With the March 8 now widely touted as International Women’s Day, dedicated to the celebration of all women, one is tempted to ask, in the present climate of wokeness, whether this celebration includes men who consider themselves to be women – even those not recognised as such on an official certificate.
But also in the present climate of wokeness we must ask whether we are allowed to ask the question. Some prominent individuals and academics – whose task it is to ask difficult questions – have been de-platformed for daring to suggest that “trans women” are not really women.
International Women’s Day has been promoted by feminists to raise the profile of women’s contribution to the human race. But to be completely authentic it should celebrate all women, including non-feminists and all shades of female opinion.
Chris Packham and his New Caledonian crow
Are humans as smart as crows? Once the BBC poses a question like that, you already know the answer.
In a new series,
However,
Telegraph reviewer Anita Singh notes that the first episode “had an air of being cobbled together” with old footage of animals doing amusing tricks.
One experiment involved a New Caledonian crow, a species which has acquired a reputation for tool-making amongst biologists. In the wild, it removes grubs and bugs from logs with twigs.
Packham set up an experiment in which the bird had to access a treat from a perspex box through a series of manoeuvres. It needed to “push a ball out of the way, withdraw three sticks barring the door, reach inside and pull out the string attached to the food”.
Mass grave at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, Tuam, County Galway
Last week the Irish government published a 2,865 page report about dismal conditions in mother and baby homes between 1922 and 1998. The report found that about 9,000 children died, which was about 15 percent of the 57,000 children who passed through the institutions. Most of the children had been born out of wedlock – “illegitimate”, in the parlance of the time.
The levels of mortality were “appalling”, the report said, for the rate was far in far in excess of children brought up by their own parents.
Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Mícheál Martin, who made a formal apology to survivors of the homes, said the report shed light on a “a dark, difficult and shameful chapter of very recent Irish history”. “This detailed and highly painful report,” he told the Dáil (Parliament), “is a moment for us as a society to recognise a profound failure of empathy, understanding and basic humanity over a le
Tommy and Maryanne Pilling / photo from Linda Newman
Tommy Pilling died on New Year’s Day at the age of 62 after catching the coronavirus. In 1995 he made headlines when, as a man with Down syndrome, he married Maryanne, who also has DS – the first such marriage in Britain.
After having sheltered for 10 months, he was admitted to hospital with a chest infection. It is believed that he contracted Covid while there.
Tommy and Maryanne lived independently for 25 years. “Our beautiful Tommy peacefully passed … after a battle with covid pneumonia,” Ms Newman wrote on the couple’s Facebook page on Monday. “Thank you for showing me what unconditional love was, I will remember your beautiful ways forever, your pure heart, your love of music, Elvis, your dancing. Your positive attitude and how you appreciated the small things. Thank you for making Maryanne so happy.”
Commenting on former Olympian Victoria Pendleton, who says she won’t be pressured into marriage or family, Emma Palmer explains in the London
Telegraph why it can be the hardest thing to admit, saying: “Like Victoria Pendleton, I know how hard it is to trust your instincts and choose not to have children.”
She says that as a “fellow child-free woman”, she knows how hard it is to be honest with oneself, to follow one’s “gut instinct to not have children” and “that, of course, is without the enormous pressure of being a public figure and one of the UK’s most successful female Olympians”.