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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16513 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Let's have some more CW over trans issues, because we can never have enough of those, right?

Now, I've been gently chided by other commenters on here about my attitude regarding transgender activism. It's only a few edge cases and nothing to do with the reality of trans people's lives, I get told.

So here's a story I stumbled across that is happening in my own country. I'm hoping really hard that this is just a legal stratagem and not a guy who is now a gal claiming "I am too the biological mother of this child" for realsies:

A British trans woman, who used her frozen sperm to have a baby with her wife, has been granted permission to bring a High Court challenge against a refusal by the State to grant Irish citizenship to the child on the basis that she is not the biological mother.

The woman – who has Irish citizenship while her wife does not – submits that if she has to claim to be the “father” of the child as part of the application, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity and legal status.

...The woman is seeking a declaration from the High Court that she is legally and genetically a parent of the child.

She is also seeking an order compelling the State to register the child on the Foreign Births Register and for the child to be granted citizenship under Section 7 (1) of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956.

Persons born outside of Ireland who have an Irish national grandparent born in Ireland may obtain Irish citizenship through registration with the Foreign Births Register, which is maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In submissions to the High Court the woman, who was born male, states that she is a UK resident but with Irish citizenship through her own lineage.

The submissions state that the woman had stored sperm with a UK fertility clinic, intending it to be used at a future date. She changed her name and transitioned from a man to a woman under UK law, receiving a UK gender recognition certificate.

The woman married her female partner and frozen sperm was then used to have a baby with her wife by an IVF procedure at a UK clinic.

The woman says she fears any UK withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights would mean her family could lose its protections and status in that country.

It is submitted by the woman that her child was refused entry into the foreign births registry – thereby denying Irish citizenship – as the woman was not the biological mother of the child and because her wife, who gave birth to the child, was not an Irish citizen.

The woman submitted that the Department of Foreign Affairs informed her that “under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”.

It is claimed by the woman the department’s position is that, because she is not the biological mother of the child, she therefore does not meet the requirement of an Irish citizen parent and the application cannot proceed.

The woman further submits that she could have claimed to be the “father” of the child and “could have possibly obtained citizenship by descent that way”.

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

The woman submits that if she had to claim to be the “father” of the child, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity, legal status and on same-sex marriage.

I'm trying to be sympathetic here, but my well of the milk of human kindness seems to have run dry. If this person applies as the father of the child, the child can be granted Irish citizenship and this will recognise the parent as "legally and genetically a parent of the child". Otherwise, they are asking our High Court for a ruling that (a) the child has two mothers and no father (b) being trans means you are biologically a woman (c) even if she didn't bear and give birth to the child she is still a mother not a father (d) in future such cases, the mother of the child is "whoever wants to call themselves the mother" and not "biological mother".

Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests? I don't care if this person calls themself daddy, mommy, or XibablaMakiNooNoo as parent of the child, what I do care about is precedent that "trans gender you identify as is now the same as your biological sex, now if you're a trans woman you're a mother even if you're the father because calling you the father would be offensive, even though you are a father not a mother" for future cases. If the precedent is set, it won't be limited to "parent of child wishing to be identified as legal mother not legal father".

EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

I already expressed my thoughts on why this case in particular is not actually about transgenderism downthread, and the decision doesn't contradict her being a woman.

EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

I don't see anything twisted in this logic at all.

I'll start with my steelman for transgender ideology, so you know where I'm coming from. I am aware that the stance in practice varies between activists, and they often contradict one another, but I suspect the framing I give below would still make most anti-trans people unhappy, so it is not about "twisted logic", but rather a values difference.

Without any kind of gender theory:

  • Humans can be separated into the categories "male/men" and "female/women" (male/men, woman/female and sex/gender are synonyms)
  • These categories are hard to verbalise. There are a bunch of single criteria (XX vs XY, penis vs vagina, ovaries vs not ovaries, etc) that almost totally overlap, and deal with most cases. And they all make up the definition: a woman is still a woman after a hysterectomy (because she satisfies all the other things)
  • But the existence of these categories, and the way we assign people into them, is common-sense to everyone (outside of extremely rare medical cases)

Let's call this the "old" system ("cis(hetero)normativity", I suppose)

Now let's make binary transgender ideology (just 2 genders for now):

