Originally a comment by Enzyme on One’s estates.

Campaigners have said much of this land lies on peat bogs, which should be allowed to grow wild to sequester carbon instead of being used for grouse shooting.

OK, but this is important, and it perhaps does undermine some of the point about tree-cover. I’ve no love for grouse-moors, and many grouse moors are close to peat areas: anyone who’s been to the Peak District can attest that there’ll be grouse-butts in one place, and a couple of hundred metres away you’re up to your thighs in peat.

BUT… Peat-bogs are not forest. They are AMAZING carbon sinks. According to the Beeb,

Peatlands cover around 12% of the land in the UK and store an estimated 3 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to all the forests in the UK, Germany and France put together.

Granted this, complaining that they have lower-than-average tree cover is to miss the mark. In fact, if they had more tree cover, they’d be worse for the environment: much worse, in fact.

Bluntly, in huge parts of the UK, what you want is scrubby upland moors, some of which will be waterlogged, but some of which won’t – and the not-waterlogged bit is ideal for grouse-shooting.

By all means put an end to that. But pointing out lower-than-average tree cover is environmentally misleading.

It can be so difficult to be sure you’re not reading a parody. Surely the BBC wouldn’t publish a parody news item…

When Alexa Hermosillo, 25, came out as non-binary about a year ago, while living in San Diego, California, he found many of the people he dated still boxed him into a gender binary.

He was expecting to find something else? “Dating” (i.e. sex) tends to work that way.

Hermosillo had short hair and presented as more masculine, but was using she/he pronouns at the time. People he dated, however, “would assign that more normatively masculine role to me”, he says (Hermosillo now identifies as trans masculine). “If we drove somewhere, I would be the person to drive. If I took them out on dates, I’d be the main person paying.” 

Is he helpless? Can he not negotiate who does the driving, as in one person drives to and the other drives back? Can he not negotiate who pays? Can he not use his words?

This is one of the many nuanced issues people who identify as non-binary face when dating. Both dating partners and dating apps are likely to assign them to a binary gender. 

No shit. And why is that? Because 999,999 out of 100,000 people want to “date” (i.e. have sex with) a particular sex. Ok that probably undercounts bisexual people but you get my drift. Humans do “assign” other humans to a binary gender. It’s built in. Claiming to be “non-binary” is a new and silly development, and it’s not going to find many eager participants.

They’re subject to misgendering and inadvertent insults, people who try too hard to empathise with their gender identity, and those who don’t try to understand at all. 

In other words everybody gets it wrong and it’s just so unfair.

Dating can be a minefield for anyone who’s looking for partnership – but for people who identify as non-binary, there are even more obstacles, often invisible to people who identify with the mainstream view of gender identity and heteronormative sexuality.

Of course there are. Suck it up. Nobody has to pretend to be “non-binary,” and nobody has to humor people who do pretend to be “non-binary.” Suck it up, move on, transition to being an adult.

The Guardian decides today would be a good day to treat “JK Rowling” as just another political issue people disagree on, and by the way she’s the wrong side to pick.

It seems they have a series called Dining across the divide: two people eat something and talk about how they disagree. Catchy subhead for this one:

One voted Labour, the other Tory, and they disagreed about Brexit. Can they find common ground over JK Rowling?

Can they? Can they? Can they agree that she’s a bitch and a Karen who has no right to say that men are not women?

Of course they can.

John The subject where I felt I was educated is the storm that has engulfed JK Rowling. To my knowledge, I’ve only met two trans people. And he said: “You’ve probably met plenty of others; you just didn’t know it.” And that’s probably true. I didn’t know enough about it; I wanted to know what the fuss was about.

No it isn’t probably true. That’s not probable at all. It’s part of the mythology that trans people are undetectable.

