What is the law regarding "misgendering" in the UK?

[cromeyellow0]

Many people assume that the law compels us to use preferred pronouns.

This is not explicitly stated in the Equality Act 2010. Possibly one could interpret failure to use someone's preferred pronouns as harassment, but that seems like a stretch to me (hopefully someone with legal expertise can give proper insight!).

Mermaids and perhaps some police forces want to treat misgendering a crime--to get ahead of the law, as the Labour Party would say.

To quote Susie Green: “We had to get the police involved because a young student was being regularly misgendered by his tutor. The tutor dismissed it until he was informed that it counted as a hate crime.”
www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/02/24/a-charity-called-the-police-on-a-teacher-who-misgendered-their-student/
(Ms Green's legal qualifications aren't known to me. Nor do we have the police's or the teacher's account of this incident.)

So if I’m in court, and under oath, and compelled to use female pronouns on a person I KNOW to be Male, and say I believe they are female, am i committing purjury? Because my words would be at odds with observable reality. And I would be lying

No, you are not committing perjury. You using particular pronouns is not material to the evidence you are giving. Maria Mclachlan was not asked to lie. Everyone knew who the defendant was, the defendant was in court and admitted throwing punches (but claimed defence of another person). She was not in any sense giving false testimony by using different pronouns.

I agree that TW would probably not have dared punch MM had she been a strapping young man. It is still not equivalent to granny bashing and I just watched the video of it to double-check. She was not attacked because she was a certain age- she was unjustifiably attacked because she was involved in a struggle with another activist over her camera. TW had no right to attack her, but I cannot see how it can have been motivated by her age.

Isn't there now some daft salutations doing the rounds Xi or Ze or something? When in doubt, go neutral.

And I have had quite a few letters addressed to me as Mr Fekko (God knows how as I have a pretty obviously female first name, as my parents correctly assigned me female at birth.)

Doesn't it depend on context? Something can be true but also offensive.

So, a famous world leader's doctor can talk about the politician's hair loss and the drugs he is prescribing and he is giving information.

A comedian can talk about the famous world leader's hair loss and they are exercising freedom of speech.

However, if you shouted baldy at the world leader as he is giving a speech, it could be seen as abusive?

There’s about a million ‘alternative pronouns’ but I have never met anyone who has demanded that I used them.

Thank you Susan - that makes sense. I would like to say I would use preferred pronouns as I have in the past for transsexuals I have known. But if I’m honest, in the situation above I would use them from fear. And that makes me very uneasy, because it is policing what should be objective, non offensive language to bend reality. I have a problem with that - I’m a scientist, I work on objectivity. I would hope the law does to a degree as well.

Agree merry, it’s a tenuous argument to say I can say whatever I want because it’s true. I could say that entitles me to go up to overweight people and tell them I think they are too fat. I could do that, but it would be considered very impolite and potentially abusive.

Yes I agree merry - context is important. The doctor could be breaching patient confidentiality for example.

It’s a very different thing to say in court ‘the person I saw was about five foot ten and significantly overweight’ than it is to yell ‘fatso’ at someone.

Yes, but remember Hypermice that the law enables a person to legally change gender so it is not necessary based on objective reality. The law, like most things, is a social construct.
I think the pronoun thing seems neutral and unobjectionable to most people, but for trans people it is not. There is ample evidence that distress is caused to trans people by using pronouns relating to biological sex. Therefore it no longer is completely neutral. Pronouns themselves are a linguistic construct- some languages make no difference between male and female pronouns.

I have had quite a few letters addressed to me as Mr Fekko

I've also had quite a few addressed as "Mr Spouse". I use my PhD title for work but not outside work so I am correctly "Ms Spouse". "Mrs Spouse" is my mother and "Mr Spouse" is my uncle (my dad also has a PhD).

And of course DH relatives address me as "Mrs DHname".

Can I sue the companies that write to me as Mr Spouse for misgendering?
Can I sue DH relatives/random government busybodies/marketing companies for the opposite of deadnaming?

In fact - how about an internet campaign to name and shame anyone that writes to us and misgenders us?
I actually also have people via work doing this (usually non-native-English speakers who don't understand either English first names or English naming conventions).

