What makes them experts?
UN press release on the who gets to be a woman question:
A group of independent human rights experts* today expressed concern about the implications of the recent UK Supreme Court judgment interpreting the definition of “woman” under the Equality Act 2010.
While the ruling was limited to a question of statutory interpretation, the experts warned that it risks entrenching legal uncertainty and undermining the rights of transgender persons in all aspects of life, including education.
But what about the way the bogus “definition of woman” to include men risks undermining the rights of female persons in all aspects of life, including education?
Why does sweaty concern for the purported rights of trans people (“rights” such as being endorsed as the other sex) cancel concern for the genuine rights (rights such as single-sex spaces and medical care) of women? Why do purported trans rights matter more than women’s rights? Why do people like these “experts” always always always ignore that conflict?
I have no idea what the answer is. I have no idea how they manage it.
“The judgment does not remove the legal protections trans people currently enjoy under the Equality Act,” the experts said. “But it may be used to justify exclusionary policies that further stigmatise and marginalise an already vulnerable population, as well as human rights defenders working to protect and promote transgender rights. We are deeply concerned that the application of this judgment may lead to increased discrimination and exclusion of transgender women in various sectors, including the workplace, at a critical time when employers should be striving to foster and maintain inclusive environments for all employees.”
But that would include women. If you let men use the women’s toilets and changing rooms then you have ruled out any “inclusive environment” for women. If you keep insisting that trans people’s rights should cancel women’s rights then you’re not being inclusive of women.
They also raised concerns about how interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has interpreted the ruling, allowing – and in some cases requiring – organisations to exclude individuals from single-sex spaces based on biological sex. This could lead to situations where both trans women and trans men are barred from facilities aligned with their gender identity, or even excluded altogether, the experts warned.
But, again, allowing men to use women’s facilities is unsafe for women, and effectively excludes them.
Round and round and round it goes.
Funny how so many “experts” failed to notice the diminution of women’s rights when this mad train started to leave the station, and how they portray the return to normal, understood-for-ages definitions of “man” and “woman”, as some sort of terrible aberration, when the actual terrible aberration was in the promulgation of the novel, bizarre, unevidenced claim that men can be, or become women (and vice versa).
Which is good. Trans identified people should enjoy the same human rights as everybody else. That has never been under threat.
That population isn’t nearly as “stigmatised”, “marginalised” and “vulnerable” as it claims to be. Governments and corporations keep telling us they are, but the more they do, the less I’m inclined to believe. It’s all part of the boilerplate mantra of emotional blackmail designed to give these men what they want. But they’re not really “oppressed” if they can call upon this power and influence. These men are certainly not as stigmatised, marginalised, and vulnerable as women already are, and almost always have been. In fact, the push for supposed trans “rights” has further exacerbated [threats to] women’s safety and security. Women defending their rights and interest are painted as transphobic bigots. Women are portrayed as the main oppressors of trans identified people. Women have no legitimate interest in preventing the violation of their spaces by men, or their existence in law erased. They must surrender in the name of a bogus, predatory “inclusivity” which they are supposed to celebrate and centre, at the expense of their own rights. And here’s the UN come along to prove my point, and get in a few good kicks of their own.
If they are already defending human rights, that is enough. It’s not like women’s sex-based rights. There are no additional “transgender rights” that go on top of human rights that belong to everyone. There are no special “trans” considerations that have to be taken into account. These “extra” rights are never spelled out, or, if they are, it becomes clear that they are not rights at all, but demands for special treatment and privileges that are to be extracted from others, like being accepted as the sex they are not, or demanding access to spaces based on putative “gender identity” rather than sex. I’m not interested in protecting or promoting those, because they come at much too high a price. They are not “rights”, but attempts at extortion and intimidation to take something to which they are not entitled.
Then your “concern” is misplaced. Why do these men get special consideration when women themselves have not yet reached parity in the workforce? When you’re talking about trans identified males, “inclusion” is intrusion. It is theft. It is cheating. It cannot be otherwise. Every woman’s space, position, or opportunity given to, or taken by a man pretending to be a woman is taken from a woman. The UK Supreme Court decision gives us clarity that has been missing (and deliberately obscured) in this discussion (which is more discussion than trans activists would have ever allowed at all). Anyone fudging or waffling about this wants to ignore or defy the law. They want to keep screwing women over. It cannot be otherwise. If I’m wrong, tell me how and why I am wrong. Show your work. Prove me wrong.
