A while back, I decided that instead of getting cross about cancel culture and the shoulder-sagging intolerance of younger snowflake people, I’d simply tune out when they talked to me and turn over when they came on television. They could, for example, be down there in their Hoxton bedsits, loving Meghan and the damage she’s done to the royal family. And I could be up here, on a hill in Oxfordshire, wanting to sprinkle diced guillemot into her morning Paltrow juice.
And it wouldn’t matter. Because I wouldn’t be listening to them and they wouldn’t be listening to me. We’d be mutually and blissfully ignorant of one another’s viewpoint.
The problem with that plan, however, is this column. Last week, for instance, I did a whole segment on how some people in this country can’t speak English, and while that’s patently true and completely acceptable to my friends, it would be deeply offensive to the spotty and the hormonal of Hoxton. So it was all removed, and that meant some poor soul had to sit down at his, or her — or their — laptop and fill the gap with a new passage that sounded as if it had been written by me, while expressing an opinion that I don’t have.
That’s selfish of me, making them do this extra work, so this week I shall say what I’m not thinking instead. To save them the bother of changing it.
We’ll begin with my decision to remove from my house all the photographs of my grandfather. To the casual observer he was a much-loved country GP who held the hands of the dying and always had time for the lonely. But there’s no getting around the fact that he began to practise in the early 1920s, so it’s entirely possible that he attended to the wellbeing of people who had profited in some way from slavery. Which of course makes him the personification of evil. Certainly, he shed a tear at Winston Churchill’s funeral, which indicates very clearly to me that he supported racism in all its forms.
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As a doctor, he would also have been “ablist”, judging people by their physical abilities, and it’s a fair bet that he would have had no clue what to make of this whole gender issue. He may even have been a supporter of the hateful JK Rowling, who dares to believe that a person who menstruates is a woman.
Not me, though. I spoke last week to a young girl so that I could better understand the complexities, and I think I’m there now. You can only be one of two sexes, a man or a woman, but you can choose which you’d like to be from the age of six. You can also be whatever gender you like. And there are a limitless number of possibilities. You just pick anything you identify as, and then that’s who, or what, you are.
The capitalist patriarchy think this is a bad thing. They argue that a man cannot say he’s a woman so that he can take part in a women’s boxing match or go to a women’s prison. They also say that a man cannot go into a ladies’ public lavatory even if he is wearing a frock.
But these silly old men are missing the point, because last weekend, after a particularly determined drinking session, I woke in the morning and, because I could not move and felt very top-heavy and wooden, decided to identify as a hat stand. This meant that someone else made my breakfast.
Also, if you fail a breathalyser test, it would be very useful to say to the policeman or policemanwoman: “Aha, yes, officer. I may well be drunk. But I identify as a sober person, so I’ll be on my way.” I’m not sure Boris Johnson would allow this, though, and there’s a very good reason for that: he’s a fully paid-up member of the meat-eating classes, which means he simply has no idea about real life.
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No one can know what it’s like to be a woman unless they are actually a woman. They cannot know what it’s like to feel unsafe in a taxi or on the street. And no one can know what it’s like to suffer racist abuse unless they are from an ethnic minority. I know Barry Norman once said that even though he’d never been to the South Pole, he still knew it was bloody cold, but Barry was mansplaining at the time, while under the influence of his middle-class face, so he should be ignored.
You need to be constantly aware of your privilege so that you are aware of the challenges faced by people who lack that privilege. And you need to understand, once you’ve spotted someone without your privilege, that you should give them your Bentley. Then the next day, when they see you waiting for the bus, they should give it back. How refreshing that would be. Sharing everything and chatting in the day-long queue for bread with people who are just the same as you are. And thinking the same thoughts about everything as well.
It worked with climate change. There was a time when the subject could be debated, but then the BBC announced that there was no debate and that anyone who thought man might not be involved was a climate-change “denier”. Suddenly everyone was on side. Like we are today on meat, the royal family, trans issues, mental health and colour. It’s so much easier that way.
It’s only the Tories who remain resolutely out of step. They announced a year ago that I would not be allowed to have a 60th birthday party, and last weekend they said I couldn’t have a 61st either. (It’s today, by the way.)
That’s sad, because I was going to burn a few Union Jacks, erect a monument to George Floyd, have a Mao-themed vegan barbecue and free all my baby lambs from the tyranny of farming. Before going into town to kill a bill and smash up a Mercedes-Benz.
