I am sure Andrew Doyle must regret his reaction. He has always done a brilliant job defending GC women against the extremism of transactivists. Your argument must have got lost in the pile-on of abuse hurled at him, and seemed to come from the same direction, when in fact your legal argument was unimpeacheable. I had never heard this argument, though I follow all matters GC vs Trans. I think Doyle had probably never heard it either. Indeed, as you say, the selective willingness to refer to transwomen as "she" (whenever they are your friends, or seem reasonable people like Debbie Hayton) can expose GC women to accusations of malicious misgendering whenever they refuse to do so. If some people can use pronouns that do not correspond to sex, why can't everyone? - so the argument might go. And this indeed would be a very bad consequence of this kind of selective politeness. When I read Andrew Doyle's piece in Unherd the other day, I liked his analogy to bowing one's head in prayer out of respect to your hosts at dinner, while not being a believer. But your clear legal argument is much stronger. Thank you, Alessandra, you are my Queen too (to echo someone's comment to your piece about Italy).
Like you, I think Andrew must regret his initial reaction, at least the parts he's deleted. Unlike you this is the first I've heard of Alessandra and I'd like to think I'm approaching this from a disinterested position. Her legal argument may be logically sound, but far from unimpeachable. The argument that a personal choice in how we refer to someone may be coopted by the evil TRAs for legal fights around 'misgendering' strikes me as implausible (or unsustainable if it does happen). Not that there won't be legal fights and that TRAs won't be using any underhand trick in their book to advance their 'interests', as they already are. But that we must stick to such an absolutist position, with no room for nuance or personal choice, does strike me as extremist. Alessandra knows this is the case and tries to disarm it by deriding and ridiculing anyone accusing her - accurately in my opinion - as simplistic, purist, an ideologue, or an ultra as ignorant (citing their lack of knowledge of the US constitutional doctrine around the subject). The fact she knows that doesn't make it less valid though, or less true.
Your comment misses the mark. Courts in England have insisted that rapists be given the honorific “her”—there’s actually a notorious Ricky Gervais joke about this insane fact. Laws and institutional norms work together to enforce behavior. Major institutions, including academia, the media, and the courts, have been demanding pronoun conformity for quite awhile. The American Press guidelines instruct journalists to use opposite sex pronouns for trans identified males. The NYT referred to Harvey Marceline, a serial killer of women, as “she.” Murderers and rapists of women are now housed in women’s prisons, and the state that imprisons them calls them “she,” and expects the women prisoners to do so also. The “personal choice” ship sailed long ago. You write like it’s still 2003.
What's the logical chain from private choice about how to address someone to the public enforcement of compelled speech (legal, organisational, or other)? I acknowledge and share your repulsion regarding the institutional denial of reality in all the cases you've brought up but how does it follow we should now advocate its mirror image, trying to enforce - through reputational hounding or any future legal means you might desire - compelled speech favoured by another group?
That said my comment was about something else entirely and I don't want to defend (or apologise for) something I never said or meant, in any language, whether of 2024, 2003 or 1990, whatever its implied impact on the truth value of my response.
asking a person not t lie is not compelling speech. The US constitutional doctrine of compelled speech is a completely irrelevant and quite out of place.
To clarify the logical chain: Two of the examples I cited involve branches of state power -- the court and the prison. When courts demand that male rapists be addressed with female pronouns, their demand is not merely about politeness or personal choice. The courts have the power to punish and imprison. The use of opposite sex pronouns by courts makes a mockery of the idea that pronouns are simply a "private choice." The actual rape victim has been denied her individual conscience, her choice, by state power. Whether we're talking about California (see: Dana Rivers), Scotland (see: Isla Bryson), or elsewhere, state power increasingly enforces fealty to opposite sex pronouns. Even more egregiously, state-run prisons force incarcerated females to live with violent males because the pronoun "she" instantiates the fiction that a violent male could possibly be a "she," which absurd on it face. This is a matter of purposefully deceitful language used at the highest levels of power. Pronouns do the work of distorting reality, and it is on the basis of this pronoun sleight-of-hand that women in prison are harmed by both trans identified males and the state's power to enforce gender ideology.
