Discussion: Transwomen are not women (Part 7)

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Meadmaker said:
Yes.

Well, sort of.

Here's the thing. No one is going to stand on the floor of the House of Commons and say, "Trans women should have the right to sue anyone who refuses to was their balls!" No governor is going to sign a law and say, "With this law, we're going to ensure that 52 year old people on the sex offender list will finally be able to walk around the women's spa without having to hide their penises as if they should be ashamed." No school board is going to say, "Why should our students have to prove who they are just to use the girls' bathroom? Those stories about rape or whatever are just anecdotes!" No one will point to those as desired outcomes, but they are inevitable outcomes.

Those bogeymen all did what they did with the full support of the government.
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Yaniv's brand of trolling was unsuccessful though. Her lawsuit failed and she had to pay damages to those she sued, despite trans rights being codified into law.
 
LondonJohn said:
Does it help you to reinforce your own stereotypes, misconceptions and bigotry (and those of your fellow travellers) to write stuff like this?

Perhaps this document may help with your incomprehension and mockery* - it sets out the official position of the UK Government, and educates you as to what the UK considers "a woman" to be (and how/why it's separate from "a female"):

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/envi...isthedifferencebetweensexandgender/2019-02-21


(And I presume that where you refer to "the social justice league".... you mean to write: "various major global governments, including for example the UK and the US Federal Govt, as well as mainstream medical science". That doesn't fit with your agenda though, I guess?).

As you say: ;)

:rolleyes:


* Though history and precedent in this thread suggest, of course, that it will actually help you with neither.
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I saw definitions of "sex" and "gender" at that link but didn't see definitions of "man" and "woman." Can you copy and paste the definitions of "man" and "woman" from your link? I confess I didn't read the whole thing word for word, I just scanned it.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Yaniv's brand of trolling was unsuccessful though. Her lawsuit failed and she had to pay damages to those she sued, despite trans rights being codified into law.
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Yaniv lost b/c the tribunal frowned upon her non-trans-rights motives and b/c she lacked counsel.

The tribunal ruled against Yaniv, in part because it found her motivation in bringing the complaints was not merely to advance trans rights but also for her own financial gain and animosity towards the immigrant groups of which the respondents were a part.
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https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/n...r-trans-human-rights-cases-says-lawyer/321582

Remains to be seen whether a less vexatious and better advised litigant can successfully make a case for testicle waxing as a human right.
 
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Paul2 said:
I saw definitions of "sex" and "gender" at that link but didn't see definitions of "man" and "woman." Can you copy and paste the definitions of "man" and "woman" from your link? I confess I didn't read the whole thing word for word, I just scanned it.
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They aren't there. That document has a long history on this thread. It gets trotted out any time the definition of "man" or "woman" comes up, even though it doesn't contain a definition of "man" or "woman".


If you piece a few sentences together, you can kind of get to the basic idea that a woman is someone performing the feminine gender role. You get there by noting that the words "man" and "woman", though not defined in the document, only appear in the section on "gender", while "male" and "female" are used in the section on "sex".

All the problems with that definition are also well known.
 
Meadmaker said:
They aren't there. That document has a long history on this thread. It gets trotted out any time the definition of "man" or "woman" comes up, even though it doesn't contain a definition of "man" or "woman".


If you piece a few sentences together, you can kind of get to the basic idea that a woman is someone performing the feminine gender role. You get there by noting that the words "man" and "woman", though not defined in the document, only appear in the section on "gender", while "male" and "female" are used in the section on "sex".

All the problems with that definition are also well known.
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It should also be noted that this is the Office of National Statistics' attempt to get a standard definition they can use for consistent presentation of statistical data. It's not based on any scientific research or conclusions. Just a sociological recognition that people have gotten kind of fuzzy about gender and so they need to have a consistent definition for statistical reporting.

This definition has been presented as the scientific consensus, even though there's no evidence of scientific support. It's also been presented as the official position of the UK government. But no reason has been given to believe this definition is in use by the UK government anywhere outside this narrow application to consistent reporting of certain statistical categories by the ONS.

It's tragicomic that this circular mess, lacking the core definitions themselves, is the best the ONS can come up with. If it really is the official position of the UK government, that's embarrassing for them, but neither here nor there for our purposes. What matters to us is that this is the closest we've been given to a "the science is settled" definition of gender. And as you can see, it's nowhere near that standard. Since it doesn't actually rely on any science at all.

These flaws have been pointed out repeatedly, but this is the go-to cite that keeps coming back up. You'd think that if the ONS definition had a real basis in real scientific research and scholarship, *that* would be the cite we'd get. Not this derivative claptrap - derivative of what, though? Not even its proponents seem to have an answer to that question.

My conclusion is that it's claptrap all the way down.
 
Paul2 said:
I saw definitions of "sex" and "gender" at that link but didn't see definitions of "man" and "woman." Can you copy and paste the definitions of "man" and "woman" from your link? I confess I didn't read the whole thing word for word, I just scanned it.
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It fudges over this to avoid the uncomfortable facts that a) 'gender' cannot possibly be both 'a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity' and an innate characteristic of a person, analogous to a sexual orientation and b) defining 'man' and 'woman' as 'the gender one identifies with' means defining them with reference to socially constructed stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, according to its own definition.
 
theprestige said:
This definition has been presented as the scientific consensus, even though there's no evidence of scientific support. It's also been presented as the official position of the UK government. But no reason has been given to believe this definition is in use by the UK government anywhere outside this narrow application to consistent reporting of certain statistical categories by the ONS.
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Large, complex bureaucracies are bound to use different lexical meanings on different occasions. Here's one definition of woman from the UK legislature, for example. Notice how it's nothing like the definitions we've seen elsewhere.
 
theprestige said:
It should also be noted that this is the Office of National Statistics' attempt to get a standard definition they can use for consistent presentation of statistical data. It's not based on any scientific research or conclusions. Just a sociological recognition that people have gotten kind of fuzzy about gender and so they need to have a consistent definition for statistical reporting.

