An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled that calling women "birds" is sexist even if it is meant as a joke.
A young investment banker in London on her first job was startled when her boss used the B-word. Anna Anca Lacatus said her boss, James Kinghorn, a manager at Barclay's, continued to do so even though she asked him to desist.
In court, Mr Kinghorn defended his use of the B-word as "lighthearted". But Judge John Crosfill stated that it was "foolish" to believe that anyone would find the remark funny. "The language is plainly sexist (whether misplaced irony or not)."
Elsewhere, in the UK media's firehose of legal loopiness, we learn that two women are going to stand trial in Portsmouth after one of them slapped a man on the bottom outside a nightclub last summer. It appears that a fight then ensued between the two women and the man's girlfriend.
Scarlett Bareham, 20, a beauty and massage therapist, was charged with sexual assault and affray. Her fellow defendant Fiona Hoyle, 19, has been charged with affray. Both have pleaded not guilty.
This could be regarded as a bum rap for women after the apparent advance in sexual equality represented by the tribunal ruling on the word "bird". But perhaps it is a salutary warning to women that woke censorship is an equal opportunity employer.
There is a bizarre inconsistency in these reports.
The trans movement is attempting to erase the word "woman" altogether. In the name of trans inclusion, it employs grotesqueries like "individuals with a cervix", "people who menstruate", "birthing parents", "pregnant people", " bodies with vaginas ", or "gestational parents" for fear of offending men who think they are ... birds?
Even if they fail, they will no doubt police the internet to ensure that "birds" are no longer allowed to Tweet about it.
It's too easy to treat all this woke nonsense as a joke. But at this very moment women are suffering terrible injustices, even in the UK, such as being trafficked for prostitution and porn. For decades Chinese women have endured forced sterilisation and abortion; in Afghanistan they are under the thumb of the Taliban, which is not noted for its embrace of gender equity.
Not content with ignoring abuses like these in distant countries, the West has invented a woke version of sexual subjugation - of women by men who "feel like a woman" and sometimes act out their fantasies in public facilities formerly dedicated solely to women.
Women will still be allowed to get an abortion or be sterilised, or be at risk of sexual assault in prisons, toilets and changing rooms, but will not be allowed to call themselves women.
If they want to be as free as the birds, they will give this wokespeak the bird.