Is this the stupidest time to be alive?

When I turned 90 last year, I thought I had acquired a reasonable knowledge over my long life of how the world works. But nothing has prepared me for the triumph of left-wing "woke" ideology.

In today's world, the Christian teachings of two millennia are deemed hate speech. University students are "triggered" by the mere mention of Tony Abbott or Donald Trump. Recently, an Oxford University college apologised to homosexuals and lesbians for having allowed on its premises a "hateful" Christian conference of the Wilberforce Academy. I have just learned the astonishing news that Olympic New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard — a burly biological man identifying as a transgender woman — has been named "Sportswoman of the Year" by New Zealand's University of Otago.

Thanks to transgenderism, we now have a strange new etiquette whereby, on being introduced to someone, you're supposed to inquire what that person's preferred pronouns are. Why? Because reigning orthodoxy has decreed there are at least 57 genders. Last century, when I graduated in science, I distinctly remember that humanity was limited to only two: male and female. Discovering a third gender — let alone dozens more — is, I believe, as unlikely as discovering a new continent.

The nonsensical ideas concerning class, race and gender, which constitute "woke" ideology, did not come about overnight. They have been introduced by stealth over many decades, sometimes as a result of something as seemingly inconsequential as small changes to our language. For instance, universities have long banned the use of the familiar terms AD and BC to designate years, preferring instead the de-Christianised terminology of CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before the Common Era).

From wife to 'partner'
Feminist-mandated "gender-inclusive language" has been standard in government departments, institutions of learning and the media from the 1970s. Ever since the early 1980s, whenever you fill out an official form, you are prohibited from using the words husband and wife. Instead you must enter the name of your "partner". If you are happily married, as I was for 56 years to my late husband Charles, you should strenuously protest at having your status as spouse downgraded to that of "partner".

For me the last straw is the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine's recent directive discouraging any mention of women, especially mothers. The ABM, an international body of physicians and other health professionals seeking to support and promote breastfeeding, wants health professionals to replace the word "mother" with de-sexed gender-neutral terms such as "birthing people" or "persons who breastfeed". In a document it released on August 1, titled "Infant feeding and lactation-related language and gender", it has declared that this new terminology should be used in order to avoid discriminating unfairly against "vulnerable populations". Which prompts me to ask: why is the ABM not keeping up with the spirit of the times and renaming itself the Academy of Chestfeeding Medicine?

The ABM's notice came after the U.S. Biden administration released a budget health proposal that used the phrase "birthing people" instead of "mothers". Republican critics denounced use of this phrase as effectively reducing women to their reproductive capabilities. When Senator James Lankford took Biden's Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra to task over this terminology, Becerra could not even bring himself to use the word "mother".

American bioethicist and author Dr Christine Rosen writes: "The use of 'people' deliberately erases motherhood and devalues women. 'People' can't get pregnant. Only those who are born biologically female can have babies. … It's absurd to suggest, as the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control] is doing with this language change, that men can become pregnant."

America is not alone in this silliness. On the other side of the Atlantic, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, founded in 1823, recently ran as its front cover headline, in extra-large print, the phrase, "Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected". It was taken from an article, in that issue, on menstruation by one Sophia Davis (The Lancet, September 25, 2021).

It is clear that political correctness, especially transgender ideology, has enormous sway over the medical profession. Five years ago Dr John Whitehall, professor of paediatrics at Western Sydney University, remarked: "In fifty years of medicine, I have not witnessed such reluctance to express an opinion among my colleagues." A left-of-centre American commentator, Katie Herzog, recently described what healthcare looks like now that activism has taken over. Professors at top medical schools in the U.S. now routinely apologise for saying "male" and "female". Students police their lecturers' every utterance. She warns that "activism, specifically around issues of sex, gender, and race, is impacting scientific research and progress".

The transgender juggernaut is especially dangerous for sexually-confused and vulnerable youngsters, who may be misled by the social media, mainstream culture and "safe schools" sex education to undergo irreversible and medically harmful hormonal and surgical procedures, in a futile attempt to change their sex. One anonymous American mother poured out her grief two years ago about the tragedy that had befallen her child. She wrote: "My once beautiful daughter is now nineteen years old, homeless, bearded, in extreme poverty, sterilized, not receiving mental health services, extremely mentally ill, and planning a radial forearm phalloplasty (a surgical procedure that removes part of her arm to construct a fake penis)" (Christian Post, January 30, 2019).

As if things couldn't get any worse, Scotland has recently fallen victim to an even more extreme variant of transgender madness under the country's Chief Minister — or should that be Chief Woke-Scold? — Nicola Sturgeon. Children as young as four will be allowed to change genders without parental consultation, according to government guidelines issued to Scottish schools in August. The guidance reportedly applies in primary schools, where the youngest children may be as young as four, because "recognition and development of gender identity can occur at a young age".

How long must we wait until the pernicious "woke" agenda is banished for good, and sanity restored across the Western world?

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