It causes me distress when I am forced to lie and using incorrect pronouns feels to me like a lie. It is even more distressing because I have my own connections to the words woman and female and to she/her pronouns. My own identity is centred in my experiences of having a female body and of being treated as a girl and then a woman my whole life. Insisting that this identity and these experiences are meaningless, (which is what saying men can become women actually does - it makes women's own identity meaningless) is an assault on women as individuals and as a social group. It is an erasure so immense that the idea of comparing our distress about it to the distress of a man who is not getting what he wants seems incredible. But I feel like I do have to raise this comparison because women's distress at our erasure doesn't seem to even get a blip of recognition in this argument!

Isn't it just good manners to address someone in the way they want to be addressed? So if a woman is married but doesn't want you to use Mrs then don't. If someone presents dressed as a man, wanting to be addressed as a man why not refer to them as he or him? The same the other way round so someone presenting as female. It's a shame it has to become a legal matter.

Whether it's "good manners" is not the issue here.

the law enables a person to legally change gender

Not sex though. So one can extend the courtesy of allowing someone to operate in the female gender bracket (which is itself ridiculous .. ) but to say that you believe they have changed sex is different. Humans cannot do that and that’s what the current hoo hah is about, because sex is not a social construct like gender is. It’s a fact and women are grossly disadvantaged simply by belong to that sex.

But yes I accept your point. A lot of this is fudging and social construct driven

Ereshkigal I don't agree, I think alot of laws are actually based on people not knowing how to behave in a civilised society and this is no different. If men didn't touch women who didn't want to be touched i.e. showed good manners, then we wouldn't need a law about it. It isn't good manners to take things that belong to other people but people ignore that so we have theft laws.

How lovely it would be if people did have good manners and how low crime would be.

It causes me distress when I am forced to lie and using incorrect pronouns feels to me like a lie.

Nobody is asking you to lie. Pronouns are a linguistic construct- you are not making a claim to truth when you use them. I have equally little sympathy for people who claim that they are being forced to 'lie' by saying acknowledging that some same-sex couples are married on account that the bible did not acknowledge same sex marriage. I have heard 'I will never call them wife and wife- that just feels wrong'. OK fine, but what about the person whose reality is being denied? Should they just be asked to 'deal with it'?

It is even more distressing because I have my own connections to the words woman and female and to she/her pronouns. My own identity is centred in my experiences of having a female body and of being treated as a girl and then a woman my whole life.

Yes, that is true, but your own experiences are really not being denied by using the pronouns that someone else has asked that you use. The same as same sex marriage does not affect or invalidate the marriages of heterosexual people.

I think this hugely detracts from the real issue which is ensuring that certain spaces are kept single-sex for safety and dignity reasons. We really can't say that transgender people should not be allowed to be transgender.

Talking of being polite, I don’t usually use pronouns at all when I am referring to a person who is present. As the saying goes “who’s she? The cat’s mother?”.

the law enables a person to legally change gender

Not sex though. So one can extend the courtesy of allowing someone to operate in the female gender bracket (which is itself ridiculous .. ) but to say that you believe they have changed sex is different.

Technically the Gender Recognition Act says that getting a GRC changes your sex too. It can be viewed as a work of legal fiction but it is what the law says.

Yes, merry, referring to someone by name is always an option. So is using a gender-neutral pronoun (they). The problem comes when someone claims to have a 'right' to call a transwoman 'he' because it is their 'truth'. Not so problematic when you are talking to your friends about a celebrity (e.g. Caitlyn Jenner). More problematic when you work with that person and interact with them daily. Which is why the former has no legal consequences, whereas the latter does.

Talking of being polite, I don’t usually use pronouns at all when I am referring to a person who is present. As the saying goes “who’s she? The cat’s mother?”.

This has always been my thought - in a meeting I don't refer to another person present as "she"!

The exact wording of s 9(1) of the GRA 2004:

Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).

Ironically, another place where I often avoid referring to gender is Mumsnet because we are all anonymous.

To me it's abit like religious belief. I can accept tht some people believe in gOd, some people believe that they are literally eating the body and blood of God.. I don't believe these things on any level, and I resist that these beliefs are part and parcel of legislation in many states. If this personal belief system gets absorbed into the legal framework, what do we do with those people that believe they are the queen, Joan of Ark, the pope etc...do we have to address them as your highness etc.

Yes, it does, but then the law is at odds with facts, science and observable reality.

It’s a strange situation. The comparison to religion is a valid one I think. When we start legislating beliefs we are in dodgy ground.