Dan He seemed to have taken a surface-level view, that JK Rowling is just standing up for women’s rights, as someone who’s experienced domestic violence. I tried to explain that you have to disregard a trans woman’s womanhood to be able to even say that this is an issue. While I have a huge appreciation for people who have been through domestic violence, and understand how you might have a fear of the opposite sex because of that, it doesn’t mean you get to oppress already oppressed people.

How nice of Dan to dig beneath the surface to find out that women (women – notice he doesn’t even say the word) who have experienced male violence (euphemistically called “domestic violence”) have no right to dispute men’s claims to be women.

What a lot of deceptive bullshit there is in just that one paragraph. Surface-level view is one, domestic violence is another, a trans woman’s womanhood is another, a huge appreciation is another, might is another, the opposite sex is another, oppress is another, oppressed people is another.

People have trained themselves to do this – to use generic words to avoid admitting that you’re defending men who bully women, to flip perpetrator and victim, to treat arguing for women’s rights as “oppressing” men who pretend to be women. And the other guy lapped it all up. One dude explains to another dude why it’s fine to brush off Rowling’s experience of a violent husband and pretend she’s “oppressing” men by not believing they’re women.

John He knows a lot of trans women, and because of his circle, he has a lot of insights, which I enjoyed listening to. He made a good point, which is that there isn’t really a threat from trans women – it’s the media blowing things out of all proportion. He made very, very strong arguments to convince me that it’s a bit of a storm in a teacup.

Awww, that’s just heartwarming, John, thanks for sharing.

To think I used to admire Peter Tatchell.

So, who cares, right? So 80 “cis lesbians” do get pressured to have sex with men pretending to be women, so what? Bitches. Karens.

A lot of people make the point that Simon makes:

How many people was that claim based on? 27.

Bros before hos.

Simon Edge tells us that the publishing industry is full of horrible little censors. Little in mind, regardless of stature.

He and Stock and Joyce and Shrier and Bindel all found publishers who would ignore the tiny-minded ones, but they still deal with retail staff who hide the books and rebuke customers who want to buy them.

(Off topic – All those shiny buildings? They’re all brand new. That part of the city used to be low-rise, drab, quiet, uninteresting, a neglected edge of downtown.)

We know what’s next.

But if the custom is to yell and cheer and scream, a bizarre silence is itself any unpleasantness. Very unpleasant indeed if you ask me.

And now another ratchet. You thought it couldn’t get worse? Ha.

A blacklist. Very progressive.

A crudely written vituperative piece on the Allison Bailey tribunal by one Moya Lothian-McLean:

Barrister Allison Bailey – a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, a transgender-exclusionary organisation – is suing, in one fell swoop, Garden Court, her legal chambers, and Stonewall, the largest LGBTQ+ organisation in Europe. 

It’s just stupid and ludicrous to call the LGB Alliance “transgender-exclusionary.” There is no law or rule or unwritten agreement that lesbians and gay men must “include” trans people in everything they do. It’s not particularly obvious why they’re expected to “include” them at all ever. Stonewall, meanwhile, could be said to have become a mostly trans-focused organization, and it can certainly be called one that treats some lesbians and gay men like The Enemy.

Bailey’s case is just one of several legal challenges brought by those who fall under the umbrella of what’s now termed the ‘gender critical movement’. They’re made up of a loud (and often public-facing) minority, that run a gauntlet from rightwing evangelicals, in the American mould, to radical feminists.

Oh sorry are we loud? That must be awful, when the trans minority is so very whispery and gentle and self-effacing. Also “run the gauntlet”? She means “run the gamut.” Too bad nobody at Novara caught that. Embarrassing.

Binding them is an inexplicable opposition – in many cases, what feels closer to virulent hatred – to the existence of trans people.

Mkay now we’re getting defamatory. She’s implying that the gender critical movement wants to genocide trans people.

Increasingly, their focus is on the law and attacking even the current meagre rights it offers trans individuals, from access to healthcare to protection from the likes of conversion therapy. 

From the likes of? This fool cannot write.

