“Trans” needs to be handled with more sensitivity

The Trans issue got out of hand didn’t it? I remember meeting Jan Morris in Hong Kong back in the late 1980s. She signed her book for me and many others. The fact that she had needed to present herself as a woman after decades of being a man seemed uncontroversial and unremarkable. But biologically (and despite surgery) she remained male. Her biology wasn’t changed because it couldn’t be, though physically and psychologically she presented as a woman, and was accepted as one.

I’m not suggesting Ms Morris as a model just saying that if we accept the shorthand that sex and gender are different things, as I’m sure she did, with goodwill such changes can be accommodated and become unremarkable. But the goodwill has to be on both sides of the debate.

For the population at large we should unquestionably accept that a tiny minority of people is uncomfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth and decide to present themselves as of the opposite gender – i.e. they become “trans”. But these people do not change their biological sex any more than Jan Morris did. This places an obligation on them to accept that they are different. And to behave, especially in public, in a sensitive way. It’s not hard to define what that means is it ?