Court and enforced use of 'preferred' pronouns

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

I am still aghast that Maria McLachlan was repeatedly instructed by a judge to use female pronouns for Tara Wood, who had assualted her at Speakers' Corner.

Tara Wood is scientifically male.

Maria McLachlan was instructed to do this, by a Judge, while under oath to tell the truth, in a Court of Law.

What would have happened if Maria had refused to do it on account of it not being the truth?

Anyone know the legal position on this?

[TheUterati]

What bothers me, as well as the stuff below, is the way this allows the perpetrator to use the court to continue control the victim.

Exactly.

And on a wider level, policing our language here on MN such that we are forbidden to accurately use language to refer to someone's sex, allows TRA to continue to set the agenda, set the permissible terms of the debate, to control how women are permitted to talk, and to force us to agree that these individuals are entitled to be referred to in public as women.

This is the case even though MNHQ individually and collectively are not part of TRA. (And I hope it is obvious that I am not trying to imply that!!)

Consenting to 'preferred pronouns' AKA lying comes with a cost.

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

This is really not what our court system is for.

Actually I think it's been designed for exactly that and is a useful weapon for abusive men and their enablers to carry on the harassment and male violence, even after the woman has said no/left/ reported him - whatever - it's weaponised effectively and it seems all too well designed for that purpose.

We have been duped very effectively….

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

RE pronouns - No one should be compelled to use words they don't want to - it's coercion and that's against the law in the UK. It's against the laws of free speech that been weaponised against women and children. It's a gross violation of our autonomy.

Where else does this apply if not in the effective mind control and hence subjugation of women? Give me one other example where people are forced to change their language - apart from meeting the Queen perhaps. Name me one other example where people are forced by the court to lie in court. This mindf* re gender and pronouns is not only grossly offensive to women, it's mass coercion and Mao-ist. Next they'll be telling us what we have to wear and where we can and can't go - that's happening covertly already. Policy by stealth - like stealthing in rape - it's a gross violation without consent. It's disgusting.

[LouiseCollins28]

@womanformallyknownaswoman
Great username btw!

Just as an example since you asked for one where someone's language must be changed.... obvious one really but , doesn't everyone in court refer to the Judge as "Your honour?"

[Hypermice]

Your honour

That’s the accepted social way of referring to a judge. No cognitive load would be increased and no penalty would be forthcoming for a nervous witness who used any form of polite address like sir/madam in their testimony instead.

The problem comes when the object of the address and the term used to address them are at such odds that the witness must consciously think about how to address them and if there are consequences if they fail to address properly.

It’s more analogous to the judge holding the witness in contempt if they call him sir rather than your honour.

[Hypermice]

Have you ever heard ‘Just a minute’ on the bbc? It’s a comedy panel show where ‘The object of the game is for panellists to talk for sixty seconds on a given subject, "without hesitation, repetition or deviation"‘

So any errr... ummm.... gets beeped and you lose. A very simple thing to do you’d think but contestants rarely get through the minute because the cognitive load of policing your language while trying to talk about something is actually really high.

This is effectively what's happening in court, except it’s not funny.

[SusanBunch]

Your honour

That’s the accepted social way of referring to a judge. No cognitive load would be increased and no penalty would be forthcoming for a nervous witness who used any form of polite address like sir/madam in their testimony instead.

To be pedantic, in the lower courts, the correct form of address is Sir/Madam and not Your Honour. The judge in this case was a District Judge, so Sir. Completely off topic, I know.

It's very difficult. For those who object to using preferred pronouns, I think it has to be all or nothing. Surely it's just as much of a lie to use them towards old-school transsexuals like Miranda Yardley as it is in respect of Tara Wolf? Otherwise you would surely be suggesting that having surgery in fact changes a person's sex? So I think whatever position you take, there should be some consistency.

[thebewilderness]

The courts systems were designed to enforce the dominance and submission paradigm. They are functioning as designed.

[SupermatchGame]

Give me one other example where people are forced to change their language - apart from meeting the Queen perhaps.

Anne Marie Morris has been forced not to say N** in the woodpile. We would be forced by a court not to say the N word as well.
Tim Farron was forced to say being gay is not a s**, even though he believes it is, because it is totally incompatible with the career he wanted. (OK, not compelled but it had life changing consequences).
You can be arrested for telling a police officer to f off.
You can't call a disabled person a c***e

I guess the world is putting pronouns in the same category now.

[HairyBallTheorem]

That's an entirely spurious analogy, Supermatch

It's the difference between a witness being allowed to use the N word in their testimony (unacceptably racist) versus describing the person they saw fleeing the scene as being black (which presumably would be an entirely factual description useful in context to distinguish them from other people who had been in the vicinity).

Similarly, it would be outrageous if a witness were allowed to refer to a defendant as a T*y (that would indeed be transphobic), but forcing, say, a rape victim to refer to the person with a penis who had forcibly penetrated her as "she" during her testimony would be preventing her from giving a factually accurate account of what had happened.

Or perhaps you're okay with forcing rape victims to refer to their rapists as "she"?

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

To me, this ideological insistence of being coerced into acknowledging something that is a delusion is the MO of a cult not of a functioning democracy. There has been no national, open discussion about this issue.

Social media is not representative of public opinion nor a safe place to host such a discussion. I note THECULT is trying to confine discussion to SM as they can orchestrate the mind control tactics that dominators thrive on there. Not so easy in real, public life.

