MY name is John Smith and I’m a 23-year-old black man.
Actually, none of that is true. That’s not my legal name, and I’m long past my twenties. I’m definitely white-skinned and 100 per cent a woman.
Prof Alice Sullivan carried out a review of vast swathes of official data and her conclusions are very worryingRex
GettyWomen who identify as trans men are not being invited for cervical smears or mammograms[/caption]
But what if I FEEL that I’m all of those things, despite all the evidence to the contrary?
Should I be allowed to write those “facts” on an official form — to claim I am something I am not?
I’m pretty sure most people, certainly the commonsensical readers of this newspaper, would answer that question with a resounding: “No!”
The world of officialdom that asks us to fill out documents would largely agree.
Whether it’s an application for a passport or driving licence, filling out the census, a CV, information you give to the police or the courts, or even your own NHS records, you aren’t allowed to just MAKE STUFF UP.
You have to state facts or you risk facing prosecution or other serious repercussions such as losing your job.
Except for just one of those so-called facts — which has somehow gone from being something that is an objective, verifiable truth to being just how someone feels or identifies.
While I am not allowed to lie about my name, age or race, for some reason that is utterly incomprehensible it is apparently just fine and dandy for me to lie about whether I am a man or a woman.
Even on official documents.
And that has, unsurprisingly, created a whole host of problems when it comes to the data collected and used by our public institutions including the civil service, the NHS, the police and criminal justice system, the military, schools and universities and everything else in between — as well as much of the private sector too.
A new report, commissioned under the last Conservative government and published by Labour this week, has exposed just how extensive and dangerous the erasure of the reality of biological sex from our official data has been.
Prof Alice Sullivan, of University College London, carried out a review of vast swathes of official data and her conclusions are very worrying indeed.
Trans people are missing out on vital NHS cancer screenings. Men who identify on their NHS records as trans women are failing to be offered prostate tests, while women who identify as trans men are not being invited for cervical smears or mammograms.
Trans people are missing out on vital NHS cancer screenings
This is, quite literally speaking, life or death stuff.
Likewise, criminals have been allowed to self-identify as the opposite gender — with even rapists able to claim they are trans women, while their crimes are recorded as offences committed by females.
Facts are not transphobic
Which is particularly bizarre since the criminal definition of rape in English law requires the perpetrator to have a penis.
Not only have male violent sex offenders who claim to be trans been allowed to insist on the use of their preferred pronouns of “she” and “her” in court, but male offenders have even been allowed to be jailed in women’s prisons.
Meanwhile, previous convictions can disappear into the criminal records system when an offender receives a Gender Recognition Certificate that legally recognises their new gender identity.
And, remember, the vast majority of men who have a certificate, driving licence and passport stating that they are LEGALLY a woman are still physically intact males — with their meat and two veg — with no requirement to undergo any surgery or hormone treatment to qualify.
This is obviously all mad, yet for more than a decade the great and the good who run our country have allowed this to happen because, they insist, not to do it would be “transphobic” or “unkind”.
But here’s the thing: Facts are not transphobic, just as they aren’t racist or sexist either. They’re objective — not subjective feelings. The confusion between these two concepts is what got us into this mess in the first place.
The words sex and gender used to mean the exact same thing.
The reality is that sex matters. That’s why we have laws in place that recognise the biological differences between the two sexes
But thanks to the militant activists in organisations like Stonewall pushing trans ideology into every corner of our lives in recent years, those words began to have different meanings — gender becoming a word to describe how someone IDENTIFIES rather than what they ARE.
Then the use of “gender” began to replace “sex” on some official forms.
All of this has rendered much official data utterly meaningless.
It all happened under the Tory watch but don’t hold your breath for any sensible changes coming soon, now that we have a Prime Minister who insists 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis” — which means Sir Keir Starmer believes 0.1 per cent of women DO. That’s more than 30,000 “women”.
The reality is that sex matters. That’s why we have laws in place that recognise the biological differences between the two sexes.
We wouldn’t allow people to claim on official documents to be the wrong age or race, or to give a false name.
So why do we allow people to claim to be the wrong sex?
Of course we should care about trans people’s feelings, but being kind doesn’t require us to pretend that up is down, black is white or men can become women.
When it comes to official data, it’s facts and not feelings that matter.
PUTIN TOYING WITH TRUMP
JAW-JAW is better than war-war, so we were all hopeful that this week’s much-trailed phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin would kickstart the peace process in Ukraine.
We can only wonder how much the US President enjoyed the Kremlin switchboard telling him, “Please hold, your call is important to us . . . ” as the Russian leader insultingly kept him waiting for a full HOUR before picking up the phone.
AFPPutin insultingly kept the US President waiting for a full HOUR before picking up the phone[/caption]
Donald Trump has already given away all his cardsGetty
Trump claims to be the master of the art of the deal but Putin is a cunning former KGB man who has his American counterpart wrapped around his little finger – demanding everything but the kitchen sink before he would ever agree to a full ceasefire in Ukraine.
Now that Trump has already given away all his cards – ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine, no promise of an American military backstop, and even no demand placed upon Russia to give up seized territory – there’s no reason at all why Putin should bother agreeing to a ceasefire.
The “on-hold” muzak that Trump heard for that hour of waiting was the sound of Putin playing him like a fiddle.
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