Professor Richard Dawkins.
"You can't change your sex; it's encoded in every cell of your body."
Professor Robert Winston.
It absolutely beggars belief that it has actually been necessary for two extremely eminent professors of biology to make those statements! Surely the most contentious aspect of today's "woke" culture is so-called "gender ideology", which contradicts the most elementary facts of biology!
To any rational person, a human being is either male or female, full stop. ( Apart from the tiny fraction, less than one in 5000, who due to accidents of genetics, actually are anatomically something in between. ) But in the world of woke, sex or gender is imagined as some kind of spectrum, whereby a person can supposedly "choose their gender", and can choose to "identify as" the opposite of their biological sex, or even to "identify as non-binary" - that is, to somehow claim to be neither male nor female, whatever that even means!
After Donald Trump was elected President for the second time, he did, on his first day in office, perhaps the only really sensible thing he has ever done! That is, he declared that the US Government recognises that there are two genders, male and female, and one can't "become" the other.
In the UK, however, this has become one of the most decisive issues in politics. The currently governing Labour Party is obsessed to the nth degree with "woke" ideology, and many of its members seem to believe that the rights of so-called "transgender" people should take precedence over those of everyone else, and especially women! Some of them parrot the mantra "Trans women are women!" - that is, they believe that a man who simply declares himself to be a woman somehow "becomes" one! And Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, apparently believes that "a woman is anyone who self-identifies as a woman".
I absolutely agree with Professors Dawkins and Winston, and accept the fundamental facts of biology. And before I go any further, I'll repeat that my right to hold and express the opinions which follow is itself defined as a "protected characteristic" ( Section 2.4 ) by the same Equality Act so beloved of the woke!
6.1. The terminology of absurdity
Everyone these days knows the acronym "LGBTQ+", which we get shoved in our faces at every turn! That's the form in which it's most commonly used, but some of its proponents keep adding ever more letters, standing for ever more ridiculous things. The longest version I've come across so far is "2SLGBTQIA+"; I've no idea what half of those stand for! But however many extra letters they add, they still keep the "+", to represent any others which they haven’t yet thought of!
"Gender ideology" is not concerned with "sexual orientation", i.e. whether a person is attracted to the opposite sex, their own or both. And here, nor am I; I don't particularly care what consenting adults do in private, as long as they keep it private, and it doesn't affect anyone else!
In fact, many people of the "LGB" part - that is, gay people of both sexes - are themselves opposed to "gender ideology", which is a different thing entirely, and apparently object to themselves being lumped together, under a single label, with deluded people who claim not to know what gender they are! There's an organisation called the "LGB Alliance", of gay people who want to dissociate themselves from the rest of it.
The ideology claims that "sex" and "gender" are not the same thing, and concerns people who actually claim to be the opposite "gender" to their biological sex. So let's start by defining the latter. The above quote by Robert Winston refers to what everyone who has studied biology to O-level standard knows - that being male or female is defined by a person's DNA, and is indeed encoded in every cell of your body. Every cell contains a pair of chromosomes, known as X and Y, which determine the person's sex, and whether they develop male or female reproductive organs. Two X chromosomes means you are female; an X and a Y means you are male. Full stop.
( This does not apply to all animals, but only to mammals. Birds have a similar pair of chromosomes, but they work the opposite way - the males have two identical ones - which shows that the similar systems evolved independently in mammals and birds. Reptiles don't have sex chromosomes at all; their sex is determined by other factors.
There are also some animals which are anatomically hermaphrodite, meaning every individual has both male and female reproductive organs. But they do still have separate male and female organs, and mate in pairs, with the male organs of each individual coupling with the female organs of the other.
But the definition in terms of X and Y chromosomes does apply equally to all mammals, which humans obviously are.
As Dawkins points out7, there is in fact a "universal biological definition" of male and female, which applies across the entire animal and plant kingdoms, but that is far beyond the scope of this essay. )
And just in case anyone doesn't get it, the "two billion years" in the Dawkins quote is roughly the time which has elapsed since the first multicellular organisms evolved, and evolution first developed the process of sexual reproduction, and therefore the concept of male and female.
