THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

(Part III (and conclusion) of trans and dental meditation)

BC PIRES

'I CAN resist anything but temptation,' said Oscar Wilde, and even to champions of the transgendered cause, it sometimes seems like the loudest voices in the trans debate are saying, a la Oscar, 'I can tolerate anything but tolerance.'

Not of trans people. But of anyone who dares protest against anything done by, or purportedly for the benefit of, trans people.

Whether woman weightlifter Laurel Hubbard should be allowed to compete against women born female is a red herring, because the rules permitted it.

But tilt your head and this red herring becomes red meat.

The more people willing to defend minority rights, the greater the benefit to the majority. Abandon minorities to defend themselves and all rights not ratified by the majority vanish. There is no violence in the streets (except against minorities) and the trains run on time (except somebody has to go to the back of the bus).

To fail to defend belligerently the rights of a minority so easily singled out for that intoxicating blend of justifiable hatred is to invite fascism.

Deny that Laurel Hubbard is a woman and you invite the eventual domination of the Taliban.

But there's something about a woman born a man competing against women born women that just doesn't seem fair.

Young people today go much farther than their parents in accepting trans rights wholesale. I told my son (21) that 'the reveal' of a TV real estate show arrived before I realised the couple concerned were lesbians, because I thought one of the women was a man.

'He is,' said my son, 'a trans man.'

'Well,' I replied, 'she certainly looked like a man, but she's actually a lesbian, 'cause she's with a woman.'

My son corrected me. He was a trans man.

I happily stood corrected.

And, said my son, because he identified as a man, he had in fact become a man. The person I thought was a trans man/lesbian was not at all gay, but straight: he was a heterosexual trans man who was - quite naturally - attracted to women. He was a heterosexual man. Although he had no penis.

We created female divisions in sport because men are born with great natural physical advantages over women.

And Laurel Hubbard competes in female weightlifting. Although she has a penis.

Is it fair?

Do the women who lose their Olympics slot to a trans woman also lose the right to argue against their disenfranchisement?

JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author was labelled transphobic for mocking someone else's description of 'women' as 'people who menstruate,' a phrase that only became necessary because, in attempting to avoid violence to trans people, advocates of trans rights did violence to language itself.

And, with respect, to logic itself.

It is as offensive to reason for trans advocates to declare that sex does not ma