Hadley Freeman - Indulging killers’ trans delusions is dangerous

Froodwithatowel · Today 15:43

This definitely bears repeating:

...I don't call it 'respect' because respect is a mutual thing, and someone requiring me to perform pretense to supply them with the experience they want from me without bothering to see me as a person who may not believe or wish to do this?

With a criminal, especially one that has committed particularly horrendous crimes, it gives a direct perspective to the matter to refer to their sex via pronouns otherwise the crimes are assigned to someone with the incorrect sex. We also have to acknowledge the victims thoughts on the matter especially when it is manifestly obvious what sex the perpetrator is.

the criminal in question is being held in a male prison and I doubt his fellow inmates will be particularly careful about pronoun use along with the guarding staff. Therefore I think the public is entitled to use the sex pronoun rather than gender.

In every other bit of speech the speaker chooses the words. Some words are open to interpretation and sometimes we define them (like calling Luton or Stansted London airports) or sometimes we have a choice. Like I could tell my husband about "Simon" "Mr Smith" or "DS's violin teacher" or if Simon Smith had upset me then "that wanker." It might not be kind of me but I am allowed the freedom of speech. To legislate against use of undesired pronouns would be very worrying.
Incidentally my child is spoken about with incorrect pronouns often when we meet new people. Men in particular seem to think he's a girl. I corrected someone recently and someone else started using "they" presumably thinking thus was less wrong than "she." This allows us the listeners to understand something about their perception of my son. My son has long hair which I think he thinks makes him look like a rock star, it makes other kids' parents and supply teachers think he is a girl! It didn't change who my son was for even a split second.

You might choose to see it as being nice to this person face to face by indulging their choice of pronouns - I don't call it 'respect' because respect is a mutual thing, and someone requiring me to perform pretense to supply them with the experience they want from me without bothering to see me as a person who may not believe or wish to do this? Is not respectful. I'm not a doormat, I'm not an enabler. It's personal choice, and I expect the respect to go both ways, which requires an acceptance that I'm an equal person in this interaction and I may not choose to do this.

However that is a wholly different matter to whether or not a man is recorded, in public statistics and figures as 'female' - ffs, that's just plain ridiculous, no male is female. And the vigorous pronoun virtue signalling in the press builds up confusion, distortion of reality, the false public images and sympathies that open doors to forcing male prisoners into female prisons to the detriment and harm of female prisoners, and false statistics further used by an aggressive political lobby to force the privilege of men over the basic human rights of females. Not to mention that the press is engaging in being the mouthpiece for a partisan, quite extreme belief system as if it is the one and only truth, and what all Good People Think. That's plain wrong. Particularly the public funded ones with duties towards impartiality.

So yes, I'm absolutely in agreement that in all documentation and press reports of criminals that sex is used in addition to any mention of their gender choices, with correct pronouns. There have to be limits to how far kindly missexing someone to meet their emotional needs can be pushed, and the limits are other people's rights.

I disagree, @Runskiyoga - using chosen, non-sex-based pronouns is an exceptional accomodation we can choose or not choose to indulge.

Everyone else in society is referred to by their sex based pronouns when referred to in the third person (if their sex is known).

If a trans or non-binary identifying person wants the society to alter the linguistic habits and traditions of centuries, individuals can decide to go along with that or to reject it, depending on their own values, understanding of gender or any other reason.

Sometimes referring to someone by their sex-based pronoun is essential to prevent harm to others, to prevent misunderstandings or obsfucation, or to retain factual information where that information matters.

When reporting on a crime, it matters. When addressing a wedding invitation, it probably doesn't.

I am happy to address my son's trans-identifying friends as they, because within my house while asking whether they will want tea or coffee it's irrelevant. If the friends wanted places on the girls' hockey team, I would say use He/Him about those male friends to make clear exactly what was being requested.

I think her comparison between using pronouns and a preferred nickname is slightly flawed maybe? The nickname would be the equivalent of calling Fangze Scarlet, ie anyone is entitled to change their name (legally or informally) and expect people to use the new one, but that is not the same as expecting them to deny biological reality and use preferred pronouns.

Exactly. It reinforces the notion that not using preferred pronouns is disrespectful.

So, thanks to Hadley, we now know "Blake's" original name: Fangze Wang.

It's strange that none of the other reporters were able to find that out.

The debate in the comments shows how much this issue has moved in the last year. Years ago women commentators were carefully explaining the basics of how women's rights and child safeguarding were stripped away. Now that's not needed as transactivists have efficiently educated the public with what their bullying & intimidation looks like. The torrent of grim sex offending court cases have exposed all the quiet bits that #nodebate silenced and the tribunals established that organisations will be punished if they allow women and men to be sacked and bullied for speaking about facts and science.

Now to work out why if transwomen rapists and murderers are actually men, how does that happen? Why is anyone else different??

I think the problem is couching it in terms of 'stripping criminals of their chosen pronouns' as a punishment.

If you look at chosen pronouns this way:
as a courtesy not a right which does do some harm (to victims of crime, to women being able to talk about the reality of their bodies and spaces, lack of precision in language and the knock on effects, normalising lack of truth in public discourse, confusion for non native speakers and ND people, etc) to the rest of society.

