Why can't we debate gender issues in a calm, rational way?

THE kids are back at school. The swallows are lining up on the telephone poles. But the interminable debates around gender have shown no sign of going away.

We have Cork City Library, other libraries, and now several schools too under siege by far-right activists who disagree with the provision of material about LGBT and trans-gender issues.

And we have Irish singer Róisín Murphy, still battered from the outrageous pulverising and the blatant threat to her livelihood she received for expressing concern around the prescription of puberty blockers to young people.

Puberty blockers, if you happen to be lucky enough to have missed all the recent hoo-haa, are a controversial treatment used by transgender children to delay the development of sex characteristics that are not in alignment with their gender.

These substances have either been banned or severely restricted in countries like Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway.

In England, the NHS has announced it is developing proposals to stop puberty blockers being made routinely available outside the research arena.

All the same, Murphy ended up apologising abjectly for expressing reservations about puberty blockers, declaring that she felt she was “deeply unsuitable for discourse around the issue” and announcing she would bow out of the conversation.

So that was poor Róisín gagged and put in her box.

Meanwhile, Harry Potter author JK Rowling continues to have cauldrons of boiling oil poured over her because she had the temerity to criticise an opinion piece that did not mention the word ‘women’, instead the article alluded to ‘people who menstruate’.

Personally, I consider that to be a gruesome and deeply offensive phrase.

There’s a hell of a lot more to living life as a (born) woman than just being a person who menstruates. God in heaven. What have we come to?

I felt like taking up a banner and marching myself.

Expressing an opinion about something is far from unusual in this country, but now a self-righteous and highly vocal minority feel it is incumbent upon them to lay down the law on what the rest of us can and can’t say.

I’m no expert on puberty blockers but I’ll say it loud and clear: I wouldn’t touch those things with a 40ft pole.

Nor would I agree to medicate my kids with them, whether or not they wanted to identify as a different sex.

So, does that make me a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) which is what they now seem to be calling any woman who dares raise her head above the parapet to express concern about puberty blockers, or the granting of permission to men who self-identify as female to saunter into women’s changing rooms and toilets at will?

Rowling, it should be pointed out, also said that she respected every trans person’s right to live any way that felt authentic and comfortable. And she declared that she would march with any trans people who felt they were being discriminated against on the basis of being trans.

But the self-righteous and utterly vituperative backlash continues.

Grow up the lot of yez.

And that includes those people marching on Cork City Library and various schools targeting books for children and young people that they regard as inappropriate – ie, texts explaining the concept of trans-genderism and other gender-related issues.

That also includes those involved in the witch-hunts against dissenting voices like JK Rowling and Róisín Murphy.

It’s madness! It’s censorship! It’s off the bloody wall.

Aren’t we all getting so utterly precious here that we’re forgetting what’s actually going on in the real world?

Then there are the arguments around what genders are allowed into changing rooms and toilets.

Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable in a women’s changing room or toilet that any man, even one who declares to us that he has identified as a woman, is allowed to enter at will.

As someone said to me rather caustically, how many fellas would still be eager to declare they’d self-identified as women once they saw the endless pee-queues that snake around for miles outside ladies’ rooms at football matches, nightclubs and other public events, compared to the lack of any queue outside the men’s?

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women, has warned that gender self-identification could see violent men taking advantage of loopholes to get into women’s spaces and have access to women.

And what about sports? Some experts are acknowledging the blindingly obvious - that the undeniable physical advantage of trans women over ‘natal’ women cannot be undone.

Look at the case of swimmer Lia Thomas, who achieved only modest success in male categories before becoming a national champion in women’s events after her transition.

Or transgender cyclist Veronica Ivy, who defended her right to complete in women’s sport despite accepting that-trans athletes may retain physical advantage over rivals. Ivy won the UCI Women’s Masters Track World Championship for the 35-44 age bracket in 2018 while competing as Rachel McKinnon, becoming the first transgender track cycling champion.

This is a complex and sensitive situation that isn’t resolved by confrontation, name-calling or ideological horn-locking. Or indeed, by the assumption that only one side of the debate has all the rights.

In the midst of controversy surrounding this issue, governments and activists on all sides are forgetting about the rights of the great and all-too-often silent majority – that is, those people who are comfortable in the gender they were born with (am I saying this correctly?).

Trans-people need and deserve protection. But so do ‘natal’ or ‘born’ girls and women.

So let’s stop the attempts to silence dissenting voices of those such as Róisín Murphy or JK Rowling who stand up for us.