Do we really need an international pronouns day?

Transgender high days and holy days are coming thick and fast. Today marks ‘International Pronouns Day 2021’. The organisers tell us that the third Wednesday of October is the day to, ‘make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace.’

I write a lot about transgender issues. It is niche and not something that is necessarily at the forefront of my mind in my day-to-day life, even though I am trans. Until around 2015, people transitioned and then tended to reintegrate into society. Nobody else took much notice. That’s how I liked it and, I suspect, how most people liked it too. Live and let live seemed to work rather well.

But trans rights have become the centre of a toxic dispute concerning one of the fundamental foundations of human society: the division of humanity into men and women. Biological sex is being replaced by gender identity in law and policy, and also in the way we are expected to think.