What is a woman?

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mickle

New Member
JK Rowling wrote:

" In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact. These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.

I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women's and girls' rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don't want opposite sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids. Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?

I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it's a complete waste of time telling a gender activist that their favourite slogan is self-contradictory nonsense, because the lie is the whole point. They're not repeating it because it's true - they know full well it's not true - but because they believe they can make it true, sort of, if they force everyone else to agree. The foundational lie functions as both catechism and crucifix: the set form of words that obviates the tedious necessity of coming up with your own explanation of why you're one of the Godly, and an exorcist's weapon which will defeat demonic facts and reason, and promote the advance of righteous pseudoscience and sophistry.

Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions (though we can quibble whether they're actually liberal at all, given the draconian authoritarianism that seems to have engulfed so many). Gender ideology could give medieval Catholicism a run for its money when it comes to punishing heretics, so isn't it common sense to keep your head down and recite your Hail Mulvaneys?

But before we start feeling too sorry for any cowed and fearful TWAWites who're TERFy on the sly, let's not forget what a high proportion of them have willingly snatched up pitchforks and torches to join the inquisitional purges. Call me lacking in proper womanly sympathy, but I find the harm they've enabled and in some cases directly championed or funded - the hounding and shaming of vulnerable women, the forced loss of livelihoods, the unregulated medical experiment on minors - tends to dry up my tears at source.

History is littered with the debris of irrational and harmful belief systems that once seemed unassailable. As Orwell said, 'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.' Gender ideology may have embedded itself deeply into our institutions, where it's been imposed, top-down, on the supposedly unenlightened, but it is not invulnerable.

Court losses are starting to stack up. The condescension, overreach, entitlement and aggression of gender activists is eroding public support daily. Women are fighting back and winning significant victories. Sporting bodies have miraculously awoken from their slumber and remembered that males tend to be larger, stronger and faster than females. Parts of the medical establishment are questioning cutting healthy breasts off teenaged girls is really the best way to fix their mental health problems.

One seemingly harmless little white lie - Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men - uttered in most cases without any real thought at all, and a few short years later, people who think of themselves as supremely virtuous are typing 'yes, rapists' pronouns are absolutely the hill I'll die on,' rubbing shoulders with those who call for women to be hanged and decapitated for wanting all-female rape crisis centres, and furiously denying clear and mounting evidence of the greatest medical scandal in a century.

I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame. "
 

monkers

Squire
JK Rowling wrote:

" In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact. These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.

I often wonder whether the signatories of such letters have to quieten their consciences before publicly boosting a movement intent on removing women's and girls' rights, which bullies gay people who admit openly they don't want opposite sex partners, and campaigns for the continued sterilisation of vulnerable and troubled kids. Do they feel any qualms at all while chanting the foundational lie of their religion: Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men?

I have no idea. All I know for sure is that it's a complete waste of time telling a gender activist that their favourite slogan is self-contradictory nonsense, because the lie is the whole point. They're not repeating it because it's true - they know full well it's not true - but because they believe they can make it true, sort of, if they force everyone else to agree. The foundational lie functions as both catechism and crucifix: the set form of words that obviates the tedious necessity of coming up with your own explanation of why you're one of the Godly, and an exorcist's weapon which will defeat demonic facts and reason, and promote the advance of righteous pseudoscience and sophistry.

Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions (though we can quibble whether they're actually liberal at all, given the draconian authoritarianism that seems to have engulfed so many). Gender ideology could give medieval Catholicism a run for its money when it comes to punishing heretics, so isn't it common sense to keep your head down and recite your Hail Mulvaneys?

But before we start feeling too sorry for any cowed and fearful TWAWites who're TERFy on the sly, let's not forget what a high proportion of them have willingly snatched up pitchforks and torches to join the inquisitional purges. Call me lacking in proper womanly sympathy, but I find the harm they've enabled and in some cases directly championed or funded - the hounding and shaming of vulnerable women, the forced loss of livelihoods, the unregulated medical experiment on minors - tends to dry up my tears at source.

History is littered with the debris of irrational and harmful belief systems that once seemed unassailable. As Orwell said, 'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.' Gender ideology may have embedded itself deeply into our institutions, where it's been imposed, top-down, on the supposedly unenlightened, but it is not invulnerable.

Court losses are starting to stack up. The condescension, overreach, entitlement and aggression of gender activists is eroding public support daily. Women are fighting back and winning significant victories. Sporting bodies have miraculously awoken from their slumber and remembered that males tend to be larger, stronger and faster than females. Parts of the medical establishment are questioning cutting healthy breasts off teenaged girls is really the best way to fix their mental health problems.

