Gender again. Sorry!

[icowden]

As time goes on your post become less and less distinguishable from Aurora's - why are you bombarding me with straw men? If you are, for some reason, wanting to bring up with me the media story about the person known as Sophie Rebecca... Pigeonholing for a moment the fact that I find even good classical ballet ridiculous, I quite agree that it would be unjust if she were to gain a place at a prestigious ballet school for talented youngsters. That isn't actually what happened, though, is it? It's good for everyone if we all just pause before hitting the outrage retweet button.

Apologies - it was a bit of a non-sequitur wasn't it? I was distracted I think and started replying to a statement that wasn't there.

On this topic. there seems to be scant detail. but Sophie Rebecca does appear to have been awarded a female scholarship at The Royal Academy of Dance back in 2017, and the reviews of her dancing are that she is not particularly good compared to her contemporaries. The scholarship is thus questionable. Dance schools are not known for being very forgiving when it comes to skill levels.

Thus a place that could have gone to someone talented, deserving and biologically female and who could otherwise not afford to progress their potential career appears to have gone to someone of a lower skill level whilst simultaneously reducing the opportunities for biological women in order to make the school look good.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Feeling that you deserve something is not the same a it being 'deserved', or making it so in law, or being right. I haven't argued that men should be in the female prison estate as you will continue to say. I have said very little about sport, save for one opinion that you didn't disagree with. But I challenge the lies, because that is not a pathway to anything useful, or a correct outcome.

You've argued that transwomen should be placed in the female estate if they were living as a transwoman when they committed the crime. So not trans on Monday is a male prison; trans on Tuesday is a female prison.
At least I'm consistent. No men in female prisons whatsoever.

So far you've managed to argue that the EqA protects women's hard won rights, but after being challenged couldn't define those rights or where they exist in the EqA 2010.

You've argued that spaces are already segregated by biological sex. Whereas they are not, but they are the change being sought.

You've argued that women should be able to challenge people who look dodgy entering the women's loo, but not by their appearance.

You've argued that human rights are not cemented in international human rights law, but that they are in UK law even though we have a government with a manifesto pledge to abolish the UK Human Rights Act.

You keep repeating 'Stonewall law' when we all know it's perfectly legal to exclude males from certain spaces under the Equality Act legislation if it's legitimate and proportionate.

Still, you think you know better about UK law than law professers who explain it to you on Twitter, and more about biology than the likes of Robert Winston, Richard Dawkins, and Nobel Prize winner Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.

You've argued that women's rights are cemented in 'social mores' but that gender is nothing more than a social construct.

Here is a picture of the pie of protected characteristics after you've taken your share using 'social mores' to ensure that you've got the piece that you 'deserve'.

View attachment 3696

And you think a feeling your head trumps biological reality when it comes to safeguarding lol.

 

[monkers]

Apologies - it was a bit of a non-sequitur wasn't it? I was distracted I think and started replying to a statement that wasn't there.

On this topic. there seems to be scant detail. but Sophie Rebecca does appear to have been awarded a female scholarship at The Royal Academy of Dance back in 2017, and the reviews of her dancing are that she is not particularly good compared to her contemporaries. The scholarship is thus questionable. Dance schools are not known for being very forgiving when it comes to skill levels.

Thus a place that could have gone to someone talented, deserving and biologically female and who could otherwise not afford to progress their potential career appears to have gone to someone of a lower skill level whilst simultaneously reducing the opportunities for biological women in order to make the school look good.

Can we have a little appreciation of facts please ~ go on indulge me with facts at least this once.

Fact 1: RAD is not a dance school with access limited to a few places with auditions. It's an exam board with dance schools teaching all comers to dance to pass those exams.

Fact 2: Some RAD dance schools use the term 'scholar'. This does not mean they have 'won a scholarship' or are dancing in some prestigious institution like the Royal Ballet School with places won by competition.

Fact 3: Sophie Rebecca says she is not a ballet dancer, just a person who likes to dance ballet. It's not a career aspiration.

Fact 4: RAD has a policy of welcoming trans people as part of its own inclusion policy. No rules were bent, misapplied, or broken. No special exception was made for Sophie to be able to learn to dance or pass the exams due to her gender identity. No harm has been done, no crime committed.

So why is this even a story?

