Reality check

Pronouns, prostates, and propaganda

When I started treatment for prostate cancer, I was given a stack of information leaflets, and a booklet from Macmillan Cancer Support (one of the main British charities supporting people affected by cancer). Titled ‘Understanding pelvic radiotherapy’, the booklet contains helpful information, but its writers have clearly had to go through considerable linguistic contortions in order to be both biologically accurate and ‘trans inclusive’.

The pelvis

The Macmillan booklet has two diagrams illustrating ‘The pelvis’, with its associated sex organs. One diagram depicts the male pelvic area. Instead of being labelled as that, it is described as applying to ’men and people assigned male at birth’. The other diagram depicts the female pelvic area. Instead of being labelled as that, it is described as applying to ‘women and people assigned female at birth.’

The booklet acknowledges that “Not all transgender (trans) people have had gender affirming surgery.” It goes on to explain, helpfully, “But if you have, you may not have all the sex organs you were born with.” Are there any who will not have noticed this absence? I can only imagine that stating it is to demonstrate just how ’inclusive’ the charity is. In case any might doubt its commitment to ‘inclusivity’, though, the booklet goes on to include a whole page for ‘If you identify as LGBTQ+’. Lesbian, gay or bisexual people I’ve known simply are that - they don’t need to ‘identify’ as such (and there is something deeply suspect about straight men who ‘identify’ as lesbian women). This page is clearly intended for the TQ+ more than the LGB.

Unintentionally, what it reveals is the absurdity of having to go along with a pretence that biology is not real, but ‘gender identity’ is. “Pelvic radiotherapy may involve parts of the body that don’t reflect your gender identity”, it suggests. “You may find this uncomfortable or upsetting to talk about.” Help is at hand, though - a peer support group that offers a “safe space for anybody who identifies as part of the queer spectrum and has had an experience with any kind of cancer at any stage.”

The prostate

Charities dealing with men’s health used not to be ashamed about accurately naming biological reality. No longer. Prostate Cancer UK is a charity that focuses specifically on prostate cancer, and it does say that this is a cancer that affects only one sex - men. Dig deeper, though, and it’s clear that it, too, is determined not to be seen as lagging behind in the inclusivity stakes.

I was invited recently to complete a 20 minute survey, supposedly designed to find out about supporters’ needs . An early question asked for my ‘gender’. I checked male as I thought maybe, as is so often the case, they were misusing the word gender to refer to sex. The presence of a ‘non binary’ option should have alerted me that they were using the term gender to refer to so-called ‘gender identity’. I went on, through scores of questions that appeared to show little interest in my prostate cancer experience, until it came to a question asking if I identified with a gender that was different from the one assigned to me at birth. As is so often the case with questionnaires nowadays, it threw me. How do you answer that question if you reject the whole notion of gender stereotypes? I tried to move on and complete the questionnaire without answering that question, but it wouldn’t let me.

I emailed Prostate Cancer UK to let them know that I felt less supportive of their charity after wading through their questionnaire than I had been when I started it. I explained that I would not have been diagnosed with prostate cancer if I was anything other than male - how I ‘identified’ had nothing to do with it. There was no way I, or anyone who respected biological reality, could answer that question authentically. (On reflection, perhaps I should have suggested that if they needed to know a respondent’s ‘gender identity’ they could have included this as one of the options in an earlier question on religious belief).

The next day I had a reply. An email from Supporter Care explained that “Part of our mission is to help and provide equal and equitable health information for every person that could be affected by prostate cancer, and we will continue to support all men, transgender and non-binary people through our work.”

I was invited to read the ‘trans women’ section of their website, and I was asked if I wanted to be removed from their mailing list. I don’t want to be removed from the mailing list. But I shall stop wearing the Prostate Cancer UK beanie hat I purchased from them, and I won’t be donating to them.

The website link includes information about complications that might arise for men with prostate issues who have taken cross-sex hormones, or have synthetic sex organs created by surgery. Fair enough. It is noticeable, though, that language is distorted to describe artificial sex organs as if they are natural organs of the opposite sex (inverted and dilated penile tissue being called a vagina, for example).

Pronouns

The distorted language that is used by these charities, and the arguments they use to justify it, are reminiscent of the ongoing debate around ‘preferred pronouns’. If a man says his preferred pronouns are she/her or they/them, we are told not only that it is unkind to not use them, but that there are no negative consequences of using them. Similarly, if a charity wants to talk of someone’s ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex, we’re expected to accept it, because it ‘includes’ people who say they are the opposite sex. Again, it is claimed there are no negative consequences.

There are, of course, kinder ways of responding to someone who denies their sex than validating their illusion. But it’s the negative consequences for others that are more worrying. As an independent review carried out in 2025 for the UK government states, “In some cases, the loss of data on sex poses risks to individuals. This is particularly apparent within health and social care. These risks are especially high in the case of minors.” The safeguarding dangers for children of the defence dulling that occurs if adults require them to use pronouns that deny their instincts are particularly concerning

I embarked on the Prostate Cancer UK questionnaire around the time that news of a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, was reaching the outside world. The first report I heard said that the shooter was a woman in a dress. For a few seconds I pondered how unusual it was for a mass murderer to be a woman. A few seconds later, I realised it was almost certainly a man in a dress. I then wondered why the report had mentioned the dress. Was it perhaps a way a journalist, frightened of the consequences of saying the shooter was a man, could hint at the reality in this coded way, knowing that listeners would suspect that only a man who pretended he was a woman would put on a dress to carry out a mass shooting?

It transpired that it was the local police that put out the ‘woman in a dress’ story. It was only when feminist website Reduxx reported on X that the shooter was a male who had exhibited violent tendencies at a young age, and had ‘identified’ as a ‘girl’ in his teens, that any mainstream news agencies started reporting the truth. Asked why the police had referred to the shooter as a man in a dress, and later as a gunperson, the Deputy Commissioner of British Columbia police explained that the shooter “identified as an 18 year old female.” This, apparently, was more important than being accurate about his sex. And, as SEENinJournalism have observed, here, here, and here, some media continued to describe the shooter as ‘she’, long after the truth had finally been officially acknowledged.

I’m not, of course, claiming that my inability to state my ‘gender identity’ in a questionnaire is anything like as serious as police and media combining to falsify the sex of a mass murderer. But they are both aspects of a relentless and overwhelming campaign to deny the reality of sex. At one end of the spectrum, it causes unease. At the other end, it’s used to justify housing convicted rapists who say they are women with actual, vulnerable women in women’s jails. It’s propaganda, whose effectiveness depends on it being applied at every level.

********

How has this come about?

A number of culprits have been suggested, including influencers amplified by social media algorithms, social contagion, autogynephilia, Judith Butler and her academic acolytes, homophobic responses to adolescents who don’t conform to gender stereotypes, medical preference to diagnose ‘gender dysphoria’ rather than explore possible underlying mental health issues, and a medical industry that has a vested interest in hooking adolescents into lifelong medication.

All of these play their part, but underlying them is something deeper and even more sinister - a determined effort by tech billionaires to turn their transhumanist and eugenicist fantasies, many of which centre around surrogacy and artificial reproduction, into realty. To achieve their long term aims, the sex binary has to be broken down. Whether we collude with or resist pronoun use that replaces sex with ‘gender identity’ may at first glance appear to be of little significance. But, like it or not, it’s a choice that takes sides in an ongoing battle over what it means to be human, and how that will determine the future of humanity,