The furore around the election of Dr Manivannan to the Scottish Parliament is deeply troubling. There is no argument whatsoever that they were eligible to stand for election. The law was changed specifically in order for those on temporary visas to be able to stand in Scottish parliamentary elections.
I confess I am not sure that is altogether a good idea. I can see arguments both ways. There are far too many people amongst our neighbours who have to manage their lives through the Home Office’s discriminatory, hostile and prohibitively expensive immigration application systems. It is good to see such people given a voice.
On the other hand, there is a reasonable expectation of legislators having a fixed stake in the country for which they legislate.
I suspect like most people, the question had never even occurred to me until the current furore over Dr Manivannan and I have to give it some thought.
But whatever view one takes on what the law ought to be, the law as it stands is clear. Dr Manivannan was eligible, stood, and was duly elected.
That Scotland has subsequently been rocked by shrill calls for Dr Manivannan to be deported by the immigration authorities, I therefore find appalling. It is not only a denial of democracy, it is without doubt motivated by the most basic hatred and bigotry, both racist and anti-trans. To see such sentiments so openly espoused in Scotland I find deeply disturbing.
Almost amusing is the argument that, while it was perfectly legal for Dr Manivannan to stand for election, it is illegal for them to be elected.
This argument was first adopted by the radical anti-trans campaigning group For Women Scotland. This group was founded in order to oppose self-ID for trans people. 99% of its output is anti-trans rights argument. They would, however, have us believe that their objection to Dr Manivannan is nothing to do with their being trans, but a longstanding, though hitherto silent, interest in the minutiae of immigration legislation.
The practical reality is straightforward. The Scottish elections happened to fall just after Dr Manivannan completed their PhD.
There is the usual short gap between finishing the thesis and the formal end of the academic year. They are therefore still on their student visa.
They are in the process of applying for the next graduate visa. This would be the position whether or not they had been elected.
A new visa will be needed. It seems highly improbable that the Home Office would refuse one.
A seat in the Scottish Parliament is hardly unrelated to a PhD in Political Science. Quite apart from that, the democratic mandate ought to carry considerable weight.
I know Reform UK has coarsened political discourse across the UK. But to hear gleeful demands for an elected immigrant to be thrown out is dispiriting. Some of these voices even come from within the Scottish independence movement.
I also find the extreme anti-trans positions being put forward in relation to this case downright depressing. The Workers Party of Britain simply tweeted “Trans women are men”, while their lead candidate for Edinburgh argued directly that gender dysphoria is a mental illness and mentally ill people should be banned from parliament.
I have frequently complained that the gender identity question is dominated by such extreme and unreasonable positions. The complete denial of the validity of any trans people is an extreme position. It also rolls back 40 years of broad societal acceptance.
I first met Jan Morris in the 1980s, and have known several other trans people since. For decades, there was little open intolerance. I can’t recall anybody ever suggesting Jan Morris should not use women’s bathrooms – least of all the feminist movement of those times.
Feminism then was about breaking down sexual barriers, not erecting them.
The extraordinary attempt of the US-originated movement to erect differing gender identities into a compulsory and strange ideology transformed the situation. Attempting to introduce compelled speech is not something I support – I try to use people’s preferred pronouns out of politeness, for example, but it is not a matter for the state. The purpose of a pronoun is to specify an individual, not to signal political correctness.
The issue of self-ID led to a real political fracture. Personally I favour treating people as they wish to be treated, which favours self-ID. That is polite, tolerant and kind. But most people find the idea of people self-identifying themselves into women’s elite sports, or reserved women’s positions on boards, to be not obviously desirable.
Personally, I have always specifically opposed the idea that those who have used violence, including but not only sexual violence, against women should be able to self-identify into women’s prisons. That seems to me a blindingly practical exclusion.
The problem is the pro-trans lobby is equally dominated by extremists. They argue that any restriction on the ability of the individual to immediately self-identify is unacceptable, and any restriction on their being treated as their gender of choice is discrimination.
The problem with this position is that it assumes nobody ever lies. The problems for the trans movement has been caused by their inability to accept the existence of fake trans people. You cannot deny by ideology the existence of human criminal behaviour.
In practice, there are a number of men who pretend to be trans, but are not really trans, in order to gain access to women in various situations. I took the position that these were extremely rare and wrongly used to introduce smears against trans people as criminal into the debate.
But then, a succession of shocking cases in Scotland made me realise that my initial views had given insufficient weight to the need for protection of women from fake trans people.
I have had arguments with trans advocates who simply refuse to accept that such people exist. The cases of Isla Bryson, Serenity Francis Johnston, Katie Dolatowski and Alexandra Stewart are notorious and they do exist. They cannot simply be wished away.
They are certainly not representative of trans people in any way, but the debate could helpfully be shifted from the deliberate confusion of trans people with sexual perverts, if only the trans lobby would recognise that men falsely pretending to be trans do actually exist and this needs to be guarded against.
My own position is that anybody guilty of a sexual or violent offence should lose their right to change gender. I believe changing gender should be a right, but some rights are normally lost when you commit a serious crime. It seems to me that is the coherent basis for policy.
However I also believe that nobody should have their rights circumscribed before they have committed any crime, and the mantra of “you can’t tell which man is a rapist” is deeply wrong. It is as offensive and dangerous as racial or other profiling.
The “gender-critical” faction in Scotland have, as usual, reacted to my defending Dr Manivannan on social media by accusing me of adopting all kinds of positions I have never held – like allowing convicted rapists to self-identify into women’s prison, supporting medical intervention in children, or trans women boxers to compete in the Olympics.
Neither side of the debate seems able to comprehend for a moment that people of good will might be trying, in good faith, to find compromises to balance rights so that trans people may lead full and happy lives while hard-won feminine rights – and safety – might not be endangered by faux opportunists.
But it is difficult to explain anything when everybody is screaming at you.
Here is a truth. Scottish people are not stupid. It is extremely well known by now that the Scottish Greens have a very strong line indeed on supporting trans rights and gender self- ID. The Scottish Greens regard my own position outlined above as extremely reactionary. They are fully signed up to the ideology of gender fluidity and its compulsory acceptance.
In the last two Scottish parliamentary elections, alternative pro-Independence parties have stood, noisily, on the very specific and openly stated position that “Trans women are men” and that they oppose trans rights. Most notably Alba in 2021, but also the Independence for Scotland Party and the Workers’ Party of Britain. Famous Independent candidates like Fergus Ewing and Ash Regan also made this a major plank of their platforms.
The party I stood for, Alliance to Liberate Scotland, while having no formal position on the issue, featured mostly candidates who are vocally anti-trans.
Next to nobody voted for them.
A lot of people voted Green.
All of the pro-Independence parties which adopted extreme anti-trans positions got derisory votes, fractions of one per cent. The Greens got many times as many votes. That is how democracy works.
Nicola Sturgeon derailed the SNP when she shifted its emphasis from Independence to identity politics. There is no doubt she shifted the emphasis on purpose. The toxicity of the trans issue in Scottish politics is her legacy – she approached it in the most abrasive and divisive way possible, and used it to force out of her party those not loyal to her. The single most important cause of hatred towards trans people in Scotland is Nicola Sturgeon.
None of which was the fault of Dr Manivannan, but they are the current lightning rod for the resultant hatred. Which is entirely unfair.
It is par for the course that the Tories and Reform are attacking Dr Manivannan. Bigotry is what they do. But for alleged socialists and Independence supporters to join in is deeply dispiriting,
Dr Manivannan has done nothing wrong and is by all accounts a very pleasant and gentle soul. They were elected. Please stop the hate. This member of the Scottish parliament, elected by the Scottish people, must be defended against any attack from the London-based UK Home Office.
———————————
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I’m sure them is a perfect Scottsman, wearing kilt, playing bagpipe, eating haggis and all. Scott-lyandd must be frrrreee!
What worries me here is this kind of stuff: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-grooming-gangs-unexamined-organized-crime-angle/ Maybe the ex-Israeli ex-journalist is exaggerating the problem, I dunno. But ethnic criminal gangs need to live in symbiosis with law enforcement and politicians, and ethnic politicians will be more likely to cooperate with ethnic criminal gangs.
Something is rotten in the state of Britain? As we all know, Winston Churchill strongly opposed Indian self-governance, believing Indians were incapable of managing their own affairs and that independence would lead to chaos and the destruction of essential services. In the same way, I am inclined to think that UK (and maybe the whole Europe) today is not capable of self-governance and need a strong man to fix it up. Maybe Putin, maybe the reptiloids, maybe the little green men from outer space will do this, but this must be someone from the outside.
independence would lead to chaos and the destruction of essential services
Ironic when you consider how our essential services have become dependent on immigrants from the Indian sub-continent (and elsewhere).
A common belief amongst old style colonialists that the peoples they ruled over were incapable of governing their own affairs but yes, let’s have Putin over, a man unlikely to embroil the country in futile unnecessary wars or trash the economy.
All Putin’s wars are reactive, not proactive in their nature. Just leave Russia alone and Putin won’t start any wars. To quote Churchill again, if you want peace in Europe, you need to respect Russia’s concerns of the safety of her western borders. But there are no Churchills among you today
26 years of demonizing Putin really took toll on your brains. You never tried to understand Putin; that he, just like Bismark, is moved by fear, not by ideology (like Hitler), or pride and vanity (like Trump).
Ah yes. More oligarchy is precisely what we need!
Not.
Can’t be any worse than zogarchy !
Definitely don’t need more of that either!
The measure of economic inequality, Gini index, is about the same for Russia (35.1) and UK (32.4), according to WB.
But if your prefer maroon trans-humanoids, I can’t stop you.
Britain has been an oligarchy since 1066 if not before. Ain’t gonna change now, not even if the UK adopts a sensible foreign policy towards Russia.
There was no Britain in 1066.
“There was no Britain in 1066.”
Did you bunk off all your history lessons?
May 18, 2026 at 09:26
Bayard;
“There was no Britain in 1066.”
Did you bunk off all your history lessons?
========
I suspect he was making an assumption that by “Britain” you meant “United Kingdom“
You actually meant the kingdom of England – didn’t you?
If so then JM is merely stating a fact!
“You actually meant the kingdom of England – didn’t you?”
Well, yes I did, but JM is still wrong: the kingdoms of Scotland and England and the principalities of Wales were part of Britain in 1066. Britain has been Britain since Roman times.
“26 years of demonizing Putin really took toll on your brains. ”
Not really, it’s just the same cognitive error of being unable to see any wrong in your heroes or right in your villains that PM himself decries down thread WRT trans activists. Plenty of that kind of thing apparent in the comments on this blog on a wide variety of subjects.
“yes, let’s have Putin over, a man unlikely to embroil the country in futile unnecessary wars or trash the economy.”
Are you trying to be sarcastic here and, if so, didn’t you really mean Trump?
Trump? You mean Putin’s bastard.
No. A moment’s thought and research (you should try thinking, it’s a rewarding activity) would enlighten you to the fact that Trump is older than Putin and therefore cannot be his offspring.
Applies to Trump as well, yes. Well spotted.
“and ethnic politicians will be more likely to cooperate with ethnic criminal gangs.
Would you care to substantiate that?
What like the grooming gangs ?
Now ask yourself: who is responsible for the majority of child sex abuse in the UK?
How’s the Epstein Class Investigation going again?
The Epstein island is not really an island; it is the underwater tip of an iceberg. The huge underwater part is described in the paper I gave the link to.
I meant, “the above water tip of the iceberg”.
If I wanted to make absolutely sure that white people were responsible for the majority of child sex abuse in the UK, a perfect way of achieving this would be to ignore thousands and thousands of cases of child rape by non-whites, and simply refuse to investigate them. Then the perpetrators would never even be charged, far less convicted. Then I could go round shouting and pointing – “Look! Look everybody! Look who’s responsibe for the majority of child sex abuse in the UK! It’s wypipo!”
“If I wanted to make absolutely sure that white people were responsible for the majority of child sex abuse in the UK, a perfect way of achieving this would be to ignore thousands and thousands of cases of child rape by non-whites”
Or you could use the statistics, but’ I suppose they might give the Wrong Answer. Just keep up the racist polemic, you know it delivers results: thousands of Blackshirts can’t have been wrong.
“Now ask yourself: who is responsible for the majority of child sex abuse in the UK?”
Have you ever heard of a local council’s social services, so efficient at kidnapping working class children, investigate a boarding school? There is sexual abuse in all boarding schools. They are machines for abuse and anyone who looks at them clearly and from a humanitarian point of view will agree they should be abolished.
^ This isn’t intended as “whataboutery”. Pakistani Muslim men who have sexually abused children should be jailed, and everyone knows the British authorities condoned their activities for a long time. But the authorities continue to condone abuse widespread sexual abuse of children by others too.
“There is sexual abuse in all boarding schools. They are machines for abuse and anyone who looks at them clearly and from a humanitarian point of view will agree they should be abolished.”
You should try talking to people who have been to boarding school instead of just reading rubbish written by people who haven’t and simply imagine what it must be like based on nothing better than class prejudice. I know you also have the false idea that all parents who send their children to boarding school do so because they hate them (and I would ask you to consider how you would feel if someone said that about your parents), but that is rubbish, too. The vast majority of parents send their children to boarding school for one reason only, which is to give them a better education than is available locally. They would very soon know if there was any sexual abuse going on in the school that they have chosen for their children and would be taking them away pronto.
I can see how this works in the Ural region of Russia, where the Azeri diaspora is strong.
Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote; I said ‘substantiate’.
But I guess you don’t care, other than to troll.
Maybe next time you won’t forget to say “please”?
A typically humane, balanced and intelligent response, Craig. No reasonable person could object to any part of what you’ve written.
