Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
No, it was Hunt adopting the cold fusion strategy for debt.
Debt falling is five years away, and it always will be.
Err...that is what I said. But Reeves didn't change this as a target when introducing her new, improved, financial framework, hence the OBR's frankly meaningless guess is restricting our room for manoeuvre now.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
So assuming that this Parliament will do nothing to change the GRA or EA to change the law we'll now have at least 3-4 years to live under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law.
The Cyclefree position is that this will make women safer. I think it will make women less safe with the added disadvantage of making trans people less safe as well. Are there any datasets we can look at over the next few years to determine which one of us is right?
You’ll probably both find statistics to support your position. It will probably be impossible to distinguish from other effects.
Probably right. That's the case with many things.
Something I'd like to see covered (and it never seems to be) is how other countries handle this issue of the legal sex of transgender people and their inclusion (or not) in women's spaces.
I could be wrong but my impression is we are making a particular meal of it. If so, why is that?
One reason is that people in this country with no strong ideological view get dragged to and fro by the ultras. I think Starmer is possibly a prime example. It seems a particularly Anglo Saxon obsession and perforce one that everyone on this island gets splattered with. It appears to have had electoral effects in the US and UK, while in Australia the GCs got carried away and off-puttingly ended up with Neo Nazis as fellow travellers. Canada seems more variegated due to its federal system. Heaven forfend that the UK had a system that stopped central government overruling the provinces.
That's right, when I've seen it referenced about other countries it's been "anglo" ones. I'm curious as to how it's handled in our continent, Europe. How (if they have) have the likes of Germany, France, Spain etc managed to create a system that allows a legal change of gender without causing the rumpus we've seen over here?
I wonder if there is something about operating in the de facto global language which makes you particularly susceptible to culture war issues in the hyper-online world? Much harder to find a stranger online to fall out with in, say, Czech.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
I'm in favour of the court's ruling but IIUC people should now use the changing room of their (biological) sex.
Which isn't quite the same as "If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space."
I think the potential legal consequence of the ruling is that you are no longer able to discriminate on gender while you still can in certain areas on sex. Which means in effect toilets either have to be strictly man/woman or a single facility for all. Which I think will mean a big increase in unsegregated toilets and changing facilities. It's the easiest option for organisations who don't want to have to deal with this nonsense.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
They have been successful in driving the Ukrainians out of Kursk which has removed one potential playing card that Zelenskyy had at the table but with enormous difficulty and at great cost. The final stronghold there still held by Ukraine fell yesterday.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
Surely the reason he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains is because the Trump administration has changed which side it is backing.
In the interests of balance on sentencing, this 10-year stretch for the paddleboarder company owner feels excessive to me.
I'm going on instinct here and have no detailed knowledge of the case other than the BBC article, but, as ever, it seems disproportionate to sentences for those for careless/dangerous driving.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
He's not that delusional. He thinks Trump will award it to him.
With a reaonable basis for thinking so.
If Trump pulls the rug, he is in a wretched position. He has gone all in on Trump making the recent months worth the vast loss of men and materiel. It has barely yielded an extra 10 square kilometres.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
They have been successful in driving the Ukrainians out of Kursk which has removed one potential playing card that Zelenskyy had at the table but with enormous difficulty and at great cost. The final stronghold there still held by Ukraine fell yesterday.
The Russian army is constantly being bled of men and equipment, for trivial gains. Their commanders don't even reach Luigi Cadorna's level of ability.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition.
Cite?
It’s entirely plausible of course, but I think a blanket statement like this does need a citation of some sort.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
They have been successful in driving the Ukrainians out of Kursk which has removed one potential playing card that Zelenskyy had at the table but with enormous difficulty and at great cost. The final stronghold there still held by Ukraine fell yesterday.
During which time, Ukraine has gone and taken a chunk of Belgorod.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
Surely the reason he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains is because the Trump administration has changed which side it is backing.
Evil and mendacious maybe, but not delusional.
If Europe steps up to the mark, Trump can't aid him much. And, Trump is hurting Russia (if only unintentionally), by causing the oil price to plunge.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
It would be the NDP's worst result in its history - they got just nine in the 1993 election where the Progressive Conservatives were almost wiped out. It would be the third worst result for BQ - not as bad as 2011 and 2015 but would wipe out much of the progress made under Blanchet.
It's worth re-iterating the provincial numbers are the key - a strong Liberal performance in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia would be enough for a majority. The CPC will win the Prairies but they need seats in the east and if the Liberals hold on, Poilievre will lose.
Many of my cars (or company cars) have been German, French, Korean or Japanese. the best of which was an Audi Quattro.
Not on the British list, but which I have had were:
Austin A40 (my first car, leaked like a sieve and started with a starting handle, but I loved it) Granada Ghia Rover 800 (hopeless)
On the list which I have had:
At 47 Vauxhall Viva (my second car) At 42 AC Cobra (but a replica obviously) At 20 Ford Sierra (3 of them of which the GTi was the only nice one)
Two that I would like are at 9 the GT40 (again I can only afford a replica obviously) and the DB5 obviously.
I don't think I've owned a British car with the intent of driving it. I did flip Range Rovers for a while and there is good money in that but ultimately I was neither enough of a masochist nor a sadist to stick at it.
My father owned 2 x P6 Rover, an XJ6 and an XJ12 in that order so he did British car ownership on nightmare mode. When he retired he got a B5 Passat and always seemed overwhelmed with surprise and gratitude when it just worked.
I have enjoyed the people who so attacked the Supreme Court (“enemies of the people”) now saying how brilliant the Supreme Court are.
I haven't. They still need to be abolished. I do think they are doing it with an eye to the future though. It's not the behaviour of an organisation that is confident that we are at the start of a thousand year Starmer reich.
We need a final level appeal court - it was the House of Lords but that was replaced for sensible reasons. So what are you proposing we replace the Supreme Court with and how would it be different to the Supreme Court as it currently is given its main purpose
It is possible and rational simply to abolish the SCUK, and have the Court of Appeal as the final and highest court.
But it would be a less than brilliant move. The Court of Appeal is a very busy place, and it deals with nearly everything arising on appeal, including urgent stuff, from the civil and criminal courts - which is a lot. And huge numbers of cases get there more or less as of right.
The SCUK is different; you only get there with permission and when there is a serious and unresolved point of law; it doesn't deal in disputes about facts or arguments about how to apply established law. it doesn't do anything much urgently. Its judgments are stupifyingly dull, even when dealing with something interesting, and can effortlessly wander back to 1250 in its efforts to unravel some point. It can deal with cases only understood by a handful of legal experts in some arcane field of tax, shipping or patent. Keep it.
The 335 paragraphs of this recent one is a classic, but not for the faint hearted:
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
Thanks @Sean_F . I hadn't seen this poll and have just looked it up. Am I right in that it is:
Lab 23 Con 20 Ref 25 Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
In the interests of balance on sentencing, this 10-year stretch for the paddleboarder company owner feels excessive to me.
I'm going on instinct here and have no detailed knowledge of the case other than the BBC article, but, as ever, it seems disproportionate to sentences for those for careless/dangerous driving.
She’s an unreliable witness, and then there’s this.
Lloyd 'well-versed' in health and safety being a trained firearms officer
The judge turns now to Lloyd's character and background. Lloyd, who will turn 40 in two days, trained as a firearms officer after joining South Wales Police following university.
Mrs Justice Stacey says she will have been "well-versed" in the importance of health and safety and risk assessments and was also a trained RNLI volunteer.
Lloyd has no previous convictions but did accept a caution in October 2021 for a fraud offence relating to a vehicle insurance claim.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
Utterly OT, but while I was very annoyed to have an appointment shifted (day, time, and location) it was a pleasant surprise that, seemingly, cancelling was easily done online.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
It might be about the level of abuse they get - if you're always expecting someone to abuse you then I can see why they are often on edge. Since the SC judgment I already know of someone who's going back into the closet, using their deadname again and their biological pronouns because they can't deal with the abuse.