How about we fix things for half the goddamn human population of the planet before we start catering to the perverse demands of boutique “identities”? Or how ’bout we just drop bowing and scraping to identitarianism altogether? Globally, looking after women and girls reliably raises up the standards and prospects of entire communities. With genderists, you’re stoking the egos of a small number of selfish, petulant, deluded narcissists. Which “community” is the more worthy, the more deserving? I’m no expert, but I know where the UN should be focusing its attention; too bad the UN doesn’t.
This is so laughable. Stating “a woman is biologically defined” is much less uncertain than stating “a woman is anyone who says she is” (a circular definition). Having a clear, concise definition for woman does not entrench legal uncertainty, it removes it.
Just more bait and switch.
Have any of these ‘human rights” groups ever shown a scintilla of concern for the human rights of trans men? Are trans men not also worthy of protection in all aspects of life, including education?
No? Of course not, because it’s a Men’s Rights movement and they know that.
nBruce I added a couple of words in brackets where you had accidentally left them out..not quite the right words though so let me know if you remember the right ones.
“Transmen” get trotted out in an attempt to prove it isn’t just about trans-identified males. Remember Gavin Grimm, the girl who fought to be allowed to use the boys’ restroom, and remember all those memes with pictures of bearded short-haired trans-identified females with captions like “Would you want your daughter in the same bathroom as me?”. But they are used as stalking horses.
So much to unpack here!
The judgment “may be used to justify exclusionary policies . . . .”
What do you mean by” exclusionary”? Who gets to say what policies are ” exclusionary”? You imply a universal pejorative to the word ” exclusionary,” as if ” exclusion” is always bad. Is that really true? I mean, if you classify or categorize anything, you are making decisions or selections — i.e., discriminating — between what things are “in” a category (included), and what things are “out” (excluded).
Human beings routinely make such decisions dozens or hundreds of times a day, if not more. We decide whether something “is” or “isn’t” what we think it is, All. The. Time. We have to, or we’d be dead. Neither “discrimination” nor “exclusion” is inherently bad; they are essential for our survival.
So, “exclusionary” in this context means “excluding men (the sex that women are not) from the spaces, facilities, resources, opportunities, offices, competitions, etc. that are specifically set aside for women (the sex that women actually are).” In that case, where divisions are based upon actual sex, it is necessary to “exclude” men from anything afforded to women as a sex class. “Men” are the other sex from “women.” The word “women” necessarily excludes “men.” Everyone used to know this. It is mind-blowing how many people, who I used to think were intelligent and kind, have expunged these facts from their memories. Like 1984’s doublespeak and doublethink, T dogma has managed to destroy many people’s mental access to what was formerly “knowledge;” the erasure is astonishingly and chillingly complete. The whole reason for “women’s” anything is that women — because of their sex — have historically been systematically excluded from full rights of participation in society. You want to talk about “exclusionary policies”? That’s your exclusionary policy right there. Women have been “excluded” from most rights in most places for most of history. Women’s sex-based rights are relatively recent “INclusionary policies,” to allow women to finally have some say in civic life. Then along comes T and destroys what little women have (grudgingly) won for themselves.
The judgment “may be used to justify exclusionary policies that further stigmatise and marginalise an already vulnerable population . . . .” Really? ” Stigmatize” how? “Marginalize” how? ” Vulnerable” in what way? The men who call themselves “trans women,” are kings of the roost as far as I can tell. They and all their sycophantic allies and enforcers have had almost everything their own way for a decade or more. The rapidity and completeness with which T has captured all major social institutions puts the lie to any claims of “vulnerability” or “marginalization.” Any group that can snap their fingers and get police — the State — to punish people for a sticker that says, “Woman = adult human female” or for photographing a suffragette ribbon, is neither vulnerable nor marginalized.