One seemingly harmless little white lie - Trans Women are Women, Trans Men are Men - uttered in most cases without any real thought at all, and a few short years later, people who think of themselves as supremely virtuous are typing 'yes, rapists' pronouns are absolutely the hill I'll die on,' rubbing shoulders with those who call for women to be hanged and decapitated for wanting all-female rape crisis centres, and furiously denying clear and mounting evidence of the greatest medical scandal in a century.

I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame. "

I started to read this, but then the realisation was immediate, that Rowling doesn't understand anything.

" In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact. These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.

The resident doctors’ wing of the BMA argued that a binary divide between sex and gender ‘has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people’

Doctors at the British Medical Association (BMA) have condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling on biological sex, dubbing it “biologically nonsensical” and “scientifically illiterate”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...upreme-court-ruling-bma-doctors-b2741304.html

Not only do biologists say that sex is not a true binary, but medical bodies say so too.

And now the Supreme Court, through legal illiteracy have decided that sex is a binary, but all trans women and trans men with a GRC are male for some purposes and female for others, meaning that they have ruled that no trans person with a GRC fits the binary the they declared.

Marvellous isn't it.

I didn't read the rest.
 
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...upreme-court-ruling-bma-doctors-b2741304.html

Not only do biologists say that sex is not a true binary, but medical bodies say so too.
Not medical bodies - the BMA is a union with 190k members and this was a motion passed by attendees at the Resident Doctors conference, not the full BMA. It doesn't necessarily reflect the views of BMA members or the BMA itself. It reflects the views of those who were at the conference and bothered to vote on the motion.

Sex has always been binary. We know this because because there are only 2 reproductive pathways. Activist medics and those with a vested interest like to pretend otherwise.
 

bobzmyunkle

Über Member
The resident doctors’ wing of the BMA argued that a binary divide between sex and gender ‘has no basis in science or medicine

Not sure even @CXRAndy is saying there is. Or have I misunderstood again?
 

monkers

Squire
The resident doctors’ wing of the BMA argued that a binary divide between sex and gender ‘has no basis in science or medicine

Not sure even @CXRAndy is saying there is. Or have I misunderstood again?

Sex is a binary if you consider sex to be the full potential and capacity for reproduction. Intersex people like trans people hate to be argued over, but in those strictly limited terms they do not fit the sex binary.

This model that sex is binary is built around heteronormativity, ie sex is a social model. The model is that one man marries one woman, and they raise a family together. That is a societal model, one that fits most, not one that fits all.

Sex only works on a biological model if that model is that all males must go around shagging all females for the maximum reproduction rate. if we listen to many young men might think that a good model (?), and if we listen to women, I'll suggest this much less likely to be the attitude(?)

Gender is the societal model of sex, and to play it down as an irrelevance collapses society - hence ''the gender pay gap'', it's how sex operates in society rather than the bedroom.

In other words, sex is the private aspect, and gender is the public aspect. Society is shaped so that we grow up with an expectation of the difference. Men treat other men differently than they treat women, even when their is no expectation or prospect of sexual engagement or desire for reproduction.

Sex and gender are not the same, they serve to operate differently, though their woven interdependence is cemented in cultural norms, norms that vary across different cultures.

The process that trans people go through is a socialising one. They absolutely know that in cases where reproductive sex is binary, that there is no such thing as a ''sex change''. Medical science is not yet at the place where reproductive sex can be changed - though through the advent of womb transplants etc, it may only be ten years away.

What trans people struggle with is being faced with living in society where their reproductive sex has to fit the societal and heteronormative model. The model develops and changes in other ways all the time, yet there is this resistance. This resistance is perpetuated through religious dogma, and other indoctrination in schools and everywhere else, ''boys be like this'', and ''girls be like this''. Increasingly it is girls who are rejecting the model.

The medical treatments that trans people go through, are masculisation and feminisation, this can make them feel more authentic, this is largely driven by a desire to be seen and accepted in the societal model as that gender, hence the terms that trans people use, ''gender presentation'' and ''gender expression''. The law reflects this through the ''Gender Recognition Act''.

Since 2013, the UK has recognised same sex marriage. Many in society fought against this too.

What the anti-trans people are demanding is a ban on things that make them feel any discomfort because something has changed.

The law does not guarantee freedom from discomfort - how could it. But is does include fundamental rights to prevent discrimination on the grounds of being able to live freely in society without public condemnation for being the person that you are.

What the Supreme Court have done is turn this on its head whereby the comfort of a noisy minority have trumped the fundamental rights of a minority. The SC decision has then been further weaponised by individuals in places of authority to implement such bans on the lives of trans people to make them impossible to live with dignity.
 
The resident doctors’ wing of the BMA argued that a binary divide between sex and gender ‘has no basis in science or medicine

Not sure even @CXRAndy is saying there is. Or have I misunderstood again?

