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Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

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I see the petition has taken off again this morning - already another 380 signatures since midnight, and it's not noon yet. All the publicity surrounding Graham/Bryson seems to be peaking people right left and centre.
 
Rolfe said:
Darat, I'm not even getting into the war of semantics with you.
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What war of semantics - I thought you were the one for wanting to use the "correct" definitions?

Rolfe said:
What I really think about this is that gay men who are defending the Sacred Trans should probably step back and think about what they're doing. Way back when, sections of the gay movement were suckered into teaming with "minor attracted persons" on the grounds that they were also disapproved of by society. It took some time to disentangle that and to shake off the perception that gay men were paedophiles. ...snip...
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That's nice - nothing at all to do with me or anything I have ever posted in this thread.

Rolfe said:
Now the forced teaming is with the trans, and specifically with trans-identifying men. This is not a rational teaming, because trans is not a sexual orientation. Most trans-identifying men are heterosexual, that is gynaephilic. (It's in the name. Autogynaephilia.) This is becoming a cover for all sorts of questionable practices from sterilising children to allowing men to compete in women's sports to calling rapists "she". Many of these men are porn-addled and with open kinks such as tampon fetishism. Stonewall is completely in thrall to them, having in 2015 chosen to take up the trans cause rather than wind itself down with dignity when the equal marriage laws were passed.
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Will this post ever be anything to do with anything I have posted - ever?

Rolfe said:
Many people are now spotting this. Decades of good work in making homosexuality and homosexual couples a normal part of society are being undone by the forced teaming with the T. Gays are again in some circles being associated with hypersexualised kink and fetish, and the premature sexualisation and hypersexualisation of children. Because this is all happening in the name of "LGBT rights", even though the whole thing is being driven by the T.

That's what I think. Just so you know.
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That's nice - but of course nothing at all to do with anything I have ever posted in this thread - so why address it to me?

Any chance you could now address something that I have actually posted?
 
Rolfe said:
Your midnight check-in on the petition reports 75,160 signatures, so 533 new signatures today. Still doing well and way above target.

The new magic number is 295.7.

However, the government has finally issued its belated response.




In other words, it's fine, leave it as it is. Which is more or less what they said to the counter-petition, currently stalled on 12,000ish signatures. "Don't worry your pretty little heads, we won't change anything."

I don't see how they can possibly maintain that there is no need or further clarity. We do need that debate. I think by then things might have got even more heated and there are definitely MPs who will stir this up.
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What further clarity do you want? They've clarified the one area where there was some ambiguity, which was whether someone who has a GRC could be excluded on the basis of their sex, they are saying they can. (I.e. saying the use of sex in the act refers to a person's born/biological sex regardless of their GRC.) That directly addresses the reason I "signed" the petition.

It means that the single sex spaces and services that are currently legal do not have to allow access to someone with a "matching" GRC.

However I still say what is needed is actual legal cases to go to court- that ensures this has been fully tested in court - this is not unusual to this issue as it is the case for most legislation in the UK. Further guidance won't remove this requirement.
 
Rolfe said:
Oh wow.

https://twitter.com/Daily_Record/status/1618739269677518848

Basically the girls on the beauty course had to strip off and apply fake tan to each other.
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As far as I can tell that course is open to men and women, so regardless of what the rapist was identifying as they could have attended the course. This doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the "trans" status but rather a wider safeguarding issue, such as how long it takes someone to be put on trial, how we assess possible risk during that time and how we balance the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and making sure the public are kept safe. In the real world it is always going to be messy and not ideal.
 
Darat said:
What further clarity do you want? They've clarified the one area where there was some ambiguity, which was whether someone who has a GRC could be excluded on the basis of their sex, they are saying they can. (I.e. saying the use of sex in the act refers to a person's born/biological sex regardless of their GRC.) That directly addresses the reason I "signed" the petition.

It means that the single sex spaces and services that are currently legal do not have to allow access to someone with a "matching" GRC.

