Catholic journalist gets visit from police after ‘misgendering’ a trans person

[John24]

Wrapping bubble wrap around everyone, plugging all ears, sticking duct tape over every mouth, and immobilizing potentially wayward fingers in the vicinity of keyboards doesn’t sound like a practical solution.

The practical solution is being kind. Misgendering is not kind.

Do you feel the same way about complaints over the use of racial slurs?

 

[Kaninchen]

Except that, rather like me, your difference is one that is embraced as ‘difference’. You’re Irish and vocal about it, I’m Jewish and not apologetic about it.

Surely the questions here are about how far the intolerant should be tolerated and how far they should be allowed to get away with portraying themselves as victims of the people they can’t tolerate?

 

[GKMotley]

In a sense, not yours, I agree.

 

[GKMotley]

It is certainly possible.

 

[John24]

There’s nothing fallacious about the comparison. They’re both examples of persecuted groups requesting certain dehumanizing language not be used.

 

[dvdjs]

I don’t view like people claiming that oppose using a pronoun of the antecedent’s choice because of Catholic religious sensibilities. I think that it mis-characterizes and trivializes the religion and degrades it in the service of politics.

 

[dvdjs]

Agreed. I will not seek action against anyone for mis-characterizing or trivializing the Catholic religion.

 

[GKMotley]

Makes sense.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

The other difference of course being that racial slurs were created and deliberately used to be insulting and degrading and to dehumanize people. Calling a man a man is a statement of fact, even if he wants to be called a woman. It is used to keep reality in check. Moreover, there is no way for anyone to know what ideological concepts are bouncing around in one particular individual’s head and to then cater to them, so unless it is a political and policy debate where someone is trying to make a point (as was the case with Ms. Green), 99.9% of the time when someone refers to a transgender dude as a “he” it is not out of malice but because that is what they see. Just watch that video posted above with the trans dude going absolutely ballistic at some poor kid because he called a 6ft jacked bohemouth in a dress a man. And it makes no logical sense to pretend that every single person you encounter actually thinks they are the opposite sex and to walk around on eggshells when addressing them when over 99% of the population is not confused about their identity.

Lastly I would just like to point out that pronouns are not used in direct conversations, so what trans people are really trying to control is your conversations with other people besides themselves. I do not say, “Hey he, let’s go grab a bite to eat. She, do you want to go to the movies?” That is not how English works. You use names or nothing at all when talking to someone. So the whole brouhaha over pronouns isn’t about being polite to an individual in the moment but about forcing everyone to acknowledge and play out a fiction all the time for one individual whether they are present or not.

 

[Nelka]

Wrong, they were allowed to shout any obscenities at the soldiers marching past that they wanted and it was all over the papers, don’t you remember?

Do you not remember abu hamza preaching hate and murder whist the police protected him in Finsbury Park in London?

 

[Londoner]

Wrong, they were allowed to shout any obscenities at the soldiers marching past that they wanted and it was all over the papers, don’t you remember?

I assume you are talking about the occasion when a small group of Muslims protested at a parade by 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton in 2009. Five people were convicted for their role in that incident, so it’s hardly the case that ‘they were allowed to shout any obscenities … that they wanted’.

Do you not remember abu hamza preaching hate and murder whist the police protected him in Finsbury Park in London?

Yes, it is now admitted that it was probably a mistake that Abu Hamza wasn’t prosecuted earlier than he was. Possibly he and his followers were providing police and security and intelligence agencies with so much material that on balance it seemed more useful to allow him to continue preaching. Possibly the CPS believed that a successful prosecution was unlikely because there was insufficient evidence that would actually have been admissible in a British court. Possibly the authorities just didn’t realise how dangerous he really was. The facts are, however, that he was under Special Branch and/or MI5 surveillance probably at least since 1997, that he was removed from his position as imam of Finsbury Park Mosque by the Charity Commission in 2002, that he was been in custody since 2004, and that he has now been convicted of so many offences in both the UK and the US that he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

And yet being a member of a different religion screaming in the streets for the heads of soldiers to be cut off is apparently free speech according to the police.

This point is still clearly untrue. If anybody screams in the street ‘for the heads of soldiers to be cut off’ it is not ‘free speech’. I think I can give you a cast-iron guarantee that if you were to go out and incite people to commit murder you would not get away with it. It is a crime. It is not covered by freedom of speech.

 

[Nelka]

I saw it it in the 80’s in London also and the police did nothing and the press couldn’t care back then.

I’ve seen Christians get arrested for saying certain things are sinful in the street.

They aren’t isolated incidences.

I can walk through parts of East London and get threats just by walking because I am white. I could spend all day with many stories if I could be bothered, the police are one sided espevially the met.