I've deleted my post because I've found the full motion. My points stand though. This was a motion put forward by activists who don't necessarily represent their members, who did not vote on this motion. It doesn't represent either doctor's views or the BMA'S.

Here it is in full:


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorsUK/comments/1k97tti/british_medical_association_conference_calls/


The actual resident doctors in that thread don't seem too impressed with it.
 
This model that sex is binary is built around heteronormativity, ie sex is a social model. The model is that one man marries one woman, and they raise a family together. That is a societal model, one that fits most, not one that fits all.
Lol. Sex in mammals has been binary for millions of years. Sex was binary before humans. Sex was binary before society even existed. If humans were wiped off the face of the earth sex would still be binary in whatever mammals were left.

It's activist driven ideology that tries to promotes this nonsense idea that we are somehow different from the rest of the 6,000 mammalian species.

What the Supreme Court have done is turn this on its head whereby the comfort of a noisy minority have trumped the fundamental rights of a minority.
Women aren't a minority. It isn't a fundamental right for men to be included in women's spaces and services.

The SC decision has then been further weaponised by individuals in places of authority to implement such bans on the lives of trans people to make them impossible to live with dignity.

Men don't need to be in women's spaces, sports, refuges, prisons, to live with dignity. In fact, giving men access to those spaces and services prevents women from living with dignity at times.
 

bobzmyunkle

Über Member
Sex only works on a biological model if that model is that all males must go around shagging all females for the maximum reproduction rate
Sounds to me like you're conflating sex and gender again.
 
Last edited:

spen666

Senior Member
Sigh, and here you are again. You really are so very tedious. Are you like this in real life? Of course you are.

As ivepointed out I'm not saying your posts don't have a point.

Bizarrely you keep replying to posts that you say do not make a point.

Some would call your behaviour obsessive or showing a distinct lack of ability to think rationally.

Many would say that people who think rationally probably wouldn't spend their time replying to people who they acvuse of making pointless posts

Not me, I find your behaviour in repeatefly replying to someone you say makes pointless posts, rather funny and entertaining.

Still I suppose it diverts you away from trying to claim the ruling of the Supreme Court isn't determining what the law is .
 

monkers

Squire
Sounds to me like you're conflating sex and gender again.

Actually no. Male and female pertain to sex. The trouble is that we conflated the words so much in ordinary language that we lost their meanings.

For example, in engineering speak, couplings have a male part and a female part. It's heteronormative of course, because it's formulation is that a penis only ever enters a vagina.

Then the computer geeks came along and created the notion that cables that changed a male part to a female part, or vice versa were gender changers.

Man, woman, boy, girl are genders. All derivatives vulgar or otherwise such as bloke, chap, geezer, lad, lady, lassy, bird (which is a gender neutral term in the animal kingdom) relate to social roles.

When you call someone a ''decent bloke, or a ''good man'' you are talking about something other than his penis (hopefully).
 

monkers

Squire
As ivepointed out I'm not saying your posts don't have a point.

Bizarrely you keep replying to posts that you say do not make a point.

Some would call your behaviour obsessive or showing a distinct lack of ability to think rationally.

Many would say that people who think rationally probably wouldn't spend their time replying to people who they acvuse of making pointless posts

Not me, I find your behaviour in repeatefly replying to someone you say makes pointless posts, rather funny and entertaining.

Still I suppose it diverts you away from trying to claim the ruling of the Supreme Court isn't determining what the law is .

What is irrational, is that you think that I am replying to you, but you are not replying to me.

At least I have the sense to know we are replying to each other, and that other people are as bored with it as I am.

All that causes me to reply is your apparent insistence that you have the last word - is that because you are the man? Of course, because you don't understand that society has tried to move on.
 

bobzmyunkle

Über Member
Actually no
Sex only works on a biological model if that model is that all males must go around shagging all females for the maximum reproduction rate. if we listen to many young men might think that a good model (?), and if we listen to women, I'll suggest this much less likely to be the attitude(?)
I wasn't referring to the terms male and female - sex. I was referring to the societal expectations you describe - gender.
 

spen666

Senior Member
What is irrational, is that you think that I am replying to you, but you are not replying to me.
..

Its irrational to think you are replying to me?

when you quote my post and then make references to what I have said, most rational people wouldn't think you are replying to me.


You really can't help contradicting yourself can you?

1. If my posts are as you say pointless, why do you keep replying to them.
This behaviour by you in replying contradicts your claims my posts are pointless or could it be your behaviour is irrational?

2. If you are not replying to me, then why quote my posts in your response. The forum tells me you have replied to my post.

You then also respond to the comments I have made in the post you have quoted.

This seems to undermine your claim you are not responding to me.



Actions and words can combine to paint a picture
 
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