  • I define a new sort of identity marker (next to stuff like race, sex, age, etc) called "gender identity" (or "gender" for short)
  • This is a redefinition of the old concept of gender. We will still keep the word "sex" to refer to the old-fashioned thing above.
  • I also redefine "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to now refer to gender identity, instead of sex
  • Same for any other gendered (pro)nouns (fireman, mother, lesbian, etc) - we can only refer to sex by male/female (and references to sex should be avoided where possible)
  • Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be (EDIT: mostly) male/female (this, but unironically)

To address the typical complaints/questions about gender ideology:

  • This is not tethered to claims about objective reality: nothing about trans women having "female brains", the effect eostrogen has on sports performance, etc - this is a purely moral framework
  • There are no weird logical contortions about how sex is a spectrum. Sex is real, but it just shouldn't talked about for moral reasons.
  • In this framework, it does not count as a "lie" to use trans people's pronouns. It is merely an acceptance of a redefinition of language, and agreement to look at things a different way (people might still be uncomfortable with this, but it wouldn't be an objective lie, like saying "the sky is red")
  • The definition of man/womanhood is not-circular (it goes back to referencing the already established notion of sex)
  • There is the issue of practically judging "sincerity" of desire. But I think most anti-trans people are unhappy even in cases where there is clearly a sincere desire (e.g. this one!)
  • And as for the general "Is a [bunch of masculine features] person really a woman? Seriously?" type "questions": yes. That is what this framework includes under the category of "woman" - you can of course morally oppose the framework on this basis. But it doesn't prove the framework itself is illogical.

With this framework, let's address your complaint.

"You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!"

Correct, she is not a father. She is a woman, and fathers are men. Calling her a father is in direct violation of transgender ideology ("transphobic", if we wish to pathologise it)

Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women

Individuals with "functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant" are males, and are typically men. But they do not have to be men, and in this case, the individual is not a man, she is a woman.

Now of course, this framing I gave above doesn't get respected by TRAs in real life. Indeed, the woman in this very case makes a mistake:

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

She is supposed to say same-gender marriage! (Or gay/lesbian, which sounds less awkward than "same-gender")

Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests?

You are right to call this out. My most charitable explanation is that she just misspoke when she said "same-sex" (other than that, she didn't say anything contradictory) - though it does seem that as of late, TRAs has started conflating the 2 concepts (more egregiously are the terms MtF and FtM, which refer to sex!)

Now let's make binary transgender ideology (just 2 genders for now):

  • I define a new sort of identity marker (next to stuff like race, sex, age, etc) called "gender identity" (or "gender" for short)
  • This is a redefinition of the old concept of gender. We will still keep the word "sex" to refer to the old-fashioned thing above.
  • I also redefine "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to now refer to gender identity, instead of sex
  • Same for any other gendered (pro)nouns (fireman, mother, lesbian, etc) - we can only refer to sex by male/female (and references to sex should be avoided where possible)
  • Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be male/female (this, but unironically)

Taken at face value, this seems bad on its merits, because why? There aren't any substantial actual claims in there, just a demand for changing language, so what benefit does this redefinition offer? This isn't even a steelman, because it involves no object level position. It's just a proposal for changing words without a justification.

Redefining terms is bad, because it leads to confusion. So where is the justification for paying that price, over creating new terms?

Aside from allowing for rhetorical shell games, of course?

Correct, she is not a father. She is a woman, and fathers are men.

The document isn't using the new definition under which this is true. If you honestly just want to change definitions, you can argue "the term 'father' should be replaced with 'male parent' (or similar) to reflect that 'father' now means something different". You can't argue the meaning/content of the document should change alongside a definition change of kne word it was using.

Your "steelman" framework doesn't give an argument here. It only appears to give one because it equivocates between the two meanings of "father".

I don't agree with this myself, but I suppose another steelman position would say that prior to transgenderism, terms like "women" and "men", "fathers" and "mothers" etc were not highly resolved, just like most natural language terms. We had not had cause to decide whether they refer to outward signs of feminity/masculinity, internal states such as genetics and gamete size, or psychological ones such as the sense one is a man. All these things were usually clustered together. Once edge cases appear, though, it's in our gift to further specify how we'll use the words in future.

Under this reading, sure, it is a language change or precisification to stipulate that we have always really been talking about e.g. psychological identity, but it would equally be one to say we have always been talking about gamete type. Examination of the previous usage of terms may not give a 100% clear answer.

(I guess this is basically Kripke/Putnam/Wittgenstein applied to gender, so no doubt there is a philosopher somewhere who has publicly adopted this position.)

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