“What is the cost of lies?” asked the TV miniseries Chernobyl. “The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognise the truth at all.”
Theodore Dalrymple similarly observes that the point of communist propaganda is “not to persuade or convince, not to inform”. If not, then, what is its point? “To humiliate.” By forcing people to repeat lies – to actively participate in what they know is a lie – they are made complicit in the lies: they are blackmailed, in a word. Forced to become, in however small and mean a way, evil.
We saw that in Covid. Of course, a great many people had the feeble excuse of believing the lies. But many who knew, or should have known, that they were lies still repeated them. Some still are. They chose to perpetuate evil.
Because, in Dalrymple’s words, ‘a society of emasculated liars is easy to control’.
In the case of the ‘transgender’ lie, we are on the fast track to becoming a society of emasculated liars.
But we may just be beginning to pull back from the brink – even though the lies were so pervasive that it took Britain’s highest court to even begin to unravel them. And that’s the saddest part.
Why did we need a court of law to tell us what a woman is?
‘Lies. They’re practically what define us’ – Chernobyl
Because so many people lied about it. Even people who we’ve been told to believe were rigorous truth-tellers: scientists. Scientists who openly lied about one of the most well-established facts of human biology: sexual dimorphism. That is, that there are two human sexes.
I repeat: scientists – biologists – literally lied about this fundamental fact with straight faces.
There was a time when every babbling toddler knew there were men and women and that they were different.
Even our Neanderthal forebears understood sex difference. They didn’t know much but they knew half the tribe was made up of grunting blokes who were good with spears, and the other half of females who might get pregnant.
Ever since our kind came down from the trees we’ve known we are sexually dimorphic – even if we didn’t use words like that for a few more million years.
And yet in 2025 we apparently need five judges to explain what a woman is.
How is this even possible? We live in the most high-technology society in the history of our planet. Science, supposedly the last word in truth-finding, pervades our lives in almost every way imaginable. Thanks to the internet, we have practically the entire library of human knowledge just a swipe on a phone screen away.
And yet our leaders, our supposedly best and brightest, from prime ministers to Supreme Court justices, couldn’t tell us what every dog sniffing another’s arse could tell: what is a woman?
That has been my overriding emotion following the UK Supreme Court’s ruling this week that essentially says trans women are not women. I’m glad the ruling has been made but I’m bemused – and kind of scared – that we needed it.
Thanks to a bunch of obstreperous Scottish women – is there any other kind of Scottish woman? – the truth is reminding us that it’s still there, in however small a voice amid the din of lies.
And they won. The judges came down on their side, hugely. The ruling says that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, woman means woman. The End. No man, regardless of how he identifies, is entitled to women’s rights.
“The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man,” it says. And this means that legal protections for women “necessarily exclude men”.
It’s a stirring defence not only of women’s rights but of scientific truth itself.
Well, it’s a start. But the sad fact remains that lies have become so common and accepted that a rare moment of truth-telling is shocking headline news.
Imagine trying to explain to your 2010 self that it would one day be breaking news that men are not women.
It is a testament to the lunacy of our times, to the wild contagion of woke nonsense, that the truth of sex can be emblazoned across the papers as if it were some new and shocking discovery.
For me, that’s the most telling thing about the Supreme Court ruling: it confirms how close Britain got to the cliff edge of moral derangement before these five judges pulled us back.
Well, started to.
Because there are still so many lies to cut through that it’s like trying to find your way home through a 1950’s London fog with a penlight with one failing battery.
Islam is a religion of peace. Covid vaccines are safe and effective. Stay home, save lives. Diversity is our strength. Socialism will work next time. The state can take better care of your children than you.
