There is a bit of doggerel, much favoured by republicans of old. “When Adam delved and Eve span, / Who was then the gentleman?” This hardly makes any sense to us in the 21st century, since we associate the word gentlemen with lavatories, and, anyhow, are distracted by the absurdities of ‘gender’ into first wondering whether Eve could be described as a gentleman, including in the lavatorial sense, and then emphatically concluding that Adam could be well described as a lady in the lavatorial sense if he was so liberal with his own understanding of self as to want it. (Scholarly note: In the olden days, ‘gentleman’ meant lord, gentilhomme, someone nobly born, of higher status. Needless to say, today no such thing exists. It is as extinct as the Stegosaurus.)
Anyhow, for the chastisement of the great lawyer and man of learning, Lord Hermer, I offer an updated version:
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