That argument applies much more to other organizations listed in the report. But even in the article, Beiraās Place is described as
a sexual assault support center founded and funded by billionaire J.K. Rowling that explicitly excludes transgender women from its services and was established after Rowling objected to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centreās inclusive policies.
She didnāt like the way an organization was run, and made her own. The case can be made that itās anti-rights, but thoughtlessly throwing around labels like Amnesty UK did here against someone with the time, money, and motivation to respond with lawyers was an own goal.
Anti-trans is, by definition, anti-rights because it is denying trans people their right to exist and receive the medical care they need (that is readily available to cis people for a myriad of conditions).
Iām saddened that Amnesty UK caved on the issue, whether they legally had to or not. Every concession emboldens the anti-trans mob to use more of their resources to silence and oppose societal progress whenever their feelings get hurt.
Regardless of your feelings on Rowling, Amnesty UK fucked up big time and realized it. For better or worse, the UK doesnāt have the same speech protections or values that other countries like the US do. Throwing around vague labels like āanti-rightsā was a terrible idea.
Plain garbage propaganda. Throwing in āexcluding the top 1 percent of households (the outliers in how they spend their wealth)ā to massage inconvenient numbers is plain lying with statistics.
Here are the main problems with Velocciās paper:
It conflates sex differentiation, sex determination, and the definition of sex
It argues, wrongly, that no progress has been made in understanding the nature and definition of biological sex
Its argument is ideological rather than scientific, yet is given the trappings of science
It argues that the binary nature of sex, which the author rejects, somehow erases transgender and nonbinary people
And, as usual, its supposed examples that make sex nonbinary, like the long clitoris of the hyena, are wrong. But where are the clownfish? Send in the clownfish!
Politically motivated as it may be, the original paper and response to critique, to me, read as straightforward and level-headed. From the original paper:
The societal and ethical stakes are also significant. Accurate biology is distinct from questions of dignity, rights, and how we treat one another. Policy disputes should not be adjudicated by redefiningāor defining awayāthe reproductive realities that make sex a useful scientific concept in the first place. When categories are blurred for nonscientific reasons, we invite downstream harms: muddled clinical protocols, compromised epidemiology, eroding and/or conflicting legal protections, and diminished public trust in science.
From the critique:
In a time of vigorous discussion about gender diversity, invoking a single biological ātruthā can shut down necessary conversations about intersex rights, health research, and inclusive policies.
This quote makes me think directly about the previous quote from the original paper: ādiminished public trust in science.ā The response seems to be saying, quite straightforwardly, that we should not make sex a binary because of the potential social and policy implications. But to me, this seems like the tail wagging the dog, and if a respected scientist made such a claim, it would certainly diminish my trust in their propensity to tell me concrete facts about the nature of reality.
OOP says as much in their follow up:
In sum, Mahrās critique is mainly about the sociology of categories and the policy implications of scientific debates. Those are fair topics to discuss, but they do not change the biological basis for how the sexes are defined.
To me - I think this is why things like trans rights have been the leftās undefended belly in public discourse for years now. The left lets the policy outcome it wants - equitable treatment of sexual minorities - override any discussion about the facts about the world. And this feels disingenuous and untrustworthy to people who would otherwise be very interested in more left leaning economic policies
Regardless of if anyone was injured, the posts Smith made say āallegedā, and the court case isnāt about those being truthful or not. As the ruling notes,
The ultimate issue is whether the acts or conduct of the Defendant as particularised, amount to unlawful vilification of the Plaintiff pursuant to Section 38S, of the Act.
My scholarly article that no one will read. Lul. No one is going to peer review your trash because even looking at it gives it some measure of legitimacy in your eyes. You get nothing. Good day sir.
To be clear, those are mating types, which is the analogue to sex in isogamous species. The claim about the sex binary is limited to only anisogamous species.
Interesting study but it relies on self-reported views and is limited to the question of endorsing political violence, not whether that translates to such violence occurring.
The logic in the image is specious. Surely thatās not serious?
Thereās been a string of recent victories for sex-based sports advocates like the IOC splitting up sports by sex, and the answer seems to be increasingly that people think it matters.
The takeaway is that probably, people worry too much about penis size. Women are good at accurately recalling penis size, and express a preference for only slightly above average. Thereās also almost no difference between preference in one-night stand vs long-term sizes. Study was limited in demographics, but it was also more about developing a better process. Sadly the Thingiverse file no longer exists.
