Whatever happened to Free Speech

The 21st Century is a strange one. I suppose all centuries have had their moments, but I doubt any other century can be surpassed for the plethora of ignorant assholes making a lot of angry noise to shut up those with knowledge and understanding.

You hear it all the time “Everyone has the right to their opinion.” And I am all in favour of their right to hold an opinion. I’m a lot less happy about it when they voice half-brained, ignorant and frankly offensive opinions. My wife said to me recently that she had come across an excellent way to address such people by saying “What evidence do you have to support such a hypothesis?”

So everyone does have the right to hold an opinion but everyone also has a responsibility to yield that opinion in the light of factual evidence to the contrary. They also have to allow others the space and opportunity to voice their own opinions and present the factual supporting evidence. Take, for example JK Rowling’s current travails with transgender people. She is a woman and is perfectly entitled to present her views on privacy for women in public areas. We are talking about toilets and changing rooms here. How can that be wrong? A transgender person with a penis is not, despite how they might self identify, a woman. That is a fact. Biology does have a part to play in the semi – charade of gender self identification.

A person with a penis trying to pass themselves off as a woman is a nonsense. An aspiring woman, perhaps, but, until that final removal of exterior on-site plumbing, biologically, the evidence plainly shows that the person is a man. What I think may colour my gender, and there are undoubtedly gradual shadings or degrees of difference between men and women in certain behaviours and characteristics, but a man has a penis (unless there has been a terrible accident) and a woman does not. It is possible due to genetic anomalies for a human to have both sets of genitals, at least in part, but that is very rare and irrelevant to the vast majority of transgender people.

The trans gender community has a lot to contend with but it should not ever pretend that a person with fully functioning male accoutrements can understand or have any rights as a woman, no matter how female they feel inside.