Michael Patrick O’Leary, in The Island, 12 March 2023, where the title reads “Time to Think Part One”
Transgender Issues in Sri Lanka:
Sri Lanka’s first president, JR Jayewardene, famously boasted that the newly-created executive presidency gave him the power, “to do anything, except make a man a woman, or a woman a man”. Today, there is much conflict in many countries about making a man a woman or a woman a man. The issue recently contributed to the downfall of Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who had seemed unassailable. In Ireland, the government is under attack because the Equalities Minister, Roderic O’Gorman, has been siphoning money off to trans activist groups that had been earmarked for the Traveller and Roma communities, migrant integration and redress for children who had been abused by the state and the church. There are some who believe that if a man says he is woman – “self-identifies” as a woman – then he is, indeed, a woman. Wishing makes it so. Those who dispute this are labeled “transphobic” and are brutally attacked in the trans wars. JK Rowling has been vilified simply for saying a man cannot be a woman.
