Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
Also, why do Jewish people get more Jewish looking as they get older?
This, and “why are Italians charming?” - these are the vital issues of the day, NOT BLOODY TRANS FFS
Was I like this about the *unmentionable technology*? if so: I apologise, But at least that is intellectually interesting, and is going to transform humanity - so it is important. The whole trans debate is so infinitely decadent and bizarre, as it concerns about 74 people around the world. It is insane. Indeed, if the trans debate is of any historic interest at all, it is this: how did such a fringe and microscopic ideology - trans rights - somehow come to dominate the discourse of entire countries and cultures? Leading to the downfall of actual governments?
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
Ive loopked at the first and its an interesting and useful study. It is also only a single small study. It says itself that you need more research. I think you're overclaiming again talking as if that has settled everything.
Point of order. The minimum size of a study is dictated by the size of the effect and/or the test applied to the result.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
Sunak won't wait till January. He's repeatedly said the GE will be "in the second half of the year"; this will be repeatedly thrown back at him if he delays to 2025.
Personally, I'm a bit torn. The sooner we get rid of this lot, the better. On the other hand, if he delays until January I'd enjoy the spectacle of there being so few Tory MPs.
December looks more likely now, then he can Christmas in Santa Monica as usual.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
78.65% of statistics are made up on the spot.
They are tho. Where do they put the autistic and shy and neurodivergent Italians? The ones who are socially awkward? The misfits and nerds and socially clumsy types, who easily offend, are they all kept in a shuttered stadium in Ravella? indeed, even the autistic Italians have a kind of social elan
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
17s might be just about value but I really don't see a Jan election, pissing off media, public and activists alike.
There comes a point when prolonging the agony just feeds into the narrative and makes things worse still. I don't see polling day going any later than Dec 12.
(And I still think Nov 14 is most likely, with a mid-Oct date next)
A scenario I find plausible is using a January election date to disrupt the primarily activist-based campaigning of Labour and, particularly, the Lib Dems, while leaving a Tory campaign based on online advertising largely unhindered.
You might argue that the benefits of that would be outweighed by the public ridicule, but I think that Sunak is exactly the sort of person most likely to make such a miscalculation.
But activist- based campaiging is basically knocking on voters' doors, gathering data. And the later he leaves it, the more doors will have been knocked on.
I expect Sunak will wait until at least the Labour Conference, and just hope Labour shoot themselves in the feet there.
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
I asked if you personally see any problems with it. As you've declined to answer, can I take that as a no?
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
Italy works almost entirely on ‘who you know’. Dig deeper, and how the place really works will shock any American or Brit.
Ah, now see, that’s a good theory, and is interesting. UNLIKE TRANS
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
I asked if you personally see any problems with it. As you've declined to answer, can I take that as a no?
I don't see problems with it and I don't not see problems. I do know that it has to be properly tested by a statistical analysis, and I'm not a statistician. Simple as that.
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
78.65% of statistics are made up on the spot.
They are tho. Where do they put the autistic and shy and neurodivergent Italians? The ones who are socially awkward? The misfits and nerds and socially clumsy types, who easily offend, are they all kept in a shuttered stadium in Ravella? indeed, even the autistic Italians have a kind of social elan
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
LOL that Putin managed to field a single tank, a WWII-era T-34 pulled out of a museum, for the annual Victory Day parade in Red Square.
Traditionally they’ve fielded *hundreds* of tanks for this, so where did they all go Mr Putin?
Only a handful of planes for the flypast as well, red white and blue smoke not making up for the fact that they don’t even have enough spare planes to make them do a tight circuit and back to fly past again, as they always used to do.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
Italy works almost entirely on ‘who you know’. Dig deeper, and how the place really works will shock any American or Brit.
Ah, now see, that’s a good theory, and is interesting. UNLIKE TRANS
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
Remember also that, only just out of generational memory, Italy was ruled by others, for many long centuries. An occupied country, where people disrespected authority and got by through informal channels of their own. Which explains a lot about Italian attitudes towards authority, through to today, and also explains why charm, not always genuine, is important. And also, of course, the origins of its various brands of mafiosi.
English writer Tim Parks’s trajectory is interesting. His early books are great holiday reads, the story of how he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, moved to Italy, and set about making his life there. They observe Italian society and mores through British eyes, with wry humour, very astutely and from an affectionate perspective. The true stranger abroad.
Lately, he’s separated from his partner but remains in Italy, working in an Italian university and struggling as a stranger adrift in a foreign land. His latest, a novel - but clearly presented as such to disguise the very real-world story he is telling - is a far more cynical description of how Italy runs, revealing how students’ exam results depend very little upon their aptitude, and how pretty much everything depends upon connections rather than merit. Italian Life, it’s called. Recommended
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
Italy works almost entirely on ‘who you know’. Dig deeper, and how the place really works will shock any American or Brit.
Ah, now see, that’s a good theory, and is interesting. UNLIKE TRANS
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
Remember also that, only just out of generational memory, Italy was ruled by others, for many long centuries. An occupied country, where people disrespected authority and got by through informal channels of their own. Which explains a lot about Italian attitudes towards authority, through to today, and also explains why charm, not always genuine, is important. And also, of course, the origins of its various brands of mafiosi.
English writer Tim Parks’s trajectory is interesting. His early books are great holiday reads, the story of how he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, moved to Italy, and set about making his life there. They observe Italian society and mores through British eyes, with wry humour, very astutely and from an affectionate perspective. The true stranger abroad.
Lately, he’s separated from his partner but remains in Italy, working in an Italian university and struggling as a stranger adrift in a foreign land. His latest, a novel - but clearly presented as such to disguise the very real-world story he is telling - is a far more cynical description of how Italy runs, revealing how students’ exam results depend very little upon their aptitude, and how pretty much everything depends upon connections rather than merit. Italian Life, it’s called. Recommended
Properly interesting, Grazie
However I am not sure “charm” is ever “genuine”. That’s a category error. Charm is a profound social skill: the ability to make others feel at ease in your company, and want to talk to you more, or at least not feel averse. it is allied to humour but different
Is humour ever “genuine”? No, it’s neither genuine nor ungenuine,, it is more a capacity some people can do, and have. It’s what saves the British from being Swedes or Germans
But the Italians, overall, are still much more charming that anyone else, including the Brits
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
There's parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria which I would as soon visit as the Darien Gap.
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
I asked if you personally see any problems with it. As you've declined to answer, can I take that as a no?
I don't see problems with it and I don't not see problems. I do know that it has to be properly tested by a statistical analysis, and I'm not a statistician. Simple as that.
What precisely needs to be tested? Whether or not there is a relationship between age and athletic performace? Is this really something about which it is intelligent to plead ignorance?
Oh Lord .. this is approaching the twattery of Trans for Hamas.,
On topic, if Sunak waits to January, then I would place a bet on the next leader of HM Opposition being Sir Edward Davey.
William Hill has prices on who will be runner-up:- Con 1/5 LibDem 5/1 (was 12/1 so you have missed the price) Labour 12/1 RefUK 14/1 Greens 150/1 SNP not quoted, although it is just about possible if they sweep Scotland and Labour sweep England and Wales.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
Italy works almost entirely on ‘who you know’. Dig deeper, and how the place really works will shock any American or Brit.
