Louise O'Neill: Transgender people deserve safety, healthcare and recognition

'The insistence that gender is an immutable fact of biology seems misguided to me. If that is true, how do we explain babies who are born intersex?'

Louise O'Neill. Photo: Cathal Noonan

In her speech after winning Artist of the Year at the newly gender-neutral Brit Awards, Adele said: “I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist.”

A fairly innocuous comment, one might have thought. Not to Fox News and other right-wing outlets who gleefully reported on the ‘backlash’ against the singer, claiming social media users were criticising Adele’s speech as ‘anti trans’.