[RedToothBrush]

I can not use preferred pronouns. Not because I am being disrespectful or wish to cause distress, but because its for my own psychological well being. I use they, because it is neither giving power to someone nor taking away from me.

The way we relate to other people is important. Pronouns represent more than just being polite.

The question, do you have any brothers or sisters represents this well to me. I find it hard to answer. The politically correct answer is I have a sister. But if I say it, people start to talk about their relationship between them and their sister or how their children interact together. I can not relate to that. If I say the biological answer that I have a brother, people do the same but my experience isn't like that either. Its not a question about how many siblings you have, its a question about how do I relate to this person. My childhood and how I was raised with a brother does not change. Using the 'correct' pronouns based on either sex or political correctness is insufficient to convey my reality of experience and the nature of the relationship. You can not switch it off nor change it. Even if you want to.

Saying my sibling is trans allows me to relate properly and for others to understand me. If my sibling finds that disrespectful, thats tough.

I think people feeling ok to call Debbie Hayton has a lot to do with reference points and DH acknowledgement of the problem and what issues it throws up. Hayton isn't perceived as a threat to the social dynamic of how you relate to others and define yourself. Ultimately Hayton understands the importance of sex to women's identity.

This is why I find the judges position distressing. I think Maria was right to challenge it. Should she have persisted in using he? Thats probably where I differ in opinion and think she should have gone neutral, though I understand the point about wanting to make a point about male violence and power.

I do not believe you can separate pronouns and power as concepts. They are intrinsically linked. I think this needs to be recognised properly rather than the screaming of 'hate speech'. It is important to both the giver and the receiver. It does not always come out of hate nor even a lack of acceptance, but a need to acknowledge the elephant in the room and how there are differences. Differences can be neutral - neither good things nor bad - they just 'are' sometimes.

[MsBeaujangles]

Once again, it seems as if a distinction needs to be drawn between sex and gender. Where sex is important to a given situation, people want to be able to discuss this. In the case of male patterned behaviour or inequality between the sexes, people will feel unable to communicate this if they cannot describe the sex of someone.

I don't have an issue with preferred pronouns in day to day situations and I have never knowingly misgendered someone?

I do have an issue with how equality is monitored and catered for. To do this, we need to disaggregate data in relation to sex and gender in order to ensure we monitor and act upon inequalities for females, males and trans people (crime stats, longevity of life, involvement etc).

If I were talking about (or believed I was experiencing) male pattern violence and inequality of power as a result of being female in relation to an individual, being forced to call the male 'he' would further increase my experience of power inequality.

A previous poster brought up people's willingness to use preferred pronouns for a well liked transwomen on this board. If this transwomen started to demonstrate male pattern behaviours that serve to undermine females, or used their strength and size to intimidate a female or was violent towards a female, that would probably change. Especially if people made connections with the behaviour and the person's sex.

[SusanBunch]

I do get what you are saying Beau but I still find it inconsistent to say that you will call someone a woman until they start displaying male behaviour. I think it has to be all or nothing. It’s also hard to define male behaviour. Violence is not an exclusively male trait and nor is entitlement. If people are saying that it’s deeplt damaging to their sense of truth to use female pronouns then that has to go for so called ‘trans allies’ too. Except many won’t do so because that would upset said trans allies and be a sign of disrespect.

That means that we are in a situation where it’s clear that the pronouns he and she are not neutral- they have some meaning behind them and misgendering has some impact. And then you can’t argue that you are being totally inoffensive by ‘calling a spade a spade’. Because if that was what you truly believed, you would call Miranda Yardley ‘he’ too, but nearly everyone here is prepared to call her ‘she’.

It’s difficult to discuss this in the context of a victim and defendant. Obviously emotions will run high and a victim won’t be wanting to bend over backwards to please her attacker. But in the broader scheme of things, this discussion shows that you can’t on one hand claim that you will always stick to biological truth when you don’t do that for the small group of trans people who happen to have the same view as you. It has to be all or nothing.

[kesstrel]

All or nothing isn't how human psychology works. With reference to the issue of cognitive load referred to above, the more cues there are that point to an individual being female (appearance, manner, actions - eg not punching someone) the lower the cognitive load of using a female pronoun becomes, and the less likely it is to create a high burden of distraction to mental processing. ("cognitive load" is the term for a psychological concept that has had a lot of research).

[JiminyBillyBob]

A victim does not owe her male attacker a courtesy, least of all one which goes against her beliefs and the truth


This.

[MsBeaujangles]

susan, when I use pronouns my default is to base them of sex. With trans people, I override this (through conscious effort) so I acknowledge there gender identity.
However, if I am talking about their sex, my speech would sound ludicrously incongruent if I used female pronouns. Hence the need to switch.

[FredNerk]

Ungraceful.

A woman referring to the man who beat her as the male he is, is called ungraceful.

Women are, as always, expected to smile and nod and not hurt the feelings of the men who abuse us. Be nice, women. Better yet, be silent, be compliant. Never disobey your masters.

Between this and handing out a fine, this judge has his misogynist colours nailed to the mast, doesn’t he?

[YouStacey]

So if a woman is raped and the man who raped her with his penis then decides to identify as a woman it is expected that the raped woman will refer to her rapist as she when giving evidence? Nice.