Big Tranny

A growing campaign in the West to do away with gender-based language defies reason and is subverting human nature, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, arguing children should not be taught biological sex does not exist.

“The discussion about the rights of men and women has turned into a total phantasmagoria in a number of Western countries,” Putin said in a speech to dignitaries and reporters at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia on Thursday. “Those who risk saying that men and women still exist, and that this is a biological fact, are virtually ostracized.”

Margaret Atwood is the Canadian author whose most famous creation is the dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” about a future American theocracy in which women have no rights. The book was published in 1985 and more recently became a popular television show starring Elizabeth Moss. The show, which premiered in 2016, inspired a lot of political activity, especially during he confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh when women in red handmaid cloaks were a frequent site at protests. Atwood’s creation has really become part of the American political zeitgeist.

It is perfectly fine if leftists wish to live in a fantasy world. But it is not okay for them to try to force everyone else to live in said fantasy world.

Instagram recently censored a post from Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist. His crime? Posting about a study showing that biological men were more proficient than biological women in most sports.

In the postwar era, few norms have changed as fast, as dramatically, and with so little input from ordinary citizens as has the public status of gender dysphoria. Twenty years ago, observes Helen Joyce in her definitive new book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, the idea that a man who hadn’t taken estrogen or undergone surgery could identify as a woman and expect others to affirm that identity “would have seemed nonsensical to almost everybody.” But now “this very concept of transness has conquered medicine, law, public policy and the media.” And more.

She has been subjected to a vicious intimidation campaign simply for speaking her mind.

On Saturday morning I should have been sitting alongside Professor Kathleen Stock in a debate on ‘hate, heresy and free speech’ at the Battle of Ideas festival in London. But this was not how things turned out. Following a week of protests led by self-styled ‘anti-TERF’ activists at the University of Sussex and police concern for her safety, Professor Stock took the difficult – but entirely understandable – decision to stay away.