This label here says so

Grotesque.

“They are women on their passports,” he says twice, irritably.

What does that mean?

People could “be” anything at all on their passports if the rules of passports allowed it. They could be ants, trees, nations, planets – because passports are just human artefacts, which humans can change at will. If a man’s fist smashes a woman’s face it really doesn’t matter what his passport says.

They are women on their passports, he says. Ok but are they women in their bodies? Are they women for real? Are they women in the sense we normally understand it?

I’ve been trying to find that out this morning and not finding it easy. The reporting is muddled.

But Mark Adams’s dismissive “They are women on their passports” suggests they are not women in their bodies, as women have been saying for the past few days.

It’s all so absurd. He might as well write on a piece of paper “They are women” and hold it up whenever a woman asks the question. “Look, it says right here they’re women, now stop asking.”

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