{"id":9202,"date":"2020-10-21T23:59:52","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T23:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2020\/10\/21\/an-autumn-note-3\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T04:22:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:22:58","slug":"sex-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2020\/10\/21\/sex-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s <\/span>been quite the month for the Gender Critical community\u2014namely, those of us who have nothing against trans people but who refuse to chant the mantra \u201cTranswomen Are [Literally] Women\u201d, and certainly not in all-caps repetition on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Liz Truss lifted our spirits no end, rejecting the pernicious proposal to amend the Gender Recognition Act to allow men to self-identify as women. (Yes, that\u2019s exactly how it sounds\u2014self-identification even if you\u2019re in possession of a beard and a full set of male genitals, and no medical diagnosis at all.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The GRA has included single-sex exemptions from the start, so it\u2019s puzzling that in the last few years, lobby groups have crowded into the boardrooms of charities, corporations and government institutions, insisting that women are legally obliged to accept transwomen in their spaces. (That\u2019s not just \u201cbathrooms\u201d, incidentally\u2014it includes women\u2019s refuges and prisons.) The rejection of self-ID by this government is a tremendous boost to those of us who know what the law says\u2014and who still think sex matters and that \u201cgender\u201d is a cluster of ridiculous stereotypes.<\/span><\/p>\n

All the same, a woman\u2019s work is never done. (Nor yours, the many men and transpeople in the GC camp\u2014thank you.) The other major parties are still fully committed to self-ID. There\u2019s a lot of \u201ctraining session\u201d misinformation to clear out of public and private institutions. Same as it ever was: the war for women\u2019s rights is yet to be won.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

I<\/span>t\u2019s one of the many bizarre contradictions in trans ideology that while grown men have no obligation to take a single hormone\u2014let alone have their \u201clady penises\u201d removed\u2014children are eagerly encouraged to demand body modification and drugs that will affect their entire lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Good on the Department for Education, then, for introducing new guidelines requiring that schools stop playing host to lobby groups that perpetuate the \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d myth. That\u2019s the homophobic misconception, say some brave renegade professionals from the Tavistock Gender Clinic, that will result in there being \u201cno gay kids left\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cue a frantic flurry of trans-lobby website amendments; and you couldn\u2019t move on social media without stepping on a reversing ferret. Suddenly \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d was a \u201cmetaphor\u201d that no-one should have taken seriously. Now that Mermaids Gender and Stonewall have cleared that up, perhaps they\u2019ll consider endorsing the lovely book\u00a0My Body Is Me<\/i>\u00a0by Rachel Rooney and Jessica Ahlberg?<\/span><\/p>\n

That would be a nice way of saying sorry to Rooney in particular\u2014who was driven out of children\u2019s writing by a storm of abuse and hate: a storm that came not from anonymous social media trolls, but from a clique of Mermaids-supporting children\u2019s authors.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>o top off a good few days, more than 50 creative professionals signed a letter to the\u00a0Sunday Times<\/i>\u00a0in support of J.K. Rowling, who has endured an avalanche of sexualised abuse and death threats calling her \u201ctransphobic\u201d (she isn\u2019t). The letter didn\u2019t even mention trans ideology; it was a statement of solidarity against abuse, especially of women, and I was one of the signatories.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three steps forward, at least one back.\u00a0Mslexia<\/i>\u00a0was once a magazine devoted to promoting women\u2019s writers. Amanda Craig, the eminent author of\u00a0The Golden Rule<\/i>\u00a0and an early feature writer for the magazine, was also one of the signatories of the Rowling letter. That prompted one complaint from a trans activist\u2014and\u00a0Mslexia<\/i>\u00a0couldn\u2019t drop their hot brick fast enough. Craig was removed as a competition judge\u2014all for a letter opposing bullying and misogyny. Go figure, because I can\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear teenage me: kindly come to feminism a little sooner. Those battles you thought were won\u2014they\u2019re still there to be fought. Again.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

D<\/span>ementia is a hellish thing, but it can still have its funny moments. \u201cPeople keep trying to tell me you\u2019re my daughter,\u201d said my mother the other day. \u201cI am, though,\u201d I reassured her. \u201cHonest I am.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She was quiet for a moment, thinking. She shook her head. \u201cGoodness,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know I was THAT old.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

O<\/span>ther things I wish teenage me had known, or even 30-year-old me: there are two essentials in life, and one of them is a high-pressure washer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seriously, kids: get one before you even get a TV. I came home yesterday hugging my new toy, and spent the hours until dusk stripping age and an infinite variety of mould from my house, all while dressing and feeling like an absurdly happy Ghostbuster.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been lucky in lockdown; I live in the country, and ticks and midges are worth it for the relative freedom and the proximity of many horses. Being fired from my own children\u2019s writing job (for backing J.K. Rowling) has meant that my garden and my neighbours\u2019 no longer look like before-and-after Alan Titchmarsh projects. And make-up suddenly seems pointless as well as expensive, so I\u2019ve pretty much quit the addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Best of all, I\u2019ve had the chance to train as a lorry driver. I\u2019m now qualified to drive up to 7.5 tonnes, and the test for the bigger trucks is coming up. Refreshingly, in road haulage, lying and fraud aren\u2019t considered \u201ckindness\u201d, but downright dangerous. I\u2019m looking forward to joining an industry where being a mouthy woman won\u2019t cause half as much trouble as it did in children\u2019s publishing.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s been quite the month for the Gender Critical community\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[646],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9230,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions\/9230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}