Ah, now see, that’s a good theory, and is interesting. UNLIKE TRANS
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
Remember also that, only just out of generational memory, Italy was ruled by others, for many long centuries. An occupied country, where people disrespected authority and got by through informal channels of their own. Which explains a lot about Italian attitudes towards authority, through to today, and also explains why charm, not always genuine, is important. And also, of course, the origins of its various brands of mafiosi.
English writer Tim Parks’s trajectory is interesting. His early books are great holiday reads, the story of how he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, moved to Italy, and set about making his life there. They observe Italian society and mores through British eyes, with wry humour, very astutely and from an affectionate perspective. The true stranger abroad.
Lately, he’s separated from his partner but remains in Italy, working in an Italian university and struggling as a stranger adrift in a foreign land. His latest, a novel - but clearly presented as such to disguise the very real-world story he is telling - is a far more cynical description of how Italy runs, revealing how students’ exam results depend very little upon their aptitude, and how pretty much everything depends upon connections rather than merit. Italian Life, it’s called. Recommended
Properly interesting, Grazie
However I am not sure “charm” is ever “genuine”. That’s a category error. Charm is a profound social skill: the ability to make others feel at ease in your company, and want to talk to you more, or at least not feel averse. it is allied to humour but different
Is humour ever “genuine”? No, it’s neither genuine nor ungenuine,, it is more a capacity some people can do, and have. It’s what saves the British from being Swedes or Germans
But the Italians, overall, are still much more charming that anyone else, including the Brits
I was wandering through Maltby street market on my own a few Saturdays ago having just bought some steak and chips from a market stall, and the Italian owner of a wine shop and bar somehow got me to sit down at his terrace, order quite a pricey glass of red wine and eat my food there before I even knew what was happening. I remember thinking at the time that only an Italian could manage that: most other nationalities would either be too reticent to push themselves in front of a random punter, or too obviously needy and touty (“my friend my friend, take a seat”). It’s a real talent.
Please, please, please Rishi. Call an election today.
Then PB might just stop going on about trans issues, at least for a few weeks.
Preach it, brother*
If I am banned from mentioning REDACTED then perhaps this subject-ban might usefully be applied elsewhere. BLOODY TRANS, AGAIN
*or sister, or theyster
Close call. Your stuff on REDACTED or lots of folk on trans? Maybe PB should vote on which is worse.
REDACTED is about the only thing Leon writes about that is of both interest and import!
And I am banned from writing about it. Honestly. The stuff I could tell you but I can’t - it would make your hair curl. Speak to the authorities
You’re not allowed to keep spamming us about it precisely because so many of us have spoken to the authorities.
Then you’re an idiot. Because I was keeping you all up to speed, and all you had to do was scroll stuff that didn’t interest, and now you’re all less well informed, about the most important REDACTED in the world, but hey. Now you get to talk endlessly about Trans, is that an improvement?
However, I submit to the rules. It is up to @TSE and @rcs1000!
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
There's parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria which I would as soon visit as the Darien Gap.
There are several grands projets out there which idle billionaires could really throw themselves into and transform the world.
Constructing a highway and railway through the Darien gap is one of them. Not cheap, but well within the grasp of someone with a few tens of billions to spare.
So far we only really have Elon sending humans to Mars and Bill eliminating Malaria on the billionaire list.
The other thing someone should have a go at is building the African Dubai/Singapore. The two most promising options I think are Mombasa and the Gulf of Guinea coast around Ghana/Cote D’Ivoire.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
Italy works almost entirely on ‘who you know’. Dig deeper, and how the place really works will shock any American or Brit.
Ah, now see, that’s a good theory, and is interesting. UNLIKE TRANS
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
Remember also that, only just out of generational memory, Italy was ruled by others, for many long centuries. An occupied country, where people disrespected authority and got by through informal channels of their own. Which explains a lot about Italian attitudes towards authority, through to today, and also explains why charm, not always genuine, is important. And also, of course, the origins of its various brands of mafiosi.
English writer Tim Parks’s trajectory is interesting. His early books are great holiday reads, the story of how he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, moved to Italy, and set about making his life there. They observe Italian society and mores through British eyes, with wry humour, very astutely and from an affectionate perspective. The true stranger abroad.
Lately, he’s separated from his partner but remains in Italy, working in an Italian university and struggling as a stranger adrift in a foreign land. His latest, a novel - but clearly presented as such to disguise the very real-world story he is telling - is a far more cynical description of how Italy runs, revealing how students’ exam results depend very little upon their aptitude, and how pretty much everything depends upon connections rather than merit. Italian Life, it’s called. Recommended
Properly interesting, Grazie
However I am not sure “charm” is ever “genuine”. That’s a category error. Charm is a profound social skill: the ability to make others feel at ease in your company, and want to talk to you more, or at least not feel averse. it is allied to humour but different
Is humour ever “genuine”? No, it’s neither genuine nor ungenuine,, it is more a capacity some people can do, and have. It’s what saves the British from being Swedes or Germans
But the Italians, overall, are still much more charming that anyone else, including the Brits
I was wandering through Maltby street market on my own a few Saturdays ago having just bought some steak and chips from a market stall, and the Italian owner of a wine shop and bar somehow got me to sit down at his terrace, order quite a pricey glass of red wine and eat my food there before I even knew what was happening. I remember thinking at the time that only an Italian could manage that: most other nationalities would either be too reticent to push themselves in front of a random punter, or too obviously needy and touty (“my friend my friend, take a seat”). It’s a real talent.
Craig Brown brilliantly describes “Old Etonian” charm, in one of his essays
In his eyes, it is this, you can be walking down a road and you meet an Old Etonian coming the other other way, and he hails you with a smile, and you engage in pleasant conversation and then you are suddenly walking back the way you came, just to be in his company - until you realise, kinda too late
It’s not a trick or a steal, it is more you sacrifice some of your own comfort to continue an agreeable social exchange. And Italians often do it without any hope of gain, they are so used to doing it
I confess I am much more susceptible to Italian charm than Old Etonian charm, these days, after 14 years of Etonian Tory wankers
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
I asked if you personally see any problems with it. As you've declined to answer, can I take that as a no?
I don't see problems with it and I don't not see problems. I do know that it has to be properly tested by a statistical analysis, and I'm not a statistician. Simple as that.
What precisely needs to be tested? Whether or not there is a relationship between age and athletic performace? Is this really something about which it is intelligent to plead ignorance?
1 If you don't realise that just eyeballing data is not good enough, then there is n othing I can do for you.
2. And now youe moved on to a different whinge. That must be about your fourth or fifth shift of the goalposts (!) BTW. Ever considered whethercontrolling for age is useful, if one is actually examining the typical footie team as it exists today? Or the differences in age distribution might be interesting to inquire into? Not that I know or care, but there are different questions that might be asked and different questions that might emerge.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
Which Tory MP do you think Labour would most benefit from defecting? Important enough that it would put the shits up the Tories, but acceptable and centrist enough to reassure Labour members.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
That's at least a rational question, unlike pretending that the paper had a single author on the basis of a Twitter label in very small print despite the names of sven being put in much larger print right at the top.
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
I asked if you personally see any problems with it. As you've declined to answer, can I take that as a no?
I don't see problems with it and I don't not see problems. I do know that it has to be properly tested by a statistical analysis, and I'm not a statistician. Simple as that.