This definition has been presented as the scientific consensus, even though there's no evidence of scientific support. It's also been presented as the official position of the UK government. But no reason has been given to believe this definition is in use by the UK government anywhere outside this narrow application to consistent reporting of certain statistical categories by the ONS.

It's tragicomic that this circular mess, lacking the core definitions themselves, is the best the ONS can come up with. If it really is the official position of the UK government, that's embarrassing for them, but neither here nor there for our purposes. What matters to us is that this is the closest we've been given to a "the science is settled" definition of gender. And as you can see, it's nowhere near that standard. Since it doesn't actually rely on any science at all.

These flaws have been pointed out repeatedly, but this is the go-to cite that keeps coming back up. You'd think that if the ONS definition had a real basis in real scientific research and scholarship, *that* would be the cite we'd get. Not this derivative claptrap - derivative of what, though? Not even its proponents seem to have an answer to that question.

My conclusion is that it's claptrap all the way down.
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The ONS lost a crowdfunded judicial review brought at the 11th hour after it tried to allow self-identification of sex in the census. This is a good overview of the roles political lobbying played in the case:

Sullivan, (2021). Sex and the Office for National Statistics: A Case Study in Policy Capture

"With just days to spare before the census date, the ONS was forced to concede that it did not have the authority to redefine sex in this way, following a preliminary judicial review hearing where their arguments were given short shrift. This outcome raises the question: how and why did the ONS find itself in court defending a position which appeared to lack both coherence and legal foundations?"

ONS ended up conceding and having to pay costs. They can't even get the basic processes of data collection right.
 
d4m10n said:
Large, complex bureaucracies are bound to use different lexical meanings on different occasions. Here's one definition of woman from the UK legislature, for example. Notice how it's nothing like the definitions we've seen elsewhere.
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Yes, the equality act defines 'man' as 'a male of any age' and 'woman' as 'a female of any age'.

The Equality Act is, of course, is the act that permits special exemptions from prohibition of sex discrimination in order to allow separate services for men and women.
 
d4m10n said:
Large, complex bureaucracies are bound to use different lexical meanings on different occasions. Here's one definition of woman from the UK legislature, for example. Notice how it's nothing like the definitions we've seen elsewhere.
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Exactly. Which is why it's bizarre that LJ keeps trotting out this one as the settled scientific position of the UK government. It's actually neither.
 
Paul2 said:
I saw definitions of "sex" and "gender" at that link but didn't see definitions of "man" and "woman." Can you copy and paste the definitions of "man" and "woman" from your link? I confess I didn't read the whole thing word for word, I just scanned it.
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From Section 2 of the document (my highlighting and bolding for emphasis):

The UK government defines gender as:

- a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity; gender identity is a personal, internal perception of oneself and so the gender category someone identifies with may not match the sex they were assigned at birth

- where an individual may see themselves as a man, a woman, as having no gender, or as having a non-binary gender – where people identify as somewhere on a spectrum between man and woman
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Meadmaker said:
They aren't there. That document has a long history on this thread. It gets trotted out any time the definition of "man" or "woman" comes up, even though it doesn't contain a definition of "man" or "woman".


If you piece a few sentences together, you can kind of get to the basic idea that a woman is someone performing the feminine gender role. You get there by noting that the words "man" and "woman", though not defined in the document, only appear in the section on "gender", while "male" and "female" are used in the section on "sex".

All the problems with that definition are also well known.
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Except they are there.

Oooops!

(You're as well versed on this subject as ever, I see.....)
 
theprestige said:
It should also be noted that this is the Office of National Statistics' attempt to get a standard definition they can use for consistent presentation of statistical data. It's not based on any scientific research or conclusions. Just a sociological recognition that people have gotten kind of fuzzy about gender and so they need to have a consistent definition for statistical reporting.
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No. I've told you and others several times now: the ONS (which, yes, is the Office for National Statistics - and it's a department of the UK Government) explicitly states that it's outlining the UK Government's definitions and representations.

It's right there in black and white. Perhaps there are none so blind as those who will not see, eh?
 
(See, for example, the very quote from the article I posted in this thread in response to Paul2's question. You might just notice that the passage begins "The UK Government defines.....")

:rolleyes:
 
LondonJohn said:
(See, for example, the very quote from the article I posted in this thread in response to Paul2's question. You might just notice that the passage begins "The UK Government defines.....")
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Defines "woman" as what, exactly?

ETA: I'm going with this definition until you come up with another one.
 
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d4m10n said:
Can you tell what a "woman" is from this document? I cannot.
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A woman is someone with the lived cultural identity and set of values/behaviours that is generally attributed to females (but it's not exclusive to females).

I'm sorry that you still don't know enough about this subject to understand what the UK Government's position on the matter is. Especially since the UK Government's position on the matter is wholly informed by the mainstream medical science position on the matter.

So you might be better off seeking out relevant medical literature if you're still having trouble understanding the difference between sex and gender, particularly with respect to a) what's currently understood about gender (as an intangible construct, based on behavioural expectations) and b) what "man" and "woman" mean in that context.
 
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