Nor are we concerned here with "transsexual" people - that is, those who have actually had "gender reassignment" surgery, and depending on your point of view, may or may not be regarded as having changed their sex. The ideology concerns those who merely "identify as" the opposite "gender" to their biological sex, and those who somehow "identify as" neither. And it has its own language of gibberish!
"Transgender" means a person who "identifies as" the opposite gender. A "transgender woman" is a man who "identifies as" a woman, and a "transgender man" vice versa. However, the former seems to be considerably more common than the latter, and is what we mostly hear about. "Transgender" is often abbreviated to just "trans" - though that isn’t even a word!
"Non-binary" means those who somehow claim to "identify as" neither male nor female; I have no idea what that actually means in reality!
Those who buy into all this nonsense also talk about the ridiculous concept of "gender assigned at birth". They claim that the gender which was "assigned" to a person at birth is somehow arbitrary, and that everyone has the right to "identify as" whatever they choose. Accordingly, they have invented another absurd word, "cisgender", as the opposite of "transgender", meaning a person whose "gender identity" "matches that which was assigned at birth". In other words, a normal person!
( In case you're wondering where this gibberish comes from; cis is a Latin prefix which is the opposite of trans, meaning "on this side of", as opposed to "on the other side of". For example, there's a geographical term, derived from the Romans, "cisalpine", meaning south of the Alps - that is, on "this" side of them, as seen from Rome. And there's a term used in spaceflight, "cislunar space", meaning the region of space within the orbit of the Moon. )
Then there's the bizarre concept of "preferred pronouns". "Transgender" people insist on telling everyone whether they want to be referred to by male or female pronouns - and for some reason, insist that everyone else should do the same! In workplaces, it has become common practice for people to suffix their names, e.g. in their e-mail signatures or on name badges, with "( he/him )" or "( she/her )". I'm baffled as to why anyone considers this necessary; in most cases, it's obvious from a person's name whether they are male or female! ( Though there are of course a few names which are gender-ambiguous. ) Even "transgender" people usually adopt false names in accordance with their "chosen gender", so it's still obvious which gender they want to be regarded as. What matters is whether anyone else is obliged to take any notice!
But then there are those who "identify as non-binary". They commonly state "their pronouns" as "they/them", and demand that others refer to them as such!
I for one will not, under any circumstances, refer to a single person as "they", as that word is plural! As a published author, I pride myself intently on my command of the English language, and refuse to mutilate it to pander to the fantasies of a handful of deluded individuals! A slight deficiency of English is that it doesn't have a "gender neutral" third person singular pronoun, except for "it"; there isn't one to refer to a person. ( And it is indeed grammatically correct to use "it", when referring to a child of unspecified gender, or to an as yet unborn baby. ) It's common practice, when referring to an unspecified person, to use "they", in order to avoid saying or writing "he or she" repeatedly - but using plural pronouns to refer to a specific person, whose gender is known - notwithstanding his or her delusional preference - is simply grammatically wrong!
Again, a person can choose to call him or herself whatever he or she likes - but it does not follow that everyone else is obliged to take any notice!
6.2. Thou shalt not question it, or else!
I'll remind the reader, at this point, of the words of Lord Toby Young: "Free speech not only means the right to say what you believe; it also means the right not to be forced to say what you don't."
But the latter part of that is exactly what is now happening every day, in workplaces throughout the UK; people who don't believe in "gender ideology" are forced to comply with it, for fear of losing their jobs if they don't! If there's a person in a workplace who is "transgender", or who claims to be "non-binary", then everyone else is obliged to accept it, and refer to that person by their "preferred pronouns", or else! There have been many cases of people being subjected to disciplinary action, and even sacked, for the terrible "offence" of "misgendering" such a person. There are some in the present government who actually want to make that a crime! This is because "gender identity" is defined as a "protected characteristic" by the Equality Act, so it's an offence to discriminate against a person on the grounds of it, just as it is to discriminate against a person for being gay. But I fail to see how simply using the "wrong" pronoun constitutes discrimination!
