be the 2%. IMO, a society is judged on how it treats the minority.
My point is that “biological” sex is not definitive. Sure, you can look between the legs – but that’s not the whole story. And you can look at the chromosomes – and that’s not the whole story either. Foetal development is incredibly complex and depends on bursts of hormones from the foetus triggering bursts of hormones from the mother triggering developmental pathways. There’s a lot that can go “wrong” (in the non-judgmental sense of the word).
I can dig out some references, but various studies are strongly suggestive that there are neural pathways that define whether a person feels male or female. These are usually – but not always – associated with a person’s “biological” sex – whether you define that by visible genitalia or by chromosomes.
I don’t need to define the “(fe)male mind”. Like everyone on the planet, I have knowledge of exactly one mind – my own. I can only gain knowledge of another’s mind by asking them about it. And if someone tells me that they feel male or female or neither or both , then who the heck am I to argue?
With all due respect, Shaughn, you can’t see or touch mine. Unless you buy me drink first, obvs.
@Abreyu
Aye, aye and aye – you’re making valid points.
I agree with ‘biological sex is not definitive’, but let me add “unless you choose it to be'”. Definitions are not matters of eternal truth that must encompass everything. They serve a purpose and come in handy, or not. And for the legal purposes at hand, the Court decides the biological sex comes in handy. Not that it’s absolute truth forever, or as handy for other purposes. And if necessary one can add appropriate niceties to a definition.
Who the heck you are to argue – that’s easy. You’re the one known here as Abreyu. Perhaps you know your own mind and I sure hope you do as do I mine, but the world is full of those who don’t or at least not as much as they ‘think’ they do. That’s the Dunning-Kruger effect, ‘know thyself’-Socrates would have loved it.
If you don’t define (fe)male, you haven’t clue what you’re talking about (or they, for that matter). You may not know, but you apply your definition.
How do I know? Because I know I do, and I have what’s called a”Theory of mind” about others. So do you. But then, so has my Dog, and by times she happens to fool me, to our joy.
@Shaughn. Likewise. And thank you for remaining polite.
To be sure, in order to function, laws have to have absolute definitions – even if these are somewhat arbitrary or subjective. We have to define what a “woman” is if we are to have e.g. “women-only spaces”. And don’t get me wrong for a second – we need women-only spaces.
Our laws define that a “woman” is a person whose birth certificate says that she was born “female”. What’s on the birth certificate, I guess, is on the say-so of the obstetrician attending the birth. Fair enough. It’s a definition. We needed one.
But some people want the definition of “woman” to be extended to a person whose birth certificate says that she was born “male” but who has transitioned.
And that makes some people very, very angry.
Some people dismiss the idea outright as “woke” to which I say “piss off and come back with an actual argument rather than ad-hominem bullshit”.
Some people dismiss the idea “because there is a simple biological definition of sex” – and I say to that “Are you sure about that?” And, even if there is one, why in principle cannot a person who has transitioned sex never, ever, ever be reclassified as their transitioned sex?
When you see a banner saying “No man can be a lesbian”, what it’s really saying is “No man can become a woman”. And I think that’s debatable.
@Arbeyu
Thank you too for remaining polite, Arbeyu. I think it’s clear we don’t differ that much on the subject. Perhaps in resuting choices, but not fundamentally, I’d say.
Re ‘woke’, the modern use of it is in my not-so-humble opinion, a matter of hostile take over from original Afro-Americans use, a form of cultural appropriation. That itself is very unwoke. By now woke stands for a diffuse bunch of notions and ideals, by no means as defined as its origine. Calling someone woke may be ad hominem, but not more so than calling someone fascist (the usual reciproke woke ‘tu quoque’ fallacy) or democrat, republican, socialist, jew, protestant,catholic. Aside from that it’s also a metaphore for all the opponent stands for that is wrong. All container concepts, so to say.
Last, your last remark is debatable indeed. ‘No man can be a lesbian’ (i.e. a woman sexually attracted to women) is true. It emphasizes not that a man cannot become a woman, but that to be a lesbian the man must become a woman. 🙂
Whatever its origins (the meanings of words do change!), the term “woke” is now commonly used as a name for an aggressive and quasi-religious left-wing social movement that very much does not wish to be named.
@Shaughn
I think we differ in our interpretation of the intention behind the “No man can be a lesbian” poster.
It is literally true: Only a woman can be a lesbian (the two statements are equivalent). It is so literally true that it doesn’t need said at all – so much so that there must be a reason for the protestor saying it.
The intention behind the poster can only be to imply that “No man can become a woman (and thence a lesbian)”.
“Sex” is a legal definition – currently effectively “whatever the doctor decided you were when signing the birth certificate”. Legal definitions can change.
Same-sex marriage is an example of this. Previously, the legal definition of marriage was restricted to being between a man and a woman. Protestors against same-sex marriage claimed that this was the only possible definition of it (often for religious reasons). They said that marriage as an institute would not survive a change to the definition; that same-sex marriage would deprecate the specialness of hetero-sex marriages. They said that gay couples should be given an equivalent-but-definitely-not-the-same legal status called a “Civil Partnership”. Hey, the bus is going to the same place, so what does it matter if you have to sit at the back?
