Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊May 22, 2025
At the weekend, a group of trans women protested topless at the Scottish Parliament about the recent Supreme Court ruling that the Equality Act defines women as "biological women". The police couldn't arrest them, because to arrest them for showing their breasts would be to define them as women (it's not illegal for men to be topless). And, of course, the right-wing press that reported on it censored their breasts, thereby making their point for them.
Show threadLiberal Crone
@brucelawson But unless they do genetic testing on every person declaring themselves to be a different gender from what their genitalia might indicate, nobody can possibly know whether they’re “biological women” or not. If people are concerned about different genders competing in the same sports, I believe their worries are misplaced. Why not create classes of competition based on levels of testosterone rather than gender? It’s more complex; but so are humans.
May 22, 2025 at 4:48pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadDucoMay 22, 2025
@BrendaAnna @brucelawson Genetic testing costs money. But it's not needed here because trans is defined as having a gender different from the sex assigned at birth. So when a baby is born, they look at it and decide what it is and put it on the birth certificate. If someone has a different gender from what they decided at that time, they are trans.
Show threadLiberal CroneMay 23, 2025
@duco @brucelawson I agree that it would be absurd to do genetic tests on people who are Transgender. Ideally, we would all just take their word for it. Unfortunately, there are currently a lot of ignorant people who are not willing to see beyond the 2 gender status quo. Given positions of power, these people will make considerable efforts to ensure Trans people are not acknowledged.
Show threadDucoMay 23, 2025
@BrendaAnna @brucelawson most trans people fit into the 2 gender status quo, though. They are men or women.
But I agree that there are people fighting trans and other queer people. There is still a lot of fighting for trans rights needed.
Show threadLiberal CroneMay 24, 2025
@duco @brucelawson All the fears that some people express as grounds for being dismissive of the Trans community are so easily addressed without dehumanizing anyone. Unisex bathrooms with private stalls and focusing on testosterone levels rather than gender in sports events are a couple of examples.
Show threadzbrownMay 26, 2025

@duco @BrendaAnna @brucelawson genetic testing is also irrelevant from a UK law perspective, the Court defines ‘biological gender’ to be ‘the sex of a person at birth’ — so it doesn't matter if a woman originally assigned male turns out to be XX or XY or anything else on any test: It's that original assignment — and only that — which counts.

No test can tell you what a person's original assignment was.

There is no definitive official document that states what someone's assignment was.

Show threadLiberal CroneMay 26, 2025
@zbrown @duco @brucelawson I hope we can evolve to that point in the US; but it isn’t looking likely soon, sadly.
Show threadzbrownMay 26, 2025

@BrendaAnna @duco @brucelawson what? why? this situation is completely unhinged!

Access to services, and not just toilets, is now supposed to be gated on ‘biological sex’ except there is absolutely no way to know what a person's ‘biological sex’ is, nor can you ‘prove’ your own!

Not only is it completely unjust, it's totally unworkable — you fundamentally cannot comply with it even if you wanted to (and unfortunately there are many who are).

Show threadLiberal CroneMay 26, 2025
@zbrown @duco @brucelawson I meant that I hope we’ll eventually stop attempting to assign gender at birth.