In particular, women are often forced to accept sharing their toilets and changing room with a man in drag, and risk being sacked if they dare to object. ( See Section 2.4. )
However, as also detailed in Section 2.4, sacking someone for any such reason is in fact illegal, and there is a tried and tested legal defence - namely, that "philosophical belief", including "gender-critical" belief, is itself a "protected characteristic", according to the same Equality Act.
Some companies now require their employees to attend mandatory "training courses" on "gender ideology", ED&I and other aspects of woke culture. A few years ago, a friend of mine, who works for a major engineering company, told me that all employees had been required to attend such a course, titled "Respect". What it amounted to was "You WILL respect the LGBTQ+ community, OR ELSE!" The course presenter was a so-called "transgender woman" - or as my friend put it, "a creature that looked like Meatloaf in a dress". I've desperately tried not to visualise that!
Many employers now require job applicants to fill in all manner of personal details - race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. - for purposes of "diversity monitoring". ( There are always options of "Prefer not to say", which sort of defeats the object! ) Or to put it another way, to enable them to discriminate against straight white males, to meet their "diversity quotas"! But surely the whole point of equality laws is that such things are not supposed to matter; it's illegal to discriminate on the grounds of any "protected characteristic", so no account should be taken of them. So once again, we see that ED&I has nothing to do with equality, and blatantly contradicts it!
In many cases, application forms now ask for the applicant's "gender identity". For some reason, supermarket companies seem to be particularly obsessed with this. After I was kicked out of my last job in 2024, I was required to apply for "any job which I'm capable of doing"; in particular, I applied for a number of jobs in supermarkets, as I had done some such work during the Covid lockdown, when I was prevented from doing my normal job.
On one company's online application form, the very first question in the personal details section, before it asks your gender, is "Are you trans?" The correct answer to that would be "Trans-what?", as "trans" isn't a word! It's a Latin prefix, which has no meaning in isolation, so the question is grammatically nonsensical.
Another company's application form explicitly asks for your "gender identity" - and there isn't even an option to simply state "male" or "female"! The options are:
Cisgender male
Cisgender female
Transgender male
Transgender female
Non-binary
I use another term
Prefer not to say
Naturally, it then has to include an explanation of what "cisgender" means, for the benefit of the 99% of normal people who neither know nor care!
I selected "I use another term"; had anyone asked what term I use, I would have said, "Male!" I will not, under any circumstances, describe myself as "cisgender"! So-called "transgender" people apparently make up 0.7% of the population - so why should the 99.3% be expected to use a ridiculous made-up word to indicate that we are normal?
6.3. So what about women's rights?
The former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, famously said that she would "stand up for women's rights until the day I die". Yet shortly before leaving that office, she tried to pass a law in the Scottish Parliament, which would have trampled all over women's rights! Thankfully, it was later rejected by Westminster.
This was her "Gender Recognition Bill". For medical or psychological reasons which I don't pretend to understand, some "transgender" people are given "gender recognition certificates", which mean they are somehow legally entitled to be regarded as their "chosen gender". But the bill proposed by "Wee Jimmy" ( British readers of a certain age will understand that nickname! ) said that anyone who simply chooses to "self-identify" as the opposite gender should be legally recognised as such. So any man who simply adopts a female name and wears women's clothes should be recognised as being a woman, and among other things, should be allowed to use women's single sex spaces, such as changing rooms! ( I will make no apology whatsoever for repeating this point! )
There are some in the present woke-obsessed government who still believe that that should be the case. I've discussed such matters with my Labour MP; frankly, I might as well be banging my head on a wall! I've asked him the same question twice, but failed to get an answer - namely: "Suppose you had a teenage daughter, and she went to a swimming pool or sports centre, to be confronted with a naked man in the women's changing room. Would you be happy about it?"
In 2025, the UK's Supreme Court ruled that in the context of "single sex spaces", the word "sex" means biological sex, and not "gender identity"; in other words, that "transgender" people should not be allowed to use single sex spaces, such as changing rooms, reserved for the opposite sex. It could not have been made any clearer! After all, if men are allowed into women's spaces or vice versa, then they no longer are single sex spaces, are they?
Yet some organisations - including, and most notoriously, the National Health Service - have blatantly ignored this ruling, and continue to allow men who pretend to be women to use women's changing rooms! There have even been a couple of cases of this being applied to schoolchildren, with teenage boys, who claim to "identify as" girls, allowed to share the girls' changing rooms and showers!!!