 

[classic33]

You've argued that transwomen should be placed in the female estate if they were living as a transwoman when they committed the crime. So not trans on Monday is a male prison; trans on Tuesday is a female prison.
At least I'm consistent. No men in female prisons whatsoever.

You keep repeating 'Stonewall law' when we all know it's perfectly legal to exclude males from certain spaces under the Equality Act legislation if it's legitimate and proportionate.

Still, you think you know better about UK law than law professers who explain it to you on Twitter, and more about biology than the likes of Robert Winston, Richard Dawkins, and Nobel Prize winner Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.

And you think a feeling your head trumps biological reality when it comes to safeguarding lol.

And prison staff who are men in women's prisons?

 

[monkers]

You've argued that transwomen should be placed in the female estate if they were living as a transwoman when they committed the crime. So not trans on Monday is a male prison; trans on Tuesday is a female prison.
At least I'm consistent. No men in female prisons whatsoever.

No I haven't.

I have rejected the lies that trans women are housed in the female prison estate in Limerick prison with access to other prisoners.

I have rejected the lie that Isla Bryson was housed in the female prison estate with other female prisoners.

I have rejected the lies that women's prisons are safe spaces for women, because they are not. The inspectorate said that prison with the highest levels of violence is a women's prison. When the few trans women prisoners were shipped out the violence became worse - though we don't know if that change was due was due to any influence or coincidental.

I have stated that trials treat circumstances contemporaneously as they should. I have stated an opinion that if a person has the protected characteristic of male at the time of the offence, then the consequences should be contemporaneous, ie. recorded as male, any prison sentence served in a male prison.

I have stated an opinion that I agree with the existing arrangement for male and female prisoners in terms of placement by risk assessment.

I have stated an opinion that there should be more use of scheduling and timetabling to ensure that more vulnerable prisoners are kept away from the more dangerous ones in any prison. This is a simple process that teachers in schools exercise each day - such as allocating desks to individuals.

The data shows that most prison violence and harm occurs while prisoners are in their cells rather than the communal areas where they are more closely watched.

If you think that I am saying that the perpetrators of dangerous crimes should be able to choose the prison they go to - then the answer is clearly in the negative..

It's time for you to learn that just because I call you out on a lie that it must mean that I support laws or policies that you don't. It doesn't, it just means that my reasoning is based on recognising facts rather than parroting lies. If I disagree with a law or a policy, I will say what that law of policy is, and state why I disagree with it. What I don't do is pretend that the law or policy is something other than what it is.

I notice your faithful puppy dog employing similar tactics to discredit me with plenty of straw men arguments along the way.

 

[theclaud]

Apologies - it was a bit of a non-sequitur wasn't it? I was distracted I think and started replying to a statement that wasn't there.

Thanks. Unfortunately there's a whole lot of this on this thread!

On this topic. there seems to be scant detail. but Sophie Rebecca does appear to have been awarded a female scholarship at The Royal Academy of Dance back in 2017, and the reviews of her dancing are that she is not particularly good compared to her contemporaries. The scholarship is thus questionable. Dance schools are not known for being very forgiving when it comes to skill levels.

Thus a place that could have gone to someone talented, deserving and biologically female and who could otherwise not afford to progress their potential career appears to have gone to someone of a lower skill level whilst simultaneously reducing the opportunities for biological women in order to make the school look good.

I see Monkers has already replied to this above. I don't know a great deal about RAD but I saw the story on Twitter, shared by someone who was outraged about it. Of course it would be outrageous if SR (at least based on the video that was shared) got a place on a competitive serious or elite training programme. It took me one Twitter search a couple of clicks to find that there were obvious holes in that story. I have a friend who started dancing with a RAD franchise called Silver Swans at the age of 62 - she even got a feature in the Guardian about it. My idea of hell, but it's changed her life, and is a scalable participation thing, not a dog-eat-dog struggle for scarce opportunities. I have tried to make a similar point about grassroots football, but as usual those who are actually involved in these things on the ground (including the more thoughtful service providers interviewed for the project referenced in the OP) get their perspectives airily dismissed by people like Aurora applying their monocular vision machine to all of human life. There are some difficult questions about inclusion, opportunity and fairness in sport and work - let's not make it harder than in it is by being taken in by every panic Tweet that pops up in our timelines.

 

[monkers]

You keep repeating 'Stonewall law' when we all know it's perfectly legal to exclude males from certain spaces under the Equality Act legislation if it's legitimate and proportionate.