However……there is the issue of, well, Reality; can that – admittedly nebulous – concept be so casually dismissed ? If the idea is accepted that humans can change sex, ie become the opposite of their natal sex ( please, don’t anyone start on the whole Gender/Sex ( bogus ) dichotomy nonsense ) then we have to redefine how we understand Reality.
My concerns on the issue are to do with TWAW. No, they’re not, and never will/could be women. Some men can ” pass ” as women, and many I’m sure are more comfortable acting/feeling/imagining they are ACTUAL women; and probably the majority of such do so without causing any distress or threat to women. or anyone else.
But I’m not a woman, so I can’t know what it’s like to be, to more or less be compelled to be confronted with this issue and it’s implications ( ” Transmen ” don’t seem to be the source of as much ” controversy “; as yet ). I imagine it could be very disturbing to think that what you, and every other female since the evolution of humankind has taken as an immutable condition, with distinctive characteristics and biological capacities ie a Woman, is not in fact immutable, but merely an label ” assigned at birth ” ( it’s this kind of idiocy that really irritates ) and has no ontological substance: in effect ” anyone ” can become a woman.
There’s also the very concerning focus on young, often very young children, involving irreversible, irreparable surgery and often based on an ideological interpretation of child behaviour/s that historically would have been understood much more simply, and correctly.
When you learn that such drastic, life-defining actions like amputating healthy body parts – in anyone, but particularly young people- can be based on the demented metaphysics of being ” born in wrong body ” we have to enquire WTF is going on.
As previously stated…….if the category Woman can be essentially rendered meaningless, how long before the same fate befalls the category Human?
# War On Reality
I have no idea if people can change sex, not knowing the limits of medical science. The question that interests me is whether people ought to be able to live in the way they wish to live, when they are not engaging in any harm to others.
A man or a woman is of one sex or the other because of the chromosomes in every single cell of the body. If a man wishes to live as a woman, or vice versa, well and good – but the “woman” is still a man, or the “man” a woman.
That is just as much true as that a man cannot, by taking thought, become a python, a seagull, or a beetle.
As for a man insisting that he be called “they”, that is certainly a very effective way of attracting attention. But it is confusing, as “they” fundamentally is a plural form.
“As for a man insisting that he be called “they”, that is certainly a very effective way of attracting attention”.
Not really, “they” is already in use where the sex of the person being referred to is uncertain due to lack of knowledge, it is only a small step to extend that to cover uncertainty due to personal preference.
“But it is confusing, as “they” fundamentally is a plural form.”
English has lacked a gender-neutral way of referring to people ever since the word “wer” fell out of use, to be replaced by “man”. Now that there is felt to be a need for such things, the language has changed, as languages always do, and “they” has been co-opted to provide a gender-neutral singular pronoun. Sure it’s the same word as “they”, the plural pronoun, but English is stuffed full of synonyms and one more isn’t going to hurt. It’s not as if the word can’t be used for its original purpose, unlike “gay”.
Biological sex is not assigned at birth, it’s determined at conception by the arrangement of X and Y chromosomes in a persons genes and is immutable. It remains unchanged throughout a persons life and beyond. See Profs Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston, both of whom have been subject to abuse for stating this scientific fact.
The problem with your approach is very simple Craig. By the time we find out that he wasn’t “not engaging in any harm to others” it’s already too late, and somebody has been sacrificed on the altar of your goodness. Is that really ok because some of them will “only” be raped or “only” be molested. Can you put a number on how many such sacrifices is an acceptable number?
The best reason not to let a man into women’s toilets is that he wants to go in there in the first place.
Then you should also be in prison on the off chance you decide to rob a bank, or rape a goat, or murder a traffic warden. Assigning pre-crime status to anyone other than an actual criminal isn’t just a slippery slope, it’s a cliff edge.
Dean – where does anyone mention imprisoning trans people?
“By the time we find out that he wasn’t “not engaging in any harm to others” it’s already too late, ”
A moment’s thought would have shown you that this is true for nearly every criminal in the country, but I suppose thinking is hard, let’s go marching. It’s this sort of attitude that produced the necessity for it to be coded into British law that everyone is innocent until proved guilty, not the other way round, as you would seem to prefer.
Bayard – so banks should not contain safes?
Try reading my comment again and working out the difference in your mind between “Everyone is innocent until proved guilty” (my point) and “criminals don’t exist” (your point).
To banks everyone is a potential criminal- and I should not have to tell you why!!
Banks are locking up their valuables because realise that amongst the population there are those that might take them if they didn’t. That’s not the same as restraining the entire population for the same reason.
By your reasoning, every adult is a potential paedophile and therefore no adults should be allowed anywhere near children, because “by the time we find out that they weren’t “not engaging in any harm to others” it’s already too late,”
Ladies toilets are the equivalent of the bank safe.
Who doesn’t understand that.
“Who doesn’t understand that.”
Everybody except you, I think.
‘Banks are locking up their valuables because they realise that amongst the population there are those that might take them if they didn’t. That’s not the same as restraining the entire population for the same reason.’
Ladies toilets exclude men because it is realised that there are men who might take advantage of access to do harm to women.
Perhaps it is hard for your ‘superior’ mind to grasp that.
‘The best reason not to let a man into women’s toilets is that he wants to go in there in the first place.
‘
David- well said – you have hit the nail square on the head.
Craig,
I am a PhD biologist/biochemist/medical scientist and academic (retired). Believe me, in humans and most vertebrates sex is immutable (some species of fish for example can, under certain circumstances, change sex, but not mammals). It is literally built into the DNA.
Human beings cannot change sex, notwithstanding medical, surgical and hormonal manipulations.
That is a simple fact. You can check this out very easily in the scientific literature. So now you DO have an idea “whether or mot people can change sex”.
They can’t. The rest is sociology – which of course is Not a science.
I hope this clarifies things for you. You now have no excuse for your apparent uncertainty.
Thanks for some science John O’Dowd, what has to be mentioned in this debate is the unrestricted(at first) release of sex altering chemicals, such as Oestrogen, and other similar substances such as plasticisers, into the environment since the 1960’s,
What are the percentage of these chemicals that are released into us and the environs, and what is the effect of longterm exposure of such chems on our genetic makeup, especially that of child bearing women?
Politicians should remember that they all have sex and that their personal proclivities can and will be dragged out during elections, prioritising it even, rather than talk about policies that could lead to a more civilised science based attitude to the issues we have barely scratched, an issue that for years has hardened attitudes, including mine.
The media does not help at all when sexual politics fly from left to right, they thrive and promote it, advertandly helping one or other position in the ensuing debate.
The companies that produced these chemicals for decades have an obligation to clean up their act, be responsible enough to look for alternatives, and help in alleviating the releases into the environment, into the air, waters and our lands.
John O’Dowd
” in humans and most vertebrates sex is immutable (some species of fish for example can, under certain circumstances, change sex, but not mammals). It is literally built into the DNA.”
How does this work for hermaphrodites?
Hermaphrodite? What species. Many invertebrates – for example earthworms – are hermaphrodite. Each individual individual is both male and female and has both kinds of genital apparatus. When they mate, they couple at each male-female region of each animal and swap sperm which fertilises eggs in each individual. This is an example of true hermaphroditism – which has many forms in many different animals and plants.
In contrast, “human hermaphroditism” is not a biologically accurate term; instead, humans experience rare intersex conditions (often ovotesticular DSD) involving ambiguous genitalia or mixed tissue, which do not enable functional dual reproduction.
these individuals are sterile – therefore it is not true hermaphroditism – which is sexually and reproductively functional.
Science depends on the accurate use of concepts and language to describe underlying phenomena faithfully. Unfortunately the misuse of technical terms appropriated into general usage results in the kind of confusion alluded to above.
The six most common karyotypes of biological sex in human beings that do not result in death to the fetus:
X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s )
XX – Most common form of female
XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter)
XY – Most common form of male
XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people
XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births
https://www.joshuakennon.com/the-six-common-biological-sexes-in-humans/
this is I think true but does not speak to the Trans debate really. I say this because the concept of a transgender person cannot be articulated without reference to biological sex. Nor can gender dysmorphia, a scientifically recognised condition. So we do have to admit of a distinction between biological sex and gender to make sense of the real phenomena of trans people.
“I have no idea if people can change sex”.
I don’t believe you. Most people lie because they are afraid to tell the truth.
But, Craig, they are harming others – women and girls – by trying to muscle in and take away their rights and sense of themselves as females. We just don’t want them anywhere near us. It doesn’t matter if they are predisposed to violence or not, the very fact that they cross-dress means that they are one of three categories – 1. transvestites; 2. autogynephiles; 3. fetishists. This has been known for many, many years. They are not poor, confused wee men. They are men who have a kink, a deviant sexual identity and who want to be treated as ‘normal’.
That means that they ‘must’ be given sanction to occupy female spaces. Yes, some of these men used female loos in the past, but women always recognised them. It both amuses and horrifies just how little attention men pay to their own sex when they are larping as women. Women, because we have evolved through generation after generation to deflect male unwanted attentions clock immediately when a man is larping as a ‘woman’. That is why so few men actually get it. They come out with little homilies like, “this bores me, and, if these men are harming no one, they should be allowed into female spaces.”
No, they should not. They are not females, they are not women and they are not girls. They are men. If they want to stay away from other men who, according to them, just exist to beat them up and kill them, they should have started campaigning for their own spaces many years ago, shouldn’t they? As women had to do. Most places could accommodate a unisex loo. They shouldn’t be larping as disabled either because disabled people need their own loos.
The answer to their woes is simple. Why don’t they campaign for their own spaces? Guess, Craig and all the other gents on here who don’t give a toss for female rights, dignity or safety? It’s because they are motivated by sexual feelz. ALL of them. They would never admit it, of course, because that would spoil the narrative. Just gaining access to female spaces gives them a power b****r. Having women flap around them gives them a b***r. Making women and girls afraid or uncomfortable gives them a b***r. The thing is, I believe, as a woman, that most of you men know exactly what this is about, and, like your ‘trans’ brethren, are in denial. Oh, and too many of you do not see women as fully-formed, autonomous human beings.
It almost makes me wish that all those girls who have cut off their breasts and taken testosterone would crowd into all your private spaces. Hang around and watch you pee. Stare at you while you undress. Enter your changing rooms and stare at you. Demand that sporting standards for men should drop so that they can compete against you and take away your medals and trophies and scholarships. Demand to be accommodated on a male ward. Tell you that maleness is just a state of mind and that anyone can be male, a man. If you object, you get arrested when they complain to the police that you are intimidating them and want them to be “genocided”.
What anti-trans (especially Evangelical) people need to wrap their heads around is that, in the natural world, it is perfectly possible for gender to be fluid.
Velociraptors changed gender roughly half way through their lives and modern day chickens can do too. What does that tell you?
And if your view is that XY chromosome = a gender and XX chromosomes = the other gender (regardless of what adjective or noun you use to describe those two genders), by what adjective or noun do you describe people born with chromosomes additional to those two sets? Or people born with both functional sets of genitalia?
Oh, The Nature Argument… Yes, being an ardent scuba diver I am aware that sex transformations are common among the sea creatures. Some moray and ribbon eels begin their lives as males and end up as females; parrotfishes and wrasses do the opposite. Yet no mammals do that. And the “nature argument” can justify such wonderful things as cannibalism, polygamy, incest, streetfighting and even wars. It is natural for the gangs of chimps to fight other gangs, kill and even eat their members.
Don’t be riduculous. Velociraptors didn’t have “genders” and neither do modern chickens. Do you seriously think there are chickens out there saying to themselves “Oh I’m antegender!”? Or “Oh I’m caelgender!” Or “Oh I’m genderqueer!”
“Velociraptors changed gender roughly half way through their lives and modern day chickens can do too. What does that tell you?”
It tells me that human beings are pumping modern day chickens full of frightening levels of appalling destructive hormones.
“Velociraptors changed gender roughly half way through their lives and modern day chickens can do too. What does that tell you?”
That you are well-read.
Oh, and that human beings are not velociraptors or chickens.
“Velociraptors changed gender roughly half way through their lives and modern day chickens can do too.”
The latter is not true and I doubt the former. From an article by: Dr. Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky
It is possible for a female chicken to take on external characteristics of a male, a phenomenon referred to as sex reversal. (To date, spontaneous sex reversal from male to female has not been reported.) Genetically and anatomically, a chicken that has experienced sex reversal is still a hen, but it has secondary characteristics similar to those of a male.
So the chicken hasn’t changed sex, just appearance.
Chicks with dicks ? 😉
Nope, sadly, though that made me laugh. It’s only the secondary characteristics that change.
Bayard has the right of it. It is perfectly possible for Jennifer Lawrence to grow whiskers or for Tyson Fury to grow breasts. This would have no bearing on their sex and ought to have no bearing on their perceived gender.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/why-i-am-suing-my-trade-union/
It may well become possible in the future to ‘change sex’, but it is not possible now. Yes, people should be free to live as they choose with the proviso that they do not impinge on the rights of others. When Rachel Dolezal tried to pass herself off as a black woman, and to speak for black women, most people with two braincells knew that was both insulting to black people per se and demeaning in trying to access the lived experience of black people. Anyone with sense could agree that she, a white woman could never, ever be a black woman.
If we can all, or most of us, see how insulting and demeaning and plain wrong that was, can someone explain the difference? Women are not a dress, long hair, a pair of heeled shoes and a lipstick, and no amount of removal of sex organs can change a man into a woman. The first thing I would ask any cross-dressing man is: why do you do it? The second would be: why don’t you campaign for your own spaces, away from women? Most, if not all, unless he is a homosexual man, will do it because it gives him sexual pleasure to do so. Please explain why women should put up with men who want to use them as props in their own sex show? It has long been known that these men are either fetishists or autogynephiles, and, now, because they play the sympathy card, we are all supposed to welcome them into our sex-based spaces and rights.
