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Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

The UK is not in Europe any more, so does the ECHR still have jurisdiction? Can the UK just tell them to go pound sand?
You're under the same misapprehension as Brexiters and friends. The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU, it comes from the Council of Europe which was set up post-WW2 at the instigation of such famous Lefties as Winston Churchill.
 
This is a very clear explanation of the implications of the judgment for toilet provision.


I'm currently trying to continue a dialogue with the theatre I have a season ticket for (and the new season tickets go on sale in a few days). I asked them if they would assure me that should there be any disagreement or altercation as a result of a man in a dress using the Ladies in the theatre, that they would support the woman, and not the man. (I have seen men in dresses in that space, and no longer go there as a result. This matters to me.)

They told me they were waiting for the Scottish government to issue its guidelines in the summer. I replied that the judgment and the EHRC guidelines were perfectly clear on the issue, with no ambiguity, and it was inconceivable that any guidelines that might emerge later would say anything different. I didn't get a reply. I think I'm going to have another go, pointing out that waiting for guidelines issued by the losing party in a court case as to how the judgment that went against them should be intepreted, while ignoring guidelines from those whose legal arguments were accepted by the court, is frankly perverse.

They are breaking the law now if they refuse to manage the spaces with the little skirted figure silhouette on the door, and they ought to understand that.
 
I also think such laws are kind of a "negative space" kind of thing. They're saying that gender identity cannot have any legal place in hiring and housing decisions. The laws only bring it up to say it has no place in such matters.
So long as we retain the BFOQWP carveout for jobs that reasonably require prospective hires to be and/or appear female or male, this sounds fine.

I really wonder whether we have anyone left willing to argue that "gender identity" needs to be written into the law at any level.
 
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I think any law that prohibits discrimination in housing or employment based on gender expression completes the assignment.

I also think such laws are kind of a "negative space" kind of thing. They're saying that gender identity cannot have any legal place in hiring and housing decisions. The laws only bring it up to say it has no place in such matters.

So while there is an obvious "wElL AcKsHuLlY" rebuttal here, I think that laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity comport with the spirit of the second statement

Transgender is a protected characteristic
Female is a protected characteristic
TRAs and their sycophants scream blue murder about how this clarification by the UK Supreme Court takes away their protection (it does no such thing, but they will scream their lie that it does every chance they get).
However, any other decision would have taken away the protection afforded females. This puts the protections under law in conflict. Any law that permits transwomen to enter and/or use female safe spaces will, by default, is discrimination against women.
Sorry (not sorry) but I'm siding with the majority of affected people on this one.
 
You're under the same misapprehension as Brexiters and friends. The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU, it comes from the Council of Europe which was set up post-WW2 at the instigation of such famous Lefties as Winston Churchill.
That'll be why I framed it as a question and not a statement.
 
Are there any at a high enough level to compete in the world cup? What chance would they have against transwomen (i.e., biological males).
Once you have answered those two questions., you will have your answer as to why no transmen entered that division either.
Dude! You just said that NOT ONE SINGLE transwoman entered the open category, so presumably the answer would be "quite high".

But also, I don't think you understand what the biological advantage really is.

Nobody seriously claims that ANY and EVERY biological male would beat every single woman in ANY and EVERY sport. That would be a ludicrous claim, and yet you seem to be making that right now.

The claim is that men tend to have an advantage over women, so erasing the distinction would open the floodgates to men who want to compete.

You have no reason for claiming that transmen would refuse to compete against transwomen. In fact, there are plenty of examples that show that is not true....

At the time Will Thomas was swimming in the women's category there was a trans-identifying woman competing in the same area. I can't remember her name. She also competed in the women's category. She chose not to take testosterone so that she could go on doing that, because obviously that's a banned substance. She did quite well, as I remember. She would have been nowhere in the men's category.

Nobody had the slightest problem with her swimming against other women, obviously. I don't know which changing room she used but I suspect the women's too.

Indeed. Not only that, but there was a transman who even won against Lia Thomas. Googling tells me his name is Iszac Henig.
 
Why does anyone want to compete in a sport? Because they like to win, and some are prepared to cheat to win (Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Diego Maradonna, Tonya Harding, The Spanish Paralympic Basketball team, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, the Houston Astros). Some sportsmen have simply found another way to cheat and win ("Kate" Weatherly, "Lia" Thomas)
This again is too extreme a claim.

More than 50,000 people ran the London marathon at the weekend. If any one of them except around 10 - 20 in any one category thought they had a chance of winning it then they were extremely delusional.
 
So long as we retain the BFOQWP carveout for jobs that reasonably require prospective hires to be and/or appear female or male, this sounds fine.

I really wonder whether we have anyone left willing to argue that "gender identity" needs to be written into the law at any level.

Nobody male gets to do anything to me on the grounds that they  appear female.
 
Dude! You just said that NOT ONE SINGLE transwoman entered the open category, so presumably the answer would be "quite high".

But also, I don't think you understand what the biological advantage really is.

Nobody seriously claims that ANY and EVERY biological male would beat every single woman in ANY and EVERY sport. That would be a ludicrous claim, and yet you seem to be making that right now.