An interview with a Stonewall lawyer follows, but it’s too stupid and dull to go into.

Oh, gee, I thought Priss Choss was such a keen environmentalist.

The duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, two of the royal family’s largest portfolios of land, have snubbed tree campaigners who are calling for the royals to rewild their estates.

Well. You know. There’s The Environment, and then there’s One’s portfolio of land.

Rewilding advocates at the campaign group Wild Card have been meeting for months with the crown estate, which manages most of the royal land and pays the revenue into the Treasury. They say relations have been “really positive”.

However, the duchies are separate to the crown estate, and not subject to the same level of accountability. The two organisations – described by the land campaigner Guy Shrubsole as “medieval anachronisms” – manage more than 73,000 hectares (180,000 acres) of royal land between them, with all profit going directly to the royal purse.

That’s how it is when your ancestor was the successful mob boss.

Both estates have lower levels of tree cover than the national average. The duchy of Cornwall, run by Prince Charles, has only 6% tree cover, and the duchy of Lancaster has 13%. The average in the UK is 16%, while in Europe it is 38%.

Choss is a tree-hugger of other people’s trees.

The duchies have no intention of talking to any of these pesky rewilding people.

“The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have categorically ruled out meeting with our campaign. This is an appallingly undemocratic affront to our futures,” said Emma Smart, campaigns manager for Wild Card, which has highlighted the lack of forest cover on royal land.

The group has delivered a 100,000-signature petition and emailed the duchies on nine occasions, but has had no response.

Wild Card is asking the royals to practise what they have preached during the Queen’s jubilee tree-planting scheme and allow more trees to grow on their own land.

…

The duchy of Lancaster owns about 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres) of grouse moors on the North York Moors and about 180 hectares (450 acres) of grouse moors in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire. Campaigners have said much of this land lies on peat bogs*, which should be allowed to grow wild to sequester carbon instead of being used for grouse shooting.

There it is, it’s the grouse shooting again. What do the environmental benefits of trees matter compared to a handful of toffs shooting birds out of the sky for the mere sake of killing them?

*Updating: see Enzyme’s comment on peat bogs as much better carbon sinks than forests are.

Honoring Pride Month.

H/t Jane Clare Jones

Jon Pike talks about conceptual engineering and That Word:

There is a growing approach in philosophy called “conceptual engineering”. It’s a cool name for an interesting project. Indeed, one of my colleagues at the Open University is heavily involved as a conceptual engineer. They look at our concepts and see if they are doing good work — if they are functioning well. If not, then we should try to improve them (“ameliorate” is the key term). The chief thinker behind this is Sally Haslanger; the title of her main work Resisting Reality: Social Constructions and Social Critique gives you a flavour of what she is up to.

…

So far, the term (and concept) “female” has seemed relatively immune from such attempts. The term “female” is straightforward. It’s generally accepted as an ordinary scientific and biological term. You can see that it is unambiguously a sex term rather than a gender term by realising that it applies across species: we don’t have woman squirrels, but we do have female squirrels.

It’s a good thing that we have some fixed and simple terms that apply to regular and important features of the world. It enables us to describe those features of the world in straightforward ways. To have the term “female” is a help in describing features of the world that matter — sexed features. That there are such features of the world seems to me important, and obvious. You only need to look at the work of Caroline Criado-Perez to see why, and the emergence of organisations like Sex Matters is part of a political move to focus on those features of the world where, well, sex matters.

The word is useful, we need it, so let’s not re-engineer it so that it means something else.

Creasy, and others, want to decouple “female” from the reality of biological sex. That project I find intellectually disturbing. It’s lots of other things — I think it’s politically damaging to the party we both support, I think it’s an affront to women, and I think it radically distorts the discussion. In policy, I think a redefinition of “female” would be disastrous, most obviously in health care. In the words of Keir Starmer, it generates more heat than light.

