last word
Male or Female?
I
Forget the operation, you can change sex by
clicking here. By Nury Vittachi
n Norway, any child over the age of six can now legally
change his or her sex. “Daddy, guess what, I’m a female
now! Daddy, what does female mean?”
Recently in the United States, a student responded to
a reference to gender by commenting that there are two
biological genders, male and female. Teachers barred him
from the class at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In Asia,
any student who answered a question on gender without
saying that there are two biological genders, male and
female, would risk getting thrown out of class.
East and West seem to be different planets on matters
of gender.
In parts of Europe and the United States, if a bearded man
working as a professional sperm donor claims to be female,
using the word “him” for him (oops!) is a hate crime, and
repeat offences can lead to a six-month jail sentence.
This was on my mind as I have two family members
travelling to Europe while writing this column. Before they left,
I warned them to avoid all gender questions.
“But what if someone gives me a form and I have to tick a
‘male or female’ box?” one asked.
I told her that this would definitely be a trick question, and
she should throw the form back in their faces, saying: “Your
discredited binary gender categories outrage me.”
These days if you meet a Western baby, you can’t tell
what sex it is, since many consider it an arrest-able offence
to dress girls in pink and boys in blue. You have to say
something like: “What a cute little, er, offspring, it looks just
like one or other of its, er, begetters.”
In several Western countries you can now change your
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sex by clicking an online form. It was revealed in recent days
that an Argentinian man named Sergio Lazarovich got his
pension money paid five years early by changing his sex to
female. Now if this column was being written in the West,
I would have to refer to this guy as a woman, because
Western journalists are required to follow their subjects’ self-
chosen sex, even when it is patently idiotic to do so.
Lazarovich’s relatives are quoted saying that he is the sort
of man who makes homophobic comments and has a string
of girlfriends, including after his, er, “sex change”.
I feel really sorry for my journalistic colleagues in the West
ha ha ha ha.
Schools in Sweden are instructed by the government to
“counteract traditional gender roles and gender patterns”,
the New York Times reported approvingly recently.
One Swedish couple was unhappy when their daughter
came home having been taught to be rude, loud and untidy
(that is, more like a boy). The teacher was unapologetic. ‘This
is what we do here, and we are not going to stop it,” she told
the reporter.
I think making girls behave like boys may qualify as the
dumbest idea in history, beating even Chairman Mao’s “Let’s
kill all the birds”, British India’s “Let’s lubricate bullets with pig
fat”, and Hollywood’s decision to finance a film called “Santa
Claus Conquers The Martians.”
Meanwhile, I am updating my all-purpose answer to my
children’s questions, from “Ask your mother” to “Ask your
other begetter”.
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his Facebook
page: www.facebook.com/nury.vittachi