George Orwell once allegedly said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. Orwell does not appear to have said that, but the quote is apt in our own time of LBGTIDK inspired deceit and madness. I am afraid that I am going to tell certain biological truths in this post as a response to this bit of insanity from the United Kingdom. whether I am going to commit a revolutionary act is not clear, but I am sure that some would regard the statement of basic biological facts as being transphobic, anti-LGBT, or bigoted.
First, the relevant article, concerning a birth coach who was fired for the high crime of stating only women can have babies, from Venus Valley, a feminist web magazine, which I don’t think is satire.
It all started in the UK, where a birthing coach was forced to resign after she said that only women could give birth, but how on earth did it get to this?
Her name is Lynsey McCarthy-Calvert, and she is a mother of four as well as a former Doula UK birth coach. She said that a small number of activists opposed her statement and then pressured her company to punish her too!
She is a non-medical companion that supports people who have given birth and she says that her company “ostracised” her over the pressure of being politically correct.
She said:
“I am angry and sad …I was effectively ostracised for saying I am a woman and so are my clients.”
“I have been very disappointed by Doula UK’s response. The leadership is paralyzed by not wanting to upset transgender rights activists. They have fallen over themselves to acquiesce to their demands.”
The margarine brand, called Flora, refused to advertise on Mumsnet after the website was said to be transphobic for having a wide range of views on transgender issues.
The makers of Always sanitary towels got rod of the female “Venus” symbol from the packaging after they got complaints from transgender men.
The fall out with Doula UK started after Cancer Research UK dropped the word ‘women’ from its smear test campaign, instead of saying screening was:
“…relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix”
So in response to this Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert then posted a picture on Facebook of a negligee-clad woman somersaulting, underwater, with these words:
‘I am not a “cervix owner” I am not a “menstruator” I am not a “feeling”. I am not defined by wearing a dress and lipstick. I am a woman: an adult human female.’
Then she added below it:
“Women birth all the people, make up half the population, but less than a third of the seats in the House of Commons are occupied by us.”
These statements, which would not be at all controversial, or even remarkable just ten years ago, are now completely beyond the pale. Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert has committed a revolutionary act of truth-telling.
Then it seems that her words provoked a group of about 20 individuals, also known as “trans-activists”, they wrote to the company saying that she had “clearly” breeched the company’s inclusive guidelines.
In the letter they wrote, they claimed McCarthy-Calvert was guilty of making several “trans-exclusionary comments” which included, of course, her description of being an “adult human female.”
Doula UK proceeded to straight away withdraw Mrs. McCarthy-Calvert as a spokesperson and, after a four-month dragged out an investigation, its board of directors decided:
“[The post] does breach Doula UK’s guidelines”
They said:
“We are proud to say that we seek to listen to the lived experience of marginalized groups and make changes – including changes to the language we use – if we believe it is necessary to make the Doula UK community more welcoming and supportive”
Here are the facts. Human beings, like nearly all complex organisms on the Planet Earth, are divided into two, and only two, genders. There are indeed a small number of people who have some medical condition, or genetic defect, which renders a certain gender ambiguity, but such conditions are pathologies and not the norm. It is also true that some individuals believe that they are, or ought to be, the gender opposite of their biological gender. These people, who are generally called transgendered, may be sincere in their feelings that they are “really” the opposite of their biological sex, but their feelings, however strong and sincere, do not change physical reality, even if they have pharmacological and surgical techniques applied to themselves to change their physical appearance to resemble the opposite sex.
The two genders into which human beings are divided are male and female. Each gender plays a separate and distinct role in reproduction. The female produces the ova or egg, and in mammals carries the fertilized egg in the uterus until it is born. The male produces the sperm which fertilizes the egg. Only women can become pregnant and give birth to children. Only men can beget children. This is a simple biological fact. It may be a laudable goal to be more welcoming and supportive of marginalized people, but not at the expense of denying the truth. Truth is a higher value than compassion and ought not to be compromised simply because some people might feel uncomfortable.
However, I am not convinced that the goal is in fact laudable. This is not so much an LGBT issue as a matter of how we define reality. Those people who insist that gender is a matter of personal feelings are stating that reality is defined not by any sort of objective facts but by subjective feelings, backed by the threat of punishment for those who dissent. If a pregnant woman who feels that she is really a man can be considered a pregnant man, then there may be no distortions of facts and logic that we cannot be coerced into conceding. The implications here are truly Orwellian.
In George Orwell’s 1984, one of the central tenets of INGSOC, the ideology of the Party that rules Oceania is that there is no such thing as objective reality. Reality is what the Party says it is. If the Party says that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia when it was at war with Eurasia last week, or that the chocolate ration has been raised when it has really been lowered, they are not lying. Oceania really has always been at war with Eastasia and the chocolate ration really has been raised, because the Party said so. If you happen to remember otherwise, you are in the wrong, and you had better get your thinking straightened out, or else the Thought Police will straighten it for you. In the end, the protagonist Winston Smith reflected, the Party was going to declare that 2+2=5, with torture and execution in store for anyone who insisted that 2+2=4.
If we can be intimidated into saying that men can become pregnant, how long before we are forced to believe that 2+2=5?
David's Commonplace Book 