On topic anyone and everyone is entitled to disagree with a SC decision. That’s called democracy. To give an example the SC made a terrible decision a few years ago now that completely screwed up our law on prescription. An Act of Parliament and several other SC decisions later the law is nowhere near as satisfactory as it had been for decades before that decision. I have no problem saying that as an advocate and officer of the court.
I would even defend the right of people in general to ascribe hateful motives to the decision. I have no problem in doing that for Justice Thomas in the US SC, for example. I am very far from being a defender of the fox killer but he has a right to express his views, however irrational, hypocritical or febrile.
Those whose duties to uphold the law as it has been established have to be much more measured in their comments and I do agree with the criticism of Maggie Chapman, at least in how she expressed it.
But, much though I admire and generally agree with @Cyclefree , there is an element of triumphalism about this piece that in my opinion goes too far.
Come now, everyone's allowed to cherry pick these days: bad to to criticise the SC intemperately, good to ignore their exhortations to avoid triumphalism.
Yes, as usual my contribution was not particularly original. The judgment itself made the same point.
FWIW I respectfully disagree with them on their construction of the 2004 Act. In my opinion Parliament had, subject to very onerous conditions and third party authentication, stipulated that those with a GRC should be treated as members of the opposite sex.
My real problem with the Scottish GRR was that those safeguards were being removed without any consideration of the consequences for women.
I can’t help but feel that the argument has been distorted here by the sleight of hand by the Scottish government that @cyclefree sets out and by the realisation of the court that if they had decided that the 2004 Act had that effect it would make everything much, much more complicated.
But there are a number of genetically male people who have been taking various hormones, have developed busts and wear feminine clothing who now have to go into male toilets. I don’t think is entirely satisfactory.
Like this person you mean who was at the demo stating that he would continue to breach women's boundaries, regardless of their wishes?
Gosh - why might women and girls have an objection to having such a man who doesn't give a toss about their consent in with them?
What is not satisfactory is men standing up for blokes like this and showing fuck all sympathy for women who have had to put up with men like this forcing their way into women's spaces and abusing any who object, in the most vitriolic and violent tones. Men can make space for them in their own spaces, they can "be kind" and "inclusive" or they can create neutral spaces for them, to use. Though when this has been offered this has been refused because they want to force women to validate them. This is - bluntly - coercive behaviour and no women should be expected to tolerate it. It is not satisfactory to expect women to give up their needs and rights to solve the problem of men's violence against other men or men not being inclusive of other sorts of men. This is a problem for men to solve. Not women.
As I said before, it is extremely unlikely that person has a GRC under the 2004 Act. Something like 8,400 have been issued in total since the Act came into force 20 years ago and some, if a minority, will be to transwomen. If they don't have a certificate that is the end of the matter.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
Farage seems to think we should have no climate change targets at all. I don’t think he’s changed his mind at all, he’s just dishonestly pretending he’s not still a climate change denier.
It’s a form of denial to think that anything we do to reduce emissions within the UK will make a difference to the trajectory of global climate change.
Whether you pay your taxes or not will not make any difference to the trajectory of government funding. But you should still pay your taxes.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
Perhaps they are pissed off by continuously being told by the medical profession to pull themselves together.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
It might be about the level of abuse they get - if you're always expecting someone to abuse you then I can see why they are often on edge. Since the SC judgment I already know of someone who's going back into the closet, using their deadname again and their biological pronouns because they can't deal with the abuse.
Yes, I think that part of it too.
Fox jr2's flatmate is a Trans-woman and has become virtually housebound recently, in large part for the abuse she gets just walking down the street. Their abuse comes from men.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
On topic anyone and everyone is entitled to disagree with a SC decision. That’s called democracy. To give an example the SC made a terrible decision a few years ago now that completely screwed up our law on prescription. An Act of Parliament and several other SC decisions later the law is nowhere near as satisfactory as it had been for decades before that decision. I have no problem saying that as an advocate and officer of the court.
I would even defend the right of people in general to ascribe hateful motives to the decision. I have no problem in doing that for Justice Thomas in the US SC, for example. I am very far from being a defender of the fox killer but he has a right to express his views, however irrational, hypocritical or febrile.
Those whose duties to uphold the law as it has been established have to be much more measured in their comments and I do agree with the criticism of Maggie Chapman, at least in how she expressed it.
But, much though I admire and generally agree with @Cyclefree , there is an element of triumphalism about this piece that in my opinion goes too far.
Come now, everyone's allowed to cherry pick these days: bad to to criticise the SC intemperately, good to ignore their exhortations to avoid triumphalism.
Yes, as usual my contribution was not particularly original. The judgment itself made the same point.
FWIW I respectfully disagree with them on their construction of the 2004 Act. In my opinion Parliament had, subject to very onerous conditions and third party authentication, stipulated that those with a GRC should be treated as members of the opposite sex.
My real problem with the Scottish GRR was that those safeguards were being removed without any consideration of the consequences for women.
I can’t help but feel that the argument has been distorted here by the sleight of hand by the Scottish government that @cyclefree sets out and by the realisation of the court that if they had decided that the 2004 Act had that effect it would make everything much, much more complicated.
But there are a number of genetically male people who have been taking various hormones, have developed busts and wear feminine clothing who now have to go into male toilets. I don’t think is entirely satisfactory.
Like this person you mean who was at the demo stating that he would continue to breach women's boundaries, regardless of their wishes?
Gosh - why might women and girls have an objection to having such a man who doesn't give a toss about their consent in with them?
What is not satisfactory is men standing up for blokes like this and showing fuck all sympathy for women who have had to put up with men like this forcing their way into women's spaces and abusing any who object, in the most vitriolic and violent tones. Men can make space for them in their own spaces, they can "be kind" and "inclusive" or they can create neutral spaces for them, to use. Though when this has been offered this has been refused because they want to force women to validate them. This is - bluntly - coercive behaviour and no women should be expected to tolerate it. It is not satisfactory to expect women to give up their needs and rights to solve the problem of men's violence against other men or men not being inclusive of other sorts of men. This is a problem for men to solve. Not women.
As I said before, it is extremely unlikely that person has a GRC under the 2004 Act. Something like 8,400 have been issued in total since the Act came into force 20 years ago and some, if a minority, will be to transwomen. If they don't have a certificate that is the end of the matter.
I get your point, but the SC has just thrown that out of the window. Under that ruling the GRC has no force with regards to toilets.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
Do you support having an age of consent even though it cannot be policed?
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
The saying "never break a spoon before midnight" suggests that one should save their "spoon" of energy, effort, or mental capacity until the end of the day, much like in the spoon theory from TPGi. It implies that one should avoid wasting their resources or abilities prematurely, reserving them for the most crucial tasks or moments later in the day.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
Thanks @Sean_F . I hadn't seen this poll and have just looked it up. Am I right in that it is:
Lab 23 Con 20 Ref 25 Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
The England sub sample from this morning's YouGov (changes from the GE):
On topic anyone and everyone is entitled to disagree with a SC decision. That’s called democracy. To give an example the SC made a terrible decision a few years ago now that completely screwed up our law on prescription. An Act of Parliament and several other SC decisions later the law is nowhere near as satisfactory as it had been for decades before that decision. I have no problem saying that as an advocate and officer of the court.
I would even defend the right of people in general to ascribe hateful motives to the decision. I have no problem in doing that for Justice Thomas in the US SC, for example. I am very far from being a defender of the fox killer but he has a right to express his views, however irrational, hypocritical or febrile.
Those whose duties to uphold the law as it has been established have to be much more measured in their comments and I do agree with the criticism of Maggie Chapman, at least in how she expressed it.
But, much though I admire and generally agree with @Cyclefree , there is an element of triumphalism about this piece that in my opinion goes too far.
Come now, everyone's allowed to cherry pick these days: bad to to criticise the SC intemperately, good to ignore their exhortations to avoid triumphalism.
