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This latter belief is held only by a statistically nugatory number of transactivists and gender-studies academics. And yet, remarkably, otherwise intelligent professionals with social and cultural influence have willingly accepted this redefinition, forswearing objectivity and cognitive precision to appease gender tyranny.

Photo by MORRIS LAMONT/THE LONDON FREE PRESS /POSTMEDIA NETWORK

A case in point: the gender definition of “woman” recently published by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP): “It is important not to assume, for example, that being a woman necessarily involves being able to bear children, or having XX chromosomes, or breasts.” In other words, neither a penis or XY chromosomes preclude “being a woman.”

Such an absurdity — a woman literally redefined as a man or a woman — could be sloughed off as an over-reach if politicians, the justice system and school boards were not similarly complicit in enforcing compliance with this lie. Lies have real-life consequences. If they were identified as transwomen rather than “women,” it would be a very different conversation. Those who were born female would not be fighting tooth and nail to keep “transwomen” out of intimate spaces such as locker rooms, shelters and prisons. It wouldn’t be an issue.

Transactivists bristle at the very idea that girls and women may be at risk in single-sex environments when biological males have access to them. But the concern does not spring from transphobia. A Sept. 2 article in The Sunday Times states the newspaper’s own investigation showed that “(a)lmost 90 per cent of reported sexual assaults, harassment and voyeurism in swimming pool and sports-changing rooms happen in unisex facilities, which make up less than half the total.”