In a famous scene in George Orwell’s 1984, Inner Party member O’Brien tests protagonist Winston Smith’s allegiance to Party truth by demanding that Winston sees five fingers, instead of the four he is holding up. Winston’s refusal to see something other than what his eyes tell him is the cue for intense physical pain, courtesy of the Ministry of Love.

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I can only assume these Orwellian doublethink dimensions were intentional in a recent projection onto London’s Ministry of Justice demanding viewers to ‘Repeat After Us’ the slogan Trans Women Are Women!

For some people the assertion ‘trans women are women’ does something similar to the Party slogans devised by Orwell. It messes with categories in various ways traced below, at the same time as truthfully conveying a contested political reality towards which contemporary society is being pushed.