News from the madhouse

Sorry for eschewing the usual euphemisms, such as ‘England’, ‘the West’, ‘our civilisation’ or ‘the world’. A madhouse is what it is regardless of what you call it, and this is the only precise name for what one sees everywhere.

The first news item today that justifies my lack of euphemistic subtlety comes from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). A useful ‘lifehack’ (dread word) for you: a world in which an EHRC can exist is mad ipso facto.

As if to prove its point, Mary-Ann Stephenson, EHRC chairman (she calls herself ‘chair’, which is like calling a postman ‘post’ or a fireman ‘fire’), demanded that all public lavatories be rebranded as “gender-neutral”.

This “straightforward change” would go a long way towards improving “everyday life for those who can’t or don’t want to use the services of their biological sex.”

It can also improve everyday life for those who accept their ‘biological sex’ without quibbling. They’ll be able to walk into any lavatory without bothering to check the sign on the door.  

This reminds me of my late French friend, gynaecologist by trade. Many years ago, he felt an urgent need to use motorway services. To his dismay, Paul found the men’s facility out of service.

Undeterred, he walked into the women’s loo where he was greeted by a collective gasp. “Don’t worry, ladies,” said Paul, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture. “I’m a gynaecologist.” The gasp became a sigh of relief: the women found that excuse satisfactory.

Today, they wouldn’t be allowed to gasp, lest they may be accused of, perhaps charged with, transphobia, binarism, possibly also global warming denial and Islamophobia – these crimes tend to come as a package.

But thank God for small favours: the ‘chair’ has decided not to create “toilet police” for the time being, relying instead on “social conventions” to enforce the changes. I’d suggest the ‘chair’ look up the word ‘convention’ in a dictionary of her choice.

I think she’ll find it means more or less the same as ‘custom’, which is the way things have been done for yonks. She really means indoctrination, not convention, but hey – for this lot words mean whatever they want them to mean.

The other news item comes from the Green Party and its leader, Zack Polanski. His party is currently surging in the polls, overtaking Labour in some, the Tories in most and only trailing Reform.

The Greens also show the symptoms of pandemic madness, but in their case it’s at its most virulent. Thus, the party is planning to change – which in this context invariably means broaden – the definition of misogyny.

According to these plans, if a man voices “any disagreement” with a woman, he is guilty of that heinous crime and will face sanctions.

Now, every man knows that he disagrees with a woman at his peril. But so far the peril hasn’t presupposed administrative action. Usually, the woman simply repeats the same statement, but slightly louder, the way people sometimes talk to foreigners who don’t understand English. If the man still hasn’t seen the light, she’ll continue incremental increases in volume until he does.

Yet Mr Polanski’s party is proposing a change that the EHRC ‘chair’ would probably describe as a convention, no less conventional for being new-fangled. Congratulations are in order: the Greens commendably advocate precise forensic definitions of such crimes as misogyny and transphobia.

Mr Polanski isn’t at all like Sir Keir Starmer who constantly looks for a fence to sit on. Old Zack spurns equivocation: “A woman can have a penis… If a woman is transitioning, they can have a penis.”

Yes, but what if that plural penis-wielding woman has already transitioned? Isn’t they a full-fledged woman even if they chooses to keep that fixture as a memento?

Much as I admire Mr Polanski’s quest for terminological precision, they still has work to do. They ought to adopt Hermann Göring’s approach to such matters. When the Gestapo told him that one of his field-marshals had Jewish ancestry, the Luftwaffe chief replied: “At my headquarters, I decide who is and who isn’t a Jew”.

Following the same tack, Mr Polanski should modify that terse statement by saying that, at the Green Party HQ, he decides who is or isn’t a woman – penis or no penis. He still gets full marks for calling the Supreme Court to task.

Mr Polanski described its ruling that only a biologically female woman is a woman as “thinly veiled transphobia”. Not even thinly veiled, I’d suggest. ‘Blatant’ or ‘flagrant’ would be more appropriate, now we are in the business of tightening definitions.

Mr Polanski and his party don’t limit their madness to how’s-your-father matters. Not to be outdone by Farage’s Reform, he too attacks Britain’s immigration policy, but with one slight difference. If Farage believes we are taking in too many asylum seekers, Polanski insists we are taking in too few.

Since most of those refugees are Muslims, I’m sure Mr Polanski has found a way to make them accept his views on transphobia, misogyny and homophobia. A lesser man would fear his – sorry, I mean their – work is cut out for them, but the Greens have the power of their madness.

An interesting phenomenon is occurring in British politics. The Greens are to the left of Labour, and they are becoming the flagbearers for that end of the political range. Trying not to cede their leadership of the Left, Labour have to edge their policies further in that direction, steadily moving from unhinged to stark raving mad.

At the same time, the surge of Reform in the polls is forcing the Tories to extoll the same policies they never even tried to implement during their 13 years in power. While these policies are unquestionably sane, this makes one wonder what will happen if another Right-wing party appears that does advocate loony-Right policies.

Would it have the same knock-on effect on Reform and the Tories as the Greens have on Labour? Would loony Left and loony Right become two jaws of the same vice crushing any residual sanity out of British politics?

Still, conjecture isn’t my task today. Rather, it’s reportage, with just one question lingering in the background. Is it I or the world that has gone mad?