We can’t always be what we want to be. There is a real world, and it needs to be acknowledged. Denying this risks fairness in sports, safety in spaces, even winning wars that require a grip on reality.

In most species, males are larger, stronger, and tasked with roles like protection from predation. This holds true for Homo sapiens, as I explored in Parts 1 and 2 of this series. Men historically went to war, led victorious returns, and protected populations.

Denying this risks not just fairness—like in women’s sports—but our ability to reason about the world, and our capacity ultimately to survive.

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson warned parents to vigilantly correct their children’s deviations from truth: “Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.” Johnson believed that small falsehoods, left unchecked, could unravel the fabric of society.

His words resonate today as we grapple with a culture that often prioritizes personal perspective over objective reality.

On Wednesday, a packed courtroom in London heard the UK Supreme Court affirm a fundamental truth: in British law, the terms “woman” and “sex” refer to biological women and biological sex, not men identifying as women. Three Scottish women from For Women Scotland (FWS) successfully argued for the reality of biological sex and the right to exclude men from women’s spaces.

Sex Matters, another women’s rights group, celebrated the ruling: “The protected characteristic of sex – male and female – refers to reality, not to paperwork.” This decision is a step toward reclaiming truth in a world increasingly swayed by subjective narratives.

I’m sometimes told that I don’t always need to be so harsh. That it is more important to be kind. In fact the pendulum has mostly swung too far in that direction, where because of a fear of offending, and then becoming an outcast, too many of my colleagues and also family, continue to let gross untruths pass even with a nod. As though for peace and political correctness it is acceptable to let the child not only pick the window from which it made the observation, but to add absurdly to the reality of what was observed.

For sure, the conversations we have today shape the decisions of tomorrow. Technology, a desire to escape biological destiny, and perhaps a rebellion against past unfairness have fuelled claims that “we can be whatever we want to be.” That we can retell our story to make it closer to the heart’s desire.

The marriage bar, which required women to resign from permanent positions in the public service upon marriage, was in place until 1966 in Australia. This restriction, inherited from British traditions and formalised in Australia under the Public Service Act 1902, meant that married women could only be employed as temporary staff, limiting their promotion opportunities and superannuation rights. The ban was abolished in the Commonwealth Public Service in 1966, and Queensland followed suit within a few years, with departmental approval required for married women to continue working until 1973.

It’s empowering that women can now aspire to careers and leadership. That is different from claiming to be able to change sex. It is not that the pendulum has swung too far and perversely, but rather there is a reluctance to acknowledge any reality leading to absurdities—like biological men competing as women in sports. As though there is no biological difference between the sexes.

At the last Olympics, a biological man won a gold medal in a Paris boxing ring, after beating-up one female competitors after another.

Paperwork declaring him a woman trumped genetic reality, much like the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s manipulation of historical temperature records to align with climate change narratives.

I’ve been pointing out this truth that Bureau keeps changing the temperature data, and since at least 2014 when I got it on the front page of The Australian newspaper. At the time my claims were considered outrageous. I proved them to be correct. The reality of the lie it is now understood by key Conservative politicians in Australia, yet their reluctance to talk about the matter only increases. And so wrong decisions are made. The price of our electricity increases because, the lies have compounded including in other areas extending to economics and on and on it goes. There is no longer any reality in the market, or to the policies underpinning the transition to so called renewables. Worse, we have an election campaign and none of this is allowed to be discussed.

Johnson’s warning about truth’s erosion was prophetic.

When we allow “their truth” to override the historical temperature data, claims of biological reality and other facts even of markets and economics, we risk losing any shared reality and all becoming poorer.

Nature does not organise with purpose: but only winning strategies survive.

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Read more:
Part 1: Biological Realities – What Matters
Part 2: Biological Realities – What Matters
UK Supreme Court Ruling [Epoch Times]
Olympics Boxing Controversy [YouTube link]

The feature photo is by Tobi, taken at Saxon reef in May 2023. These Maori Wrasse fish at the Great Barrier Reef, remind me that nature respects function over pretence.

And much thanks to my daughter for encouraging me to write this Part 3.