I think we need to talk about words. Not just any words but special words. Loaded words. Prejudicial words. Words that cause upset, depression, consternation and even constipation. Because words can be inflammatory. We know that. Sometimes that’s their purpose. Like Donald Trump before the Capitol invasion. Or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”. David Bowie, ‘wham, bam, thank you maam’.

But the American government legislated that words such as ‘brother, sister, son, daughter, mother, father’ must be replaced with ‘sibling, child and parent’. So as to avoid… to avoid…

Well, its a gender issue. NOT, as you’ll have already deduced, an issue about sex. So we need firstly to define the difference between those two words. And its a big difference. That’s not me boasting, its just what it is. My sex is masculine, because I was born with a penis. I still have it. You can see it on Facebook, instagram or various blackmail sites. But my GENDER is whatever I choose to identify with. And I don’t think ‘Spurs fan’ counts as a gender. (Though ‘Arsenal fan’ in fact does. And not a very good one.) They mean, sexually identify. Or gender-ally identify maybe, must check that.

So you’re born with your sex defined by your organs but you later (or earlier) can choose your gender. That’s easy. Unless you choose your somewhat alternative gender a bit too early and then retain the right to sue all those you had sued to enable you to change, when you realise later that it was a mistake. As all those being sued again spent half a decade repeatedly trying to tell you.

But when you change wording, making it more ‘gendery’ rather than ‘sex-y’, it also has an impact on the tiny number of people who aren’t part of the ‘trans’ community. I know, they’re barely worth considering but as they almost now constitute a ‘persecuted minority’ we’re obliged to give them a footnote on the page which re-writes everybody’s lives.

Any man in America claiming to ‘identify’ as a woman can enter, by law, any woman’s toilet, shower room or partake in their sport. A rape victim can no longer request that the ‘sex’ of her post-trauma examining doctor be female, just that its ‘gender’ is female.

You see, talk is cheap, but words can be very very expensive. I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest (which will measure 36DD by next Wednesday).

Happy non-gender-specific-day-of-your-choice

A xxxx