Rachael Padman (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🇬🇧 🇦🇺
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rachael-p.bsky.social
Rachael Padman (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🇬🇧 🇦🇺
@rachael-p.bsky.social
740 followers 390 following 2.3K posts
Suffolk-based retired Cambridge physicist. Trans woman.
Catless mad catlady

I look forward to reasoned discussion, but will block people who insist there is only one way to be trans, or that my way is transphobic.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachael_p
Posts Replies Media Videos
rachael-p.bsky.social
This young man pulls it off
December 4, 2025 at 11:49 AM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Leonardo's lawyers have been listening....
December 3, 2025 at 6:00 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Yes, but when it replaces you with an administrator, nothing is changed except that the people running the organisation no longer have any interest in any of it.

And this:
December 3, 2025 at 5:11 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Gonna be the oldest.... (71)
December 2, 2025 at 6:11 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
"She might very well pass for 45 in the dark with the light behind her".

OK, I quite liked this one.
November 30, 2025 at 10:16 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
These are the two relevant references that I could find....
November 27, 2025 at 8:51 AM
rachael-p.bsky.social
16 June 2016

I'm not sure I agree exactly, or at least in those terms. I want to try out an argument I made in a letter to the @lrb.co.uk (16 June 2016). Discussion welcome -- that was already some time ago.

Short thread...
Moira Dustin appears to believe that gender has to be socially constructed, because the consequences of its having a biological element would undermine years of progress on sexual equality. That is hardly a scientific view: the way the world is cannot be a function of the consequences of its being so. I would simply observe that animals need a programme – a built-in repertoire of feelings and behaviours – to ensure that they reproduce. That programme has to include, at a minimum, mechanisms for identifying potential mates and competing with others of the same sex for access to them, as well as playing an appropriate role in the production (and sometimes nurture) of offspring. For social animals, it includes the ability to recognise others as ‘my sort’ or ‘not my sort’. For me, that is a good, working, biological definition of gender. Humans have a unique ability to ornament gender differences socially, culturally and technologically, but that doesn’t change the underlying truth that they are necessary for the continuation of the species. It is a small step from there to recognising that on occasion an individual of one sex may develop with at least parts of the programme appropriate to the other. This is observed in other animals as well.
November 25, 2025 at 7:06 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Talk about a strawman. I doubt anyone *ever* claimed sex was determined by hair and makeup. Quite the opposite I would have thought.

But anyway, it's selection bias. Of course all the trans people she has seen have been visibly trans. I wonder how many she has seen and not identified?

Moron.
November 21, 2025 at 7:28 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
The Indy today. As at 16:30, no responses from SM or any of the usual suspects.

The Govt put up the Childrens' Minister Josh McAlister. At first sight, the govt is preparing the ground for at least a partial retreat.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
November 20, 2025 at 4:36 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Sometimes you can't help thinking a post is related to the preceding one ....
November 20, 2025 at 2:43 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
If I can have a second go...

A rather gritty portrayal of a trans woman's path to happiness. Spoiler -- it's not easy. But it is totally believable, and trans people will recognise themselves in Amanda's difficulty in sharing her full self with others.
November 18, 2025 at 7:13 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Might be a little saccharine for some, but I'm an old lady, and it made me cry in places. A lot of wisdom here.
November 18, 2025 at 7:09 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
In the absence of anyone else to do it, and the likelihood Ollie won't, at least check your pupils in the mirror to make sure they are both normal, and check your pulse occasionally.
November 18, 2025 at 4:03 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
This line in the judgment must really have rankled...
(I am impressed that Irish schools have a specific year for transition)
November 18, 2025 at 2:21 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
But note this: why *do* they keep banging on about "biological sex" all the time then?

Having their cake and eating it too. Cis women are women, trans women are biological males.

I am so looking forward to seeing this all collapse, as it will
November 11, 2025 at 3:28 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
I had never heard of Neal Lawson, but this article beautifully expresses everything I had been feeling about Labour, and the direction is has taken since the Labour right undermined Corbyn.

archive.ph/Zwm21
Because this was a project that only knew how to win control of the party and then the state, not how to run a country. People skilled only in the art of party faction fighting had no interest and little ability to think about how to change the economy and the state. Not being the Tories, not being Jeremy Corbyn, them being in total control, that was enough.
November 11, 2025 at 1:03 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
I'd like that too.

And I'd like there to be a billionaire who supported trans people at the same time as being a political donor.

And I'd like there to be just one editor-in-chief at a major UK media outlet who had a trans kid and supported them

Oh wait, is that the sound of pigs' wings I hear?
November 10, 2025 at 8:43 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
The excellent Patrick Cockburn in the Independent:
@greenparty.org.uk
In Labour’s case, this has led to the left popping up outside the party in the shape of the Green Party of England and Wales under Polanski, a leader whose devilish arts include the ability to attract people to his party by giving interesting speeches and interviews free from evasive platitudes.
November 7, 2025 at 7:42 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
I wonder if said legal advice was a letter from JKR and her team or from the charity's own lawyers?
November 4, 2025 at 8:01 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
"Rights are not a zero-sum game."

Substitute "trans" for "First Nations" and "transphobia" for "racism" below. It is exactly right. 2/2
One of the hardest barriers in fighting for a greater protection of rights is the misconception that granting rights to one sector of the community deprives another of it. Rights are not a zero-sum game. But First Nations rights are often painted that way. If we give you native title, I will lose my backyard. If I give you a greater say about the things that affect you — a voice — my rights to tell you how to live your life will be diminished. But this is a harmful fallacy. When a right is protected — due process before the law, equality before the law, protection from racism in the workplace — it applies to everyone. It lifts everyone up, especially those who are most vulnerable and need protection the most.
November 4, 2025 at 11:01 AM
rachael-p.bsky.social
In order to print this, the Times had to admit that the new Code has NOT taken effect, which must have hurt!

But the rest of the media seem to be completely ignoring the delay. Maybe they dont want to admit they jumped the gun?
Trans people protesting outside the Houses of Parliament. Photo from the article in The Times in which they announced Bridget Phillipson's request for a Regulatory Impact Assessment for the EHRC's updated Code of Practice.
November 2, 2025 at 9:44 AM
rachael-p.bsky.social
George Eaton in the New Statesman.

Say it louder. We need to pay more tax. And what he doesn't say, if it funds better services, it will change the whole political discourse for the better, away from Reform.

Just do it, Rachel.
And here is Reeves’ challenge. Labour wants European-style public services – as do voters – but that is no longer feasible without broad European-style taxes. Economic populists such as Green Party leader Zack Polanski and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speak of the 99 per cent against the 1 per cent but traditional social democracy has always depended on the middle classes. Reeves’ Budget will expose a hidden truth: overtaxed Britain has arguably been undertaxed Britain.
October 28, 2025 at 10:26 AM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Well, that went well.

I never expected my MP to say anything else -- Dignity and Respect blah blah, and by the way, Fuck You.
October 27, 2025 at 9:33 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
That line was LOL.

You'd think it would have been the headline really, it's so priceless.
At the centre of the ambiguity of the way competing rights should be enforced was “the unresolved legal contradiction between the potential for being sued for challenging someone’s gender versus being sued for failing to”, the letter said.
October 23, 2025 at 5:14 PM
rachael-p.bsky.social
Palestine Action themselves say they used modified fire extinguishers to spray paint into the engines. So that means removing them, disassembling etc.

Regardless of how that is paid for, it's a lot of work, so not quite just wiping paint off. Still not terrorism though..
October 10, 2025 at 3:59 PM