What precisely needs to be tested? Whether or not there is a relationship between age and athletic performace? Is this really something about which it is intelligent to plead ignorance?
1 If you don't realise that just eyeballing data is not good enough, then there is n othing I can do for you.
2. And now youe moved on to a different whinge. That must be about your fourth or fifth shift of the goalposts (!) BTW. Ever considered whethercontrolling for age is useful, if one is actually examining the typical footie team as it exists today? Or the differences in age distribution might be interesting to inquire into? Not that I know or care, but there are different questions that might be asked and different questions that might emerge.
I haven't shifted the goalposts one iota. The study is ideologically motivated, badly designed and executed, and compromised by undeclared conflicts of interest. Why you feel the need to defend its rigour is beyond me.
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
What would be your trigger point for going an election? I'm thinking something like three polls in a row with Tory+Reform 5 points ahead of Labour.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
There's parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria which I would as soon visit as the Darien Gap.
Calabria and Sicily can be horrific, I agree. I believe a Spectator writer engaged on exactly this
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
He's hanging on for a hung parliament!
This will also be the first time Rishi hopes he is Jeremy Corbyn.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories won comfortably, a big 38% NEV to 27% for Labour and 18% LD ie May had an even bigger lead over Labour than Starmer did over the Tories last week. ICM in early May had the Tories on 49% and Labour on 27%. Survation had a 17% Conservative lead.
Yet over the GE campaign Corbyn slashed the Tory lead and squeezed the LD local vote drastically to get a hung parliament
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
Part 1: if you are checking between the competitors in a sport (edit: without age bands) possibly not. If you want to look at the data more closely, then (edit: delete possibly) yes, and some studies use effects model to see how each factor affects the result. It wouldn't be wrong if you did, but...
Part 2: ...be careful you don't walk into Simpsons Paradox. Bear in mind that the predicted difference between men and women performance is based on muscle mass/density, and weight is a proxy for that. So if you correct for age and weight the difference between TW and CW may vanish or get worse, and - it would be funny if this happened - the difference between CM and CW may disappear or lessen. So be careful what you wish for... 😀
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
What would be your trigger point for going an election? I'm thinking something like three polls in a row with Tory+Reform 5 points ahead of Labour.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
There are probably around 30 Tory MPs closer in opinion to Starmer than Sunak, and perhaps 100 closer to Starmer than Braverman/Patel/Farage.
Of course few will defect, but it is a failure of our system that so few do, rather than surprising when one does.
It would take 15 defections for the government to lose its majority as they currently have a majority of 30 (down from 80). It is a big number , but it could happen if there is a sudden collapse of confidence.
Oh Lord .. this is approaching the twattery of Trans for Hamas.,
On topic, if Sunak waits to January, then I would place a bet on the next leader of HM Opposition being Sir Edward Davey.
William Hill has prices on who will be runner-up:- Con 1/5 LibDem 5/1 (was 12/1 so you have missed the price) Labour 12/1 RefUK 14/1 Greens 150/1 SNP not quoted, although it is just about possible if they sweep Scotland and Labour sweep England and Wales.
Unless Labour also do well in Scotland it gets tricky avoiding a hung Parliament of course.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
There are probably around 30 Tory MPs closer in opinion to Starmer than Sunak, and perhaps 100 closer to Starmer than Braverman/Patel/Farage.
Of course few will defect, but it is a failure of our system that so few do, rather than surprising when one does.
It would take 15 defections for the government to lose its majority as they currently have a majority of 30 (down from 80). It is a big number , but it could happen if there is a sudden collapse of confidence.
I think there would be a lot more if there were already 3 or 4 Reform MPs in parliament. Nobody’s going to defect to Lee Anderson.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
Which Tory MP do you think Labour would most benefit from defecting? Important enough that it would put the shits up the Tories, but acceptable and centrist enough to reassure Labour members.
How about former candidate for the leadership, (checks notes) Rehman Chishti.
Please, please, please Rishi. Call an election today.
Then PB might just stop going on about trans issues, at least for a few weeks.
Preach it, brother*
If I am banned from mentioning REDACTED then perhaps this subject-ban might usefully be applied elsewhere. BLOODY TRANS, AGAIN
*or sister, or theyster
Close call. Your stuff on REDACTED or lots of folk on trans? Maybe PB should vote on which is worse.
REDACTED is about the only thing Leon writes about that is of both interest and import!
And I am banned from writing about it. Honestly. The stuff I could tell you but I can’t - it would make your hair curl. Speak to the authorities
You’re not allowed to keep spamming us about it precisely because so many of us have spoken to the authorities.
Then you’re an idiot. Because I was keeping you all up to speed, and all you had to do was scroll stuff that didn’t interest, and now you’re all less well informed, about the most important REDACTED in the world, but hey. Now you get to talk endlessly about Trans, is that an improvement?
However, I submit to the rules. It is up to @TSE and @rcs1000!
A Nottingham academic discusses a research paper (see, it's just like pb on trans today) claiming that generative REDACTED will need implausibly large amounts of data (or a new paradigm).
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
When will you young losers realise we adult intelligent people don't give a toss about your made up names, genders , trans crap and get a life. Stop whining and whinging.
If the defections pick up then Sunak can wave bye bye to a January election... then it might be forced on him.... I am not at all sure he can limp on for that long.
Forced on him how and by whom? With as many defections as you like, there will not be the numbers for a VONC in the Commons. Most Conservative backbenchers are in no rush to collect their P45s. That leaves the men in grey suits but I'm going out on a limb to suggest they do not want a Labour government either.
You lose your majority in parliament and it is game over.
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
There are probably around 30 Tory MPs closer in opinion to Starmer than Sunak, and perhaps 100 closer to Starmer than Braverman/Patel/Farage.
Of course few will defect, but it is a failure of our system that so few do, rather than surprising when one does.
It would take 15 defections for the government to lose its majority as they currently have a majority of 30 (down from 80). It is a big number , but it could happen if there is a sudden collapse of confidence.
As far as I am aware the majority is 45 at present
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
Part 1: if you are checking between the competitors in a sport (edit: without age bands) possibly not. If you want to look at the data more closely, then (edit: delete possibly) yes, and some studies use effects model to see how each factor affects the result. It wouldn't be wrong if you did, but...
Part 2: ...be careful you don't walk into Simpsons Paradox. Bear in mind that the predicted difference between men and women performance is based on muscle mass/density, and weight is a proxy for that. So if you correct for age and weight the difference between TW and CW may vanish or get worse, and - it would be funny if this happened - the difference between CM and CW may disappear or lessen. So be careful what you wish for... 😀
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
It is interesting how much interest there is in trans women (note, it's never trans men) from the 50+ gammon demographic. Very Alan Partridge.
As I've pointed out here previously, far from being a danger to women, the average trans woman is more likely to be a young, vulnerable individual forced to engage in sex work (up to 26% of trans women according to a 2010 study) as a result of being marginalised and discriminated against the very same gammony men who exploit them for sexual services. Look at the number of trans women who have been victims of sexual assault. It's horrific. A trans woman is 4 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as a cis woman.
Yet if you listened to the TERFS on here you'd think it's all cocks in frocks. As if anyone would undergo workplace discrimination, online abuse, abuse on the street, the constant threat of being physically or sexually assaulted, years of hormone therapy, invasive medical procedures, and major corrective surgery, just to get to use the women's loos or win a gold medal at the women's institute sack race.
