Maya Forstater

We can do both. But you are insisting very forcefully that for many cases, we should privilege the use of sex over gender. I think in this way you are hurting a small and very oppressed minority and doing very little to help those of us born in a female-perceived body.

Yes i think there are limited situations where we allow a facility or programme to be selective about sex (in most situations someone's sex does not matter & whether you are male or female shld not be taken into account in your suitability for employment, entry, membership etc..)

It sounds like you had some bad experiences related to trans women. I imagine they were not about too many trans people appearing on public panels. What's your underlying experience that leads to you feeling so strongly about this issue?

Fighting oppression of women is about fighting structures of patriarchy. To me this means securing the space & rights of all people who don't have the privileges that come w/being cis-male. So to Maya's original Q, only panels made up of primarily cis-males should be challenged.

Well, only panels made up of primarily cis-males should be challenged for lacking diverse perspectives based on gender (to me that's what manel means). That's not to say that we shouldn't challenge panels & other platforms for lacking diversity in other ways-e.g. race, geography.

What about diversity of sex? Sex and gender are different things (and are not related) why are we treating them interchangably, whereas we don't treat diversity of race, geography, age etc... as interchangeable with diversity of sex?

(obviously manels thing is small, but it is interesting to think thru). i.e. yes the typical manel we are reacting against is four old, posh, white men. Sex diversity is not the only thing we care about. But a panel of men of different ages, races & backgrounds is still a manel

In my opinion the manel issue is about under-represented genders & I find your fight to make it about only people of female gender and born with female sex displaced. It seems to come at the back of a gender that in many setting is even more discriminated against than cis-women.