Hadley Freeman - Indulging killers’ trans delusions is dangerous

And yet Willoughby has again resorted to using 'people treat me as a female' in Willoughby's accusations at Joanne Rowling today. And what do people do when they treat these male people as 'female', they use preferred pronouns. Out of respect.

I really think it is time that people started to understand that they cannot have it both ways. They really cannot use pronouns for those they 'respect' and draw some imaginary line of deservedness for those they don't respect. It is incoherent and inconsistent. And results in harm being done to women ultimately.

All that.

It's the growl of a disaffected teen. 'Are you disrespectin' me?'

It also highlights that we now have a cohort of young adults that haven’t been through proper puberty. Their brains haven’t developed properly and they haven’t had the hormones to trigger that development. I can’t see how they ever will- psychologically stunted as well as physiologically

I think this just highlights that viewing pronouns as basic respect is extraordinarily simplistic.

It should be a personal choice and never, ever coerced or mandated. The very act of attempting to force others ought in itself be enough to throw doubt on whether the respect goes both ways. I see it as analogous to the gay best friend who comes on the hen do, or the one non-threatening man allowed to overhear the intimate chat between women in an office. It is bestowed upon that male. If he had demanded it, he would automatically have been excluded from the hen do / office chat.

Because demanding we refer to males with female pronouns isn't respectful to women. Recent events prove how it is very far from a neutral act and has real life negative consequences for potentially all women.

I'm staggered that a society that is learning to treat other cultures with more respect is unable to offer the same to women.

Good point, they seem to be selective about how they refer to arseholes.

We should still record someone's sex accurately if they are shoplifting.

Either sex is completely irrelevant and therefore there is no need to record anyone's sex at all, or it has or may have some relevance in which case it needs to be recorded and referred to accurately.

Even if its relevance is just for monitoring crime statistics to aid policy-making, if sex is being recorded for some people it needs to be accurately recorded for all people or it messes everything up.

By all means record sex and include detail about their special gender feelings as well as their sex, but if you're recording sex, and referring sex, then it needs to be accurate.

Worth remembering that if the person has name changed, shockingly the DBS has given these people an exemption to the honesty that is required from ordinary citizens and they don't have to reveal any previous names. These people have a special help line that they may wish to contact about this - because as we all know paedophiles and sex offenders are renowned for telling the truth about previous offending. The government have said they'll close the loophope but to date, I've not seen any evidence of this happening:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4911334-sex-offenders-to-be-banned-from-changing-name-and-gender

I think that female prisoners, many of whom have already experienced sexual violence and abuse, should also be accorded respect by not imprisoning them with male murderers, rapists and liars.

On the pronouns question, I just see that as a manners and respect issue. For example in my role I sometimes have to look at someone's DBS. I might see that they have a previous conviction. Obviously I never mention this in any way. But if the person was then suspected of a crime I might mention it to the police, and it would also be raised by the judge in sentencing.

So I do think there are situations where you might have previously respected someone's wishes and right to privacy that could change if they committed a crime in the interests of protecting society.

If Blake had been convicted of shoplifting there would be no need for society to know his biological sex, but because he has been convicted of an extremely rare and shocking crime, it's in the public interest to understand his background and record the crime correctly.

And has anyone noticed that, whenever the Guardian has a news report on Tommy Robinson, it always refers to him as "Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon"?

Lots of people change their names as adults, yet I don't think the paper does that with anyone else. So why does Robinson always have his "real" name appended, but a vicious murderer is given the courtesy, not just of his preferred name, but his adopted sex and pronouns?

Coming to a prison near you soon.

And I bet the male prisoners won't get punished the way the female prisoners do for misgendering the violent thugs who claim to be woman.

Thanks for sharing his. Hadn’t seen it.

Am I mad to hope that the horrible killing of a cat (rather than the murder) will wake up some sectors of the UK public to the dangerous insanity of assigning male crimes to women?

This is how insane the world is. None of tbis would be an issue and there would never be the need for such an article if everyone stopped pretending men can be women.

Pronouns. Bloody pronouns.

RecentlyI was thinking and noticed the iteration of correcting the thoughts in my headto express relationships, who people were etc. For example: using 'biological woman' instead of 'woman'. Using ‘they’ for someone one person, or woman to describe a man.

Thesewere private thoughts and from now on I will not respect pronouns. Why change my thoughts for other people? Why respect a 'belief' that has no basis in
reality and causes harm to others? Why prioritise the permanently offended when they will find something new to be offended by?

Barraker was right Pronouns are Rohypnol.

Seconding that.

No-one has the human right to have a lie or delusion pandered to by another person, at the expense of that other person’s psychological equilibrium.

When I first read an article about Blake ,I thought that's unusual for a woman to do something so twisted...erm turns out it was a man.

Many Chinese names can be used for either sex. Fangze might be one of them.

Just did a quick google on "Fangze Wang".

Feb 23 : The Telegraph
"Blake previously went by the name Fangze Wang and later Alice Wang"

Feb 26 : First Sportz website
"Navratilova got involved in the case following BBC’s mistake that quickly went viral. Blake has claimed to be a woman having changed names to Fangze Wang and later Alice Wang."

Feb 27 : The Spectator
"For the record, Scarlet Blake was born a male in China, and went by the name Fangze Wang earlier in life."

All other news outlets - silence.

Trivia Alert : Google threw up that Wang created a company in 2016 called Alexandra Aerospace Limited, (nature of business (SIC)72190 - Other research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering) which he dissolved in 2018. On Companies house, he's referred to as MR Fangze Wang. On a commercial site listing the company, he's referred to as MISS Fangze Wang. Left me wondering if there's another name preceding Fangze.

I can't recall another high-profile murder case where the name of the perp is not known (or not publicised).

Imagine the twenty year reunion.

I doubt very much that'll be the last of the Tavistock Alumni we hear about.

I have seen this reported before in other articles along with all the aliases he went by. I think the issue was because of cultural naming differences other media outlets weren't sure if this was his male name or another alias. They could have made an effort to find out though.

This article doesn't make sense though, given her scolding of women a fortnight ago who complained about Janice Turner calling men who impose their fetish on women "she".

Tiffany Scott didn't get female pronouns from the media reports of his death, but he hadn't ever killed anyone. Blake did, but he had killed someone. Who gets the courtesy pronouns and which women are disrespectful for not using them?

Because it's starting to look like Hadley, Janice, Helen Lewis, et al use female pronouns for the men they are friends with even though those men are harming women. And yet they tell women off for putting the feelings of the women harmed first.

Inconsistent and incoherent.

They can't complain about the media calling Blake "she" when they were doing the exact same thing a fortnight ago.

I draw a line between personal and public discourse. I'll say over and over again that I don't care what a journalist (or anyone else) calls anyone in a private conversation - it's not my business. I do however care that they report information factually and accurately because - and here I'm paraphrasing another poster from another thread - their prime job is not to respect the feelings of the individual concerned but to respect the truth and their readers.

This is why journalism is such a bloody hard job. It's not enough to be a good writer, I think you need to be curious, tenacious, resilient and you need to care about the truth more than any other agenda.

Anyway thanks for the link, I enjoyed the article regardless. It's important to have the pronouns debate and I'm sure it'll rumble on. And also that's quite an alumnae from the Tavistock.