Holly Lawford-Smith

ICYMI -- all twelve lectures for THE PHILOSOPHY OF FEMINISM are now available @ my Y/T channel 👇🏼

@ekodayuki @yamashita_socio hello! thank you so much for your work! if only the sociologist had taken the time to make use of it :(

@aytchellesse @yamashita_socio Hello, I am the one who translated this article into Japanese. I am very glad to talk to you thanks

キンバリー・クレンショーも、パトリシア・ヒル・コリンズも、トランスジェンダーの排除を扇動するような種類のフェミニストではありません。二人とも、トランスジェンダーに対する差別を交差する抑圧のひとつの軸として捉えています。

@itagaki_lunedi @void3108 they say "biological reductionist" in such a vitriolic way that they hope no one will notice it only means "believes there are two sexes and you can't change sex" 😂

@aytchellesse @void3108 TRAs labeled you as notorious transfobe and as biological reductionist😅but I'm on your side😆

ICYMI -- all twelve lectures for THE PHILOSOPHY OF FEMINISM are now available @ my Y/T channel 👇🏼

@JulieSzego there's a reason one of them is out on its own 😂

I'm certain that every single title on this list is there for no reason other than literary merit.

@Erinadinfinitum telling us he hasn't read the paper without telling us he hasn't read the paper 😂

@aytchellesse Hey! Have a look!

@yamashita_socio you didn't read the paper before posting this thread, did you. allow me to assist: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

そしてブラック・フェミニズムが問題化してきた女性経験の普遍化と同じ種類の問題を、それ以上に深刻な形で内包しているのが、セックス・カーストとしての女性という、ローフォード＝スミスによる生物学的な還元だ。

@void3108 oh very cool! thanks for letting me know :)

@aytchellesse @ekodayuki @stqamalan @yamashita_socio x.com/KEIOUP/status/…

The leader of the Lib Dems, and the leader and deputy leader of the Green party, think some women have penises. In itself, it seems like a relatively unimportant matter. But it is symptomatic of a contempt for science and evidence-based truth. Could you vote for a flat-Earther?

🚨Yale changed its mission statement. Here's why that matters:

@TheMopingOwl i think something like pregnancy discrimination would be considered as sex, not gender identity, discrimination. the absurdities appear only with gender identity.

@aytchellesse How does the law cope with women who don't have a "gender identity"? It seems ridiculous that they are pushing women into a category which many think is a lifestyle choice, not something that everyone is born with.

reading the giggle v tickle (2026) judgement that was published yesterday. some interesting departures from trans activist ideology: 1) the gender identity of a transwoman is "transwoman", _not_ "woman". that means transwomen do not share a gender identity with women. universal gender identity is false. 2) discrimination can be done on the basis of "a characteristic that appertains generally to persons who have the same gender identity as the aggrieved person". this characteristic, according to the judgement, is looking like a man. 3) transwomen, as a distinct protected group (_not_ trans people generally), have in common that they look like men. 4) as usual, no explanation is offered for why a transwoman is a type of woman rather than a type of man. the judgement refers to "gender identity" that is different from "sex assigned at birth" but does not explain what gender identity has to do with sex. e.g. "" transgender" which refers to a person whose gender identity is different from their sex as registered at birth". 5) the federal court decision effectively prevents the exclusion of males from female-only spaces due to the fear that if that male-appearance person turns out to be a transwoman rather than an ordinary man, the exclusion can turn out to have been direct discrimination. you don't need to actually be treating someone worse _because you believe they are trans_. 6) this is so genuinely absurd—that the shared characteristic of transwomen on the basis of which they might be discriminated against is also shared with ALL MEN—that giggle will surely win on appeal to the high court. that's my saturday morning hot take, anyway. ⭐

@HarkDorse @blackthugcat @DoNoHarm79 true—and there was a paper in @JConIdeas that did a survey and found most people still mean adult human female by "woman".

