Respect, it seems, goes only one way
JKR nails it again.
The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my ‘anxiety’ about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’
That assurance is welcome, although I note that he’s addressed the matter only after it was raised publicly. No such exemption is mentioned in the Practice Note, which takes the ideological position that the ‘use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect’. The natural inference is that a woman would be considered guilty of disrespect if she, alone in the courtroom, described her male attacker as a man, while all court officials were addressing and describing him as a woman. This is not a hypothetical situation. The judge will be aware, if he’s informed himself – as he implies I have not – that I’ve already cited an example where a 60-year-old woman was violently assaulted by a 26-year-old trans-identified male. She was chided by the judge for displaying ‘bad grace’ by not using her attacker’s preferred pronouns.
The Practice Note does not acknowledge that in sexual and violent crimes committed by men against women, there is a clear clash of rights. The woman has a right – indeed, a legal duty – to speak truthfully about the male violence/sexual violence to which she was subjected. Meanwhile the Practice Note says that court officials should respectfully use female pronouns for the attacker if he says he identifies as a woman. The likely effect on a traumatised woman of hearing her attacker addressed and described as a female by the court is neither mentioned nor addressed in the Practice Note. Respect, it seems, goes only one way.
Millions of women are losing confidence in judicial systems that have adopted an ideological position with which they do not agree. In the very place where they go to seek justice, a woman may now be obliged to listen to court officials asserting they were raped or beaten by a fellow woman. Such women are not merely ‘anxious’, they are furious, about the apparent inability of certain men, judges or not, to understand how dystopian this situation seems to those of us who have suffered male sexual violence.
And about the equally apparent indifference to their own inability to understand. They just don’t care.
Anyone I’ve ever encountered who explicitly demanded my respect both didn’t deserve it, and didn’t offer me any. So, in my experience, yes, absolutely and invariably for those who demand it, respect only ever goes one way, and no, absolutely and invariably, those who demand it don’t have mine.
I thank JK Rowling for her intervention in this matter, as South Australia, where I live, and whose justice system I would be subject to if circumstances arose, is not a place where women’s organisations and victims of crime organisations are speaking up and intervening to ask why the Chief Justice has seen fit to sell women down the river in this fashion.
This matter was discussed on public radio (ABC 891, the local equivalent of the BBC) this morning, by a so-called “fearless” King’s Council, who thought it was all probably fine, really, just respect, like pronouncing a tricky unfamiliar name properly. Nonetheless, he did expound on the issue of free speech, and how free is it really, in the current chilling climate of getting one’s head metaphorically shot off for saying the wrong thing. And despite both guest and presenter being overly credulous and “kind” on the matter, we’re still roasted on the text line by a listener who was inferring disdain.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/adelaide-mornings/adelaide-mornings/103052432
Not sure if it’s region locked, skip forward by an hour, the segment starts around one hour and four minutes in. Will only be available for two weeks max.
Eeew. I wasn’t impressed by the KC pompously waffling on about Voltaire (OK, I learnt decades ago that I’m not the audience for ABC “Local Radio”, if that’s what they still call it) but he was criticising the sort of censorious bullshit the message writer was indulging in. He is no doubt a good enough lawyer that I genuinely have no idea what his view on “pronouns’ might be. But he was not engaging in a display of the sort of absolute obeisance the TRAs demand so, of course, he could be deemed to be expressing disdain, phobia, whatever. A textbook example from the TRA strategy manual. Was that obvious to the average listener? I think I did detect a hint of irritation (though carefully covered in the language of his profession) on the part of the presenter that the message writer wasn’t prepared to defend their view in person. All in all I don’t think the TRAs won this one (“if we speak we win – if they speak we win”) but as I say say I’m definitely not the intended audience.
I haven’t read her books (I detest the genre), but that is some powerful writing in that excerpt.
I think her argumentative writing is vastly better than her fiction writing (whether the Harry genre or the detective genre).
I was reading an article last night on the need to be respectful in our skepticism. When did respect become something one was to be given automatically, rather than something to be earned? And why should we respect people who don’t respect us? And where is the data to show respect is going to work, other than a few rather dubious surveys?
Like so many other words in this debate that have been redefined, or used as euphemistic camouflage for more accurate language, when they say “respect” it really means “submission,” “compliance,” and “obedience.” It’s not a call for courtesy but a demand to surrender. It’s not just pronouns. To comply is to capitulate. So yes, it is a one way street.
But you also have to be heard.
