JK addresses “language policing”

[Mayyouleave]

Haven't seen a thread on this, if there is one I'll ask for this to be removed.
JK posted about language policing today.

It has started a lot of intense discussion (as do most JK posts) however this time it is mainly from women and men who are gender critical, sex realists, trans windows etc who are upset and annoyed about her post.
I agree with her about language policing, I wonder what the thoughts are on this board?

x.com/jk]]

I'll copy the text in for those not on twitter/X

*I say the following again because, while I understand people's strong views on the matter, some of the language policing is getting a bit wearing.

As I've said multiple times, I do not believe that a person can be born in the wrong body and I don't believe in gendered brains or souls. I believe the ideology that preaches such ideas is dangerous.

However, there are people in this world who want to present as the opposite sex for many diverse reasons - some of which I'm truly sympathetic to, others far less so - all of whom call themselves 'trans.' I use the word 'trans' in the full awareness that this umbrella term covers multiple groups who have nothing else in common with each other, such as straight men who enjoy cross-dressing for erotic purposes and young lesbians who, tragically, feel they'll be happier without their breasts.

When I talk about sex-based rights, I use the word 'trans' to denote 'people who wish to be seen or treated as the opposite sex', no more or less. Telling me ad nauseam that 'there is no such thing as a trans person' isn't overly helpful, because you're trying to pull me into a different argument, on which I've already made my position clear.*

The point is, with religion, in the the uk for the time being at least, we can muddle along each with our own beliefs. The compromises don't impact on safeguarding.

We can't do that with trans ideology because the same compromises don't exist. One man can call himself a a priest, another a rabbi and we can be polite and refer to them as such. We can say it without having to believe or compromise safeguarding.

I can't do that with a man who wants to be seen as a woman. If i call him she, even if i dont believe it, I'm adding to the removal of safeguarding.

If i compromise and not call him she or he, im still not accurately describing him as male.

So its not just a white lie in the name of a better life for everyone, its the removal of a fundamental need in society. We need to say 'he's a man everywhere in society' to avoid the idea that some men arent really men sometimes.

I think the problem fundamentally here is that secularism as a solution came to dominate at a time when the prevailing ideologies were primarily religious, and they were clashing, and the state in many cases was expressly linked to various religious systems of governance.

The practical solution for this was secularism which is to say that the state no longer formally represented and one particular religious authority. Individuals within the system could of course still be religious, and the laws still tended to reflect Christian beliefs and social values, because that's what the people in society believed in.

If we look at what is happening now a lot IMO comes down to the fact "secular" only seems to refer to religious philosophical systems, not non-rrligious ones. So you can have government of political parties ties very explicitly to such ideologies and systems, even ones that are as encompassing as religions - Marxism being a good example. It's materialist, or wants to be anyway, but it's very much an totalizing viewpoint that encompasses things like the nature of metaphysics, the meaning and process of history, and ethics. Of course many people don't believe in those elements but they underlie the policy positions of Marxist parties.

Fuzzy mainstream secular humanism is also such a viewpoint.

This isn't actually a problem in secularism. Individuals are free to vote for policies informed or even dictated by their religious or ideological beliefs about good and evil, or the nature of history, etc. Many of our criminal laws come from what people think is right and good based on their own beliefs. There is a lot of overlap on these basic things.

However - Fuzzy mainstream secular humanism has become something of a problem, because it seems to believe that as it isn't "religion" it should be setting up moral and governing institutions that operate behind or just under the government. Like NGOs, like international, unelected organizations, etc. The problem isn't so much that ideology underpins the policies these groups want, the problem is they disrupt the structure of secular government which depends on a direct relation of voter to the state.

The point is that gender identity ideology needs to be categorised and treated like a religion but atm it is not. It has been mis-categorised as a social justice movement and that is where the problem lies. That is why we have absurd laws resulting in clear harm for women and safeguarding failures. This is what happens when religion gets tangled up in law.

It is treated as a relgion in some sense - the state calls men reverend rather than mister, the state calls some men female rather than male, the state allows a mr to call himself miss. Both of those is based on a belief rather than a truth.

If we re classify trans as a religion rather than a truth, why shouldnt the state recognise every religious title equally?

Personally, I could accept a situation where someone's legal title is Miss even if they are a male as along as a) that gave them no rights as a "female" i.e. no access to sports and spaces etc. and b) I wasn't forced to use it as a title i.e. I was free to choose to avoid it all together and just use their name, or free to say Mr if I wanted to.