Yes, as usual my contribution was not particularly original. The judgment itself made the same point.
FWIW I respectfully disagree with them on their construction of the 2004 Act. In my opinion Parliament had, subject to very onerous conditions and third party authentication, stipulated that those with a GRC should be treated as members of the opposite sex.
My real problem with the Scottish GRR was that those safeguards were being removed without any consideration of the consequences for women.
I can’t help but feel that the argument has been distorted here by the sleight of hand by the Scottish government that @cyclefree sets out and by the realisation of the court that if they had decided that the 2004 Act had that effect it would make everything much, much more complicated.
But there are a number of genetically male people who have been taking various hormones, have developed busts and wear feminine clothing who now have to go into male toilets. I don’t think is entirely satisfactory.
Like this person you mean who was at the demo stating that he would continue to breach women's boundaries, regardless of their wishes?
Gosh - why might women and girls have an objection to having such a man who doesn't give a toss about their consent in with them?
What is not satisfactory is men standing up for blokes like this and showing fuck all sympathy for women who have had to put up with men like this forcing their way into women's spaces and abusing any who object, in the most vitriolic and violent tones. Men can make space for them in their own spaces, they can "be kind" and "inclusive" or they can create neutral spaces for them, to use. Though when this has been offered this has been refused because they want to force women to validate them. This is - bluntly - coercive behaviour and no women should be expected to tolerate it. It is not satisfactory to expect women to give up their needs and rights to solve the problem of men's violence against other men or men not being inclusive of other sorts of men. This is a problem for men to solve. Not women.
As I said before, it is extremely unlikely that person has a GRC under the 2004 Act. Something like 8,400 have been issued in total since the Act came into force 20 years ago and some, if a minority, will be to transwomen. If they don't have a certificate that is the end of the matter.
I get your point, but the SC has just thrown that out of the window. Under that ruling the GRC has no force with regards to toilets.
Though the SC ruling didn't prevent that individual from using the women's toilets at Waterloo either.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
Reading 100,000 posts on here about the niceties, logistics, legalities and established customs of trans people using, what the lower middle class refer to as, "loos" has made me quite short tempered.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
Do you support having an age of consent even though it cannot be policed?
Of course it can be policed, did sex happen, was one under age. Both are factual questions. If it was impossible to police then how are people still convicted for sexual activity with an under-16 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn08y6785xqo
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
Thanks @Sean_F . I hadn't seen this poll and have just looked it up. Am I right in that it is:
Lab 23 Con 20 Ref 25 Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
Every seat under FPTP is its own election and most of these seats were Lab/Con marginals in 2024. So this analysis requires a lot of 2024 Con support to switch to Reform in those seats next time and even more Labour support to switch to Lib Dems and other parties so Reform rather than Labour take the seat on a low vote share. Possible but not a given IMO.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
I didn't flag it, but I think you're being rude to Cyclefree who hasn't engaged in any back-and-forth discussion so you can't pretend the lack of response to you "speaks for itself" when she hasn't responded to anyone and has simply shared her thoughts, which is eminently reasonable.
As for Lia, I have no idea what you're talking about, but from a quick Google search all I can see is articles from fellow-athletes complaining about seeing his/her/their penis in a female-only changing room.
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
It is not "innocuous" to be displaying a penis in a woman's changing room and that you think it is shows how far gone you are and speaks volumes about you, not Cyclefree.
“Let's see: Lia Thomas, swimmer. As a man, got nowhere in competitions. As a woman won loads, upset female competitors by wandering round the changing rooms naked with an erect penis (according to reports)...”
Cyclefree escalated from actions that were permissible, even if you disagree with them, to apparently baseless accusations of actions that would be a gross indecency offense pretty much anywhere.
She could have walked it back very easily & still made her point, but chose not to.
There are plenty of reports of Thomas taking out his/her penis in women's changing rooms. That is, indeed, a gross indecency offence regardless of whether it was erect. Many think that team mates commenting that Lia still has a penis and is still attracted to women implies that the girls do indeed have to put up with his/her erections. So I'm not sure what it is you think Cyclefree should walk back.
There are plenty of reports of Thomas changing and the penis in question being visible. There do not appear to be any reports that Thomas either wandered round naked or that the penis was ever seen in an erect state.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
No. Say there are 1 million men and 10 trans women. If both groups have committed 5 assaults, that's a 50% chance a given trans woman is an assailant vs 0.0005% that a given cis man is. ie trans women are 100,000 times more dangerous. even though "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman" is only 50%
On topic anyone and everyone is entitled to disagree with a SC decision. That’s called democracy. To give an example the SC made a terrible decision a few years ago now that completely screwed up our law on prescription. An Act of Parliament and several other SC decisions later the law is nowhere near as satisfactory as it had been for decades before that decision. I have no problem saying that as an advocate and officer of the court.
I would even defend the right of people in general to ascribe hateful motives to the decision. I have no problem in doing that for Justice Thomas in the US SC, for example. I am very far from being a defender of the fox killer but he has a right to express his views, however irrational, hypocritical or febrile.
Those whose duties to uphold the law as it has been established have to be much more measured in their comments and I do agree with the criticism of Maggie Chapman, at least in how she expressed it.
But, much though I admire and generally agree with @Cyclefree , there is an element of triumphalism about this piece that in my opinion goes too far.
Come now, everyone's allowed to cherry pick these days: bad to to criticise the SC intemperately, good to ignore their exhortations to avoid triumphalism.
Yes, as usual my contribution was not particularly original. The judgment itself made the same point.
FWIW I respectfully disagree with them on their construction of the 2004 Act. In my opinion Parliament had, subject to very onerous conditions and third party authentication, stipulated that those with a GRC should be treated as members of the opposite sex.
My real problem with the Scottish GRR was that those safeguards were being removed without any consideration of the consequences for women.
I can’t help but feel that the argument has been distorted here by the sleight of hand by the Scottish government that @cyclefree sets out and by the realisation of the court that if they had decided that the 2004 Act had that effect it would make everything much, much more complicated.
But there are a number of genetically male people who have been taking various hormones, have developed busts and wear feminine clothing who now have to go into male toilets. I don’t think is entirely satisfactory.
Like this person you mean who was at the demo stating that he would continue to breach women's boundaries, regardless of their wishes?
Gosh - why might women and girls have an objection to having such a man who doesn't give a toss about their consent in with them?
What is not satisfactory is men standing up for blokes like this and showing fuck all sympathy for women who have had to put up with men like this forcing their way into women's spaces and abusing any who object, in the most vitriolic and violent tones. Men can make space for them in their own spaces, they can "be kind" and "inclusive" or they can create neutral spaces for them, to use. Though when this has been offered this has been refused because they want to force women to validate them. This is - bluntly - coercive behaviour and no women should be expected to tolerate it. It is not satisfactory to expect women to give up their needs and rights to solve the problem of men's violence against other men or men not being inclusive of other sorts of men. This is a problem for men to solve. Not women.
As I said before, it is extremely unlikely that person has a GRC under the 2004 Act. Something like 8,400 have been issued in total since the Act came into force 20 years ago and some, if a minority, will be to transwomen. If they don't have a certificate that is the end of the matter.
I get your point, but the SC has just thrown that out of the window. Under that ruling the GRC has no force with regards to toilets.
I know. That is why I was respectfully disagreeing with them.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
Do you support having an age of consent even though it cannot be policed?
Of course it can be policed, did sex happen, was one under age. Both are factual questions. If it was impossible to police then how are people still convicted for sexual activity with an under-16 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn08y6785xqo
But the police don’t go around knocking on teenagers’ bedroom doors to check for any illegal activity. They only get involved if there has been a specific accusation.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
Reading 100,000 posts on here about the niceties, logistics, legalities and established customs of trans people using, what the lower middle class refer to as, "loos" has made me quite short tempered.