However I still say what is needed is actual legal cases to go to court- that ensures this has been fully tested in court - this is not unusual to this issue as it is the case for most legislation in the UK. Further guidance won't remove this requirement.
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I think it was already established that people can be excluded from a single-sex space on the basis of sex even if they have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment' - provided it's a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate goal. Gender reassignment is not the same as having a GRA, as gender reassignment as gender reassignment has minimal requirements to obtain as a protected characteristic. Because GRA wasn't specifically mentioned as an exception to excluding people based on sex, it was assumed people with a GRA can also be excluded, and that is now clarified. It isn't clear, however, whether additional requirements are needed to justify treating people with either gender reassignment or a GRA as their biological sex for the purposes of single-sex spaces, beyond the justification already needed to have a single-sex space in the first place. It also isn't clear if exclusions can be blanket or need to be on a case-by-case basis (which is unworkable for many spaces).

Further, the Equality Act specifically says already that 'women' and 'man' count as female/male of any age for the purposes of the act, but activists are now framing 'male' and 'female' as identities and objecting to terms such as 'biological sex'. Since this isn't written into the act itself, any guidance or interpretation could be changed later (for example, if activists take over the EHRC which made the current guidance, or the EHRC gets abolished). Likewise if legal cases go against this guidance, which depends partly on the influence activists have on the legal system. It would be better to have the definitions and exemptions stated more explicitly within the Equality Act itself rather than being subject to interpretation.
 
Darat said:
No idea - if she posts about it here I'm quite happy to discuss it with her. I suspect "pressured" is not going to be the same as actually being forced to do so (by disciplinary measures).
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You didn't follow the link, did you? She was being pressured to force guards to do that. She resisted that pressure. But another governor probably will force guards to do such searches. The distinction you want to draw won't protect them.
 
Elaedith said:
I think it was already established that people can be excluded from a single-sex space on the basis of sex even if they have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment' - provided it's a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate goal. Gender reassignment is not the same as having a GRA, as gender reassignment as gender reassignment has minimal requirements to obtain as a protected characteristic. Because GRA wasn't specifically mentioned as an exception to excluding people based on sex, it was assumed people with a GRA can also be excluded, and that is now clarified....snip...
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I raised that point earlier in the thread and I did ask if anyone knew of any legal challenges to that interpretation i.e. a case gone through to judgement in the courts and no one responded with any. I did do some searching to answer my own question and I couldn't find any, but I don't have access to the professional legal search tools so it could be there have been some.

Elaedith said:
It isn't clear, however, whether additional requirements are needed to justify treating people with either gender reassignment or a GRA as their biological sex for the purposes of single-sex spaces, beyond the justification already needed to have a single-sex space in the first place. It also isn't clear if exclusions can be blanket or need to be on a case-by-case basis (which is unworkable for many spaces).
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And the cabinet office comments on the petition I think cover that i.e. nothing changes by dint of having a GRC so no further requirements.

Elaedith said:
Further, the Equality Act specifically says already that 'women' and 'man' count as female/male of any age for the purposes of the act, but activists are now framing 'male' and 'female' as identities and objecting to terms such as 'biological sex'. Since this isn't written into the act itself, any guidance or interpretation could be changed later (for example, if activists take over the EHRC which made the current guidance, or the EHRC gets abolished). Likewise if legal cases go against this guidance, which depends partly on the influence activists have on the legal system. It would be better to have the definitions and exemptions stated more explicitly within the Equality Act itself rather than being subject to interpretation.
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All guidance can be changed there is no certainty, adding "biological sex" won't alter that. All legislation is subject to interpretation by the courts, that's why what we need - if you want the only "certainty" there can be in our system - is for legal precedent to have been set in a couple of actual legal cases.
 
Ziggurat said:
You didn't follow the link, did you? She was being pressured to force guards to do that. She resisted that pressure. But another governor probably will force guards to do such searches. The distinction you want to draw won't protect them.
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Since prison officers at the coal-face are not forced to do searches now even on prisoners of the same sex I doubt that any governor would try to change that practice.
 
I don't know whether that beautician course was open to men or not. There's nothing in any of the accounts about any other males being present. A course that expects young women to strip "almost naked" for a practical session on spray tanning seems to me to be more likely to be limited to women only. Here is the full article.

Scots beauty students asked to strip in front of trans rapist after sex attacks

The headline is somewhat hyperbolic, but it is the Daily Record after all.

Now former Ayrshire College students who trained to become beauticians alongside the 31-year-old have told how they got naked for spray tan sessions in front of the sex attacker while she was awaiting trial.