It’s interesting how the trans activist side accuses its opponents of speaking in “dog whistles,” yet to get to what TERFs are “really” saying takes huge leaps of paranoid imagining, and imputation of nothing but murderous bad faith (“bans” of trans athletes, the “actual violence” of “misgendering,” incipient trans genocide hiding deep in the heart of even the mildest criticism, etc.). Yet their own vocabulary and terminology is purposely designed to sugar coat the grim truth of stealing women’s awards and positions, invading their spaces, violating their boundaries, and erasing them from public life altogether, all in the name of so-called “fairness” and “inclusion.” And that’s just on one front, which would be bad enough on its own. Add to that the horror of mutilating and sterilizing children, and you’ve got the full nightmare.
That institutions such as the police, courts, and media have adopted this poisonous treacle wholesale is a public scandal and danger, with disastrous consequences. Captured police and judiciary can’t be trusted to uphold the law as it is written; captured media cannot be trusted to report the facts as they are. The justice system deals with people who are deemed to be breaking the law. If police are rewriting the laws they’re supposedly upholding, their initial determination of “wrongdoing” becomes fickle and partisan. They have become someone else’s private police force. This results in otherwise innocent individuals being subject to the legal system, and offenders escaping responsibility for their actions. Vital use of limited police resources? Limericks. Pamphlets. Stickers. Ribbons. Untoward comments. Not worth police attention? Intimidation. Mob encirclement. Assault. Smoke bombs. Death threats. The “legal” infringement on free speech brings about a chilly climate. It is a warning. As others have noted, the process is the punishment. Conversely, failure to detain those who threaten, bully, and assault is a green light to continue to do so, with official blessing. I guess we’re supposed to take the occasional, half-hearted, after-the-fact prosecution of some of these thugs, initiated after public outcry, as a sign the system is working.
In following preferred trans terminology, media outlets have forgone objectivity to become propaganda organs for one side in what should be a public debate, hiding reality and reinforcing lies and obfuscation, distorting reality and undermining democratic political discussion, using style guides as a fig leaf to hide their partisanship. Not that news outlets are new to doing this, but this seems to be more blatant and shameless, and consequently, more obviously cynical and manipulative. After all, how much more obvious can you get than saying a man is a woman? The constant repetition of untruth and confusion is just a wordier, slow motion version of the Twitter invocation of TWAW, without the claps. The means are different, but the aim is the same: indoctrination into accepting the normalization of the impossible.
Nisbet and Mooney’s “Framing” redux?
No, it was in an old (2018) Skeptical Inquirer. I’m sort of behind on my magazine reading…
Got through one a a few pages of “Potter” when *everyone* was reading it. Not my scene.
I enjoyed the “Strike” novels (excluding “Ink Black Heart”) and put them in the same category as Lee Child, David Baldacci, et al as a great way to turn off the thinking and enjoy a story. A few hours of relaxation, maybe because too much of my current reading is economics, social theory, and war history.
But I do concur, she is an excellent writer of argument.
@Arcadia – waves to you from Waikerie.
Editorial from “The Advertiser”, Adelaide’s Murdoch Daily.
https://i.postimg.cc/fR0cTyF9/clipping0-1.jpg
My understanding is that respect is one of the keystones of Skepticism in that we approach human folly with the recognition that it is indeed human folly, for we are all subject to the same types of errors in reasoning. It’s not smart people on one side and idiots on the other. The more we learn about how easy it is for anyone to fall for fallacies or sloppy thinking, the more similar the Other is to ourselves, and the humbler we become. There but for the grace of Skeptical Inquirer go I…
That doesn’t mean an idiotic opinion isn’t idiotic, of course. And their opinions might make them idiotic, too. But the human aspect of being capable of idioticism is shared.
As for being an ass hole, well, that might be a separate matter.
See, that’s the problem. That doesn’t fit with what I have always learned ‘respect’ is. To me, that falls under Theory of Mind. Not all people who fall for stupid arguments are stupid (I’ve fallen for some myself and have been glad of correction). By the same token, they are not all intelligent, though many are. Some very prominent scientists fell for some really ridiculous stuff.
At the same time, respect is a loaded word. You can be understanding. You can be friendly. You can explain your position in a non-asshole way. None of that is respect, it is just recognizing the reality that people fall for ideas that are ridiculous. I don’t advocate foaming at the mouth rage, but I find ‘respect’ a difficult thing, and believe no respect should be given to ideas that have been demonstrated wrong, and in some cases, dangerous.
That’s the same argument that is made about Trump voters; we need to respect their grievances, because the grievances are legitimate. Really? I’ve known a lot of Trump voters (Nebraska provides a welcoming habitat) and very few if any of them are working class people who were angry because the world was working against them. They were middle to upper middle class people who wanted to pay fewer taxes, didn’t think anyone who looked different was legitimate, and felt the patriarchy needed to be reestablished. I feel no respect for them or their opinions.
That’s why I find this a pernicious argument. Telling me I need to respect is a concept loaded with problems. I have never tended toward rudeness in my advocacy, and have listened to the arguments they make. I think that is what we need to do if we want to engage thoughtfully and effectively. But that is not respect.