Got downvoted, probably from people not reading past the title. To be clear: bigger doesnāt mean smarter. Brain-to-body ratio might have more of a case, but otoh grey wolves donāt strike me as dumb.
My forecast: Big win for Rowling. The UK has strong defamation laws, and Amnesty UK depends on government funding. Theyāre already caving to pressure. The FWS ruling from the post shows UK courts probably wouldnāt agree that Beiraās Place is anti-rights.
This study is a great example of why DOGE is needed.
Anyone over the age of 18 knows these things and you spent time doing this āresearchā and publishing a paper and now expecting others to read it for any reason other than parody value.
Brilliant.
Before criticizing my research, how about you actually read the paper and explore all the graphs, analyses, and discussion points?
No government funding was received for this project. I completed it entirely unpaid and in my spare time. In fact, because this was the case, I set up a designated crowdfunding account for people to make volunteer donations. Many people who value this research made donations. In fact, on the title page of the paper, just underneath the title, in a section titled āFunding,ā it states that that crowdfunding (not a government grant) was used to support this research.
Did you really know that there was a sex difference in grip strength in the earliest years of development? It would be odd for you to know such a thing considering that no one has ever meta-analyzed data prior to age 5, and the one previous meta-analysis that examined kids above the age of 5 included results from only 4 studies. Your certainty about this result is further odd because if you actually look at one of the graphs in the paper, you will see that, although the aggregate data show a sex difference in grip strength favouring boys prior to puberty, some studies show no difference and others show that girls are actually stronger.
Did you really know that the sex difference in grip strength remains stable between ages 5 to 10? Are you sure that you wouldnāt have predicted the size of the sex difference in grip strength to increase or decrease between the ages of 5 and 10?
And what about the narrowing of the sex difference in grip strength at age 11? Did you really know about that prior to this paper? And did you really know the likely reason for that specific result (i.e., girls reaching puberty before boys)?
And what about the finding about sex differences in grip strength being roughly equal across countries (both before and after puberty). Are you 100% certain that you would have predicted that?
Finally, the analysis examined the size of the sex difference in grip strength over the past 60 years. Are you certain that you knew that the size of that sex difference has remained roughly the same each decade from 1960 to now?
Thereās a new paper out that suggests that puberty blockers are associated with a decreased likelihood of mood disorders and suicidality
Bad news!
The paper is so methodologically flawed it would take me the rest of my career to detail themā¦.
I cant understand for the life of me why researchers (whether they be gender critical or trans supportive) canāt nail down a well-designed analysis of routinely collected health dataā¦.
Missing from this paper is any explanation of why the effect occurs, making it unclear if these results would hold up in actual work scenarios or across longer durations. Thereās also the matter of the gender-specific math finding, it only appeared when slicing the data by subgroup, so there might be p-hacking involved. Still, worth investigating more.
RetroFed
That argument applies much more to other organizations listed in the report. But even in the article, Beiraās Place is described as
She didnāt like the way an organization was run, and made her own. The case can be made that itās anti-rights, but thoughtlessly throwing around labels like Amnesty UK did here against someone with the time, money, and motivation to respond with lawyers was an own goal.
Anti-trans is, by definition, anti-rights because it is denying trans people their right to exist and receive the medical care they need (that is readily available to cis people for a myriad of conditions).
Iām saddened that Amnesty UK caved on the issue, whether they legally had to or not. Every concession emboldens the anti-trans mob to use more of their resources to silence and oppose societal progress whenever their feelings get hurt.
Regardless of your feelings on Rowling, Amnesty UK fucked up big time and realized it. For better or worse, the UK doesnāt have the same speech protections or values that other countries like the US do. Throwing around vague labels like āanti-rightsā was a terrible idea.
Plain garbage propaganda. Throwing in āexcluding the top 1 percent of households (the outliers in how they spend their wealth)ā to massage inconvenient numbers is plain lying with statistics.
What a terrible, terrible paper.
And yet it was cited seriously on Lemmy over in https://lemmy.today/post/57474308. Hereās a takedown of it:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/17/the-journal-cell-endorses-the-view-that-sex-isnt-binary/
Another short critique, summed up as āitās relatively safe to assume that sexual orientation confounded the results in the original paper.ā
https://xcancel.com/NeuroSGS/status/1646930422088052736
Iām not entirely sure what you are saying. Maybe you could rephrase it so I could understand?
You know -maybe- if he hadnāt picked a deliberately provoking title to bandwagon a social issue, maybe, people would take it serious.
