In regards to pronoun usage and why a growing number of people now refuse to use preferred pronouns or even refer to male people who demand to be called ‘women’ as transwomen, I think Naomi Cunningham has summed it up rather well in this interview.
Naomi Cunningham is a barrister and so has some first hand experience in how the effects of language changes impacts policy and law. In my reading on the topic, I have seen the argument used that ‘people use my pronouns therefore it is cruel / inhumane to deny my demand to be included in female sport / prison / single sex spaces’.
The recent past has now shown us just how important pronouns are in getting changes of law and policy. It has come to light that it is a leverage tool so that activists can use the rhetoric ‘I am fully accepted as a female, people call me ‘she’, it is cruel to deny me access to [insert female single sex space or sex based opportunity here]’. And it works.
The CPS published that:
Refusing to use their preferred name or pronoun
Was considered abuse by an intimate partner. Think about that. A long term partner who may be in an abusive relationship has been in turn designated as abusive to that abusive partner by the Crown Prosecuting Service.
www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/domestic-abuse
To date, extreme trans activists have leveraged people’s use of pronouns and this social acceptance of males being ‘woman’ to push through their political agenda. Sport is one of area that this has been done. McKinnon/Ivy stood infront of policy makers and argued that it was cruel and inhumane to deny males trans people the right to compete as their chosen gender. Why? Because surely society at large accepted they were ‘female’ as people used their female pronouns and treated them a female.
Here is one link for McKinnon / Ivy
news.sky.com/story/trans-cyclist-rachel-mckinnon-defends-her-right-to-race-in-womens-competitions-11838131
There is another to a video but it needs a VPN to view outside of the USA.
Mridul Wadhwa is another. Applied for a female advertised job role and was made CEO of a rape crisis centre. Because everyone treats this male individual as a female.
The effect of using preferred pronouns is that it also then removes cues for others to have full information for their decision making. If someone is using preferred pronouns for a male who demands access to the female single sex facilities, it doesn’t alert a woman in that conversation that this male might be in a single sex space sometime.
If a woman hears the preferred pronouns being used for a carer or health professional, she is being given cues that the person they are seeing in front of them is female.
You can be assured that Mridul Wadhwa’s female counselling clients would be led to believe that they were wrong in thinking Wadwha is male because everyone around them uses preferred pronouns. How many of them never asked or felt they could ask?
The end result is the same still. Using the wrong sex pronouns for someone when you know that the person is the opposite sex, allows male people to access female single sex provisions, ie sport, spaces, short lists, and so on.
Not necessarily that particular person at that particular time, but the impact is the same. It may build up over time, or it can have an immediate effect. Or it can be used collectively such as McKinnon/Ivy successfully argued.
It really is a falsehood that it is ‘harmless’, just as it is false to say it is ‘a kindness.’ Because that kindness is just to one person and it is unkind to those who needed that knowledge, that verbal cue, to make a decision that was significant and important to them.
So, to any person reading this who has ever written or thought, where is the harm in just being kind and using pronouns, there is harm in my opinion. Maybe not that you can trace directly, but the harm is there on numerous fronts. It is up to you whether you use a person’s preferred pronouns, but i think it is important to understand the overall result of doing so.