That's the logical chain. As Max Weber explained, the state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The examples I have given demonstrate the state forcing gender lies onto women. The harm this causes goes well beyond a Twitter/X bullying pile-on -- which is harmful, to be sure, but the nature and the magnitude of harm caused by harsh words on social media does not compare to the state forcing capitulation to gender ideology.
There is literally nothing you said I would disagree with, but we are still debating (and I'm grateful for your taking the time to rebut my arguments). So I've been wondering where's the disconnect. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it may be that we have a different understanding of 'public' and 'private'. You wrote 'the use of opposite sex pronouns by courts makes a mockery of the idea that pronouns are simply a 'private choice'' and I fully agree, but I don't see it as an example of 'private' choice, but institutionally mandated irrationality. And the dire consequence you listed are real.
I'm not fully consistent in my thinking because my moral intuition says there should be exceptions when it comes to forms of address, even in institutional settings, when the sex of the individual has no bearing on women's rights, is a matter of common courtesy and tacit acknowledgement of their mental health struggles. I'm on shaky leggs here but putting it out so that it's clear where I stand.
For me Andrew's choice to address Debbie as 'she' was a personal choice divorced from the broader fight in favour of reason, truth and rationality, a fight he's contributed to enormously, often - like Alessandra - at significant personal cost. That's probably why he singled her out in his UnHerd article, others' attacks register but ultimately do not matter, hers must have really stung. It's like Laverne Cox turning on Owen Jones. And it's regrettable, now that I know more of Alessandra and her contributions, the courage she's shown, and the mistreatment she's experienced, the whole malarkey makes me sad.
Telling a lie about a man's sex in order to cater to his perversion or mental illness isn't a form of common courtesy or politeness.
People who do this are weak and they are liars. They're cowards. They can dress it up however they like, but that is the truth. And we can point that out all we like.
They would never call a 70 pound anorexic obese in order to be "polite." They would never call a schizophrenic Napoleon in order to appease the voices in their heads to be "polite." That is nonsense.
Anyone who calls David Hayton "she" or "Debbie" is a weak liar. Nothing more.
And because of that, TERFs like me go out of our way to call him a man to his face. Because he is. There's no such thing as "trans" or a "trans" woman or "gender identity." The whole thing is a fraud.
Since the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon circa 1750, women's subjugation have been based on BOTH the intimate, private sphere AND the public sphere. Our fight for liberation, which has lasted 5000+ years, has been about having sovereignty over our bodies and the ability to define how we want to live--our voices, our boundaries, our needs, our understanding of ourselves. Your belief that you can separate the wider context of women's rights from the interpersonal realm rests on a fallacy. The interpersonal IS where women keep having to fight for our rights -- the fight against rape, harassment, men claiming ownership of our capacity for sexual reproduction, being able to give birth and mother without suffering a financial penalty, not being trafficked as sexual objects, fleeing from domestic violence... The list is very long. The argument that we should prioritize a man's mental health issues over women's freedom and autonomy actually reproduces male dominance. Consider this: There are 14.2 million women in a state of abject slavery in Afghanistan, and women in America still pay a huge economic penalty for giving birth and raising children (economists call it the motherhood penalty.). In the last two years, we have lost our reproductive freedom (with attempts to make contraception illegal now becoming a concerning political issue!), while the Title IX protections we worked for decades to win have been destroyed by the Biden administration. Women in many countries --including the USA -- are imprisoned, at this very time, for miscarriage. Male dominance exists on a spectrum, from the absolute to the subtly tyrannical, but it has not been overcome.
This issue cannot be separated from the wider context of women's everyday lives, and our ongoing, arduous historical struggle for freedom and self-determination.
Yes, I see your point. I hadn't thought of it that way. There should be room for personal choice. I just thought that the selective politeness/ personal choice strategy would give ammunition to devious lawyers. I think it might. After all it is lawyers and judges who have come up with ridiculous nonsense such as "the belief in the real immutable nature of sex is not worthy of respect in a democratic society" or "a GRC changes a person's legal sex for all purposes, including for the the purposes of the Equality Act", and so on. But I think (and hope) you are right, thank you for this comment.
I share you concern. I hope I am right, too, but we live in crazy times and the madness Andrew once lampooned for hyberbolic comic effect as his Titania McGrath persona has, to my horror and morbid amusement, actually been prophetic!