Rachel Ferguson, 21, said: “It really scares me to look back and realise she was watching me with no clothes on after being charged with this. It makes me feel physically sick and violated.

Students at Ayrshire College’s Kilwinning Campus say they worked alongside Bryson, then known to them as Annie, in 2021. They described her as “overpowering” and “disruptive”, saying classmates were repeatedly branded homophobic before Bryson was finally asked to leave the course.

Rachel, a nail technician from Dundonald, South Ayrshire, said: “We started college when she was beginning her transition. It was a class full of young girls. She was refusing to do practical stuff at first because she said she didn’t feel comfortable. “We had all kinds of accusations thrown at us in the middle of the classroom. I was being verbally attacked. She went to the head of the department and said we were all discriminating against her and were homophobic. I was really offended and hurt by that and didn’t go to college for three weeks because I was scared of the way she was coming at me. I didn’t even look at her because if I did, it gave her ammunition to say things to me. The way she spoke to the lecturers was disgusting. She made two of them cry. I found her very forceful and intimidating. Her true self came out during that time.”

Rachel said her experience of being required to remove her clothes in front of Bryson had left her “sickened”. She said: “Being a beauty course, you need to take your clothes off for some of it. We were doing spray tanning at one point and I was a model. You need to stand practically naked. Looking back, with what we know now, it’s so scary to think she was watching me with no clothes on. Someone should have told a class full of young women what was going on. Anything could have happened.”

Rachel said Bryson was later asked to leave the course, which she understood was due to the allegations being made about students. Another former student Abi Nixon, 18, from Ardrossan, told of her shock at learning of Bryson’s conviction this week. She said: “We all did the one-day spray tanning course. We had next to nothing on and this was before ‘Annie’ had been removed from the course. She hadn’t fully transitioned yet but we all accepted her for who she wanted to be. It was a complete and utter shock to the system to see what she had been convicted of."
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These poor girls have been utterly brainwashed. They see a man, and we have all seen pictures of what Adam Graham looks like without the wig,* and they're conditioned to refer to him as "she". They're conditioned to strip almost naked in front of this intimidating "muscular" man, as if he were one of them, and not object. If they do show reservations they're called homophobic (well, that's what it says, maybe Graham hadn't figured out that the word was "transphobic").

The poor girls are only now describing their trauma, framing it as "if only we'd known that 'Annie' was on bail facing charges of rape!" But they shouldn't have been subjected to this in the first place, and they shouldn't have been conditioned to believe that they should accept it and accept Graham "for who he wanted to be".

If he had done this before he'd been charged with the rapes, would that have made it any better? If he'd done it and nobody knew about the rapes at all, would that have made it any better? If he was just a run-of-the-mill creep and voyeur with no history of physical assault, would that have made it any better?

This is where "be kind" has got us, and I for one have had enough of it.

* muscular build, hair shaven in a no 1 buzzcut, hard-man Mike Tyson-style facial tattoos and the initials of "All Cops Are Bastards" tattooed on his knuckles, in case anyone was unaware.
 
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Darat said:
However I still say what is needed is actual legal cases to go to court- that ensures this has been fully tested in court - this is not unusual to this issue as it is the case for most legislation in the UK.
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It has - judgement in the Outer Court in December, which has contributed to the confusion.

https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-general-docs/pdf-docs-for-opinions/2022csoh90.pdf?sfvrsn=8eee302c_1

For all of the foregoing reasons, I conclude that in this context, which is the meaning of sex for the purposes of the 2010 Act, “sex” is not limited to biological or birth sex, but includes those in possession of a GRC obtained in accordance with the 2004 Act stating their acquired gender, and thus their sex.
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Basically that judgement said that because the EA didn't use the term "biological sex" (which she said was open to those drafting it to have used if they had wanted to), then it actually means anyone with a GRA literally becomes the opposite sex for these purposes.

In my view those drafting the EA in 2010 never thought for half a second that they had to spell out "biological sex" in that context, but Lady Haldane thought otherwise, which is why we are where we are. A bill passed by the Scottish parliament giving absolutely any adult free rein to get a GRC on demand, and Lady Haldane's judgement mandating that when they do that then they are for all purposes members of the sex they declare themselves to be.

