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Politicians abandoned common sense for fear of offending.

I want to turn your attention this morning to one of the great intellectual mysteries of the 21^st century.

Can a woman have a penis?

Now, most of humanity settled that question somewhere around the invention of language.

But Britain’s Health Minister has only just caught up.

Until very recently, James Murray insisted that trans women are women and, by implication, that penises can just turn up anywhere.

Not anymore.

When Fear of Offence Replaced Plain Truth

The senior Labour member turned up on national television at the weekend and was asked,

Do you think a woman can have a penis? Cause you did previously. It’s an important question for a Health Secretary to answer.

James Murray replied,

No I don’t.

The journalist was incredulous:

So you’ve changed your mind?

The Health Minister replied simply,

Yes.

Well, hang on a second.

You can’t just say that yesterday you believed women could have a penis, but today you’ve decided they can’t.

It’s not like changing your mind on whether to holiday in Europe or the US.

This isn’t a revised opinion about pineapple on pizza.

It’s basic biology.

So what happened?

How did the man responsible for Britain’s National Health Service suddenly discover something every maternity ward has been quietly observing for centuries?

The British Government’s Health Minister explained:

I think a lot of us have been thinking about this issue over recent years. And I wouldn’t now way that trans women are women. I think that biological sex is important.

“A lot of us have been thinking about this?” Imagine saying that with a straight face!

Are we supposed to be impressed that he finally came to the right answer?

Or should we be dismayed that it took a group of Britain’s brightest… considering and contemplating and consulting — over years — to figure out that women can’t have a penis?

A Question That Never Needed Years of Debate

I mean… this guy went to an exclusive school growing up. He’s university educated. Maybe that’s the problem. He’s in charge of UK health services.

So… how on earth could he have ever been so confused as to become hopelessly befuddled by something primary school kids find pretty simple to understand?

His explanation was short but important to hear:

I hope people would see that I was always respectful of different views on this topic.

In other words, he was so open-minded there for a while, his brain fell out.

He became so determined not to offend anyone that he temporarily lost the ability to describe reality.

That’s one of the peculiar moral confusions of our age.

Professing to be respectful, he became a complete fool.

Always being respectful of different views is a very modern boast.

It comes from our culture’s obsession with tolerance. Tolerance is always good. Intolerance is always bad. But neither statement is true.

Tolerance and intolerance are both necessary in a functioning society. The trick is directing them at the right target.

Tolerance is for people, never for bad ideas. And intolerance is for bad ideas, never for people.

Be meek with the erring, violent with the error.

What I’m trying to say is that you can be respectful to people suffering from gender dysphoria while rejecting nonsense ideas that are plainly wrong.

Those two things are not remotely incompatible.

But politicians often struggle with that distinction because they’re less interested in what’s true than in what’s fashionable.

Which brings us to the minister’s explanation for his extraordinary epiphany:

Well I think this is an issue a lot of us have thought about in recent years.

On this issue in particular I listened to people.

I listened to constituents of mine.

I’ve listened to other people in politics.

I’ve listened to people working in public services, in policy and so on and yes, my position is different a few years ago.

So that’s how he discovered that only men have penises.

Years of listening.

Personally, I’d have suggested looking.

It would have been quicker.

The Real-World Cost of Political Confusion

And while politicians were busy “listening,” what happened to the women who knew the answer all along?

Many were smeared as bigots.

Some lost jobs.

Others were hounded out of public life for refusing to deny what every biology textbook had previously regarded as settled science.

What about the children encouraged down pathways of experimental medical treatment while leaders insisted reality was negotiable?

Those consequences weren’t theoretical. They were painfully real.

Yet now the same political class quietly changes its mind and expects applause for finally arriving where ordinary people started.

The minister concluded with this:

I think it’s right that as politicians, if we think things through and we come to a different position, that we say that and make that clear.

Fair enough. Changing your mind when the evidence changes is admirable.

But changing your mind after years of denying the bleeding obvious is less impressive.

Especially when so many other people paid a very high price while you were still “thinking it through.”

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Originally titled “When Respect Becomes Ridiculous”.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.