The Times - UK (2020-08-28)

28 1GM Friday August 28 2020 | the times

Comment

Goodness

me, Gromit,

they’re the

wrong type

M

y American neighbours
are becoming British
citizens, for reasons that
escape me. He’s from
Seattle, she’s from New
York and both cities knock London
into a cocked hat as far as I’m
concerned, but anyway. They set off
this week to take their “Life in the
UK” test. It started, like so much else
in our fair country, with a queue in
the rain. The testing centre was the
Hammersmith home of the Iranian
Association, that long-standing ally
of the UK and arbitrary jailer of our
citizens. My neighbours were pretty
much strip-searched on arrival, then
faced with the most random
selection of questions imaginable.
They report that Winston
Churchill and Elizabeth I feature
heavily, but why will they be better
Britons for knowing what the
Chartists campaigned for, or who
appoints life peers? They were

The world is failing

the oppressed

people of Kashmir

Moeed Yusuf

T

he creation of the United

Nations after the Second

World War was a landmark

in human history. While

the world continues to

experience wars, destruction and

massacres, there is at least the

reassurance that international

conventions, laws and mechanisms

exist under the auspices of the

UN to observe and respect

human rights.

Despite all the safeguards, some

nations continue to suffer crimes

against humanity and their territories

have become an arena of abuses with

no recourse to justice. The situation

prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir

under Indian occupation and the

plight of the Kashmiri nation are

glaring cases in point.

Kashmiris carry heart-wrenching

memories of the November 1947

massacre of tens of thousands in

Jammu, the mass rape of Kashmiri

women in Kunan Poshpora in 1991,

the discovery of several thousand

bodies in unmarked graves in 2009

and many other incidents.

The evidence of those atrocities

should have been enough to move

the world to ensure delivery of

justice by bringing the perpetrators

to account.

While those responsible for

protecting human rights and

maintaining world order watched

and discussed the sufferings of

Kashmiris, in August 2019 the

Indian government took a unilateral

and illegal decision to strip the

disputed region of its autonomy,

opening a dark new chapter in

its history.

In the year since then, Kashmiris

have endured a communications

blockade, cutting them off from the

outside world, and have been denied

access to media, medical facilities

(even during the pandemic) and

religious gatherings.

Allegations of arbitrary detention,

torture, extra-judicial killings and

rape have all been reported by the

international media, Amnesty

International and Human Rights

Watch, among others. UN bodies

and Britain’s all-party parliamentary

group on Kashmir have also

published reports on the gross

human rights violations in Kashmir

under Indian occupation.

Kashmiris are still hopeful that the

international community will come

to their rescue and justice will be

delivered — that the UN will fulfil its

promise of the right to self-

determination as enshrined in the

Security Council resolutions on

Kashmir before it’s too late.

The international community and

the international institutions need to

act now before the question mark

over Kashmir’s future turns into an

indelible black mark on the world’s

conscience.

Moeed W Yusuf is national security

adviser to the prime minister of Pakistan

Turning sex into gender and gender to social construct has pitted the movement against science

Trans people are real — but so is biology

This is a new one on me. My sills are

lined with conkers, which seem to do

the job, although I have deep respect

for a friend who has the feet of her

bed standing in saucers of water. Ash

is in short supply round here. I gave

up smoking 20 years ago, and fires

are banned, so where do I get some?

And what will a thin coating of ash

do for the value of my flat?

Loafing around

B

ad news for bread lovers. The

price of a loaf looks set to rise,

after the worst harvest in years.

I already pay £6 for a loaf, albeit a

large, artisan loaf of impeccable

provenance, kneaded by vestal

virgins and left to rise in a Sèvres

dish. Seeing as good, plain bread is

one of the great joys of life, I spend a

fair bit of time trying to find it and

it’s surprisingly hard. I can get 43

types of sourdough, but a plain loaf,

unsliced, good crust, not pappy?

Not so much.

Branches of Gail’s are everywhere,

but I don’t rate their bread. Instead, I

found my dream loaf at a bakery in

Notting Hill, but now it’s closed. A

sign on the door said my nearest

branch is Greenwich, which is so far

away I haven’t been since I was 15. Is

a two-hour round trip across London

worth it for a loaf? Or should I get

over myself and start eating Hovis?

Ann Treneman is away

be thought to be a boy trapped in a

girl’s body? Or a boyish girl be

“diagnosed” as trans? At least four-

fifths of children diagnosed as having

“gender dysphoria” will grow up to

be healthily gay. Is it any wonder

that an increasing number of gay

men and lesbians are becoming

concerned about the claims made by

advocates of gender dysphoria?

Despite all this, in the face of the

revolt the trans activists keep digging

in. And the absurdities mount. The

Lib Dem leadership candidate Layla

Moran recently tried to get around

the impasse by claiming that she sees

someone’s true gender “in their soul”.

Yet most people — albeit privately —

recognise that to be anti-scientific

nonsense.

Still, as the sackings continue, the

activists seem to imagine that if they

just clear all opponents from their

path, they can win by insistence.

Nothing could be further from the

truth. Biological reality can be

ignored, but not for long. Our society

is struggling for a way to understand

the question of trans. It is a noble

aim. But if you are going to address a

complex question it is unwise to

discard the best analytical tools any

society has developed. As Soh

demonstrates, we can be humane

and self-respecting, liberal-minded

and respectful of the scientific

method. A generation is emerging

that is dedicated to that task. We

must hope that they win.