I do not seek to be insulting to all men, but the men who support these other men’s aggressive encroachment on female spaces, services and rights, lead me to asking the same questions: why do you support them and why do you not think that they should have their own spaces, etc.? The answer, I think, is that all men know, and have always known, what the motivation is for heterosexual men to cross-dress. That many do stand up for women is to be applauded, but the rest who do not have questions to answer.
Q Manivannan and the Greens – it’s always the Greens, who are the greatest parasites in the history of politics – knew what they were doing, too. They knew. The result of allowing people with temporary visas to stand for election to Holyrood is that the ‘temporary’ visa will very quickly become a ‘permanent’ visa – an advantage not given to all who land on our shores or, conversely, to Scots who land on other shores. Very clever little…can we call it a ploy? So many people these days spotting the main chance and grabbing it regardless of consequences for others. Oh, and well spotted about the ‘human’ category.
Much of what is described as ‘transphobia’ is a reaction to the way trans activists have controlled the debate over the past several years. Using violence, intimidation and threats to silence dissenting voices.
Video (1m 06s): “Trans protestors clash with police in ambush attempt of gender critical conference” (The Telegraph, 23 March 2024) – [YouTube] [Invidious]
Most feminists branded transphobes are nothing of the sort, they just want to be heard. Be able to express their right to free speech without being shouted down, cancelled or de-platformed.
I suppose somebody would argue that preventing prisoners transitioning or whatever infringes their human rights but it’s more common for sex offenders to decide they were ‘born in the wrong body’ after they’re arrested ie when they’re still legally innocent. There was a case locally where a rapist, whose victims included an 11 year old girl, claimed to self ID as a woman after arrest. In accordance with MoJ rules male pronouns were used throughout the trail but sentencing was done using the female name; after which they were sent to a male prison because ‘she’ is considered to be a danger to women…
Many of them actually are transphobes. The glee with which cruel photos mocking the physical appearance of trans women are published is one obvious example.
Possibly the Daily Mail but then some just take the wotsit, particularly true of sex offenders who claim to be trans.
“The glee with which cruel photos mocking the physical appearance of trans women are published is one obvious example.”
None of which would have happened if the whole matter of sex-transitioning hadn’t been politically weaponised. Both transphobes and trans people would have remained in the obscurity in which they had lived until that point. It’s just another in the long, long line of campaigns to get the Little People fighting amongst themselves so they don’t turn on the Big People who are robbing them.
Yes there is definitely a (significant) element here of an identity politics issue being weaponised for political gain – see how Labour Together used such “allied” statements to get Starmer to present himself as “left wing” and attract the support of left wing Labour Party Members…whom he subsequently stabbed in the back and “cut out of the Party”, with current conduct and policy rather overtly hostile to trans people. Sturgeon clearly used it as a means of distracting from Scottish Independence.
As I understand it, the zionists have been one of the biggest pushers of the radical trans ideology. Divide and conquer, destruction of religious beliefs, backdoor pedophilia, special rights for a group that is much less than 1% of the population. There are no votes in this madness, so why get involved ?
If you look at enough religions across a long enough time span, even as an individual indoctrinated into one particular mainstream religion since birth, you can reasonably conclude that pretty much all religion has been an attempt by groups seeking to attain or maintain power and control through applying otherwise illogical mysticism and sorcery to geological, meteorological and astrological events, for which rational explanations are rather better provided by the scientific method.
I doubt there is a connection. This is just the nature of neo-liberalism, this ugly bastard of the US Democratic Party.
If you remember, the famous “It’s the economy, stupid!” took Bill Clinton to victory in 1992. However, the Enron/Dotcom and the 2008-9 housing bubble crisises finished the clintonomics off. To survive, the Dems invented the new thing, neoliberalism, which is protecting people identities, like race and gender. To keep on going, they have to constantly invent new identities that need protection, so they added LGBTQ+, transgender and so on. This is an ersatz freedom for the masses in lieu of economic prosperity: if you can’t afford to buy a house, change your sex and we’ll protect you!
” It’s just another in the long, long line of campaigns to get the Little People fighting amongst themselves so they don’t turn on the Big People who are robbing them.”. Yes, B, and this is why I never get involved in arguments on the subject online, or anywhere else. I’m, in general, deeply suspicious of how, and why, this has become such a loud, divisive and contentious issue: as ever in such cases we have to ask….cui bono?
We know Big Pharma has a very large ” stake ” in the whole * Transitioning * madness, ie apart from the very lucrative surgical aspect, there is also the requirement of lifelong medications – what’s not to like about that scenario from a corporate profit POV? As stated, above, I also think the whole ” Trans ” thing is a stage in the Holy Grail and fantasy Elixir of Immortality pursuit which is the wet dream of every Plutocrat, ie extending life via Transhumanism.
Y’know when – as a contemporary New God of Tech – you have explored every hedonistic pursuit known to man ( and many unknown ), got all the materialistic baubles, bangles, ie houses, cars, islands, humans, and still you’re faced with the inconvenient fact of your mortality, what’s left other than to use your wealth to try to defy that fact, that terrible reality of your inevitable oblivion.
I simply don’t believe the dramatic rise in people claiming to be ” really ” the opposite sex is in anyway ” organic ” – why now, why so many? but has been and continues to be driven and promoted by and for ulterior sources/motives. There is also likely an element of ” Social Contagion ” involved; like, eg in the case of Anorexia Nervosa. People, particularly young people, are impressionable and it’s easy to picture how, eg a teenager with all the angst, confusion and conflicting thoughts/emotions of that time-of-life could persuade themselves ( influenced perhaps by the plethora of ” Gender “-obsessed entities/individuals extant these days ) that their problems are down to ” being in the wrong body ” and their troubles would be resolved by ” becoming what they really are “.
I see the whole phenomenon as humankind taking another wrong turn – something we seem to be particularly adept at – and will ultimately do more harm than good to us as a species. As always, time will tell.
“People, particularly young people, are impressionable and it’s easy to picture how, eg a teenager with all the angst, confusion and conflicting thoughts/emotions of that time-of-life could persuade themselves ( influenced perhaps by the plethora of ” Gender “-obsessed entities/individuals extant these days ) that their problems are down to ” being in the wrong body ” and their troubles would be resolved by ” becoming what they really are “.
There is also element of consumerism in this: “spend enough money and you can solve your problems” has been the salesman’s mantra since way before consumerism as a concept was even thought of. Think of the Catholic church selling indulgences so that rich people could buy their way into heaven.
Didn’t Sturgeon adopt trans as a wedge issue to split the Snat grass roots? Using trans as a stick to beat people is the worst disservice to people who want a quiet life and to decide for themselves whether to wear jeans or a dress.
I don’t condone unnecessary rudeness or cruelty – by anyone, to anyone.
However a man who insists on being treated as a woman, or a woman who wants to be treated as a man, is flying in the face of reality. Mockery and laughter are natural ways for human beings to cope with such absurd and worrying pretences.
As always, the order of things should be observed. First establish the facts, and then decide what you want to do about them. I have no issue with a man who lets it be known that he wishes to be treated as if he were a woman – provided he does so courteously, and then proceeds to behave as a woman would. Likewise for a woman who prefers to be treated as a man. History has witnessed many examples of both cases. Normal people – that is, those who make no bones about their natural sex – are liable to be confused and suspicious about “trans” people; if a man says that he is now a woman, are they to expect typical female behaviour from him in future? That uncertainty, which can be frightening, no doubt lies behind a lot of the mockery. Val McDermid, who couldn’t really be accused of male chauvinism or anti-feminism, brought out an extreme possibility in her thriller “The Angels Singing”. (Don’t read if you have a weak stomach).
The problem arises when someone insists that a man IS a woman, or vice versa. Not physically possible at present, and the lame invention of “gender” does nothing to help.
Unattractive biological women have always been mocked for their appearance – the question is that after a millenia why are men suddenly bothered?
If they are women, they will use whatever weapons they can find, Craig. We do not have their brute strength, or their natural aggression emanating from testosterone, or their sexual fetishes (in the main). Ergo, they use what they can find, and holding a mirror up to these deluded men is just another weapon. The arsenal that these men use against women – that all men use against women in relation to their looks, their shape, etc. – is vast. Women’s is limited so they will be used to create the most crippling effect possible. Had they kept to their own lane, worn their frocks and make-up, we would never have bothered them. Overreach should be a lesson right across the board. I have lived a long time, and I have never before seen such a horrendous men’s rights/sexual rights movement that plays the victim card, and nor have I seen just rage as women express now. This is going to end badly.
“Much of what is described as ‘transphobia’ is a reaction to the way trans activists have controlled the debate over the past several years. Using violence, intimidation and threats to silence dissenting voices.”
Agreed, and you can substitute “anti-semitism” for “transphobia” and “Zionists” for “trans activists”. It’s an MO that works, that’s why people use it.
As the category of trans people, you are more likely to experience violence than the category of women is. But woe betide you if you calmly present this stat to someone like Shelagh Fogarty as you will simply be ‘splained at and told that that stat can’t be true simply because she refuses to accept it.
It’s a statistic capable of being used in confused and misleading ways. Many true statistics are.
Gender dysphorics have a right to be protected from the threat of violence. They don’t have a right to insist that sane people accept crazy crap as true.
Funnily enough, we still have laws that protect people, all people, from the threat of violence. We don’t need special laws for minority groups, we just need the existing laws to be properly enforced.
Once you go down the route of special laws for special groups then you end up with a two tier justice system.
If its a stat the tell us your source please.
It’s because rather than seeking out the views of the Trans community, the SNP sought the views of attention seekers. I don’t know whether they intentionally did this to make more of a splash, but that’s what has gotten us to the point where this comments section is roughly on par with fox news’s “opinion” page.
A substantial part of the problem is the fasle dichotomy: you or I are either transphobes or not. I think I’m an agnostic here: I certianly don’t have a the relevant phobia, but I do think that the same restrictions that apply to men should apply to transwomen as well.
We as a society already discriminate against a whole category of people (men) on the basis of the bad behaivior of a small fraction of that categtory, and we accept that discrimination.
Most of the time, it seems right to do what’s courteous.
I was a bit surprised about this law change, which goes in the opposite direction of the Australian and New Zealand parliamentary eligibility crises, where even dual nationality was considered disqualifying (reasonably so, I thought). I suppose the difference with the Scottish Parliament is deemed to be its lack of foreign policy.
There are other ways for foreign students to contribute to Scottish politics, perhaps as a special adviser, rather than a Representative, although I suppose the Westminster idea of amateurism has been adopted for MSPs.
I agree you have to wonder who oppositional ideologies serve. I suppose another example would be people denying there were predators on Pride marches, despite that recent SNP council leader’s conviction. But perhaps we will all be pleasantly surprised this time by an informed Green focus on supremely urgent ecological threats, environmental problems and living planet welfare concerns in this parliament.
MSPs have to swear an oath of allegiance to
which is a strange thing for a citizen of the Republic of India to commit to.
In some cases, the nation they belong to will have some significant claim on a citizen, such as compulsory military service, but this doesn’t seem activated in the case of India. It would seem to rule out citizens of some other nations becoming MSPs, though. Maybe Indian authorities would be quite happy to waive requirements and make exceptions to have its citizens in other countries’ legislatures, I don’t know. Maybe they could teach us a thing or two about constitutions.
No worries, just one of many badly-written, half-baked laws drafted by michief-makers or incompetents.
We should be used to that by now, just as we should expect to see a pretty long-stretched fudge to produce a work-permit which I understand is not attached.
Not ready for independence I fancy.
Spot on with your summary of why there is even a “Trans Issue” in Scotland. The SNP under Sturgeon was a center right party self identifying as a left wing party but in the absence of any real policy shift away from neoliberalism they went the “virtue signalling” route of the center right US democrat party, likely with the hope that she could ride a glittery pony into a new job in the European commission off the back of it. Trans people should detest her, she didn’t help them, she used them.
@ Dean I rather agree but but centre right = far right.
“…centre right = far right”.
That depends entirely on where you are standing.
Sex changes in the surgical sense are established since the 1970s, rather early in the GDR e.g. 1976. FRG 1981.
Currently around 3000 people (peaking in 2023) undergo the procedure annually.
That however is only the beginning of it. The mixture of substances that the patient has to take in preparation and in the aftermath are an ordeal many were not aware of in the past.
It should be clear that no one will undergo this painful procedure for sake of fun or performance.
The original sex must bear a very heavy toll on an individual first.
The entire scheme of instrumentalisation in the political on all sides is an entirely different matter.
Including the lingual absurdities.
Fwiw in Berlin 0.065% of the population (=2400 people as of Oct. 2025) have asked for being registered under a different sex.i.e. it is on paper only. The actual surgery is a separate matter. But also it show who overblown the issue is and how dumb by DIE LINKE e.g. to let themselves get diverted so massively by very minority interests at the cost of serious topics re: labour movement and peace movement, both of which have taken huge damage in the wake of this new agenda.
edit, typos sorry:
“But also it shows how overblown”
This. Precisely this.
And the minority groups of people the 99% should be going after are kiddie fiddlers, the Epstein Class and other oligarchs. Which, incidentally, have rather a lot of overlap.
No better way to keep the people split than a trans immigrant elected as a Scottish MP.
Does rather beg the question who was behind this shit !
The people who voted them in presumably. I’m sure that’s how the process works
Not to mention referring to a single person as “they”.
When I was young I had no inkling of how soon people of ill will would start dismantling the very English language itself.
Wise men from Confucius to Orwell warned that those who wish to confuse others and stir up trouble often begin by attempting to corrupt language. Confucius, for instance, spoke of the necessity for Rectification of Names:
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything”.