Yes, I think I'll take a break this afternoon, too.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Okay, I'll humour you - Peggie felt that she would be raped by Upton. So the inconvenience to her to use some other changing room where Upton isn't is less than forcing her to use the same changing room and suffer the fear of being raped. The trans people just want to get changed or use the toilet so it's unreasonable to get someone who is doing nothing wrong to do something else.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
Why anybody wants to listen to Evan Davis talk about heat pumps every week is another matter. I think podcasting might have peaked !!!
The article frames it as the Right having gone a bit off the rails in their politicising opposition to technologies which may be framed as addressing climate change. Such are not political. He's co-presenting with the chair of the Heat Pump Federation, aiui as non-political content.
I'd view this BBC decision as an unnecessary glass-jaw on the part of the BCC, caving in where not necessary. In their place I'd just view it as a non-political side-gig, like an after-dinner speech - or if he was hosting a podcast about public footpaths or Youth Hostels. The BBC should be defending their presenter, instead, and standing for open debate in the marketplace of ideas.
However, despite initially being given approval to go ahead with the non-BBC project, bosses told Davis the podcast risked exposing him to accusations of political bias.
“As the series has gone on – in fact as the world has progressed over the last few months – they have become concerned that anything like this trying to inform people about heat pumps can be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as somehow treading on areas of public controversy,” he told followers of the podcast’s YouTube channel.
That things like heat pumps and electric cars have become politicised highlights how disasterous it's been to have a government targets based approach to achieving net-zero.
I think it's more to do with desperation on the tribal political right, and their need for a culture war to save their backsides; it is a measure of self-serving political cynicism. The approach has worked very well over perhaps 3 decades (1990-2020), as a political consensus.
I'd make a comparison with the 20mph speed limits in Wales. In the Senedd back in 2020-2021 the proposal had cross-party support, and the Conservatives were demanding that Labour were too slow in implementing the Labour Party manifesto commitment.
They swapped opinions when they were washed up politically, and needed a way of trying to save the next Election.
It runs across many questions, and has potentially ended the possibility of my support for Conservatives (speaking as a former member whilst there was a hope of levelling-up) for life.
Takes two sides for a war....what you describe as a culture war is the left wing you are on saying lets do this and sensible people going do fuck off....pushing back on arsehole suggestions isn't the right starting a culture war its just the right telling you that you have strange ideas than makes you dicks
That's Trump's logic for blaming Ukraine for the invasion.
The point is these measures used to have broad political consensus, implemented by councils and governments of all stripes and backed up by solid evidence. It's only since the Conservatives went all Magna Carta that they have become party political.
FWIW Edinburgh's had LTNs since the 18th Century; even Pompeii had modal filters to avoid clogging up their markets with traffic. It's basic town planning.
Since you brought up the 20mph example, the broad political consensus is to have 30mph for normal roads and faster for other roads, with 20mph being very exceptional use cases like outside schools. That has been the broad consensus for a very long time.
Making 20mph universal was never a broad consensus.
On 20mph - a few things.
"Making 20mph universal" is a myth about the proposals, that never existed. The proposal was a change of default. The creation of such a myth was part of a fomented culture war - the clue is the widespread use of the term "blanket speed limit" - misrepresenting the proposals. The proposal was narrow, and included ample opportunity for exceptions by LHAs built into the process. We have even had a second round of review, which has allowed the North Walean LHAs to catch up with the South Walean.
As for broad consensus, there was a vote (NDM7355) in the Senedd in support of the proposals on 15 July 2020 when the motion was passed 45-6, with 7 from 11 Conservative Members of Senedd voting in support, and only one against. Two parties included it in their Manifestos and they received more than half the vote (60% constituency vote, 55% regional vote).
The real argument is where lines should be drawn, and whether people can be (imo) tricked into opposition to obvious, positive measures *. I think the result in Wales seems to be in approximately the correct place. What we need now is for the culture change to work through.
I'm not particularly by the politics of this, as the evidence in support is overwhelming, including ~30 years of evidence in England. The question is how quickly it will happen. The same overwhelming evidence is why Wales will not be taking steps backward in any significant way. Fewer collisions and lower insurance premiums are practical persuaders.
* Of course, I have a list of other positive measures things I would like to see introduced, starting with "speed up" signs (to say 40mph or 50mph) being put on the way OUT of a traffic island, not on the way IN. But those will be for another day.
No Austin/Morris 1100/1300? The best selling car in the UK from 1964 to 1971 (excluding 1967). Precluded because they all rusted to dust?
Triumph Stag? When I was in the Stag owners club they would provide a low loader for the first driver who broke down on club events. Normally overheating.
Ford Fiesta? Weren't most of them made in Valencia and Cologne?
Nissan Leaf? An EV with a 100 mile range. Awesome.
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
Thanks @Sean_F . I hadn't seen this poll and have just looked it up. Am I right in that it is:
Lab 23 Con 20 Ref 25 Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
Every seat under FPTP is its own election and most of these seats were Lab/Con marginals in 2024. So this analysis requires a lot of 2024 Con support to switch to Reform in those seats next time and even more Labour support to switch to Lib Dems and other parties so Reform rather than Labour take the seat on a low vote share. Possible but not a given IMO.
The switching Labour support could/would also be to Reform, but even so I agree with you 254 is a big number.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
Did Reeves introduce large tax increases in the year just ended? What were they? Isn't the most significant increase the rise in NI for employers, which has only just been implemented and should raise a fair bit?
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
The idiom "you can't comb your hair with a chisel" means that you can't use a tool inappropriately for its intended purpose. It highlights the absurdity of using something that is not designed for a specific task to attempt that task. In this case, a chisel is a woodworking tool, not a hair tool, so using it to comb hair would be completely illogical. Here's a more detailed explanation: ...
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
I've been moved to ask AI two questions this morning. (Where in England is furthest from a rail station? What's the most expensive street within half a mile of Workington Town Centre?) It produced obviously wrong answers for both of them.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Okay, I'll humour you - Peggie felt that she would be raped by Upton. So the inconvenience to her to use some other changing room where Upton isn't is less than forcing her to use the same changing room and suffer the fear of being raped. The trans people just want to get changed or use the toilet so it's unreasonable to get someone who is doing nothing wrong to do something else.
No, its not, since women's changing rooms are safeguarded spaces for women and men like Upton forcing themselves into women like Peggie's protected space is a violation.
Since you have already accepted "go change somewhere else" as a solution, there is no reason why Upton can't get changed somewhere else, leaving people like Peggie in peace in their protected space, is there?
If you just want to use the toilet, then using the gender-neutral toilet "somewhere else" fulfils that need.
No Austin/Morris 1100/1300? The best selling car in the UK from 1964 to 1971 (excluding 1967). Precluded because they all rusted to dust?
Triumph Stag? When I was in the Stag owners club they would provide a low loader for the first driver who broke down on club events. Normally overheating.
Ford Fiesta? Weren't most of them made in Valencia and Cologne?
Nissan Leaf? An EV with a 100 mile range. Awesome.
As might be expected, because it's on a shit website aimed at the uneducated and/or deranged, it's a shit list.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Okay, I'll humour you - Peggie felt that she would be raped by Upton. So the inconvenience to her to use some other changing room where Upton isn't is less than forcing her to use the same changing room and suffer the fear of being raped. The trans people just want to get changed or use the toilet so it's unreasonable to get someone who is doing nothing wrong to do something else.
No, its not, since women's changing rooms are safeguarded spaces for women and men like Upton forcing themselves into women like Peggie's protected space is a violation.
Since you have already accepted "go change somewhere else" as a solution, there is no reason why Upton can't get changed somewhere else, leaving people like Peggie in peace in their protected space, is there?
If you just want to use the toilet, then using the gender-neutral toilet "somewhere else" fulfils that need.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
It depends on whether there was a consensus among other economists/fiscal experts that those predictions were wildly out. As I recall, there was not, which is why there wasn't widespread panic at the budget al la Truss. (Perhaps you were the genius outlier? )
However, almost everyone (including the OBR) pointed out the "headroom" was exceptionally tight, which meant that any negative variation would mean a forced change tax and spending, and they pointed to the looming threat of tariffs among other risks. In answer to your question - I think the OBR report in the round is a very useful analysis, and always worth reading.
