Piers Morgan For God's sake let boys be boys

Piers Morgan For God's sake let boys be boys 



'm a man.



There, I've said it. At the risk of offending the world's increasing army of hypersensitive PC-crazed snowflakes, I am proudly and unapologetically identifying as a male.



I realise that for some people, this admission alone is currently tantamount to having me fired, arrested and possibly publicly executed.



Think I'm being ridiculous?



Think again.



Last night, popular US Teen Vogue writer Emily Lindin tweeted this to her 22,000 followers: 'Here's an unpopular opinion. I'm not actually at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs over false sexual assault/harassment allegations.'



So yes, for some people like Ms Lindin, just being a man right now is enough to warrant a career and life being wrongly destroyed.



She is the very worst kind of radical feminist, the kind that hates men so much it blinds her even to basic fairness and justice.



Yet Ms Lindin's tweet wasn't even the most outrageous gender-related thing I read today.



She added: 'I don't think it's useful to be constantly reminded of your gender all the time and all the stereotypes that go with it.'



Warming to her theme, Ms Devon stated that 'boys' holds connotations of being macho and not talking about feelings, whereas 'girls' prompts a sense that everything must be done perfectly, which can stress them out.



Today, she doubled down on her comments after they sparked a furious reaction.



'There are several unfortunate, negative and largely unconscious connotations attached to gender,' she tweeted. 'In that context, the words 'boy' and 'girl' can come with a whole heap of invisible expectation which can stifle and cause anxiety in young people.'



Sorry, what?



I've never heard such utter garbage in my entire life, and given I judged talent shows for six years that is a very high bar of garbage.



Speaking as a father of four children - three boys and a girl - I'll tell you what I think might just cause young kids more anxiety than being called 'boys' and 'girls' – and that is telling them they CAN'T be called 'boys' and 'girls'.



The simple reason is they were born boys and girls.



Yes, they were all handed to the their proud parents at birth with the words 'Congratulations, you have a little boy' or 'Congratulations, you have a little girl.'



Not, 'Congratulations, you have a non-binary, gender fluid creature of indeterminate sexuality.'



These children will have spent years happily being boys and girls, and for the vast majority of them that's exactly how they wish to remain.



To banish these descriptive terms now is to the first step to banishing gender altogether, thus disrupting and destroying one of society's strongest and until now, least contentious norms: i.e. that we're all either male or female.



I suspect the real reason for Natasha Devon's speech can be found buried away as almost an afterthought. She said she was also advising the abandonment of the terms 'boys' and 'girls' to protect the feelings of transgender children. 'You can't presume that because somebody presents as a gender,' she insisted, 'then that's what they are.'



Erm, yes you can actually.



A girl 'presenting' as a girl is a girl and a boy 'presenting' as a boy is a boy.



This belief doesn't make me transphobic, as some seem to think.



I fully understand and respect that some people genuinely feel they were born to the wrong biological sex.



I recently spent three hours interviewing Caitlyn Jenner for my Life Stories show and came away massively impressed by her extraordinary courage and determination in transitioning from all-American male Olympic gold medal hero Bruce Jenner to a woman.



This is not something anyone does lightly and those who do it should be treated with full rights, respect and equality.



But what I don't support is the creeping eradication of conventional gender altogether, as if somehow it is a bad thing.



This new gender war is being driven by the radical transgender community, which - like radical feminism to non-radical feminism - is a very different, far more aggressive, loud and extreme group to the non-radical transgender community.



They basically want anyone, including very young children at school, to be free to identify how the hell they like, and their campaign has been undeniably successful.



That's why Facebook currently provides over 70 different gender 'options', from 'two-spirit person' to 'neutrois' and 'transmasculine'. One is simply: 'neither'.



Now, I don't care if adults want to identify themselves as giraffes or parrots if it makes them happy. That is their right, so long as they abide by the laws of the land.



But I do care when massive pressure is applied on the rest of us to stop using words like 'boys' and 'girls' because it may offend the gender fluid brigade.



I also care that kids as young as five are being encouraged to embark on a journey to change their gender and/or sex before they even really know what either of things even mean.