Indeed Titania has been prophetic. I could not have more admiration and gratitude for Andrew than I already do. All his books are fantastic, and so is his Free Speech Nation. I can see Alessandra's point, though (though I had never heard this view), and I think people on the same side should clear up this misunderstanding and not fight each other. Perhaps they both overreacted and will reconcile. Andrew could invite Alessandra to GB News?
Did you seriously just describe “you shouldn’t lie about something this fundamental and impactful” as an absolutist position? Please defend this absurd claim.
The logical chain is clear. Powerful institutions have made it a sign of right mindedness to declare “your pronouns” and expect you to abide by others’ declarations. Email signatures contain not only listed pronouns, but links to articles asserting that “Pronouns are important.” This is common in academia. Yet in academia, it is verboten to link to an article asserting “pronouns are bad.” Anyone who tries to will suffer heavy career and personal cost—as can be seen in the hounding of Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix. Your argument is a weak version of “both sides!” Can you name a single major institution where trans activists have been hounded out of their livelihoods and harassed for offering pronouns?
I've tried my best and I've been accused of 'both-side-ism' before, so that may be a character flaw. I'll stick to my belief we are talking at cross purposes and arguing different things.
I have been ostracised by some of my social circle for my gender critical beliefs and branded a bigot by others. Others still claim my beliefs, though not hateful in themselves, lead to discrimination and hatred towards trans people. I've always considered it a hyperbole, that is until the Andrew Doyle affair. I must admit it has given me pause.
You argue eloquently about what you describe as 'the right of women to hold on to material reality without being accused of being ideological extremists who want to compel everyone's speech'. That's quite a mouthful. One can recognise material reality while not an extremist bent on compelled speech, but one can as easily be a material realist while ideologically extreme AND a censorious illiberal. Based on this post, the only one of yours I've ever read, you'd fall into the latter camp.
Unpacking your post would require an article of equal length, and you make - in my opinion - a number of valid points. But my whole experience, which is obviously limited, says most gender criticals want an acknowledgement of material reality and some kind of accommodation with that as the starting point. Once common sense prevails and it becomes a truth universally acknowledged that trans women are men the rest should be a tacit or explicit social contract.
You use your legal expertise to rightly point to potential pitfalls. But then you fall into an absolutist rabbit hole concluding that hence any individual choice in pronoun use is pandering to some evil leading to inevitable tragedy. A mirror image of TRAs saying misgendering leads to their feeling unsafe, and what follows is misery and, inevitably, suicide.
As you admitted everything started from your tweet saying you don't trust Andrew because he lies in order to pander to a fetishist's feelings and his kinks. You went defensive about it saying it was to be expected from a woman exasperated by his ignorance that this constituted a 'safeguarding risk'. I don't think it was 'to be expected'. I think it was plain nasty. You intimated Andrew's reasons for his words (ugly ones in your opinion) and used it to malign his character (he's not trustworthy because he lies to indulge a pervert, he knowingly does it to harm women and children) and implied his degeneracy may have no bounds (what else are you ready to do...).
The decent thing to do would be to apologise to Andrew. But you won't, as you said this would be admitting there is room for people to make their own choices, ones that are not depraved and nefarious, for how they address other people. And this for me is extremism with ideological blinkers on. You may be ideologically pure, but you do the movement harm and set it back, yours will be the views the TRAs use to show the intolerance, prejudice and disrimination implicit in gender-critical feminism.
He didn’t elicit any sympathy from me. Team Feminist Dogpile all the way!
I did not however realize how dishonest he was being about the concrete substance of your interactions with him. That is disappointing. I just thought ah, things got heated, but the women who think we should call men men every time are the ones making coherent sense on that question. That is where the light is no matter the amount of heat.
David Hayton is a man. And if he KNOWS he's a man, how on earth can he FEEL LIKE he's a woman? In that case, what is the point of anything this degenerate does? Would any other perversion be treated this way? Would any other mentally ill people make such irrational demands as this man does?
He's not a "trans" woman because that does not exist. There's no type of woman who's actually a man. He's a man--there's one kind. To say anything else is a lie. And if people lie, they should be called liars. That's simple enough. Admit you're a liar and call it a day.
