The Telegraph reports that a vicar is being investigated for calling trans archdeacon Rachel Mann a ‘bloke’.
Comments from Telegraph readers are predictable: ‘Well he is a bloke, and the Church is selling out to woke ideology’. Comments from gender critical people too: ‘Here we go again: another man pretending to be a woman.’
On the other side, progressives inside and outside the Church are outraged at what they see as disrespect and bigotry.
My dilemma is that I’m strongly gender critical, but I suspect a small number of people have real gender dysphoria (as opposed to AGP, sexual motives for entering women’s spaces etc). If anybody has real gender dysphoria, Rachel Mann does.
Somebody with long-term dysphoria who goes as far as having their bits removed as an adult, as Rachel has, instinctively seems to me quite different from men with penises and wigs demanding access to women’s spaces.
Interested to know what others think about this distinction.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/16/church-of-england-investigates-vicar-trans-archdeacon/