Interesting thread on Reddit's UK policing sub (RE: misgendering)

[TBHno]

https://www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/comments/j89pts/usedtheewrongpronounnandthreateneddwithpolice/?utmmsource=share&utmmedium=ioss[[https://www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/comments/j89pts/used_the_wrong_pronoun_and_threatened_with_police/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf app&utmname=iossmf
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This thread (about misgendering) is quite interesting.

Please don't brigade the sub as that's banned on Reddit.

I promise not to brigade the sub as I don't know what that means! 😁

Is it something you can do accidentally, like misgendering someone?

Brigading means one community going to another's and sort of piling on with downvotes and comments etc. It does happen on places like Reddit because there are very distinct communities. Distinct isn't strong enough a word for some of the subreddits though..

I’m glad someone has explained what brigading is

Ive been wondering for a while...

The fact that the op didn't even specify is it a trans man or a trans woman and yet most of the comments know it's a trans woman really says it all

I still have trouble understanding why misgendering is viewed as such a heinous crime. I get that it is rude, of course, and I would not do it on purpose to anyone.

But I don't understand the theoretical context we are supposed to apply here (i.e., if we are talking about human rights or about a mental health issue or both or about something quite different). I mean this sincerely, because I would really like to understand the framework.

@nepeta it's because trans women like to think they are the most opressed and badly treated and at risk of violence etc in society.

However there is really no evidence of that as they have the same rights as everyone else so they have to conjure some horrible crimes against them out of thin air. One of those crimes is misgendering

Interesting thread.

(I can't imagine why you'd think any of us would want to 'brigade' a thread which, from what I read, was mostly sensible coppers and reasonable trans people, OP. Not that MNers are into brigading anyway afaik)

I dont like being told not to do something i had no intention of doing

It makes me want to do that thing i had no intention of doing

Luckily I’m much too lazy (and still not completely clear on what I shouldn’t be doing)

Apologies TBH it is an interesting thread

I still have trouble understanding why misgendering is viewed as such a heinous crime. I get that it is rude, of course, and I would not do it on purpose to anyone.

It's supposed to be equivalent to a violent physical assault. Which means either that the person has such a fragile sense of their own identity then it's indistinguishable from mental illness or they're using it to control others. Or it's a spectrum between those two positions.

Thanks for the responses about why misgendering is such a crime.

I also wonder about the sin of dead-naming in a similar context. That name was the person's real name once, after all, but now we cannot mention it at all under any circumstances, except perhaps the police are allowed to if a crime was committed under the dead name?

It does sound to me like a form of extreme fragility of that gender identity.

A few things come mind:

1. this reddit thread sounds reasonably sane (phew!)

2. I wonder how the OP ended up misgendering the person in front of them?
   Usually we talk to other people in the second person ("you"). We only use the 3rd person when talking about someone else to another person. It's actually not very nice for anyone to be referred to in the 3rd person when they're in the same room. It certainly can happen, especially in healthcare (when being passed over between staff like a sack of meat...), but I believe it could often be avoided. Maybe frontline staff should be trained to use more gender neutral language, and/or avoid pronouns altogether (mostly to avoid staff being verbally abused and intimidated, like the OP was!)

3. I got routinely misgendered as a skinny short-haired teen wearing androgynous clothing... Was that hate crime, or does it only become a crime when it affects trans people? (fairly sure I know the answer... And yet, yes, this misgendering was hurtful, and sometimes quite obviously malicious, from people who very much disapproved of non-gender-conforming females)
   Similarly, I knew boys being bullied and called girls for having long hair. They were very much boys, not trans. Was that a hate crime?

I wonder how the OP ended up misgendering the person in front of them?

Maybe they said something along the lines of ''excuse me Sir...'' and got into an "it's MA'AM" situation (or vice versa). Like you say, we tend to use pronouns when talking about someone, not to them, so it's the only way I can think of misgendering someone to their face.

I can't see how misgendering by mistake would be a hate crime or non-crime hate incident assuming the law is correctly applied.

However, if a boy has long hair and someone suggests he is a girl or is feminine, then this would seem to fall into the hate crime or hate incident category, unless he did have a feminine identity.

I wasn't clear enough:

... However, if a boy has long hair and someone who recognises them as a boy suggests he is a girl ...

Whether or not an incident is a hate incident is not up to the police, its up to the person who wants to make the complaint.

''The police and Crown Prosecution Service have agreed a common definition of hate incidents.
They say something is a hate incident if the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on one of the following things:
disability
race
religion
transgender identity
sexual orientation.
This means that if you believe something is a hate incident it should be recorded as such by the person you are reporting it to. All police forces record hate incidents based on these five personal characteristics.''
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/hate-crime/what-are-hate-incidents-and-hate-crime/

Example of someone who has been repeatedly reported for hate incidents for spurious reasons;

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3982831-I-have-been-recorded-by-my-local-police-force-as-hateful?msgid=98761625

Thanks for the correction Thelnebriati. My comment about the boy with the long hair should only apply to hate crimes, and then you need to decide whether "harassment" has taken place.

Sorry about the brigading request. I didn't mean to offend anyone. It's just that if tons of people had piled-on, then the thread may have been deleted.

Anyway, I am quite heartened by how the police officers reacted to the op

@nepeta

Thanks for the responses about why misgendering is such a crime.

I also wonder about the sin of dead-naming in a similar context. That name was the person's real name once, after all, but now we cannot mention it at all under any circumstances, except perhaps the police are allowed to if a crime was committed under the dead name?

It does sound to me like a form of extreme fragility of that gender identity.

nepeta You might be interested in this article by Marcus Evans if you haven't come across it before

quillette.com/2020/01/17/why-i-resigned-from-tavistock-trans-identified-children-need-therapy-not-just-affirmation-and-drugs/

"An increasingly common characteristic of children presenting with gender dysphoria is a deep involvement within online chat groups that support their sense of dislocation, encourage them to view voices of moderation (including parents) as enemies, and which echo the cultish language of pro-anorexia and pro-suicide websites. As in actual cults, followers are encouraged to believe that their entire gamut of personal problems can be solved so long as they embrace one overarching dogma. “Feel dislocated from your sex, feel like you do not fit in?” asks the Transgender Heaven website. “Here is a group that understands your feelings of dislocation and confusion and can offer you an identity that can provide certainty and a feeling that you belong.” Or as one pro-trans vlogger said on YouTube, “trans is a solution to feeling shit.”

“My online experience, having been affected by that level of groupthink, that level of moral policing, and the constant implicit threats of social exposure and [ostracism] made me an intensely internal and anxious person,” reported one detransitioned woman about her online experience in this world. “It made me paranoid about the motives of people around me—I saw my parents as bigots because tumblr told me to; because they held out for so long to prevent me from starting hormones. Anyone that slipped up and misgendered me was, according to tumblr, an enemy. One incident—one ‘she’—had the ability to make me absolutely hate someone. Tumblr’s version of morality and justice made me—an impressionable, insecure teenager—feel like my only safe place was in my head, where I would never be misgendered.”

@nauticant

I still have trouble understanding why misgendering is viewed as such a heinous crime. I get that it is rude, of course, and I would not do it on purpose to anyone.

It's supposed to be equivalent to a violent physical assault. Which means either that the person has such a fragile sense of their own identity then it's indistinguishable from mental illness or they're using it to control others. Or it's a spectrum between those two positions.

Someone here actually claims to be oppressed by being misgendered in other people's minds.

twitter.com/elizamondegreen/status/1313596570202505216