If Leftie Linda isn’t safe from the Trans Taliban — who is?
JAN MOrrIS is one of Britain’s outstanding journalists, authors and historians. She covered the conquest of everest, the Suez invasion and the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf eichmann.
She has published acclaimed books on the British empire, the royal Navy, Gallipoli and a history of Venice. During World War II, Morris served with the 9th Queen’s royal Lancers.
One other remarkable aspect of her life story is that Jan was born James. For many years, James had felt his true gender was incompatible with his body. So, in 1972, aged 46, Morris travelled to Morocco for a sex-change operation.
eyebrows were raised, some people were horrified, and it took decades for the law in Britain to catch up. For Morris, though, it was a personal, not political, decision to have the surgery.
Over time, any initial controversy melted away, like the snow in summer on the lower slopes of the Himalayas.
Her stellar achievements came to define her, not her altered gender.
When I interviewed her, around the 40th anniversary of the ascent of everest, I don’t remember the subject even coming up. Morris is back on the interview merry-go-round again, aged 91, to promote a fascinating new collection of extracts from her diary.
A profile in The Times recalls an earlier book, about her gender reassignment. It is described as ‘free of angst or bile’ and ‘is generous to people who would have found it awkward’. She writes of the ‘kindly incomprehension of sailors and old ladies’. Morris declares herself baffled by the toxic atmosphere around sex, gender and ‘trans’ issues today.
Indeed, she should be. Unlike Morris’s willingness to acknowledge the genuine feelings of those uncomfortable with the concept of gender fluidity and sexchange operations, the militant ‘trans’ lobby is now the most bigoted, intolerant pressure group in modern Britain.
Not only do they refuse to countenance dissent, they aim to destroy anyone who dares to challenge their rigid, doctrinaire creed.
THeIrlatest, unlikely, target is Linda Bellos, a lifelong feminist from the far- Left fringes of the Labour Party. Bellos is a black, Jewish lesbian, prominent in London local government circles during the Wolfie Smith years — a Corbyn, Livingstone and Barmy Bernie Grant acolyte back in the eighties.
Like many other veteran women’s campaigners, including the writer Germaine Greer, she has fallen foul of the trans stormtroopers and is facing a court appearance for a perceived ‘hate’ crime.
Having fought for decades for equal representation for women, Bellos objects to plans for transgender candidates being allowed on all-women Labour shortlists.
She is also appalled by the violence directed towards feminists who oppose trans fundamentalism, especially a nasty assault on a radical feminist at a rally in London’s Hyde Park.
Bellos, a pugnacious character who still plays football and boxes at the age of 67, told a meeting in York that if any of these characters attempts to assault her: ‘I will take off my glasses and thump them.’ This was enough to have her reported to police, who for once displayed a modicum of common sense and declined to charge her. But the trans headbangers weren’t deterred.
They have now taken out a private prosecution and Bellos will have to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, accused under the Public Order Act of using threatening language which could cause alarm.
No one would mistake me and Linda Bellos for political bedfellows. But although we’re diametric opposites on most issues, I’ve always admired her conviction, passion, honesty and willingness to speak her mind, regardless of what the hell anyone else thinks. Free speech, however, is anathema to the modern breed of political activists — none more so than the deranged trans lobby.
In their warped universe, anyone who so much as wonders out loud whether someone in possession of a full set of wedding tackle should be allowed to call himself a woman is a heretic who must be silenced for ever.
The Government hasn’t helped by cravenly agreeing that anyone can choose their gender simply by filling in a form. So 50 years of hard-won women’s rights can now be overturned by the New Kids on the Block of the victim culture, simply because they are prepared to shout loudest and intimidate the opposition.
The fears about men ‘ defining’ as women just so they can use female toilets and changing rooms are well-founded.
EArLIerthis week, the equalities Minister Victoria Atkins was slaughtered for, quite reasonably, urging caution over the increasing number of children and teenagers being referred by gender clinics for life-changing surgery.
And whatever you think about all-women parliamentary shortlists, it’s clearly absurd that a biological woman should have to give up her place to a bloke with a seven o’clock shadow in a frock and Jimmy Choos, just because he’s decided to ‘ identify’ as a woman that morning.
It’s outrageous that someone such as Linda Bellos should be dragged before a court simply for stating that she’s prepared to defend herself against violent trans fanatics.
Let’s hope the magistrates decide she has no case to answer. Yet from her old comrade Corbyn, now leader of the Labour Party, has come not a peep of support.
It shouldn’t be necessary to restate that the minuscule number of people in Britain who genuinely feel trapped in the wrong body should be entitled to our understanding and, if necessary, appropriate treatment on the NHS.
No one wants to return to the bad old days when James, now Jan, Morris had to travel to Morocco for surgery. But that doesn’t mean we should all have to submit to the tyranny and intolerance of the Trans Taliban.
Jan Morris once quipped that when she dies, she will be remembered with a small back-page headline: ‘Sex Change Author Dies.’ No, she won’t. She’ll be remembered for her talent, her courage and her humanity.
Which is how it should be.