Gender

Seeing my husband in his armchair snoozing, as his unacknowledged habit is, head back, mouth open, stertorous and blotchy, it is sometimes hard to believe in the patriarchy. Along with the doctrine that we women are oppressed, a wave of terminology washes over us from the radio. Its originators believe that by gaining our acquiescence in using it, they have won a battle in the culture war. They might be right. Last week the High Court ruled that ‘gender critical’ beliefs should not lead to a woman losing her job, having her goldfish confiscated and generally becoming an hissing and a reproach among all the nations. Though it is not

Today brings yet more proof that Liz Truss is dead right to want to withdraw government departments from Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme. The Telegraph reports that one way institutions and companies can rise up Stonewall’s ‘Workplace Equality Index’ is by ditching words like ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and using more ‘gender-neutral’ terms instead. Apparently, words like ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ are too ‘gendered’ and thus they might offend trans people. So if you want those precious brownie points from Stonewall, and if you want to be beatified as a ‘diversity champion’, you’ll have to stop using these loving, everyday terms that the entire population understands and instead parrot the gobbledegook of woke

Education has become embroiled in a culture war and rather than extricating itself politely, it just keeps digging. What gets taught has long been subject to debate: move beyond the basics and you rapidly head into dangerous terrain (although, look hard enough, and you will find those prepared to argue that even maths and spelling are racist). Now it’s not just taught content but the name of modules that is under the woke microscope. One of the UK’s leading exam boards, OCR, has proposed renaming the ‘Women in Literature’ section of its A level English courses. It is taking votes on new titles: ‘gender in literature’ or ‘representing gender’. But

When a small US publisher accepted my first book for young adults, ‘Crosstrack’, it wasn’t long before things went pear shaped. The novel follows two teenage athletes, one a middle class American, the other a young Syrian refugee. Apart from cycling ability, they have another thing in common: both are trans.  I’d anticipated a backlash at having the temerity to describe someone outside my own experience, and expected it to involve the Middle Eastern migrant (a la Jeanine Cummings). Yet when my publisher passed the book to a new editor for a final edit, she took exception to some of the views expressed by the other main character, and in

I once asked a hospice nurse to describe her job and was surprised when she likened it to midwifery. ‘There are two days,’ she said, ‘which aren’t the full 24 hours. The day you are born, and the day you die.’ Uncertainty, fear and waiting. Having been at my late-wife’s deathbed – and at her side as she gave birth to our children – I can see the analogy. But why, when it comes to the language of inclusivity, is death excluded? Or, as the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, asserted recently ‘there is currently biological essentialism and transphobia present within elements of mainstream birth narratives and discourse’.  Why stop

Another pillar of the patriarchy has fallen. His name is Mr Potato Head – or rather, it was Mr Potato Head. US toy giant Hasbro has decided to make the branding for this nearly 70-year-old range gender-neutral, so it will just be Potato Head from now on. According to Hasbro, this is all part of an effort to ensure that ‘all feel welcome in the Potato Head world’ and to ‘promote gender equality and inclusion’. Neither Mr Potato Head nor his wife, Mrs Potato Head, are being shelved entirely as characters, Hasbro was later forced to clarify. But the overall brand will change, and a new family set will allow

It’s the bane of many an author these days: those newspaper-filler Q&As. One I recently filled out included the question: ‘What’s the book you’re never without?’ Of course, there’s no book I lug about with me everywhere, but inanity comes with this territory. I responded: ‘A tattered, duct-taped blue hardcover of my Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (based on Webster’s Third) published in 1969.’ Lame? Actually, no. Access to older analogue dictionaries has become politically invaluable. Pre-internet, august dictionaries such as Webster’s and the OED functioned as linguistic anchors. Beneficially slow to adapt and resistant to vernacular fashion, print editions that were expensive to reissue acted as drags on popular

Target practice The government hit its target of giving a first Covid vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable people by the middle of February. Some other government targets which have been met (sort of): — 100,000 Covid tests a day by the end of April. The government did claim to have achieved this — but did so by counting testing kits which had been posted out and not necessarily returned. — There was a rise of 7,600 people applying for teacher training courses last year, which meant that the government hit its target for secondary school teachers to the tune of 106% and primary school teachers by 130%.

It’s great that Britain’s high court has ruled that children can’t give informed consent to receive puberty blockers. I only wish that we had made that sort of progress here in Australia. But we haven’t — we’ve gone the other way. Not only are we still handing out puberty blockers to children, we have also introduced ‘self-identification’ for legal sex status in multiple states. What’s more, there are serious attempts under way to introduce legislation that could be used to make it an offence to fail to affirm people’s chosen gender identities. This is happening under the banner of expanding hate speech protections and prohibiting conversion therapy. I’m not writing this

The trans debate can be a nasty one. And when women (and it usually is women) have the courage to speak out, they face being shamed and silenced. Their crime apparently is ‘transphobia’. But all too often, this word no longer means the hatred or fear of trans people like me. Instead, it refers to the simple act of disagreeing with an ideology that insists men and women are defined, not by their biology, but by feelings. Dame Jenni Murray, Professor Kathleen Stock, Joanna Cherry MP, Julie Bindel, and many other women have been hauled before a kangaroo court and been found guilty. But behind these high-profile cases, ordinary women face the same treatment. An