But seriously.
It is a tedious debate, and I'd be more than happy to stop banging on about it once the bigots shut up about it.
Things have been developing quickly over the past 2-3 weeks in Georgia, but in the last couple of days, they have progressed at an unimaginable speed. The ruling Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics targeting civil society, escalating to an extreme level. .. https://twitter.com/EtoBuziashvili/status/1788278445224464886
Watching this race, it came to me that you could remake every Competitive Dad sketch from The Fast Show with a trans ‘woman’ as the Dad, and an actual woman as the kids, and it would work perfectly
🚨BREAKING🚨
A trans-identified male dominated the Girls Varsity 400m at the Portland Interscholastic League Championship Semi-Finals yesterday.
Aayden Gallagher will now compete in the finals as a “girl.”
And? The record for under 18 400m for girls is like 50 seconds; for men it's closer to 45 seconds. That this girl runs 400 m in 56-57 seconds makes her, like, a good amateur?
I assume that OR, like many places that allow trans athletes to compete, have rules around when students can participate (from what I can find students have to have been transitioning consistently and cannot participate in the same year they started their transition). I have no idea how old this girl is - but this is a tenth grade competition, so she is likely 15-16. If she's on HRT muscle mass and strength typically is one of the first things to fall in line with new hormones (3-6months).
He’s not on HRT, so it’s literally a boy competing in the girls race
I couldn't find any information on if she was on HRT or not (that's why I said if) - can you give me a citation for that assertion?
His calves.
Can you see how this could be seen as just straight up misogyny and why people like me say that this policing of women's bodies is bad for cis and trans women? Are you saying any woman who has calf definition similar to this athlete is actually a man? You can "just tell" who is a trans or cis woman by looking at them?
This isn't policing women's bodies. It's straight up fairness. You cannot have a fair competition between men and women in sports that involve the deployment of muscle mass. There is a lot of generalisation but splitting sports between the sexes, while by no-means perfect, is the best way we have to create something of a level playing field (pun intended).
I'm someone who competed at a reasonably high level in sprint events when I was a teenager, trained with boys and girls my own age, and my lived experience (which is all that counts these days apparently) is that it would have been unfair for us to compete with one another in events that mattered.
We do not know if this young athlete is on HRT and, if so, for how long she has been. For all I know she could have never had a testosterone based puberty - she may have been on puberty blockers and got straight onto HRT. To say that you can tell this girl is "really a boy" just by looking at her is completely misogynist - in the same way that those who call Michelle Obama "secretly a man" is. Many cis women who do not conform to feminine beauty standards will be insulted by calling them men; many cis women have been harassed, in toilets and other public spaces, because they were considered too manish and people thought they were trans. It's all the same thing - policing women's bodies based on expectations of femininity.
We don't need to go into observed physical attributes. The original report notes that s/he is a biological male. The what-iffery is beside the point. Men should not be in women's races, and boys - post about 11 - should not be in girls' ones. Or, at least, should not be allowed to compete to win or to set records.
Transphobes call women who have been on HRT most of their life and have had gender affirming surgeries "biological males" - it doesn't mean anything. Again - we have no idea if this athlete even had a testosterone based puberty. She may have been on HRT for years, and it is known that muscle mass is one of the first things to fall within a typical cis women's range when trans women start HRT (as noted, 3 - 6 months). Calling her a "biological male" in reporting (reporting from right wing / "independent" news orgs) is, again, just transphobia
148grss, you have repeatedly made this point that maybe she’s been on HRT for years and not experienced a testosterone-based puberty. So, are you saying that these things matter? If she had only started HRT the day before, would it then be unfair for her to compete against ciswomen?
Are you (implicitly) proposing that transwomen should only be able to compete against ciswomen under certain circumstances relating to their transition and hormone use?
what is this ciswoman mince, can you not just say it as it is "woman". rather than using the bollox ( pun not intended ) PC crap.
A cis woman is a woman who isn't a trans woman; it's pretty simple. Cis and trans are Latin prefixes used to denote closeness to and farness away from (the usage for cisalpine Gaul in the Roman period to mean those Gauls on the Roman side of the Alpines, and transalpine Gaul for those Gauls on the far side of the Alpines from Rome, for example).
When you put it like that, isn’t the term transwoman transphobic because it implies distance from womanhood?
Language is weird - but the trans in this context is farness from assigned gender at birth.
Do you think that the practice of assigning gender at birth should be abandoned?
Surely it's outrageous for a parent to make assumptions about a child's religion, sexual orientation or gender until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves?
I think there is a difference between making an assumption and then forcing their kids. Most people are cis, most people are straight, etc. But if your kid comes out and you basically say "no" - that's a problem. Even if that child is "going through a phase" or "experimenting" - what's the issue with saying "sure, okay, keep talking to me and know I'm here for advice" rather than saying "no your not, I know you, that's not possible, no child of mine, etc!"
Firstly, it's a joke. Possibly a very poor one, but obviously a joke.
Secondly, everyone should be treated (and called) what they wish to be called. If you want me to call you "Janice" and "she/her", then I will obviously comply, because to do otherwise would be incredibly rude and disrespectful. This isn't complicated. I don't care what your views on "trans" are, you treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself.
Thirdly, it is - or should be - a free world. You want to wear a dress, or whatever, knock yourself out. And if a child wants to experiment, good for them. As a parent I would obviously be 100% supportive if my child said "I don't know if I'm really an [x]". Although, I always ask "what characteristic of [x] is it that makes you feel that way?"
Fourthly, this has nothing to do with changing rooms. Safe spaces for women exist for a reason: it's because people with penises will lie in order to access women's only spaces. The simple solution - which they've implemented brilliantly in the changing rooms in the Olympic Pool in Stratford - is private changing areas. We should have more of those, albeit it's a long road to get there.
Fifthly, sports is separated into men's and women's because there are certain physical advantages that come with XX rather than XY. It's not separated according to how you feel, but by the genetic advantages that accrue to a certain biological sex. Change the names if you like: it's the XX Tennis Champion, and the XY Tennis Champion, but it's nothing to do with how you feel or identify, and all about whether you have genetic physical advantages.
Points 1-3 I will take.
Point 4 - trans women should be barred from refuges because it may be abused by cis men? Why? There is no evidence that trans women are more of a threat than cis women to other women, and they have more in common with cis women in terms of being victims of sexual abuse and being perpetrators of sexual assault. If an individual is a concern entering a refuge, that is fair and should be managed. A women's refuge wouldn't still allow in a same sex partner of an abused woman - so being a woman isn't the only qualification to get in to a woman's refuge.
Point 5 - The advantages are not related to chromosomal type, they are associated with the effect of hormones on the body, which you can change. Taking cross sex hormones make trans peoples' bodies more in line with the typical cis body associated with those hormones. I have already detailed some of the changes that happen and how long people have to be on hormones to experience those changes, such as muscle mass in trans women being more in line with cis women within 3-6 months of taking HRT. Also - cis women are being policed based on their testosterone levels and other things - not their chromosomal type. So women are policed in sports beyond sex - it is based on a "standard" woman that, itself, is restrictive to the right "kind" of woman.
OK.
Point 4 is where we get to a very difficult point.
