Saturday 6 December 2014

Sex, If We Must

Tom Watson, to whom one defers utterly in these matters, calls this a "must read" on Elm House and all that.

The depravity of those who ruled over us in the 1980s puts into the shade even the questionable campaigning connections of those who were to go on to rule over us during the Blair years, and those were bad enough.

We told you so.

We were right, and we are being proved right again.

I shall not be writing about Nigel Farage's bizarre views on breastfeeding.

Nor about the mind-boggling story of the changes to the pornography laws in relation to practices that I, considerably older than several of the people who have been writing about them, struggle to believe can be real.

But this caught my eye.

There is an understandable emphasis on the plight of teenage girls who might find themselves required to change or shower next to persons who insist that they are female despite the Y chromosomes in every cell of their bodies manifesting themselves in very much the same way as my Y chromosome does.

It works both ways, though.

Teenage boys might find themselves required to change or shower next to persons who insist that they are male despite having, not to put too fine a point on it, breasts and vaginas.

Those boys would be quite unable to help the very apparent reaction of their own changing and showering bodies to such features in their midst.

In itself, that reaction would be entirely normal, natural and healthy. In this context, obviously, it would be anything but. The context, then, is demonstrably wrong.

This may or may not be dangerous to the girl. It might be, but it probably would not be. A boy has such a reaction to far less blatant stimulation every day, and often several times in a day. He gets by.

The cause of that reaction, however, is rarely aware of it and can almost never see it.

Boys find the fact that it is happening embarrassing enough despite knowing that that is the case. They would be utterly mortified - yes, even American football types or whatever - if this were the case.

They have as much right to be protected from that as girls have to be protected from the sight of male genitalia in a comparable situation. There is also an element of physical discomfort.

Of course, everyone reading this who has been through a male puberty already knows all of that.

Anyone who has not and does not, well, just as we who have never menstruated are not you, so you are not us. We are just not, and you are just not.

That is reality, which all the surgery in the world cannot change. You can cut up the tissue in any way that you like. But the chromosomes do not and cannot change.

The experiences based on them begin at least at birth, and the basic arrangements in every cell have been there since very conception.

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