I read that during a Department of Trade seminar, organised by its ‘LGTBQ+ Network’ sixty participating civil servants were asked to describe their weekend but were told avoid mentioning the gender of anyone, or pronouns that would give it away. An example given was not to say “I went home to visit Mum and Dad” because some people may have two mothers or two fathers.
I don’t have any statistics, but I suspect that families with two fathers or two mothers are still relatively rare. In all probability, many more families may be less fortunate in only having one parent, be it a father or a mother.
I cannot imagine how someone with a widow for a mother would be offended by any mention that I visited my father over a weekend. No more so, can I imagine that a fellow with two mothers at home would be upset by such a reference to my father.
It is, of course, complete nonsense. Irrespective of our sex and sexual preferences, we are all quite capable and broad-minded enough to chat about what we did at the weekend without our colleagues being upset by references to our mothers and fathers, whether they possess such parents themselves or not.
What this is really about is given away by the earlier part of the instruction namely, to avoid mentioning anyone’s gender. What they seek is the abolition of the concept of fatherhood and motherhood in entirety, replacing it instead with a gender-free concept of parenthood.
Now, I’ve previously made clear in this column that I consider this concept of separating sex and gender as pretty nutty. Nevertheless, given my preference for freedom of expression, if people want to espouse this nonsense, that is entirely a matter for them. In my opinion they are entitled to believe that there are any number of genders. Just as I am entitled to recognise only two, male and female (whist keeping an open mind about hermaphrodites).
What is increasingly sinister however, is the attempt to bully those of us who reject this new ideology which suggests that life is not unlike a supermarket where you can choose your gender much as you choose a breakfast cereal.
Telling us we will upset others by using gender specific nouns like mother and father, is clearly an attempt to coerce us into abandoning them. Effectively it is telling us that polite and decent people don’t use those offensive words.
I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I’ve begun to wonder if there is one.
Why is it that this new gender ideology is trying to purge us of everything that we have considered familiar, even normal?
I don’t know, but I’m working on it.