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 16th 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.