No Austin/Morris 1100/1300? The best selling car in the UK from 1964 to 1971 (excluding 1967). Precluded because they all rusted to dust?
Triumph Stag? When I was in the Stag owners club they would provide a low loader for the first driver who broke down on club events. Normally overheating.
Ford Fiesta? Weren't most of them made in Valencia and Cologne?
Nissan Leaf? An EV with a 100 mile range. Awesome.
As might be expected, because it's on a shit website aimed at the uneducated and/or deranged, it's a shit list.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
Kind of true, but to get the comparison fairer chisels would be sold as magical, can do anything, wonder sticks.
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
Thanks @Sean_F . I hadn't seen this poll and have just looked it up. Am I right in that it is:
Lab 23 Con 20 Ref 25 Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
Every seat under FPTP is its own election and most of these seats were Lab/Con marginals in 2024. So this analysis requires a lot of 2024 Con support to switch to Reform in those seats next time and even more Labour support to switch to Lib Dems and other parties so Reform rather than Labour take the seat on a low vote share. Possible but not a given IMO.
Main swing on that poll since the last general election is Labour to Reform
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
I'm in favour of the court's ruling but IIUC people should now use the changing room of their (biological) sex.
Which isn't quite the same as "If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space."
No, trans people might be excluded from both spaces was the ruling according to the EHRC.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/f89ecc90-d81e-4f92-967b-8b6309cbb65f?shareToken=89a05676716e9d9c97242f0bbde7bbd2 In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Undoubtedly this creates a double bind for trans people, and lawful solutions that preserve dignity and enable the full participation of trans people in public life must be found. An obvious one is to provide additional mixed-sex spaces alongside single-sex ones.
OK - the way round that, since building third toilets/changing rooms or whatever is going to be cost prohibitive for a lot of places is to keep the female facilities and relabel the mens to include everyone. We (Men) don't need sex protections from women in public tbh.
Oh I see, now we are in "what's wrong with a female teacher shagging one of their pupils, lucky sod!" territory.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Okay, I'll humour you - Peggie felt that she would be raped by Upton. So the inconvenience to her to use some other changing room where Upton isn't is less than forcing her to use the same changing room and suffer the fear of being raped. The trans people just want to get changed or use the toilet so it's unreasonable to get someone who is doing nothing wrong to do something else.
No, its not, since women's changing rooms are safeguarded spaces for women and men like Upton forcing themselves into women like Peggie's protected space is a violation.
Since you have already accepted "go change somewhere else" as a solution, there is no reason why Upton can't get changed somewhere else, leaving people like Peggie in peace in their protected space, is there?
If you just want to use the toilet, then using the gender-neutral toilet "somewhere else" fulfils that need.
I agree that's what the law says now.
Good.
So we can draw a line in the sand here then? A reasonable judgement whereby women like Peggie get their protected single-sex spaces available to them, individuals like Upton can use alternative facilities elsewhere which protects their dignity too.
A compromise whereby everyone but the most extreme individuals can get what they need, even if its not what they want.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
Kind of true, but to get the comparison fairer chisels would be sold as magical, can do anything, wonder sticks.
kind of true, but still more a reflection of the gullibility of those who are misled by the branding rather than a reflection of the worth of the chisel
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
I'm in favour of the court's ruling but IIUC people should now use the changing room of their (biological) sex.
Which isn't quite the same as "If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space."
No, trans people might be excluded from both spaces was the ruling according to the EHRC.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/f89ecc90-d81e-4f92-967b-8b6309cbb65f?shareToken=89a05676716e9d9c97242f0bbde7bbd2 In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Undoubtedly this creates a double bind for trans people, and lawful solutions that preserve dignity and enable the full participation of trans people in public life must be found. An obvious one is to provide additional mixed-sex spaces alongside single-sex ones.
OK - the way round that, since building third toilets/changing rooms or whatever is going to be cost prohibitive for a lot of places is to keep the female facilities and relabel the mens to include everyone. We (Men) don't need sex protections from women in public tbh.
Oh I see, now we are in "what's wrong with a female teacher shagging one of their pupils, lucky sod!" territory.
In terms of public toilets its not particulary unusual to find a female cleaner in the mens toilets and no-one (well hardly anyone) cares about that.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
I've been moved to ask AI two questions this morning. (Where in England is furthest from a rail station? What's the most expensive street within half a mile of Workington Town Centre?) It produced obviously wrong answers for both of them.
The greatest failing of AI is its inability to say "I don't know" to a question and feeling the need to make some other shit up instead.
The greatest failing of people using AI is their inability to tell that the AI is making shit up and believing it wholesale.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
It depends on whether there was a consensus among other economists/fiscal experts that those predictions were wildly out. As I recall, there was not, which is why there wasn't widespread panic at the budget al la Truss. (Perhaps you were the genius outlier? )
However, almost everyone (including the OBR) pointed out the "headroom" was exceptionally tight, which meant that any negative variation would mean a forced change tax and spending, and they pointed to the looming threat of tariffs among other risks. In answer to your question - I think the OBR report in the round is a very useful analysis, and always worth reading.
As it happens I was forecasting that borrowing would be higher than expected both last year and this, so we shall see.
Since that forecast all of a month ago we have had: a near 10% increase in borrowing from the forecast in the previous financial year; the reduction in growth estimated by the IMF yesterday and the continuing uncertainty caused by Trump and his lunacy, most recently in attacking the Fed. As you say, there is no headroom to talk of. We are getting close to needing an emergency budget to correct our course. Autumn seems a dangerously long way away.
So assuming that this Parliament will do nothing to change the GRA or EA to change the law we'll now have at least 3-4 years to live under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law.
The Cyclefree position is that this will make women safer. I think it will make women less safe with the added disadvantage of making trans people less safe as well. Are there any datasets we can look at over the next few years to determine which one of us is right?
You’ll probably both find statistics to support your position. It will probably be impossible to distinguish from other effects.
Probably right. That's the case with many things.
Something I'd like to see covered (and it never seems to be) is how other countries handle this issue of the legal sex of transgender people and their inclusion (or not) in women's spaces.
I could be wrong but my impression is we are making a particular meal of it. If so, why is that?
One reason is that people in this country with no strong ideological view get dragged to and fro by the ultras. I think Starmer is possibly a prime example. It seems a particularly Anglo Saxon obsession and perforce one that everyone on this island gets splattered with. It appears to have had electoral effects in the US and UK, while in Australia the GCs got carried away and off-puttingly ended up with Neo Nazis as fellow travellers. Canada seems more variegated due to its federal system. Heaven forfend that the UK had a system that stopped central government overruling the provinces.
That's right, when I've seen it referenced about other countries it's been "anglo" ones. I'm curious as to how it's handled in our continent, Europe. How (if they have) have the likes of Germany, France, Spain etc managed to create a system that allows a legal change of gender without causing the rumpus we've seen over here?
I wonder if there is something about operating in the de facto global language which makes you particularly susceptible to culture war issues in the hyper-online world? Much harder to find a stranger online to fall out with in, say, Czech.
Interesting point, not sure. But I do think we'd have a better chance of resolving these hot button issues if they hadn't become hot button issues.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
And how could that possibly be policed?
Same as all laws are policed - 99.999% of it will by self-enforcement, then if there are complaints then those can be investigated afterwards and at workplaces for instance if someone is breaking the rules they can either get training if appropriate, or face disciplinary action upto and including termination of employment if it continues.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
And how can a woman prove that she's never had a penis?
Why would she need to?
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
Imagine this situation, a cis woman happens to be very butch and someone starts saying that she thinks that woman is trans. The word gets around the pub and she's prevented from using the ladies loo. What happens next?
She says "no, I'm a woman" and if nobody can prove otherwise that's it.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
Okay, i give up.
Good.