I happily use our vicar's title of Reverend when speaking about and to her - I don't feel strongly enough about my lack of belief to make the point by referring to her as Mrs X. I don't know what the legal implications would be if I did that but I'm guessing it would be laughed out of court and I'd just be told that she found it offensive. Or would it be a hate crime? The whole notion of hate crime is ridiculous but that's a different subject.

I can't imagine a scenario where I would use someone's preferred pronouns because they had a certificate (GRC) saying that they were legally recognised. The impact of doing so is far greater than me using the title of Reverend for the vicar, as society already accepts that not everyone believes in god. So even if a person had a GRC with their "legal pronouns" on, I'd just avoid using pronouns at all. I'd still make the same points about why they shouldn't use facilities and services that were specifically for the opposite sex, just without pronouns being needed.

Edited to add: my caveats in the first paragraph effectively render the GRC pointless. It's only purpose should be that it says the law recognises that someone holds a belief.... which is indeed pointless. It makes as much sense as a Christian holding a certificate that says "I am one of God's children".

Are you just as happy for children to be brought used to the idea that a man can be called miss and she?

My son treated me to the “be kind” lecture the other week, and was then quite taken aback to hear that actually there are men placed in Womens prisons, that a transwoman was running a rape crisis centre etc. But I think I lost him because I talked about men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men. He felt that was transphobic. I know I’m not transphobic because I do know a fair number of young transpeople, and have nothing but love for them, I am very respectful and hope against hope that they won’t wake up one day and think what have I done. I do think they are pretending and that it places a strain on them. But I’m never going to say that out loud again because , as Bonfire Lady says, we have to respect peoples joutney.

No.

This belief should be nowhere near children.
Hopefully schools will be helped to recognise that there is already existing legislation that says staff shouldn't be teaching/promoting personal beliefs to children, particularly where these children are vulnerable. That's already in the statutory teaching standards guidance.
Plus the Nolan principles apply to all employees of public bodies, including those in schools, and govern how personal beliefs should be handled.

To add re children, we had a situation in our own household a couple of weeks ago where my eldest told me that one of the new joiners in her girls' league sports team (not at school) uses he/him pronouns. I said that it's good to know this, as I would avoid using pronouns altogether to avoid upsetting [child's name]. My b daughter's biggest concern was that I wouldn't remember, so I said that I would promise to make every effort to do so. We then had a conversation about how it was good that [name] recognised that it was better to stick with the girls' team for safety reasons. My daughter was recently injured by a boy in mixed-sexed contact sport at school (a story for another day, although I have mentioned it on another thread in full) so it struck quite a chord with her. I then said that I guess the biggest issue we needed to watch out for was a "biological male" who identified as a girl deciding to join her girls' team (and potentially taking team selection spaces off the girls in the squad) or on an opposition team (and potentially injuring people). Her eyes widened and she nodded.

@Zebracat similar-ish to your experience, I've been navigating "acceptable vocabulary" with my daughter for a while. I've had to do a combination of gentle nudges, asking opinion, biting my tongue and all sorts. Sometimes stopping the conversation and coming back to it, sometimes dropping it for good. Our settling on "biological male" was after she said that she found my description of "a boy who identifies as a girl" to be transphobic on a previous occasion.

This isn't about pandering to my daughter's "language policing", it's about keeping the conversation open and being mindful that she's on her own critical thinking and maturity journey. Thankfully we seem to have moved away from the days when she wanted puberty blockers to buy herself time to decide if she wanted to be a boy or a girl, but she's still getting lots of influencial messaging that means she might still end up concluding that she's actually a boy trapped in a girls' body, or needs to remove her breasts because she's "not really a girl" etc. To me, the overall message is far more important than me not "holding the line" on every single word. I'm still holding the line at the macro level.

Completely agree with JK👍

How does that work then? You happy for a mans legal title to be miss, but not in front of the children?

Transgender ideology has proven to constantly push boundaries and society has proven that it cant hold any line.

Thats why we have men in womens sports, we ponder the size of breast a man needs for it to be a fetish, we have the concept of a trans child.

If my follow-on comments didn't clarify my position well enough, I'll have one more go.

How does that work then? You happy for a mans legal title to be miss, but not in front of the children?

