This ridiculous ‘gender-fluid’ dog row shows the woke Left have lost gender wars

Like the rest of the country, I’m fascinated by the story of the female social worker who was reprimanded by her employer for voicing “transphobic” views after a row about a colleague’s cross-dressing dog. The most striking aspect of this quintessentially modern saga, however, is the following sentence from the dog’s owner.

Because, in documents submitted to an employment tribunal, he wrote: “I identify my dog as gender-fluid.”

But hang on a minute. The whole point about gender identity is that it’s not for others to decide. It’s for the individual, and the individual alone. Which means that the owner surely has no right to “identify” his dog as gender-fluid. The dog is only gender-fluid if the dog says it is.

I freely admit that I myself have never met this dog (a dachshund that apparently goes by the not especially ambiguous-sounding name of Pablo). The two of us have never spoken. It has never taken me into its confidence. So how it identifies, I don’t know. Perhaps, one evening at home, it plucked up the courage to go to its owner and say: “Master, I have something to tell you. I’m coming out as gender-fluid, and my pronouns are they/them.” If so, I applaud it, or rather them, for their bravery – and understand why their master has taken to dressing them in a brightly coloured tutu.

If the dog themself has never said how they identify, however, I’m concerned. Because it’s possible that, by calling them “gender-fluid”, we’re actually misgendering them. If the dog really identifies as cisgender, for example, that means we should be referring to them, or rather him, as him, not them.

If that’s the case, the poor creature could be dreadfully upset. Especially if he’s reading this article, and has noted, to his horror, that I keep calling him them.

There’s only one way to settle this. I must request an interview with the dog, so that I can ask him, or them, or even her, directly.

At any rate, whatever the truth of Pablo’s views on gender self-ID, I was pleased by the outcome of the employment tribunal. It ruled that the female social worker had been discriminated against for her gender-critical views, and ordered Cambridgeshire county council to pay her £55,000.

Good. This is a crucial victory for free speech. Gender ideologues are entitled to their beliefs – but they must stop forcing those beliefs on others. After several miserable years, in which countless people – mostly women – have been abused, traduced and cancelled merely for expressing views that reflect biological reality, it feels, at long last, as if the woke Left are losing the gender wars.

Still, I wish all the best to the adorable Pablo. I just hope a passerby in the park doesn’t make the mistake of asking, “Who’s a good boy?” – or all hell will break loose.