Those who support this idiocy are clearly advocating the Orwellian view that "some are more equal than others", and think the rights of a handful of deluded individuals should be allowed to take precedence over those of women. All the hard-won rights of women, in their Cloud Cuckoo Land, are to be sacrificed on the sacred altar of wokery!
It's surely blindingly obvious, to anyone with any semblance of a brain, that allowing men into women's single sex spaces violates women's fundamental right of privacy! In what fantasy land is it considered acceptable that women and girls are forced to undress in front of a man?
It's surely not beyond the bounds of possibility that if this is allowed, then somewhere, some pervert might pretend to "identify as" a woman, in order to go into women's changing rooms and spy on women, with the result that a woman - or even worse, a little girl - ends up being assaulted!
There has already been at least one case in the UK, where a teenage girl was abducted and raped by a man dressed as a woman. She had missed a bus and was walking home from school, when this person, whom she assumed to be a woman, offered her a lift. Thankfully, the offender was caught and later convicted; on sentencing him, the judge said, "It can be reasonably assumed that the victim would never have got into your car, had you not been disguised as a woman."
In an infamous case in Scotland, a convicted male criminal, who claimed to "identify as" a woman, was placed in a women's prison. He was, of all things, a convicted rapist!!! Thankfully, sanity soon prevailed, and he was transferred to a male prison, where he rightly belongs.
Equally outrageously, there have been cases of "transgender" police officers ( It beggars belief that such a thing can exist! ) being allowed to conduct strip searches of suspects who match their "chosen gender". That is, men who pretend to be women are allowed to conduct strip searches of actual women - and the latter have no say in the matter! Once again, on what planet does this not amount to a breach of women’s rights?
Finally, there are some militant "trans rights activists" who demand that their rights should override those of everyone else, and are willing to resort to intimidation and violence to get their way. They have invented the derogatory term "TERF" for their opponents, standing for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". What that means in English is a woman who is opposed to such things as men in drag being allowed to use women's changing rooms - in other words, any normal woman who dares to oppose the ideology and stand up for women's rights!
At a London "Pride" rally in 2023, one "Sarah-Jane" Baker - formally named Alan - urged a cheering crowd, "When you see a TERF, punch them in the ( expletive ) face!" So let's see... this was a man, urging a bunch of other men to punch women in the face! And then they demand that everyone else respect them... I'll resist the temptation to respond here in language that Mister Baker would understand...
To paraphrase Richard Dawkins: "If your case is so weak that the best you can do is call your opponents derogatory names and threaten to punch them in the face, then you have already lost."
My woke-obsessed MP insists that "trans people deserve the same dignity and respect as everyone else". No, they don't, when it comes at the expense of that of everyone else! Not when it means denying women the right to dignity and privacy, and especially not when it means allowing them to cheat in sport! That's an entire subject of lunacy in itself, and is the topic of the next page.
6.4. Stealing the innocence of children
The most outrageous aspect of all this insanity is that it's being used to indoctrinate children, at ages when they are not yet even capable of understanding it! Does anyone actually imagine for a millisecond that any eight-year-old child would ever remotely contemplate "questioning their gender", or claiming that they were "born in the wrong body", unless they have had such barmy ideas pumped into their heads by deluded adults?
But in some British schools, that is exactly what is now happening! Children as young as eight are being taught the concept of "gender identity", and that they can "choose" their gender, and so on. If I was a parent of a young child, and found that he or she was being taught such drivel, I would be urgently looking to transfer the child to another school - not to mention calling for the teachers responsible to be sacked!
( It has been the case now for a couple of decades, that eight-year-olds are taught that being gay is "normal" and acceptable, before they are old enough to even understand what it means! Apparently, they are told that "it's OK to love someone of the same sex".
Some years ago, this was discussed on TV, and a concerned mother made a very valid point. Any eight-year-old girl might well say, in childish innocence, that she "loves" her same sex best friend - and having been told that, she might be confused into thinking that that means she is gay!
