Best Of

I've got no idea if what the Home Secretary has proposed will work, but that sure as hell is a change of direction, and at least to my ears it sounded like some thought had gone into the proposals. It will be interesting to see how the public receives these plans.

It's going to need opposition votes to pass IMO but it will get through. The Tories can't be seen to oppose this and neutralising Reform on immigration helps them as much as it does Labour.

Realistically for this to work I think some kind of HRA reform will need to be enacted to dissapply the ECHR on matters of immigration and asylum and dare the judges to overrule Parliament.

It's interesting that Labour are willing to risk tearing themselves apart like this. Is it because they think it is the right thing to do or because they are terrified of Farage and his brownshirts? Maybe both.

I think they might have gone too far, but for the first time in a long, long time I heard a Labour Minister make sense. Far more so than the Rwanda scheme, "just leave the ECHR", smash the gangs, or one-in one-out, which have all made things sound too easy, and been more about tone than substance.

With so much real politics going on, in both UK and US (and myriad countries inside the EU), and we’re discussing trans women, again?

Some people have a demented obsession with punishing already marginalised members of society.

Its not about that, FFS. Its about preventing men, who have had no surgery, no hormone treatment, claiming to be a woman, changing in a single sex space and allegedly asking women in that space why that aren't getting changed in front of him.

You may think it punishing trans people, but its actually about protecting the rights of half the species.

Yes but what about the ones who have had the surgery and the hormone treatment? The world is not binary and never has been. That is why athletics has for decades tested hormone levels, not cervixes. This is partly why the whole area is a mess.

As an aside, A Boy Named Mary has just lost the 4.10 race at Newcastle. It always pays to follow Cyclefree's tips in Safer Gambling Week! Boy Named Sioux runs in the 4.40.

The area is a mess because of the bad faith trans actors. There is an interesting theory about the rise of trans and social contagion.

As I understand it no cases have been brought against men who have had surgery and are actively on hormone treatment. Its always when men maskerade as women that causes issues.

As a rule lots of people who will happily disrobe in front of members of their own sex, do not like to do so in front of the opposite sex. A few months ago at my son's swimming one of the dads met a woman that he clearly knew, and for some unknown reason she came into the men's changing room for a chat. So the other six dads very carefully dried bits off, or chatted, or did anything else but drop our swimming trunks to get our tackle out. (She eventually realised).

Why should women have a man with a penis in tatty boxer shorts in their changing rooms simply because he says he is trans?

There are also bad faith people on the other side too, @turbotubbs.

My view is that you should -as much as possible- treat people as they wish to be treated, or not demonise other groups for having different views to us. If a friend of mine wished to identify as 'they' or 'she', I would obviously accede to their wishes and would hope other people would do, irrespective of their personal beliefs, because that is common human courtesy.

All too often people on the gender critical side of the debate drop into outright rudeness. Sure, you may believe that only biological sex exists, but that doesn't give you the right to be a dick (so to speak). I don't believe in God, but I wouldn't think for a moment about ridiculing another person't belief system.

I would never suggest otherwise. The outer edges of the debate are massively toxic on both sides, amplified and fuelled by likes on social media. In my personal life I have met several trans people and what they call themselves etc is their own affair. But we have reached this point because of some bad actors and then the system penalising those who complained (Peggie vs NHS Fife, Darlington nurses vs their employers). In both cases those complaining were the problem, not the man in the single sex space. The Darlington is egregious. A fully intact man, allegedly either trying to impregnate his partner or at least conserve the possibility of using his sperm to do so, wandering round the womens changing room in boxer shorts with holes in, asking women why they weren’t undressing in front of him. And the employers wanted to ‘educate’ the nurses…

A bit like Trumpmand the BBC, toilets has derailed this a bit on here. While toilets can be an issue, most (all?) women’s toilets are cubicles. The real problem is changing rooms, women’s refuges etc.

Forgive the foray into toilet use which I know gets rather too much attention sometimes but what does 'implementing the law' look like at, say, John Lewis? They have three types, signed Men, Women, Disabled. There is no additional wording relating to transgender and no policing on the door of what people's birth sex (or disability) is as they enter whichever one they decide is right for them. What (if anything) do JL need to change as a consequence of the Supreme Court clarifying what 'sex' in the Equality Act means? Do we know?

John Lewis should hang a new sign – Stuff the Disabled; Anyone's Welcome. It is ironic that trans and terf activists are so ableist. In the old days you could unobtrusively tell men from women by whether they took a newspaper to read in the cubicle but it's all Smartphones now.

At a previous place of work a youngish lad took his phone into the lav and continued to read and scroll with one hand as he did his directional business with the other standing up at a urinal. He was definitely a bloke.

Forgive the foray into toilet use which I know gets rather too much attention sometimes but what does 'implementing the law' look like at, say, John Lewis? They have three types, signed Men, Women, Disabled. There is no additional wording relating to transgender and no policing on the door of what people's birth sex (or disability) is as they enter whichever one they decide is right for them. What (if anything) do JL need to change as a consequence of the Supreme Court clarifying what 'sex' in the Equality Act means? Do we know?

If you're XY, you're a guy

Even post-op?

Yes, biology is immutable. We should have understanding for those who tread that path and choose to chop off their meat and two veg but government policy should deal in biological fact. A specific carve out for those men who have undergone surgery to access some women's spaces could be made but ultimately in 95% of those cases people don't realise they are seeing a biological man because of hormone treatment, surgery and a wish by the individual to "pass" as a woman. In some scenarios such as healthcare or social care if a female patient makes a wish to be served by an actual woman then that should be respected and the sex change XY shouldn't be eligible to participate in the activity.

I don't often comment on this subject now that the argument has been won and sanity has prevailed over the perverted men in dresses invading women's spaces. This probably is the last frontier of that argument where it seems fair to make some exceptions for men who have undergone surgery and made the lifetime commitment to passing as a woman. However, there can be no backsliding and allowing those men who don't make that commitment into those exceptions.

I've got no idea if what the Home Secretary has proposed will work, but that sure as hell is a change of direction, and at least to my ears it sounded like some thought had gone into the proposals. It will be interesting to see how the public receives these plans.

It's going to need opposition votes to pass IMO but it will get through. The Tories can't be seen to oppose this and neutralising Reform on immigration helps them as much as it does Labour.

Realistically for this to work I think some kind of HRA reform will need to be enacted to dissapply the ECHR on matters of immigration and asylum and dare the judges to overrule Parliament.

It's interesting that Labour are willing to risk tearing themselves apart like this. Is it because they think it is the right thing to do or because they are terrified of Farage and his brownshirts? Maybe both.