I can see a lot more problems at the college in Kilwinning with young men signing up to learn spray tanning armed with their brand new self-ID GRCs.
 
Darat said:
Since prison officers at the coal-face are not forced to do searches now even on prisoners of the same sex I doubt that any governor would try to change that practice.
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Do you have evidence for this claim? Note that we aren't talking about legally defined "intimate searches".

You seem awfully dismissive of what Rhona Hotchkiss said, but you aren't actually addressing it. At this point, you're just Bobbing the thread.
 
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Darat said:
All guidance can be changed there is no certainty, adding "biological sex" won't alter that. All legislation is subject to interpretation by the courts, that's why what we need - if you want the only "certainty" there can be in our system - is for legal precedent to have been set in a couple of actual legal cases.
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I think it's quite obvious that the more ambiguous the wording of legislation, the more likely it is there will be conflicting guidance. Likewise the wording of legislation will affect the outcome of legal challenges.
 
Ziggurat said:
Do you have evidence for this claim? Note that we aren't talking about legally defined "intimate searches".

You seem awfully dismissive of what Rhona Hotchkiss said, but you aren't actually addressing it. At this point, you're just Bobbing the thread.
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It doesn't appear to me that Darat has actually listened to what Rhona said at all, despite the link being posted more than once.

I've actually heard Rhona speak about this and other matters at two different public meetings, and had a short conversation with her myself. Darat is in denial.
 
Darat's quibble about being pressured not being the same as being forced by disciplinary measures puts me in mind of the folks that try to minimize the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace.

As long as a woman just feels pressured to put out for her boss, but is never explicitly threatened with losing her job if she doesn't, it's no big deal, right? We can just dismiss her concerns without further examination, right? /s
 
Rhona spoke very eloquently about the traumatising effect on female prison officers having to deal with violent male offenders as if they were women, in a prison designed and run for the purpose of incarcerating (only) women). To dismiss this with the glib retort that some women work as prison officers in the male estate is more or less what I have come to expect of a certain type of man who doesn't see women as being fully human.
 
Rolfe said:
I see Maya has set out her stall on the EA issue, with the petition now pretty obviously set to trigger a debate. (The current brou-ha-ha is attracting a lot more signatories and it looks likely to add at least a thousand more today.)

https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1618922034368778240
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Can you tell me what it means when the petition reaches 100k? It looks like it definitely will!!
What happens that could change the bill on hand or the law?
I know it goes up for debate, but who is allowed to participate in that? Can opposing MP's bring in their own experts, or women inmates, or victims? Are people called to testify before parliament (by both sides) like here in the US?

I have no clue how that works in Scotland. or is this for changes to all of the UK?
Apologies for the ignorance.
 
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I get that your employer can change the terms of your employment, such that you are now working with male inmates even though you sought jobs specifically to avoid that, and that your only real recourse in that scenario is to find another job.

What bugs me is the refusal to even examine the trade-offs, question whether the change in terms makes sense, or consider whether it's good public policy. "They're allowed to do it, that settles it" is a terrible way to approach the question. But this approach comes up repeatedly in this thread.

And it always comes up from one side. The trans-exclusionists don't rest on "they're allowed to exclude, and that settles it". The trans-exclusionists actually argue for their position. "They should be allowed to exclude, for these reasons." It's good that these exclusions are allowed, and here are the reasons why." Etc.

With the trans-inclusionists, it's a different story, though. When pressed, Boudicca fell back on, it's legal in her jurisdiction, and that's all the reasoning she feels obliged to give in support of her position. LJ seems to think that once a government imposes a policy, that resolves all debate, in favor of his preferred conclusion. And sure, that female prison guard should find employment elsewhere, if she doesn't like her current employer's new terms. But why doesn't she like the new terms? Maybe none of us should like the new terms. Maybe the new terms are terrible public policy, and forcing female prison guards out of their current jobs is a bad idea. But Darat won't deign to examine any of these questions, because well the employer is allowed to change their terms, so why make a fuss?

As if just switching jobs willy-nilly is such an easy thing to do.

Reminds me of the idea, bandied about recently on this forum, that knowingly putting an innocent person on trial isn't a form of punishment.
 
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