The Irish Times
PADRAIG O'MORAIN
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0124/1224310666307.htmlAS I WRITE this, Australia's female tennis icon Margaret Court is at the centre of a storm over remarks in which she opposed gay marriage.
That her views created a storm is understandable in a country which, last autumn, announced that citizens would be allowed to list their gender as X on their passports if they did not want to be categorised as male or female.
Four years ago, a secondary school in Thailand announced that in future it would have three kinds of toilets – for girls, boys and transsexuals. The principal of the school said at the time that 10-20 per cent of the boys in his school regarded themselves as transgender. In other words, they would prefer to be girls.
All of this suggests that definitions of male and female, and the traditional idea that you're either a man or a woman and that's that, are shifting.
