When I was growing up, men were best at science, business, politics, academia, journalism, sport. Little did we suspect that one day they would be better than women at beauty contests too. It takes a really ambitious and brazen kind of misogyny for a country to claim that its most attractive woman used to be male.
I’m afraid that this is now nothing less than an existential threat to women’s vocabulary, women’s bodies, women’s spaces. Last week,
I wrote about the school in Essex where four girls were sexually assaulted in “gender-neutral” loos which everyone insisted posed no threat to them. Until they did.
This week, we learnt of the
disgusting term “bonus holes”. That’s what Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust seriously suggested as an alternative to vagina to avoid upsetting women who identify as men or, quite possibly, the other way round. If the biologically correct term “vagina” has become offensive to some trans people then let them take offence. Be our guest. Our offence is every bit as valid as yours.