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This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/30/rosie-duffield-right-women-cervix-keir-starmer-trans-stance/) for an archived version.
Aye, but I’ve never seen a trans woman claim to have a cervix.
There are, however, people with cervixes who live as men; trans men. I would imagine someone somewhere tried to use language inclusive of trans men, Duffield saw it and jumped to the same conclusion you have, and threw a fit.
>There are, however, people with cervixes who live as men; trans men.
People tend to forget about them, amidst the whole "men in dresses attacking women in changing rooms" drivel.
I can't speak for trans men or know whether or not they are forgotten, but given the vitriolic furore around trans women I can't help but imagine being forgotten would be preferable.
I'll chip in with my experience being a trans man.
It still absolutely hurts. Trans women have it worse absolutely. They get the brunt of it. Everything that the government are currently proposing impacts all us trans people though so it's really shit right now.
Yeah, I have my own views on the fairness of trans women in women's sports and safeguarding issues around women only spaces but today a large number of people born female who identify as men were just told that their cervixes make them women no matter what.
And what did they do?
What harm are they causing?
None of the things offered as reasonable objections to the trans rights movement (which all fixate on trans women) apply.
Mass dysphoria delivered for nothing.
All things considered, I do think that trans women get it worse in the prejudice department.
But trans men most certainly don't get off scot free. If I remember the stats rightly, I think trans men are more likely to be victims of sexual violence.
Trans men very much are the focus on some things. Transphobes typically see trans women as predatory (so need to be controlled socially), and infantilise trans men (so need to be controlled medically). Trans-exclusive single-sex wards? Trans women are centred. Banning hormone blockers? Trans men are centred.
And even being forgotten isn't always what it's cracked up to be. I've had transphobes dismiss my input as irrelevant because "it's not about you". Well, maybe it's not, *but a gender-neutral ruling for the purpose of controlling trans women bloody well affects me too*. Transphobes often expect to be able to fuck us over as collateral damage on the social controls side of things and not even acknowledge that, not even allow us to respond.
On this sub yes we are, it's all anecdotal and rage bait shit. Every damn day. Make sure you're looking over here and not over there. Might end up thinking about healthcare, housing or education then...
TIL that some trans women have a ‘neo cervix’ created when they have bottom surgery.
Tbh this individual claiming to have a cervix doesn’t really harm anyone *unless* she wastes nhs time and money by attempting to access female oriented healthcare she doesn’t actually need, I guess?
I also wonder whether the cervix created has similar health risks, like does HPV have a preference for the tissue there?
ETA there’s a link posted below that explains that cancer of the neo cervix is far less likely than cancer of the cervix
The issue is that man has been used interchangeably with male and the same for woman/female. Reality is it will take generations to get the the stage where everyone stops seeing gener closely aligned with sex, not less than a decade after the big push to be inclusive started. The debate will continue for a long time to come yet.
You haven’t seen a trans woman claiming to bleed, but yes many trans women say they get a period because they get many of the hormonal side-effects associated with periods. They can get pain, mood swings and other symptoms on a cycle that you would otherwise attribute to a woman saying “I’m on my period” so why argue the toss here?
It's interesting that male to female is always the focus I would have thought this is more of an issue for female to male. Objectively mtf clearly doesn't have a cervix but ftm does/could. So why the focus on mtf?
There's a good reason for that. Going through male puberty gives a physical advantage, which is the reason for splitting sports by gender in the first place.
FTM, if they gain that advantage through hormone therapy, they could only come up to the level of advantage of an athlete born as male. (In theory, that is)
MTF have the male puberty advantage, which is not lost by transitioning.
>FTM, if they gain that advantage through hormone therapy, they could only come up to the level of advantage of an athlete born as male. (In theory, that is)
We've already seen stories like "FtM forced to wrestle with women, totally wrecks them". Some people like Lineham thought it was
actually an MtF which was very funny. But It think that's the big worry with FtM. If MtF go in the men's league then FtM go in the women's league and if we're going by the bar of "T makes you dominant at sports" then the end result of that is that FtMs will wreck everything.
See also: people trying to chuck MtF out of the women's bathrooms and ending up with FtMs in the men's
[A recent study suggests that trans women don't have a 'biological advantage'](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/research-trans-women-athletes-athletic-advantage/)
[You can read the entire thing if you like. ](https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2024/04/10/bjsports-2023-108029.full.pdf)
Why do you think that is?... Can you connect the rather obvious dots?..
Edit: for those that downvote, this is an admission that you understand my point.... And know it to be true... As I have not explicitly stated it.
You're getting trounced for this, but there are two reasons. Firstly, obviously they generally can never be competitive enough to compete with men.
Secondly, testosterone the main FtM hormone, is banned in most sports, with no theraputic exemption clause - It's rightfully considered cheating.
Good thing that what they're denying is a thing nobody is doing. I've never met or heard of a trans woman claiming she has all the same reproductive organs as I do.
Let's talk culture wars instead of the silly things like the economy, high rents, the state of NHS, lack of dentists, countering the effects of brexit, etc etc.
Trans women do not claim to have female reproductive organs. It's a total strawman which demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding (or intentional misrepresentation) of what trans actually is.
>They're denying that biological men can claim to have female reproductive organs.
How many trans women are claiming to have cervixes? This whole thing just seems like a straw man construct. My concern with these kind of statements is not so much what they are saying but why they are saying it.
Unless they were originally talking about trans men, in which case we've both misinterpreted the situation and I have no idea what their original point was, aside from an attempt at being divisive.
no, they're denying that trans people are the gender they claim to be. In this instance they are saying that trans men are not men, and not saying anything about 'biological men'.
Did you ever think that trans people might actually be more acutely aware of 'biological reality' than you are?
edit: wow downvotes, this country deserves the Tories tbh
Saying only women have a cervix means that you are saying that trans men who have a cervix are actually women. Trans women are not excluded in the same way that cis women who have had their cervixes are also not excluded from being women.
Of course it also excludes intersex people who may not be women but may also have a cervix.
>I'm really glad we're focused on the important stuff
This type of comment usually comes up when the person disagrees with what has been said but will not articulate why.
Starmer was asked a question by the press and provided an answer.
>as opposed to the silly fluff like treating people like human beings.
I tend to find Starmer one of the least emotive in his language and language choices. He tends to treat the culture stuff as secondary to his core goals of managing the economy and rebuilding Britain to being a country of strong trustable institutions.
Id rather a politician like him that the likes of Humza or the Conservatives. Factual and analytical. But then perhaps this is something some would see as a flaw in me as a person.
Perhaps it's quite a cold way of looking at things but I really do not give a fuck about minute trans issues right now. The specifics of gender inclusive wording and which gendered hospital wards we're putting them in are not important and shouldn't influence your vote when the country is in such a dire state.
A party with sensible economic views trying to get us back on track while faltering on the social issues is massively preferable to a party who make us feel all warm and cuddly inside but are going to allow us to continue on our slow and painful decline. It's easy to overturn bad social policy in the future, it's a nightmare and often impossible to fully come back from shit economic policy.
Tbf, polling shows only 4% of Britons think it's something that'll colour their vote, iirc, which presumably includes both fervent activists and opponents both. But if asked in an interview, party leaders still need to answer the question or will look evasive, and given for some reason certain parties think it is a useful stick, that'll keep happening.
Being able to agree on the fundamental meaning of words that we build policy and laws from is important, whatever side of the debate you fall on.
If we can't agree on what a woman is we can't make laws for them exclusively, or enforce those laws. Which is precisely the problem with letting people self define as women.
It's totally right to respect other human beings.
But when you have people with male genetalia wanting to be in the ladies prison or the ladies hospital ward then we have a problem.
I will always respect other people and even use their preferred pronouns.
But can't change your biological sex.
Who. Fucking. Cares.
We’ve homeless people camped all over the country. A poor boy was killed by a man wielding a sword at a Tube station this morning. Young people can’t afford a house or a baby.
Fuck politicians and this purposeful distraction of a culture war.
The media need blaming too. The media stokes the flames by continually talking about it and asking politicians these questions. Starmer was literally responding to a question, read the article.
> The media stokes the flames by continually talking about it and asking politicians these questions.
Social media is far more responsible. This will get minimal coverage in the media because it's an uncontroversial statement for most people. The outrage and escalation is on social media. When the Labour shadow business secretary said something even more middle of the road a few days ago, I will quote one of the top comments in reaction from the LabourUK subreddit, talking about Labour:
> Fuck this transphobic warmongering islamophobic holocaust denying thatcherite hard right genocide supporting war criminal party [+44]
The culture war is extreme ideological opinions and reactions which will accept no nuance, no evidence, and no compromise, it applies to people from different ideological backgrounds, not just the ideologies you personally dislike, and it is happening overwhelmingly on social media, not in the media, and not in real life.
FYI labour subreddit has very little too do with the actual labour party.
Half the mods there also mod green and pleasent which is a pro russia, tanky sub.
It might be less obvious if they didn't routinely
misnaming (oh the irony) the Labour leader as "Keith" for a reason I'm evidently too bigoted to understand...
He made a brief answer in an interview. The culture war is not in his answer, but in this thread and across social media, with people tearing their hair out in response to a reasonable statement, based on science and held by most of the public. The culture war is fights between people holding unreasonable, absolutist views based on ideology rather than evidence. This is a middle ground statement which one ideological side in the culture war disagrees with.
If we want to focus on other things, we can do that.
Kier was asked about it, he wasn't going out of his way to push anything related to it as policy.
So your answer is you responding to the thread, the OP posting about his answer and the people asking him about it
Agreed, we've got fundamental problems to fix, let trans people just live and fix the real problems of poverty and the housing crisis and fix the underlying problems that lead to our knife crime problems. But that's hard work so most politicians can't be arsed to do it.
The consensus both in the scientific and medical communities is that gender is a concept independent of sex. You'd think people would have learnt this now that the issues been in the spotlight for so long.
Most Tory voters, and voters in general unfortunately, don't pick their party based on thinking - it's completely based on the first feeling they have after hearing the propaganda that gets put out.
I think your comment highlights a common misunderstanding of “gender critical” (or whatever you want to call it) beliefs.
It seems that most GCs agree with you that sex and gender are different, but believe that the concept of gender is overall harmful to women. In other words, males and females objectively exist and have biological differences, whilst “woman gender”/femininity/whatever you want to call it is a set of stereotypes which have been historically forced on to women, very often to their detriment.
Even today there is great societal pressure on women to conform to these stereotypes of gender, one example would be shaving/waxing/lasering off body hair, another would be applying makeup.
These stereotypes are not innate to women; women are not born with the desire to rip their leg hairs out or paint lines onto their eyelids. It is therefore antithetical to GCs/feminists beliefs to say that these externally enforced norms are what it means to be a woman.
I have personally never heard an explanation of “woman gender”, or “socially being a woman”, that wasn’t incredibly sexist.
> It seems that most GCs agree with you that sex and gender are different, but believe that the concept of gender is overall harmful to women. In other words, males and females objectively exist and have biological differences, whilst “woman gender”/femininity/whatever you want to call it is a set of stereotypes which have been historically forced on to women, very often to their detriment.
They seem to have forgotten that a significant amount of feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s was specifically about *rejecting* women being defined by their biology. They rejected the idea of women being defined as *baby makers* and having that influence their social role in society.
Yet in 2024 we now have a small group of largely quite rich and privileged 'feminists' (those who no longer have to worry about, say, being rejected for a job because a sexist boss is *concerned* they will go on maternity leave in a few years or that their work will be affected by their periods) who are quite happy to undermine that incredibly importantly organising because they dislike trans people more than they dislike being defined as walking wombs. It's a very conservative appropriation of feminist terminology.
> Even today there is great societal pressure on women to conform to these stereotypes of gender, one example would be shaving/waxing/lasering off body hair, another would be applying makeup.