I don’t see anything to the claim of “stigma,” either. Trans women (men) have been so aggressive and bullying and public and “out there,” that there’s nothing new or surprising about seeing guys in frocks running in packs with their black pampers enforcers. The institutional capture has been so successful for so long that there’s no particular stigma in being a trans woman per se. However, when all these trans identified males keep bullying, terrorizing, and attacking women, there’s a certain stigma attached to being a sexual pervert. If the men (trans women) stuck to using men’s facilities instead of insistently invading women’s spaces, the stigma of sexual perversion would be minimized. Win-win. Women get their own spaces, and trans identified men reduce stigma against themselves.
As to “human rights defenders working to protect and promote transgender rights,” those people are not being ” excluded”
Dag nabbit, accidentally touched the “submit” button before I was done.
Anyway, as to “human rights defenders working to protect and promote transgender rights,” afaict, those people aren’t stigmatized or marginalized or vulnerable in any way. They are just an army of misogynistic bullies who like to stick it to women.
As to what the T army of “human rights defenders,” who are “working to protect transgender rights,” are really advocating for, are not human rights at all. There’s no such thing as a “human right” to lie about your sex, and to falsify government and medical records.
The entire T enterprise is a lie founded upon lies. Human beings cannot change their sex. It’s a monstrous lie to say that men can be women. The T movement is a men’s rights movement, meant to terrorize and punish women, with the added bonus of public adulation for doing so.
So, yeah, you’ve got entirely the wrong people being unfairly “excluded,” or “stigmatized,” or “marginalized,” or “vulnerable.” As always, the real victims are women.
Hi Ophelia; “threats to” works fine, thank you.
Okay, third thoughts:
In fact, the push for supposed trans “rights” has further threatened women’s safety and security.
Well, somebody is doing a great job of stigmatizing these people, but it’s not the TERFs. As I used to say during the Deep Rifts, no feminist has ever portrayed men in a less flattering light than MRAs do every time they open their mouths. Same with people uncomfortable with their sexed bodies and TRAs*. With ”friends” like that, who needs enemies…
* Of course the prevailing strand of TRAs are nothing but MRAs in womanface anyway…
[…] a comment by maddog on What makes them […]
Does the UK Supreme Court ruling potentially place TIFs in an unworkable position though?
They can’t legally use the Men’s room or other facilities. They’re female. Fair enough.
But I recall reading a section where the judge says that if their testosterone-enhanced appearance is so masculine that it causes alarm and concern from the other women (Transman’s Gotcha), they can legally be removed from that facility.
So where are the passing TIFs legally permitted to use public bathrooms, fitting rooms, dressing rooms, etc? Has this been addressed somewhere?
I don’t know. I can’t honestly say I care very much though. All these years of all this nonsense have no doubt made me callous. If a woman is fool enough to make herself look convincingly male, that’s not anyone else’s problem to fix.
It points to a problem in the ruling, however. Maybe it could be exploited. I don’t know.
Well but is it a problem in the ruling or a problem in the fad for pretending to be the other sex?
Activists are claiming the ruling is unclear/flawed/wrong anyway, so the heel-dragging and nose-thumbing is happening without reference to the ruling in any case. They need no reason or excuse. They’re still following Stonewall Law and its unlawful guidance, which was made up to suit what activists claimed and wanted despite the original intent of the Acts it was supposedly embodying. They’ve never argued their case; why would they feel the need to start now?
While I see women trying to escape the demands and expectations of an increasingly sexualized, patriarchal femininity as a completely different and unrelated demographic from the AGP males who have roped them into the chimerical “trans community” by way of forced teaming, they chose this path for themselves, and shouldn’t expect or demand the rest of the world to go along with their delusional beliefs, just as secular society cannot be forced to follow the rules and strictures of a particular religion or denomination thereof.
My alma mater, Western University, has an “inclusive” washroom policy, featuring the following incoherent and gaslighting sticker on many washroom doors:
“Western respects everyone’s right to choose a washroom appropriate for them. Trust the person using this space belongs here”.
