Katie Brannen, 26, of South Shields, Tyne and Wear, allegedly carried out the attacks in January

Woman, 26, appears in court charged with raping man twice.’ I thought this was a traffic-stopper of a news story, too. How did that work, I wondered.

Details, though, were oddly scant. All there was to know was that a Katie Brannen, 26, of South Shields, Tyne and Wear, allegedly carried out the attacks in January. She was granted bail, had to observe a curfew and was not allowed to enter licensed premises, and that’s all.

I allowed my mind to run wild. Had a woman drugged some poor lad she’d picked up in a boozer – and forcibly had her ‘wicked way’ with him?

As it turns out, it wasn’t like that at all. Brannen was born male – but we readers weren’t allowed to know that.

It’s not that this detail wasn’t important (and as I will argue, m’Lud, it’s crucial) or forgotten. It was omitted in the moral panic around both privacy and ‘misgendering’, the progressive cause de nos jours.

To call someone by the wrong title is considered verbal assault and even bigotry.

And it’s largely fear of misgendering that has led to the courts perpetrating, and the press reporting, a fake fact – that women can and do rape men – rather than telling us the literal truth.

Last week, the courts decided to wave aside inconvenient aspects of biology and law (rape is defined as intentionally penetrating another person with your penis against their will, and only males have penises) because they were dealing with something far more important than truth, or indeed, statute.

It’s largely fear of misgendering that has led to the courts perpetrating, and the press reporting, a fake fact – that women can and do rape men – rather than telling us the literal truth

They were dealing with a situation where a man identified as a woman. And his right to identify as a woman trumped our right to know the actual facts, as opposed to the ‘alternative facts’.

This case exposes like no other the stupid way our courts and our Parliament – and, I’m afraid, the press – are being sucked into the prevailing moral panic over misgendering, the cause that’s fast overtaken feminism as the go-to civil-liberties issue of our times.

It was this panic that prevented us from reporting or reading that Katie Brannan was born a man, and had a penis – two facts completely central to this case. You have to know them otherwise – think about it – the charge wouldn’t be rape.

Even so, we’re not allowed to call a spade a spade even though this is the only way you can make any sense at all of this man-bites-dog story. It’s getting even more bonkers as there are moves afoot to make gender a simple and swift matter of choice requiring no bureaucracy at all (at the moment, you have to apply to the Gender Recognition Panel to register a legal change of gender, and receive a certificate).

MPs are considering a Private Member’s (no pun intended) Bill to allow folk to ‘become’ whatever gender they feel like, ie men who feel like women can insist that they use Ladies’ bathrooms, or serve their sentence for rape in a women’s prison if they so desire.

This absolute farrago of fashionable fruitcakery must stop.

On Crimewatch the other day, the public was asked to look out for a ‘Lisa Hauxwell’, described as a woman convicted of two rapes and seven indecent assaults, which police called ‘horrendous crimes’.

This led to a feature in a broadsheet bewailing the rise in female sexual violence despite the fact that 98 per cent of sexual crime is carried out by men, and that, er, ‘Lisa Hauxwell’ is… a part-time transvestite man.

In our anxiety not to offend the misgendered minority, we are allowing misleading language and bullying groupthink to take root and flourish in public life.

In our anxiety to bend over backwards to grant the misgendered the inalienable right to be called whatever they like, we have lost our precious ancient rights as English subjects to use the correct language to describe the actual truth.

Can a woman rape a man? No. It is not biologically or legally possible. Only a man calling himself a ‘woman’ can.

If nobody else will say it I will, and I’ll see you in court if it comes to that.

We don't know if Paula, played by Vicky McClure (pictured) is supernaturally pleasant or a wacko

The terrifying reason I will never return to the office

The nation is transfixed by The Replacement, a psychological thriller about maternity leave – written by a man.

And here’s why: It reminds us that when women fight dirty at work, it makes House Of Cards look like a teddy bears’ picnic.

We don’t know if Paula (played by Vicky McClure) is supernaturally pleasant or a wacko.

We don’t know if first-time mum Ellen (Morven Christie), is perceptive or paranoid.

It’s all in the writing... and the facial expressions (Paula’s eyes give me nightmares).

It’s Single White Female meets The Hand That Rocks The Cradle played by at least one Hitchcock Brunette.

I’m so glad that I don’t work in an office any more, and that my child-bearing years are long behind me.

I can’t watch Crufts since our Coco died – it’s too painful. Everyone keeps asking when we’ll get a new dog but it still feels too raw. Coco died at Christmas more than a year ago and I still find myself blubbing that a dog wasn’t for life after all. I vowed on her grave to keep you posted on any happy puppy news.

Lonely? Single? Skint? Let me introduce you to Words With Friends. The simple £2.99 app has a busy messaging sidebar where you play the Scrabble-like word game and, er, ‘meet’ like-minded folk online (or so I’m told!). Safe, sweet, and so cheap. Triple word ‘score’, eh!