Gender self-identification is often described as this generation’s civil-rights battle. And it is promoted by some of the same organisations that fought for women’s suffrage, desegregation in the American South and gay marriage. But, demanding that self-declared gender identity be allowed to override sex is not, as with civil-rights movements, about extending privileges unjustly hoarded by a favoured group to a marginalised one. Most people are in the dark about what is being demanded by transactivists. They understand the call for “trans rights” to mean compassionate concessions that enable a suffering minority to live full lives, in safety and dignity. I, alongside every critic of gender-identity ideology I have spoken to for this book, am right behind this. Most, including me, also favour bodily autonomy for adults. A liberal, secular society can accommodate many subjective belief systems, even mutually contradictory ones. What it must never do is impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else.'

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