I want to make it perfectly clear: sex is not assigned at birth. You are born a man or you are born a woman. Those are indisputable facts. You have XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes. Again, that is not up for debate or discussion. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) talked about XXY chromosomes, but as the NHS website points out, Klinefelter syndrome is caused by an abnormal amount of chromosomes. It does not relate to the separate debate about self-identification. Those two things are separate.
To finish, it is biologically clear that a male has XY chromosomes and a female has XX chromosomes. This is a scientific truth that should not be conflated with any constructed truth. William of Occam had it right that the simplistic approach is the best. Let us keep the Equality Act simple in order to protect the rights of everyone in a civil society. The problem with the debate we are having is that it is set in the context of a postmodern society that thinks that it can get away with dictating to those with universal convictions of truth that they must abandon them in favour of the nonsensical versions of their truth. Although the Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida once pointed out that society is in a state of flux, he did not say that science is in a state of flux.
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