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
You know that I don't agree with you, I'm fully prepared to keep poking holes in your position all day but I would prefer to do something more productive with my time.
OK then answer me one final thing please. You, yourself, proposed the other day when advocating that trans people should be able to use single-sex spaces, that any woman who disagrees (like Nurse Peggie in Fife which was being discussed) can "go change somewhere else".
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Okay, I'll humour you - Peggie felt that she would be raped by Upton. So the inconvenience to her to use some other changing room where Upton isn't is less than forcing her to use the same changing room and suffer the fear of being raped. The trans people just want to get changed or use the toilet so it's unreasonable to get someone who is doing nothing wrong to do something else.
No, its not, since women's changing rooms are safeguarded spaces for women and men like Upton forcing themselves into women like Peggie's protected space is a violation.
Since you have already accepted "go change somewhere else" as a solution, there is no reason why Upton can't get changed somewhere else, leaving people like Peggie in peace in their protected space, is there?
If you just want to use the toilet, then using the gender-neutral toilet "somewhere else" fulfils that need.
I agree that's what the law says now.
Good.
So we can draw a line in the sand here then? A reasonable judgement whereby women like Peggie get their protected single-sex spaces available to them, individuals like Upton can use alternative facilities elsewhere which protects their dignity too.
A compromise whereby everyone but the most extreme individuals can get what they need, even if its not what they want.
What is there to object to?
I don't object to the concept at all. Everyone being given the dignity to live how they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else is my ideal. I would like to live in your world too but I don't think the world I live in is that nice.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
No. Say there are 1 million men and 10 trans women. If both groups have committed 5 assaults, that's a 50% chance a given trans woman is an assailant vs 0.0005% that a given cis man is. ie trans women are 100,000 times more dangerous. even though "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman" is only 50%
I know what you mean, but that's "the probability that a trans woman will do an assault". The stat that prh47bridge quoted was "18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man", which has to be interpreted as "Given that a person has been assaulted, the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman is 18 times higher than that of a cis man".
For simplicity's sake, let's assume the only people doing the assaulting are cis men and trans women and that all assaulters are convicted. If a person is assaulted and the probability of that assaulter is 1/19 cis male and 18/19 trans, and the number of cis men in prison for assault is in the thousands, then the number of trans women in prison for assault is in the tens of thousands
In short "the probability that a trans woman will do an assault" is not the same stat as "Given that a person has been assaulted, the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
The former is (number of trans women assaulters)/(number of trans women)
The latter is (number of trans women assaulters)/(number of cis men and trans women assaulters)
No Austin/Morris 1100/1300? The best selling car in the UK from 1964 to 1971 (excluding 1967). Precluded because they all rusted to dust?
Triumph Stag? When I was in the Stag owners club they would provide a low loader for the first driver who broke down on club events. Normally overheating.
Ford Fiesta? Weren't most of them made in Valencia and Cologne?
Nissan Leaf? An EV with a 100 mile range. Awesome.
Interesting list. I like "Bentley Blower" - Bill Clinton would appreciate one of those. The later Lotus Elan is missing, as is the Lotus 7. No Land Rover Series 1 or Discovery, or original Range Rover.
As one would expect of the Daily Mail, no attention is applied to reliability !
JD Vance-If we don’t receive a positive response, we will step back from mediating between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve put forward a clear and fair proposal to both sides.
I'm not sure "giving Russia most of what it wants (for the moment) counts as either clear or fair.
We're left hoping that Putin is so insane and greedy that he thinks he can get more so he rejects the offer. This is suboptimal. Ideally, the European powers, including us, would make it clear that the deal proposed is not acceptable.
Putin has gone from evil, but clever and competent, to evil and delusional, at some point.
In the past four months, Russia has taken vast casualties, in return for going nowhere. The Europeans are ramping up military production, and the oil price has plunged. Yet, for some reason, he thinks he can be awarded political and territorial gains that he has been unable to win on the battlefield.
It’s more, that by invading Ukraine and bogging down in endless war there, he has nailed his trousers to the masthead.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
We know that trans women generally have similar offending patterns to men, not women, even if the individual has undergone hormonal and surgical treatment to transition. So you are 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man. There is evidence that suggests trans women are more likely to be violent sex offenders than men - hardly surprising since the mantra that TWAW allows sexual predators to access women in vulnerable situations simply by saying they are women.
Of course, most trans women are not a threat, just as most men are not a threat. But we cannot ignore the fact that allowing biological males into women-only spaces compromises women's safety.
A line that simply says if you have, or have ever had, a penis you are not allowed in women's spaces would not put any cis women on the wrong side and would be a lot safer for women than allowing trans women in.
Ahem:
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
My experience of Trans folk both male and female is that they are rather short tempered. How much of this is due to their pre-existing state and how much due to taking large doses of hormones, I am not sure.
Reading 100,000 posts on here about the niceties, logistics, legalities and established customs of trans people using, what the lower middle class refer to as, "loos" has made me quite short tempered.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
Interesting that you seem to be impugning that "trans men" who have had surgery are a major threat to women, while "trans women" who are still biologically male, and are numerically a much-greater number of people (since most trans people don't get surgery changing their genitals) are not. How do you square that circle?
And actually the court did not determine that. The court determined that trans women can be women's spaces and it also determined but much less noted that trans men can be excluded from women's spaces too. See this from a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Hence the need for third spaces such as gender-neutral alternatives to be provided on top of single sex provisions.
Given your argument that trans men make women unsafe, and given you argued the other day "change somewhere else" is an option, presumably excluding both trans males (with surgery) and trans women from women's spaces will make women more safe. While having what you've personally proposed as an alternative of "change somewhere else" available for trans people too.
Leaving everyone with a safe and dignified option. What's not to like?
My position is that neither trans men or trans women are a threat. They are just people trying to live their lives. But I do recognise that most women don't want men in female-only spaces. So the line between men and women has to be drawn somewhere. For me the ideal would be for that to be on legal gender, it's easy to prove. But the EA doesn't allow for that option (I don't like it but reading the EA it's not a wrong decision). So we have a line where it's impossible to prove that you are entitled to be in a female-only space. Birth Certificate or Passport? no good because some men have F and some women have M. Appearance? That's really tricky, as I've mentioned I've got a butch lesbian aunt and I had a female friend at college who grew a better moustache than I could. Any line will have cis women on the wrong side of it.
I'm not saying that the old way was perfect but the new regime is worse for cis women, trans women and trans men.
How about the line is drawn with sex?
If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space.
Clean and simple.
There is a perfectly reasonable alternative for trans people of change somewhere else, eg gender-neutral facilities and stay out of single-sex facilities.
I'm in favour of the court's ruling but IIUC people should now use the changing room of their (biological) sex.
Which isn't quite the same as "If you have, either now or have ever had, a penis then do not enter a woman's-only space."
No, trans people might be excluded from both spaces was the ruling according to the EHRC.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/f89ecc90-d81e-4f92-967b-8b6309cbb65f?shareToken=89a05676716e9d9c97242f0bbde7bbd2 In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.
Undoubtedly this creates a double bind for trans people, and lawful solutions that preserve dignity and enable the full participation of trans people in public life must be found. An obvious one is to provide additional mixed-sex spaces alongside single-sex ones.
OK - the way round that, since building third toilets/changing rooms or whatever is going to be cost prohibitive for a lot of places is to keep the female facilities and relabel the mens to include everyone. We (Men) don't need sex protections from women in public tbh.
Oh I see, now we are in "what's wrong with a female teacher shagging one of their pupils, lucky sod!" territory.
Err no, not really. That's a very different issue.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
Did Reeves introduce large tax increases in the year just ended? What were they? Isn't the most significant increase the rise in NI for employers, which has only just been implemented and should raise a fair bit?
You're right. The biggest increases by far were Employers NI which has come in this month.