I completely agree that many trans women are abused. I completely agree they should be protected.
But how do you prevent an abuser from claiming to be a trans woman to gain access to a refuge? It's the same issue with prisons: non-trans abusers will - and have - used self ID to abuse women. This isn't about trans women being pervy. They are not. It is about sexual predators lying. How do you solve this issue?
Point 5, you are factually wrong. Even if you take hormones, you will still have a womb, and your body will still be using energy to keep the womb warm at the expense of the extremeties. Men, by contrast, don't have this. That's because women's bodies are designed to keep babies alive at the expense of a finger lost to frostbite.
FPT:
How do women's refuges currently prevent potentially abusive women from entering a space? They will do a safeguarding check. Trans women have been going to women's refuges for all my life, using women's toilets and changing rooms, etc etc. The issues are rare - there is no pattern of behaviour that suggest trans women are a unique threat.
I'm gonna get out my citations again: recent studies show that trans women may be at biological disadvantages to cis women:
And that most advantages that may exist early in transition are just that, seen early in transition, and declines the longer that trans women are on HRT:
This is the author of the paper that preposterously claims that trans women may have a biological disadvantage against cis women. In any other context you would be very suspicious about bias and vested interests.
Glad to see that this is totally based on an understanding of articles and journals and not just bigotry.
Why are you so deferential to anything published in a journal (provided that it confirms your preconceived view)? What's your view on the replication crisis in academia?
I'm deferential to journals and peer review because that alternative is believe in your gut? Like, it's an imperfect method - but it's the best we've got. And it's certainly better than going "that person looks are somehow more important than their research (which was conducted with lots of other researchers, reviewed and deemed suitable for publication)".
My thought on replication crisis is to do more research - keep trying the same experiments, scenarios, etc and collate bigger data sets. Try to broaden the people represented in research, by age range, by class, by race, by gender, etc etc. We make models of understanding based on the research we have, we obviously have uncertainty, but at the end of the day it's the best system we have of understanding how things work.
The alternative isn't to believe your gut but to use your brain.
If research funded by a tobacco company said that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer, you would be the first to smell a rat and come up with elaborate theoretical explanations for why the research should be dismissed out of hand.
You've just, today, effectively claimed, knowingly or otherwise, that a single person has committed serious scientific fraud.
Have another look at your post at 4.38 pm and my reply to it.
The principal contributor and author of the write-up is the person in the photo.
I haven't alleged fraud, but it's a fact that the only reason the paper exists is because the author(s) wanted to further an ideological position regarding the participation of trans women in female sports.
You said 'This is the author' not 'principal contributor and author' when you referred to a paper with SEVEN authors. If you are going around claiming that academic work is dodgy and to be ignored, then you should at least be clear what you are talking about.
The text itself is signed by a single author.
All authors are equal and all are in the header. This bit might have escaped you:
"Contributors BH, FMG and YPP designed the study. Material preparation, reporting and critical revision of the work were performed by BH, PGB, FMG and YPP. Data collection was performed by CC-C, AB, SM-M and BH. BH wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors critically revised subsequent versions until all authors could approve the final manuscript. YPP is the guarantor."
Then they can all take responsibilty for a badly designed and executed study.
The transwomen used in the samply are on average older and fatter than the cis women.
Doesn't change the fact that you completely misread the paper and made unjustifiable accusations as a result.
I didn't misread the paper. I just omitted the qualifier of 'principal' author. The person in question wrote the draft as you've clarified yourself.
Someone has to. Doesn't mean much, especially with experimental design, data gathering and analysis beforehand.
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
If you were designing a study to compare the athletic performance of different groups of people, would you try to control for age?
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years) 12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years) 23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years) 21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
Part 1: if you are checking between the competitors in a sport (edit: without age bands) possibly not. If you want to look at the data more closely, then (edit: delete possibly) yes, and some studies use effects model to see how each factor affects the result. It wouldn't be wrong if you did, but...
Part 2: ...be careful you don't walk into Simpsons Paradox. Bear in mind that the predicted difference between men and women performance is based on muscle mass/density, and weight is a proxy for that. So if you correct for age and weight the difference between TW and CW may vanish or get worse, and - it would be funny if this happened - the difference between CM and CW may disappear or lessen. So be careful what you wish for... 😀
Part 4: I haven't checked any of this and it may be bollocks. No warranty is given or implied. DYOR
Understanding Simpson's paradox is absolutely essential for any statistical understanding.
In this case it's helpful for understanding why a particular sample might show an advantage for cis female athletes even though the overall trend is the reverse.
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
Firstly, I'm under 50. Secondly, *you* and your lot, started this culture war by putting male rapists into women prisons, and insisting that anyone who objected was a Nazi.
An example is a set of three completely fair cubical dice, with each face having a positive integer written on it, and for which on average A will beat B, B will beat C, and C will beat A.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
There's parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria which I would as soon visit as the Darien Gap.
Calabria and Sicily can be horrific, I agree. I believe a Spectator writer engaged on exactly this
Glaswegians are often incredibly funny - more than the human average I’d say, do I want to live in Glasgow, or even visit much? Er, no
Glasgow seems to be uniquely placed to elicit ennui and dissatisfaction in the visitor, a feeling of being "sick and tired of everything" as I recall hearing from someone who performed there for a few nights in the 1970s.
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
It is interesting how much interest there is in trans women (note, it's never trans men) from the 50+ gammon demographic. Very Alan Partridge.
As I've pointed out here previously, far from being a danger to women, the average trans woman is more likely to be a young, vulnerable individual forced to engage in sex work (up to 26% of trans women according to a 2010 study) as a result of being marginalised and discriminated against the very same gammony men who exploit them for sexual services. Look at the number of trans women who have been victims of sexual assault. It's horrific. A trans woman is 4 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as a cis woman.
Yet if you listened to the TERFS on here you'd think it's all cocks in frocks. As if anyone would undergo workplace discrimination, online abuse, abuse on the street, the constant threat of being physically or sexually assaulted, years of hormone therapy, invasive medical procedures, and major corrective surgery, just to get to use the women's loos or win a gold medal at the women's institute sack race.
But seriously.
It is a tedious debate, and I'd be more than happy to stop banging on about it once the bigots shut up about it.
I would rather prize my eyeballs out with a rusty nail than engage with the substance of the debate, but you must realize that your final paragraph boils down to "I will be happy to abandon this subject as soon as everyone concedes that I am right about everything." Generous of you
The prime minister met today with university vice-chancellors and Jewish groups to discuss what to do about student protests. Mostly taking the form of "encampments" - occupations of outside areas - these protests are critical of Israel's assault on Gaza and the British government's support for Israel. Apparently they are a really big problem that required the prime minister's time and couldn't have been handled by James Cleverly or Gillian Keegan.
The path to a Tory election victory is crystal clear. A July election is likely.
Apparently university leaders should take "personal responsibility". In other words they've been told to follow the line and not dare to step outside of it if they know what's good for them - personally.
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
It is interesting how much interest there is in trans women (note, it's never trans men) from the 50+ gammon demographic. Very Alan Partridge.
As I've pointed out here previously, far from being a danger to women, the average trans woman is more likely to be a young, vulnerable individual forced to engage in sex work (up to 26% of trans women according to a 2010 study) as a result of being marginalised and discriminated against the very same gammony men who exploit them for sexual services. Look at the number of trans women who have been victims of sexual assault. It's horrific. A trans woman is 4 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as a cis woman.
