Originally a comment by Artymorty on Referred to.

Interesting that team trans’s defence here is that transwomen are male after all — or this particular one at least is — and that there is a clearly visible difference between males and females.

Watkin’s lawyers said she saw and presented herself as female but was “visibly and audibly” male, so it would have been “blindingly obvious” to the man that Watkin was not biologically female.

It’s notable that they only ever admit this when it’s advantageous to their side to do so. Still, this is one of those items that’ll make a handy bookmark. It can be deployed to show that transactivists are never consistent in what they profess to believe. They’ll readily change their tune and even completely flip their arguments right around, depending on whatever side benefits them the most.

Interesting, too, that this case establishes that sexual orientation is based on biological sex and not “gender identity”. It didn’t take the jury very long to agree with the prosecution that deception about one’s biological sex can violate people’s deeply-held sexual instincts. I think that principle is very easy for people to grasp and to agree with.

It also goes to highlight how bizarre it is that we still can’t openly state our biological sex-based boundaries on dating apps like Grindr. This ruling says biological sex matters so much that it’s potentially criminal to mislead people about it, but the dating apps’ policies state the opposite — that biological sex is so inconsequential it’s practically criminal to even mention it. Effectively, dating app users are not allowed to reject a sexual advance on the basis of someone’s sex until they’re face-to-face IRL. Within the confines of the apps, they’re obligated to lie, potentially putting both sides in legal danger.

I wonder if that will change…

This ruling puts the gay male transgender culture in a bind in another way: it’s all about assimilating into “femaleness” as much as possible, especially for the purposes of gaining sexual attention from males. See, for example, Kim Petras, the gay male transwoman of “Slutpop” fame, whose entire persona consists of bragging about how fuckable he supposedly looks in the eyes of straight men.

See also the actor Hunter Schafer (who I just read about this morning, as he’s been cast in the upcoming Blade Runner TV series). I wrote about him here last year. He wants to be cast in roles that don’t mention his transgender status. But in reality, such “stealth” transness is illegal, once dating and mating become a part of one’s life.

The entire puberty blockers and pediatric gender medicine regime is built upon the total erasure of feminine boys’ biological sex.

But if they’re still legally obligated to inform potential partners of their sex, then what’s the point of all that deception? In this particular case, the fact that the defendant hadn’t had surgeries and hadn’t changed his appearance enough was what their entire defence rested on. The strange corollary of that is that the more transwomen “pass” the more liable they are to be found guilty of sexual assault by deception.

Seemingly, according to this ruling, transwomen always have to disclose to their sex partners that they’re male, which is going to make a lot of them question why they were put through this regime in the first place.

Hmm, there’s a lot to think about here…