A level playing field?

Amid the many splendours of West Side Story is this lyric: ‘My sister wears a moustache, my brother wears a dress/ Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess.’ Quite what Officer Krupke would have made of planned reforms to the Gender Recognition Act is hard to say, though not much at a guess. The proposed changes have just been through a consultation period and may become law. They are said to have the support of the Prime Minister but that is no guarantee of anything these days. The amendments will allow anyone to self-identify rather than living in their preferred gender for two years and getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In short, as I understand it, if you want to say ‘I’m a woman’, that’s good enough, even if you are biologically a man and have lived as one for years.

These are murky waters, and you can appreciate the liberal instincts of the new law — it must be hellish feeling you are trapped in the wrong body — but once men can say they are women, then the implications for some sports are enormous.