Flexibility simply won't work. If you ban discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" (as the Equality Act would), and you don't define "gender identity" (it currently has no specific legal definition and the Equality Act also does not provide one), then anyone can claim to be any gender at any time for any length of time. A man can, for example, enter a womens' professional sporting event (with prize money), and it would be illegal to stop him, unless and until a more restrictive legal definition of "gender identity" is passed into law or is imposed by the courts. A man can enter any womens' locker room and ogle to his heart's content, and it would be illegal to remove him.
While I agree that the rancor over KBJ's response was overwrought, I don't think it can be defended on the ground you've supplied, because the fact of the matter is that she *didn't* say, "I don't know, it might depend on the statutory scheme at issue." She said, "I don't know, I'm not a biologist." So, she wasn't making any claim that this is a term that might have some fuzzy definitions depending on the context. She, at least implicitly, acknowledged it has a specific definition, but professed not to know it.
That said, I am not sure I can think of a statutory scheme that uses the word "woman." The more common formulation is "on the basis of sex." So the better question would have been about defining the word "sex," not the word "woman." That could have made for an exchange even more cringy than the one we were treated to, though.
Flexibility simply won't work. If you ban discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" (as the Equality Act would), and you don't define "gender identity" (it currently has no specific legal definition and the Equality Act also does not provide one), then anyone can claim to be any gender at any time for any length of time. A man can, for example, enter a womens' professional sporting event (with prize money), and it would be illegal to stop him, unless and until a more restrictive legal definition of "gender identity" is passed into law or is imposed by the courts. A man can enter any womens' locker room and ogle to his heart's content, and it would be illegal to remove him.
That's what "flexibility" gets you.
While I agree that the rancor over KBJ's response was overwrought, I don't think it can be defended on the ground you've supplied, because the fact of the matter is that she *didn't* say, "I don't know, it might depend on the statutory scheme at issue." She said, "I don't know, I'm not a biologist." So, she wasn't making any claim that this is a term that might have some fuzzy definitions depending on the context. She, at least implicitly, acknowledged it has a specific definition, but professed not to know it.
That said, I am not sure I can think of a statutory scheme that uses the word "woman." The more common formulation is "on the basis of sex." So the better question would have been about defining the word "sex," not the word "woman." That could have made for an exchange even more cringy than the one we were treated to, though.
I prefer the Cube Rule: https://cuberule.com