Yet if you listened to the TERFS on here you'd think it's all cocks in frocks. As if anyone would undergo workplace discrimination, online abuse, abuse on the street, the constant threat of being physically or sexually assaulted, years of hormone therapy, invasive medical procedures, and major corrective surgery, just to get to use the women's loos or win a gold medal at the women's institute sack race.
But seriously.
It is a tedious debate, and I'd be more than happy to stop banging on about it once the bigots shut up about it.
I would rather prize my eyeballs out with a rusty nail than engage with the substance of the debate, but you must realize that your final paragraph boils down to "I will be happy to abandon this subject as soon as everyone concedes that I am right about everything." Generous of you
Actually, what it means is I would be more than happy with a sitewide ban on the subject, as there is on AI related matters, see Leon's point downthread.
It's tedious and the views are entrenched, and it adds nothing to the site. It makes it a deeply unpleasant place to be sometimes, and unlike say, Brexit, which is a political debate where both sides of the argument are earnest, IMHO some of the things said about trans people are bigoted and odious and would not be allowed about, say, gay people, or any other minority, such as an ethnic minority.
I would be happier if such matters weren't aired on PB, but as long as the bigots keep on bringing up their bigotry, I will keep rebutting their points. But I honestly think a sitewide moratorium on the issue is preferable to the current tedious entrenched debate.
It is a definite thing, and no other country has anything like it
There's a lot of African countries where charisma is off the charts.
Definitely a high social capability, I agree. The easeful and ready smile, the evidence that they want YOU to be happy and that this makes THEM happy. And all are conjoined, But still nowhere near Italy
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
There's parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria which I would as soon visit as the Darien Gap.
Calabria and Sicily can be horrific, I agree. I believe a Spectator writer engaged on exactly this
Glaswegians are often incredibly funny - more than the human average I’d say, do I want to live in Glasgow, or even visit much? Er, no
Glasgow seems to be uniquely placed to elicit ennui and dissatisfaction in the visitor, a feeling of being "sick and tired of everything" as I recall hearing from someone who performed there for a few nights in the 1970s.
17s might be just about value but I really don't see a Jan election, pissing off media, public and activists alike.
There comes a point when prolonging the agony just feeds into the narrative and makes things worse still. I don't see polling day going any later than Dec 12.
(And I still think Nov 14 is most likely, with a mid-Oct date next)
I agree with you but say come early October when Sunak has to call a November election and the Tories are circa 20-25 points behind in the polls you think he might delay in the hope something does come up?
It's the price of missing the reltively painless option of May.
As many on here suggested, it was only ever likely to get worse after that, and that is what we seeing now.
Pops on and, yep, they’re still droning on about trans issues. Might as well rename this site.
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
It is interesting how much interest there is in trans women (note, it's never trans men) from the 50+ gammon demographic. Very Alan Partridge.
As I've pointed out here previously, far from being a danger to women, the average trans woman is more likely to be a young, vulnerable individual forced to engage in sex work (up to 26% of trans women according to a 2010 study) as a result of being marginalised and discriminated against the very same gammony men who exploit them for sexual services. Look at the number of trans women who have been victims of sexual assault. It's horrific. A trans woman is 4 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as a cis woman.
Yet if you listened to the TERFS on here you'd think it's all cocks in frocks. As if anyone would undergo workplace discrimination, online abuse, abuse on the street, the constant threat of being physically or sexually assaulted, years of hormone therapy, invasive medical procedures, and major corrective surgery, just to get to use the women's loos or win a gold medal at the women's institute sack race.
But seriously.
It is a tedious debate, and I'd be more than happy to stop banging on about it once the bigots shut up about it.
I would rather prize my eyeballs out with a rusty nail than engage with the substance of the debate, but you must realize that your final paragraph boils down to "I will be happy to abandon this subject as soon as everyone concedes that I am right about everything." Generous of you
Actually, what it means is I would be more than happy with a sitewide ban on the subject, as there is on AI related matters, see Leon's point downthread.
It's tedious and the views are entrenched, and it adds nothing to the site. It makes it a deeply unpleasant place to be sometimes, and unlike say, Brexit, which is a political debate where both sides of the argument are earnest, IMHO some of the things said about trans people are bigoted and odious and would not be allowed about, say, gay people, or any other minority, such as an ethnic minority.
I would be happier if such matters weren't aired on PB, but as long as the bigots keep on bringing up their bigotry, I will keep rebutting their points. But I honestly think a sitewide moratorium on the issue is preferable to the current tedious entrenched debate.
The prime minister met today with university vice-chancellors and Jewish groups to discuss what to do about student protests. Mostly taking the form of "encampments" - occupations of outside areas - these protests are critical of Israel's assault on Gaza and the British government's support for Israel. Apparently they are a really big problem that required the prime minister's time and couldn't have been handled by James Cleverly or Gillian Keegan.
The path to a Tory election victory is crystal clear. A July election is likely.
Apparently university leaders should take "personal responsibility". In other words they've been told to follow the line and not dare to step outside of it if they know what's good for them - personally.
What the students should do now is demand to have their own meeting with Sunak as a matter of urgency - live-streamed to all the encampments so they can decide direct-democratically on a response.
Set up a table in a big tent, put chairs around it, and keep one chair with Sunak's name-sign in front of it.
C'mon Sunak, if you're hard enough. Want to say something to us? Come and say it, because we want to say something to you too.
Sometimes I wonder whether anyone under 50 has even heard of Saul Alinsky, let alone read him.
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
He wont wait until Jan. It's surely obvious that he'll use the party conference as a campaign launchpad. Gives him time to prepare and control the agenda. I imagine there will already be a team at work on this behind the scenes.
An example is a set of three completely fair cubical dice, with each face having a positive integer written on it, and for which on average A will beat B, B will beat C, and C will beat A.
Sunak will try and stay in power as long as possible, so unless the polls change an autumn or winter election looks likely. Having said that Yougov go have Labour and Reform higher than most other pollsters at Tory expense
He wont wait until Jan. It's surely obvious that he'll use the party conference as a campaign launchpad. Gives him time to prepare and control the agenda. I imagine there will already be a team at work on this behind the scenes.
I really hope they don’t go until after conference. I’m supposed to be doing a panel there and I want to see the freak show for myself, ideally with Patel-Farage bopping and packed queues to watch Truss speak.
I don't understand what the Tories have done to farming. It was practically a block vote, and the CAP was agreeably bad. All they had to do was engage with farmers and replace CAP with something better.
Instead? Replaced with practically nothing. Farmers ignored, sneered at, patronised. Tory MPs like David Duguid print leaflets practically lying about how great it is for famers and how they all support him.
And here we are. Rural England swinging as sharply away from the Tories as urban areas. Absolutely stupid.
Oh Lord .. this is approaching the twattery of Trans for Hamas.,
On topic, if Sunak waits to January, then I would place a bet on the next leader of HM Opposition being Sir Edward Davey.
William Hill has prices on who will be runner-up:- Con 1/5 LibDem 5/1 (was 12/1 so you have missed the price) Labour 12/1 RefUK 14/1 Greens 150/1 SNP not quoted, although it is just about possible if they sweep Scotland and Labour sweep England and Wales.