@aytchellesse @blackthugcat @DoNoHarm79 "woman" now includes men, & govts meekly accepted this, over the views/wishes of ACTUAL women, & then used it to change the meaning of, or rewrite laws. In what other area would they let a handful of activists in effect just change the law? It's quite scary how easy they made it!

@SpeakUp4WomenNZ just read your email. good luck for wednesday! 🤞🏼

As Australian women found out yesterday, she won't be right, mate. New Zealand has to do better, and we have the chance this week! The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill is being read in Parliament, probably on this coming Wednesday May 20th. The Federal Court of Australia ruling in the Giggle vs Tickle case is a reminder of what can happen if Sex is not prioritised in legislation. The case centred on whether a female-only app could lawfully exclude a male who identifies as a woman. In Australia, in 2026, the law says "no". Women in Australia cannot say no to men who say they are women. This is our opportunity to get New Zealand back on track. The Bill in its current form is not perfect but the intention is clear - encourage your MP to vote for it through the first reading by using the template on the link below Use the FIND YOUR MP button to look up the email address of your chosen MP, then copy and paste the text into your email. A big thanks to @SWS_australasia for sharing this. speakupforwomen.nz/write-to-your-…

i see what you're saying, but given that our law lists two protected characteristics, sex _and_ gender identity, i think they'd try to understand female historical oppression using sex, and anti-trans discrimination using gender identity. that _should_ allow understanding that a transwoman qua male is privileged, even if a woman qua "cis" is too, but then comes all the stupidity of taking gender identity to change/transform sex... ☠️

@aytchellesse @WillDennison10 Holly, even though they would try to present woman/cis women/Afab as a privileged gender id, couldn’t a simple run through of feminist history show they are a disadvantaged group? Cis men should be the comparator, just as white ppl would be the comparator for race.

@OmegaFiveOG @raqaellapaella so the answer as to why transwoman is a type of woman (rather than a type of man) is just that some people now use the word that way? even though most people don't...

With respect to your point number 4. The Gillard amendment inserted some explanatory text when they removed man and woman as to be a broader meaning to include men, as women. They they use that amendment to say the meaning has changed. Their interpretation is that woman = women + men with gender identity of woman. So from their perspective, other women are therefore the comparator. To me, excluding someone on the basis of their sex, necessitates discrimination based on gender identity in some situations.

@blackthugcat @DoNoHarm79 yes—if i recall correctly that was in the explanatory memorandum when the definitions of man and woman were removed from the SDA. it makes the law unpredictable and radically changeable.

@aytchellesse @DoNoHarm79 I was more alarmed by the discussion at 271+. "changes in the ordinary meaning of a word resulting from changing social conditions or attitudes may be relevant to the application of a statute". If 'sex' & 'woman' have become fluid in meaning, that leaves us where, legally?

it would be unlawful discrimination unless considered covered by either general or special exemptions. there are some, of each, that allow positive discrimination / affirmative action -type measures. so i think there really could be a situation of "whether you can exclude him depends on what he says about himself".

@dizzywhatsit i don't think they can take the whole SDA to be about woman as a gender identity that includes both trans and non-trans women, because that would make nonsense out of sexual orientation and sex characteristics discrimination.

@aytchellesse Re: 1) I see 2x meanings of woman here: ‘woman’ the shared gender (identity) of the SDA & (cis) ‘women’ + ‘trans women’ gender identities that make up that shared gender (identity) Re: 4) Think of SAAB as a gender identity assigned at birth, ie. cisgender

yes, woman would be a distinct gender identity. but then because the protected attributes are named for the whole category (e.g. "race" rather than "people of colour"), woman might be understood as a privileged gender identity unlikely to face discrimination. i think they'd probably want to run sexism/misogyny as sex discrimination, rather than as gender identity discrimination.

@aytchellesse Re your point 1) - doesn’t that mean that women should be able to segregate by “gender identity”? So women just have to change their labels and illegal becomes legal? Do I have that right?