Pronoun Trouble

Sending this around again because the concerted media campaign to make women accept the compromise of male pronouns for trans sex offenders only is disturbing. There should be NO sacred caste of men singled out for preferential treatment. Did Savile not teach them anything? Rotheram? Paedophilia in the church? How many more victims are they willing to sacrifice for their political compromises?

Here we are again. Pronouns. We are all so sick of them, aren’t we? Why can’t women just be kind already and move on to the bigger problems? Aren’t us women used to being told we are not doing feminism right and there is always something else we should be worrying our pretty little heads about. Kind of smarts when it is other women repeating this tired old chestnut.

There are so many arguments against validating someone’s fake pronouns that it feels like a pick ‘n’ mix. So I will start from one that feels personal to me, as an Italian. There is more than a whiff of American cultural imperialism in linking so closely gender identity and English language pronouns. While we are told gender identites are a universal experience spanning time and place, on the other hand, their expression is imbricated in the English language and almost impossible to transfer to other languages and cultures. For a start, some other languages, such as Turkish, do not even have gendered pronouns. Bow your head in sympathy with trans and non-binary people in Turkey, unable to express their gender identity through language. Italian does not make a distinction between his and her. ‘Preferred pronouns’ are clearly quite a specific cultural artefact, the monstrous offspring of the medical-transvestite/transsexual marriage, picked up uncritically by ‘queer academia’ and then spread across the world through the hegemonic power of American cultural production. On social media you will see countless profiles from trans and non-binary individuals from around the world with English pronouns in their bio. If this is not proof of cultural imperialism, I do not know what is.

This argument brings us easily to the next one. Pronouns are a shibboleth. They serve the function, when used by people who are not trans or non-binary (so most of us) of signalling one’s compliance with gender ideology. Why else would I need to put pronouns in my email signature, or state them at the beginning of a work meeting, as if meetings were not already painful enough? Why should I care which pronouns people use to talk about me when I am not even around? But this is not their purpose. Their purpose is to signal acceptance of the ideology. Accepting that someone’s stated gender identity matters more than their sex in language. More, they destabilise language, because they are such a fundamental part of it, decoupling them from the reality they refer to, the reality of sex, is a profoundly disabling tool.

Oh I can hear them, the gender critical people who wave their hands, ‘we are just being courteous’! (which sounds so much posher than kind); ‘we know they are men, silly!’. And I think, have they spent the last 10 years in a cave?

If they use them out of courtesy, are they signalling they are the good women? The reasonable ones. The kind ones. We, inevitably, are the witches. The bitches. The extremists. The fascists. They are starting to sound more and more like your average social media TRA, aren’t they?

And if they ‘know’ they are men, why do they call them women? Even the ones who say they are men. Oh the exquisite pleasure they must derive, these AGP men, from getting gender critical women to call them women by insisting they are men. It is so devious I almost admire it. Almost.

Oh, but it is their choice. Their free speech. ‘I will not have my speech compelled!’ they yell, as they stomp their metaphorical feet. They must have been delightful pupils, refusing to follow the rules of grammar because they compelled their speech. It is unfortunate there is no ‘Free Speech for Dummies’ book, as these people clearly need it. Maybe I ought to write one.

So, shortly. Private individuals do not ‘compel your speech’. Asking you not to lie about a person’s sex and to follow the rules of grammar, which, if you are a journalist, are kind of relevant to your job, is a reasonable demand. If you refuse it we are entitled to ridicule you.

Clearly if there is someone compelling speech it is transgender people and their allies, using the power of the police, of the courts, of employment and equality law, to bully women (especially women) into referring to men as women if this is their demand. And, to paraphrase Madeleine Albright, there is a special place in hell for women who equate the men bullying us into calling them women to the women resisting and asking for solidarity in their resistance. Instead of never using female pronouns for males in solidarity with the women who are forced to do so by circumstances, some women appeal to their ‘freedom of speech’. What a luxury that is, and how they are wasting it to pander to men who get sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as women and by any validation of that thought.

In the end, these pronouns are just a squalid lie. Lying receives little to no protection in freedom of speech constitutional law and human rights, for obvious reasons. It beggars belief that some people are defending their right to lie about something so easily discovered. How they think we can trust them, especially if they are in the business of uncovering and reporting facts, such as journalists are, is truly a mystery. If they want to use female pronouns for the AGP du jour socially, free to do so. I have no inclination to ever meet them socially as I like to have fun in my free time. But when they write an article in a newspaper, a man is a man is a man. How many litres of ink have been wasted to write about how important it is not to deceive the public about a man’s sex?

‘Oh, but these are nice she-men! We do not use female pronouns for known sex offenders!’ Only my exceedingly nice nature prevents me from reminding you which woman dared to use an argument at the same time so profoundly idiotic and so openly offensive to women. Any woman will know that most sex offenders are not ‘kown’ sex offenders. Even the rapists. Most rapes are never prosecuted which means that most rapists walk freely amongst us. And if they decide they are women, they will get the ‘honour’ of a female pronoun by women who should return their feminism card pronto.

‘But, but, but, you agree with right wing men who want us pregnant and bare-footed in the kitchen, how dare you get upset by a pronoun!’. Well, what can I say, I am so damn articulate I can convince even right wing men of the rightness of my opinion. All the same, you still have not explained why you call some men women. Surely you are not using the evidence of your eyes and your brain, because they would tell you that is a man. A man is a ‘he’. If you use ‘she’, you are, even subconsciously, obeying what you think is his wish.

Now, call me crazy, but I think obeying men’s wishes should never be the goal of feminism.