Transgender - Not So Simple – but don’t get confused

 

Transgender - Not So Simple – but don’t get confused

Unfortunately, for transgender people, politicians, and the public are completely confused about this issue and it is my contention that they have formed the opinion that there are only two sexes. They are very wrong. There are in fact at least three sexes: female, male and intersex male or female - or sometimes both. Most people fall into the binary version of birth sex.

Since the Supreme Court Ruling on the 16^th April 2025 there has been a political furore and rightly so. The court judged that for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act a person can only be identified as being a man or woman if it was recorded as such on their birth certificate and that their current sex matches their sex at birth. Up until the Supreme Court Ruling a  transgender woman or man with a Gender Registration Certificate could claim to be a real man or woman, even if they were originally recorded on their birth certificate as the opposite sex. Transgender people were also allowed to change their birth certificate. The upshot of the ruling means that transgender people cannot use single sex facilities such as toilets, changing rooms or hospital wards unless their gender matches their original biological sex. The same would apply to intersex people. The ruling only adversely affects transgender women - in most cases. It is worth reading the House of Commons Guidance as follows:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk › research-briefings › cbp-10259

The case was raised by” For Women Scotland” (FWS), against the Scottish Home Office ministry. FWS contend that transgender women are in fact men and should be excluded from single sex facilities.

Part of the Supreme Court ruling:

The court said that the EA 2010 seeks to reduce inequality and to protect people with protected characteristics against discrimination. The act recognises women as having the protected characteristic of sex and “transsexual” people (the term used in the act) as having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

The court found that as a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination could only be interpreted as referring to biological sex. For example, the provisions relating to pregnancy and maternity are based on the fact that only biological women can become pregnant.

It also found that a certificated sex interpretation would cause confusion and impracticability in relation to other parts of the EA 2010, such as the provision of single and separate sex services, and could undermine the protection given to those with the protected characteristic of sexual orientation.

Overall, it concluded that any interpretation other than one based on biological sex would render the EA 2010 incoherent and impracticable to operate. Therefore, the guidance issued by the Scottish Ministers, which FWS was challenging, was incorrect.

 

 The ruling is black and white clear but does not consider the fact that some XY people who are genetically male could appear to be physical women. Equally some XX genetically female could appear to be physical men. This would mean that a transgender man should be allowed to use female only single sex facilities. It is obvious that the Supreme Court and” For Women Scotland” have got things wrong.

Some of the lesbians jumping up and down in celebration of victory in the courts could quite easily be genetic XY men without realising it, so does this make their lesbian partners heterosexuals: a bitter irony indeed. There is confusion all around but not in my mind. There is no confusion in my mind that this ruling has serious consequences for transgender women and men who could suffer abuse of their human rights.

Those people who are born with XX chromosomes and have the full complement of female sexual organs are female. They are, therefore recorded as female on their birth certificate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nng2j42xro

Likewise, people who are born with XY chromosomes and have the full complement of male sexual organs are male. They are, therefore, recorded as male on their birth certificate.

Most children grow up as either “normal” males or females and have no difficulty identifying with their genetic and physical sex or gender.

Some children grow up feeling that they identify with the opposite sex and feel that they are psychologically in the wrong sexual body, but more of that later.

Intersex people are born with physical features which do not entirely match their Karyotypic or Genotypic make up.

 It is possible, in nature, for a child to be born with XX (female) chromosomes but to have acquired male physical characteristics. Thus, they may look like a boy when they are born and grow up to be men. This is often called the de la Chapelle syndrome. It occurs when, during fertilisation, a male SRY gene is transferred from the Y chromosome of the father to the one of the X chromosomes of the mother, which make up the female genotype. Some children with the de la Chapelle syndrome grow up not knowing that genetically they are “females”; neither do their families; they look and feel like men. These types of intersex individuals are usually sterile, and they only find out that they are intersex when they try and fail to make their fertile- female partners pregnant.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10693380/

 

https://academic.oup.com/jcemcr/article/3/Supplement_1/luae218.037/7984227?login=false

It is also possible, for a child to be born with XY (male) chromosomes but to have acquired female physical characteristics. Thus, they may look like a girl when they are born and grow up to be women. This is often known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) which can be complete or partial.  Individuals with complete AIS can grow up to be almost completely female from a physical point of view.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22199-androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

There is another condition, Swyer Syndrome which has similar results as for AIS. XY individuals with XY AIS or Swyer syndrome are usually infertile.

The number of Intersex individuals is very small perhaps less then 0.1 percent of the population, but this means that globally there are thousands of individuals who are Intersex, it should be noted that these syndromes are perfectly normal results of genetic mutations and hormonal anomalies. It should also be noted that many Intersex individuals have mixed male and female physical attributes. Some Intersex females have internal testes which produce sperm and can father children by artificial insemination even though their female bodies are infertile and may lack a uterus or ovaries. Nature is very variable indeed.

Hanne-Gaby-Odiele is a Belgian model who is a self-declared Intersex female with “male” XY chromosomes. She looks completely feminine and is married to a man although she is infertile. When she was young, she had an operation without her consent to remove internal testes, which doctors claimed could become cancerous. She campaigns for Intersex individuals’ rights. She is married to a man. Does that make her husband a homosexual? I don’t think so.    Hanne looks exactly like a woman. She should not dare to go into a male sex facility for fear of either ridicule or assault from thugs. Would “For Women Scotland welcome her into there single sex facilities or would they claim she was a man, if they knew her circumstances, and exclude her?

So, let’s look at the case for transgender women who could now be legally excluded from female single sex facilities if FWS have their way. Transgender women are in the unfortunate position of being classified at birth as males and having this recorded on their birth certificate. They have XY chromosomes and some or all the physical attributes of men, and they can even father children. However, transgender women feel that they are women trapped in a man’s body. Attempts to persuade them otherwise usually fail. If they can be persuaded to have psychotherapy to treat their condition, they often end up being traumatised. Many transgender women undergo surgery and hormone treatment to make their bodies fit in with the perception of their gender. No-one would undergo such medical treatment to make their perceived gender opposite to their birth” sex” without serious consideration, as they are not doing it just for fun or fashion. The law allows them to obtain Gender Reassignment Certificates to prove that they have changed their gender, and they can change their “sex” at birth on their birth certificates.

There is some scientific evidence that the internal structure of the transgender brain is ever so slightly different for a cisgender brain. It could be the case that a transgender woman’s brain is structurally more feminine than the brain of a cisgender man and this is why transgender women feel that they are in fact women in men’s bodies. This is all part of the natural variation in human biology. A similar reasoning applies to transgender men. These are the reasons why transgender people are prepared to accept severe medical procedures to re-assign their gender; such individuals deserve the respect of the cisgender society and deserve to have their human rights respected.

https://studyfinds.org/study-shows-differences-brain-structure-transgender-cisgender/

Laverne Cox of Netflix fame is a transgender woman: does she deserve to be treated as a man? To me is she fully female and deserves the right to be treated as such.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1209545/

Should this lady be forced to use the single sex spaces for men rather than ciswomen, such an opinion would be absurd?

There was no need to change the guidelines, as the Equality Act already catered for the protection of ciswomen by excluding transgender women, from single sex areas, where it was both proportionate and appropriate. Let’s not trample on the human rights of one minority group to protect another. Let’s exercise a little bit of tolerance for a small minority of people who are stuck in the middles of an ambiguous sexuality.

The supreme court ruling is being taken to the ECHR who hopefully will overturn an unjust decision.