And George Orwell’s magnificent essay “Politics and the English Language” is required reading for everyone who wants to understand either politics or language.
“When I was young I had no inkling of how soon people of ill will would start dismantling the very English language itself.”
That the English language has changed in your lifetime should not come as a surprise. That is what languages do and is why you can’t read Chaucer easily.
Ismaele: “No better way to keep the people split than a trans immigrant elected as a Scottish MP.”
That´s a dark truth which one cannot just ignore or talk away. The truth lies in the polling booth which so far is a decision between the voter and that sheet of paper. No other witnesses. No one else you need to explain yourself to. The results are sometimes shocking, somtimes surprising, often expected.
I’m not sure that it can be truly said that the electorate voted specifically for Manivannan, as that person, I think, was on the list vote. Although entitled to be elected, perhaps there should not have been eligibility to be elected as an MSP without a more permanent entitlement to residence in Scotland. Unfortunately, that seems not to have been followed by the legislature in Scotland.
Q Manivannan should get his new visa because he clearly has a solid job offer and strong sponsorship from a large number of people who voted for the Green list in the regional ballot. The idea that he should be expelled from Britain because he’ll be working more hours than are allowed on his existing visa is nothing but prejudice – mostly against immigrants, probably intensified by prejudice against non-white people and trans people.
He’s a geezer, though.
The true radical position is one that sticks it to the authorities by demanding that “gender” selection on forms shouldn’t be so restrictive and should allow he/her, she/him, and, following in the footsteps of Malcolm X, it should definitely allow it/it. Saul Alinsky would have agreed. Switch it from “it’s a difficult issue” to “the authorities and their culture are both wicked and ridiculous.” It’s Ternary is nothing but the new binary!
I understand the first paragraph of your comment. But could you explain the rest in plain English?
I haven’t read much about this guy, but I read somewhere that some are calling for him to be kicked out because the number of hours of work he will put in as an MSP will exceed what’s allowed on his current student visa. I am suggesting that some take this point of view, which ignores the fact that he has a very solid job offer and clear sponsorship, because they are influenced in large part by him being non-white and transsexual. Because why else are they ignoring the usual requirements for a work visa and the fact that he meets these requirements? Many in Britain are to a large extent ignorant about the actual visa process and what a visa applicant’s dealings with the UK Visas and Immigration service can actually be like, but surely what a work visa is all about is common knowledge if only people can forget skin colour and sexuality for a moment.
Malcolm X called himself “X” because he rejected his “slave name”. The message was that he and other African Americans were treated like objects. I would extend this to most who aren’t African Americans too. Saul Alinsky wrote “Rules for Radicals” in which he showed a very powerful understanding of how to stick it to the authorities. I am suggesting that choosing “it/it” as one’s pronouns DOES stick it to the authorities. It has nothing to do with sexuality, but can I choose what I write in some box or other on a form that the authorities want me to complete or not? This is called subversion.
“The message was that he and other African Americans were treated like objects”.
With all due deference to Malcolm X (which is actually quite a lot), I beg to point out that this is not all or nothing, but a matter of degree. I submit that everyone treats other people as objects somewhat, some of the time, etc. When I get onto the bus and proffer my card, I treat the driver as an object. As far as I am concerned, he is more or less interchangeable with a ticket machine. Certainly I will smile if I feel able to, and may say something friendly. But I do not, and cannot, relate to him 100% as a unique human being with thousands of intricate relationships, needs, passions, and accomplishments. Life is too short.
In light of my fairly limited experience of the USA, I think that most Americans habitually treat others like objects – from their spouses to business colleagues and passers-by. It may well have something to do with living in a big city with millions of other people packed in around you. Before you actually go raving mad, knife random strangers, and eat your own children, you probably go through a stage of objectifying people.
If he (or she) was legally elected, that’s all there is to it.
Or they. (They was elected? They were elected? oh God).
Well, in addition, what really matters is whether they will carry out the duties expected of them as an MSP conscientiously and diligently. Better a conscientious and diligent MP with a question mark over their electoral propriety than a careless and idle one with impeccable electoral credentials.
….and its ok if they fail to extend/get a UK visa and run Scotland from India??
Depends if such an outcome would be cause for compulsory resignation.
So if the rules allow- then Scotland can be ruled by foreign nationals from their own countries? schhhh don’t tell the Russians.!
What’s worse, a foreign national acting in the interest of the Scots or a Scot acting in the interests of a foreign country, like Starmer (although he’s not a Scot)?
We dont have to chose which is worse- both should be stopped.
What have you got against foreign nationals apart from a general xenophobia?
Your use of such a long word illustrates your superiority of mind yes?
There is no such thing as ‘biological sex’. The term is unscientific, and in any serious study should not be used. (To compare changing sex with claiming to be another species is just plain silly!)
The comments here indicate populist views and a great ignorance of the subject’s complexity,so I suggest a careful reading of the following article as an introduction:
https://theconversation.com/are-trans-women-biologically-male-the-answer-is-complicated-244465
There is a bewilderingly wide range of chromosomal karyotypes. As for XX or XY chromosomes being replicated in every cell of the body, this is far too simplistic – what one would expect to be taught at school. Scientific reality is not that simple. For example, you could research chimaerism and mosaicism (very common but rarely identified). Research the effects of diethylstilbestrol (DES). Research neurological gender. Research epigenetics and correlations with neurodiversity,such as autism and intellectual giftedness
“Sex is not one thing. It is a set of interrelated but separable biological variables, including chromosomal complement, gonadal development, hormonal profile, receptor sensitivity, anatomical morphology, and neurological correlates of identity. These variables usually match each other. When they do not, the result is not a defective version of one sex; it is a human being whose biology does not conform to a model that was always too simple”.
.
Pretty sure that unless things have changed radically since my university days, there is indeed biological sex, otherwise my whole curriculum was based on faulty data.
Maybe it was, for such curricula inevitably lag well behind the research. Old theories must necessarily be scrapped in the light of new scientific evidence, Such is the inherent nature of science!. Science does not stand still. Please carefully read the article,none of which is particularly controversial in their respective professional communities.
Please cite the research papers/projects on which you base your bald statement that “There is no such thing as ‘biological sex’” Or do you believe that the scientific method is also obsolete?
Mihaela already posted a perfectly good link above, Tom Welsh. If you want more details, follow the links it contains, or, gasp, use a search engine, there’s a good chap.
Clark, I already posted a reply to Mihaela’s link. I posted it 80 minutes before your reply,
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/05/dr-manivannan/#comment-1098439
For your convenience, here is what I wrote:
‘Looking at the source you cite – https://theconversation.com/are-trans-women-biologically-male-the-answer-is-complicated-244465 – I see an article attributed to G. Samantha Rosenthal, Visiting Assistant Professor of American History, Washington and Lee University. She (if I may use that provocative pronoun) is said to be “co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project and the Southwest Virginia Trans Wellness Fund”.
‘Not, in my view, ideal credentials for laying down the law about biological sex or any other scientific issue’.
The links in the article Mihaela cited include only one from a reputable scientific source: “Nature”. Unfortunately it is paywalled so I cannot read it.
As for “gasp, use a search engine, there’s a good chap” – please try not to sound so condescending. As you ought to know, search engines will produce thousands of URLs to a wide variety of material ranging from a mass of rubbish and lies to the very occasional useful item.
Making weak or absurd claims, then inviting people to “use a search engine” is not a sound or reputable way to conduct a debate.
Tom Welsh – “I already posted a reply to Mihaela’s link.”
Yes, you posted a type of argument from authority, the only type of argument available to the ignorant, specifically an argument from your own assumption of the author’s lack of authority. Yet you yourself have demonstrated no authority to comment on the author’s authority or lack of it, so let’s call it an argument from your own arrogance. You also seem to be indulging in circular reasoning, dismissing an author because you’re already declared their field to be bogus.
There are plenty of links in that article, and plenty more on this page, and plenty of search engines that will produce more results for you. But my guess is that you won’t even bother looking, to insulate yourself from anything that could contradict your boneheaded opinion.
,’In the light of scoentific evidence’?
Every year some 1500-2500 different chemical concoctions, additives and or emulsions are released totally unregulated by any scientific control, bar the assurances of large or small companies.
Some hide behind commercial laws, or fear that others in their business can replicate their product.
Nobody here wants to talk about the dirty side of science, patents dont even come into it.
If a term is unscientific, that’s at least one positive thing it has going for it.
“To compare changing sex with claiming to be another species is just plain silly!” But to compare claiming to be another sex with claiming to be another species isn’t though.
You tell people to research this and that. Maybe take more care to be accurate and to think about what you write first. At ground level, knowledge of the difference between “compare to” and “compare with” would be useful.
Do you know where the term “giftedness” comes from? It comes from Lewis Terman the eugenicist.
If you’ve never heard of him, maybe start here:
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-vexing-legacy-of-lewis-terman
Brian Red, you do this repeatedly. When some fact or facts challenge one of your pet beliefs, you start quibbling about the language of the person who told you. It’s a disguised, passive-aggressive form of trolling. Just get used to the idea that there is always more to learn.
@Mihaela, so how does the Tree of Life exist without the biological process of sexual reproduction (other kinds are available) then? I’m aware that Glasgow genderists peddle the notion that the Enlightenment invented the idea of Two Sexes as opposed to some imagined One Sex consensus beforehand based on the writings of a single author, but babies aren’t delivered by storks, or the artificial wombs of Brave New World, or cabbage patches.
Obviously the “Tree of life” exists, but we have to define what does the term “biological sex” means?
Answer: The word “biological” is the scientific study of living organisms, processes and
relationships, and “sex” – in plain colloquial English – has broadly two meanings :-
1. the act & process of human reproduction, i.e the “Tree of life” which is binary, and then after we’re born; and
2. our genotypes / phenotypes, which is non-binary because we all lie on a spectrum of
possibilities, sometimes called Disorders / Differences of Sex Development (DSDs).
In other words, not every animal born or hatched or whatever, can reproduce.
@Natasha, ‘biology‘ can mean both the study of life and the subject of that study: that includes the biology of a specific organism. Like ‘anatomy’ and so on.
I agree with your point that some animals cannot (or do not) reproduce. And some are evolved sterile forms (non-reproductive groups) that exist naturally within social organisations. However, when chemical pollution (like endocrine disruptors) causes sex differences (or in the radioactive pollution case of The Simpsons’ famous fish Blinky, a third eye), I think is ecologically responsible to call these ‘birth defects‘.
From that BBC article:
“Paul Quinn, senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Chichester in the UK, says ‘Another mythological layer was added by the pelican, which in European medieval literature was a symbol for the Virgin Mary and the nurturing mother.’”
This is the kind of crap that gets in the media nowadays. Quinn has obviously heard something about something, but he hasn’t registered it properly. That he talks with such authority about it makes him look ridiculous. The pelican pecking itself and feeding its own blood to its young wasn’t a symbol for the Virgin Mary, FFS! It was a symbol for Jesus and his self-sacrifice.
“For Victorian parents [sic], tales featuring the stork and cabbage patch babies offered a ‘way to explain things to their children that they couldn’t explain to them otherwise’, says Quinn. ‘They didn’t know what a female body looked like inside … they just imagined it to be an inverted male body,’ he says. ‘So how do you explain that? The natural world is the obvious model to go to.’”
Get a proper job, mate!
“They didn’t know what a female body looked like inside ”
Were all the workers in abattoirs blindfolded then? While there might have been a lot of non-medical men who had no idea what the inside of a human body looked like, of either sex, I expect that women had a fairly good idea of what went on in their own bodies, and so did doctors.
Looking at the source you cite – https://theconversation.com/are-trans-women-biologically-male-the-answer-is-complicated-244465 – I see an article attributed to G. Samantha Rosenthal, Visiting Assistant Professor of American History, Washington and Lee University. She (if I may use that provocative pronoun) is said to be “co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project and the Southwest Virginia Trans Wellness Fund”.
Not, in my view, ideal credentials for laying down the law about biological sex or any other scientific issue.
“There is no such thing as ‘biological sex’. The term is unscientific, and in any serious study should not be used.”
That is tantamount to claiming that there is no such thing as a species and the term is unscientific because there are so many of them. Just because the distinction between the two main types of sex, male and female, is not sharp-edged does not mean that the groupings do not exist, nor that the terms for the groupings are inaccurate.
@Mihaela – Did you reach your opinion on how society should treat men who say they want to become women (or people who are neither male nor female) by reading articles in scientific journals that contain lots of long words? If so, regarding scientific and medical journals and the influencing of scientists’ and medics’ opinions [*] you might like to consider the role of a company called Elsevier. That and the general level of Big Pharma PR spend.
Note
*) Medics’ “minds” follow what’s good for their pockets. E.g. no medic with more brain cells than a lump of turf believed that multiple repetition of vaccination against SARSCoV2 was “indicated” for almost the entire population including children – but very few had the guts to say so in public. Mustn’t scare the herd. They might stampede.
This is using details and small deviations to deny the big picture, focusing on trees to deny the forest, and muddling the issue. Whatever deviations and nuances may exist across populations and within individuals, the binary biological sex division does remain the most sensible approach of describing and explaining how the sex-related aspects of human biology work in practice. Denying that obviously isn’t sensible, and the reasons you and others are doing it anyway is the goal of furthering the trans cause. On top of it all, it is not really a serious argument in favour of the trans cause either – nobody has proved that trans people have more of these biological deviations than others. The idea is to defend trans people against accusations of ‘going against nature’ by denying the existence of natural sex as such, as if ‘going against nature’ would otherwise be a real ‘offence’. This is not necessary for the trans cause. In fact, you are harming that cause by creating an association between opposition to transphobia and unreasonable sophistry.