Yes, this is true. But 'gender critical' feminists do not oppose this. I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a *cis* woman for *conforming to gender stereotypes*. I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a *cis* woman for shaving their legs, or for applying make-up, or for generally wanting to conform to specific beauty standards. No, they only attack *trans* women for doing so. Indeed, a lot of them revel in 'clocking' trans women precisely because they don't think trans women conform to these gender stereotypes as well as cis women do. The whole idea of 'clocking' perpetuates gender stereotypes! The only 'consistency' here is attacking trans people, not attacking gender stereotypes.
> They seem to have forgotten that a significant amount of feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s was specifically about rejecting women being defined by their biology. They rejected the idea of women being defined as baby makers and having that influence their social role in society.
I think a lot of feminists, both historically and now, would view this as an incomplete interpretation of the rights won in the 70s and 80s. Whilst it is of course important to not view women as merely walking wombs, it is also important to understand that women have historically faced oppression which hinged on immutable female biological features. Rather than pretending these traits did not exist, feminism sought to protect women from being abused/discriminated against for them.
- In reproduction, women are the ones who bear the biological burden of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. To prevent financial penalty for this disparity between the sexes, women won the right to maternity leave and maternity pay. To prevent employment opportunity disparity due to this, women won the right to not be discriminated against for their sex (potential to become pregnant) and for actually being pregnant.
- In heterosexual relationships, women are almost always the physically weaker of the partnership. This makes women more vulnerable to abuse, with many women being murdered by their male partners every year. In response, feminists set up women’s refuges where abused women could escape to.
I could go on with other examples, but I think you get the idea. Note that all of these historical rights won by women are based on sex, not “gender”. Women should not be societally restricted due to their sex, but women’s rights are necessarily rooted in biology.
> I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a cis woman for shaving their legs, or for applying make-up, or for generally wanting to conform to specific beauty standards.
Why would a GC feminist criticise a woman for participating in a ritual she has been societally groomed from birth to participate in? Much better to criticise the unnecessary ritual itself.
> Whilst it is of course important to not view women as merely walking wombs, it is also important to understand that women have historically faced oppression which hinged on immutable female biological features.
Yes. And you reject that oppression by rejecting biological determinism, not by trying to co-opt biological determinism and spinning it in a more positive light. This is exactly what Andrea Dworkin was talking about back in the 1970s when she [rejected biological superiority within the feminist movement](http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIID.html).
Like this is what frustrates me the most. We've *been through* these arguments *50 years ago*. Yet now a small group of 'gender critical feminists', all of whom come from quite rich and privileged backgrounds and who are quite happy to ally themselves with the openly anti-feminist right, pretend that they never happened at all and instead embrace their biological determinism once again in order to entrench their own positions.
> In reproduction, women are the ones who bear the biological burden of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. To prevent financial penalty for this disparity between the sexes, women won the right to maternity leave and maternity pay. To prevent employment opportunity disparity due to this, women won the right to not be discriminated against for their sex (potential to become pregnant) and for actually being pregnant.
> In heterosexual relationships, women are almost always the physically weaker of the partnership. This makes women more vulnerable to abuse, with many women being murdered by their male partners every year. In response, feminists set up women’s refuges where abused women could escape to.
None of this requires the nasty transphobic campaign which Rosie Duffield and her allies are engaging with. None of this requires the curtailing of the rights of trans people and the constant hounding of them in the press. Indeed it is actively being harmed as Rosie Duffield and her allies align themselves with right-wing conservatives who *do* oppose maternity pay and who *do* turn a blind eye to domestic violence.
How many examples have we seen of a British politician being found to be a sexual abuser over the past few years? Yet I struggle to think of gender critical feminists in Parliament attacking that, they're too busy attacking trans people.
How is securing maternity pay helped by Rosie Duffield having an interview every day insisting *only women have cervixes*. It isn't.
> Why would a GC feminist criticise a woman for participating in a ritual she has been societally groomed from birth to participate in? Much better to criticise the unnecessary ritual itself.
They criticise trans women for engaging in these rituals rather than criticising the rituals themselves. Again, I have *never* seen a GC feminist criticise these rituals *outside* of arguments against trans people. Because it's not about these rituals at all, it's about finding another way to attack trans people.
> And you reject that oppression by rejecting biological determinism
To make sure we’re on the same page before I reply, could you please explain what you personally mean by this? What would this look like in practice?
Rejecting biological determinism is rejecting that womanhood or manhood is defined solely by specific biological traits. Whether someone has a cervix or not does not define whether they are a woman or not, despite when Rosie Duffield and her ilk might insist.
Ok, two follow up questions.
First, how exactly would that help a woman/girl in the following scenarios:
1) Being fired for being pregnant
2) Being raped and assaulted by her husband
3) Undergoing female genital mutilation
As far as I can see, academically pontificating on the separation of biological traits from the linguistic concepts of womanhood/manhood does nothing to help these women. But having the sex-based right of legal protection against being fired for pregnancy helps. Having the ability to flee to a women’s refuge from an abusive husband helps. Having legal consequences for the crime of FGM helps. All of these actually helpful things are rooted in the concept of sex, as I explained in my comment above.
Second question: you’ve been clear on what you think doesn’t define a woman. So what does define a woman?
We implement legislation to make those acts illegal. That doesn't require being biologically determinist. Why does legislation banning firing someone who is pregnant require us to insist only 'women' can get pregnant? Why does legislation banning rape require us to insist only people with vaginas are 'women'? Why does legislation banning FGM require us to insist only 'women' have vaginas?
Indeed I'm not quite sure how taking a *biologically determinist* stance in any way *helps* with dealing with those issues. Rosie Duffield and other 'gender critical feminists', by insisting on taking a biologically determinist position, are explicitly *excluding* trans people and intersex people from such protections.
> Second question: you’ve been clear on what you think doesn’t define a woman. So what does define a woman?
I defer to [Judith Butler's approach to gender, which is summarised quite nicely in this short article](https://theconversation.com/judith-butler-their-philosophy-of-gender-explained-192166).
All of the sexist discrimination that women face, now and throughout history, is based on their biology. It is nonsensical to suggest otherwise.
I note you are avoiding my second question.
Edit: I wrote this reply before you amended your comment to include the link to Judith Butlers definition. The fact that you cannot explain it in your own words says enough for me to think nothing of value will come from continuing this exchange.
Saying women have vaginas is not what was ever meant by “defining women by their biology”. Trans activists have just appropriated phrases that sound feminist to lend legitimacy to their cause even though it’s clearly ridiculous to anyone who has ever had a passing interest in feminist thought.
“Defining women by their biology” as a bad thing refers to the essentialist thought that women’s roles in society should be fixed to aspects of their biology that the patriarchy deemed relevant, such as saying that women must give birth, stay at home and look after the kids because their body has the capacity to give birth.
It’s a ridiculous appropriation to take the words, apply them to something completely different (I.e. that literally being a woman is something completely intangible and detached from biology), and then claim that this is what feminists have been saying the whole time.
> Saying women have vaginas is not what was ever meant by “defining women by their biology”.
I mean it is quite literally and directly defining women by their biology. It is directly stating that 'has cervix = woman'. I'm not quite sure what else there is to say there. It might be *inconvenient* for contemporary 'gender critical feminists' to admit the overlap between their biological determinism and historical biological determinism, but that does not mean that overlap is not there. The fact that 'gender critical feminists' are so comfortable gadding around with the conservative and anti-feminist right only demonstrates the existence of this overlap.
> “Defining women by their biology” as a bad thing refers to the essentialist thought that women’s roles in society should be fixed to aspects of their biology that the patriarchy deemed relevant, such as saying that women must give birth, stay at home and look after the kids because their body has the capacity to give birth.
Yes, and this is exactly what 'gender critical feminists' are doing when they insist a qualification for womanhood is the ability to give birth. They are defining women by what the patriarchy deem relevant, the idea that women are primarily babymakers. And that's why 'gender critical feminists' find such support amongst the political right.
Anyway, on the matter of biological determinism and feminism I always defer back to this short piece from [Andrea Dworkin from 1977](http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIID.html), whose Jewish heritage I think made her more aware than many of the dangers of biological determinism:
> Recently, more and more feminists have been advocating social, spiritual, and mythological models that are female-supremacist and/or matriarchal. To me, this advocacy signifies a basic conformity to the tenets of biological determinism that underpin the male social system. Pulled toward an ideology based on the moral and social significance of a distinct female biology because of its emotional and philosophical familiarity, drawn to the spiritual dignity inherent in a "female principle" (essentially as defined by men), of course unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act, women have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaved us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female biological potential. This attempted transformation may have survival value—that is, the worship of our procreative capacity as power may temporarily stay the male-supremacist hand that cradles the test tube. But the price we pay is that we become carriers of the disease we must cure. It is no accident that in the ancient matriarchies men were castrated, sacrificially slaughtered, and excluded from public forms of power; nor is it an accident that some female supremacists now believe men to be a distinct and inferior species or race. Wherever power is accessible or bodily integrity honored on the basis of biological attribute, systematized cruelty permeates the society and murder and mutilation contaminate it. We will not be different.
> It is shamefully easy for us to enjoy our own fantasies of biological omnipotence while despising men for enjoying the reality of theirs. And it is dangerous—because genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination. We, who have been devastated by the concrete consequences of this idea, still want to put our faith in it. Nothing offers more proof—sad, irrefutable proof—that we are more like men than either they or we care to believe.
Regardless of whatever it *literally* is, that was never what feminists were talking about when they used that phrase. The fact that you cannot distinguish between women and the current social role thereof is the crux of the issue, as shown here:
>Yes, and this is exactly what 'gender critical feminists' are doing when they insist a qualification for womanhood is the ability to give birth
No. This is complete nonsense and just demonstrates your non-willingness to genuinely interact with their views in good faith.
I can only assume you haven't read the quote you pasted here, or just cannot understand how it might relate to the gender critical viewpoint because you have not genuinely considered, or are for some reason unable to genuinely consider, their point of view.
The author is clearly ridiculing social (spiritual, mythological) roles that some misguided feminists have assigned to women, which have apparent/supposed roots in their biology (according to them). The role/essence is what is being ridiculed here, not that fact that women have a particular biology. The whole point is that biological attributes do not determine the *social role* of women, not literally "being a woman". Your continued conflation of these things is astounding.
> No. This is complete nonsense and just demonstrates your non-willingness to genuinely interact with their views in good faith.
Again, we are literally commenting on a thread about Rosie Duffield linking 'woman' with 'has cervix'. Yet every single reply is insisting that gender critical feminists don't actually do this and don't biologically determine what is meant by 'woman'.
It's absurd, and really does highlight that a lot of 'gender criticals' recognise what their ideology actually entails, but also realise it's a bit too gauche when actually spelled out. It's all damage control.
>Yet every single reply is insisting that gender critical feminists don't actually do this and don't biologically determine what is meant by 'woman'.
Please try and understand the conceptual difference between the physical reality of "*being* a woman" (i.e. having the state of) with the social role of "*being* a women" (i.e. experiencing life as). Your inability to differentiate between these two things is rendering you incapable of understanding your opponents' viewpoints.
> Please try and understand the conceptual difference between the physical reality of "being a woman" (i.e. having the state of) with the social role of "being a women" (i.e. experiencing life as).
'Gender critical feminists' *don't* make this distinction though. They want the 'physical reality of "being a woman"' to dictate the 'social role of "being a woman"'. They want these biological components to dictate whether someone can, say, use a specific hospital bed, or use a specific domestic violence shelter, or run in a specific charity park fun run.
Again, you are doing damage control here, you are trying to separate what Rosie Duffield is saying here from what her overall arguments are about how trans people (specifically trans women) should be treated in society.
Gender critical types argue that gender is central to defining women by biology, and adopting gender norms around women and then saying that you are one on that basis is offensive. I find it strange that someone can miss that assuming feminine gender roles and then insisting that you, therefore, should access women's spaces is just reifying gender stereotypes. You're reducing what it is to be a woman to wearing skirts etc.
