Lunacy of letting us pick our own gender just because the Tories want to get down with the kids
Youcan’tdestroysimple truthsthathaveserved ussincethedawnoftime justtolookfashionable
WHY CAN’t a woman be more like a man?’ grumbled Professor Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady. Now, there’s a fellow who was ahead of his time. Because today, thanks to the Government’s new directive on gender self-identification, any woman can be a man. or vice versa, for that matter.
Gender is no longer an accident of birth, a biological imperative which most of us simply accept. It is, in these enlightened times, a lifestyle choice. Boy, girl, man, woman, both, neither: the choice is yours.
It’s as open and easy as deciding which brand of washing powder to use, or whether to go to Wales or Cornwall for your summer holiday.
Just ask Justine Greening, Secretary of State for Education. According to the minister, gender is ‘a choice that people are making’. Which is why the Government has decided to relax the rules on gender reassignment (which currently require an individual to prove serious intent as well as a medical need).
From now on, everyone will be free to ‘selfidentify’ — i.e. pick their own sex — as they please on their birth certificate.
In one way, I suppose, it would go a long way to resolving some of society’s more pressing problems.
take the gender pay gap at the BBC. How easy now to resolve that discrepancy by simply getting Jenni Murray, Sarah Montague
et al to re-designate themselves as men, thus instantaneously qualifying for a fat pay rise.
In return, the director-general, tony Hall, could demonstrate his solidarity with female employees by becoming one for a day and donating the resulting pay differential to a suitable charity.
And what about those lovely lady England cricket players who have just won the World Cup? If they were men, how much more sponsorship and Press coverage would they get, not to mention prize money?
As for women tennis players . . . what was it John McEnroe said about Serena Williams being ranked ‘700th in the world’ if she were on the men’s circuit? A quick reassignment, and we could find out if he was right.
Fatuous? Maybe. But not as fatuous as whoever came up with this ludicrous, ill-thought-through policy. Heaven knows what confusions and disasters will arise because of it. Surely such a system will be wide open to abuse, both from people seeking to exploit the law and those wishing to take advantage of the vulnerable, particularly women.
What’s going to happen, for example, when a self-styled female prisoner — once a male killer or rapist — demands to be placed in a wing with other women?
What about care homes and hospital wards? How will it affect the NHS? And what about pension rights and competitive sports. It’s a minefield.
Notto mention the damage it will do to those people who genuinely do suffer from gender dysphoria.
thankfully, I am not one of them, because it is not an easy struggle to have to deal with. But if I were, I would be furious at having my situation trivialised in this way; seeing my condition turned into a branding exercise for a virtue- signalling political class that just wants to jump on the youth bandwagon.
Because don’t be fooled: this idea is not borne out of any genuine desire to help people with gender issues. It’s designed to ‘reach out’ to a sector of the electorate that the Conservative Party wants to win over.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBt) rights are a big deal among the nation’s youth — or that, at least, is the perception. And since it seems all the Conservatives can think about at the moment is how to get down with the kids, some bright spark has dreamed this one up.
It’s a classic case of ‘Guys, we really must do something to show how in touch and socially liberal we are’, and then — as the Conservative Party so often does — getting the wrong end of the stick.
they’ve even gone so far as to open a public consultation on this issue, in the form of an online questionnaire.
You can find it on the Government website under the ‘consultations’ category. A joint effort between the Government Equalities office and the Department of Education, it is both unintentionally hilarious and utterly cringeworthy.
First, there is a bewildering smorgasbord of identities to choose from, ranging from transwoman/transgirl or transman/ transboy to Non- binary/ Genderqueer/ Agender/ Gender fluid, Don’t Know, Prefer Not to Say and, bafflingly, other.
As far as I can ascertain genderqueer is someone who is basically a bit undecided but is keeping their options open; agender is someone who rejects the concept of gender altogether.
It then asks you if you are intersex, explaining (in case you didn’t know) that this is an ‘ umbrella term to denote a number of different variations in a person’s bodily characteristics that do not match strict medical definitions of male or female’.
More questions. How comfortable do you feel being an LGBt person in the UK? Do you ever avoid holding hands in public with a same- sex partner for fear of a negative reaction from others? Do you ever avoid expressing your gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others?
At what age did you start transitioning? Were sexual orientation and gender identity discussed at school in lessons, assemblies or in any other part of your schooling?
How understanding were your teachers and other staff of issues facing transgender, gender fluid and non-binary pupils?
How did others at your educational institution react to you being LGBt or because they thought you were LGBt? Have you ever had so- called ‘ conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapy in an attempt to ‘ cure’ you of being LGBt?
on and on these questions go, like some terribly parody. Except they are real, governmentendorsed questions, compiled and paid for by taxpayers.
Assuming anyone fills this thing in with any degree of honesty (I must confess that I rather naughtily wrote ‘ alien’ in the ‘other’ section on gender), it will no doubt be used to justify more pointless intervention, thus placating a small number of people on twitter at the expense of the silent majority who are perfectly content with being what nature made them and who, in any case, have better things to do than obsess about such matters.
the fact is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the current arrangements. Indeed, they are eminently sensible.
Under existing laws — established in 2004 — anyone wishing to transition must apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate. this requires a doctor’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria and a demon- stration of serious commitment, i.e. spending a minimum of two years living as a member of the opposite gender.
However opponents say that these are discriminatory, especially in the case of trans children, who identify as the opposite sex early on — and who want to delay puberty or stop the process altogether.
this is especially common among boys who wish to become girls, as they want to avoid developing irreversible secondary male sexual characteristics such as an Adam’s apple, a deep voice and facial hair.
But how many pre-pubescent children genuinely want to be a different sex to the one they were born as? Isn’t the idea of turning little boys into eunuchs before they’ve really had any sort of life experience just a little bit sinister?
that is why it is right and proper there should be legal obstacles in place. Individuals need to be absolutely certain they are making the right choice before undergoing surgery or taking powerful drugs to change their gender identity.
the final step — altering your gender on your birth certificate — should be a serious and solemn undertaking, not something that can be done on a whim.
ALREADY,too many young people, especially children, are being forced into choices they may later regret.
In a recent case in Canada, an eight-month-old baby is growing up as neither a boy nor a girl because her parent — mother, father, it’s not clear — does not believe in such things.
this person thinks they are offering their child ‘a choice’. In truth, all they are doing is imposing their own particular brand of liberal fascism on some poor innocent.
the existing safeguards are not in place to make it harder for people with gender dysphoria to find peace; they are there so that vulnerable individuals are not open to abuse. No one wants people in the trans community to suffer; but they also do not want them to be encouraged, however well-intentioned, into making irreversible decisions.
take, for example, the most visible campaigner for trans rights of our time, Jack Monroe. time and again, she has changed her mind about who she is and how she wants to be defined.
In a recent interview she said she wanted to be treated ‘ as a person, not as a woman or a man’ — and then went ahead and posed for the same interview dressed first as a woman, in a red dress, high heels and make-up, and then as a man, in a black suit and brothel creepers.
She is clearly a very confused individual. Which is why she — and people like her, who represent a small but disproportionately vocal group of media-savvy campaigners — must not be allowed to dictate policy.
You cannot destroy the simple truths that have served humanity since the dawn of civilisation simply to make yourself look fashionable. Yet this is exactly what the Government is doing, under the auspices of equality but, in reality, because it believes — wrongly, I suggest — that there are votes in it.