The guy has a dick!
That’s a callous, crude, inane and irrelevant comment. How can you be sure? They may be intersex for all you know.
Besides, they don’t even identify as transgender, but as non-binary. Their external genitalia are totally irrelevant to the issue, and it’s none of our business..
Well, I think that Tess Tickles’ comment and Mihaela’s reply to it make things pretty clear.
You’ve made it pretty clear you’re obsessed as to what’s inside other people’s underwear. Take a cold shower. About once every two hours, considering how predictably you get worked up by this subject.
“Symbolic of his struggle against reality.”
Life has become a monty python sketch !
Maybe yours has.
Got out the wrong side of bed today, Clark ?
It’s a shit time, Stevie Boy; in addition to over two years of genocide and the wanton destruction of Southern Lebanon, tomorrow I have to attend the Nakba demo in London, while the Police Commissioner of the Met has been handing dishonest political ammo to Israel-sponsored Tommy Robinson, so that his bully-boys can feel righteous about celebrating what they don’t even know to be Jerusalem Day, when Israelis run amok spitting on and beating up Arabs and Christians. I’m not looking forward to it, and your denial of yet another aspect of reality just makes things worse, it helps rob me of hope.
He’s got Y chromosomes though. Are they none of anyone else’s business too? So why is a bloke’s desire that other people call him something he patently obviously isn’t anyone else’s business? Here’s the answer: no.
He can call himself non-binary to himself as much as he likes. I wish him all the best for his mental health.
And before you say it, @Mihaela, no this doesn’t mean I support beating up mentally ill people on the street.
I am in favour of giving this guy the chance to do a good job representing his constituents.
Or should that read “…these guy”? It certainly should be “their constituents”.
Let’s be consistent in our lunacy.
Brian Red, oh, you have Dr Manivannan’s genetic information, do you? Whether you obtained it legally or not, posting any of it here is definitely illegal.
So STFU and count to ten, troll. In fact, five whole minutes are called for.
Get a grip Clark!!
Glenn Greenwald has an explanation for why the once benign acceptance of people like Jan Morris suddenly transformed into fanatical hostility.
He says that after gay marriage was legalised across the US the big LGBT rights organisations required some issue to justify their jobs and funding, so began aggressively promoting trans rights.
Because these NGOs operate on a business model that requires a continuous state of emergency to drive fundraising, they deliberately elevated highly controversial, radical demands—specifically regarding children and medical transitions and women’s bathrooms —to provoke a culture-war backlash.
In Greenwald’s view, this backlash was then weaponised to tell donors that LGBT people are under greater threat than ever, thereby securing more funding.
In essence, ‘the trans issue’ was deliberately created to keep a few LGBT activists in high-paying jobs.
“In essence, ‘the trans issue’ was deliberately created to keep a few LGBT activists in high-paying jobs.”
Indeed, this is the paradox of charities, that many are working to do themselves out of a job. It was recently estimated that there was one homelessness charity to every 200 homeless people in the UK. If all those charities succeeded in their aims, and there was no homelessness in the country, there would be a lot of well-paid chief executives unemployed. It’s not just charities either. NATO lost it’s raison d’etre when the Iron Curtain came down, but it was almost unthinkable that all those well-paid staff would just leave their well-paid positions, and so happened that NATO continued in existence until a new purpose could be found for it. History is full of examples of jobs with large salaries attached that continued for centuries after the reason for their existence had completely disappeared.
That, what GG said, sounds very plausible to me , Z. The same situation exists vis-a-vis ” Race Relations “, particularly in the U.S.
Not to say that all racial discrimination has been eradicated – people will * always * find ways to define/relate to other, different-from-themselves groups negatively, alas; but it’s fair to say that, eg Black people are much less subject to discrimination that previously, in terms of, eg career advancement – much as I consider Obama a total fake/failure, his presidency did demonstrate that ” people of colour ” ( aren’t we all people of colour? ) can obtain the highest position in the land, some might say World; some also may say his attaining POTUS was as a bit political legerdemain, ie ” Look how unprejudiced we are, a Black President “, except his blackness was really irrelevant to what he was elected to do by the power brokers that determine these things – keep the wheels of Neolib/con Capitalism grinding relentlessly on.
So all these, extremely well funded/remunerated groups and individuals wittering on from a Race Theory perspective have to keep finding more and more – often obscure to the point of absurdity – instances of racial discrimination; otherwise their nice-little-earner sinecures become redundant.
Whilst I agree that there are people grifting on the subject of racism and Obama is a war criminal as well as a con artist (working for the common good, my arse), racism is alive and well in both America and the UK. I’m not talking about “micro aggressions”, but the stated desire of the Trump administration to rid the country of people of the wrong hue. The road returning to segregation is already underway and the Supreme Court has given permission for racial profiling, ICE has seized it with both hands. Every day I see someone calling for ICE in the UK, and people saying deport all brown people, nevermind whether we were born here. The ongoing genocide in Palestine and the illegal war on Iran is further evidence.
@zoot, yes, I’ve heard something similar. The invention of the idea of a ‘LGBTQ Community’ as a notional civil rights interest/pressure group/voting bloc is attributed to Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, by Bad Gays authors+podcasters Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, who say that this vehicle was abandoned by ‘rich white’ gay men in the USA after they achieved their own aims of drug treatments, gay marriage, military service or whatever. There is no bloc, just like there isn’t a community of autistic people, but the illusion is useful in societies where apparent voting power can pressure legislators.
I see another aspect which is similar to recently more extreme Christian anti-abortion stances: the moral trump card. No matter that Christian spokespeople have had to repeatedly apologise for some of the worst crimes in history (including the worst, as the UN has reasoned), as long as they don’t mention anti-contraception in the same breath, they can accuse secular society of (fetal) murder. Though biblical authority seems sketchy at best, the undetectable pre-birth soul is very similar to the soullist version of gender identity. As least Plato was honest enough to call his metallic-variant casteing to segregate the inhabitants of his Republic a ‘noble lie’.
But some of the developments seem related to the concept of (expansive) personhood. At any rate, I’m reading The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots (Verso, 2026), by Lisa Siraganian, although I haven’t got to the “Unborn Fictions: Fetal Persons and Their Women Containers” yet. There is a lot of overlap between political noble lies and legal fictions.
I assumed transitioning to be a natural thing, but there are 100s of videos using hypnosis to help the budding trans along. Wholly unrestricted, so available to all ages.
Wishes to be referred to as ‘they’. This is just confusing, as it was reading it in the blog above. Also it will be used when the person is absent, as I guess , in conversation the person will be referred to as ‘you’, which of course covers singular and plural.
Being referred to as ‘they’ is just a game on the royal ‘we’, and ‘trans’ seems to have evolved from royalty – see Henry III France and Henry VIIIS son Henry Fitzroy, who might have doubled as Elizabeth I.
How can transitioning ever be a natural thing ? It involves butchery of the human body and life altering drugs.
‘…to be a natural thing….’, as in one chooses to transition ‘naturally’ without the help of hypnosis videos.
Hope that clears it up for you.
On this one Craig I don’t agree with your point of view.
Have I got it right that the only real bones of contention in policy between our host and the Scottish Greens is that he thinks that people convicted of violent & sexual offences should never be allowed to legally change sex, whereas they are of the opinion that anyone should be able to do so at any point in their lives past the age of 16; and that he doesn’t believe that trans women should be able to participate in women’s sports, whereas they do? In the grand scheme of things, these seem to be fairly minor differences.
In a recent post, our host claimed that the Scottish Greens are ‘dominated by some extremely weird and unpleasant people who should be nowhere near political power’. Maybe he can enllghten me as to what he finds extremely weird about their co-leader Ross Greer. According to Wiki, he’s about 30, openly gay and a member of the Church of Scotland (the established church in Scotland) – but he could be celibate, like around two-thirds of 18-24 year olds in the UK these days, so nothing particularly weird there. Their other co-leader, Gillian Mackay, is married with a young child.
Re-lapsed Agnostic
The Greens pretend they are all about the environment, but that’s a cover – the Greens are utterly obsessed with gender politics, as for Ross Greer, he has no real life experience – as far as I know he’s never even had a real job, just straight into politics.
The Greens and the SNP – are not in the slightest bit interested in freeing Scotland from the Westminster ball and chain, the other parties are KNOWN branch offices of their London HQs.
On the trans issue as Ted said in the movie, called TED – “There are no chicks with dicks only men with breasts” – you can’t trans – oh you can cut bits off, or add bits on to appear like the opposite sex but that it – if they dig a guy up in say 100 years from now – who lived as a woman all his life – the DNA tests would show that he was a man and not a woman.
Holyrood has become a place for grifters and careerists – with their own agendas, of course Holyrood is ran by a colonial admin, and the case for Scotland as a colony has past through the UNSG’s hands – decision time is coming from the UN on Scotland’ status, I’m pretty sure it will be favourable for those who seek big changes.
Yes. Trans, antisemitism, environment, etc. are all vehicles for the careerists to progress their ‘careers’. The reality is that these people don’t give a f*ck about their adopted hobby horse of the moment, only in as much as it advances their position on the gravy train. Soon they’ll be moving onto the next new craziness.
Governments have made things worse for trans people.
Governments have made things worse for Jews.
Governments support and protect the corporations that trash the environment.
And yet it’s the professors who are the enemy? –
xcancel.com/Parody_PM/status/1912571601289179314
x.com/Parody_PM/status/1912571601289179314
Al Gore made at least $300 million dollars from the environment hoax – the absurd Hate Laws in Scotland can see you locked up for seven years for expressing and opinion in your own home on the trans matter, as long as someone hears you say something they find offensive, infact a stranger on the street can report you to the police – on behalf of a third-party who didn’t hear you say anything.
As for the anti-Semitism trope, its used to beat us over the head with, to shut us up.
“The reality is that these people don’t give a f*ck about their adopted hobby horse of the moment, only in as much as it advances their position on the gravy train”
Exactly that, hence all the screaming. However they do give a bit of a f*ck as the poor unfortunates that they have decided to champion make a handy fiefdom to support their lordship over them.
Thanks for your reply RoS. For quite a while, I’ve been wondering why our host is so antipathetic towards the Greens when, as far as I can tell, they’re the party that are closest to his overall political views. I’m still none the wiser.
A full 86 MSPs voted for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) bill at its third stage. Only 7 of them were Greens. Their views on gender are hardly niche, and are closer to his than mine. (I don’t support gender self-ID, and would require all trans women holders of gender recognition certificates to have testosterone levels below a certain level (probably around 150 ng/dL) or to be taking androgen receptor blockers.)
For most practical purposes, gender is mainly about hormones – and those can be supplemented. If you are/were a man, but you’ve been taking substantial amounts of estradiol for a significant period of time (which will cause your testosterone levels to plummet), in terms of personality, you’ll likely be more feminine than most women. As Blur put it on Modern Life is Rubbish, it’s a chemical world.
“A full 86 MSPs voted for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) bill at its third stage.”
Re-lapsed Agnostic
You are most welcome, on the above I can tell you that Stu Campbell over on Wings carried out several polls – on what the public thought of the the bill and the majority of MSP’s backing it – the PEOPLE of Scotland overall were against it, to a similar percentage.
Jan Morris had surgery, and never asked anyone to call her “they”. There’s a perfectly respectable case that such a person should be treated as a woman in every way except of course gender-specific medical treatment. A man has a prostate and a woman has a cervix. Transvestite men who claim to be women and demand access to women’s spaces on the basis of their clothing do not deserve such consideration.
‘gender-specific medical treatment. ‘
Yet the trans community object to having their ‘birth sex’ recorded on NHS records?
Many cultures globally, both historic and contemporary have acknowledged and celebrated the biological, scientific, and psychological reality that sex and gender in humans falls on a non-binary spectrum without imploding.
India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, all have a long history of recognising a third gender called Hijras. And Native American two-spirt are usually considered a good omen, and children are encouraged to chose their own gender roles.
And a third gender has been legalised in 14 countries: Argentina, Australia, Malta, New Zealand, Germany, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Chile, Bangladesh, South Africa, Ireland, Spain, and Thailand.
In Indonesia Warias are men who live their lives as women, who are believed to have feminine souls even though they have male sex organs, and the Bugis people recognize five genders. And in Oaxaca Mexico Muxes are celebrated. And in Oman the Xaniths use makeup, oil their hair, and engage in other activities traditionally categorized as feminine. And in Samoa a third gender called Fa’afafine are respected and recognized. And Madagascans recognize the existence of a third gender called Sekrata born as boys but raised as girls and grow up to become women. And in the Dominican Republic Guevedoce who don’t have a visible penis at birth are recognized by some tribes as a third gender. And Old Judaism recognized six genders.
• https://listverse.com/2018/10/03/10-societies-that-recognize-more-than-two-genders/
• https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2018/10/29/indias-relationship-with-the-third-gender/
• https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=third+gender+history+country+list&ia=web
I’m sorry but the above for me is all nonsense – there are clearly only two sexes male and female, with (hermaphrodites) being the exception, how the hell did society come to this insane notion that there are more than two sexes, its so bad now that many business men and women along with a helluva lot of politicians – are to afraid to say what a woman is for fear of being cancelled, mind you many of them are on the puberty-blocking companies payroll.
I’ve nothing against a man or a woman wanting to dress up as the opposite sex – or even live as the opposite sex – but they cannot BE in reality the opposite sex.
“I’ve nothing against a man or a woman wanting to dress up as the opposite sex – or even live as the opposite sex – but they cannot BE in reality the opposite sex.”
As far as I am concerned, they can even believe they are a different sex to the one their chromosomes indicate. The problems start when people start demanding that others believe it too. On reflection, forcing one set of beliefs on people who hold other, opposing beliefs has been behind much of the trouble in the world throughout history.
