Last night on BBC Newsnight someone, a smart, probably Tory lady who writes for the Telegraph, made the point that we now look back in horror at the way Alan Turing was mistreated all those years ago just for being gay. She thinks that in 50 years’ time people will look back on all the current fuss about gender recognition in much the same way.
Somehow, though, the gender question is much more complicated. We have biological male and female, transgender male and female and cross-dressers who may well dress up as the opposite of their biological gender but don’t in fact identify as the gender whose clothes they wear. Throw sexuality into the mix as well and it’s a real mess!
What I would like to know is how anyone plans to police the toilet question. How do you check that a person who dresses as a woman, moves like a woman, looks like a woman is in fact a woman? Especially when that person walks into the ladies’ toilets?
I came across a story for this time of gender-kerfuffle. The magic circle used to be a male-only preserve. Women could not be magicians. They were supposed to be the magician’s “beautiful assistant”. Someone called Sophie Lloyd was good at magic tricks and wanted to join the magic circle. So she dressed herself up, even added “plumpers” to her face to make her jaw line look more square and masculine, put gloves to disguise her ladylike hands and presented herself for judgement by the Magic Circle. And “Raymond” Lloyd was duly accepted.
In 1991, hearing that the Magic Circle was about to start admitting that women could also do magic tricks, she confessed her big trick. And they expelled her! Which seems a bit harsh! Now they have welcomed her back in. “We are delighted to finally be able to invite Sophie back in to the society as herself,” said the Magic Circle president, Marvin Berglas. “It is something we should have done when we accepted those first women into the club in 1991. I’m so glad she has accepted our apology so we can right this wrong for what happened all those years ago.”
It still sounds a little condescending to me. But I suppose she should consider herself lucky. At times in the past she would have been regarded as a witch I suppose!
Inequality is an odd thing. We tend to think that up in the “higher” professions all would be well. Not so. There is this set of statistics:
“Although more women than men now study law at university, the bar has been slow to catch up; 41% of barristers are women, but just 21% of KCs (senior barristers). Junior women at the bar earn on average 77% of what junior men earn: female KCs earn on average only 67% as much as their male colleagues. In 2024, 62% of court judges in the UK were men, rising to 69% in the high court and 75% in the court of appeal.” What do the other women who studied law do? Surely they don’t all become teachers of A-level Law in sixth form colleges. Here’s a link to an article about it.
I particularly liked the description Brenda Hale (first female president of the supreme court) uses privately to describe most male barristers:
“quadrangle to quadrangle to quadrangle boys” – lawyers who had been at independent boarding schools, then Oxbridge and the Inns of Court in London, their lives bounded by similar architecture and privilege.
Another area of imbalance is reporting. What’snthe difference between a “massive attack” and a “wave of attacks”? Here are some headlines:
“Children in school shelter among 25 killed in wave of Israeli strikes on Gaza”
“Zelenskyy to cut South Africa trip short after ‘massive’ attack on Kyiv – Europe live”
“Children among nine dead and at least 70 wounded by Russian attack, Ukraine says”
And here is something Michael Rosen has to say about the situation:
“Given that the phrase 'two-tier policing' got some traction a while back, maybe now's the time to talk of 'two-tier reporting': Ukraine and Gaza.
Recent bombing of Ukraine is called 'deadly'. Recent bombing of Gaza is described as a 'wave' of attacks.”
It all depends on your point of view!
Life goes on. Stay safe and-well, everyone!
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