But, you know, had to go with clickbait
Edit:
Mind you, that ignores the flagrant āscience isnāt wokeā diatribe worked into it that is notacceptable in a supposedly scholarly work
Nah. Thereās a nice big fat block button for this discussion.
We can just let people be themselves.
Hiding divisive bias in science language isnāt new, and it isnāt bringing value.
Politically motivated as it may be, the original paper and response to critique, to me, read as straightforward and level-headed. From the original paper:
From the critique:
This quote makes me think directly about the previous quote from the original paper: ādiminished public trust in science.ā The response seems to be saying, quite straightforwardly, that we should not make sex a binary because of the potential social and policy implications. But to me, this seems like the tail wagging the dog, and if a respected scientist made such a claim, it would certainly diminish my trust in their propensity to tell me concrete facts about the nature of reality.
OOP says as much in their follow up:
To me - I think this is why things like trans rights have been the leftās undefended belly in public discourse for years now. The left lets the policy outcome it wants - equitable treatment of sexual minorities - override any discussion about the facts about the world. And this feels disingenuous and untrustworthy to people who would otherwise be very interested in more left leaning economic policies
Yes that was the thought I was trying to put forth there. Thanks for refining it.
Published as a commentary. Not as a real scientific article. So I agree with you, somebody didnāt want to face their peers.
Sure, sex still isnāt binary though.
Bad headline, bad article. Hereās a site with some commentary on this and a related case:
https://lawandreligionaustralia.blog/2026/01/25/football-and-transgender-vilification-the-kirralie-smith-cases/
No idea if that site has any particular slant, but it has copies of the rulings:
https://lawandreligionaustralia.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/dennis-v-smith_26.8.25-for-blog.pdf
https://lawandreligionaustralia.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/dennis-v-smith-no-2-for-blog.pdf
Regardless of if anyone was injured, the posts Smith made say āallegedā, and the court case isnāt about those being truthful or not. As the ruling notes,
My scholarly article that no one will read. Lul. No one is going to peer review your trash because even looking at it gives it some measure of legitimacy in your eyes. You get nothing. Good day sir.
To be clear, those are mating types, which is the analogue to sex in isogamous species. The claim about the sex binary is limited to only anisogamous species.
Only two sexes? A casual review of Pornhub videos proves otherwise.
He would be really upset to hear about the amount of fungi sexes
Looks like this has been politicized, with the Good Law Project making the case that thereās no plagiarism and this is all about race:
https://xcancel.com/GoodLawProject/status/2082089176107786376
But this looks pretty damning:
You can verify those passages here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49402810_An_analysis_of_the_concept_reflective_practice_and_an_investigation_into_the_development_of_student_teachers%27_reflective_practice_within_the_context_of_action_research
https://www.proquest.com/docview/1784057434
Thereās no indication that itās citing the previous paper, and the quotes exist as shown
Valiant effort. Biggest challenge will be convincing people that itās not just an ideological trojan horse
Okay! But how do they explain big butts? I like big butts and I canāt denyā¦
Interesting study but it relies on self-reported views and is limited to the question of endorsing political violence, not whether that translates to such violence occurring.
The logic in the image is specious. Surely thatās not serious?
Thereās been a string of recent victories for sex-based sports advocates like the IOC splitting up sports by sex, and the answer seems to be increasingly that people think it matters.
Semenyaās response to IOC ruling:
https://time.com/article/2026/04/01/caster-semenya-the-ioc-s-ruling-is-a-disgrace/
The takeaway is that probably, people worry too much about penis size. Women are good at accurately recalling penis size, and express a preference for only slightly above average. Thereās also almost no difference between preference in one-night stand vs long-term sizes. Study was limited in demographics, but it was also more about developing a better process. Sadly the Thingiverse file no longer exists.
Got downvoted, probably from people not reading past the title. To be clear: bigger doesnāt mean smarter. Brain-to-body ratio might have more of a case, but otoh grey wolves donāt strike me as dumb.
My forecast: Big win for Rowling. The UK has strong defamation laws, and Amnesty UK depends on government funding. Theyāre already caving to pressure. The FWS ruling from the post shows UK courts probably wouldnāt agree that Beiraās Place is anti-rights.
https://xcancel.com/JamesLNuzzo/status/1891781779578925492
https://xcancel.com/datadriven_tdoc/status/2078214837063020674
Missing from this paper is any explanation of why the effect occurs, making it unclear if these results would hold up in actual work scenarios or across longer durations. Thereās also the matter of the gender-specific math finding, it only appeared when slicing the data by subgroup, so there might be p-hacking involved. Still, worth investigating more.