Piers Akerman: Why the gender-fluidity woke folk are horses arses

A horse is a horse and its biological gender is what’s critical, not what the nag identifies as. Why are humans any different, asks Piers Akerman.

The Melbourne Cup, the nation’s best-known horse race, has been won by mares, stallions and geldings, but never in its 145-year running by a stallion identifying as a mare, a mare identifying as a gelding or a gelding identifying as a mare.

The Victoria Racing Club knows that the average punter wouldn’t stand for any such nonsense.

A horse is a horse and its biological gender is what’s critical to racegoers and breeders alike, not what the nag identifies as on race day.

Unfortunately, Victoria’s government — and, to be fair, identity-obsessed woke folk dictating their narrow agendas around the world — has taken the knee before a noisy minority determined to inflict their views on the rest of us.

2019 Melbourne Cup winner Vow and Declare ridden by Craig Williams and Russian Camelot ridden by Damien Oliver (left) hit the track. Picture: Mark Wilson

Dan Andrews’ dysfunctional Labor government has a minister devoted to equality, Harriet Shing, who, it is claimed, is the state’s first openly homosexual female MP.

Ms Shing has welcomed moves by the British parliament to refer to pregnant women as “pregnant persons”, which would imply that a man could get pregnant which is a biological impossibility.

The UK legislation would also remove the term “breast feeding” and replace it with “chest feeding”, nodding again to the farcical movement to have all gender relevant terms removed from the language.

Ms Shing believes the removal of gendered terms would be “inclusive” to people who often suffer discrimination and stigma, and who she says are not causing damage to others.

She also told The Australian that “we do have people who are able to have babies who identify as male”.

Giving the nod to people who like to think they are male and able to bear children will obviously have repercussions which have escaped Ms Shing, but fortunately in Danistan there is also a Minister for Fairness, Ros Spence.

Ms Spence is also responsible for Families, Youth and Housing, which hardly seems like a fair sharing of the work, but given the Andrews government’s well-publicised failures of governance in the area of coronavirus quarantine and tracing, not to mention its massive failure to police money laundering and criminal organisations exploiting the Crown Casino, the state’s largest employer, perhaps her workload reflects the critical shortage of talent in the Labor government.

Victoria’s Parliamentary Secretary for Equality Harriet Shing. Picture: Andy Rogers

Ms Shing and Ms Spence should put their heads together and consider the wider ramifications of changing gender identity and encouraging official bodies to cement such fluid arrangements into law.

Just as the racing authorities recognise the realities of biology, so too, does the medical profession.

Take prostate cancer, for example. Women don’t have a prostate gland. A man who identifies as a woman may, however, have prostate cancer and, as much as they protest that they identify as female, the cancer won’t believe them and neither should their oncologist, who should treat the cancer as if the patient is a male.

Should that doctor be sent to a re-education camp for offensively rejecting the notion the patient has a condition that affects males only?

The flip side of this remarkably fluid argument arises when a female, identifying as a male, becomes pregnant. Would that person reject the attentions of an obstetrician or a gynaecologist on the grounds that such specialists are focused on providing their services to women?

Would it be fair to have them deliver their child in a male ward?

The absurdity is that it is not only the Andrews government which has permitted the gender fluidity propaganda to permeate the public service culture and the education system, but the federal government and other states as well.

While punters, and presumably veterinarians, are familiar with the obvious biological gender differences in the neddies, governments are determined to pretend that biology cannot only be ignored but must be discarded when it comes to humans.

And this from governments which claim to “follow the science” when it comes to everything from so-called global warming to economically and catastrophically counter-productive Wuhan virus countermeasures.

The best medical science demands that the biology of the patient is regarded as a basic diagnostic factor for the determination of treatment.

Those who think otherwise are horses’ arses — mares, stallions or geldings. Their choice.