Transgender Freemasons a rank move for equality?

THE Freemasons’ decision to welcome transgender brethren to its ranks might indicate that, after centuries of resisting change and social progress, the Brotherhood has put one toe on the threshold of the 21st century.

But while it is about to extend the famous Freemason handshake to transgender men – ie, women who were born female but now identify as men and, even more startlingly perhaps, to men who have transitioned to female (once they originally joined their Lodge as men) – the ban on natural-born women is still set in stone.

Perhaps we should not be too surprised at the Freemasons remaining a bastion of male entitlement. It is after all its raison d’etre – or most of it.

Gender reassignment surgery may treat thousands of people suffering from gender dysphoria but it also may have the potential to create a new social hierarchy, whereby born women with no desire to become men are bottom of the pile, with privileged males – even if they have renounced their masculinity to become women – further up the chain.

A new social order might sound as scaremongering and outlandish as The Handmaid’s Tale but we can see its footprints in a single-sex organisation such as the Freemasons opening the doors of the Masonic lodges to transgender men but keeping them shut to women.

Certainly, transgender people experience harsh discrimination but it would be a pity if their battle for equality is won at the expense of women’s rights.