Maya Forstater

But why are we weighting the (potential) feelings of male people so highly? Why cant we just say some things are aimed at addressing obstacles that effect women, and this is one of them?

if trans people are 0.6% of the US pop i'm guessing trans women are half that i am not going to worry about the TINY possibility of someone hosting a panel & opposing manels, but only bothering to invite one woman, who happens to be trans, & them 'taking' a woman's slot.

the whole point of opening up manels is to learn from diverse perspectives. and demonstrate that expert does not equal white male. so i'm ridiculously relaxed about this.

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