Nobody would call anorexics fat to be "polite." Nobody would call schizophrenics Napoleon to be polite to the voices in their head. We understand that these people are mentally ill and don't need "affirmation." They need to be told NO, which is what David needs to hear. Anything else means you become part of the problem.
So the answer must be NO. To everything. That is the only solution. To call a man "she" or use a female name like "Debbie" means you are unable to stand for the truth, which means you become part of the lie. They know that, which is why they fight so hard for it. David is the problem, and men like him know it.
Nobody has a "gender identity" because "gender" does not exist for humans. It's a linguistics term for words only.
I totally agree with you on this topic. However, I don’t think the author did herself, or the side of reality, any favours by attacking and making insinuations about Doyle. He may be wrong, but she could have just said he was wrong to use female pronouns, and said why she thought so; instead she maligned his character. Being “exasperated” is no excuse. You get what you give.
It’s not an “insinuation” to call a lie a lie. It only maligns his character because he knowingly lies, repeatedly and despite having been informed of the harm and offense his lies cause. If you think calling out liars doesn’t do the side of reality any favors, I would say you yourself have lost touch with reality, not to mention your moral compass.
“What else are you willing to do for men, knowing that you harm women and children?”
That is an insinuation. It’s unnecessary and catty and pointlessly combative.
You telling me that using someone’s “preferred pronouns” causes “harm and offence” is the mirror of those who say NOT using “preferred pronouns” causes harm and offence. Then you start attacking people’s character in the same way they do… do I need to draw you a picture? You are them. They are you. You have sunk to their level. Enjoy being in the mud with the pigs.
I am sure Andrew Doyle must regret his reaction. He has always done a brilliant job defending GC women against the extremism of transactivists. Your argument must have got lost in the pile-on of abuse hurled at him, and seemed to come from the same direction, when in fact your legal argument was unimpeacheable. I had never heard this argument, though I follow all matters GC vs Trans. I think Doyle had probably never heard it either. Indeed, as you say, the selective willingness to refer to transwomen as "she" (whenever they are your friends, or seem reasonable people like Debbie Hayton) can expose GC women to accusations of malicious misgendering whenever they refuse to do so. If some people can use pronouns that do not correspond to sex, why can't everyone? - so the argument might go. And this indeed would be a very bad consequence of this kind of selective politeness. When I read Andrew Doyle's piece in Unherd the other day, I liked his analogy to bowing one's head in prayer out of respect to your hosts at dinner, while not being a believer. But your clear legal argument is much stronger. Thank you, Alessandra, you are my Queen too (to echo someone's comment to your piece about Italy).
Andrew's analogy is nonsense.
It's possible to become a member of a religion, and religious beliefs are protected by law.
It's impossible for a man to become a woman. And mental illness is not protected by law.
He's trying to dress up his cowardice by citing "respect."
It's pathetic. He should admit he's a weak liar because that's the truth.
I have no idea why you are so sure of this, when his actions clearly signal the opposite.
Like you, I think Andrew must regret his initial reaction, at least the parts he's deleted. Unlike you this is the first I've heard of Alessandra and I'd like to think I'm approaching this from a disinterested position. Her legal argument may be logically sound, but far from unimpeachable. The argument that a personal choice in how we refer to someone may be coopted by the evil TRAs for legal fights around 'misgendering' strikes me as implausible (or unsustainable if it does happen). Not that there won't be legal fights and that TRAs won't be using any underhand trick in their book to advance their 'interests', as they already are. But that we must stick to such an absolutist position, with no room for nuance or personal choice, does strike me as extremist. Alessandra knows this is the case and tries to disarm it by deriding and ridiculing anyone accusing her - accurately in my opinion - as simplistic, purist, an ideologue, or an ultra as ignorant (citing their lack of knowledge of the US constitutional doctrine around the subject). The fact she knows that doesn't make it less valid though, or less true.
It is not extremist to simply use the correct pronouns. What is extremist is to insist one has to lie about someone's sex.