Bayard.
Yes very good point – the beliefs one – also many not all, I emphasis, of those men declaring themselves to be women – want access to women’s toilets – women and children’s safe spaces – and lets not forget women’s prisons, which is not on, I forgot to add women’s sports as well – who could forget Imane Khelif’s brutal beating he gave a female boxer at the Olympics, his poor female opponent was left in tears.
Yes, that’s the other elephant in the room (it’s obviously a very big room!), that there are always those who will take advantage for malign reasons. The correct approach to this problem is to acknowledge both that it exists and that when the advantage is being taken of measures designed to protect a particular group of people that are seen to be disadvantaged in some way, the whole of that group is brought into disrepute as a result. Denying the problem and calling anyone who points out its wider ramifications a bigot or racist only exacerbates it.
In the USA the following statement was signed by 2617 scientists on 2018/10/26:
“As scientists, we are compelled to write to you, our elected representatives, about the current [US] administration’s proposal to legally define gender as a binary condition determined at birth, based on genitalia, and with plans to clarify disputes using “genetic testing”. This proposal is fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity. The proposal is in no way “grounded in science” as the administration claims. The relationship between sex chromosomes, genitalia, and gender identity is complex, and not fully understood. There are no genetic tests that can unambiguously determine gender, or even sex. Furthermore, even if such tests existed, it would be unconscionable to use the pretext of science to enact policies that overrule the lived experience of people’s own gender identities.”
https://not-binary.org/statement/
If they would like to keep your research funded, they’ll sign a letter claiming the Sun is black and the wind blows because the trees wiggle.
Let me explain this BS to you. “Gender” is not a scientific term, so the claim that “there are no genetic tests that can unambiguously determine gender” is true. But “sex” is a scientific term, and precisely for this reason there are genetic tests that can unambiguously determine sex. I used such tests myself when I worked in the lab and FBI widely uses it in forensics. The statement that “The relationship between sex chromosomes, genitalia, and gender identity is complex, and not fully understood” is also true because once you introduce “gender identity” into the formula, any scientific meaning is lost. If anyone can claim any gender identity they like (or to be a dog or a stapler), this is not science anymore, and scientists shall not even comment on such BS. To be correct, they had to say “The relationship between sex chromosomes, genitalia, and gender identity is complex, and not fully understood by scientist.” What is understood very well is “the relationship between sex chromosomes, genitalia, and sex.”
The chromosomal abnormalies you’ve mentioned above, like XXX or XXY are not differend sexes but abnormalies, like Down syndrome and should be regardered as such.
If you use a test with only two outcomes, you’ll only ever get two outcomes, d’uh. You shouldn’t need telling that the physical system might be more complex than the resolution of the test you’re using.
Like the environment you mean ?
My bad, Clark. Such ignorant and transphobic tests were designed back in the good old days when we still had just 2 sexes.
But imagine that now you are the man who designes such tests. Can you create a test that will tell the person’s sex (or gender, if you like it) based on their sample? I repeat: based ONLY on their blood/saliva sample, not on what they say.
Do you usually tell men from women by examining their spit? You must have a great love life.
Clark, I normally trust my eyes, but my eyes can betray me. So, let’s rely on science. I do know how to tell a man fro a woman, and I do know which markers I will test to achieve this. If you believe that there are more than 2 sexes, what markers will you look for to tell sex 2.01 from sex 2.5A etc? Which genes, what DNA or RNA sequences, what proteins?..
Yuri K, thanks for engaging with me, but please leave your condescending tone (e.g. “Let me explain this BS to you”) out of your responses to me here. First, let’s investigate the Question: What does the term “biological sex” in English mean?
Answer: The word “biological” is the scientific study of living organisms, processes and relationships, and “sex” – in plain colloquial English – has broadly two meanings :-
1. the act & process of human reproduction, which is binary, and then after we’re born;
2. our genotypes / phenotypes, which is non-binary because we all lie on a spectrum of possibilities, sometimes called Disorders / Differences of Sex Development (DSDs).
For example, the six most common karyotypes of biological sex in human beings that do not result in death to the fetus:
X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s )
XX – Most common form of female
XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter)
XY – Most common form of male
XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people
XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births
https://open.lib.umn.edu/evosex/chapter/8-7-variations-in-human-sex-differentiation/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-xx-and-xy-the-extraordinary-complexity-of-sex-determination/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/2023/02/the-6-genders-according-to-the-talmud-and-biological-science/
https://www.calendar-canada.ca/frequently-asked-questions/what-are-the-6-common-biological-sexes
Ovotestes is an intersex condition whereby some people can be born with any combination of ovaries and ovotestes. The genitals of a person with ovotestes may appear more typically male, female or somewhere in between.
https://scienceline.org/2020/10/beyond-x-y-chromosomes-and-sex-organs/
https://www.intersexjusticeproject.org/
https://isna.org/
Clearly, the fact of the existence of these genetic and phenotypical BIOLOGICAL SEX variations demean as a touch vacuous, any alleged authority Yuri K claims, when they write: “there are genetic tests that can unambiguously determine sex. I used such tests myself when I worked in the lab and FBI widely uses it in forensics”.
Yes, it takes two fully functioning and healthy sexes XX & XY to reproduce a human being – a binary phenomena. But NOT ALL resultant babies can always be neatly and irreversibly assigned into a “male / man” or a “female / woman” “sex” category.
In other words some of the resultant humans (following the binary “sex” act) do NOT unambiguously posses a binary genetic “sex” (i.e. unambiguously ONLY male or female). When those babies mature, some of them may discover (through self reflection) that the binary “sex” category they were assigned at birth is the wrong one i.e. the social “gender” they were assigned (as one of two possible sexes on their birth certificate) does not align with the social gender role available in their particular cultural environment, which they perceive themselves to best fit into.
So Yuri K, you are utterly and completely wrong: there are NO genetic tests that can unambiguously in ALL case determine which binary reproductive sex category a person should be assigned into at their birth, in the sense that NOT EVERY human ever born is able to produce fertile functioning eggs or sperm, to then create a baby.
For Yuri K to thus label this reality as “BS” and “If anyone can claim any gender identity they like (or to be a dog or a stapler)” simply exposes Yuri K as someone who, when engaging with this topic, is emotionally driven by irrational sneering fear or perhaps some similar unearned superiority complex, concealing their actual feelings of inferiority.
Yuri K, instead of attacking transgender / transsexual / intersex people try reading the links above (and that I’ve given here in other comments) written by biologists who’ve repeatedly stated that the “sex” of a resultant baby following the successful fertilization of an egg by a sperm is NOT ALWAYS BINARY. There’s simply no way any rational intelligent person can deny this reality, as you somehow seem to want to.
Meanwhile, what we then do, culturally and politically and legally, with the scientific reality of the NON-BINARY BIOLOGICAL SEX / GENDER category in HUMANS is a separate question, which of course is open to debate, but any such debate MUST be based upon accepting and respecting this non-binary first step: NOT ALL HUMANS can be unambiguously assigned – by a third party – a binary sex / gender category, by appealing to whatever “biological binary sex” metric you want to wave your alleged authoritative hands at.
However for Yuri K to then claim that genetic variations to the so called “normal” XX ~vs~ XY binary “are not differend [spelling mistake] sexes but abnormalies [spelling mistake], like Down syndrome” completely misses the point: transgender / transsexual / intersex people are NOT “abnormalies” nor are we abnormalities to be dismissed, scoffed at, and thrown away as worthless invisible shits.
Our esteemed host Craig Murray allowed me to post a discussion on this topic back in September 2022.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/sex-and-gender-in-humans-is-not-binary/
Natasha, I worked in science for 35 years, and you are just someone who learned how to use Google search and copy/paste the quotes which suit you; so I have every right to talk to you about science they way I wish.
This is not up to a cork or a brick to decide if they float or sink. They simply follow the law of nature called Archimedes’s principle. Since this is a law of nature, anyone – you, me, Craig Murray, Stevie Boy, etc – can test it and verify that it is true. Also, because this is a law of nature, it can predict what’s going to happen if we place these objects into water. Knowing their specific density, we predict that a cork will float and a brick will sink, and this is what happens when we try. This is how science works, Natasha. The brick has no choice to sink or to float; we have no choice if we are men or women. I can take your blood or saliva sample and tell if you are a man or a woman; you can do the same with my sample. I can dress in drag and pretend I am a woman; this is up to you what you’ll think of it but biologically I will still be a man.
I am not “attacking” trans people (I do not care about them except I am against trans men in women’s sports because this gives them unfair advantage, and in ladies bathrooms, because this is a loophole for perverts), I am attacking the pseudoscience that justifies their choices as something predetermined by Nature and poisons ignorant minds like yours.
Galileo thermometer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_thermometer
“Galileo thermometer.”
Which shows how little you know about science. Whether something floats of sinks is governed by the principle that, if the object displaces a greater weight of the liquid that it is placed in than it’s own weight, it will float. Galileo’s thermometer demonstrates this as the different floats within it float or sink in accordance with the change in density with temperature change of the liquid in which they are floating. It is not possible to change the density of liquid water enough to cause a cork to sink or a brick to float.
– “Yes, it takes two fully functioning and healthy sexes XX & XY to reproduce a human being – a binary phenomena.”
Note that this applies at the level of egg and sperm. But see the link below – it does NOT necessarily apply at the level of a whole person, who may have different cell lines with different chromosomal sequences in different cells:
– “new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body.”
https://aeon.co/essays/nonbinary-identity-is-a-radical-stance-against-gender-segregation
I wonder how many boneheaded “I’m unambiguously male” / “I’m unambiguously female” people there are walking around who have never had themselves tested 😀
Clark: So? Did you miss the key words “temperature changes”?
“X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s )
XX – Most common form of female
XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter)
XY – Most common form of male
XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people
XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births”
The first two are different types of female, the rest are different types of male. The fact that there are different types within a category does not invalidate the category itself.
Sadly peer reviews are not what they used to be – in the US Big Pharma funds the majority of them.
Steven Novella 2022:
“Biological sex is not binary. The notion that sex is not strictly binary is not even scientifically controversial. Among experts it is a given, an unavoidable conclusion derived from actually understanding the biology of sex. Its more accurate to describe biological sex in humans as bimodal, but not strictly binary.”
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/
Claire Ainsworth writing in the science journal Nature in 2015:
“Doctors have long known that some people straddle this boundary – their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another … What’s more, new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body.”
https://aeon.co/essays/nonbinary-identity-is-a-radical-stance-against-gender-segregation
Claas Flint et al publishing in Nature, Neuropsychopharmacology 2020:
“Biological sex classification with structural MRI data shows increased misclassification in transgender women. […] Conclusions. In this study, we present a highly accurate biological sex classifier in cis gender individuals that shows a significantly decreased accuracy in transgender individuals after cross-sex hormone treatment. Our results underline that the brain structure of transgender individuals is similar to both the brain structure of their perceived gender and biological sex. This implies that brain structure of transgender women differs from both cis gender men and women. Based on our brain-structural data, we suggest a dimensional rather than binary gender construct which will contribute to the destigmatization of transgender individuals.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0666-3#Sec19
Marianne J. Legato, MD, PhD (hon.c.), FACP publishing in Sage Journals 2018:
“Untangling the Gordian Knot of Human Sexuality: What Is the Biologic Basis of Variations in Sexual Phenotype? Abstract. There is increasing interest in and tolerance of the lay public for variations in human sexuality. In contrast, the molecular biology that underlies gender identity, the development of gonadal and genital anatomy, and the factors that define sexual behavior is proving unexpectedly complex and is still incompletely understood. It is now evident that humans cannot be characterized as member of 1 of 2 clearly defined units: male or female. In fact, individuals exist on a continuum: those who do not conform unequivocally to the dyadic view of human sex in terms of anatomy, gender identity, and/or sexual behavior should be characterized as having variations in rather than disorders of sexual development. Such individuals can no longer be regarded as anomalies to be rejected, condemned, and, if possible, “corrected” either psychologically or anatomically.”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289718803639
Agustín Fuentes, Busting Myths About Sex and Gender 2022: According to published research by biologists and psychologists when we take all humans into account, “gender identity” is embedded in a ‘non binary’ spectrum of “biological sex”.
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/busting-myths-about-sex-and-gender/
Monica Vilhauer Ph.D. 2024:
“Key points. Defining biological sex by sex organs or chromosomes is unscientific due to numerous exceptions. Biological sex is traditionally defined by gametes (sperm and egg), essential for direct reproduction. This definition is incomplete, as intersex conditions can be adaptive through kin selection. A complete definition of biological sex should include male, female, and intersex.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lies-and-deception/202412/what-is-biological-sex
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/pharma-paid-1-06-billion-to-reviewers-at-top-medical-journals/
The above was just a couple of years ago – imagine how tight their grip is now on reviews and articles produced in the medical field, its mainly all down to getting your funding renewed, look at Bill Gates he has no medical qualifications yet via his huge wealth he holds sway over the WHO.
I strongly recommend that you read both Bad Science and Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre. Yes, there’s serious corruption in science, but there’s far more to it than Bill Gates etc. telling the (vast) scientific community what results to fabricate. Our technological world needs genuine science, and fields are interrelated far more than you probably expect; science can’t just be invented or imposed, or technology would be impossible for a start.
Bad Science is a brilliant tutorial in the tools needed for understanding, revealing many simple deceptions along the way, using them for illustrative purposes. Once you have those tools, Bad Pharma teaches how large-scale corruption is actually achieved, explaining the apparent paradox of how science can be valid and yet also misrepresented. I promise you, it’s a fascinating journey that repays your effort many times over.
““Doctors have long known that some people straddle this boundary – their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another … What’s more, new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body.”
