Male or Female?

Gums on Bynya Road, Palm Beach.

"Do you identify as male or female?" ran the text of a survey I was asked to complete recently.

This is political correctness gone mad. I do not understand why it is, that men with artificial vaginas whose femaleness can only be maintained by swallowing handfuls of hormones, have managed to impose on society to the point where such surgically created beings are given the courtesy of being called women. When it is the case that they menstruate for thirty years, and occasionally find themselves unwittingly pregnant, I might begin to believe that being a male or a female is a matter of personal choice.

But like Germaine Greer, I see it as an instance of extraordinary male arrogance to impose the belief that such a change is sufficient to make a person female.

The Duel

(My fire draws and the chimney is relatively waterproof, thanks to Andrew, Vicky & Rachel.)

Yesterday, I saw "the Duel", based on a Checkhov novella. I continue to be amazed that such physically unprepossessing actors, (Andrew Scott - hunch-backed, small) are chosen to play characters who could only get by on physical beauty. As played by Scott, Laevsky is a snivelling, whinging, morally & sexually unappealing character who can only have taken in people by beauty and his sense of his own superiority to all others. So why in hell didn't they choose a physically attractive actor? A sense of superiority coupled with ugliness (of soul & body) does not take people far unless there is a real intellectual superiority, which is a proposition which was exceedingly difficult to believe here.

In the duel itself, Laevsky shoots wide and throws away the pistol, challenging Von Koren to murder him in cold blood and in full public view - a reasonably cowardly response in itself. Despite this, Von Koren tries to shoot him, but fails. In my view a great pity. We are supposed to believe in a final Laevsky, redeemed and sympathetic. Fat chance. As Scott plays him, he is thoroughly unattractive, ugly, cruel, careless, nasty piece of humanity.