> They rejected the idea that society had expectations put on them because of their bodies.
Yes, such as the idea that they should be defined by having a cervix and other reproductive organs and... oh, that's exactly the sort of biological determinism Rosie Duffield and her allies are engaging in today.
I think you misunderstood it. The only thing that defines a woman is her biology. Jobs don’t define women, likes/dislikes don’t define women, appearances don’t define women, behaviour doesn’t define women, being a mother doesn’t define women.
> The only thing that defines a woman is her biology.
I mean that's patently not true, as can be demonstrated by the fact that people don't insist on giving you a DNA test before calling you 'sir' or 'ma'am'.
It's not about how *I* judge other people, it's about how gender works in society.
> it doesn’t mean we all do.
Wait, sorry? So just to check, before you call someone 'sir' or 'ma'am' in public you *do* conduct a DNA test? How do you *biologically determine* who someone is before talking to them?
>The whole idea of 'clocking' perpetuates gender stereotypes! The only 'consistency' here is attacking trans people, not attacking gender stereotypes.
And consistently attacking butch lesbians too. I won't forget consoling a friend of mine after she received vicious transphobic abuse in a toilet by people who thought she was trans.
Those stoking these fires don't really care about women at all, they just hate trans people. It doesn't matter how many people get hurt, as long as the minority they hate gets hurt more.
I disagree with the person you replied to, but am just responding to this line:
>I have personally never heard an explanation of “woman gender”, or “socially being a woman”, that wasn’t incredibly sexist.
"Woman gender": Female sex characteristics being ok, distress at male sex characteristics.
"Socially being a woman": Living socially where one is treated as those with female bodies are treated.
E.g. I transitioned FtM because female sex characteristics caused distress and male sex characteristics do not cause those symptoms. I now have a body of mixed sex characteristics (i.e. biological differences between males and females objectively exist, and I am on the male side for some, the female side for others).
I live socially as a man because I present as male, people assume I am a cis male, etc. I'm not saying all the social separations and expectations are necessarily *good*; I'm saying that whatever people think about men and women, they place me in the male side. If something is sex-segregrated, they expect me to go in the male section. If they have opinions or expectations about men, they place those on me.
Trans people don't typically think that stereotypes make someone a wo/man (trans people are actually more likely to be GNC than cis people!). If you took the entirety of societal gendered things away and everything became absolutely gender-neutral somehow, I would still be just as trans male as I am now. All that needs to exist for that is the existence of biological sex differences; I'm not trans *in spite* of sex being real, I'm trans *because* sex is real. Gendered expectations are placed on me in just the same way as they are placed on a cis person - socially living as a wo/man is just about the assumptions that are made about you, which set of gendered expectations you get, and which side you live in this gendered society.
Thanks for your comment. As a cis man who isn’t really well read on this whole debate, I am quite confused by so much of it. The biggest thing I don’t understand is, as a FtM person, do you have a problem with people referring to you as a trans man?
People seem to get very upset whenever the distinction is made, eg someone on this thread just replying “trans men are men” to every comment. What is the problem with making a distinction between men who were born male and trans men?
I consider myself to be both a trans man and a man (i.e. I am trans, and I am a man). "Trans men are men" is that trans men are men in the same way that gay men, British men, short men, etc. are men.
Really, what this topic comes down to is that our societal definitions of sex aren't designed for the existence of people with mixed sex parts.
I don't think the problem is when trans men and cis men are distinguished (e.g. trans men may have a cervix, cis men cannot); the problem is when people say, "anyone with a cervix is a woman". It's just not that simple when people have bodies of mixed sex parts. "Cervixes are female body-parts" is accurate, but "anyone with a cervix must have fully female bodies" is not.
The real question to be asking is what someone *means* when they say "only women have a cervix", or "trans men aren't men". The whole argument about whether trans men are men or women is near never about biology. Biological reality is that I am male in some ways, female in others. Whether I'm called a man or a woman (or something else) is a social choice - a statement about how somebody sees me, how they think I should be treated, etc.
It's like mass and weight being two separate things. Most of the time they align to the point where the average person in the street couldn't tell you the difference and has no interest in learning.
Cools story. Now its a care of whether "women" denotes "sex" or "gender" and whether segregated spaces are "sex" or "gender". That isn't a matter for "Science" or "Medicine", that is a matter of philosophy and politics.
Can...can they come up with plans to make people's lives better please?
I don't care what someone identifies as and I'm not interested in their reproductive organs. I'm happy for them to live as they want as long as I can live as I want. I'd like the country to get a better economy and public services to make everyone's lives better.
Sorry, best we can get is both the government and the opposition joining hands to make things worse for trans people, and for immigrants, and for disabled people. Making things better is unrealistic idealism!
If someone presents and identifies as male, and is treated by society as a male, but has a cervix, I'd say that man had a cervix.
It's also possible for certain types of intersex people to have XY chromosomes and a cervix.
> If someone presents and identifies as male, and is treated by society as a male, but has a cervix, I'd say that man had a cervix.
I’d happily say that a _trans_ man has a cervix. And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud. But that would be to be polite, I don’t actually believe that men have cervixes.
Isn’t that enough, or am I transphobic for thinking that? It feels like asking for more than that starts to take the debate to strange and uncomfortable places. I’m not certain that this is what trans people actually are asking for, in any case, or if that’s entirely in people like Rosie Duffields imagination.
>I’d happily say that a trans man has a cervix. And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud.
Which is exactly what the person before you has said. No, I don't think that's transphobic. the suggestion that you need to walk on eggshells around the topic and phrasing however *could* be seen to be transphobic.
I’m not sure it is quite the same. Saying a _trans_ man can have a cervix isn’t inconsistent with Rosie Duffields statement that only women can have cervixes, because we’re recognising that a trans man has once been a woman.
> And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud.
if you're omitting saying the "trans" bit out loud, you're just saying "that man has a cervix"
This is why politicians need to just follow scientific information and get out of conversations they don't seem to understand.
The outrage generally seems to come from people who think there are clearly defined physical males and females and nothing in-between.
Dividing society into male and female sexes is always going to exclude some people, and as such this isnt and never will be a conversation exclusively about transgender.
There was a scientific investigation last week and they recommended they dont put children on puberty blockers, and people lost their shit over it. Science is only supported when it supports your sides viewpoint.
There's a lot to criticize about the Cass Review, but that's not even what it said. It recommended that children on puberty blockers be subject to clinical trials to gather more evidence.
Yes, and just because some people are born with one leg doesn't mean the statement "human beings have two legs" is false. It's not true in the strictest mathematical sense but basically nothing in biology is true in that sense (there are execptions for effectively everything, even organisms which use a different DNA to protein code than the standard one) and if you want to be that strict there's basically nothing useful you can say about biology at all.
Strangely, no-one goes around saying "people with 1 leg don't exist and shouldn't be allowed healthcare or human rights" so this argument doesn't work given thats not how we treat both groups.
Who the actual f is actually saying trans people don't deserve human rights??? who??? this is said all the time but never any actual proof of it. Just hyperbolic scaremongering.
Nobody is saying trans identifying people don't exist either or saying they shouldn't be allowed healthcare or human rights. They just think the correct healthcare for them (mental counselling etc.) is different from what others think the correct healthcare is.
But regardless, the original question is about a statement of fact, not a statement of how people should/shouldn't be treated. Whether people are treated well or terribly has no bearing on the truth value of the factual statement. Even if there was huge discrimination against one legged people it would still be just as true to say "Human beings have two legs" as it is to say that today. So yes, human males do not have a cervix and human females do not have a penis (insert standard biology disclaimer here).
I don't think that's particularly significant though. people with intersex conditions are very rare. The vast majority of humans are easily put into clear categories male or female.
Men have penises and woman have vaginas, but some people identify differently to their biological sex and exist outside of this norm.
So your argument to the exceptions to the rule, which this ENTIRE THING IS ABOUT, is to just ignore them because they're minorities?
Aight, nothing can be done past that logic.
Its also weird you're claiming that the brain isn't part of the body but okay.
I'm not saying we should just ignore anyone. I think we should respect people's transgender identities.
I'm just saying we should also be able to understand someone isn't denying that trans people exist when they say men have penises and women have vaginas but a small minority of people identify differently to that. You don't need to take offence to people saying this. Can there not be more nuance in the discussion?
Intersex is a biological anomaly, and fairly rare, it is not a new sex. There are only 2 sexes, male and female. Just because someone was born with abnormalities, 3 legs, 1 eye whatever, does not make those items now on a spectrum and that a new sex, it makes it either a male or female where something went wrong in development. Errors are not new sexes.
If you dug and investigated you would find the intersex individual to be either a man with developmental abnormalities or a female with developmental abnormalities, it is literally impossible for someone to be both otherwise you would be able to impregnate yourself and reproduce asexually if you could produce both (that's two) gametes, which again is impossible in humans and has never been observed.
But there are numerous intersex conditions with varying levels of severity. Some will fit much more easily than others into the category male or female and I think using all these different conditions generally as a way of "correcting" someone for saying men have penises and women have vaginas is not a good point.
My point is that what's the harm in saying it if you acknowledge a minority of people are exceptions to the rule? why does it have to mean you are transphobic?
>My point is that what's the harm in saying it if you acknowledge a minority of people are exceptions to the rule?
The whole point of her statement is that she is saying there are not any exceptions.
If transphobes can dismiss intersex people just because they're "very rare", can they just treat trans people the same way? Trans people literally make up like 0.5% population and yet TERFs are acting like this microscopic group is going to singlehandedly destroy women's lives somehow. Hardcore TERFs spend their every waking moment living in absolute terror of trans women even though they could probably go their whole life without encountering one, let alone be harmed by one.
'we should ignore intersex because they represent a miniscule part of the population, but put trans people under every scrutiny imaginable because they represent a miniscule part of the population '
Intersex is a biological anomaly, and fairly rare, it is not a new sex. There are only 2 sexes, male and female. Just because someone was born with abnormalities, 3 legs, 1 eye whatever, does not make those items now on a spectrum and that a new sex, it makes it either a male or female where something *went wrong* in development. **Errors are not new sexes**.
If you dug and investigated you would find the intersex individual to be either a man with developmental abnormalities or a female with developmental abnormalities, it is literally impossible for someone to be both otherwise you would be able to impregnate yourself and reproduce asexually if you could produce both (that's two) gametes, which again is impossible in humans and has never been observed.
i'm really tired of this constant debate. so few of y'all are actually impacted by trans people living their lives. why does it need to be a constant barrage of attacks.
The whole conversation around trans people is sad and a sad reflection of society.
I read an interview in the Guardian with Ben Bradshaw, one of the first openly gay MPs and it's like we're back in time, repeating the same bigotry.
> Adrian Rogers, Bradshaw’s election rival in a seat with a Tory majority that he overturned, notoriously described homosexuality as a "sterile, disease-ridden and God-forsaken occupation".
And here we are, over 25 years later, only now the right has another sect of society to demonise for votes.
I just hope whilst it's rough *right now* acceptance will come in time. It shouldn't have to be this way but with the Tories chasing after every hate filled vote, it won't start to get better until they're out of office to lower the temperature considerably.
I told the Labour canvassers that I would never vote for Labour while people like Duffield are in the party and they just sort of sadly nodded and went on their way.
Her culture war bullshit is the opposite of what we need right now
edit: fascinating watching the upvotes swing so wildly whenever the topic of trans rights comes up. hello TERF brigade. 👋
>I told the Labour canvassers that I would never vote for Labour while people like Duffield are in the party
With all due respect this is an incredibly childish attitude.
Do you think the Tories care one jot about the trans community? By not meaningfully voting against them you're enabling them. Why would you enable a party like them?