The claim is that men tend to have an advantage over women, so erasing the distinction would open the floodgates to men who want to compete.

You have no reason for claiming that transmen would refuse to compete against transwomen. In fact, there are plenty of examples that show that is not true....



Indeed. Not only that, but there was a transman who even won against Lia Thomas. Googling tells me his name is Iszac Henig.

That was the name. I have a strong suspicion that race was rigged though. AFAIR it happened during the time that Thomas was strongly suspected to be throwing races. He won one by an absolutely insane margin, having obviously put in his maximum effort, and there was a lot of talk about unfairness. Immediately after that his performance took a bit of a nosedive and people who understand swimming were saying it looked as if he was barely kicking his legs. I'm not at all sure Henig could have beaten him if he'd been going all in. It seemed to be a bit of a stunt.
 
It won’t matter. Nations regularly ignore UN judgements which are against their public interest.
Indeed


The Human Rights Act also requires UK courts, including the Supreme Court, to "take account" of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (which sits in Strasbourg). UK courts are not required, however, always to follow the decisions of that Court. Indeed, they can decline to do so, particularly if they consider that the Strasbourg Court has not sufficiently appreciated or accommodated particular aspects of our domestic constitutional position.

"Your Honours, we have taken account of your decision in this matter, and have decided that we disagree with that decision. As a consequence, we will not be implementing your decision into law in this country"

Translation: Go pound sand!
 
The claim is that men tend to have an advantage over women, so erasing the distinction would open the floodgates to men who want to compete.

It's more than a tendency. Men's élite performance is consistently 10% (speed) to 30% (strength) better than women's. While of course an élite woman will be able to beat a couch potato of a man, the difference is striking and more than a tendency. If the couch potato got up and got into training there's a pretty decent chance he could beat the woman. Fifteen-year-old schoolboys are beating female world records all the time.

Sorry if this was posted in this thread already. The four-minute-mile barrier was broken in 1954 (when I was a five-month-old baby) by Roger Bannister when he was working as a junior doctor and only in light training. Someone else beat his time only about six weeks later, and the record has tumbled since. The current record is 3 min 43.13 seconds. Though that record is now over 25 years old, so maybe we are seeing an absolute limit on performance - or maybe it's just that non-metric distances aren't often raced these days..

How long did it take for a woman to run the first sub-four-minute mile? Trick question. I am now an old lady of 71, and it still hasn't happened. The five-minute-mile barrier for women was broken about three weeks after Bannister's achievement. The current record for women is still over seven seconds over the magic four minutes, although that record is less than two years old.

Is it actually possible for a female human being to run a sub-four-minute mile? It may be that it isn't. There has to be an absolute limit somewhere. Horseracing has seen the equine limits reached long ago, thanks to selective breeding and dedicated training, which is why they don't even bother giving out the times for horse races. We'll get there for human performance too, and we won't be seeing female performance equal male at that point.
 
I see that after literally years of "we will not bow to external pressure" and ban males from playing on women's teams, the English Football Association has now done just that. I think the Scottish Football Association doing it yesterday might have been the last straw. English netball has also come out today with the same decision, although they also allow mixed teams. (I don't know if there are rules about how many of each sex there must be in a mixed team, but it seems likely.)

Parkrun next, hopefully.

Slowly, gradually - then all at once.
 
It's more than a tendency. Men's élite performance is consistently 10% (speed) to 30% (strength) better than women's. While of course an élite woman will be able to beat a couch potato of a man, the difference is striking and more than a tendency. If the couch potato got up and got into training there's a pretty decent chance he could beat the woman. Fifteen-year-old schoolboys are beating female world records all the time.

Sorry if this was posted in this thread already. The four-minute-mile barrier was broken in 1954 (when I was a five-month-old baby) by Roger Bannister when he was working as a junior doctor and only in light training. Someone else beat his time only about six weeks later, and the record has tumbled since. The current record is 3 min 43.13 seconds. Though that record is now over 25 years old, so maybe we are seeing an absolute limit on performance - or maybe it's just that non-metric distances aren't often raced these days..

How long did it take for a woman to run the first sub-four-minute mile? Trick question. I am now an old lady of 71, and it still hasn't happened. The five-minute-mile barrier for women was broken about three weeks after Bannister's achievement. The current record for women is still over seven seconds over the magic four minutes, although that record is less than two years old.

Is it actually possible for a female human being to run a sub-four-minute mile? It may be that it isn't. There has to be an absolute limit somewhere. Horseracing has seen the equine limits reached long ago, thanks to selective breeding and dedicated training, which is why they don't even bother giving out the times for horse races. We'll get there for human performance too, and we won't be seeing female performance equal male at that point.
Right, I get that. But the point is that in an open category where both transmen and transwomen would be able to compete, there will no doubt be transmen who would be open to competing. The claim that they would not because they would not want to compete against transwomen, on the grounds that they are men, seems to lack a theory of mind. After all, transmen are largely down with the idea that trans people can self-ID so won’t refuse on the grounds that their opponents are biological men. Besides, if it is also true that no transwomen will enter the open categories because all they really want to do is beat women in the women categories then it contradicts the argument that transmen will be competing against transwomen.