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
AI is a tool which can be used to do certain things -- the analogy is people trying to comb their hair with a chisel, and showing their scratches to prove that chisels suck
The idiom "you can't comb your hair with a chisel" means that you can't use a tool inappropriately for its intended purpose. It highlights the absurdity of using something that is not designed for a specific task to attempt that task. In this case, a chisel is a woodworking tool, not a hair tool, so using it to comb hair would be completely illogical. Here's a more detailed explanation: ...
I'd take that as telling me more about the hairdo, such as it surviving unmoved a flight in an open cockpit aircraft.
Because @Cyclefree’s profile is private, it appears to be impossible to discover whether she has retracted her apparently false & deeply unpleasant remarks about Lia Thomas.
Have you retracted them Cyclefree? I have searched all the news articles I could find, as did several others here & can find no mention anywhere of the behaviour you describe. Since it would have been so explosive, I have little doubt that right wing outlets would have made a huge deal of it (and rightly so in that case, frankly) but there appears to be nothing.
I seems to me that you have accused her of a crime. I don’t think an honest person would let that statement stand, if they knew it to be false. Obviously I apologise in advance if you have retracted them already, or if you can substantiate your remarks.
Since @Cyclefree has turned up, I would like to know her answer to this.
Her lack of response speaks for itself I guess.
Fwiw, when people talk about bigotry, this is one of the behaviours they’re referring to - the sexualisation of everything that trans people do, no matter how innocuous.
What Lia did was permissible at the time under the rules of their sport. Testimony from the time shows that there was no where else for them to get changed . You can (rightly) argue about whether or not she should have been allowed to compete, or to be in that changing room at all.
Cyclefree went far beyond that mark - contemporaneous accounts simply don’t match her description of events & her depiction of a transwoman in these gross sexualised terms which appear to be completely untrue is not OK.
(edit: re:flags, please do explain why you think my comments are unacceptable.)
That is disgusting. Nobody with a penis should be going into a female-only changing room and even if you did there are ways to get changed without showing your penis to others, such as getting changed in a cubicle or underneath a towel.
But that is what the Supreme Court has just decided, trans men who have had a phalloplasty are women. The perceived threat was always that men could just put on a dress and claim to be a trans woman, now a man could just lie and say they are a trans man. I think that will make women less safe than the previous position.
They said a woman was biological born woman, what are you smoking. There was no pick and mix in the decision.
I have enjoyed the people who so attacked the Supreme Court (“enemies of the people”) now saying how brilliant the Supreme Court are.
I haven't. They still need to be abolished. I do think they are doing it with an eye to the future though. It's not the behaviour of an organisation that is confident that we are at the start of a thousand year Starmer reich.
We need a final level appeal court - it was the House of Lords but that was replaced for sensible reasons. So what are you proposing we replace the Supreme Court with and how would it be different to the Supreme Court as it currently is given its main purpose
I would revert to the previous system, which, whatever the 'sensible reasons' was vital to the British constitutional system, where parliament is sovereign. Many of the issues we're now experiencing stem from the botched Blairite reforms.
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 1h The government borrowed £151 billion last financial year. Which was £14.6 billion more than the OBR estimate *last month*.
And yet their forecasts for five years time are being used as the entire basis for public policy decision making.
How on earth do you get a forecast for the year out by 9.6% when you're producing a report with about 85% of the data already known ?!
It indicates the error on the unknown portion was ~ 70ish %.
...or that the remaining 15% was grossly skewed. See, for example, the results from the 2024 Arizona Senate election, which had Kari Lake catching up but not fast enough as later results came in.
I had money on that: I may have mentioned it...
Or, more likely in my opinion, that there have been significant revisals to some of the "known" data.
But the point made by Freedman remains valid. The OBR's estimates continuously prove to be seriously unreliable. Restricting what we can spend now on the basis of where they think we will be in 5 years time is frankly laughable. In fairness to them it was Hunt that came up with this nonsense of debt falling in 5 years time and Reeves who kept it for her own purposes.
I think Freedman misses the point of the OBR and the fiscal rules. I don't think we can expect them to always be met, or the forecasts always to be bang on. They just serve as a control on unsustainable fiscal plans based on current information, and as a signal to the markets that someone is keeping an eye on things.
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Being nearly 10% out in the year just finished is highly alarming though, especially when their estimate came so late in that year. It suggests that the large tax increases introduced by Reeves have not been sufficient to cover the extra spending, very largely in wages, that she has allowed. That means the assumptions on which the current year estimate are based are seriously optimistic. Unless something meaningful is done to address that (ie yet more tax increases or even deeper cuts or both) we are going to borrow more yet again. It is disappointing that the guardians of our public finances completely missed such a miscalculation by the Treasury and the Chancellor. How can we rely on them going forward?
Did Reeves introduce large tax increases in the year just ended? What were they? Isn't the most significant increase the rise in NI for employers, which has only just been implemented and should raise a fair bit?
You're right. The biggest increases by far were Employers NI which has come in this month.
Yep - it was a very nasty surprise to someone last week when their £160 agency fee for a short week had £7.60 (ish) of employer NI deducted.
I have enjoyed the people who so attacked the Supreme Court (“enemies of the people”) now saying how brilliant the Supreme Court are.
I haven't. They still need to be abolished. I do think they are doing it with an eye to the future though. It's not the behaviour of an organisation that is confident that we are at the start of a thousand year Starmer reich.
We need a final level appeal court - it was the House of Lords but that was replaced for sensible reasons. So what are you proposing we replace the Supreme Court with and how would it be different to the Supreme Court as it currently is given its main purpose
I would revert to the previous system, which, whatever the 'sensible reasons' was vital to the British constitutional system, where parliament is sovereign. Many of the issues we're now experiencing stem from the botched Blairite reforms.
Parliament remains sovereign.
If the Court makes a ruling Parliament dislikes, then Parliament can override that with a new law.
The Court is merely interpreting the Common Law and laws made by Parliament. No more, no less.
I see this morning's Yougov poll would give 254 seats for Reform, 185 Labour, 75 Conservative, and 71 Lib Dems.
So another poll with a hung parliament and Kemi again holding the balance of power between Labour and Reform
Or the Lib Dems... I can't see the Conservatives agreeing to be the junior partner to Reform, it would be existential.
Anyway the seat models are no longer valid, they're based on 2 (+ small 3rd) party data. It'll take several elections of the current multi-party distribution before they are accurate.
Dimbleby has an R4 programme on Goldsmith for all you Brexit fans.
Comments
Evil and mendacious maybe, but not delusional.
I'm going on instinct here and have no detailed knowledge of the case other than the BBC article, but, as ever, it seems disproportionate to sentences for those for careless/dangerous driving.
With a reaonable basis for thinking so.
If Trump pulls the rug, he is in a wretched position. He has gone all in on Trump making the recent months worth the vast loss of men and materiel. It has barely yielded an extra 10 square kilometres.
Most places which take safeguarding seriously already have procedures in place to handle safeguarding complaints.
It’s entirely plausible of course, but I think a blanket statement like this does need a citation of some sort.
Putin playing whack-a-mole. Poorly.
"18 times more likely to be physically assaulted by a trans woman than by a man" is I think a reference to the percentage of trans women prisoners who are in for assault. What you need is this:
"Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
And I'm pretty sure that's not 18 times bigger than "Given that a person has been assaulted, what is the probability that the assaulter was a man". Because if it was there would be tens of thousands of trans women in prison for assault.
Women should go freely to the women's toilets, and men should stay out of it, even if they identify as women.
If someone is biologically male and going into the women's toilets, then they ought to be able to face action if a complaint is made and upheld.
It's worth re-iterating the provincial numbers are the key - a strong Liberal performance in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia would be enough for a majority. The CPC will win the Prairies but they need seats in the east and if the Liberals hold on, Poilievre will lose.
My father owned 2 x P6 Rover, an XJ6 and an XJ12 in that order so he did British car ownership on nightmare mode. When he retired he got a B5 Passat and always seemed overwhelmed with surprise and gratitude when it just worked.