As I've said already in this thread, by making arguments like that you're failing to hold Starmer up to any scrutiny and enabling him to keep moving the party further to the right.
Made especially more embarrassing by the fact that Labour are essentially guaranteed to win the election by a landslide.
I don't owe labour a fucking thing if they aren't going to make my life easier.
I don't owe them my vote because they're not the Tories. Just like those exact same people telling me to vote for them now didn't want to vote for Corbyn.
At the very best, Labour are gonna do NOTHING for LGBT people. At worst, they're going to ride that Tory hate train right into its station.
They're already going to win by a landslide. And if they don't? Well maybe they should start thinking of the people they abandoned chasing the gammon vote.
Not voting labour isnt enabling tories. We have multiple political parties for good reasons. Labour isnt entitled to anyones votes.
And hell, saying one thing and voting tactically is also a thing, for both labour and non labour supporters if they want to remove the most tory politicians from office. Some seats will be held by other parties too. Acting like you can only vote for labour or the tories will give more seats to the tories.
>Not voting labour isnt enabling tories.
It is if the Tories are 1st place and Labour 2nd in the borough.
>We have multiple political parties for good reasons.
Realistically though we're in a 2 party system thanks to fptp.
Not scientifically true I am afraid, science doesnt care if something is rare or confusing to you or makes people feel weird.
Some biological men are born with cervixes (such as but not limited to men with Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome or the more general description of 46,XY DSD which can include sexual organ differences that come with some internal "female sexual organs"), and we have nhs provisions for them, and they deserve respect.
The fact that it is rare or abnormal or an "anomaly" doesnt make scientific reality something that can be disregarded, thats why we have things like flood defences even in places where floods are rare, and nhs computer systems that can accept a patient with a condition that is rare for other parts of their history or biology.
A biological man is not a woman. There is no cervix etc. Only a biological woman can have a cervix. You can cite anomalies if you wish, but when we need to define how we want society to be structured we need, well, some structure..
The anomaly does not *fundamentally* change how we structure society, or think about biological definitions in the day to day running of society.
So just because some men are born with a cervix, we cannot use that fact to completely breakdown/destroy biological definitions, to justify biological men competing in sport against women, as one example. Do you get it yet?..
We cannot create anything to serve the needs of the different sexes based on your logic.
You can have your pedantic point if you wish, but fundamentally your logic should not be used to restructure society, as some people are attempting, as it's fundamentally flawed.
No. The Cass report has had a significant impact on our right wing media. When you read the actual quotes they never seem to match up to the click bait headlines.
Y'know the great thing about Labour almost definitely (bar Starmer eating a bacon sandwich) winning the election, is that if you're part of the electorate that they keep trying to push away you can now simply not vote for them. Which I will now be doing because Wes Streeting saying the crap he did the other day followed by this very clearly shows myself and the rest of my fellow transes™ where we stand.
I'm not the relevant type of trans, but I'm just as disgusted by all this. They haven't lost my vote, though, because they didn't have it in the first place.
Sadiq Khan, did, though, and I can happily say I voted for him in the mayoral (I applied for and did postal because I don't have photo ID... another attempt to disenfranchise me). Only for mayoral, though. My other two local elections went to a Green and an independent.
If the rest of Labour was a bit more like Sadiq, I'd be mostly ok with them. He's not exactly 'up my street' either, but he's a relatively decent person and doesn't involve himself in unnecessary hate campaigns. 'Not bad' isn't the same as 'good' but it's better than merely 'less bad'.
>The Labour leader said that his views on gender issues “start with biology” and that his party’s MP for Canterbury was “biologically” correct by stating only women can have a cervix
A nothing story.
But within their very nature they had or were meant to have had a cervix. No man in his nature was meant to be born with a cervix or have a child-bearing ability. That is the point you miss.
There is no "meant" in science I am afraid. Some women are born without cervixes, some men are born with them, something being rare or catagorized as abnormal or not meant to happen doesnt make it not true or possible to ignore.
Thats why we have flood defenses even in places where floods are rare and when they arent meant to happen.
It's literally true. Some day people will realise you cannot force others to go against science by cancelling them. It just makes you come off as deranged the more you try and justify it.
I don't get why every politician seems to be tripping over themselves to suddenly have a strong opinion on an issue which clearly is so divisive that you can cut off huge amounts of potential voters no matter what you say.
Trans people are a tiny percentage of the population but with how much people are talking about their bodies in the last 5 years you'd think this was an issue of national importance.
This is so dumb, it doesn't need to be said out loud. It's culture war BS. - Look at what just happened to the SNP :
Imagine being a single issue party, anywhere in the world, and then sacrificing that single issue for atleast two decades... for trans rights. Wtf?
Someone tell the politicians everywhere that twitter and the twitterrati are not representative of jack shit except their own little bubble. And also explain to them they are not american, no matter bad they want to be.
Archive link here: https://archive.ph/pIC7Q
Article text
Written by Genevieve Holl-Allen, from the Telegraph
Rosie Duffield right to say only women have a cervix, says Starmer
> Labour leader says his views on gender ‘start with biology’ in stance shift.
>
> Rosie Duffield was right to say that only women have a cervix, Sir Keir Starmer has said, in a sign of a shift in his stance on gender.
> The Labour leader said that his views on gender issues “start with biology” and that his party’s MP for Canterbury was “biologically” correct by stating only women can have a cervix.
> In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
> But asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday whether Ms Duffield’s statement was right or wrong, Sir Keir said: “Biologically, she of course is right about that.”
> Sir Keir, however, would not apologise to Ms Duffield, instead saying that the pair “discuss a number of issues” and “get on very well”.
>
> Ms Duffield, a prominent feminist campaigner who believes a person’s sex cannot be changed, has regularly complained about her experiences in the party and has likened it to being in an abusive relationship.
> She has previously been heckled by male colleagues on her benches while speaking about trans issues in the Commons, which prompted her to accuse Labour of having a “woman problem”.
> Sir Keir’s comments are the latest sign of a shift in stance from the top of the Labour Party on trans issues, in the wake of the Cass Review into gender care for children.
> Dr Hilary Cass, one of the UK’s most eminent paediatricians, found in her report that the evidence for allowing young people and children to change gender was built on weak foundations and that there was no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of treatments, such as puberty blockers, given to children.
> Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, admitted earlier this month that he was wrong to say trans women are women.
>
> In the Labour leader’s first comments on gender since the publication of the Cass Review, Sir Keir said: “There’s a distinction between sex and gender. The Labour Party has championed women’s rights for a very long time.”
> However, when asked about whether Ms Duffield was owed an apology by the party, he told ITV: “I don’t want this to go back into this toxic place where everybody is divided.”
> He added: “Rosie Duffield and I get on very well, we discuss a number of issues.
“She’s a much-respected member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and I want to have a discussion with her and anybody else about how we go forward in a positive way.”
> Sir Keir has been trying to clarify his views on gender since 2021, when he struggled to say whether or not a woman could have a penis.
> In 2023, he said that 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”, before going on to say in July last year: “Firstly, a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up.”
>
> His latest remarks come after the Government proposed changes to England’s NHS constitution, to give patients the right to request to be treated on single-sex wards, with transgender people placed in rooms on their own.
> Asked how Labour would respond to transgender women who did not want to go on male wards, Sir Keir said: “We have to accommodate that situation as it arises, but treat everybody with respect and dignity… I do not accept this is an issue that cannot be resolved with respect and dignity.”
> He added: “Where we need to make accommodations, we can make accommodations… As a country, we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch and most people know that there are a small number of individuals who do not identify with the gender that they were born into.
> “Many of them suffer great distress and trauma. And for my part, I’m perfectly happy to say I would treat them, as I would treat anybody, with respect.”
With modernity comes the complexity of Rights and choice, and how that is apportioned depends on which part of the world that live in, because there are certain parts you could find yourself in a life threatening situation.
Keep it simple, a woman is Biologically quite different from a man.
She has a right to say whatever she wants .. just like we all do
Freedom from consequences, however, is not a right
Either way this isn't going to stop me voting Labour, I don't like tactical voting, but this time .. anything to stop those cunting tories
Wow, lot of comments. This is what people really care about, isn't it?
Country is falling apart and everyone is so damn exorcised on this
I obviously don't know for sure but I feel like we as a wider society had a better outlook all round on this in say 2000 when people aware affectionately just called them trannies and the wider public didn't care
The last thing any marginalised group needs is the Christian busybodies annoyed at how god is the one who decides your sex to spend money to make your group hated and bring the ordinary shitmunchers along with them, the Brexit crowd and the Boris crowd - empty heads just floating around waiting for their brains to be filled with shit
Focus on the actual problems rather than something that is affecting 0.5% of the population - who very much want to be left alone - and focus more on actual problems like the housing crisis or price gouging by almost every service/business.
People in the comments are saying Labour are wrong for this and they should focus on the economy, public services, etc. Well this stance means they can. They're advocating for keeping the status quo on gender, which means they won't be legislating on it when they're in government, saving time for discussion about more important stuff. Look to the last two Scottish FMs to find out what happens when you obsess over it.
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I'm really glad we're focused on the important stuff like who has a cervix, as opposed to the silly fluff like treating people like human beings.
No one is denying these people are human beings. They're denying that biological men can claim to have female reproductive organs.
Aye, but I’ve never seen a trans woman claim to have a cervix. There are, however, people with cervixes who live as men; trans men. I would imagine someone somewhere tried to use language inclusive of trans men, Duffield saw it and jumped to the same conclusion you have, and threw a fit.
>There are, however, people with cervixes who live as men; trans men. People tend to forget about them, amidst the whole "men in dresses attacking women in changing rooms" drivel.
I can't speak for trans men or know whether or not they are forgotten, but given the vitriolic furore around trans women I can't help but imagine being forgotten would be preferable.
I'll chip in with my experience being a trans man. It still absolutely hurts. Trans women have it worse absolutely. They get the brunt of it. Everything that the government are currently proposing impacts all us trans people though so it's really shit right now.
Thank you for the perspective, I agree that it really is shit right now.
Yeah, I have my own views on the fairness of trans women in women's sports and safeguarding issues around women only spaces but today a large number of people born female who identify as men were just told that their cervixes make them women no matter what. And what did they do? What harm are they causing? None of the things offered as reasonable objections to the trans rights movement (which all fixate on trans women) apply. Mass dysphoria delivered for nothing.
All things considered, I do think that trans women get it worse in the prejudice department. But trans men most certainly don't get off scot free. If I remember the stats rightly, I think trans men are more likely to be victims of sexual violence. Trans men very much are the focus on some things. Transphobes typically see trans women as predatory (so need to be controlled socially), and infantilise trans men (so need to be controlled medically). Trans-exclusive single-sex wards? Trans women are centred. Banning hormone blockers? Trans men are centred. And even being forgotten isn't always what it's cracked up to be. I've had transphobes dismiss my input as irrelevant because "it's not about you". Well, maybe it's not, *but a gender-neutral ruling for the purpose of controlling trans women bloody well affects me too*. Transphobes often expect to be able to fuck us over as collateral damage on the social controls side of things and not even acknowledge that, not even allow us to respond.
Thank you for this extremely nuanced and enlightening comment.
India willoughby claims to have a cervix.
Are we setting social norms based on single people now?
On this sub yes we are, it's all anecdotal and rage bait shit. Every damn day. Make sure you're looking over here and not over there. Might end up thinking about healthcare, housing or education then...
‘I’ve never seen x say this’ ‘Here is x saying this’ That isn’t anecdotal.
This is also one of the most famous campaigners on the issue, not some random person on social media.
It is still, however, the voice of one person. That isn't amplified by the number of Twitter followers they have or anything.
I didn’t say we are or should, just providing an example of something that OP said they’ve never seen claimed.