And if, as it may be claimed, that it is a case of “revealed preferences” (i.e transmen say they are men but they won’t compete against actual biological men which ultimately they know transwomen are) then that would also be contradicted by real life examples of transmen nonetheless competing in some men’s sports anyway.
 
It's more than a tendency. Men's élite performance is consistently 10% (speed) to 30% (strength) better than women's. While of course an élite woman will be able to beat a couch potato of a man, the difference is striking and more than a tendency. If the couch potato got up and got into training there's a pretty decent chance he could beat the woman. Fifteen-year-old schoolboys are beating female world records all the time.
Its not just in times either.

The US Women's National Soccer team, essentially, a team chosen from the best 30 or so women's soccer players in the USA, who were Women's World Champions at the time, were beaten 5-2 by a Dallas under-15 schoolboy team

The Australian Women's National soccer team was beaten 7-0 by the Newcastle Jets under-15 boys.

If 15 year old males, who are not even fully phyically mature, can give the best women players ass-whoopings like these, it shows conclusively that male speed, strength and power gives them a huge advantage over women in any sport where those attributes are required, and that includes pretty much all olympic sports, and any ball sports, team or invididual.

A number of people arguing against all this will often bring up the famous Bobby Riggs v Billie Jean King tennis match, and poit out that the female player, Billie Jean King won. There are three things however, that these arguers will always neglect to tell you.
1. Bobby Riggs was a 55 year old, washed up player, while Billie Jean King was 29, in her prime and at the top of her game.
2. The match was played under men's rules (best three of five sets) King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 - closer than many expected.
3. Riggs had trounced Margaret Court earlier in the year 6-2, 6-1 and Court was 31, also at the top of her game, the Australian Open and French Open champion at the time, and went on to win the US Open later in the year.

And no, contrary to what someone claimed earlier, I am not arguing that all men can beat all women all the time. That would be ridiculous. I'm still a reasonably good tennis player for my age (nearly 70) but I would be blasted off the court by Serena Williams - I'd be lucky to even win a point. Hell I even struggle to beat a lady friend of mine, who still plays in the local club circuit, and is eight years younger than me!
 
I see that after literally years of "we will not bow to external pressure" and ban males from playing on women's teams, the English Football Association has now done just that. I think the Scottish Football Association doing it yesterday might have been the last straw. English netball has also come out today with the same decision, although they also allow mixed teams. (I don't know if there are rules about how many of each sex there must be in a mixed team, but it seems likely.)

Parkrun next, hopefully.

Slowly, gradually - then all at once.
The floodgates may be about to open.... and not a moment too soon.
 
Nobody male gets to do anything to me on the grounds that they  appear female.
Okay, but that doesn't change my point at all.

Hooters decides to hire Blaire White but rejects J. Yaniv, because the former applicant has the sort of body shape that looks good in their server uniforms, but the latter applicant looks like an everyday craft beer enthusiast awkwardly stuffed in shorts and a tank top. Corporate could make a reasonably colorable argument that the BFOQ applies when the goal is explicitly to appeal to the heteronormative male gaze, so it matters that White really looks the part even if it would ordinarily be verboten to hire based on gender expression.
 
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The floodgates may be about to open.... and not a moment too soon.

Hope so. There is still a lot of entitled whining going on though, and a lot of people are still captured (I noticed another forum member with "Protect the Dolls" as his avatar - I wonder if he has clicked on that hash-tag yet, it's currently nothing but, well, cherries.) Media outlets are still going straight to "trans people are afraid today", and when the usual aggressive voices insist they will continue to go where they're not supposed to be, nobody says, just obey the law like everyone else. Nobody is highlighting the distress that has been felt by women over these past years, or talking about the relief they're now feeling.

The language still needs addressing. I was driving home at lunchtime when the radio started to tell us all about the Football Associations' decisions. All the time it was "transgender women" will no longer be allowed to play. The trans lobby have deliberately pushed this language to make it sound as if some sort of women are being excluded from the women's game, so that it sounds unfair. At some point the language is going to have to be reclaimed to say something like men who identify as women, or male people who identify as women. It's just misleading otherwise. (Cue a lot of bleating about hurty feelz. Too bad. Reality doesn't have to modify itself to avoid feelings being hurt.)
 
Okay, but that doesn't change my point at all.

Hooters decides to hire Blaire White but rejects J. Yaniv, because the former applicant has the sort of body shape that looks good in their server uniforms, but the latter applicant looks like an everyday craft beer enthusiast awkwardly stuffed in shorts and a tank top. Corporate could make a reasonably colorable argument that the BFOQ applies when the goal is explicitly to appeal to the heteronormative male gaze, so it matters that White really looks the part even if it would ordinarily be verboten to hire based on gender expression.

That sounds a bit like, we will only employ good-looking people. I'm not sure if that's illegal or not. Being plug-ugly isn't a protected characteristic as far as I know. It's certainly allowable in some contexts such as modelling.
 

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