Emma Hilton Profile picture
Sep 20, 2020 13 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Three years ago, the Conservative government launched a consultation on a somewhat esoteric piece of legislation concerning the rights of trans people to alter their birth certificate and legal sex.
The proposed changes included ‘self ID’, a radical departure from the current system of careful assessment and mindful transition for those suffering dysphoria.
Self ID would have allowed acquisition of legal sex based on no more than a sworn declaration. But, in reality, the sworn declaration was lip service.
The proposed changes would have, de facto, removed, or at least critically compromised, protections afforded by equality legislation on the basis of sex.
‘I am a woman’ would become sufficient to permit access to legally-protected female spaces.
Three years ago, women realised this might be a problem. Many had seen it coming for a long time, but the potential impact of these legislative changes raised an army.
Women said ‘No.’

Not just famous women expert in the politics and theory of gender, but women who had gone about their lives without even realising that these protections apply to themselves each and every day.
Women took to the streets, handed out thousands of leaflets and wrote thousands of letters, raised awareness, lobbied their government representatives, dissected the legal ramifications.
Today, following weeks of leaks and rumours, it seems that Self ID has been scrapped as a mechanism to acquiring the opposite legal sex.

For me, it has been too bitter a fight to evoke much positive emotion.
The three years of campaigning and lobbying has created a climate among service providers such that ‘I am a woman’ is indeed sufficient to permit access to legally-protected female spaces.
I hope this newly-invigorated movement of women, connected in ways unimaginable a few years ago, can stay the course to ensure equality legislation is not only secured but reinforced.
The prison service has reviewed its position on the transfer of transwomen to the female estate. Sporting federations are beginning to revisit their regulations for the female category.
Sex shouldn’t matter half as much as it does, but there are, in my opinion, a small number of situations where it will always matter, and where female protections are necessary.

Let’s see this through.

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Sep 13
I had no experience of Charlie Kirk beyond the occasional clip that went past my timeline, none of which I engaged with deeply.

From this UK POV, he was a preppy fundie Christian conservative doing preppy fundie Christian conservative stuff.

No opinion about him beyond characterising him as above, and not thinking at all about that.

But I have rarely wanted to defend anyone more.
Why would I want to defend a preppy fundie Christian conservative? Why did my gut plummet and my heart sink when I learned he had died?

Almost all of us can understand the human POV.
I wasn’t exposed to him. I had to look up everything everyone was saying he said.

None of the below is about me and his views. It’s about the appalling dishonesty I see.

The way social media works. Or doesn’t.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
So, this paper is being widely circulated as a gotcha.

First thing, any author whose affiliation is "The University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia" is probably winning at life.

But let's talk about bird sex.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
Birds use genetic sex determination, just like humans.

The "make male" gene for humans is called SRY, and it lives on the Y chromosome.

If you have functional SRY and its downstream transcriptional storm, you will make testes and make male.
Birds differ. Their "make male" gene is called DMRT1.

It pretty much works like SRY, in that it's immediate downstream target is the parallel gene in both humans and parrots, and the ensuing transcriptional storm triggers testes development (testes being male, of course).
Read 16 tweets
Aug 9
"This model of estradiol’s role in improving resistance to wound sepsis predicts at least four “sexes” across two treatment groups: females who are in the proestrus phase, females who are in the diestrus phase, females who are postmenopausal, and males."

This is Sarah Richardson, of the Fuentes review.

Four "sexes", three of them female and the other male. JFC.


Also in the frame as new sexes, fat men, pregnant women and children. JFC.scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard…
A cell line derived from an unusual cervical cancer (one that spontaneously immortalised) is not even "human", let alone "female", apparently.

It's cervical cancer cell line. Only women have cervices (pl?). JFC.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 4
An interesting article from Professor Andrew Sinclair here, criticising World Athletics proposals to SRY screen their elite female athlete cohort.

It’s a classic. Arguments from authority. Cherry-picking. Doesn’t appear to have read the policy. theconversation.com/world-athletic…
A half-truth.

Apparently-female athletes who test positive for SRY will have a consultation with WA, with a view to medical assessment to better understand any medical conditions (DSDs) they have.

It is this diagnosis that will determine eligibility (or not). Image
After a primer on sex development, Sinclair tries a gotcha.

Describing Swyer Syndrome and CAIS, he argues these athletes would be unfairly excluded.

But WA makes it clear that CAIS is exempt from exclusion. It’s in both the policy and the press release. I doubt Swyer would be excluded either.Image
Read 8 tweets
Jul 28
Ok.

Let’s take Kelly’s penalty at 110 kph and Isak’s belter as 108 kph.

First up, Isak’s belter was from outside the penalty area, under defensive pressure, on the run and without perfect body positioning.

Compare. Image
Image
That Kelly put 110 kph on a penalty is astonishing. That Isak managed to get 108 kph out of this belter is astonishing.

Isak could put 110 kph on a penalty with his eyes closed. Kelly will never get 108 kph on a 20-yard shot she digs out from under her.

No shade.
Much has been made of Kelly’s approach. And her technique is *chef’s kiss*

Now imagine a man with the same expert technique, and who puts in as much % max effort as Kelly?

The ball’s going faster.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 25
Five years ago, I gave a speech comparing sex denialism to creationism.

At the time, my partner-in-crime, Colin Wright, and I were near-lone academic voices willing to stand up and say “Biology! We have a problem!”

@SwipeWright Image
Reflecting, back in 2020, on that state of affairs:

“[That] there are two sexes, male and female is apparently something that biologists do not think needs to be said.

I think they are wrong.”
Since then, biologists with far more authority than an unknown developmental biologist who was trying to work out how nerves navigate over muscles and an unknown evolutionary biologist who was studying what makes insects mad have spoken up.

And their voices are much welcomed.
Read 9 tweets

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