If my children were told to use a transwoman's legal title of "Miss" by someone (they certainly wouldn't be told that by me) I would say it was their choice whether they did or not. I would fully expect them to say they would do it to be kind. To which I would respond that I understood their choice but obviously they shouldn't forget that transwomen aren't actually women and sometimes this really matters. We've already had lots of conversations about the dangers of mixed sex contact sports (thank you Imane Khalif 🙏), the unfairness of mixed-sex non-contact sport and the assault risk etc of mixed sex changing, so I'd loop back to that. I would also tell them that I wouldn't be using any pronouns at all but I respected their choice to use whatever they wanted.
The example I gave above of the conversation I had with my daughter about the girls' sports team player with he/him pronouns is similar to this scenario.

Transgender ideology has proven to constantly push boundaries and society has proven that it cant hold any line.

Agreed. That's why I said To me, the overall message is far more important than me not "holding the line" on every single word. I'm still holding the line at the macro level.

Thats why we have men in womens sports,

Agreed.

we ponder the size of breast a man needs for it to be a fetish,

Do we? If so, I'll go with "any".

we have the concept of a trans child.

That's why in my very first post I said that I think it's important to recognise why the phrase "trans child" is an example of one that might benefit from "language policing" of sorts.

There's a trans identifying male teaching my son a sport at the moment. He's using his original male name but wants to be called by female pronouns ATM. It's clearly a difficult situation and I've noticed the manager (a woman) who we have known a long time and get on with is clearly uncomfortable with it and has used neutral pronouns. On posters for LGBTQ the wording has been very interesting and suggestive of trying to navigate a GC position whilst acknowledging the trans position. I don't know the ins and outs of it but it's much more considered than I've seen in a lot of places.

ATM, DS is happy. He's had a relationship with his teacher for sometime and they get on and work together well. I like the guy. It just bothers me that he's clearly got sucked into this (the fact he has sunflower lanyards speaks volumes).

We are fine with it because it's not having an impact on any party at present. We are monitoring it and seeing how it goes.

But for me this is part of my problem - it SHOULDN'T impact kids and employees working with children SHOULDN'T allow it to impact the kids.

In our case it's not so I'm fine with it at present. There's respect going on. There's no power / control dynamic.

It's possible it will escalate. We will cross that bridge. But for now, it's fine. I'd like DS to learn how to cope and to treat people who are different respectfully.

But it is all about this understanding of when it's overstepping and it's no longer professional and it's imposed.

This.

The idea that everyone can call a man she, and everyone can know they are saying it with a wink is clearly not true.

Otherwise we wouldnt be in a position where we are negotiating which men are in which womens sports. Someone is believing it to be able to write the guidelines. How many politicians or lawyers are stepping in to say 'youve missed the bit where we patiently explained we were being nice and they aren't woman'?

Its pointless trying to reset boundaries that have already failed.

Certainly, it's my understanding that from a safeguarding point of view there is never a situation where you call a man she.

Telling children, or anyone really, that they cannot identify a man as a man or they shouldn't, or it's customary not to, or it's polite, is a safeguarding failure.

I realise, that not everyone addresses this issue with safeguarding principles front and centre, though.

But in terms of legislation, and any authority, safeguarding should absolutely be front and centre.

I fully agree.

However, Redtoothbrush's post helps to bring alive how this kind of thing is playing out IRL at the moment, bearing in mind the reality of where we are currently.

Hopefully the new KCSIE guidance will help to recentre schools on to a better safeguarding pathway. It links to the draft Gender Questioning Children guidance, which doesn't go far enough to address why it's a safeguarding risk if you can't accurately sex someone, but it does make a start in that direction.

As woman and mothers, we know instinctively that the girls presenting as trans cannot be the same as adult men presenting as trans. Its multitudes of reasons, but not the same reasons.

Even if the men swear that they've felt this way since they were toddlers, we know what motivates a man to present as a woman. We know its often triggered by porn, the first clothes hidden is often underwear, i could go on.

I think we rush to call men 'she' because we want to pretend to ourselves that its not all men, or not the men we know.

All the time arguing that the non binary girl is completely different to the man we call 'she' out of politeness, or because in reality we dont have the option not to.

I think what some are saying is that we might sometimes have to adopt language from an ideology we don’t agree with in order to facilitate discussion. I don’t think by doing that we necessarily need to agree with it or endorse it. Just that it’s sometimes part of communicating about it.

If as an atheist you want to discuss faith, but your response to any mention of God is ‘God doesn’t exist’, that’s not going to facilitate much discussion. You sometimes have to do a bit of ‘I don’t accept god exists but if he does then….’. I think we sometimes have to do that with labels or terms from gender ideology.

