Or are you still ‘transitioning’ Officer? – As Ms West might have been forced to inquire these days.

An armed MoD police officer making the delicate transition from male to female, had his/her gun licence suspended – the MoD has now made a ‘small ex-gratia payment’ to the officer concerned, ahead of an employment tribunal, for having failed to support her adequately – though they denied any discrimination.

Around the globe, authorities are struggling to comply with equality legislation as the tsunami of individuals who wake one morning and declare that they wish they were a different sex, dance tantalisingly

between the poles of gender.
Last week I visited our local hospital for the eternally popular ‘scan in the back of a lorry parked next to the mortuary’ and discovered that we no longer had male and female toilets. Indeed, we no longer had toilets, or WCs, or even lavatories.

Apparently there had been a spate of secretaries returning to their office only to discover that some ‘vulnerable individual’, understandably ‘struggling with language’ and ‘western culture’, had, er, crapped in their waste paper basket…..Eventually this event had occurred in the office of someone sufficiently high up the food chain to do something about it.

The ‘something’ turned out to be printing off a hundred or so pictures of a western toilet in bright yellow, black and white, on an A4 sheet of paper, laminating them all, and causing them to be affixed to the door of every single toilet in the building – obscuring the previously helpful signs saying ‘women’, ‘men’ or ‘staff only’.

This in turn ensured that the corridors were full of unsure people hopping anxiously from foot to foot saying ‘I think it was that one’ and then emerging saying ‘Sorry, I was sure that was the gents’…I’ll let you know on my next visit whether this initiative had any effect on Tomaz the Crapper’s perfectly understandable confusion regarding western toilet habits. Perhaps a picture of a hole in the ground with two footholds might have been more helpful?

I learnt all this whilst filling in a lengthy new two sided form which demanded to know whether I was male, female, transitioning or transgendered, before the NHS could consider injecting me with radioactive fluid and letting me sit for an hour, ‘to cook’ as they helpfully explain, in the portacabin on the back of a lorry – in this post-white hot age of technology. Things have improved in this department, the old firm has got the boot, and the new outfit is trying hard – even supplying copies of the Daily Mail to cheer you in your cubicle.

So I inquired, possibly rather too loudly, whether the radioactive injection came in pink, blue, or multi-coloured, and perhaps this was why they needed to know who or what I would choose to shag, should I ever be returned to shaggable condition. Never crack anything approaching a joke with an NHS employee; mindful of the ever present cctv, they choke on their tongues in most distressing fashion.

The old questionnaire merely wanted to know whether you were more or less than 25 stone, and whether you could get on and off the table unaided – now they demand to know whether you are buddhist, muslim or C of E, who you dream of shagging…and whether ‘you suffer from ill health’…..I managed to fit ‘ask me in a month’s time when you deign to give me the results of this bally scan’ all on one line.

Across the pond, questions of equality and trangenderism, or to be more accurate, transitioning, are occupying a battalion of happy lawyers. A happy lawyer is a dangerous one. You see, before you can become transgendered, you have to transition, and before you can transition you have to ‘trans-identify’.

In deepest Illinois, a 13 year old teenage boy decided that girls have more fun and he’d rather join them. In truly politically correct US fashion and mindful of Title IX equality legislation, ‘her’ teachers and the school administrators reared up as one and agreed to address her as ‘Miss’, even going so far as to change all evidence of ‘he’ to ‘she’ in (now) ‘her’ school reports and sat back well pleased with their liberal tolerance. Why, ‘she’ even played in the girl’s soccer team…

They drew the line at letting ‘Miss’ 13-years-old ‘still with his her bits’ into the girl’s showers when the game was over, citing the privacy requirements of the rest of the girl’s team. ‘Foul’ cried the lawyers! ‘If Miss 13-year-old ‘still-with-his-her-bits’ self-identifies as wishing to change gender when he she is older, then you must accord him her full female rights and privileges.

Several hundred thousand teenage boys who for generations had employed every trick in the book to gain a peephole, never mind physical access to, the girlies changing rooms watched rapt. ‘Self-identifies’ eh? No messy surgery or hilarity inducing hormone treatment needed eh?

A forest of trees was consumed between competing lawyers, ’til finally a compromise was reached. One shower, one toilet, and one changing area in the girl’s locker room would be screened off for the sole use of Miss by-now-16-years-old, and so long as she agreed to use that, she could enter via the door marked ‘Girl’s Only’.

‘More discrimination’ cried the lawyers! ‘She should have the choice of whether to use it, not be forced to’.

The head master, Superintendent Daniel Cates, no doubt mindful of the rush to ‘self-identify’ by ever ingenious teenage boys said that this was “a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications.

“The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy,” Cates said in a statement.

“Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms — where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities — for a reason.”

The school has 30 days to reach an agreement with the authorities or risk having their federal educational funding suspended or even terminated.

In Houston, ‘potty panic’ has reached potty new heights; they recently voted down an anti-discrimination bill that covered many, many areas, on the grounds that it would also allow any man who ‘self-identified’ as female to cunningly lie in wait in that ‘safe space’ previously known as a ‘female toilet’ and have his wicked way with a passing vulnerable woman.

The vision of thousands of men dressed as improbably as Mrs Doubtfire, concealed behind the doors, impeding a woman’s progress towards displaying her derriere over the toilet and relieving an urgent need, succeeded in uniting the sexes. The women fretted about their daughters, the men about their wives and children. They voted 61-39 against.

Toilets in France have been unisex for donkey’s years, since they were invented probably. The men have no privacy whatsoever, standing in a line pointing percy at the porcelain, whilst the ladies bustle past them into the closets.

Whatever must those Texas matrons make of a visit to France?