By John Leake
Courageous Discourse
April 18, 2025
In his poem "The Betrothed," Rudyard Kipling humorously weighed the advantages and disadvantages of marrying. Contemplating the constraints of monogamy when compared to "a harem of dusky beauties," he takes consolation in the fact that he will, in his married state, still be allowed the pleasure of smoking a good Cuban cigar. As he reflects:
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.
Kipling was reflecting on the reality that life and our desires are constrained by hard facts. A man cannot always get what he wants, he will grow old, and he will die. If a man has an interest in perpetuating the species, he must marry a woman and have children with her.
Kipling's marriage to an American woman named Caroline Starr Balestier proved to be a happy one that defied that doubts of Henry James, who, upon giving away the bride at the ceremony, said, "It's a union of which I don't forecast the future."
Finally-and obviously to anyone who hasn't lost his mind-a man cannot become a woman. All of the surgery and hormones in the world cannot make a male into a female.
I often wonder what Kipling would have thought of the UK today. I suspect he would have laughed out loud at the UK Supreme Court's April 16 finding that
The terms "man", "woman" and "sex" in the EA [Equality Act] 2010 refer to biological sex.
What perspicacity!
It's a testament to how badly reasonable grownups have been beaten down by the insanity of the last ten years that we now regard the affirmation of this obvious fact as a cause for celebration.
Those who are interested in the background of the case may read the Supreme Court's press release For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent).
The Scottish author J.K. Rowling-who has been a fierce defender of women from male pretenders-celebrated the Court's ruling with the following tweet:
I share Ms. Rowling's sentiment, and I often wonder why more women who hold positions of power haven't joined her in defending the female sex from male weirdos masquerading as women. I agree with her that most of the so-called transgender movement is an assault on true girlhood-most conspicuously in the arena of sports-and womanhood.
I just returned from a conference at Cambridge University, and while I was there I passed by Lucy Cavendish College, named in honor of Lucy Cavendish (1841-1925), who campaigned for the reform of women's education. I visited the college in memoriam of an old friend who just died who was one of the first women to attend the college after it was founded in 1965.
Margaret was my old friend's name, but everyone called her by her nickname Peggy. She attended Lucy Cavendish to study math, which has, since Isaac Newton, been the strongest academic discipline of Cambridge University. I believe that J.K. Rowling is part of the same intellectual tradition of Lucy Cavendish and the female academics at Cambridge who founded the college in her honor.
We hope that more women who value womanhood will join Ms. Rowling in defending the female sex. They can now cite a UK Supreme Court ruling to bolster their argument.
This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.