Piers Morgan article and pronouns

[nevercis]

In a wide-ranging article on trans issues. Piers Morgan states he is happy to 'respect a trans person's right to be called by their preferred pronoun' (although later in the article when referring to a transwoman murderer he puts 'she' in inverted commas).

I'd argue that pronouns aren't something you can pick and choose - they are a function of language designed to refer to the sex of the person in question.

I'd also argue (as others have done more eloquently) that the 'be polite/what harm can it do' approach of using cross-sex pronouns is significantly hampering progress in reclaiming women's rights.

So Piers, if you are reading...

I wouldn’t want to be on the same side as Piers Morgan! Bloody hell. There’s someone who clearly doesn’t like women. Not all men etc. Urgh.

I expect Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler held some views that the average person would agree with. That doesn't mean one is on the 'same side'.

In any case I am disagreeing with PM. I don't think we should indulge incorrect sex pronouns.

No thank you. I avoid using pronouns altogether, only use them as and when I choose.

I'd never bring myself to refer to a person with a penis as "she".

Today's youth have been so indoctrinated it's terrifying to witness not meaning Piers Morgan obviously because he's an old bloke.

there is no rule that pronouns have to refer to a person's sex. that is just a tradition and could change.

I am fully GC when it comes to sport & medical care & changing rooms & prisons - anywhere where the physical shape of the body matters. But pronouns are not fixed to your physical body, and if a person wants to use silly pronouns, that is fine. I'll try to humour them.

@Linguini

No thank you. I avoid using pronouns altogether, only use them as and when I choose.

I'd never bring myself to refer to a person with a penis as "she".

Today's youth have been so indoctrinated it's terrifying to witness not meaning Piers Morgan obviously because he's an old bloke.

You ask them first if they have a penis?

@parietal

there is no rule that pronouns have to refer to a person's sex. that is just a tradition and could change.

I am fully GC when it comes to sport & medical care & changing rooms & prisons - anywhere where the physical shape of the body matters. But pronouns are not fixed to your physical body, and if a person wants to use silly pronouns, that is fine. I'll try to humour them.

They can use whatever words they like, but compelling/forcing everyone else to? Where does that end exactly?

I do think in general there is a principle of politeness which says that unless it matters, we tend to accept who people say they are. If I am making a cup of coffee at a cafe and the person tells me her name is Mrs Jenkins, I am not going to query it, whether the person is really married, or a woman, or even really called Jenkins. Even if you are 100% sure some of those things aren't true. I used to have a guy who wandered around my neighbourhood who claimed to be a messenger from God and has a name he thought sounded appropriate to that, clearly there was no point in me, as a random person who might chat to him, trying to insist otherwise.

But how far we can push that kind of operating system is a much different question, and it's also not at all clear that it implies that it's generally ok to present yourself as something you aren't. No one cares if you use a fake name on a Starbucks order, but someone you work with or are related to - the implications of insisting on a fiction are altogether different. And names are more flexible than something like pronouns, or titles, given we can legally change them and nicknames are uncommon.

@parietal

there is no rule that pronouns have to refer to a person's sex. that is just a tradition and could change.

I am fully GC when it comes to sport & medical care & changing rooms & prisons - anywhere where the physical shape of the body matters. But pronouns are not fixed to your physical body, and if a person wants to use silly pronouns, that is fine. I'll try to humour them.

But they are not using the pronouns they have chosen. They are demanding that others use those pronouns. That is compelled speech.

Choosing the pronouns others use to refer to you is not personal to you . This is not about the evolution of language, nor the way some words may gradually change their meanings. This is about a concerted attack on our perceptions and our acceptance of the unacceptable.

Pronouns are like Rohypnol.

When the use of pronouns becomes used in court, as it has, as evidence that 'everyone accepts that someone has changed sex' I can no longer be complicit in providing evidence which destroys womens rights.

The time for politeness and courtesy is long over unfortunately, for far too long it has been a one way street and look where that got us.

If their particular religion involved calling everyone else "Bob" and "they", then that's fine. Eccentric, not very good for communication, but fine. (It might be beneficial to them to find workarounds for identifying other people more clearly in court and similar though). Secular society can accommodate people making weird pronoun or name choices.

If their religion requires everyone else to call them "Bob" and "they", even when they're the ones being identified in court, sorry, no, secular society cannot accommodate that sort of imposition on others.

Tolerance says you have to put up with other people's refusal to use words you want. You cannot compel speech.

Requiring other people to use words you want is not tolerance.

Choosing to use words others want you to use is potentially polite, if a tad submissive, and you might decide it's fine to do so in some particular situation. But you may decide there are more important reasons to decline and stick with your own words. Which is very evidently the case here.

We're way past the point where you could argue there's no harm to calling a man "she". Every time you call a man "she" it is implicit support for putting that man into women's sports or women's prisons, or sticking him in a "top 100 women" list.

Perhaps one way to flag up and counteract this pronoun nonsense would be for all women to insist that our pronouns are things such as “your imperial majesty” or “supreme highness, queen of the universe” or whatever.
If you can’t beat them, join them, until the whole shit storm collapses under the weight of its own stupidity.
Sauce for the (self identifying) goose is sauce for the gander….

Spot on as usual @NecessaryScene 👏

What stood out of the article for me was the statement that Lia took part "demolishing a field of women born with physically inferior female biological bodies." Female bodies are not "inferior" but different because they have a different function from the males.
I won't say what I'd call Lia... Oh, I will. Cheat.

We're way past the point where you could argue there's no harm to calling a man "she". Every time you call a man "she" it is implicit support for putting that man into women's sports or women's prisons, or sticking him in a "top 100 women" list.

Exactly. We're being made complicit. Pronouns are the window sign in Havel's essay (quoted extensively below):

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?msgid=111900052

It’s compelled speech, and besides, if I were talking directly to the person who’s decided to make a fuss about how others refer to him or her, I would be using “you”, so it’s a moot point.

I'm in my forties and for about forty years was happy to use 'she' and 'her' for TW (since before Hayley Cropper). Try to force me and it's a very different story. I use those words to signal my own perception of a person's sex, or (if I like the person or am neutral towards them) to be polite. I have no need or wish to be polite to people who try to compel my speech.

I hadn't seen your thread EmbarrassingHadrosaurus, have bookmarked to read later.