Maya Forstater

The point of #manels thing is that lots of conf organisers *don't* oppose them or even think about them. Or the event organiser doesn't have power to tell her boss they should find female experts.The point of the Q was that men have taken the pledge because women underrepresented

As Alice pointed out and as I pointed out, there doesn't seem to be a trade-off between trans rights and women's rights in 99.5% of the cases conference organizers will face.

Treating people who say they are in part or whole women as such doesn't pose much of a risk to the fight for women's representation on panels. Unless you are worried about a nonexistent universe where men start conspiring to cross-dress on a regular basis to duck the pledge.

No it was more of a test case wondering what people think the definition of 'woman' is in a practical setting. The thing with the #manels thing is it is already based on saying lets get women to the point of being at least *underrepresented* on panels (1 person out of 3+)

That seems like a low bar already we are shooting for, given that women are 50% of the popn. Obviously everyone who takes the pledge is using their own guide. there are no rules. But I think in general when 'gender identity' is substituted for 'sex' it means women pushed aside

The fact that folks judge that the presence of someone male who identifies as 'part female' is enough to give up the possibility of bringing a single actual female person onto the panel (with the non trans bloke volunteering to step aside) seems like skewed priorities to me

Again, I'll refer to the statistics. You are using a hypothetical case to generate concern about a wave of trans people sweeping aside women from panels. It just doesn't happen with enough frequency to really matter in the grand scheme of things.

You seem to be intent on pitching this as an inherently zero sum issue. While we can all come up with cases where there are these trade offs, it seems to go against the spirit of making panels more diverse in general, as Alice pointed out.