Peak radical gender theory? Just a thought

The essay that got me cancelled Dec 2019

Peak gender theory

The increasingly rancorous public debate about biologically-male trans-athletes cleaning up in women’s sporting events along with a steady stream of high profile scandals (the sacking of Maya ForStater in the UK; the Jessica Yaniv case in Canada; offences committed by self-identifying ‘formerly male’ rapists in women’s jails) is indicative, one might hope, of some light to the end of the tunnel. The decision by Labour and Lib Dems to get on board with self-ID in the most unreflective and public manner just days before the general election in the UK, at least contributed to the resounding victory of the Tories under Boris Johnson. The Conservative Party, finger in the wind, got a strong sense that the general public had had enough. For the most part, this is about pragmatic solutions to practical problems — problems in which two equally coherent rights-claims conflict (e.g. societal acceptance of transgender identity — versus the specific problems posed by biological…