The first sentence is vitiated by the second. Resistance to this policy is characterized as “gender policing”:
Of course the activists who foisted this policy have to do this, because if they admitted that segregation of facilities by sex is the whole point of separate toilets, it would halt the whole gender project before it got out of the gate. Washroom segregation is not a way of enforcing “normative gender expressions”, or punishing “inadequate gender performance” but an attempt to KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN”S BATHROOMS. They see “gender inclusivity” as a continuation of efforts at accomodating people with disabilities and facilities with change tables for family use. But these are vastly different “inclusivities”. “Gender inclusivity” in anything other than single-user washrooms is potentially open season for women, with the guiding ethos of “trusting” the judgement of the person entering a (nominally) women’s washroom, supporting male aggressors invading female spaces, rather than women’s safety and privacy.
Someone who decides to go into a bank wearing a mask and carrying a realistic looking toy gun should not expect to feel welcomed by the staff, other customers, or bank security. Dressing like a bank robber is going to get treated as a bank robber, because the stakes are too high to offer anyone the benefit of the doubt. Bank robbing is a thing. Similarly, women can’t be expected to second guess whether or not a trans identified female is actually male or not. Predatory males assaulting women in washrooms is a thing. The safest course of action is to assume that a “male presenting” individual is male. This might not be the kind of “passing” TiFs might want, but it’s a matter of safeguarding, not out of any respect for the TiF’s “identity”. Women’s safety should always come first. Trans activism has never admitted or accepted this, demanding women sacrifice their own wellbeing for the sake of validating gender cosplay. If some TiFs get caught in this as “false positives”, like sheep in wolves’ clothing, that’s not women’s problem. In situations where women are vulnerable, disguises that conceal or alarm are warning flags. “This person is not to be trusted,” stickers be damned. Women shouldn’t be forced to risk their safety for women pretending to be men, any more than they should be doing so for men pretending to be women. Your precious “identities” aren’t worth it.
That sticker on the door is so insane. “Western respects everyone’s right to choose a washroom appropriate for them”=Western respects every man’s right to alarm or intimidate or terrorize or assault women in the women’s washrooms.” How does that not give them pause? I will never ever understand it.
“Why, that woman has a penis and produces sperm with her testes! How gauche! How unladylike! I certainly wouldn’t let any daughter of mine go out of the house like that — she shouldn’t either.”
I suspect that any TiF that looks sufficiently male, there will not be a problem, as long as they feel comfortable using the men’s restroom. There is little likelihood that we will suddenly start checking birth certificates (many of which have been altered anyway) or making people pull down their pants to inspect their genitals. Someone who truly ‘passes’ will probably not be questioned. It will be like it always was; a woman seeing a man in the women’s restroom will simply point out to him that this is the ladies.
Some men appreciate having that pointed out to them when they stumble into the wrong restroom through carelessness or binge drinking. I know my husband was recently informed politely that he was in the wrong restroom (on a college campus that has completely embraced every aspect of woke culture, and by a young woman, probably a student), and he was glad to have that information. It’s possibly easier for a woman; if I see urinals, I know I’m in the wrong bathroom.
The TRA who explained the legal bind with passing TIFs responded to this practical suggestion by pointing out that women who use the men’s room by stealth are still breaking the law. She argued that a SC legal interpretation that implicitly expects the hard cases to ignore what it says is a flawed ruling — and I do see why that might be the case. But IANAL.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What makes them […]
Of course, being held responsible for breaking the law suggests that someone can tell you are not the sex you appear to be (or claim to be). Quite a few of the TiFs I know are indistinguishable from men at this point, though I suppose many of them would not stand at the urinal. There are some in transition who I am unclear of their biological sex because they are at that spot where they might be transitioning either way. They either look like a feminine male or a masculine female, but it’s not clear which one.
Again, short of the pull your pants down genital inspection, some of these women are not going to be questioned in the men’s room, where they certainly would be in the women’s. It would be unfortunate if they found nowhere to use the restroom, but at the same time, it’s hard to feel sorry for someone who has gone out of their way to mutilate their body, believing internet ‘influencers’ over scientific evidence, and then forcing the scientific evidence to pretend to fit their view. And all the abusive trans-identified individuals I know personally are TiF, so I don’t feel much more sorry for them than I do for AGP TiMs (keeping in mind that I have an AGP TiM as a family member, and my view has been a strain on our relationship).