Gender identity matters
SIR: I fear Michael Cole (December issue) may have been so filled with outrage at the ‘diversity’ form he was asked to complete that his fingers were flying over a foam-flecked keyboard before he had time to read the form properly and understand it — although it is possible the form wasn’t very well written.
The first question, which he quotes as ‘gender’, was (or should have been) ‘sex’ and applies to physical constitution, an attribute that is generally male or female but might, very rarely, be between the two, when it would be ‘intersex’ (this last definitely not being a sexual orientation but an anatomical matter).
‘Gender identity’ is whether the person filling out the form feels male or female. This feeling not matching up with anatomy is commoner than many might think. Such an identity can be ‘nonbinary’ for people who feel a bit of both — gender identity isn’t a sexual orientation matter, either.
It’s not clear from Mr Cole’s article that the form actually had any questions relating to sexual orientation but I suspect it would have had. These would be likely to have been along the lines of ‘heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual or asexual’. I reckon even Mr Cole might have understood these.
Why does this sort of thing matter, he asks? Because any debate about the heavy-handed imposition of politically correct diversity, reactionary right-wing agenda, stranglehold of the liberal middle-classes, sinister controlling cabal of homosexual elites, or whatever it is, will be tiresome and endless unless it is informed by facts of the sort garnered by forms such as these. Such data would have enabled Mr Cole to irrefutably and mathematically demonstrate that the BBC of his day promoted on merit, regardless of class, as he claims. Without it, he has no counter to the argument that he and John Humphrys were lone representatives of their class, surrounded by an ocean of public-school, uppermiddle-class, homosexual men. James Barrett, London
Peter Cruickshank, Lundin Links, Fife booking hall of the local railway station and, while on a visit, Betjeman left a note for me asking me to get in touch with him. My family thought him to be a person deep in Victoriana and very eccentric, and so I did not bother to contact him.
My other claim to ‘non’ fame, at the end of my Royal College of Art days, was to help David Hockney chuck all his sketches and drawings into ‘new to us’ black bags. If only I had known!