But teaching them to "question their gender" at that age of innocence is a whole different level of utter idiocy! )
The ideology is also being peddled in children's books and TV programmes. There are now children's books which include "transgender" characters. In one BBC cartoon series, intended for five-year-olds ( in which the characters, as so often in children's cartoons, are cute talking animals ), there's a character who is referred to by "they/them pronouns"! The producers have denied that this means the character "identifies as non-binary" - but what else is it supposed to mean?
Some of the proponents of this madness even go out of their way to try to find non-existent examples in classic children's books! In Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, one of the characters is named Georgina, but hates her name and insists on being called George. According to the ultra-woke, this means that she is "non-binary"! Of course it doesn't, since such a concept wasn't invented until many decades after the books were written! It just means that she is what used to be called a tomboy. Duh!!!
Far worse than all this, there are even some doctors who buy into all this gibberish, and are willing to perform irreversible, life-changing medical procedures or surgery on teenagers, whose ill-informed decisions they may well severely regret later in life. Such doctors need to be immediately struck off! I would suggest that they think long and hard about the first sentence of their Hippocratic Oath - "First, do no harm"!!!
6.5. "Proudly supporting..."
In every British town or city, we now see "rainbow flags" at every turn. Businesses such as pubs and restaurants prominently announce that they are "LGBTQ+ friendly". That's fair enough - but it's also unnecessary, as refusing anyone entry on the grounds of their "protected characteristics" is of course illegal.
We are also bombarded with corporate "virtue signalling" - to use another ridiculous contemporary expression - from major household name companies. And again, supermarkets are particularly obsessed with it. For example, every Sainsburys store now displays large "rainbow" banners, with the message "Proudly supporting the LGBTQ+ community".
I don't know exactly how they "support" them - but if it means giving them any kind of preferential treatment, then it's a problem!
In 2022, Marks and Spencer added the "rainbow flag" to their corporate logo, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of "Pride". They apparently considered that more worthy of commemoration than Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee!
In the same year, M&S stores displayed posters announcing that they "proudly supported" a charity which "supports young LGBTQ+ people facing homelessness".
Er - what??? Why them specifically? Why were young "LGBTQ+" people, facing homelessness, considered more worthy of help than young normal people facing homelessness? Why not just a charity which supports young people facing homelessness?
Did it really not occur to their management that this kind of "virtue signalling" might be offensive to the large majority of normal people who don't support it? But of course, it's perfectly OK to offend normal people, isn't it?
More importantly, this was a clear case of positive discrimination - which is illegal, according to the Equality Act. Specifically and exclusively supporting "LGBTQ+" people is, by definition, discriminating against normal people! So should the existence of such a charity not be illegal? But again, discrimination against normal people is the only kind which is still implicitly allowed.
I wrote to the company, asking them how they justified such blatant discrimination. Needless to say, I didn't get an answer. I did, however, receive a mealy-mouthed reply, claiming that "85% of customers have commented positively on our support of the LGBTQ+ community."
What utter rubbish! That was a classic case of "lies, damned lies and statistics". What it actually meant was that 85% of customers who commented on the subject at all had commented positively. But I strongly suspect that the large majority of customers didn't approve of it, but were afraid to say so, for fear of being banned from the stores!
A couple of years ago, a household name cafe chain decided to "celebrate" the "LGBTQ+ community" with a series of colourful cartoons on its coffee cups. One of these caused considerable controversy, and that's hardly surprising.
The cartoon depicted a shirtless "man" surfing, with what were clearly meant to be mastectomy scars. In other words, it was meant to be a so-called "transgender man"; that is, a woman who "identified as male", and had voluntarily had her breasts removed.
I'm utterly baffled as to why someone thought such a thing was worthy of being "celebrated" with a cartoon - but did it really not occur to them that it just might be a little bit offensive to the thousands of normal women every year who are diagnosed with breast cancer, and have no choice but to have them removed?
Such staggering insensitivity just goes to show that the "woke" brigade are so blinkered in their own fantasy world, that they really don't care about offending everyone else!
References
7. Richard Dawkins, Scientific Truth Stands Above Human Feelings and Politics, in Krauss 2025, p. 48-53. ( see Ref. 2 )