The affront to women is particularly…noticeable, in my view. It’s very affrontful. It’s an absolute classic of the “Well women don’t matter much so…” school of thought.

But my concern is in some ways quite narrow. I write about sport, and sex categorisation in sport. Here, it is obvious that sex matters. I have to be able to refer to biological sex in order to do my job. Creasy, then, is blunting the tools — the words — that I need. I argue for this claim: it is unfair for people with male advantage to compete in female sport. I try to give reasons for that view, to argue for it with governing bodies, to work out ways to apply it to sport policy. Whether people agree or disagree with that substantive view, this is legitimate academic work. In order to do it, I have to use a term to refer to biological sex. If Creasy succeeds, I will have to reorder my position. I will have to say that “it is unfair for people with advantages accruing from Homeostatic Property Cluster One to compete in sport designated for people with Homeostatic Property Cluster Two” or something similar. If we reached that point, there would be a loss to public debate. It would become obscure and technical.

Not to mention just way too goddam much trouble. If we have to use nine words instead of one to name women we won’t be able to name women at all, because any time we try people will just walk away.

Warwick Pride Issued a Statement the other day – which is to say, it wrote a public post on Facebook. It’s quite a surprising document.

STATEMENT REGARDING EXTERNAL SPEAKER NADHIM ZAHAWI

That is, Facebook post regarding external speaker Nadhim Zahawi.

TW: Transphobia, SA, abuse, homelessness

SA = sex abuse, right? So why isn’t it either “SA, A,” or “sex abuse, abuse”? Or indeed “abuse, sex abuse” – it’s more usual to start with the general and go on to the specific.

Picky picky.

It has been brought to our attention over the past few weeks that the Warwick Conservative Association is running an external speaker event, inviting Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education, to campus on Friday the 27th of May.

It’s very pompous, that “It has been brought to our attention” – makes it sound as if they’re so important and powerful and busy that they don’t have time to keep track of events, and as if they have armies of sycophants eager to bring things to their attention.

Towards the beginning of this academic year Nadhim Zahawi said the following regarding former Sussex University Professor Kathleen Stock, a notorious transphobe that is a signatory to the WDI (Women’s Declaration International formerly known as the WHRC) “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights”, that published the transphobic book “Material Girls”, that is a trustee of the LGB Alliance:

What’s up with saying “that” instead of “who”? Three times? Is it deliberate, to indicate that Kathleen is a thing rather than a person? Or just illiterate?

“It was unacceptable that a scholar of her calibre should be hounded out of university. For me that was just a terrible stain on the history of that great university.”

The WDI declaration argues for the legal elimination of transgender people. Quite frankly, Kathleen Stock’s behaviour as well as the university’s reaction is the only real “stain” on Sussex University concerning this incident.

That makes it sound as if the WDI Declaration argues for genocide. It’s as malevolent as it is stupid, and that’s saying a lot.

There are about 15 more paragraphs of the usual spite and blather. I miss the good old days when lefty students campaigned for workers and women and people of color and lesbians and gay men.

Headline news: Lia Thomas does not admit that his competing as a woman in swimming competitions is unfair. No, really?!!

Transgender NCAA swimming champion Lia Thomas is firing back at those claiming her dominance is unfair to biological women … saying trans athletes will not destroy women’s sports.

“Firing back,” eh – that’s tactful. He’s already physically bullying every woman he competes against; he’s not the one who needs to do any “firing back.”

The University of Penn athlete broke her silence on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday … saying she knew she’d face backlash once she started competing against women, but no amount of scrutiny would stop her.

And no amount of women pointing out how unfair it is would stop him. Of course it wouldn’t: he’s an entitled prick.

“I was prepared for that, but I don’t need anyone’s permission to be myself and do the sport that I love,” she said.

Except that it’s not himself. It’s a fiction. Himself is a man, but he’s competing against women, while claiming to be a “trans woman.”