“Might”, eh? That’s a word that only gets used when there’s no evidence but the speaker or writer wants to lead you to a particular conclusion, beloved of journalists, politicians and other spreaders of doom and gloom. If something “might” be the case, it’s also probable that it might not be the case. If I buy a lottery ticket, I might win millions of pounds, but the chances are less than being struck by lightning, i.e. statistically negligible. The statement is still true though.
– “Might”, eh? That’s a word that only [my emph.] gets used when there’s no evidence but the speaker or writer wants to lead you to a particular conclusion, beloved of journalists, politicians and other spreaders of doom and gloom.
So if I write “a car might run on petrol”, there’s no evidence but I want to lead you to a particular conclusion?
Hint: when you find yourself writing obvious balderdash, maybe you’re trying to defend a false assumption or something.
Context, my dear boy, context.
A BIG Thank You!! to our host Craig Murray for all his amazing work and stamina.
On 16 April 2025 the Supreme Court’s Judgement (For Women Scotland Ltd) failed to give any definition of what it assumes “biological sex” means, simply stating “it is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex […] at birth”.
But how do we judge between chromosomes / brain sex / hormones / genitals? And what combination(s) and other factor(s) and test(s) should be obligatory?
Yes, it takes two sexes to reproduce a human being – a binary phenomena. But the Supreme Court failed to even mention the existence of DSD’s – a non-binary phenomena, i.e. that not all resultant babies can always be neatly and irreversibly assigned into a “male / man” or a “female / woman”. Meanwhile, it’s uncontroversial among doctors, biologists, and geneticists, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a line in nature that cleanly divides people into males and females.
For example, after typing into an internet search engine the question: “What does “biological sex” in humans mean?” practically all the links to internet articles listed, are ones overwhelmingly telling us that the agreed understanding between scientists, is that the genotype / phenotype of a particular individual’s “sex” falls on a non binary spectrum as robustly confirmed by our National Health Service too.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=what+does+%22biological+sex%22+in+humans+mean%3F&ia=web
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/differences-in-sex-development/
Unfortunately the Supreme Court, by failing to consult and accommodate biological research, let alone doing a simple internet search on the definitions and meanings of the terms “biological sex”, “sex at birth” & “natal sex”, has thereby recklessly encouraged emotionally charged misunderstandings and conflict between the affected communities.
In other words the claim that we must ALL fit into either the “biological woman [or] man” category is not a rational scientifically robust claim, when defined by honestly and fairly reviewing the full range of published scientific research on human genotypes / phenotypes, most of which understands that “biological sex … at birth” is a non binary phenomenon, as reflected globally and historically across many cultures, for example as I have posted here above.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FrhFvsyYgdfCeYy0ghueZyduCPG7_le7/view
Generally I agree with this article. Just live and let live.
My only reservation would be that trans women should not be allowed to compete in Olympic/competitive sports particularly where the male records are significantly different to the women’s. Chess would likely be OK, don’t know about football and other team sports – don’t see a problem with amateur football.
Mihaela and Natasha, thank you for your reality checks. Closet bigots reveal their bigotry by ignoring them.
Yeah, I prefer to stcick to my good old science the way I was taught. And you can’t even tell DEI from reality.
Oh, so science stops where you personally stopped learning it? A few hundred years back, would you have been in favour of keeping Galileo under house arrest?
Science stops where the practitioners abandon the scientific method and, instead of trying to prove theories wrong, start trying to prove them right. Any paper with the title “Busting Myths About Sex and Gender 2022” is not science, it’s polemic.
Any paper with the title “Busting Myths About Flat Earth 2022” is not science, it’s polemic?
Indeed it is. Science is not in the business of myth-busting. Anyone who is myth-busting has an agenda. Science isn’t about agendas, it’s about rational and impartial enquiry.
Science never stops but the principles science is based on never change.
Yes but you stopped. So you said.
Clark: I never said that.
“Gender critical” bigots, your concocted moral outrage is playing out very badly for women who “don’t look feminine enough” and increasingly are challenged to somehow prove they’re “real women”, which in real life amounts to a demand to inspect within their underwear – which is, of course, serious sexual harassment. Did that ever occur to you?
Yeah, calling people that disagree with your worldview bigots is the very essence of maturity and is guaranteed to elicit rational dialogue, right?
Did the effect on the whole of society occur to you, or do you prefer to be one of the bigots? This isn’t about “my worldview”, it’s about how people get treated. Someone whips up a moral panic, the media amplify it for clickbait, and suddenly a load of bigots assume they now have the right to start interrogating people who they think “don’t look quite right”. If you don’t see any problem with that, you are assigning inferior social status to people you think “don’t look quite right”, and the usual term for such behaviour is bigotry.
Of course it’s about your worldview: you just made several comments elaborating what you consider real, ie your worldview.
You’re clearly one of those people totally incapable of admitting there may be downsides to what you advocate/believe and happy to do a fair bit of projecting, ie it’s only ” Gender Critical ” people who create disharmony, strife – are ” bigots “; and, of course, the corollary …..” Trans ” people are all angels, saints and – above all…..martyrs.
As far as I can make out it’s the ” Trans ” side that have been the most hysterical – ” Decapitate TERFS ” ( soooo gentle, eh? ), who have tried extremely hard to shut down any, real, debate on, eg the societal implications of the whole issue; actually loudly, proudly proclaiming and displaying signs saying ” NO DEBATE ” – that’s right ” no debate ” just, we’ll do WTF we want and the rest of society will have to accept it. No, we don’t HAVE to accept anything, particularly where young/vulnerable people lives are in jeopardy.
It’s worth bearing in mind all this baloney originated – where else? – in the U.S – that Narnia of risible ideological theory reification – and has been imported here and throughout the West, and, as such, should be subjected to rigorous critical analysis/assessment; not least because given that country’s genetically programmed instinct to ” make a buck ” there will almost certainly be financial motivations behind any, every such heavily promoted idea/ worldview.
Before you – or anyone – tries to ” correct ” me by saying, eg there have been ” Transgender ” people throughout History: yes, that may be the case, but never was the idea or – statistically minuscule – phenomenon of ” real ” transgender/hermaphrodite individuals * forged * into an ideology, neither did those individuals insist on being treated/perceived as THE SAME as natal women; let alone the linguistic idiocy of fetishising, of all things, f****** pronouns.
It would all be genuinely hilarious if there wasn’t so much unhinged SHOUTING & BALLING and so much valuable time and resources being wasted on the issue: and so much real damage being done to bodies and minds.
Imagine, even 20 years ago predicting that in the future doctors and surgeons would be content to amputate healthy body parts because the subject thought – or others, eg parents thought – he/she was ” born in the wrong body “. You would have been considered a maniac for suggesting such a future scenario. Yet, here are. Madness manifested and ” legitimised “
I could pull apart nearly all you say, but lack the time, however, a few points spring to mind.
Anyway here’s my worldview, based on recent historical facts.
The gender-critical brigade (ideologues by definition!) are the sole cause of strife. suicides and polarisation over the gender issue. They set the bandawagon rolling. Before they appeared on the scene, their victims were able to more or less live quiet lives. The extreme polarisation over this issue did not exist, (and nor did it exist over Zionist ideology). However, greater awareness of injustices, especially brazen and mounting injustices, is now unstoppable, thanks to alternative news sources and dedicated, impartial investigative journalism conducted by people far braver than myself. Truth matters. Opinion, censorship and hasbara will never conquer truth..
None of this made the establishment happy. It began to threaten the cosy status quo, as ordained and manipulated by the Epstein class, ,the zionist lobby, the big-oil and big-pharma multinationals, the MIC, intel services, etc.
The gender issue became a convenient tactic used to divert attention from these much greater obstacles to a civilised, unpolluted world, It was expedient to harness the insanity of religious extremism in order to exploit a tiny minority of people as scapegoats for society’s ills. (As with non-Aryans, homosexuals and disabled people in Nazi Germany).
Far from ‘trans ideology’ being a US export, it was the US Christian right who vigorously exported their toxic fundamentalist ideology to Britain. Their various related US-based ‘charities’, ‘institutes’ and ‘foundations’ have been its key funders here and worldwide. (That smirking cigar-smoking yachtswoman also flung a few million to the cause in Scotland. Her lack of empathy, ethics and common decency is a disgrace to humanity).
Their ultimate aim is coercive, and has always been to ban/criiminalise all who oppose their literalist, biblical worldview, which demands total support of Zionism and Palestinian genocide (“Israel’s right to defend itself”), a return to strict (but highly selective!) Biblical law, ‘traditional family values’, sexual ‘purity’, corporal punishment of children, capital punishment, the gagging of free speech,belief in the USA’s manifest God-given destiny, etc. White Anglo-Saxon supremacy lurks darkly within their ranks, but even that comes second to the supremacy of the zionist entity. ‘TERF’ ideology is ultimately psychologically inseparable from wider fascist/authoritarian thinking patterns, and its noisy influence is made possible with US Christian financial backing.
Lovely! Christian Fascist Dystopia here we come! Good luck to your worldview, but I’d sooner stick with my own.
What is particularly boneheaded about the “gender critical” comments is that these commenters are unwittingly displaying precisely the thing they wish to deny, namely, that male and female are roles in society rather than a binary pair of perfectly definable physical states.
How so? Because they haven’t had even a selection of their own cells tested for their genetic material, let alone the entirety of their cells through the course of their lives, which would of course be impossible. They haven’t been thoroughly imaged internally, nor opened surgically and inspected, to ensure that they have only the “correct” set of gonads. They don’t have monitors implanted to ensure their hormonal levels never stray beyond the “limiting values” for “their sex”.
So they can’t possibly know whether they’re “entirely male” or “entirely female”; their so-called “biological sex” is an assumption they’re making about themselves, a set of habits, and a role in society that they have been playing for so long and so unquestioningly that they believe it defines their physiology.
I suppose it may be a surprise to some, but physical reality is not made of words.
Excellent reply, Clark! Rather than attempting to reason with those whose thought processes have selectively abandoned reason, I thought I’d attempt to delve into the darker recesses of a bigot’s mind..
Inherent in all bigotry is the stubborn unwillingness to learn what those so-afflicted are determined not to hear, even in the face of dazzling logic, for they are driven by irrational subconcious fears and insecurity. It can also be a strategy for coping with their own demons, through denial and projection. They are unwitting slaves to cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy and the sweet, soothing balm of wilful ignorance. A common behavioual trait is to demand others to cite evidence that they can’t be bothered to seek for themselves – or even spend time to read it when it’s presented to them. (I did say ‘read carefully’ and ‘an introduction’, but this was ignored, and trolling was preferred – a classic modus operandi of the species).
Bigotry has no place in any serious discussion, yet I find the ‘gender critical’ ideologues merrily spouting it on this thread, wildly clutching at mirages.. Zionists, Ukronazis, the Epstein class, etc. use exactly the same psychological diversionary techniques: all of them proud bigots! Why bother even coming here; a blog where humanity and wisdom prevail? We can even learn from it! (Very rarely do I find myself disagreeing with you, Craig, and I’ve been quietly lurking here for many years).
Rather than stooping to bigotry, the world needs true ‘brave heros’, people who despise injustice and put humanity before their own self-interests. That why I come here, for it’s such people who are the catalysts of the civilising process.. Bigotry never leads to greater humanity and a fairer world, but has the reverse effect. Its arrogant self-interest even fuels wars, genocide, environmental destruction and climate chaos..
Whether discussing zionism’s evils, Palestine liberation, sociopathic presidents, the Skripal deception fiasco, the silencing of Julian Assange, Scottish independence, the rise of fascism and state authoritarianism, the death throes of the Empire, bigots will always emerge, eager to poison rational discourse with their habitual closed-minded and inane remarks. I’d feel ashamed at such revelling in ignorance, but they clearly don’t. Sadly, we live in an increasingly ‘dumbed down’ society and they’re just blindly following the herd mentality of their choice. For them, blind faith ever trumps fact; it saves them from needing to think for themselves.
.
However, for those of us who still feel that a little knowledge may actually be useful, and who can’t access the Nature article, here it is:
https://archive.ph/sZkU6
As for mosaicism, here’s an example: “A 35-year-old male was investigated for primary infertility… Chromosome analysis from whole blood culture showed cells with 46,XX/46,XY/47,XXY/48,XXXY/48,XXYY mosaicism. The predominant cell line was 47,XXY (87.86%). 46,XY/47,XXY mosaicism is *not* uncommon”. Mosaicism can exist in the brain.
Incidentally, someone criticised me for using the term ‘gifted’, and referred to Terman. Yes, I know, but similar dubious origins could be said for many terms used in psychology, but they are used nevertheless. Personally, I hate the term, for ‘giftedness’ is a paradox; equally a curse… a lifelong burden. However, it is the recognised term used by educational psychologists, and I suggest you study the work of the doyens of research into this area, Kazimierz Dąbrowski and his acolyte, Michael Piechowski.
Natasha… your data deluge is most impressive! Much appreciated.
@Mihaela – “Bigotry has no place in any serious discussion, yet I find the ‘gender critical’ ideologues merrily spouting it on this thread, wildly clutching at mirages.. ”
Try to write a sentence about your opponents that isn’t filled with haty sneers, adverbial or otherwise, in every clause. Also reflect on why you think the way you do about the matter in hand – always good discipline. I did encourage you to find out about Elsevier if you want to get a proper handle on the world of scientific journals. Might be worth looking at the fallacy called argument to authority too. It’s as if you are shouting while standing in a very small puddle.
Is it “science” BTW that tells you what a man is, what a woman is, and how many categories of “none of the above” there are, or is it personal declaration? Your take on this strikes me as highly superficial and without foundation, however many long words written by careerists you grasp and paste.