That’s where we are now with trans rights.
And then the legal definition of marriage changed. And the world didn’t come to an end.
PS – I should have pointed out that the protestors weren’t seeking to change the legal status of trans people – they were seeking to block an attempt by the Scottish government to give a trans person that same rights as those of their transitioned sex. The poster has to be understood in that context.
The term “woke” is now commonly used indiscriminately to refer to any advocacy for the welfare of others.
Yeah, there is in it a reference to extreme positions, but the label just allows the extreme fringes to hide in the crowd, as everyone with a shred of conscience becomes “woke.”
@Arbeyu
“I think we differ in our interpretation of […]” – agree! And within that context I agree on your point of view also.
Enough of this, I thank you for a pleasant and informative exchange of thoughts and wish you happy Easter Days in heathen, heretic or reliqious sense, as you wish! 😀
What about the people who wish to be identified as He on a Friday. She on a Saturday They on a Sunday and a purple Aardvaak from Monday to Thursday? Just askin….
Statistically I have more than the average No of arms and eyes and ears….thus mathematically you take the mode…so sex is modally binary is it not?
@Donn Cave.
My feelings exactly.
Every time I’ve heard the word “woke”, it’s been in the context of the politically conservative dismissing some progressive movement or “advocacy for the welfare of others” as you so well put it.
It’s used to avoid censure for overt bigotry. Don’t think that children should be “exposed” to black or gay or transgender people, but don’t want to be called a bigot? Then call Doctor Who “woke” and we’ll all know what you mean. And call Blue Peter “woke” because you don’t like that one of the presenters is a wheelchair user and the children in the studio are ethnically diverse.
Or just call something you disagree with “woke nonsense” and avoid having to construct a meaningful argument as to WHY it is nonsense. It’s pitiful.
Sex is, quite obviously, binary. There are only two sexes: you are either a member of the sex class that produces large gametes (eggs) or the sex class that produces small gametes (sperm). Occasionally people are born with disorders of sexual development (DSD), but even they belong to one of the two sex classes. If you don’t believe me, look up what Professor Richard Dawkins’s explanation. He knows more about biology than anyone posting here.
In any case, the Equality Act – which is what the Supreme Court ruling is clarifying – outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex. If sex really were a spectrum, or there were multiple different sexes, how would that work? How could you possibly say that you were being discriminated against on the basis of sex if you didn’t even know which one of the multiple sexes you were?
Well said, Eliza! Also worth looking at for intelligent discussion is https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/04/16/uk-supreme-court-rules-that-woman-refers-only-to-a-biological-woman/.
In my home US state of Washington, legislation is accompanied by definitions where deemed necessary, because legislation is written in common language, and common language does not support precise definitions. I hope this is done elsewhere (though of course there’s no guarantee anywhere that it’s done well.) If we had a law that referred to “sex”, hopefully that would come with an adequate definition that the courts can refer to (and of course that definition can be changed in the same way as the law that refers to it.)
Otherwise, you have to refer to a dictionary of the English language. What I get, for “sex”:
or,
Do any particular “anatomical and physiological characteristics” form a part of that definition? No. Perhaps they would if we were using the word in some technical context, but to be relevant to jurisprudence, that technical context would have to be legal terminology that is shared by people who make and enforce laws. How much they know about biology is utterly irrelevant.
Donn. You can have any personal delusion you like. But you cannot force anybody else to support your delusion…
This giant game of “Let’s pretend” is very interesting for a lot of people…the novelty will wear out once stark survival choices take precedance….
When I WOKE this morning I was with a lovely lady in bed. When I got home later and read the above I could clearly see it for the bullshit it really is.
@Eliza Dolittle
Biological sex, as you so ably define it is indeed binary, with only two sexes: male, female and intersex. OK, to stick to two sexes, you have to define intersex as “male of female but done wrong”, even if the intersex have neither or even both of the defining qualities of male or female that make there to be so obviously only two sexes.
But all that is to ignore sex in humans with our special qualities of consciousness and culture, found to the same degree in no other animal of which we are aware.
Humans are not only male or female – they are self-aware that they are male or female, and when you ask them which they are, you can get answers that don’t match their biological binary sex of male, female or intersex. Maybe you say that those people [who answer incorrectly as to what sex they self-perceive themselves to be] are psychologically damaged or perhaps even mentally ill. Not somewhere I’m ever going to go, but feel free. Or you could say that sex in humans isn’t quite so binary but has to be viewed as a matrix (not as a continuous spectrum, note).
Humans are also cultural animals with laws and legal definitions. All cultures recognise only a binary split between male and female, including those cultures that recognise a third option, such as the “hijras” of South Asia and “two-spirit” indigenous peoples of North America.
It’s very true that laws such as the Equality Act require absolute definitions of sex in order to function – I said as much in an earlier post. A continuous spectrum couldn’t work (“I’m 68% female so I should get in female changing rooms 68% of the time”) – but a matrix would.
