And the result is: it is the judgement that those laws are referring to the biological sex (which it itself is recognised as being subject to some debate, too, so the judgement refers to another common definition).
That's all. It is not a redefinition or anything. I cannot really understand the enthusiasm of one side or another. It just clarifies what those laws were meant to say, and I tend to agree that anything else would most likely be an unintended reinterpretation. The judges also make it clear that if law makers want more protection for other groups, e.g., trans people, they probably need to make more laws for that.
I also find that this is a very complex topic, because it was about the question whether in sex separated prisons, it is more important to protect trans women from cis men, or to protect cis women from imposter trans women cis men. I mean -- who knows a trivial solution to that? The judges clarified basically that the original law was probably just concerned about protecting cis women from cis men, because probably no-body thought about it. And for the sake of clarifying anything, they said that "woman" probably meant "biological woman". They were tasked to decide something, so they did.
And, well, at least that's I read into this... You can have a look for yourself, maybe, before taking one side.
Segregate by sex first and foremost, and then within each prison estate further separate prisoners by risk categories. It's what's done already for vulnerable inmates: ex-cops, gang informants, pedophiles, etc.
The reason that some penal systems started transferring males to women's prisons wasn't to protect them from other males - this was a justification invented afterwards - but because they decided to implement ideological beliefs that promoted gender identity over sex. Regardless of how much risk this exposes female prisoners to.
Thankfully this sort of policy is starting to be reversed, or has been already, almost everywhere it's been imposed.
My understanding, reading the various reactions in the article, is that now it is fully legally safe to deny trans women access to the "women changing room", or to "womens" categories in sport, or to lesbian meeting places, etc.
Not really though, at least not for biologists, who have an understanding of sex that encompasses all sexually reproducing species, based on there being two gamete types of different sizes.
This is why it's described as a binary, because of the two distinct types of reproductive cell. By convention the larger type is the female gamete and the smaller type is the male.
Having these consistent definitions is how biologists can discover new sexually reproducing species and understand the specifics, like are individuals hermaphroditic (each individual produces or can produce both female and male gametes) or gonochoric (individuals with distinct and unchanging sexes), and if the latter, which are the females and which are the males.
Have you got any credible sources which support this statement? I have only seen papers which confirm that sex is binary and immutable.
Biological sex is not binary. There are (at least) three criteria to be considered:
(1) cromosomes. females are XX, males are XY. But other combinations exist: XXY, XXX, XXXY, etc. There is no universal agreement of how those combinations should be best matched to the binary system.
(2) phenotype. females have a vulva, a vagina, and ovaries, males have a scrotum, a penis, and testicles. But some people have no, or half, or a large, or small of one or another. Furthermore, the phenotype might not match with the chromosomes: one example is an XY chromosome type while the person has a vulva, vagina, and internal testicles. There is no universal agreement of how those people should best be classified to the binary system -- the best is probably to recognise that they are non-binary.
(3) hormone level. females have a typical level of hormons and males have different levels. But this is not universally clear-cut. This is one of the most frequent reasons for dispute at sport events when otherwise very obvious women have hormone levels that are 'too male'. Again, no universal agreement of what to do here: ignore the hormone levels in these cases? But why? Usually, they match. But not always.
There are also male outliers that have hormone levels that are higher than for males. These males might also be excluded from sports competitions for the same reason, despite being on the right side of the binary scale, but they are too far on that side. Again -- there is no agreement whether this is still the normal male category or maybe non-binary.
And this is just the biological sex. For gender and identification, there is more. If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny how some governments define sex as binary by reducing it to biological sex or maybe assigned sex -- it is really like making a law that pi is 3.
But note that the judges here made it clear that it is not their place to make a judgement on this complex topics.