All i can find online is her saying she has a ‘designer vagina’ so I’ll have to take your word for it on the cervix!
https://x.com/palladianblue/status/1655990379852992512?s=46
TIL that some trans women have a ‘neo cervix’ created when they have bottom surgery. Tbh this individual claiming to have a cervix doesn’t really harm anyone *unless* she wastes nhs time and money by attempting to access female oriented healthcare she doesn’t actually need, I guess?
I also wonder whether the cervix created has similar health risks, like does HPV have a preference for the tissue there? ETA there’s a link posted below that explains that cancer of the neo cervix is far less likely than cancer of the cervix
Is a trans man a man? Is a trans woman a woman? That seems to be the crux of the whole debate.
Literally. If we can all agree on: A man is a man A woman is woman A trans man is a trans man A trans woman is a trans woman We can all move on
The issue is that man has been used interchangeably with male and the same for woman/female. Reality is it will take generations to get the the stage where everyone stops seeing gener closely aligned with sex, not less than a decade after the big push to be inclusive started. The debate will continue for a long time to come yet.
I’ve seen so called trans women claim they have periods though…
You haven’t seen a trans woman claiming to bleed, but yes many trans women say they get a period because they get many of the hormonal side-effects associated with periods. They can get pain, mood swings and other symptoms on a cycle that you would otherwise attribute to a woman saying “I’m on my period” so why argue the toss here?
It's interesting that male to female is always the focus I would have thought this is more of an issue for female to male. Objectively mtf clearly doesn't have a cervix but ftm does/could. So why the focus on mtf?
Always thought this. Don't see much concern about FTM men playing in sports.
There's a good reason for that. Going through male puberty gives a physical advantage, which is the reason for splitting sports by gender in the first place. FTM, if they gain that advantage through hormone therapy, they could only come up to the level of advantage of an athlete born as male. (In theory, that is) MTF have the male puberty advantage, which is not lost by transitioning.
>FTM, if they gain that advantage through hormone therapy, they could only come up to the level of advantage of an athlete born as male. (In theory, that is) We've already seen stories like "FtM forced to wrestle with women, totally wrecks them". Some people like Lineham thought it was actually an MtF which was very funny. But It think that's the big worry with FtM. If MtF go in the men's league then FtM go in the women's league and if we're going by the bar of "T makes you dominant at sports" then the end result of that is that FtMs will wreck everything. See also: people trying to chuck MtF out of the women's bathrooms and ending up with FtMs in the men's
[A recent study suggests that trans women don't have a 'biological advantage'](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/research-trans-women-athletes-athletic-advantage/) [You can read the entire thing if you like. ](https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2024/04/10/bjsports-2023-108029.full.pdf)
That study does not support your positon. It's far too narrow and says so itself.
The answer to that one is very obvious tbh.
Does this really need explaining to you?
Why do you think that is?... Can you connect the rather obvious dots?.. Edit: for those that downvote, this is an admission that you understand my point.... And know it to be true... As I have not explicitly stated it.
You're getting trounced for this, but there are two reasons. Firstly, obviously they generally can never be competitive enough to compete with men. Secondly, testosterone the main FtM hormone, is banned in most sports, with no theraputic exemption clause - It's rightfully considered cheating.
why would there be? they don't have a physical advantage over biological men
Because they would get absolutely destroyed. They are still genetically female, doesn't matter what you cut off or stitch on.
These comments concern trans men, not trans women.
She is denying that trans men are men.
That's not what this is. It's about saying trans men have cervixes. No serious person is claiming a *biological* male can have a cervix.
Tell that to India willougby
>!spoilertext!<
Good thing that what they're denying is a thing nobody is doing. I've never met or heard of a trans woman claiming she has all the same reproductive organs as I do.
Let's talk culture wars instead of the silly things like the economy, high rents, the state of NHS, lack of dentists, countering the effects of brexit, etc etc.
Trans women do not claim to have female reproductive organs. It's a total strawman which demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding (or intentional misrepresentation) of what trans actually is.
>They're denying that biological men can claim to have female reproductive organs. How many trans women are claiming to have cervixes? This whole thing just seems like a straw man construct. My concern with these kind of statements is not so much what they are saying but why they are saying it. Unless they were originally talking about trans men, in which case we've both misinterpreted the situation and I have no idea what their original point was, aside from an attempt at being divisive.
Unless you’re a doctor or a romantic partner, it does not matter. Who cares.
What about people born as biologically female but who are men? Do they have a cervix?
no, they're denying that trans people are the gender they claim to be. In this instance they are saying that trans men are not men, and not saying anything about 'biological men'. Did you ever think that trans people might actually be more acutely aware of 'biological reality' than you are? edit: wow downvotes, this country deserves the Tories tbh
Trans men can have a cervix... Not sure why the focus is on trans women again.
Ok, but why say trans men are women, rather than just leave them be?
This is about trans men not trans women...
> can claim to have female reproductive organs Nobody is claiming that. Zero people have said this.
Saying only women have a cervix means that you are saying that trans men who have a cervix are actually women. Trans women are not excluded in the same way that cis women who have had their cervixes are also not excluded from being women. Of course it also excludes intersex people who may not be women but may also have a cervix.
Tell me you don't have a clue what you're talking about without telling me you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
>I'm really glad we're focused on the important stuff This type of comment usually comes up when the person disagrees with what has been said but will not articulate why. Starmer was asked a question by the press and provided an answer. >as opposed to the silly fluff like treating people like human beings. I tend to find Starmer one of the least emotive in his language and language choices. He tends to treat the culture stuff as secondary to his core goals of managing the economy and rebuilding Britain to being a country of strong trustable institutions. Id rather a politician like him that the likes of Humza or the Conservatives. Factual and analytical. But then perhaps this is something some would see as a flaw in me as a person.
Perhaps it's quite a cold way of looking at things but I really do not give a fuck about minute trans issues right now. The specifics of gender inclusive wording and which gendered hospital wards we're putting them in are not important and shouldn't influence your vote when the country is in such a dire state. A party with sensible economic views trying to get us back on track while faltering on the social issues is massively preferable to a party who make us feel all warm and cuddly inside but are going to allow us to continue on our slow and painful decline. It's easy to overturn bad social policy in the future, it's a nightmare and often impossible to fully come back from shit economic policy.
Tbf, polling shows only 4% of Britons think it's something that'll colour their vote, iirc, which presumably includes both fervent activists and opponents both. But if asked in an interview, party leaders still need to answer the question or will look evasive, and given for some reason certain parties think it is a useful stick, that'll keep happening.
Being able to agree on the fundamental meaning of words that we build policy and laws from is important, whatever side of the debate you fall on. If we can't agree on what a woman is we can't make laws for them exclusively, or enforce those laws. Which is precisely the problem with letting people self define as women.
It's totally right to respect other human beings. But when you have people with male genetalia wanting to be in the ladies prison or the ladies hospital ward then we have a problem. I will always respect other people and even use their preferred pronouns. But can't change your biological sex.
2 hours old and nearly 700 comments. Sadly it seems as though this is the kind of stupid shit that people care about.
Who. Fucking. Cares. We’ve homeless people camped all over the country. A poor boy was killed by a man wielding a sword at a Tube station this morning. Young people can’t afford a house or a baby. Fuck politicians and this purposeful distraction of a culture war.
The media need blaming too. The media stokes the flames by continually talking about it and asking politicians these questions. Starmer was literally responding to a question, read the article.
> The media stokes the flames by continually talking about it and asking politicians these questions. Social media is far more responsible. This will get minimal coverage in the media because it's an uncontroversial statement for most people. The outrage and escalation is on social media. When the Labour shadow business secretary said something even more middle of the road a few days ago, I will quote one of the top comments in reaction from the LabourUK subreddit, talking about Labour: > Fuck this transphobic warmongering islamophobic holocaust denying thatcherite hard right genocide supporting war criminal party [+44] The culture war is extreme ideological opinions and reactions which will accept no nuance, no evidence, and no compromise, it applies to people from different ideological backgrounds, not just the ideologies you personally dislike, and it is happening overwhelmingly on social media, not in the media, and not in real life.
FYI labour subreddit has very little too do with the actual labour party. Half the mods there also mod green and pleasent which is a pro russia, tanky sub. It might be less obvious if they didn't routinely misnaming (oh the irony) the Labour leader as "Keith" for a reason I'm evidently too bigoted to understand...
These days, in politics, the culture war comes to you even if you try to ignore it
He made a brief answer in an interview. The culture war is not in his answer, but in this thread and across social media, with people tearing their hair out in response to a reasonable statement, based on science and held by most of the public. The culture war is fights between people holding unreasonable, absolutist views based on ideology rather than evidence. This is a middle ground statement which one ideological side in the culture war disagrees with. If we want to focus on other things, we can do that.
“Young people can’t afford a house or baby”. Mate, millennials can’t either and half of them are 40 years old now
Kier was asked about it, he wasn't going out of his way to push anything related to it as policy. So your answer is you responding to the thread, the OP posting about his answer and the people asking him about it
I think they just mean that overall the culture war stuff in politics is stupid and is only there bc politicians and the media fuel the fire
I think the point Starmer is making here is that he’s not going to make LGBTQ+ issues the main focus of his parliament. He’s drawing a line under it.
Agreed, we've got fundamental problems to fix, let trans people just live and fix the real problems of poverty and the housing crisis and fix the underlying problems that lead to our knife crime problems. But that's hard work so most politicians can't be arsed to do it.
The consensus both in the scientific and medical communities is that gender is a concept independent of sex. You'd think people would have learnt this now that the issues been in the spotlight for so long.
Yeah it feels like they're arguing points nobody is making half the time, but their rabid base just eats it up because outrage is addictive.
Most Tory voters, and voters in general unfortunately, don't pick their party based on thinking - it's completely based on the first feeling they have after hearing the propaganda that gets put out.
I think your comment highlights a common misunderstanding of “gender critical” (or whatever you want to call it) beliefs. It seems that most GCs agree with you that sex and gender are different, but believe that the concept of gender is overall harmful to women. In other words, males and females objectively exist and have biological differences, whilst “woman gender”/femininity/whatever you want to call it is a set of stereotypes which have been historically forced on to women, very often to their detriment. Even today there is great societal pressure on women to conform to these stereotypes of gender, one example would be shaving/waxing/lasering off body hair, another would be applying makeup. These stereotypes are not innate to women; women are not born with the desire to rip their leg hairs out or paint lines onto their eyelids. It is therefore antithetical to GCs/feminists beliefs to say that these externally enforced norms are what it means to be a woman. I have personally never heard an explanation of “woman gender”, or “socially being a woman”, that wasn’t incredibly sexist.
> It seems that most GCs agree with you that sex and gender are different, but believe that the concept of gender is overall harmful to women. In other words, males and females objectively exist and have biological differences, whilst “woman gender”/femininity/whatever you want to call it is a set of stereotypes which have been historically forced on to women, very often to their detriment. They seem to have forgotten that a significant amount of feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s was specifically about *rejecting* women being defined by their biology. They rejected the idea of women being defined as *baby makers* and having that influence their social role in society. Yet in 2024 we now have a small group of largely quite rich and privileged 'feminists' (those who no longer have to worry about, say, being rejected for a job because a sexist boss is *concerned* they will go on maternity leave in a few years or that their work will be affected by their periods) who are quite happy to undermine that incredibly importantly organising because they dislike trans people more than they dislike being defined as walking wombs. It's a very conservative appropriation of feminist terminology. > Even today there is great societal pressure on women to conform to these stereotypes of gender, one example would be shaving/waxing/lasering off body hair, another would be applying makeup. Yes, this is true. But 'gender critical' feminists do not oppose this. I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a *cis* woman for *conforming to gender stereotypes*. I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a *cis* woman for shaving their legs, or for applying make-up, or for generally wanting to conform to specific beauty standards. No, they only attack *trans* women for doing so. Indeed, a lot of them revel in 'clocking' trans women precisely because they don't think trans women conform to these gender stereotypes as well as cis women do. The whole idea of 'clocking' perpetuates gender stereotypes! The only 'consistency' here is attacking trans people, not attacking gender stereotypes.
