Maya Forstater

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.

The pledge is kinda zero sum -between the man who has made it & the woman who might take his place (assuming not a flexibly sized panel). I don't understand why it's not in spirit of diversity for *that* man to ask (as he wld normally) for the organiser to include a female expert

If there is one trans person on the panel who considers themselves a woman, then it does them a huge disservice to say "that person isn't a woman, we need an actual woman." But it is perfectly legit to say "we need more women on this panel, I'm going make space for another"

Sorry, due respect but I think this thread gets the question wrong. The point of the #manel pledge is that cisgendered men experience an immense amount of privilege and we should take our panel invitations as an opportunity to put that privilege in check and elevate other voices.