Non believer

It's about time I nailed my colours to the mast and confessed that I don't believe in gender identity and I don't believe transwomen are women. We're either male or female, we behave in ways that are seen as masculine or feminine, and that's it. And it's absolutely impossible to change sex.

Apparently that makes me transphobic, bigoted, fascistic and anti-semitic (and in some cases even anti-abortion). I need to wise up, educate myself, and show some kindness towards the most oppressed and suicidal minority in the world. And if I try to defend my views, I'll be shunned and no-platformed.

But the way "trans" people are currently viewed is relatively recent and very different from how they were viewed (and viewed themselves) just a few decades ago.

In the last century, male transsexuals, as they were then known, lived as women but never for a moment believed they were real women. Neither did they believe they had actually changed sex. There were very few of them and because of that they were fairly easily accepted as make-believe women.

That's all changed and now it's not enough to see them "living as" women. We're expected to see them as the real thing, identical to those women who've been born and brought up as women. If they "feel like" women, then that's what they are, and it's not open for discussion.

Prominent public figures who oppose the new transgender beliefs have been viciously trolled and denigrated, often the target of death threats and in some cases forced out of their jobs. Their requests for an open-minded debate on transgender, recognising different opinions, are ignored.

A huge number of people actually disagree with the new thinking, but hesitate to speak up for fear of the consequences. So the nonsense proliferates.

Pic: Professor Kathleen Stock, who was forced out of her post at Sussex University after a militant campaign by trans activists.

Holy writ

It seems to be a growing trend that those who challenge popular opinions with a radically different view are hounded and insulted and told to shut up. Their refusal to toe the conventional line is seen as abnormal, perverse, unacceptable.

Historian Hallie Rubenhold, who has exposed the miserable lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, has been the target of "offensive", "stupid" and "almost laughable" attacks from Ripper fanatics with fixed views on the five women who died.

She has challenged the prevailing belief that the murdered women were all prostitutes, saying that three of the women weren't prostitutes, simply "sick, starving, brutally treated women" who just happened to cross their killer's path.

"There are people out there who feel they have ownership of these women's stories and there is an orthodoxy. If you question those 'facts', then God have mercy on you. The response I've had to this is unbelievable."

You would think people with an interest in a particular subject would welcome different views that added to their understanding of it. You would think their only concern would be to discover the truth, whatever that may be. But no, their views turn into holy writ, and anyone who questions them is seen as a heretic, a blasphemer.

I tend to keep quiet about some of my own views that run counter to the fashionable wisdom, for fear of a hostile reaction. There's no point in confronting people who are most unlikely to change their existing opinions.

I'm increasingly glad I'm not a prominent public figure with markedly unconventional views. The predictable vicious trolling would be hard to cope with. The old British tradition of open-minded consideration of opposing views seems to be crumbling rapidly.

All that matters nowadays is being right.

Pic: Hallie Rubenhold