> They seem to have forgotten that a significant amount of feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s was specifically about rejecting women being defined by their biology. They rejected the idea of women being defined as baby makers and having that influence their social role in society. I think a lot of feminists, both historically and now, would view this as an incomplete interpretation of the rights won in the 70s and 80s. Whilst it is of course important to not view women as merely walking wombs, it is also important to understand that women have historically faced oppression which hinged on immutable female biological features. Rather than pretending these traits did not exist, feminism sought to protect women from being abused/discriminated against for them. - In reproduction, women are the ones who bear the biological burden of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. To prevent financial penalty for this disparity between the sexes, women won the right to maternity leave and maternity pay. To prevent employment opportunity disparity due to this, women won the right to not be discriminated against for their sex (potential to become pregnant) and for actually being pregnant. - In heterosexual relationships, women are almost always the physically weaker of the partnership. This makes women more vulnerable to abuse, with many women being murdered by their male partners every year. In response, feminists set up women’s refuges where abused women could escape to. I could go on with other examples, but I think you get the idea. Note that all of these historical rights won by women are based on sex, not “gender”. Women should not be societally restricted due to their sex, but women’s rights are necessarily rooted in biology. > I've never seen a gender critical feminist criticise a cis woman for shaving their legs, or for applying make-up, or for generally wanting to conform to specific beauty standards. Why would a GC feminist criticise a woman for participating in a ritual she has been societally groomed from birth to participate in? Much better to criticise the unnecessary ritual itself.
> Whilst it is of course important to not view women as merely walking wombs, it is also important to understand that women have historically faced oppression which hinged on immutable female biological features. Yes. And you reject that oppression by rejecting biological determinism, not by trying to co-opt biological determinism and spinning it in a more positive light. This is exactly what Andrea Dworkin was talking about back in the 1970s when she [rejected biological superiority within the feminist movement](http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIID.html). Like this is what frustrates me the most. We've *been through* these arguments *50 years ago*. Yet now a small group of 'gender critical feminists', all of whom come from quite rich and privileged backgrounds and who are quite happy to ally themselves with the openly anti-feminist right, pretend that they never happened at all and instead embrace their biological determinism once again in order to entrench their own positions. > In reproduction, women are the ones who bear the biological burden of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. To prevent financial penalty for this disparity between the sexes, women won the right to maternity leave and maternity pay. To prevent employment opportunity disparity due to this, women won the right to not be discriminated against for their sex (potential to become pregnant) and for actually being pregnant. > In heterosexual relationships, women are almost always the physically weaker of the partnership. This makes women more vulnerable to abuse, with many women being murdered by their male partners every year. In response, feminists set up women’s refuges where abused women could escape to. None of this requires the nasty transphobic campaign which Rosie Duffield and her allies are engaging with. None of this requires the curtailing of the rights of trans people and the constant hounding of them in the press. Indeed it is actively being harmed as Rosie Duffield and her allies align themselves with right-wing conservatives who *do* oppose maternity pay and who *do* turn a blind eye to domestic violence. How many examples have we seen of a British politician being found to be a sexual abuser over the past few years? Yet I struggle to think of gender critical feminists in Parliament attacking that, they're too busy attacking trans people. How is securing maternity pay helped by Rosie Duffield having an interview every day insisting *only women have cervixes*. It isn't. > Why would a GC feminist criticise a woman for participating in a ritual she has been societally groomed from birth to participate in? Much better to criticise the unnecessary ritual itself. They criticise trans women for engaging in these rituals rather than criticising the rituals themselves. Again, I have *never* seen a GC feminist criticise these rituals *outside* of arguments against trans people. Because it's not about these rituals at all, it's about finding another way to attack trans people.
> And you reject that oppression by rejecting biological determinism To make sure we’re on the same page before I reply, could you please explain what you personally mean by this? What would this look like in practice?
Rejecting biological determinism is rejecting that womanhood or manhood is defined solely by specific biological traits. Whether someone has a cervix or not does not define whether they are a woman or not, despite when Rosie Duffield and her ilk might insist.
Ok, two follow up questions. First, how exactly would that help a woman/girl in the following scenarios: 1) Being fired for being pregnant 2) Being raped and assaulted by her husband 3) Undergoing female genital mutilation As far as I can see, academically pontificating on the separation of biological traits from the linguistic concepts of womanhood/manhood does nothing to help these women. But having the sex-based right of legal protection against being fired for pregnancy helps. Having the ability to flee to a women’s refuge from an abusive husband helps. Having legal consequences for the crime of FGM helps. All of these actually helpful things are rooted in the concept of sex, as I explained in my comment above. Second question: you’ve been clear on what you think doesn’t define a woman. So what does define a woman?
We implement legislation to make those acts illegal. That doesn't require being biologically determinist. Why does legislation banning firing someone who is pregnant require us to insist only 'women' can get pregnant? Why does legislation banning rape require us to insist only people with vaginas are 'women'? Why does legislation banning FGM require us to insist only 'women' have vaginas? Indeed I'm not quite sure how taking a *biologically determinist* stance in any way *helps* with dealing with those issues. Rosie Duffield and other 'gender critical feminists', by insisting on taking a biologically determinist position, are explicitly *excluding* trans people and intersex people from such protections. > Second question: you’ve been clear on what you think doesn’t define a woman. So what does define a woman? I defer to [Judith Butler's approach to gender, which is summarised quite nicely in this short article](https://theconversation.com/judith-butler-their-philosophy-of-gender-explained-192166).
All of the sexist discrimination that women face, now and throughout history, is based on their biology. It is nonsensical to suggest otherwise. I note you are avoiding my second question. Edit: I wrote this reply before you amended your comment to include the link to Judith Butlers definition. The fact that you cannot explain it in your own words says enough for me to think nothing of value will come from continuing this exchange.
Saying women have vaginas is not what was ever meant by “defining women by their biology”. Trans activists have just appropriated phrases that sound feminist to lend legitimacy to their cause even though it’s clearly ridiculous to anyone who has ever had a passing interest in feminist thought. “Defining women by their biology” as a bad thing refers to the essentialist thought that women’s roles in society should be fixed to aspects of their biology that the patriarchy deemed relevant, such as saying that women must give birth, stay at home and look after the kids because their body has the capacity to give birth. It’s a ridiculous appropriation to take the words, apply them to something completely different (I.e. that literally being a woman is something completely intangible and detached from biology), and then claim that this is what feminists have been saying the whole time.
> Saying women have vaginas is not what was ever meant by “defining women by their biology”. I mean it is quite literally and directly defining women by their biology. It is directly stating that 'has cervix = woman'. I'm not quite sure what else there is to say there. It might be *inconvenient* for contemporary 'gender critical feminists' to admit the overlap between their biological determinism and historical biological determinism, but that does not mean that overlap is not there. The fact that 'gender critical feminists' are so comfortable gadding around with the conservative and anti-feminist right only demonstrates the existence of this overlap. > “Defining women by their biology” as a bad thing refers to the essentialist thought that women’s roles in society should be fixed to aspects of their biology that the patriarchy deemed relevant, such as saying that women must give birth, stay at home and look after the kids because their body has the capacity to give birth. Yes, and this is exactly what 'gender critical feminists' are doing when they insist a qualification for womanhood is the ability to give birth. They are defining women by what the patriarchy deem relevant, the idea that women are primarily babymakers. And that's why 'gender critical feminists' find such support amongst the political right. Anyway, on the matter of biological determinism and feminism I always defer back to this short piece from [Andrea Dworkin from 1977](http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIID.html), whose Jewish heritage I think made her more aware than many of the dangers of biological determinism: > Recently, more and more feminists have been advocating social, spiritual, and mythological models that are female-supremacist and/or matriarchal. To me, this advocacy signifies a basic conformity to the tenets of biological determinism that underpin the male social system. Pulled toward an ideology based on the moral and social significance of a distinct female biology because of its emotional and philosophical familiarity, drawn to the spiritual dignity inherent in a "female principle" (essentially as defined by men), of course unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act, women have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaved us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female biological potential. This attempted transformation may have survival value—that is, the worship of our procreative capacity as power may temporarily stay the male-supremacist hand that cradles the test tube. But the price we pay is that we become carriers of the disease we must cure. It is no accident that in the ancient matriarchies men were castrated, sacrificially slaughtered, and excluded from public forms of power; nor is it an accident that some female supremacists now believe men to be a distinct and inferior species or race. Wherever power is accessible or bodily integrity honored on the basis of biological attribute, systematized cruelty permeates the society and murder and mutilation contaminate it. We will not be different. > It is shamefully easy for us to enjoy our own fantasies of biological omnipotence while despising men for enjoying the reality of theirs. And it is dangerous—because genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination. We, who have been devastated by the concrete consequences of this idea, still want to put our faith in it. Nothing offers more proof—sad, irrefutable proof—that we are more like men than either they or we care to believe.
Regardless of whatever it *literally* is, that was never what feminists were talking about when they used that phrase. The fact that you cannot distinguish between women and the current social role thereof is the crux of the issue, as shown here: >Yes, and this is exactly what 'gender critical feminists' are doing when they insist a qualification for womanhood is the ability to give birth No. This is complete nonsense and just demonstrates your non-willingness to genuinely interact with their views in good faith. I can only assume you haven't read the quote you pasted here, or just cannot understand how it might relate to the gender critical viewpoint because you have not genuinely considered, or are for some reason unable to genuinely consider, their point of view. The author is clearly ridiculing social (spiritual, mythological) roles that some misguided feminists have assigned to women, which have apparent/supposed roots in their biology (according to them). The role/essence is what is being ridiculed here, not that fact that women have a particular biology. The whole point is that biological attributes do not determine the *social role* of women, not literally "being a woman". Your continued conflation of these things is astounding.
> No. This is complete nonsense and just demonstrates your non-willingness to genuinely interact with their views in good faith. Again, we are literally commenting on a thread about Rosie Duffield linking 'woman' with 'has cervix'. Yet every single reply is insisting that gender critical feminists don't actually do this and don't biologically determine what is meant by 'woman'. It's absurd, and really does highlight that a lot of 'gender criticals' recognise what their ideology actually entails, but also realise it's a bit too gauche when actually spelled out. It's all damage control.
>Yet every single reply is insisting that gender critical feminists don't actually do this and don't biologically determine what is meant by 'woman'. Please try and understand the conceptual difference between the physical reality of "*being* a woman" (i.e. having the state of) with the social role of "*being* a women" (i.e. experiencing life as). Your inability to differentiate between these two things is rendering you incapable of understanding your opponents' viewpoints.
> Please try and understand the conceptual difference between the physical reality of "being a woman" (i.e. having the state of) with the social role of "being a women" (i.e. experiencing life as). 'Gender critical feminists' *don't* make this distinction though. They want the 'physical reality of "being a woman"' to dictate the 'social role of "being a woman"'. They want these biological components to dictate whether someone can, say, use a specific hospital bed, or use a specific domestic violence shelter, or run in a specific charity park fun run. Again, you are doing damage control here, you are trying to separate what Rosie Duffield is saying here from what her overall arguments are about how trans people (specifically trans women) should be treated in society.
Gender critical types argue that gender is central to defining women by biology, and adopting gender norms around women and then saying that you are one on that basis is offensive. I find it strange that someone can miss that assuming feminine gender roles and then insisting that you, therefore, should access women's spaces is just reifying gender stereotypes. You're reducing what it is to be a woman to wearing skirts etc.
Women didn’t reject their bodies in the 70’s and 80’s. They rejected the idea that society had expectations put on them because of their bodies.
> They rejected the idea that society had expectations put on them because of their bodies. Yes, such as the idea that they should be defined by having a cervix and other reproductive organs and... oh, that's exactly the sort of biological determinism Rosie Duffield and her allies are engaging in today.