That’s just for discussing it though. I don’t want the state to endorse it or adopt it. I don’t want people teaching it to kids. I don’t want it celebrated and lauded by every company I interact with.

There are now always going to be people who believe in gender ideology. Some will be vulnerable young people trying to help themselves through something tough. Some will just want somewhere to belong. Some might be men with less than savoury motivations. Some might be outright predators. They will share very little except a belief (to a greater or lesser degree) in gender ideology. Adherents to religions or cults or other groups can come from a similarly varied set of backgrounds with similarly varied motivations. It doesn’t mean there is no group.

At the moment, our state is not interested in separating out gender ideology. I think it could, if it wanted to, but it doesn’t presently want to because the prevailing attitude is all about being allies and supporting the most vulnerable etc. It’s currently considered the most moral and good and right thing to do by a large sector of the people who run our country and institutions.

Agreed.

That’s just for discussing it though. I don’t want the state to endorse it or adopt it. I don’t want people teaching it to kids. I don’t want it celebrated and lauded by every company I interact with.

This is the key bit ⬆️

And when it comes to schools, if they follow the KCSIE guidance (safeguarding) and the linked draft Gender Questioning Children guidance within it, this makes it clear that nobody can be forced to use preferred pronouns. It only talks about the preferred pronouns of children but it would be logical to extend it to members of staff too. Plus there are the existing statutory teaching standards and Nolan principles which (should already) govern how a teacher's belief that they have a gender identity that is different from their sex is managed in the school. But.....

At the moment, our state is not interested in separating out gender ideology.... the prevailing attitude is all about being allies and supporting the most vulnerable etc. It’s currently considered the most moral and good and right thing to do by a large sector of the people who run our country and institutions.

So we're left with navigating IRL situations as best we can. If we have a situation like Redtoothbrush describes I would build on the conversations I've already been having with the school (even though we've hit a bit of a block) and take it cautiously in a similar way to how Red has described.

The state already supports and has adopted trans ideology. Its is intended to confuse sex and gender.

We have got ourselves into a spiral. The GRA exists, therefore trans people exist, and to be polite, to avoid falling foul of unclear laws, or to discuss boundaries, we call these men she and woman.

And because we call these men she, we are seen to support these men as trans and therefore women.

The prevailing attitude is twaw because everyone makes up different excuses why its best not to call a man a man.

When confronted with the reality, like a rapist in a womans prison, the prevailing attitude is one on disgust, not support.

And because we call these men she, we are seen to support these men as trans and therefore women.

The prevailing attitude is twaw because everyone makes up different excuses why it's best not to call a man a man.

Exactly.

The prevailing attitude is twaw because everyone makes up different excuses why its best not to call a man a man.

I guess I'll accept that I've made up an excuse. Here it is:

I need to be able to talk to the adults who provide external support to my daughter (in healthcare, education and more) in a way that engages them in the conversation. I don't go in saying that transwomen are men** because the risks of them disengaging have too great a consequence for my daughter. There are countless examples of social workers, teachers and others managing parents as a risk to their own child because they see the parent as a transphobe who won't let their child be their authentic self. So many of them can't see a difference between LGB and T/gender questioning, so wrap it all up as bigotry. By engaging the way that I have, I've gained support along the way. Now that I've hit a difficult patch - I always knew I was going to bump in to a blocker at some point - the support that I've got to date has proved pivotal in delivering support both directly and indirectly to my daughter.
As a second excuse, I need to be able to keep the conversation open with my daughter. There is far too much risk of her alienating herself from me. I've written on a previous thread that she once announced at school, thankfully in a small setting, that "my mum is a homophobe and a transphobe". Luckily there was a member of staff in the room who knew about my conversations with the school who said "No, your mum is just concerned about vulnerable children being harmed. Lots of adults are". I can fully understand why the staff member didn't feel it was appropriate to then start discussing LGB versus T with all the children in the room.

** Obviously this is what I believe, just as I also believe god doesn't exist (see above re my hypothetical letter written in a way that goes in from this angle).

You previously said that you expect childen to refer to a man as Miss to be kind, but its ok because we can explain twanw, then say you have to use preferred pronouns to not alienate your daughter.

I understand the trap you are in personally, but cant you see how we all have contributed to this position?

This wasnt something our grandparents had to navigate, it something manufactured and holds, in part, because none of us are willing to say a man is a man.

Id love the idea that being kind would work, but this has been mainstream for at least 8 years, with everyone respecting pronouns and little has change.