Ta .. shame I missed the best punt, I'll think about it a check some prices in a week or two.
Oh Lord .. this is approaching the twattery of Trans for Hamas.,
On topic, if Sunak waits to January, then I would place a bet on the next leader of HM Opposition being Sir Edward Davey.
William Hill has prices on who will be runner-up:- Con 1/5 LibDem 5/1 (was 12/1 so you have missed the price) Labour 12/1 RefUK 14/1 Greens 150/1 SNP not quoted, although it is just about possible if they sweep Scotland and Labour sweep England and Wales.
Unless Labour also do well in Scotland it gets tricky avoiding a hung Parliament of course.
If you put the YouGov figures into Electoral Calculus you come out with the Tories as fourth largest party.
I don't think this will happen but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. A 2025 GE would of course make it more likely,.
Please, please, please Rishi. Call an election today.
Then PB might just stop going on about trans issues, at least for a few weeks.
Preach it, brother*
If I am banned from mentioning REDACTED then perhaps this subject-ban might usefully be applied elsewhere. BLOODY TRANS, AGAIN
*or sister, or theyster
Close call. Your stuff on REDACTED or lots of folk on trans? Maybe PB should vote on which is worse.
REDACTED is about the only thing Leon writes about that is of both interest and import!
And I am banned from writing about it. Honestly. The stuff I could tell you but I can’t - it would make your hair curl. Speak to the authorities
You’re not allowed to keep spamming us about it precisely because so many of us have spoken to the authorities.
Then you’re an idiot. Because I was keeping you all up to speed, and all you had to do was scroll stuff that didn’t interest, and now you’re all less well informed, about the most important REDACTED in the world, but hey. Now you get to talk endlessly about Trans, is that an improvement?
However, I submit to the rules. It is up to @TSE and @rcs1000!
A Nottingham academic discusses a research paper (see, it's just like pb on trans today) claiming that generative REDACTED will need implausibly large amounts of data (or a new paradigm).
That was quite a bad paper. But has REDACTED been banned now? I feel like that's a little like banning discussions of global warming or China's influence.
17s might be just about value but I really don't see a Jan election, pissing off media, public and activists alike.
There comes a point when prolonging the agony just feeds into the narrative and makes things worse still. I don't see polling day going any later than Dec 12.
(And I still think Nov 14 is most likely, with a mid-Oct date next)
I agree with you but say come early October when Sunak has to call a November election and the Tories are circa 20-25 points behind in the polls you think he might delay in the hope something does come up?
It's the price of missing the reltively painless option of May.
As many on here suggested, it was only ever likely to get worse after that, and that is what we seeing now.
My previous view of Sunak was that he would probably have made a reasonable PM in 'good' times. Instead, he inherited a party that had been in power too long, had run out of ideas, and preferred attacking itself rather than the opposition.
I'm part way through changing that view. Everything after the 'instead...' about his party remains valid. But I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that he would not have made a reasonable PM even if he had had a unified, fresh party. Worse, I don't even think he's trying. It's like he's phoning it in.
Please, please, please Rishi. Call an election today.
Then PB might just stop going on about trans issues, at least for a few weeks.
Preach it, brother*
If I am banned from mentioning REDACTED then perhaps this subject-ban might usefully be applied elsewhere. BLOODY TRANS, AGAIN
*or sister, or theyster
Close call. Your stuff on REDACTED or lots of folk on trans? Maybe PB should vote on which is worse.
REDACTED is about the only thing Leon writes about that is of both interest and import!
And I am banned from writing about it. Honestly. The stuff I could tell you but I can’t - it would make your hair curl. Speak to the authorities
I have not complained to anyone, but as someone who puts other people's money into the space, I tend to think that most of what you write on the subject is pretty abject bollocks.
Comments
Then PB might just stop going on about trans issues, at least for a few weeks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ooX0ANBeKM
Spoiler: he roasts marshmallows (like they do in America!) and plays cricket; he kisses Larry and hangs up on Harry.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1788247668017222052
And you were in such a rush to hunt down a single person to blame you managed to confuse a social media designation with a sole author designation, FFS.
This, and “why are Italians charming?” - these are the vital issues of the day, NOT BLOODY TRANS FFS
Was I like this about the *unmentionable technology*? if so: I apologise, But at least that is intellectually interesting, and is going to transform humanity - so it is important. The whole trans debate is so infinitely decadent and bizarre, as it concerns about 74 people around the world. It is insane. Indeed, if the trans debate is of any historic interest at all, it is this: how did such a fringe and microscopic ideology - trans rights - somehow come to dominate the discourse of entire countries and cultures? Leading to the downfall of actual governments?
No other nation on earth comes close to this
Do you see any problems with this?
19 cisgender men (CM) (mean±SD, age: 37±9 years)
12 transgender men (TM) (age: 34±7 years)
23 transgender women (TW) (age: 34±10 years)
21 cisgender women (CW) (age: 30±9 years)
And the later he leaves it, the more doors will have been knocked on.
I expect Sunak will wait until at least the Labour Conference, and just hope Labour shoot themselves in the feet there.
If I am banned from mentioning REDACTED then perhaps this subject-ban might usefully be applied elsewhere. BLOODY TRANS, AGAIN
*or sister, or theyster
The most downloaded track in Italy, the year it was released:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRMNR7LwXGU
Or with the English translation but without the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Q8Lz3bdOc
I'll leave that to the biomedics and statisticians on PB.
Yes, you might be right. In Italy you succeed by knowing the right people, and by charming them in some way - even the gangster about to kill you wll probably make you smile and feel at ease and offer you a cannolo before slotting you, cf the Sopranos passim
Nice!
However it can’t just be that. Otherwise other countries which are equally violent and gangster ridden (plenty are worse) would be equally charming, and they are not. Definitely not. no country comes close to Italy in terms of Charm Per Capita, they are in a league of their own. I wonder if it is also the historicity of their culture, the continuity, making human relations forever important, and also maybe the benign climate, one of the nicest in the world, that must also help
Tho the French on the Riviera live in an equally lovely climate and they are grumpy and miserable old fucks
When will you old gammons realise that none of us younger* folk care about your petty culture wars?
Well, you will have a long, long, time in the political wilderness to consider your answer. If you stay alive that long.
*Anyone under 50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y4h32H0iVE
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/09/john-swinney-scraps-scottish-minister-for-independence-focus-economy#:~:text=John Swinney has axed the,concerns before the general election.
Even when Italians are feeling awkward they do it in a way which dilutes it, they share it with you but not to burden you, more to say “oh isn’t life absurd, here I am looking like a twat, anyway let’s have a grappa later”. It’s faintly miraculous
By contrast a Frenchman might go out of his way to make sure you feel slightly inferior for putting him in a vaguely awkward position: it is YOUR fault
An Englishman will laugh nervously and vaguely wander away
A German will stand there mute and make it all worse
A Russian will be angry and possibly drink
A Jappo will commit suicide
There. That’s my contribution to the evening discourse. Using the word “Jappo”
On topic, if Sunak waits to January, then I would place a bet on the next leader of HM Opposition being Sir Edward Davey.
Traditionally they’ve fielded *hundreds* of tanks for this, so where did they all go Mr Putin?