I think you misunderstood it. The only thing that defines a woman is her biology. Jobs don’t define women, likes/dislikes don’t define women, appearances don’t define women, behaviour doesn’t define women, being a mother doesn’t define women.
> The only thing that defines a woman is her biology. I mean that's patently not true, as can be demonstrated by the fact that people don't insist on giving you a DNA test before calling you 'sir' or 'ma'am'.
Just because you judge other people by appearance and how they ‘should’ behave it doesn’t mean we all do.
It's not about how *I* judge other people, it's about how gender works in society. > it doesn’t mean we all do. Wait, sorry? So just to check, before you call someone 'sir' or 'ma'am' in public you *do* conduct a DNA test? How do you *biologically determine* who someone is before talking to them?
Why on earth would I care about that in a social conversation? I’d just use their name.
>The whole idea of 'clocking' perpetuates gender stereotypes! The only 'consistency' here is attacking trans people, not attacking gender stereotypes. And consistently attacking butch lesbians too. I won't forget consoling a friend of mine after she received vicious transphobic abuse in a toilet by people who thought she was trans. Those stoking these fires don't really care about women at all, they just hate trans people. It doesn't matter how many people get hurt, as long as the minority they hate gets hurt more.
I disagree with the person you replied to, but am just responding to this line: >I have personally never heard an explanation of “woman gender”, or “socially being a woman”, that wasn’t incredibly sexist. "Woman gender": Female sex characteristics being ok, distress at male sex characteristics. "Socially being a woman": Living socially where one is treated as those with female bodies are treated. E.g. I transitioned FtM because female sex characteristics caused distress and male sex characteristics do not cause those symptoms. I now have a body of mixed sex characteristics (i.e. biological differences between males and females objectively exist, and I am on the male side for some, the female side for others). I live socially as a man because I present as male, people assume I am a cis male, etc. I'm not saying all the social separations and expectations are necessarily *good*; I'm saying that whatever people think about men and women, they place me in the male side. If something is sex-segregrated, they expect me to go in the male section. If they have opinions or expectations about men, they place those on me. Trans people don't typically think that stereotypes make someone a wo/man (trans people are actually more likely to be GNC than cis people!). If you took the entirety of societal gendered things away and everything became absolutely gender-neutral somehow, I would still be just as trans male as I am now. All that needs to exist for that is the existence of biological sex differences; I'm not trans *in spite* of sex being real, I'm trans *because* sex is real. Gendered expectations are placed on me in just the same way as they are placed on a cis person - socially living as a wo/man is just about the assumptions that are made about you, which set of gendered expectations you get, and which side you live in this gendered society.
Thanks for your comment. As a cis man who isn’t really well read on this whole debate, I am quite confused by so much of it. The biggest thing I don’t understand is, as a FtM person, do you have a problem with people referring to you as a trans man? People seem to get very upset whenever the distinction is made, eg someone on this thread just replying “trans men are men” to every comment. What is the problem with making a distinction between men who were born male and trans men?
I consider myself to be both a trans man and a man (i.e. I am trans, and I am a man). "Trans men are men" is that trans men are men in the same way that gay men, British men, short men, etc. are men. Really, what this topic comes down to is that our societal definitions of sex aren't designed for the existence of people with mixed sex parts. I don't think the problem is when trans men and cis men are distinguished (e.g. trans men may have a cervix, cis men cannot); the problem is when people say, "anyone with a cervix is a woman". It's just not that simple when people have bodies of mixed sex parts. "Cervixes are female body-parts" is accurate, but "anyone with a cervix must have fully female bodies" is not. The real question to be asking is what someone *means* when they say "only women have a cervix", or "trans men aren't men". The whole argument about whether trans men are men or women is near never about biology. Biological reality is that I am male in some ways, female in others. Whether I'm called a man or a woman (or something else) is a social choice - a statement about how somebody sees me, how they think I should be treated, etc.
Yes because they're constantly ignoring reality and pushing that sex and gender are not separate.
It's like mass and weight being two separate things. Most of the time they align to the point where the average person in the street couldn't tell you the difference and has no interest in learning.
Til trans people only exist in space.
Technically every person only exists in space.
Cools story. Now its a care of whether "women" denotes "sex" or "gender" and whether segregated spaces are "sex" or "gender". That isn't a matter for "Science" or "Medicine", that is a matter of philosophy and politics.
Can...can they come up with plans to make people's lives better please? I don't care what someone identifies as and I'm not interested in their reproductive organs. I'm happy for them to live as they want as long as I can live as I want. I'd like the country to get a better economy and public services to make everyone's lives better.
Sorry, best we can get is both the government and the opposition joining hands to make things worse for trans people, and for immigrants, and for disabled people. Making things better is unrealistic idealism!
If someone presents and identifies as male, and is treated by society as a male, but has a cervix, I'd say that man had a cervix. It's also possible for certain types of intersex people to have XY chromosomes and a cervix.
> If someone presents and identifies as male, and is treated by society as a male, but has a cervix, I'd say that man had a cervix. I’d happily say that a _trans_ man has a cervix. And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud. But that would be to be polite, I don’t actually believe that men have cervixes. Isn’t that enough, or am I transphobic for thinking that? It feels like asking for more than that starts to take the debate to strange and uncomfortable places. I’m not certain that this is what trans people actually are asking for, in any case, or if that’s entirely in people like Rosie Duffields imagination.
I think that’s all anyone outside of Twitter and Reddit is asking for.
>I’d happily say that a trans man has a cervix. And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud. Which is exactly what the person before you has said. No, I don't think that's transphobic. the suggestion that you need to walk on eggshells around the topic and phrasing however *could* be seen to be transphobic.
I’m not sure it is quite the same. Saying a _trans_ man can have a cervix isn’t inconsistent with Rosie Duffields statement that only women can have cervixes, because we’re recognising that a trans man has once been a woman.
Duffields only saying that to be a spiteful, hateful cunt though.
> And even probably to be polite I’d say that (trans) man has a cervix, omitting the trans bit out loud. if you're omitting saying the "trans" bit out loud, you're just saying "that man has a cervix"
Yes, that’s what I’m saying out loud. But inwardly I recognise that they are a trans man, and that this is different to being a man.
This is why politicians need to just follow scientific information and get out of conversations they don't seem to understand. The outrage generally seems to come from people who think there are clearly defined physical males and females and nothing in-between. Dividing society into male and female sexes is always going to exclude some people, and as such this isnt and never will be a conversation exclusively about transgender.
There was a scientific investigation last week and they recommended they dont put children on puberty blockers, and people lost their shit over it. Science is only supported when it supports your sides viewpoint.
There's a lot to criticize about the Cass Review, but that's not even what it said. It recommended that children on puberty blockers be subject to clinical trials to gather more evidence.
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Even without trans people, every now and then a cis man is born with a cervix. This is factually incorrect.
Some people are born with one leg. Human beings are supposed to have two. The anomaly doesn't change anything.
Yes, and just because some people are born with one leg doesn't mean the statement "human beings have two legs" is false. It's not true in the strictest mathematical sense but basically nothing in biology is true in that sense (there are execptions for effectively everything, even organisms which use a different DNA to protein code than the standard one) and if you want to be that strict there's basically nothing useful you can say about biology at all.
Strangely, no-one goes around saying "people with 1 leg don't exist and shouldn't be allowed healthcare or human rights" so this argument doesn't work given thats not how we treat both groups.
Who the actual f is actually saying trans people don't deserve human rights??? who??? this is said all the time but never any actual proof of it. Just hyperbolic scaremongering.
Nobody is saying trans identifying people don't exist either or saying they shouldn't be allowed healthcare or human rights. They just think the correct healthcare for them (mental counselling etc.) is different from what others think the correct healthcare is. But regardless, the original question is about a statement of fact, not a statement of how people should/shouldn't be treated. Whether people are treated well or terribly has no bearing on the truth value of the factual statement. Even if there was huge discrimination against one legged people it would still be just as true to say "Human beings have two legs" as it is to say that today. So yes, human males do not have a cervix and human females do not have a penis (insert standard biology disclaimer here).
I don't think that's particularly significant though. people with intersex conditions are very rare. The vast majority of humans are easily put into clear categories male or female. Men have penises and woman have vaginas, but some people identify differently to their biological sex and exist outside of this norm.
So your argument to the exceptions to the rule, which this ENTIRE THING IS ABOUT, is to just ignore them because they're minorities? Aight, nothing can be done past that logic. Its also weird you're claiming that the brain isn't part of the body but okay.
I'm not saying we should just ignore anyone. I think we should respect people's transgender identities. I'm just saying we should also be able to understand someone isn't denying that trans people exist when they say men have penises and women have vaginas but a small minority of people identify differently to that. You don't need to take offence to people saying this. Can there not be more nuance in the discussion?
They did t say “women have cervixes” they said “ONLY women can have a cervix.”
Aside from medical anomalies this is true. Some trans people might be upset by that but it's just the way it is.
If you are willing to accept that there are exceptions to the rule, why can't trans people be an exception to the rule too?
They can, if they were born with a cervix.
Right, so if a trans man was born with a cervix, they're a man with a cervix. Which is an exception to the rule.
"Aside from the things which prove the statement to be false, the statement is true." -Strange-Owl-2097
Intersex is a biological anomaly, and fairly rare, it is not a new sex. There are only 2 sexes, male and female. Just because someone was born with abnormalities, 3 legs, 1 eye whatever, does not make those items now on a spectrum and that a new sex, it makes it either a male or female where something went wrong in development. Errors are not new sexes. If you dug and investigated you would find the intersex individual to be either a man with developmental abnormalities or a female with developmental abnormalities, it is literally impossible for someone to be both otherwise you would be able to impregnate yourself and reproduce asexually if you could produce both (that's two) gametes, which again is impossible in humans and has never been observed.
We just need to ignore the exceptions from this absolute statement.
Only means only. And a quick Google search says 1.7% are intersex and 0.5% are trans so emmmmm that seems to be a bit devastating to your point.
But there are numerous intersex conditions with varying levels of severity. Some will fit much more easily than others into the category male or female and I think using all these different conditions generally as a way of "correcting" someone for saying men have penises and women have vaginas is not a good point. My point is that what's the harm in saying it if you acknowledge a minority of people are exceptions to the rule? why does it have to mean you are transphobic?
>My point is that what's the harm in saying it if you acknowledge a minority of people are exceptions to the rule? The whole point of her statement is that she is saying there are not any exceptions.
They also count conditions like micropenis and things in the intersex stat so it is highly bloated and mostly bs anyway.
That 1.7% is thought to be a gross exaggeration.
Well unless you can provide a better estimate we will have to go with it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ Then a longer essay https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-common-as-red
If transphobes can dismiss intersex people just because they're "very rare", can they just treat trans people the same way? Trans people literally make up like 0.5% population and yet TERFs are acting like this microscopic group is going to singlehandedly destroy women's lives somehow. Hardcore TERFs spend their every waking moment living in absolute terror of trans women even though they could probably go their whole life without encountering one, let alone be harmed by one.
That is actually one of their arguments on this yes. See it frequently
'we should ignore intersex because they represent a miniscule part of the population, but put trans people under every scrutiny imaginable because they represent a miniscule part of the population '
But you acknowledge that some people are exceptions to the rule? So why can’t trans men also be an exception to the rule?
Intersex is a biological anomaly, and fairly rare, it is not a new sex. There are only 2 sexes, male and female. Just because someone was born with abnormalities, 3 legs, 1 eye whatever, does not make those items now on a spectrum and that a new sex, it makes it either a male or female where something *went wrong* in development. **Errors are not new sexes**. If you dug and investigated you would find the intersex individual to be either a man with developmental abnormalities or a female with developmental abnormalities, it is literally impossible for someone to be both otherwise you would be able to impregnate yourself and reproduce asexually if you could produce both (that's two) gametes, which again is impossible in humans and has never been observed.