Your comment misses the mark. Courts in England have insisted that rapists be given the honorific “her”—there’s actually a notorious Ricky Gervais joke about this insane fact. Laws and institutional norms work together to enforce behavior. Major institutions, including academia, the media, and the courts, have been demanding pronoun conformity for quite awhile. The American Press guidelines instruct journalists to use opposite sex pronouns for trans identified males. The NYT referred to Harvey Marceline, a serial killer of women, as “she.” Murderers and rapists of women are now housed in women’s prisons, and the state that imprisons them calls them “she,” and expects the women prisoners to do so also. The “personal choice” ship sailed long ago. You write like it’s still 2003.
What's the logical chain from private choice about how to address someone to the public enforcement of compelled speech (legal, organisational, or other)? I acknowledge and share your repulsion regarding the institutional denial of reality in all the cases you've brought up but how does it follow we should now advocate its mirror image, trying to enforce - through reputational hounding or any future legal means you might desire - compelled speech favoured by another group?
That said my comment was about something else entirely and I don't want to defend (or apologise for) something I never said or meant, in any language, whether of 2024, 2003 or 1990, whatever its implied impact on the truth value of my response.
asking a person not t lie is not compelling speech. The US constitutional doctrine of compelled speech is a completely irrelevant and quite out of place.
To clarify the logical chain: Two of the examples I cited involve branches of state power -- the court and the prison. When courts demand that male rapists be addressed with female pronouns, their demand is not merely about politeness or personal choice. The courts have the power to punish and imprison. The use of opposite sex pronouns by courts makes a mockery of the idea that pronouns are simply a "private choice." The actual rape victim has been denied her individual conscience, her choice, by state power. Whether we're talking about California (see: Dana Rivers), Scotland (see: Isla Bryson), or elsewhere, state power increasingly enforces fealty to opposite sex pronouns. Even more egregiously, state-run prisons force incarcerated females to live with violent males because the pronoun "she" instantiates the fiction that a violent male could possibly be a "she," which absurd on it face. This is a matter of purposefully deceitful language used at the highest levels of power. Pronouns do the work of distorting reality, and it is on the basis of this pronoun sleight-of-hand that women in prison are harmed by both trans identified males and the state's power to enforce gender ideology.
That's the logical chain. As Max Weber explained, the state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The examples I have given demonstrate the state forcing gender lies onto women. The harm this causes goes well beyond a Twitter/X bullying pile-on -- which is harmful, to be sure, but the nature and the magnitude of harm caused by harsh words on social media does not compare to the state forcing capitulation to gender ideology.
There is literally nothing you said I would disagree with, but we are still debating (and I'm grateful for your taking the time to rebut my arguments). So I've been wondering where's the disconnect. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it may be that we have a different understanding of 'public' and 'private'. You wrote 'the use of opposite sex pronouns by courts makes a mockery of the idea that pronouns are simply a 'private choice'' and I fully agree, but I don't see it as an example of 'private' choice, but institutionally mandated irrationality. And the dire consequence you listed are real.
I'm not fully consistent in my thinking because my moral intuition says there should be exceptions when it comes to forms of address, even in institutional settings, when the sex of the individual has no bearing on women's rights, is a matter of common courtesy and tacit acknowledgement of their mental health struggles. I'm on shaky leggs here but putting it out so that it's clear where I stand.
For me Andrew's choice to address Debbie as 'she' was a personal choice divorced from the broader fight in favour of reason, truth and rationality, a fight he's contributed to enormously, often - like Alessandra - at significant personal cost. That's probably why he singled her out in his UnHerd article, others' attacks register but ultimately do not matter, hers must have really stung. It's like Laverne Cox turning on Owen Jones. And it's regrettable, now that I know more of Alessandra and her contributions, the courage she's shown, and the mistreatment she's experienced, the whole malarkey makes me sad.
Telling a lie about a man's sex in order to cater to his perversion or mental illness isn't a form of common courtesy or politeness.
People who do this are weak and they are liars. They're cowards. They can dress it up however they like, but that is the truth. And we can point that out all we like.
They would never call a 70 pound anorexic obese in order to be "polite." They would never call a schizophrenic Napoleon in order to appease the voices in their heads to be "polite." That is nonsense.
Anyone who calls David Hayton "she" or "Debbie" is a weak liar. Nothing more.
And because of that, TERFs like me go out of our way to call him a man to his face. Because he is. There's no such thing as "trans" or a "trans" woman or "gender identity." The whole thing is a fraud.
