The Rise of Rapid Onset Gender Bollocks

A social contagion is spreading through the newsrooms, websites and living rooms of the liberal classes: Rapid Onset Gender Bollocks (or ROGB) — a condition that involves the sudden, compulsive urge to express ill-informed opinions about trans people and their lives.

A few years ago, Gender-Bollocks ideology was largely confined to right-wing religious groups and a small faction within radical feminism. Recently, however, the number of self-identified progressives who have succumbed to this scourge has increased exponentially. It has become endemic at the BBC, the Guardian, the EHRC and now the New York Times. The cool kids in the newsroom — the ones with their own columns, the ones who write the leaders — are all jumping aboard the Gender Bollocks Express, and of course others are following where they lead.

While it’s not unusual for right-wing hacks to have learned their trade by scapegoating Muslims, the poor or refugees, many liberal journalists have never before experienced the rush of fanning a full-blown, guilt-free moral panic focused on a stigmatised minority. Saying whatever you like without repercussion, being congratulated on how brave you are for “speaking out,” and knowing that there will never be any right of reply in your paper — it’s heady stuff! (If there are replies on social media, then you will be even braver for facing a “baying mob.”™) With multiple anti-trans articles published daily in the national press, there’s always room for one more.