Douglas Murray is the author of The

Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and

Identity (Bloomsbury)

Ed Conway is away

figment of the heterosexual

imagination. Soh herself left

academia for the same reason

many other scientists have been

considering it: because this is the first

time in their professional lives that

they have been asked, indeed told, to

ignore the scientific method. The

first time in centuries that a dogma

— religion if you will — has assumed

precedence over their realm.

But the revolt is on many fronts.

The manner in which trans claims

disrupt the rights of women is now

understood thanks to some high-

profile conflagrations. That is

because the demands of trans

activists are clearly so different from

other rights movements, including

women’s rights. The successful

branches of women’s liberation never

insisted on ignoring biological reality

entirely. They asked for equality, and

demanded that certain realities were

accepted but not ignored. And yet

today when women say “We’re

happy for you to be trans but that

doesn’t make you precisely the same

thing as a woman” they find not just

abuse but (as happened to Ms White

this week) career destruction.

The same goes for gay people, who

did not win their argument by saying

“We’re here, we’re queer and as a

result the penis is a social construct”.

As the trans debate goes on there is

increasing gay alarm at the claims

made by trans activists about what

they term “trans children”. As the

LGB Alliance and others are now

trying to highlight, there exist not

just old-fashioned gender stereotypes

but something deeply anti-gay about

present trans claims. For example,

why should a slightly effeminate boy

E

arlier this week Sasha White
was fired from her job
working at a literary agency
in New York. Her offence
was writing comments on
Twitter that the Tobias Literary
Agency deemed anti-trans. As it
happens Ms White would appear to
be rather pro-trans. “Gender non-
conformity is wonderful,” she says in
her Twitter bio, “denying biological
sex not so.” It is that second clause
that got her into trouble.
It has been extraordinary watching
the trans debate play out over recent
years. But too rarely does anyone stop
to acknowledge the underlying
causes. I have tried to perform some
of this delicate surgery in my own
recent book. Happily more and more
people are doing the same. Notably
the neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh. Her
new book, The End of Gender, lays out
with exceptional care not just why we
have got into the present impasse, but
how we might get out of it.
As Soh says, the effort to turn sex
into gender and gender into some
endlessly mellifluous thing is an
attempt to contend with a real
question. Nearly every culture has
some space for between-the-sexes
people: the fa’afafine in Samoa, the
Kathoey in Thailand. In our own
culture we have struggled with this

because it has got tied up with

another issue. There is now a wide

societal embarrassment over the way

in which gay people were treated in

the past. One thing that followed

from that has been a perfectly

natural desire not to repeat the

mistake. When gay people said that

our preferences were not a choice, it

took a long time to be believed.

Today when trans people say they

are born trans they are speaking to

a highly receptive and sympathetic

audience.

Turning sex into gender and

gender into a “social construct” was

one way to try to address our near-

complete knowledge-deficit about

what trans actually is. The problem

is that it treads across some serious

magisteria. Not least science.

My own realisation of this came

when I started noticing that it was

my scientist friends who were

becoming most vocally nervous — in

private — about where this was

heading. Institutions at which they

worked were demanding that they

said things, and pretended to believe

things, they knew not to be true.

For instance gametes exist and

there are only two types: sperm cells

and eggs. There are no intermediary

gametes. Likewise, although rare

chromosomal disorders such as

Klinefelter syndrome occur, no self-

respecting biologist can therefore

agree that chromosomes are some

For a complex question

it is unwise to discard

the best analytical tools

floored by three: what is the name of

the Queen’s husband? Who was

Hadrian’s Wall built to keep out? And

which category of Oscar did Wallace

and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers

win? I can forgive them not knowing

about Prince Philip and Hadrian. I

can even forgive them not knowing

whether the film won best picture or

best animated short. What I can’t

forgive is that they’d never heard of

Wallace and Gromit, full stop. They

gaped uncomprehendingly when I

told them about an evil penguin with

a rubber glove on his head, called

Feathers McGraw.

These people cannot be welcome

here. Pull up the drawbridge,

Gromit. Don’t give them a

passport till they’ve watched

The Wrong Trousers.

Going the distance

A

friend reports

conflicted

attitudes to

social distancing on

a BA flight from

Greece. They were

crammed in like

sardines for the

four-hour flight,

although

everyone was

wearing masks

and BA is

desperately

trying to

recoup its lockdown losses. Once

they landed, the flight attendants

told them to observe strict two-

metre social distancing as they

disembarked. Hmmm.

What the hay

M

oving house for the first time

in 20 years, I’m beginning to

wish I wasn’t. Six different

forms, totalling 48 pages, and

hundreds of questions, arrive in my

inbox from my solicitor. Am I

liable to repair the chancel

of any church? Is the

property subject to

manorial rights or

Japanese knotweed?

Have radon tests

been conducted and,

if so, when? My

favourite, though,

concerns possible rights

other people may have to

take things from my land.

For example, it adds

helpfully, timber, hay or

fish. Good luck finding

any of those in a first-floor flat

in central London.

Ashes to arachnids

I

read that the best

way to repel spiders

at this dangerously

eight-legged time of

year is to scatter

ash on window sills.

Hilary Rose Notebook

Douglas

Murray

@douglaskmurray

b

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any

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