Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
As our dear friend Graham used to love saying in his posts on here, when discussing personal freedom: your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with someone putting pronouns on their emails if that’s what they want to do.
OTOH, compelling me to use manufactured language in order to comply with an ideology to which I do not subscribe - that is not OK. Nor is requiring my acquiescence to a world view that is, frankly, alien to human society throughout history.
The real problem here is not what someone puts in their email signature, it is that the loudest campaigners in this area are shrilly insisting that this issue defines their humanity and demanding others therefore acquiesce. Leaving aside the shaky philosophical basis for defining your entire humanity on the basis of whether you feel you’re a man, a woman, or something else, the simple fact is, compelled speech is unlawful. What these campaigners are demanding is intolerable in an open, liberal and democratic society.
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I’m with you 100% on that, and also what Jordan Peterson says about it.
Just as I believe someone can request to be referred to by any name/pronoun of their choosing, I’m strongly against any legal reinforcement of it.
I think the angle I’m coming from is when people refuse to agree to pronouns purely with the intention of being difficult for the sake of it. Being nasty for the sake of being nasty. Some people who consider themselves to be “brutally honest” seem to put more effort in to the ‘brutally’ part.
(Not that I’m suggesting you subscribe to any of the above ideas of course - in fact I’m happy to say I know you don’t)