And the boast about not needing anyone’s permission is very rapey, very entitled, very domestic violence-like.

“Transitioning to get an advantage is not something that ever factors into our decisions,” he says. I don’t believe him. “Trans women are not a threat to women’s sport,” he says. Of course they are. Men have physical advantages over women, so if men start forcing their way into women’s sport, they will ruin it for women. That’s a threat.

A tale of hecklement and Labour royalty:

One of the students who led a trans protest that hounded Nadhim Zahawi off a Russell Group campus is the son of Labour grandees Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, it has emerged today.

Is a trans protest a bunch of people sitting at Starbucks pretending they’re at a protest?

Mr Zahawi was hounded by around 30 activists who chanted ‘Zahawi is a transphobe’ and ‘Tory scum’ outside a talk the Cabinet minister gave to Warwick University’s Conservative Association.

In video posted by the Warwick Labour society, Joel Cooper interrupts the Education Secretary’s Q&A to heckle him over his trans views. He then sits down to cheers from fellow Labour activists. Later, he shared the clip to his Instagram story, Guido Fawkes reported.

I wonder what the views are. That men aren’t women? Crazy stuff like that?

In a statement issued by Warwick Pride before the talk, they branded Mr Zahawi a ‘reactionary harmful transphobe’ after he defended Kathleen Stock, a former Sussex lecturer who was hounded for her views on trans rights and left the university following protests against her.

…for being “a reactionary harmful transphobe” blah blah blah and thus we go on until every reasonable human on the planet has been told to wheesht.

The group added that the Education Secretary ‘plays a significant role in institutional transphobia’ in the UK, ‘trivialises’ the effects of outing LGBT+ young people to their parents and claimed he has used the ‘common transphobic dog-whistle ‘adult human female”.

The what? We’re not allowed to use the words “adult human female” now? While “women” no longer means “women”? What word or combination of words are we allowed to use to name the female sex? (Obviously not “female sex”; I committed a crime by using those two words next to each other.)

The Mail tells us a little about the Pride activists who were protesting.

Less is known about Warwick Pride’s president, who goes by the first name Mia. A mathematics and physics undergraduate, Mia identifies as ‘transgender, non-binary, genderfae, asexual, demiromantic’ and ‘neptunic’. Their interests include ‘music, electronics, programming, arcana, community management and moderation’ – and ‘Lego’.

It’s not just the eccentricity of the labels, it’s also the wealth of detail. Nobody cares. That’s a basic truth that people should learn early and never forget. Nobody cares about the details of wonderful you. Ask yourself how much you care about other people’s details of wonderful them. Got it? It’s a very small figure, isn’t it. Now notice that it works the other way around. Now resolve never to forget it again.

I do wonder what “neptunic” is though.

The trumpies lose one.

Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Democrats, was acquitted on Tuesday of a felony charge that he lied to the F.B.I. about having no client in 2016 when he shared a tip about possible connections between Donald J. Trump and Russia.

The jury returned the verdict after about six hours of deliberations split by a holiday weekend. It was a blow to the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration three years ago to scour the Trump-Russia investigation for any wrongdoing, and a vindication for Mr. Sussmann’s decision to fight the case before a jury.

Good. The more blows to Durham the better.

Yeah right.

If that were true he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing. If that were true he would go on competing against men, or give up competitive swimming. If it were true he would make very sure he did nothing whatever to take advantage of his True Self at the expense of women. If it were true he would be sharply aware that exploiting his advantage over women to cheat them out of medals and opportunities would be a terrible look. He would find the very idea painful, and flinch away from it. He would know he had no right to make the mix-up of his birth into the wrong body a problem for women. He would look at himself in the fucking mirror and say no way and that would be the end of it.

What kind of difference though?

The Crown Prosecution Service seems like a branch of government that should be particularly unpolitical. Sophie Cook is a man who identifies as a woman.