Being a convicted criminal changes the balance of risks of that, and it begins to look very different.

This is the problem when you pass a law (the Gender Recognition Act) compelling people to pretend to believe what they know to be a lie.

Truth has to be the basis of the law, and every institution. Anything founded on a lie will fall apart eventually. And the lie cannot be confined. It spreads way beyond what the makers of the law intended.

And sorry Hadley, even using people’s chosen pronouns (as opposed to a harmless chosen nickname) helps extend the harm. When one person does it, others are intimidated into doing it too. And the delusion is bolstered.

Let people dress how they like, call themselves what they like. No man is a woman.

I don't think criminals should be stripped of their human rights, but not sure I should respect them though. There is no human right to be referred to by your chosen pronoun. Maybe you mean 'treat with respect'? But even then, I'm not sure. It's not a neutral act.

What concerns me is the impact of this on the victims, especially of sexual crimes? Having to refer to the perpetrator as the wrong sex is gaslighting. It compounds their suffering. It invalidates their experience (anyone who has been through trauma will know that so much healing can come from being believed and understood). Why is no one talking about that?

Why so much concern for the criminals and so little for the victims?

Cases like this absolutely make me believe that using chosen pronouns should be optional.

Also, i would happily argue the toss on pronouns, as long as these fuckers go to man prison and their crimes are recorded as being done by men. In some ways talking about her penis just helps peak the world

Umm, that is really interesting. Now 2 v high profile cases of boys treated at the Tavistock going on to become ultra violent. I wonder whether there were any indications during their assessment of what was to come. I wonder was the assumption that hormones would fix them? I wonder how the medical staff arguing for a totally affirmative approach square this one.

@EarthSight Yes. I work in healthcare. I treat everyone with respect. It can be challenging, of course.

• Where do you draw the line between respecting chosen pronouns and disregarding them? Because someone is a criminal? Because you don't like them?

It feels off that women are compelled to use chosen pronouns in the workplace but are free to ignore them elsewhere.*

I think we all apply these differences all the time in relation to social norms and expectations.

People have different baselines regarding what all humans deserve in terms of respect/dignity and have differing views about what reflects reasonable levels of respect in different contexts.

An innocuous example is that on who it is/isn't ok to fart in front of. This example highlights how it's not always a case of 'more respect' being given the closer the relationship.

I am less likely to pull someone up at work on getting facts wrong relating to a non work related politically contentious point than would be the case at my dinner table at home or in a social gathering at work.

It didn't help that many headlines referred to an "Oxford Don's daughter".
I thought that must be a different case initially. 🤷‍♀️

• oth Blake and the Kardashian person were seen at GIDS.

It's scary that they were apparently treated for being 'born in the wrong body' but not for whatever was going to make them so dangerous.*

Evidence presented in the Blake trial showed that the treating GIDS psychologist did pick up on concerning behaviours. What wasn't clear from the evidence is how this influenced treatment of gender dysphoria.

This discussion probably belongs to a separate thread. Within medicine, and equality law, mental health conditions should not determine access to physical health conditions (eg schizophrenia and knee replacement). This is one of the many issues arising from viewing 'gender treatment' as physical rather than mental/emotional treatment. This is cropping up with autism and some suggesting autistic children face being denied gender treatment because their autism diagnosis is being wrongly considered. The same could be said for schizophrenia, personality disorders etc.

Only males can be transwomen, Scarlet Blake is male, right down to his DNA. It's infuriating that he has been referred to as she/her and that his crime, a man's crime has been recorded as a woman's. I'm pleased to see this getting so much coverage, that it's not being let go unchallenged.

Both Blake and the Kardashian person were seen at GIDS.

It's scary that they were apparently treated for being 'born in the wrong body' but not for whatever was going to make them so dangerous.

Fantastic article - Hadley has really tied loads of different strands of this dangerous ideology together.

I thought these paragraphs were worth repeating:

"For the past decade, gender ideologues have said that “youth gender healthcare” — ie giving confused children and teenagers puberty blockers, hormone treatment and occasionally even surgery to help them transition — is essential. “Better a trans kid than a dead kid,” they say, implying that a boy who says he’s a girl must be given blockers, which stop his physical development, or he will kill himself. But last week a study in Finland, led by a former gender clinician, Dr Riittakerttu Kaltiala, was published, and it suggests this is simply not true.
It showed that gender transition does not help teenagers’ mental health. It turns out that filling an unhappy teenager’s body with untested hormones and their head with the deranged idea that they were born in the wrong body might not have a happy result. Who could have predicted that?"

I am glad Hadley had this article printed.
It is not a sin to acknowledge that TW are male and TM are female. It is basic facts.

Both Blake and the Kardashian person were seen at GIDS. I know psychiatry and psychology are not exact sciences but I find it hard to understand how any young person so disturbed and dangerous would not have shown signs that could be picked up by an appropriately trained clinical professional. It’s the ultimate condemnation of the service that these children were enabled in their delusions (and possibly, as a result, in their homicidal intentions).