Since the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon circa 1750, women's subjugation have been based on BOTH the intimate, private sphere AND the public sphere. Our fight for liberation, which has lasted 5000+ years, has been about having sovereignty over our bodies and the ability to define how we want to live--our voices, our boundaries, our needs, our understanding of ourselves. Your belief that you can separate the wider context of women's rights from the interpersonal realm rests on a fallacy. The interpersonal IS where women keep having to fight for our rights -- the fight against rape, harassment, men claiming ownership of our capacity for sexual reproduction, being able to give birth and mother without suffering a financial penalty, not being trafficked as sexual objects, fleeing from domestic violence... The list is very long. The argument that we should prioritize a man's mental health issues over women's freedom and autonomy actually reproduces male dominance. Consider this: There are 14.2 million women in a state of abject slavery in Afghanistan, and women in America still pay a huge economic penalty for giving birth and raising children (economists call it the motherhood penalty.). In the last two years, we have lost our reproductive freedom (with attempts to make contraception illegal now becoming a concerning political issue!), while the Title IX protections we worked for decades to win have been destroyed by the Biden administration. Women in many countries --including the USA -- are imprisoned, at this very time, for miscarriage. Male dominance exists on a spectrum, from the absolute to the subtly tyrannical, but it has not been overcome.
This issue cannot be separated from the wider context of women's everyday lives, and our ongoing, arduous historical struggle for freedom and self-determination.
Yes, I see your point. I hadn't thought of it that way. There should be room for personal choice. I just thought that the selective politeness/ personal choice strategy would give ammunition to devious lawyers. I think it might. After all it is lawyers and judges who have come up with ridiculous nonsense such as "the belief in the real immutable nature of sex is not worthy of respect in a democratic society" or "a GRC changes a person's legal sex for all purposes, including for the the purposes of the Equality Act", and so on. But I think (and hope) you are right, thank you for this comment.
I share you concern. I hope I am right, too, but we live in crazy times and the madness Andrew once lampooned for hyberbolic comic effect as his Titania McGrath persona has, to my horror and morbid amusement, actually been prophetic!
Indeed Titania has been prophetic. I could not have more admiration and gratitude for Andrew than I already do. All his books are fantastic, and so is his Free Speech Nation. I can see Alessandra's point, though (though I had never heard this view), and I think people on the same side should clear up this misunderstanding and not fight each other. Perhaps they both overreacted and will reconcile. Andrew could invite Alessandra to GB News?
Nothing would make me happier. And a great idea, pitty Andrew won't read this, he should defo invite Alessandra to his show.
You make your personal choice.
Male rapists are in women's prisons. That's where this has gotten us.
So good job.
Did you seriously just describe “you shouldn’t lie about something this fundamental and impactful” as an absolutist position? Please defend this absurd claim.
The logical chain is clear. Powerful institutions have made it a sign of right mindedness to declare “your pronouns” and expect you to abide by others’ declarations. Email signatures contain not only listed pronouns, but links to articles asserting that “Pronouns are important.” This is common in academia. Yet in academia, it is verboten to link to an article asserting “pronouns are bad.” Anyone who tries to will suffer heavy career and personal cost—as can be seen in the hounding of Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix. Your argument is a weak version of “both sides!” Can you name a single major institution where trans activists have been hounded out of their livelihoods and harassed for offering pronouns?
I've tried my best and I've been accused of 'both-side-ism' before, so that may be a character flaw. I'll stick to my belief we are talking at cross purposes and arguing different things.
I have been ostracised by some of my social circle for my gender critical beliefs and branded a bigot by others. Others still claim my beliefs, though not hateful in themselves, lead to discrimination and hatred towards trans people. I've always considered it a hyperbole, that is until the Andrew Doyle affair. I must admit it has given me pause.
You argue eloquently about what you describe as 'the right of women to hold on to material reality without being accused of being ideological extremists who want to compel everyone's speech'. That's quite a mouthful. One can recognise material reality while not an extremist bent on compelled speech, but one can as easily be a material realist while ideologically extreme AND a censorious illiberal. Based on this post, the only one of yours I've ever read, you'd fall into the latter camp.