Only a handful of planes for the flypast as well, red white and blue smoke not making up for the fact that they don’t even have enough spare planes to make them do a tight circuit and back to fly past again, as they always used to do.
English writer Tim Parks’s trajectory is interesting. His early books are great holiday reads, the story of how he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, moved to Italy, and set about making his life there. They observe Italian society and mores through British eyes, with wry humour, very astutely and from an affectionate perspective. The true stranger abroad.
Lately, he’s separated from his partner but remains in Italy, working in an Italian university and struggling as a stranger adrift in a foreign land. His latest, a novel - but clearly presented as such to disguise the very real-world story he is telling - is a far more cynical description of how Italy runs, revealing how students’ exam results depend very little upon their aptitude, and how pretty much everything depends upon connections rather than merit. Italian Life, it’s called. Recommended
Properly interesting, Grazie
However I am not sure “charm” is ever “genuine”. That’s a category error. Charm is a profound social skill: the ability to make others feel at ease in your company, and want to talk to you more, or at least not feel averse. it is allied to humour but different
Is humour ever “genuine”? No, it’s neither genuine nor ungenuine,, it is more a capacity some people can do, and have. It’s what saves the British from being Swedes or Germans
But the Italians, overall, are still much more charming that anyone else, including the Brits
Con 1/5
LibDem 5/1 (was 12/1 so you have missed the price)
Labour 12/1
RefUK 14/1
Greens 150/1
SNP not quoted, although it is just about possible if they sweep Scotland and Labour sweep England and Wales.
However, I submit to the rules. It is up to @TSE and @rcs1000!
"Tories panic over defections as Wes Streeting says he has spoken to more MPs who want to join Labour
Wes Streeting has told The Independent that Tory MPs are “in despair”"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/wes-streeting-tories-defections-labour-natalie-elphicke-b2542417.html
Constructing a highway and railway through the Darien gap is one of them. Not cheap, but well within the grasp of someone with a few tens of billions to spare.
So far we only really have Elon sending humans to Mars and Bill eliminating Malaria on the billionaire list.
The other thing someone should have a go at is building the African Dubai/Singapore. The two most promising options I think are Mombasa and the Gulf of Guinea coast around Ghana/Cote D’Ivoire.
In his eyes, it is this, you can be walking down a road and you meet an Old Etonian coming the other other way, and he hails you with a smile, and you engage in pleasant conversation and then you are suddenly walking back the way you came, just to be in his company - until you realise, kinda too late
It’s not a trick or a steal, it is more you sacrifice some of your own comfort to continue an agreeable social exchange. And Italians often do it without any hope of gain, they are so used to doing it
I confess I am much more susceptible to Italian charm than Old Etonian charm, these days, after 14 years of Etonian Tory wankers
2. And now youe moved on to a different whinge. That must be about your fourth or fifth shift of the goalposts (!) BTW. Ever considered whethercontrolling for age is useful, if one is actually examining the typical footie team as it exists today? Or the differences in age distribution might be interesting to inquire into? Not that I know or care, but there are different questions that might be asked and different questions that might emerge.
Of course few will defect, but it is a failure of our system that so few do, rather than surprising when one does.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-i-love-terrible-towns
Doesn’t make the charm point untrue, however
Glaswegians are often incredibly funny - more than the human average I’d say, do I want to live in Glasgow, or even visit much? Er, no
In the 2017 local elections the Tories won comfortably, a big 38% NEV to 27% for Labour and 18% LD ie May had an even bigger lead over Labour than Starmer did over the Tories last week. ICM in early May had the Tories on 49% and Labour on 27%. Survation had a 17% Conservative lead.
Yet over the GE campaign Corbyn slashed the Tory lead and squeezed the LD local vote drastically to get a hung parliament
Part 2: ...be careful you don't walk into Simpsons Paradox. Bear in mind that the predicted difference between men and women performance is based on muscle mass/density, and weight is a proxy for that. So if you correct for age and weight the difference between TW and CW may vanish or get worse, and - it would be funny if this happened - the difference between CM and CW may disappear or lessen. So be careful what you wish for... 😀
Part 3: see also female applicants to Berkeley: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox#UC_Berkeley_gender_bias
Part 4: I haven't checked any of this and it may be bollocks. No warranty is given or implied. DYOR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDUC-LqVrPU
A Nottingham academic discusses a research paper (see, it's just like pb on trans today) claiming that generative REDACTED will need implausibly large amounts of data (or a new paradigm).
As I've pointed out here previously, far from being a danger to women, the average trans woman is more likely to be a young, vulnerable individual forced to engage in sex work (up to 26% of trans women according to a 2010 study) as a result of being marginalised and discriminated against the very same gammony men who exploit them for sexual services. Look at the number of trans women who have been victims of sexual assault. It's horrific. A trans woman is 4 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as a cis woman.
Yet if you listened to the TERFS on here you'd think it's all cocks in frocks. As if anyone would undergo workplace discrimination, online abuse, abuse on the street, the constant threat of being physically or sexually assaulted, years of hormone therapy, invasive medical procedures, and major corrective surgery, just to get to use the women's loos or win a gold medal at the women's institute sack race.
But seriously.
It is a tedious debate, and I'd be more than happy to stop banging on about it once the bigots shut up about it.
So go fuck yourself.
An example is a set of three completely fair cubical dice, with each face having a positive integer written on it, and for which on average A will beat B, B will beat C, and C will beat A.
It was better than endless AI and Trans.
The path to a Tory election victory is crystal clear. A July election is likely.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/09/university-leaders-must-take-personal-care-to-protect-jewish-students-sunak-says
Apparently university leaders should take "personal responsibility". In other words they've been told to follow the line and not dare to step outside of it if they know what's good for them - personally.
https://www.cityam.com/want-to-know-why-the-tories-will-lose-watch-clarksons-farm/
It's tedious and the views are entrenched, and it adds nothing to the site. It makes it a deeply unpleasant place to be sometimes, and unlike say, Brexit, which is a political debate where both sides of the argument are earnest, IMHO some of the things said about trans people are bigoted and odious and would not be allowed about, say, gay people, or any other minority, such as an ethnic minority.
I would be happier if such matters weren't aired on PB, but as long as the bigots keep on bringing up their bigotry, I will keep rebutting their points. But I honestly think a sitewide moratorium on the issue is preferable to the current tedious entrenched debate.
As many on here suggested, it was only ever likely to get worse after that, and that is what we seeing now.
Set up a table in a big tent, put chairs around it, and keep one chair with Sunak's name-sign in front of it.
C'mon Sunak, if you're hard enough. Want to say something to us? Come and say it, because we want to say something to you too.
Sometimes I wonder whether anyone under 50 has even heard of Saul Alinsky, let alone read him.
But we could just not talk about these things, would that not achieve the same thing?
Instead? Replaced with practically nothing. Farmers ignored, sneered at, patronised. Tory MPs like David Duguid print leaflets practically lying about how great it is for famers and how they all support him.
And here we are. Rural England swinging as sharply away from the Tories as urban areas. Absolutely stupid.
I don't think this will happen but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. A 2025
GE would of course make it more likely,.
I'm part way through changing that view. Everything after the 'instead...' about his party remains valid. But I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that he would not have made a reasonable PM even if he had had a unified, fresh party. Worse, I don't even think he's trying. It's like he's phoning it in.
TLDR; Sunak's hopeless.