Bending gender is child's play

I'VE never been overly impressed by the antics of Peter Tatchell, whether he's outing some insignificant MP or barging into the Archbishop of Canterbury's pulpit. Frankly, I'd respect him more if he protested in mosques about the much greater intolerance displayed toward homosexuals by some Islamic leaders (an outrage that would demand far more courage), but I freely admit that I am even more pusillanimous than he is, and for legal reasons am prepared to out only the dead. Thus it is that today, in this column, I reveal what has been common knowledge in showbiz circles for years, but has not, I believe, previously been stated in print. Namely that, despite being married, Ernie Wise was gay.

Of course, Ernie can hardly be blamed for not revealing that he was more Martha than Arthur, for he grew up in a less tolerant era, but thankfully, we now live in more enlightened times. Or so I thought until I watched last night's Child of Our Time (BBC1), and listened with mild astonishment to parents saying that they didn't want their baby boy playing with dolls because "you don't want them to be a gender-bender".

Indeed, the entire programme seemed determined to prove (through observations made of a mere 25 babies) that upbringing is far more important than biology in determining sexual orientation, and I came away feeling highly sceptical about the corporation's portentous claim that this womb-to-adult venture is "the BBC's biggest-ever experiment".

Really? I think we'd better wait until the projected conclusion date of 2020 before we begin to take that assertion at all seriously, especially as I confidently predict a massive dropout rate among the participants, round about the time that pubic hair makes its first furtive appearance.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," admitted Lord Winston, having just declared that men are "risktakers .. . they like adventure, danger" while women are "softer, more emotional, and they talk a lot". I couldn't quite believe he was saying it either (and if he'd uttered those same words on a university campus 20 years ago, those soft and emotional women would have broken every bone in his adventurous and risk-taking body), but his series has apparently proved it beyond doubt, thanks to "incredible new technology", "an extraordinary experiment" and "hundreds of studies" (which were never identified).

References to the "superior spatial skills" of the male seemed almost calculated to infuriate what Derek Batey used to refer to as "the distaff side", and even took some of the enamel off my teeth, though don't run away with the idea that I'm some sort of feminist sympathiser. Far from it. In fact, I once got punched in the face in a Glasgow curry shop by a follower of Andrea Dworkin after I'd asked her if it was true that, in tests, eight out of 10 feminists said they preferred whiskers.

Knowing of Professor his Lordship's pioneering work with in vitro fertilisation, and having watched his well-constructed series about The Human Body, I soon found myself wondering why on Earth he was fronting such a banal, yet self-regarding, offering.

Perhaps he was wondering too, because he confessed in a recent interview that "my creative input is minimal" (though he also let slip that "I will do anything for the notoriety of being on the box"), and his chief function seemed to be to lend a spurious authority to the findings of assorted hackademics from the University of the Bleeding Obvious. In between the generalisations and the scattergun theories were irrelevant inserts about family lifestyle, as though the state of someone's house repairs or their new job at a supermarket checkout somehow correlated to their baby's gender consciousness. Long before the end I felt able to make a second confident prediction: that this "biggest-ever experiment .. . over 20 years" will fare about as well as the BBC's other proud boast, back in the Seventies, to televise all of Shakespeare's plays. And so they did, except for about 25 of them.

THE things we do for television," said Lord Professor at the end, dressed as a pantomime dame, and who could argue with him? Magnus Pyke, David Bellamy, Heinz Wolff, and many other fundamentally decent boffins have been similarly led astray by television over the years, and I blame the production teams for demeaning their presenters, because PhD and LE never did make great bedfellows.

Take away the hype, and what you're left with was less impressive than a typical slot in the (often excellent) Learning Zone, which would never have made such glib and grandiose statements about gender roles, knowing how greatly they vary from culture to culture, and continent to continent. Which reminds me, I recently discovered that, in Spanish, the word esposa means both wife and handcuffs, but hey girlies, don't get all emotional about it, or start talking all the time like Lord Winston says you do. Still, with your lack of spatial awareness and aversion to risk-taking, you probably weren't even able to find a news vendor to buy a copy of this newspaper, and anyway, you've probably always been too busy trying hats on your fluffy little heads ever to have bothered to learn to read.

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.