And please note, that it was you who first used the word “spectrum” here – I’ve been saying that it’s “not as simple as a binary choice” – nothing about a “spectrum”. OK? You’ve set up and knocked down a straw-man.
The great thing about cultures laws and legal definitions is that they can change. We could change the legal definition of “female” to include people who have transitioned to female from their birth sex.
@Paradoctor – I’m quite stunned that no one’s gotten back to you on your tinfoil-hat theory! Having lived in the States, I think the term ‘worship’ for Amercans’ attitude towards sex might be … distracting, even dissembling. They are obsessed with it, and largely in a bimodal distribution, with peaks at the Victorianesque ‘supress the hell out of it/God is watching where your hands are ALL THE TIME’ at one end, and ‘build and nourish a multi-billion dollar porn industry with it’ at the other.
On the other hand, in America money is God and shopping malls (& websites) are its cathedrals, so perhaps you’re right!
arbeyu — It appears to me you start off speaking to two separate issues:
— sex is binary, and not some other set of possible values.
— sex values are defined by biological science,
And generally relegating both points instead to the cultural and personal realm, am I close? That’s sure how it seems to me, anyway.
In that case, whether sex is binary or more complex, is a question about western/European culture, am I right? Where the existence of setups with more variety elsewhere might make us feel more free to consider the possibilities, but it seems fairly clear to me that culturally, our system is a simple male / female dichotomy.
Into which, some don’t fit, and in our society that tries so hard to be inclusive, there’s a strong urge to remodel the culture. Rapidly and without a clear consensus on where we’re going. My feeling about this, is that the public sphere should touch this with a light hand if at all. Let popular consensus evolve through its own ferment. It will, and you’ll have a much more robust society. When legislative social justice moves out way ahead of popular consensus, it breeds resentment and disaffection, and the US isn’t the only place in the west where the nasty consequences seem to be springing up.
@Tebirkes
Re ‘supress the hell out of it’ and ‘multi-billion dollar porn industry’: apparently the devil make them do it.
Current cultural mores have religious fervour at their base. To boot, the wafer literally changes physically to the flesh of christ and the wine to christs Haemoglobin….and If I decide to wear a pair of my wife’s frilly knickers, every cell in my body will morph into.XX chromasomes and I will look into the Mirror and Megan Fox will be staring back at me….
and isn’t wanting to change your genitalia just another sexual fetish taken to it’s ultimate conclusion? Sexual fetishes are probably unique to homo sapiens? However that might be a dangerous assumption as isn’t a bower birds art installation driving a bower fetish in Female bower birds?
Lefty…Loosey and Righty…Tighty…get your snap-on socket set out and you will see I’m right…
There are some who argue that one of the more high profile forms of transgenderism — adult men, often highly masculine, refashioning themselves as women (e.g., Bruce Jenner) — is an expression of a sexual fetish called autogynephilia, i.e., sexual arousal at the thought of having a female body. I’m not entirely convinced of this, but yeah, maybe… 😀
The number of Straight men who enjoy cross-dressing and even wearing culturally defined female underwear under their clothes is suprisingly high. I myself would never risk either practices…what if I enjoyed it? 🤣
I think I may have discovered the true identity of M27Holts. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1096699402477780
Strange though it might seem. I went to see the “BigYin” on that very same tour. Every word the truth…I only wish I had his punchline delivery skills…🤣
I can’t watch anything on Telly without shouting at it…double whammy last night..The Pope and Donald Fucking Trump…
And dont get me started on “Loose Women” (my wife’s favourite telly) with their…”You can’t tell me that Ghosts and Spirits don’t exist”…followed by anecdotal bullshit of the highest magnitude imaginable…christ their fucking stupidity is only surpassed by their gullability…
@Donn Cave
You’re right in you most recent comment here. I agree with pretty much all you say. Thank you.
Though actually, I don’t think that biological sex is strictly binary – because there’s intersex. And intersex can fall into both or neither strictly-biological definitions of “male” and “female”. Sex is “pretty damned binary” to use Dawkin’s expression, but only “absolutely binary” if you ignore intersex or lump it with either “male” or “female” depending on which you think an individual case is closer to.
But you’re spot on that I think that it is a cultural issue… We’re a cultural species!
Western/European culture, as you say, has a strict dichotomy between male and female.
So to get trans rights, we’ve either got to extend the definitions of “male” and “female” or define two additional sexes – “trans male” and “trans female” and give them equivalent rights to their biological counterparts.
The latter would be problematic. Trans people aren’t going accept what will inevitably be seen as a “lesser” status of “not real man” or “not real woman”. Also, it’s going to create a practical problems: Will venues be required to have four sets of facilities, one for each legally-recognised sex?
You’re right about the difficulties of trying to force through legislatively something that the public aren’t ready to accept. Push too hard, and it could have some very negative consequences – especially seeing as how various societies seem to be lurching to the (far) right.
I actually think that we may be heading into some dark times for LGBTQ+ people. Maybe things are going to get a lot worse before they can get better.
But I would not want that to be used as an excuse for not trying. We cannot allow our society to be defined by the worst elements in it.