Naughty tauty
Hey kids it’s time for Ontology Gymnastics!
Biological sex is an “artificial parameter” for deciding where prisoners should be held, Scottish National Party (SNP) ministers have told a court.
Gerry Moynihan KC, acting for the Scottish Government, argued that there should be flexibility to allow transgender women, who are biological men, to serve their sentences in female jails.
He told the Court of Session in Edinburgh that defining “a man as a man and a woman as a woman, without exceptions” was “artificial”.
I know I’ve already made fun of this, but it’s just so rewarding. Defining an X as an X is not so much artificial as it is a tautology. It’s the very opposite of a definition, because it’s just a repetition. What is an apple? It’s…well…you know, it’s an apple. That won’t get you an A on the test.
Granted, it doesn’t always matter. Maybe that’s what the poor fella is trying to say. You don’t always have to know which people are women and which are men. Much of the time it’s just not an issue.
Prisons are one place where it does matter.
Next week the SNP declares the speed of light in a vacuum to be an “artificial parameter” and starts building a spaceship to fly to Alpha Centauri.
Well, gender identity is an artificial parameter for deciding where prisoners should be held. Even if sex didn’t matter, it wouldn’t automatically mean that gender identity does.
(For that matter, prisons are artificial, too.)
SNP: prime candidates for the B Ark.
Next they will declare that Nessie is real and pansexual, William Wallace was Peruvian and haggis roam the Highlands.
Besides, what has Alpha Centauri done to deserve a visit from them?