Unpacking your post would require an article of equal length, and you make - in my opinion - a number of valid points. But my whole experience, which is obviously limited, says most gender criticals want an acknowledgement of material reality and some kind of accommodation with that as the starting point. Once common sense prevails and it becomes a truth universally acknowledged that trans women are men the rest should be a tacit or explicit social contract.
You use your legal expertise to rightly point to potential pitfalls. But then you fall into an absolutist rabbit hole concluding that hence any individual choice in pronoun use is pandering to some evil leading to inevitable tragedy. A mirror image of TRAs saying misgendering leads to their feeling unsafe, and what follows is misery and, inevitably, suicide.
As you admitted everything started from your tweet saying you don't trust Andrew because he lies in order to pander to a fetishist's feelings and his kinks. You went defensive about it saying it was to be expected from a woman exasperated by his ignorance that this constituted a 'safeguarding risk'. I don't think it was 'to be expected'. I think it was plain nasty. You intimated Andrew's reasons for his words (ugly ones in your opinion) and used it to malign his character (he's not trustworthy because he lies to indulge a pervert, he knowingly does it to harm women and children) and implied his degeneracy may have no bounds (what else are you ready to do...).
The decent thing to do would be to apologise to Andrew. But you won't, as you said this would be admitting there is room for people to make their own choices, ones that are not depraved and nefarious, for how they address other people. And this for me is extremism with ideological blinkers on. You may be ideologically pure, but you do the movement harm and set it back, yours will be the views the TRAs use to show the intolerance, prejudice and disrimination implicit in gender-critical feminism.
Yes but why on earth are you referring to men as a type of woman when you make the case otherwise so well, against using females’ words for men?!
He didn’t elicit any sympathy from me. Team Feminist Dogpile all the way!
I did not however realize how dishonest he was being about the concrete substance of your interactions with him. That is disappointing. I just thought ah, things got heated, but the women who think we should call men men every time are the ones making coherent sense on that question. That is where the light is no matter the amount of heat.
This whole thing is a fraud.
David Hayton is a man. And if he KNOWS he's a man, how on earth can he FEEL LIKE he's a woman? In that case, what is the point of anything this degenerate does? Would any other perversion be treated this way? Would any other mentally ill people make such irrational demands as this man does?
He's not a "trans" woman because that does not exist. There's no type of woman who's actually a man. He's a man--there's one kind. To say anything else is a lie. And if people lie, they should be called liars. That's simple enough. Admit you're a liar and call it a day.
Nobody would call anorexics fat to be "polite." Nobody would call schizophrenics Napoleon to be polite to the voices in their head. We understand that these people are mentally ill and don't need "affirmation." They need to be told NO, which is what David needs to hear. Anything else means you become part of the problem.
So the answer must be NO. To everything. That is the only solution. To call a man "she" or use a female name like "Debbie" means you are unable to stand for the truth, which means you become part of the lie. They know that, which is why they fight so hard for it. David is the problem, and men like him know it.
Nobody has a "gender identity" because "gender" does not exist for humans. It's a linguistics term for words only.
This entire thing is a fraud. End of story.
I totally agree with you on this topic. However, I don’t think the author did herself, or the side of reality, any favours by attacking and making insinuations about Doyle. He may be wrong, but she could have just said he was wrong to use female pronouns, and said why she thought so; instead she maligned his character. Being “exasperated” is no excuse. You get what you give.
It’s not an “insinuation” to call a lie a lie. It only maligns his character because he knowingly lies, repeatedly and despite having been informed of the harm and offense his lies cause. If you think calling out liars doesn’t do the side of reality any favors, I would say you yourself have lost touch with reality, not to mention your moral compass.
“What else are you willing to do for men, knowing that you harm women and children?”
That is an insinuation. It’s unnecessary and catty and pointlessly combative.
You telling me that using someone’s “preferred pronouns” causes “harm and offence” is the mirror of those who say NOT using “preferred pronouns” causes harm and offence. Then you start attacking people’s character in the same way they do… do I need to draw you a picture? You are them. They are you. You have sunk to their level. Enjoy being in the mud with the pigs.
No, it’s a direct question. It is not unnecessary or pointlessly combative, it’s logical. If you are willing to lie, what else are you willing to do?
Saying a lie is offensive is in no way equivalent to saying the truth is offensive.