My comment was addressed to bigotry in general, not to any individual. Yes bigotry does warrant one’s disgust, because of its essential cruelty towards its victims. It causes harm, is joyless, tiresome and life-negating. Unlike many, I don’t and won’t, make personal attacks when communicating with others. I try to reason, and live in hope. Nor will I be dragged into rehashing old ground.
Over the years, I must have read countless papers published by Elsevier, . What is it that you particularly feel we should know about them? .
By the way, I do have many reservations about academia,peer review, vested interests, research funding streams and academic research of all kinds. We probably even share some of them. I also fully accept that a few trans people may be ‘fakes’ and pose dangers, but that obviously pales into insignificance when compared with similar dangers posed by some cisgender folk within the wider population, especially by men..That’s not misandry, but a sad fact.
1. I see bigotry working both ways but it looks like you see only one kind of bigotry, the one that opposes your views.
2. Re “…dangers posed by some cisgender folk within the wider population, especially by men”, the claim that women make politics safer is a common feminist myth. Women in politics can be as disgusting as men, as the examples of Madeleine Albright (with her 500,000 Iraqi children worth dying), Hillary Clinton, Toria Nuland and the current batch of women in the EU leadership demonstrate. Why are “The 3 Witches” who destroyed Libya (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Powell) any better than those 3 scoundrels (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld) who destroyed Iraq? To quote Anne Coulter on Abu-Ghraib, “I think the other point that no one is making about the [Abu Ghraib] abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general [Janis Karpinski] running the entire operation. I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn’t be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious.”
the claim that women make politics safer is a common feminist myth
I still see claims that ‘women make better mangers because they’re more caring and compassionate than their male counterparts’. Whoever wrote that never met the spiteful bitch I used to work for or her ultimate superior who wasn’t much better.
Pears Morgaine: I dunno, I don’t have enough stats. I worked under many CEOs, some men were worse than some women and vice versa. My wife certainly was a better manager than myself, not because she is more caring but because she is way better orgaized and is an excellent planner. She was also very good in judging people’s abilities, and made it her rule to place evryone in the right spot where they could do their best without reaching their level of incompetence. This is why in corporate science she successfully managed divisions of up to 25 people. I would never handle this because I was always too concentrated on projects and scientific problems. Organizing people was too boring for me.
“I still see claims that ‘women make better mangers because they’re more caring and compassionate than their male counterparts’.”
My experience is that women in male-dominated jobs tend to be better at their job, probably because to go into that walk of life you have to be really keen in the first place if you are a women as you know you are going to be up against prejudice, as opposed to for any particularly feminine qualities. Unfortunately there are still far to many organisations where being better means being more of an evil bastard.
This topic of Craig’s seems to have everyone so angry.
‘Mosaicism can exist in the brain. ‘
Evidence please.– just to demonstrate you are not a bigot.
The defence, at least of one of the defendants, has opened its case in the Keir Starmer alleged arson case:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5pqqnel6vo
My 2 euro cent worth:
The overwhelming majority of humanity are unambiguously male or female.
The tiny unfortunate minority who are not easily classified don’t count as a rebuttal of the assertion that “humans are either of the male or the female sex”.
Just as the overwhelming majority of humanity are bipedal, possessed of two legs.
The tiny unfortunate minority who are not bipedal don’t count as a rebuttal of the assertion that “humans are bipedal”.
Btw I’m old enough to remember noticing (in the 1970’s?) the quick adoption of the word gender as a synonym for and euphemism for the word sex.
Presumably to avoid unintended double entendres with sex as in sexual intercourse?
Interesting summary of the drift in usage from sex to gender: https://troonfiles.com/article.html
“The overwhelming majority of humanity are unambiguously male or female”.
If we mean external anatomy then yes. In terms of reproduction ability, true again, but this definition would exclude pre-pubertal and post-menopausal people.
In terms of chomosomal karyotypes, hormonal factors and neurology things become very blurred.- the consensus of all who research the relevant fields.
At least 1 in 8 people have ‘normal’ mosaicism – a significant mix of XY and XX chromosomes within their bodies, varying across ogans,including the brain… and that’s only considering the normal human karyotype (46XX,46XY)! Probably all women who have given birth to boys have XY chromosomes.in large numbers.
As many as 1-7% of the population have conditions described as intersex, mainly very minor.
Sorry, That should have been 1.7%!
Mihaela
May 16, 2026 at 13:14
You said “the consensus of all who research the relevant fields” is that “things become very blurred”..
As Carl Sagan said, ” Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence
Where is your extraordinary evidence?
“Btw I’m old enough to remember noticing (in the 1970’s?) the quick adoption of the word gender as a synonym for and euphemism for the word sex.”
and I’m old enough to remember when gender was masculine, feminine or neuter and sex was male or female.
I’m old enough to remember when there were two sexes and three verdicts in Scottish courts of law. How times change.
Re ‘The cases of Isla Bryson, Serenity Francis Johnston, Katie Dolatowski and Alexandra Stewart are notorious and they do exist. They cannot simply be wished away.’
You mention them as if they all were cases of men successfully posing as trans in order to prey on women. In reality, as far as I have been able to find out, three out of these four are just people who have committed sex crimes and who have subsequently come out as trans or transitioned. None of these three has been accused of assaulting a woman since they came out as trans. So we have no proof that they are just pretending to be trans, and they are not examples proving that such alleged ‘trans posers’ are often a danger to women. Nor do they prove that such cases are not ‘extremely rare’. The only half-good example seems to be Alexandra Stewart, but even here there is really no proof that she has been ‘posing as trans’ for 10 years since 2016 specifically for the purpose of eventually committing sexual assault in 2026 – she might be just a genuine trans woman who also happens to be capable of sexual assault. It’s not as if a cis woman can’t sexually assault a woman, or as if that never happens.
But even if these were four good examples, they would still be four cases out of a population of 5,5 million in Scotland. I do not deny that such cases can and do occur in the world, but obsessing over extremely rare cases and letting them guide policy is irrational. The figure of the male rapist posing as trans is given an absurdly disproportionate position in anti-trans discourse compared to its real-life prevalence. The anti-trans camp’s idea that all trans people must suffer because of these extremely few individuals is unjust and bigoted.
Assuming that trans identity is something as ingrained and deeply felt as reported, with gender dysphoria even leading to suicide, prohibiting a person from transitioning would seem to be a cruel and unusual punishment. Cruel and unusual punishments should not be meted out to anyone, including to people who have committed sexual or violent crimes. Not doing so does not need to cause a great danger for women – being recognised as a woman is not and should not be some kind of superpower or carte blanche that enables an individual to sexually assault women with impunity.
I honestly don’t get the whole ‘women’s prisons’ controversy either. It should not be made easy for anybody, regardless of gender, to rape anybody else in prison. If such a technical possibility is left, that’s the real problem, not the presence of trans women in prisons. It’s not as if cis women can’t rape or otherwise assault other women and as if protection in women’s prisons is unnecessary. And it’s not as if men can’t rape men, making protection in men’s prisons unnecessary. It’s similar with toilets. A toilet isn’t and shouldn’t be a desert where anyone can rape anyone at will. After all, there is such a thing as unisex toilets, too. This looks like an obsession with extremely low-probability events.
As for the sports thing – the science currently seems to be saying that the advantages of trans women tend to decrease with hormone replacement, but some have not been found to disappear completely. In any case, it stands to reason that they inevitably remain physically different from cis women in some respects, for better or worse. Perhaps it’s enough that they should be allowed to participate only after a period of hormone replacement, or perhaps, to be on the safe side, there should be separate competitions for trans women (and for trans men, too). In any case, this is a separate issue from recognising their gender identity. You can recognise the femaleness of a mermaid and still think that she shouldn’t be allowed to compete in a swimming race with ordinary women in view of her advantage. I’m perfectly fine with recognising their preferred gender, for what it’s worth, since I really don’t see gender identity as something meaningful in the first place.
Well all of the four persons mentioned were sent to prison so their opportunities for committing further offences were limited however Alexandra Stewart it seems did go on assault another woman.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4glne43101o
Frankly the idea that these people have had some sort of Damascene conversion which just happened to coincide with their arrest is naive and laughable. They are to put it bluntly taking the piss. Getting sent to a woman’s prison gives them access to further victims and saves them from ending up like Ian Huntley or Ian Watkins, sex offenders are not popular in prison and can expect violent assaults and even get raped themselves. You claim there’s no evidence that they’re faking it but there’s no evidence that they’re not either. Perhaps if as a proviso to being accepted as a transwoman they had to undergo some drastic surgery first it would weed out the gender-pretenders.
The governor of a Scottish prison reckoned that only one of the trans prisoners in Scotland was genuine, the others were just gaming the system. One changed his/her mind three times.
As for ‘their opportunities to commit further offences being limited’ – well, if so, then there is no problem, is there? The whole reason why it was supposed to be bad to send them to a women’s reason was that they would, in fact, be able to commit further offences there.
Re ‘access to further victims’ – again, no proof of that, since there are no reports of anyone having been victimised. Except for the Stewart case, which I have already commented on – if her goal had really been to access further victims, ten years seems like an implausibly long time for her to abstain from moving towards that goal (or else, if this was the first opportunity, it looks as if there have been almost no opportunities). Still reasonably described as a very rare incident.
Re ‘gaming the system’, well, if that ‘system’ involves commonly allowing people to be killed in prison as you argue, then frankly, it deserves to be gamed and that doesn’t trouble me much. Murray’s argument was that their alleged gaming the system was undesirable because it was endangering women, not because they might possibly get away with being murdered.
I don’t know that they came out immediately after their arrests, but human psychology is complicated – people may become more inclined to finally make a life-changing decision when they are in a radically changed situation anyway. Not to mention that these people are very rare cases, and you can’t be sure how their minds work. Indeed, if declaring oneself to be trans and then more or less playing that role for years was all roses as you describe it, I think that it would be a lot more common. There is definitely something different about these individuals – there is no shortage of habitual liars, cheats and sex offenders being convicted every year, and it is telling that, for some reason, very few of them have chosen that option.
Apart from Stewart they were all sent to male prisons.
Bryson was initially sent to a female prison, and so was Dolatowski. Then they were moved to male prisons because of the resulting brouhaha – not because they had assaulted any woman in prison in reality, but just because it was feared that they might – and a rule was adopted that ‘any transgender woman with a history of violence against women and girls (VAWG), who presents a risk to women and girls, will not be placed in the women’s estate’. I doubt that the trans movement is up in arms demanding that they or other sex offenders should be moved back to the female prison. All in all, sounds like much ado about nothing to me.
As for Stewart, she hadn’t even been convicted of any sex crime, but of murder, so there is even less reason to suspect that she was planning to rape anyone in prison, or that she was faking it.
Re my ‘not because they might possibly get away with being murdered’ – sorry, I meant ‘not because they might possibly avoid being murdered’.
Forgot to respond to the bit about one changing their mind three times – again, normal, non-criminal people transitioning do sometimes hesitate and change their mind as well. People are complicated.
Re ‘there’s no evidence that they’re faking it but there’s no evidence that they’re not either’ – well, I have never argued that we know that they aren’t faking it, only that we don’t know that they are. Murray wrote about them as if it were clear, proved and undeniable that they are faking it, and it isn’t. We certainly don’t know that all of them are faking it, let alone that all people in such a situation in the future will be faking it, and in such a case, the humane and civilised approach is to err on the side of not harming the person. It’s part of the same attitude as the principles that people are innocent until proven guilty and that it is better to let ten guilty people go free than to wrongly convict one innocent person.
“You’ve got no proof of that” doesn’t suggest a convincing case. [*] Of course these people are probably taking the piss, and in any case women in prison have a right to be protected. The question of the extent to which the blokes who say they aren’t blokes are consciously taking the piss as against truly believing what they say is secondary to the question of whether they should be classed as women but nevertheless it’s still a sensible question. I’ve never seen it even addressed, though, by the “men can get pregnant” and “men can become women” lobby, who seem completely oblivious that this area is a matter of, well, psychology. These cultists’ heads are stuck firmly up their fundaments where basic questions of psychology, the individual, and society are concerned. Which is probably why they go all nasty and start screaming as the evoke the god of science.
Note
*) Someone said this to me recently when I told her that on average vegetarians live many years longer than flesheaters. I took it at that point that I had won the argument. I did though send her a link to an academic journal article but AFAIAA she didn’t read it.
It’s a general principle that the burden of proof is on whoever claims something, or specifically on whoever claims the existence of a problem that needs to be addressed (in this case, on whoever claims there’s a major problem with prisoners pretending to be trans in order to assault women). Unlike your debate on vegetarianism, you haven’t sent me a link to any academic journal, so the comparison is rather weak.* Re women having a right to be protected – the claim that women in prison are put in increased danger by the presence of trans women is what needs to be proved, and also the claim that it is such a great danger that it outweighs the right of people to have their gender identity respected. Apart from that right, if the trans woman takes female hormones, she is objectively weakened in comparison to men in a way similar to cis women, and that means that she is in a position of increased vulnerability in a male prison in a way similar to the way a cis woman would be (while also being less capable of posing a danger to cis women).
‘Men can get pregnant’ is a true statement under a certain definition of men, namely one based on gender identity rather than biological sex. Obviously they mean trans men with biologically female reproductive systems. Overall, there is an unfortunate prevalence of extremes on both sides of this debate, with people caricaturing each other’s positions and refusing to listen to each other or to see anything reasonable in each other’s views. Murray makes that general point in the post, and he is right about that.
* Re the relative longevity of vegetarians – not an issue to which I’ve devoted much thinking and research, but the first results I get indicate that: 1. it has been argued that the studies claiming increased longevity for vegetarians have not controlled (sufficiently) for other factors; 2. some studies that have controlled for other factors have found no difference in mortality between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.