But it would be a less than brilliant move. The Court of Appeal is a very busy place, and it deals with nearly everything arising on appeal, including urgent stuff, from the civil and criminal courts - which is a lot. And huge numbers of cases get there more or less as of right.
The SCUK is different; you only get there with permission and when there is a serious and unresolved point of law; it doesn't deal in disputes about facts or arguments about how to apply established law. it doesn't do anything much urgently. Its judgments are stupifyingly dull, even when dealing with something interesting, and can effortlessly wander back to 1250 in its efforts to unravel some point. It can deal with cases only understood by a handful of legal experts in some arcane field of tax, shipping or patent. Keep it.
The 335 paragraphs of this recent one is a classic, but not for the faint hearted:
https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2025/10.html
Whether you think the particular rule is a good one is another debate. Personally, I don't really care about the specifics but do get annoyed when they change all the time, so it's harder to make a consistent comparison between budgets. The other issue is when the assumptions are so obviously a pisstake, like on increasing Fuel Duty - the OBR should stamp that out.
Lab 23
Con 20
Ref 25
Lib 16
Again if that is the poll my usual comment applies in that I don't think current calculators cater for this type of split. For instance the LDs are not going down a seat if that were the result. They would be up. And my gut says that 254 for Reform looks like nonsense, but I haven't analysed that.
Lloyd 'well-versed' in health and safety being a trained firearms officer
The judge turns now to Lloyd's character and background.
Lloyd, who will turn 40 in two days, trained as a firearms officer after joining South Wales Police following university.
Mrs Justice Stacey says she will have been "well-versed" in the importance of health and safety and risk assessments and was also a trained RNLI volunteer.
Lloyd has no previous convictions but did accept a caution in October 2021 for a fraud offence relating to a vehicle insurance claim.
And there should be gender-neutral facilities available too, to be used, like the disabled.
Either way that's better than someone with a penis entering the women's.
@gregjenner.bsky.social
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
https://bsky.app/profile/gregjenner.bsky.social/post/3lnhxkdywzc2m
There is no issue for cis women in this ruling, glad you can see that now.
Nor, if there's appropriate third-space universal toilets, is there a problem for trans people.
It may not suit the extremists, but it should be a reasonable compromise for most people.
https://hwbusters.com/news/worlds-fastest-memory-shatters-speed-barriers-with-25-billion-writes-per-second-a-game-changer-for-ai-hardware/
Best be polite at all times because this means that China will have AI that will never forget
Fox jr2's flatmate is a Trans-woman and has become virtually housebound recently, in large part for the abuse she gets just walking down the street. Their abuse comes from men.
The saying "never break a spoon before midnight" suggests that one should save their "spoon" of energy, effort, or mental capacity until the end of the day, much like in the spoon theory from TPGi. It implies that one should avoid wasting their resources or abilities prematurely, reserving them for the most crucial tasks or moments later in the day.
So since you think that "go change somewhere else" is an acceptable answer to give to Peggie, why do you not think "go change somewhere else" is not an acceptable answer to trans people?
Why can't trans individuals get changed in gender-neutral facilities, leaving the single-sex facilities for those of that sex, rather than expecting people like Peggie to get uprooted and go elsewhere instead?
Lab: 24% (-10)
Ref: 24% (+9)
Con: 22% (-4)
LD: 17% (+4)
Green 10% (+3)
Compare the national headline numbers with the equivalent YouGov from before the 2021 locals (fieldwork on 21st and 22nd April 2021):
Lab: -11
Ref: +23
Con: -24
LD: +11
Green: +3
"Making 20mph universal" is a myth about the proposals, that never existed. The proposal was a change of default. The creation of such a myth was part of a fomented culture war - the clue is the widespread use of the term "blanket speed limit" - misrepresenting the proposals. The proposal was narrow, and included ample opportunity for exceptions by LHAs built into the process. We have even had a second round of review, which has allowed the North Walean LHAs to catch up with the South Walean.
As for broad consensus, there was a vote (NDM7355) in the Senedd in support of the proposals on 15 July 2020 when the motion was passed 45-6, with 7 from 11 Conservative Members of Senedd voting in support, and only one against. Two parties included it in their Manifestos and they received more than half the vote (60% constituency vote, 55% regional vote).
The consensus existed for the proposals. It is documented here, for example: https://www.20splenty.org/w_faq04
The real argument is where lines should be drawn, and whether people can be (imo) tricked into opposition to obvious, positive measures *. I think the result in Wales seems to be in approximately the correct place. What we need now is for the culture change to work through.
I'm not particularly by the politics of this, as the evidence in support is overwhelming, including ~30 years of evidence in England. The question is how quickly it will happen. The same overwhelming evidence is why Wales will not be taking steps backward in any significant way. Fewer collisions and lower insurance premiums are practical persuaders.
* Of course, I have a list of other positive measures things I would like to see introduced, starting with "speed up" signs (to say 40mph or 50mph) being put on the way OUT of a traffic island, not on the way IN. But those will be for another day.
Triumph Stag? When I was in the Stag owners club they would provide a low loader for the first driver who broke down on club events. Normally overheating.
Ford Fiesta? Weren't most of them made in Valencia and Cologne?
Nissan Leaf? An EV with a 100 mile range. Awesome.
The idiom "you can't comb your hair with a chisel" means that you can't use a tool inappropriately for its intended purpose. It highlights the absurdity of using something that is not designed for a specific task to attempt that task. In this case, a chisel is a woodworking tool, not a hair tool, so using it to comb hair would be completely illogical.
Here's a more detailed explanation: ...
Since you have already accepted "go change somewhere else" as a solution, there is no reason why Upton can't get changed somewhere else, leaving people like Peggie in peace in their protected space, is there?
If you just want to use the toilet, then using the gender-neutral toilet "somewhere else" fulfils that need.
The Dutch Speaker of the House at a dinner with the French Ambassador suggested splitting Belgium in 2
However, almost everyone (including the OBR) pointed out the "headroom" was exceptionally tight, which meant that any negative variation would mean a forced change tax and spending, and they pointed to the looming threat of tariffs among other risks. In answer to your question - I think the OBR report in the round is a very useful analysis, and always worth reading.
So we can draw a line in the sand here then? A reasonable judgement whereby women like Peggie get their protected single-sex spaces available to them, individuals like Upton can use alternative facilities elsewhere which protects their dignity too.
A compromise whereby everyone but the most extreme individuals can get what they need, even if its not what they want.
What is there to object to?
The greatest failing of people using AI is their inability to tell that the AI is making shit up and believing it wholesale.
Since that forecast all of a month ago we have had: a near 10% increase in borrowing from the forecast in the previous financial year; the reduction in growth estimated by the IMF yesterday and the continuing uncertainty caused by Trump and his lunacy, most recently in attacking the Fed. As you say, there is no headroom to talk of. We are getting close to needing an emergency budget to correct our course. Autumn seems a dangerously long way away.
For simplicity's sake, let's assume the only people doing the assaulting are cis men and trans women and that all assaulters are convicted. If a person is assaulted and the probability of that assaulter is 1/19 cis male and 18/19 trans, and the number of cis men in prison for assault is in the thousands, then the number of trans women in prison for assault is in the tens of thousands
In short "the probability that a trans woman will do an assault" is not the same stat as "Given that a person has been assaulted, the probability that the assaulter was a trans woman".
- The former is (number of trans women assaulters)/(number of trans women)
- The latter is (number of trans women assaulters)/(number of cis men and trans women assaulters)
Different divisors.https://x.com/maks_nafo_fella/status/1915024410836169131
As one would expect of the Daily Mail, no attention is applied to reliability !
A climb down is impossible for him.
If the Court makes a ruling Parliament dislikes, then Parliament can override that with a new law.
The Court is merely interpreting the Common Law and laws made by Parliament. No more, no less.
Anyway the seat models are no longer valid, they're based on 2 (+ small 3rd) party data. It'll take several elections of the current multi-party distribution before they are accurate.
Dimbleby has an R4 programme on Goldsmith for all you Brexit fans.