Lucy Mangan at the Guardian on “Gender Wars”:

Channel 4 has bitten the bullet and is the first, I think, to produce a programme giving voice to both sides of what is usually called “the trans issue”. However, the first problem it faces is that “the trans issue” is actually about 400 issues packed into one, which has partly contributed to the endless difficulties in approaching, let alone resolving, it.

What are some of them? The incompatibility with women’s rights of course. The fact that it’s not true. The damage people do to their bodies trying to make it true. The entitlement that seems to go with it for so many. The maudlin hyperbolic rhetoric. The unwarranted belligerence. The boredom.

The fact that it’s not true is a real stumbling block, frankly. If we weren’t expected to pretend it is true then it might not be – it might be just another branch of fantasy, another Let’s Pretend for adults. If it were that it probably wouldn’t also be the new pet cause of the Left, and “activists” wouldn’t be constantly trying to ruin our lives because we can’t believe it. It would just be some people’s kink, and not of interest to anyone else.

But that’s not where we are.

Wisely, Gender Wars does not try to cover everything. It looks at the phrase “trans women are women” and the ramifications, if it is to be taken not as a catchy slogan, embodying the idea that everyone should be allowed to dress, present and live as they choose, but as literal truth and the central plank of an increasingly popular and powerful ideology.

What I’m saying. It’s the literal truth bit that makes it such a poisoned apple.