What a ‘woman’ is or is not has been defined by law ….so what? Why this ruling is a defeat for all Part 1

The April 16th UK Supreme Court ruling defined what a ‘woman’ is in the eyes of the law. The cheering and cork popping on one side and the cry of injustice on the other leave me with a sense of dismay I am now unpacking.

I am not a lawyer so the fact this judge ruling might or might not be lawful is not my fight, I leave this debate to the legal eagles out there, picking at the carcass of this new piece of legislation to see who will bleed more.

What I am is a human being, concerned with the notion that by winning this skirmish for ‘women’ we are losing the battle for men and the war for human rights.

Of the thoughts bouncing in my head that are all whispering ‘this is wrong’, two stand out in particular:  how the victory for ‘woman’ is sexist against ‘man’ and the missed opportunities of the current legal system.  

Two cases reported in the media igniting what ended in the April 16th ruling, strike me as odd. The case of the locker room and the prison ward. On one end the unease felt by a nurse at the thought of having to share a changing room with a transexual woman and on the other the outcry at the violence done against inmates by one transexual woman prisoner.

What is it about the transexual nature of the individuals in question that is making women cry out for a legal definition of ‘woman’? What are the women trying to protect and what is their fear?

What makes owning a factory standard vulva, as opposed to a bespoke one, a fact we must ask the law to opine on?

Some humans are born with a vulva, others with a penis, others with a variety of options. So what?

I do not see natural red heads getting on the soap box asking to point out that the ginger over there had their hair dyed.

Yet we must wait for a stamp of approval assigned arbitrarily by a doctor, at birth, based exclusively on the existence of a fleshy appendage and, as of two days ago, even contend with the judicial system that declared what we are and are not.

Nature equips us with a body, sexual preference, sexual orientation, gender that are unique to the individual and are normal by design.

What is not normal is that our gender conditioning still perpetuates, through this ruling, the notion that a ‘woman’ is the weak, meek, vulnerable victim of the ‘man’, a natural predator, sexually aggressive, domineering and generally a threat to society and that a transexual is nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing  trying to exploit the system that is meant to protect the inherent goodness and virtue of ‘real’ women. This is misandry, pure and simple.

Once again, we attribute behaviours to a human based on a knob of tissue in between the legs and not to the individual itself.

According to the Safety in Custody Statistics, England and Wales: Deaths in Prison Custody to September 2024 Assaults and Self-harm to June 2024 paper issued by the UK Ministry of Justice :

“…In the 12 months to June 2024, the rate of serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults was higher in the female estate (a rate of 28 per 1,000 prisoners, the highest in the series) compared to the male estate (27 per 1,000 prisoners) for the first time in the time series. This represents an increase on the previous 12 months of 12% in the male estate and 74% in the female estate...”

Only based on these statistics one would consider women to be the aggressive and violent ones. Do you see the irony?

Any individual should feel safe, respected, protected whatever their circumstance.

If one is abused physically, verbally, emotionally by another human being, one will call out the threatening behaviour of such individual and not bake in their sexuality and gender as part of the problem.

Creeps are creeps, physical sexual attributes are not a factor so let’s not cloud the real issue. We must face our fears, be accountable for our actions and biases as individuals and find a resolution based on acceptance and tolerance. Stop outsourcing this responsibility to others only because we are uncomfortable with ourselves

human-generated post :-)