Still, you think you know better about UK law than law professers who explain it to you on Twitter, and more about biology than the likes of Robert Winston, Richard Dawkins, and Nobel Prize winner Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.

I haven't mentioned 'Stonewall Law'. That's because it doesn't even exist - just another invention.

I have always agreed that the Equality Act says the some exemptions are permissible. I have already explained to you that in a court ruling a legal precedent has established that blanket bans are not permissible, that any exemption has to be on a carefully considered case-by-case basis. Therefore a blanket ban on trans women using a women's loo is not legitimate and proportionate. Let's be clear, I'm not offering you an opinion of the law, I'm telling you what the law says, and how it has been interpreted by the court. Therefore any lawyer with any opinion, is just that, their opinion and has no authority over the ruling of the judge. Neither does this mean that the ruling can not be considered by a higher court, but that is where it is at.

 

[monkers]

@AuroraSaab

What I have said is that if Robert Winston, an expert in his own right regarding reproductive sex was to say, 'at the moment there is no means of one changing one's reproductive sex' then I will agree with him. I won't agree with him saying you can not change your sex, because that is a statement that is incomplete on one level and false on another. I think it an error for him to say that, but he is way too clever to be making that error without intending something else.

One can change some elements of their sex. A trans woman who takes hormone replacement therapy goes through a stage of female puberty- not one that undoes all the effects of male puberty it has to be said.

And of course there is what the law says. So again, this is not a legal opinion, but a straight report of what the law says it intends. The law says that after certain qualifying conditions are met, that the state will recognise the gender identity of the person and at the same time amend the record of the sex assigned at birth. The law does not say they have changed biological sex, or reproductive sex or whatever, but it does give the person the right to be treated with equal dignity as any other person in the acquired sex and gender and to be treated no less favourably.

 

[icowden]

One can change some elements of their sex. A trans woman who takes hormone replacement therapy goes through a stage of female puberty- not one that undoes all the effects of male puberty it has to be said.

But as far as a doctor is concerned they are still a man. They have no womb, no cervix, no ovaries, no monthly bleed and no conception of what that means to actual women. You lot lead very different lives biologically to men. I think he is speaking as a doctor. You can change some cosmetic bits, that's it.

 

[monkers]

But as far as a doctor is concerned they are still a man. They have no womb, no cervix, no ovaries, no monthly bleed and no conception of what that means to actual women. You lot lead very different lives biologically to men. I think he is speaking as a doctor. You can change some cosmetic bits, that's it.

No.
Women who have no womb, no cervix, no ovaries, no monthly bleed are not men.

Trans women, like all other women of the age of 50, is invited for breast scans to check that their breasts are healthy. Any treatment they receive is just like it is for other women.

If trans women started walking around topless in public areas like 'men' do there would be complaints - would you be complaining?

It's interesting to me that you can read the minds of all doctors, process that into a unified theory, and then present those findings here.

 

[Mr Celine]

Yadda yadda yadda ... Robert Winston.

As a female cyclist you're probably more at risk of harm from Robert Winston than you are from trans women.

 

[AuroraSaab]

You're only invited if you're registered as female with your GP, ie. it's an automatic admin thing, not a recognition that you've changed sex. And the only reason transwomen might need breast scans more than anybody else born male is because hrt increases the risk of breast cancer, for both sexes. Any man can get the various cancers associated with that area of the body. A friend's husband was diagnosed at 30 (very rare in men so young) and had an op but no chemo/radiotherapy. Changing secondary characteristics with hrt or surgery doesn't change your sex.

 

[monkers]

You're only invited if you're registered as female with your GP, ie. it's an automatic admin thing, not a recognition that you've changed sex. And the only reason transwomen might need breast scans more than anybody else born male is because hrt increases the risk of breast cancer, for both sexes. Any man can get the various cancers associated with that area of the body. A friend's husband was diagnosed at 30 (very rare in men so young) and had an op but no chemo/radiotherapy. Changing secondary characteristics with hrt or surgery doesn't change your sex.

I didn't say otherwise. GPs become aware of the status of their patient automatically - trans people's NHS numbers are recoded following transition.

 

[multitool]

WHATEVER NEXT!!!


View: https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1648262483059298304?s=20

 

[multitool]

Let women speak

View: https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1648240070602936321?s=20

NO! NOT THOSE ONES!