UK Supreme Court Rules Trans Women Are Not And Can't Be Women

[Ilia Malinin 2,879]

2 hours ago, phantasmas said:

DRAG HAAAAA

[Leblanc 2,494]

2 hours ago, whoresup said:

I live in the UK and want to provide some more context. 

Under the UK Equality Act 2010 a trans person who has transitioned can apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate meaning that under the law they could legally change their gender, have their gender changed on their birth certificate, passport, etc. They are already extremely difficult to get and many trans people wait years for this recognition. 

This new ruling says that trans women will not be legally classed as a woman even if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Not only has this ruling put the lives and safety of trans women at risk, it also denies their very existence. 

If you look on social media in the UK right now there is disgusting transphobic vitriol everywhere and it seems it’s now socially acceptable to be extremely hateful to a vulnerable and marginalised group. 

Trans rights are human rights. Make no mistake, this will not end at trans rights. Other LGBTQ+ rights will be in the firing line, women’s rights will be in the firing line, this is just the beginning.

All it is saying is trans women under the law cannot be classed as biological women which is a separate thing. It is saying that even when you have a GENDER recognition certificate it does not mean you have changed SEX. Those two things are legally distinct. Please stop making it seem worse than it is. It does not deny their existence because you literally just quoted a law where they are recognised as a characteristic, a protected one at that.

[Ilia Malinin 2,879]

1 hour ago, Grim said:

Interested to know if they'd still be so adamant about the "biological gender" if trans men started using women's spaces again

 

only if those trans men passed, i'm sure.  i barely pass, so i'm sure they'd be a-okay with me using women's spaces.  i never will, those aren't for me, but i'm convinced they'd be fine with it.  i'm almost entirely convinced they think trans men don't exist, because it's never trans men that are the problem, it's only trans women.  and i hate that, because those women did nothing but try to live their lives peacefully.

[PartySick 172,545]

7 minutes ago, Leblanc said:

I genuinely have to check out of this debate because you just confirmed my question, I think we fully have lost the plot. I can't believe in good faith you are trying to say trans women are somehow more biologically female than a biological female. And that biological sex is a social construct. Please go out and ask a 1000 people what they mean when they refer to biological sex and when you find that person rhat answers with your answer call me because most people on this earth are going to say its male or female with potential asterisk for intersex depending on who you ask. How when most people exist understanding the subject like this can you want the law to refer to something else? I genuinely am flabbergasted.

You're describing the old definition of sex which was interchangeable with gender. Understanding has expanded.

I remember years ago some advanced college courses moving to not allow students to study their own DNA in biology classes 'cause a lot of the times a person with a penis who identifies as male, presents as a man, and goes by he/him will find out "oops, I'm genetically female".

Biological sex isn't a two sided coin, it's got a lot of moving parts. Hell, some fungi have thousands of distinct sexes  

Y'all can go back and forth all day but I think a lot of this debate gets lost in semantics. @whoresup has the most important point here - that trans women will no longer be recognized as women and are therefore no longer protected by laws that should be protecting them.

[Meruk Holland 2,358]

18 minutes ago, Leblanc said:

I genuinely have to check out of this debate because you just confirmed my question, I think we fully have lost the plot. I can't believe in good faith you are trying to say trans women are somehow more biologically female than a biological female. And that biological sex is a social construct. Please go out and ask a 1000 people what they mean when they refer to biological sex and when you find that person rhat answers with your answer call me because most people on this earth are going to say its male or female with potential asterisk for intersex depending on who you ask. How when most people exist understanding the subject like this can you want the law to refer to something else? I genuinely am flabbergasted.

You probably should just check out because it's clear that you don't know anything about the nuances of the science of gender or law. It's in law that these nuances need to be discerned and the definitions need to be drawn and updated to the science.

If I want the Supreme Court to rule on the classification of Penicillin as a medicine, and they rule "Penicillium has always been known as toxic, everyone's been taught that mold is a deadly poison, we determine it is illegal to use a medicine." That doesn't suddenly make it not a viable medicine. If 1000 people said it was a poison and unusable as medicine, but one person who studies fungal molds knows extensively about the medicinal properties and testifies to them in court, does that make the one expert's opinion invalid because 1000 people say otherwise?

Further, you are misreading what I said. I didn't say all trans women were more biologically female than all cis women. I said that, through intervention, some trans women are more biologically female than some cis women who've had no intervention. Take for example an individual with androgen insensitivity syndrome. These are people, assigned female at birth, who live their full lives as women, hence, they are cisgender. As a result of their condition, they lack the "female" chromosomes and the "female" internal reproductive organs and gonads. Compare them to a trans woman who has had surgical intervention and hormone replacement - bam, two women who are identically "biological" despite one being trans and the other cis. 

I can understand you might rail against the idea that sex is a social construct. That's because you think I'm saying that the observed commonalities are made up. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying our method for grouping these observations together and determining that they fit into a binary "Male/female" with "intersex" exception framework is made up, and that it's actually flawed. Partially because of the intersex exception, but also because of technological advancements in both observation and intervention.

But instead of asking to clarify anything or stating your own understanding, you instead dismiss it altogether and claim I've "lost the plot" for suggesting that, actually, third-grade biology is actually a reductive and oversimplified understanding of biology. 

[Morphine Prince 109,682]

People not knowing the difference between sex and gender in 2025 is a choice. 