That sounds benign, but male trans activists tend to have a particular idea of EDI – equality, diversity, inclusion – that is very far from unpolitical…or uncontroversial or uninsulting to women. In other words I think putting a man who calls himself a woman in charge of helping to embed EDI at the Crown Prosecution Service is a punch in the face to women.

Women aren’t included yet. Women don’t have equality yet. Why put a man in this job rather than a woman? Why, especially, put a man who pretends to be a woman in this job? It’s a double insult – passing over women in the usual way, and then giving the job to a pretend-woman who is in thrall to an ideology that treats women like a costume? Why not give the job to, say, Allison Bailey instead?

Updating to add what I didn’t notice – he has replies turned off. Yay, Speak Out Champion, helping with incloosion and diversitee, and doesn’t want to hear from the peasantry.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Claiming to believe.

It’s the choice to believe this, coupled with the smug, arrogant forcing of that belief on others that is so bafflingly infuriating. Creasy wouldn’t be so condescendingly flippant if she wasn’t backed up by a virtual army (and actual police forces) ready, willing, and able to punish wrongthink. Fortunately, more and more people are willing to speak out against this insanity. Sometimes just repeating what transactivists say (i.e. Ricky Gervais) is enough to show just how insane the “required” beliefs and compelled speech are.

To the extent that trans activism has operated behind the scenes to influence laws and regulations outside the bounds of open, democratic debate, it really is an “elite” movement. It really is a conspiracy. And, it might just be the reaction of the great, “unwashed masses” of people outside the rarified, indoctrinated bubble of social media that helps to turn this around.

I’ve hated the fact that some on the Left have handed the Right this big pink and blue cudgel with which to beat us. While branding any disagreement or criticism as fascist bigotry, they are helping actual fascist bigots. I’ve hated the fact that media outlets have destroyed their credibility in the course of pandering to gender ideology. Their dishonest reporting on the everything from TiMs in women’s sports, male rapists “identifying” their way into women’s prisons, and the gutting of single sex spaces for women represents actual, unironic, no scare-quotes fake news. And all of this in the midst of an accelerating climate disaster, an ongoing pandemic, and a war in Europe. Bravo, you stupid, selfish assholes. (Slow clap). They should all be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps, someday, some of them will be.

Today is the day we learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Bill Gates grows fake meat in a peach tree dish.

“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said.

“They want to know when you are eating, they want to know if you are eating a cheeseburger which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”

She’s both – stupid and ignorant. Win-win.

Jo Bartosch on Stella Creasy’s confused ramblings of the past few days:

[I]n an interview for the Telegraph on Friday, Creasy made her contempt for women’s rights campaigners clear. She claimed to believe that ‘some women were born with penises’ and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’. In the interview she complained about being a victim of sexism while feigning frustration and bemusement that some women, like JK Rowling, continue to hold on to the belief that biological sex matters.

Funny thing: it’s actually sexist to express frustration that Rowling, or any woman, continues to be aware that biological sex matters.

At this point, Creasy had two choices: she could eat a slice of humble pie and slink off to do some learning, or she could persist and await the inevitable serving of her own bruised arse. Predictably, she chose the latter and what followed was a less-than-edifying online temper tantrum, during which she tried to cast those asking legitimate questions as Twitter trolls.

But wait, it got even worse! There was the part about saying she’d spoken to all the women’s groups, and the women’s groups saying no she hadn’t, nope, no, not us, no, never met her.

She has nowhere left to go but clown shoes.

Originally a comment by Rob on Collective frustration.

Winning at sport is a hugely compelling motive for people who are into sports. Even if there’s no money involved, even if there are no scholarships at stake.

I can certainly attest to that. While I played some sport at high school, it was not a focus for my life, but as an adult I took up a high risk aviation sport and discovered that I was very highly competitive – even though the most recognition that got you was a ‘nice flight’ from peers. Competitive enough that I’ve more than once put my life on the line, which once back on the ground was clearly stupid, but in the air seemed like a carefully reasoned and absolutely proper thing to do.