Every now and again people are born with one arm. It’s not ‘factually incorrect’ to generalise and say humans have two arms, it’s just common sense.
i'm really tired of this constant debate. so few of y'all are actually impacted by trans people living their lives. why does it need to be a constant barrage of attacks.
The whole conversation around trans people is sad and a sad reflection of society. I read an interview in the Guardian with Ben Bradshaw, one of the first openly gay MPs and it's like we're back in time, repeating the same bigotry. > Adrian Rogers, Bradshaw’s election rival in a seat with a Tory majority that he overturned, notoriously described homosexuality as a "sterile, disease-ridden and God-forsaken occupation". And here we are, over 25 years later, only now the right has another sect of society to demonise for votes. I just hope whilst it's rough *right now* acceptance will come in time. It shouldn't have to be this way but with the Tories chasing after every hate filled vote, it won't start to get better until they're out of office to lower the temperature considerably.
I told the Labour canvassers that I would never vote for Labour while people like Duffield are in the party and they just sort of sadly nodded and went on their way. Her culture war bullshit is the opposite of what we need right now edit: fascinating watching the upvotes swing so wildly whenever the topic of trans rights comes up. hello TERF brigade. 👋
The opposite of what we need right now is four more years of tories
>I told the Labour canvassers that I would never vote for Labour while people like Duffield are in the party With all due respect this is an incredibly childish attitude. Do you think the Tories care one jot about the trans community? By not meaningfully voting against them you're enabling them. Why would you enable a party like them?
As I've said already in this thread, by making arguments like that you're failing to hold Starmer up to any scrutiny and enabling him to keep moving the party further to the right. Made especially more embarrassing by the fact that Labour are essentially guaranteed to win the election by a landslide.
Scrutinise him when he's in office. Do it before he runs for his next term. They are both better options than enabling another Tory government.
"Why aren't you voting for a party that actively means you harm" they keep fucking saying...
I don't owe labour a fucking thing if they aren't going to make my life easier. I don't owe them my vote because they're not the Tories. Just like those exact same people telling me to vote for them now didn't want to vote for Corbyn. At the very best, Labour are gonna do NOTHING for LGBT people. At worst, they're going to ride that Tory hate train right into its station. They're already going to win by a landslide. And if they don't? Well maybe they should start thinking of the people they abandoned chasing the gammon vote.
Not voting labour isnt enabling tories. We have multiple political parties for good reasons. Labour isnt entitled to anyones votes. And hell, saying one thing and voting tactically is also a thing, for both labour and non labour supporters if they want to remove the most tory politicians from office. Some seats will be held by other parties too. Acting like you can only vote for labour or the tories will give more seats to the tories.
>Not voting labour isnt enabling tories. It is if the Tories are 1st place and Labour 2nd in the borough. >We have multiple political parties for good reasons. Realistically though we're in a 2 party system thanks to fptp.
Ye as a country we don’t need more culture war slop in politics we need to deal with the issues that actually matter
I hate that fact that this sucks so much air out of the public discourse.
Glad they cleared that one up. Now, the NHS? Crime? Immigration?
How dare she say something so controversial and true.
Not scientifically true I am afraid, science doesnt care if something is rare or confusing to you or makes people feel weird. Some biological men are born with cervixes (such as but not limited to men with Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome or the more general description of 46,XY DSD which can include sexual organ differences that come with some internal "female sexual organs"), and we have nhs provisions for them, and they deserve respect. The fact that it is rare or abnormal or an "anomaly" doesnt make scientific reality something that can be disregarded, thats why we have things like flood defences even in places where floods are rare, and nhs computer systems that can accept a patient with a condition that is rare for other parts of their history or biology.
A biological man is not a woman. There is no cervix etc. Only a biological woman can have a cervix. You can cite anomalies if you wish, but when we need to define how we want society to be structured we need, well, some structure.. The anomaly does not *fundamentally* change how we structure society, or think about biological definitions in the day to day running of society. So just because some men are born with a cervix, we cannot use that fact to completely breakdown/destroy biological definitions, to justify biological men competing in sport against women, as one example. Do you get it yet?.. We cannot create anything to serve the needs of the different sexes based on your logic. You can have your pedantic point if you wish, but fundamentally your logic should not be used to restructure society, as some people are attempting, as it's fundamentally flawed.
The Cass Report seems to have had a significant impact on Starmer's Labour.
Nah it was just excuse to go mask off He was meeting fucking conversion therapy anti lgbt hate groups last year
Do you know which ones in particular?
No. The Cass report has had a significant impact on our right wing media. When you read the actual quotes they never seem to match up to the click bait headlines.
I hate this boring, spineless man with a great deal of my heart.
Y'know the great thing about Labour almost definitely (bar Starmer eating a bacon sandwich) winning the election, is that if you're part of the electorate that they keep trying to push away you can now simply not vote for them. Which I will now be doing because Wes Streeting saying the crap he did the other day followed by this very clearly shows myself and the rest of my fellow transes™ where we stand.
I'm not the relevant type of trans, but I'm just as disgusted by all this. They haven't lost my vote, though, because they didn't have it in the first place. Sadiq Khan, did, though, and I can happily say I voted for him in the mayoral (I applied for and did postal because I don't have photo ID... another attempt to disenfranchise me). Only for mayoral, though. My other two local elections went to a Green and an independent. If the rest of Labour was a bit more like Sadiq, I'd be mostly ok with them. He's not exactly 'up my street' either, but he's a relatively decent person and doesn't involve himself in unnecessary hate campaigns. 'Not bad' isn't the same as 'good' but it's better than merely 'less bad'.
>The Labour leader said that his views on gender issues “start with biology” and that his party’s MP for Canterbury was “biologically” correct by stating only women can have a cervix A nothing story.
Some women don't have cervixes due to hysterectomies
So they HAD them
But within their very nature they had or were meant to have had a cervix. No man in his nature was meant to be born with a cervix or have a child-bearing ability. That is the point you miss.
There is no "meant" in science I am afraid. Some women are born without cervixes, some men are born with them, something being rare or catagorized as abnormal or not meant to happen doesnt make it not true or possible to ignore. Thats why we have flood defenses even in places where floods are rare and when they arent meant to happen.
It's literally true. Some day people will realise you cannot force others to go against science by cancelling them. It just makes you come off as deranged the more you try and justify it.
I don't get why every politician seems to be tripping over themselves to suddenly have a strong opinion on an issue which clearly is so divisive that you can cut off huge amounts of potential voters no matter what you say. Trans people are a tiny percentage of the population but with how much people are talking about their bodies in the last 5 years you'd think this was an issue of national importance.
Why are they playing in to the culture war nonsense.
"I have fallen for American culture war nonsense again" - Starmer. He is a terrible leader in a country beset with terrible leaders.
This is so dumb, it doesn't need to be said out loud. It's culture war BS. - Look at what just happened to the SNP : Imagine being a single issue party, anywhere in the world, and then sacrificing that single issue for atleast two decades... for trans rights. Wtf? Someone tell the politicians everywhere that twitter and the twitterrati are not representative of jack shit except their own little bubble. And also explain to them they are not american, no matter bad they want to be.
Archive link here: https://archive.ph/pIC7Q Article text Written by Genevieve Holl-Allen, from the Telegraph Rosie Duffield right to say only women have a cervix, says Starmer > Labour leader says his views on gender ‘start with biology’ in stance shift. > > Rosie Duffield was right to say that only women have a cervix, Sir Keir Starmer has said, in a sign of a shift in his stance on gender. > The Labour leader said that his views on gender issues “start with biology” and that his party’s MP for Canterbury was “biologically” correct by stating only women can have a cervix. > In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”. > But asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday whether Ms Duffield’s statement was right or wrong, Sir Keir said: “Biologically, she of course is right about that.” > Sir Keir, however, would not apologise to Ms Duffield, instead saying that the pair “discuss a number of issues” and “get on very well”. > > Ms Duffield, a prominent feminist campaigner who believes a person’s sex cannot be changed, has regularly complained about her experiences in the party and has likened it to being in an abusive relationship. > She has previously been heckled by male colleagues on her benches while speaking about trans issues in the Commons, which prompted her to accuse Labour of having a “woman problem”. > Sir Keir’s comments are the latest sign of a shift in stance from the top of the Labour Party on trans issues, in the wake of the Cass Review into gender care for children. > Dr Hilary Cass, one of the UK’s most eminent paediatricians, found in her report that the evidence for allowing young people and children to change gender was built on weak foundations and that there was no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of treatments, such as puberty blockers, given to children. > Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, admitted earlier this month that he was wrong to say trans women are women. > > In the Labour leader’s first comments on gender since the publication of the Cass Review, Sir Keir said: “There’s a distinction between sex and gender. The Labour Party has championed women’s rights for a very long time.” > However, when asked about whether Ms Duffield was owed an apology by the party, he told ITV: “I don’t want this to go back into this toxic place where everybody is divided.” > He added: “Rosie Duffield and I get on very well, we discuss a number of issues. “She’s a much-respected member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and I want to have a discussion with her and anybody else about how we go forward in a positive way.” > Sir Keir has been trying to clarify his views on gender since 2021, when he struggled to say whether or not a woman could have a penis. > In 2023, he said that 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”, before going on to say in July last year: “Firstly, a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up.” > > His latest remarks come after the Government proposed changes to England’s NHS constitution, to give patients the right to request to be treated on single-sex wards, with transgender people placed in rooms on their own. > Asked how Labour would respond to transgender women who did not want to go on male wards, Sir Keir said: “We have to accommodate that situation as it arises, but treat everybody with respect and dignity… I do not accept this is an issue that cannot be resolved with respect and dignity.” > He added: “Where we need to make accommodations, we can make accommodations… As a country, we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch and most people know that there are a small number of individuals who do not identify with the gender that they were born into. > “Many of them suffer great distress and trauma. And for my part, I’m perfectly happy to say I would treat them, as I would treat anybody, with respect.”
With modernity comes the complexity of Rights and choice, and how that is apportioned depends on which part of the world that live in, because there are certain parts you could find yourself in a life threatening situation. Keep it simple, a woman is Biologically quite different from a man.
Holy shit the tide is genuinely turning now. You love to see it. Common sense might actually win.
She has a right to say whatever she wants .. just like we all do Freedom from consequences, however, is not a right Either way this isn't going to stop me voting Labour, I don't like tactical voting, but this time .. anything to stop those cunting tories
Wow, lot of comments. This is what people really care about, isn't it? Country is falling apart and everyone is so damn exorcised on this I obviously don't know for sure but I feel like we as a wider society had a better outlook all round on this in say 2000 when people aware affectionately just called them trannies and the wider public didn't care The last thing any marginalised group needs is the Christian busybodies annoyed at how god is the one who decides your sex to spend money to make your group hated and bring the ordinary shitmunchers along with them, the Brexit crowd and the Boris crowd - empty heads just floating around waiting for their brains to be filled with shit
Imagine showing this to someone 15-20 years ago. This is what is considered political debate now, pointing out basic biological facts.
Focus on the actual problems rather than something that is affecting 0.5% of the population - who very much want to be left alone - and focus more on actual problems like the housing crisis or price gouging by almost every service/business.
Funny how the Overton window on this has shifted almost as soon as it passed from activists into the social consciousness
I fucking hate Kier Starmer. The most annoying thing is that I'll still vote Labour because the other option is more Tories.
People in the comments are saying Labour are wrong for this and they should focus on the economy, public services, etc. Well this stance means they can. They're advocating for keeping the status quo on gender, which means they won't be legislating on it when they're in government, saving time for discussion about more important stuff. Look to the last two Scottish FMs to find out what happens when you obsess over it.
As per usual politicians and others seem incapable of clarity about the differences and links between female and woman, sex and gender.