[Leblanc 2,494]

7 hours ago, Meruk Holland said:

You probably should just check out because it's clear that you don't know anything about the nuances of the science of gender or law. It's in law that these nuances need to be discerned and the definitions need to be drawn and updated to the science.

If I want the Supreme Court to rule on the classification of Penicillin as a medicine, and they rule "Penicillium has always been known as toxic, everyone's been taught that mold is a deadly poison, we determine it is illegal to use a medicine." That doesn't suddenly make it not a viable medicine. If 1000 people said it was a poison and unusable as medicine, but one person who studies fungal molds knows extensively about the medicinal properties and testifies to them in court, does that make the one expert's opinion invalid because 1000 people say otherwise?

Further, you are misreading what I said. I didn't say all trans women were more biologically female than all cis women. I said that, through intervention, some trans women are more biologically female than some cis women who've had no intervention. Take for example an individual with androgen insensitivity syndrome. These are people, assigned female at birth, who live their full lives as women, hence, they are cisgender. As a result of their condition, they lack the "female" chromosomes and the "female" internal reproductive organs and gonads. Compare them to a trans woman who has had surgical intervention and hormone replacement - bam, two women who are identically "biological" despite one being trans and the other cis. 

I can understand you might rail against the idea that sex is a social construct. That's because you think I'm saying that the observed commonalities are made up. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying our method for grouping these observations together and determining that they fit into a binary "Male/female" with "intersex" exception framework is made up, and that it's actually flawed. Partially because of the intersex exception, but also because of technological advancements in both observation and intervention.

But instead of asking to clarify anything or stating your own understanding, you instead dismiss it altogether and claim I've "lost the plot" for suggesting that, actually, third-grade biology is actually a reductive and oversimplified understanding of biology. 

So how do you expect anyone to have any idea about that when I who had a biology module as part of my university degree has no idea about what you mention? How the **** is that Sue going to have heard about the 5 things making up biological sex. Truthfully most people when pressed are going to say its what chromosomes you have as generally that's what we get taught. And the law that was ruled upon is deciding what was meant by the people who wrote it when that law was written not necessarily what it is true, that's how the nuances of the law you talk about can work and I agree that if they meant biological sex they probably meant what chromosomes you have and that to my knowledge can't be changed although I'm half expecting you to tell me they can and blast me with some advanced knowledge that no regular person going about their day to day has a chance of knowing.

[ToGa 75]

17 hours ago, rocketn9 said:

As a lesbian woman if they want to really protect me from abuse and harassment they need to ban cis!het men from existence ,not trans women.Banning a minority group from even more rights ,won't somehow help any woman.if anything it opens the room for more harassment on GNC women (even if they are cis).

Acording to their logic they should also ban lesbian woman from woman spaces and gay man from man spaces, because in a changing room with the same sex they could look at others and find that atractive or worse could lay hands on another person.
That would lead to: woman spaces for cis hetero woman only! 

[rocketn9 442]

20 minutes ago, ToGa said:

Acording to their logic they should also ban lesbian woman from woman spaces and gay man from man spaces, because in a changing room with the same sex they could look at others and find that atractive or worse could lay hands on another person.
That would lead to: woman spaces for cis hetero woman only! 

Yeah , people like JKR  think that the only women that exists are cis-het and "feminine " .Transphobic  laws and "transvestigation" will eventually harm even cis women ( butch /stud lesbians for ex) in order to prove they are "real women" .So their whole rhetoric of protecting "real -women "besides bigotry is also very contradictive.

[Bronco 25,129]

I think the worst thing that will come from this ruling is the absolutely massive impact it will have on Women's support services in the voluntary sector - which is where the vast majority of the UK's support systems exist (rather than being part of the NHS' mental health services). 

Because now by legally enforcing that single-sex services can exclude Trans Women (they claim it's not a blanket ban, but we all know it will be) from Women only support organisations around sexual violence, domestic violence etc we'll see a fall in funding for those services. 

These services rely on 3 forms of funding - private donations, government funding & corporate funding. All 3 of which are on the decline in the charity sector in the UK already. There's a massive cost of giving crisis in the charity sector, a growing shortage of grant funders/corporate funders and local government and national government funding is being cut further for non-statutory services. 
So now people who would donate to a women's refuge etc may withdraw and change where there donation goes on the basis of whether or not they include trans women. 
And in the competitive application processes for government/grant/corporate funding - womens services which exclude trans women will now be competing with women's services which include trans women and trans exclusive services. 

There won't be new money created to support female victims of violence (we all know JK will **** off now), the old money will just be spread thinner. Which means that services will be further stretched, have less capacity and be less secure. 
This ruling is a massive blow to women's support services in the UK. 

[Horny Chicken 10,935]

I am more confused after I read this thread.  

[Raivo 201]

Well this is backwards news. I hope many trans woman can live in peace and access any spaces which are for woman only. I'm with you sisters.

[LadyxGaGa 3,220]

1 hour ago, A Fried Egg said:

I am more confused after I read this thread.  

SAME LIKE HOW IS THIS NOT A UNIVERSAL DISGRACE ALL ACROSS THE BOARD???

[Petie Estie 5,707]

ok and trans women still exist. congrats on doing nothing, terfs. 

[LadyxGaGa 3,220]

AN ATTACK ON TRANS WOMEN IS AN ATTACK ON ALL WOMEN