Athletes in whatever sport aim to be the best they can, and preferably to win. I see that in my partner and her multi-sport friends. None of them is ever going to win a major contest, but they devote enormous resources in both time and money to maintaining and incrementally extending their performance. And this is middle aged women doing it for kicks, not people chasing life changing scholarships, promotional deals, and representative team slots.

I remember a couple of decades ago a large number of college and potential Olympic athletes were anonymously polled whether they would use a performance enhancing drug that would guarantee an Olympic win, but lead to a dramatically shortened lifespan. An eye popping number (I recall it as being between 20-30%) said they would.

I don’t have any idea what goes on in William/Lia’s head, but I have no problem in believing that winning and fame at any cost is lurking in there somewhere.

Government and heads of schools differ over the “What To Do about students who say they are trans” problem.

School leaders have described advice from the attorney general, Suella Braverman, to “take a much firmer line” with pupils who identify as transgender as “unhelpful” and potentially damaging to children’s mental health.

In an interview last week, Braverman said schools in England do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender and are under no legal obligation to address them by a new pronoun, or let them wear a different uniform.

They shouldn’t have to or be under a legal obligation to, it seems to me. Schools aren’t required to play along with all students’ fantasies, after all, so why is this one fantasy singled out for Careful Handling? Especially when the basic job of schools is to educate, and that requires not lying.

Headteachers, however, who are increasingly having to navigate their way through these issues, fear that not listening to young people “would risk damaging mental health” at a time when pupils have already suffered during the pandemic.

Maybe it would, but here’s the thing: maybe so would “listening to young people” in the sense of agreeing that they are the other sex. Maybe both are risky. Maybe both are risky but one is more risky than the other and it’s not clear which one. Maybe the listening and agreeing approach is more risky over time – a palliative now but the source of disaster in two or five or ten years. It’s really not the case that humoring the belief system is obviously and clearly and reliably the safer option.

The attorney general told the Times that under the law, under-18s cannot legally change their gender, so schools are entitled to treat all children by the gender of their birth. She also said some teachers were effectively encouraging gender dysphoria by taking an “unquestioning” attitude.

This prompted criticism from Caroline Derbyshire, the executive head at Saffron Walden county high school, leader of the Saffron academy trust and chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable – a non-party political headteachers’ group operating as a thinktank.

She said: “No good can come of any young person being forced to adopt a gender they feel miserable with. It certainly won’t improve their learning.”

How about letting the young persons dress (and cut their hair) however they like, and just set aside all the My Gender Is stuff until later. (It’s hard to know what “adopt a gender” even means. A girl isn’t “adopting a gender” if teachers continue to call her “her.”

“Schools do all kinds of things to safeguard the welfare of young people that they are not ‘bound’ to do by law,” she went on. “I am a believer in rules and following them, but I think that not listening to young people and their parents on this quite particular and personal matter would risk damaging mental health.”

But what if agreeing to young people’s fanciful and socially-induced ideas about their Magic Gender would also risk damaging their mental health? Which, if you think about it, seems pretty damn likely.

Some schools have already adapted their uniform codes to remove distinctions between boys’ and girls’ schoolwear in an effort to accommodate transgender students. Dysphoric or transgender pupils at Brighton College, a private day and boarding school that takes pupils from reception to sixth form, can choose between wearing a traditional blazer, tie and trousers, or skirt and bolero jacket.

That. Do that. Relax about the clothes, and then stop thinking about them. Don’t draw wild conclusions about teenagers being the other sex because they don’t like the clothes they’re made to wear. In fact why can’t they wear trousers and a bolero jacket? Why can’t they wear trousers and a turtleneck? Why make them wear ties for god’s sake? They’re not working in office towers. Loosen up on the clothes, and leave “gender” for much later, when it’s someone else’s problem.