Was this journalist sacked for saying ‘sex is binary’?

I write a lot about transgenderism. I do so for several reasons. Among them: because politicians still aren’t doing their job and assessing policies and representing concerns properly. Because politics fails if groups of people are silenced and ignored. Because the way some women are abused, threatened and silenced on this topic makes me angry. Because other journalists (mostly male ones) who know that this stuff matters still aren’t covering it.

And because language, our ability to give form and expression to our thoughts, is important.

George Orwell is probably the most over-quoted author in the language. That’s true even if you exclude all the people who cite things he didn’t say (‘In a time of universal deceit…’). But sometimes nothing else will do. So let’s start with Winston Smith in 1984:

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’

And sometimes, in some cases, the interlinked set of norms, rules and standards that are enforced in the name of trans rights or trans equality seem to intrude on that freedom.