No more than one’s own fantasy about oneself
Fired for refusing to call a man “madam”? Sounds very Monty Python, doesn’t it.
Dr David Mackereth, 56, claims he was sacked as a disability benefits assessor by the Department of Work and Pensions over his religious beliefs.
The father-of-four alleges he was asked in a conversation with a line manager: “If you have a man six foot tall with a beard who says he wants to be addressed as ‘she’ and ‘Mrs’, would you do that?”
Well you can’t address people as “she,” can you. That’s a minor point, I know, but it gets so annoying seeing this confusion so often.
A hearing in Birmingham was told how Dr Mackereth believes transgenderism is a “delusional belief” and an ideology “which I disbelieve and detest”.
In a statement admitted into evidence, he told the court: “If you believe in gender fluidity, gender is no more than one’s own fantasy about oneself.”
And the thing about that is that one’s own fantasy about oneself is of interest only to oneself and should never, ever be forced on other people. We know some people just can’t get enough of talking about themselves, but there’s a limit to what they can force on the rest of us.
The DWP argues that Dr Mackereth’s views are in breach of the 2010 Equality Act. APM, the recruitment company who hired the medic, is also being sued for religious discrimination.
The company claims that the doctor’s beliefs “are not compatible with human dignity”.
Really? What if people started claiming to be horses or bicycles or daffodils or Poland? What does treating people’s lies about themselves as truth have to do with human dignity? What about the human dignity of people forced to lie about others?
The Telegraph mixes a whole bunch of nonsense about Christian beliefs into it, but that seems entirely beside the point to me.
Of course, it’s even sillier than getting fired for refusing to call a man “madam” – it’s getting fired for refusing to affirm that, in a hypothetical scenario, one would call a man “madam.”
True. I decided it was a level of complication to many so I simplified it.
But yeah, it is always these stupid leading questions, isn’t it. “Do you believe trans women are women, yes or no?”
That was 4 years ago. We should have an anniversary party or something.
I gotta say, I don’t miss any of those people. They did me a favor!
“I’m a bicycle. Oil my chain!”
The religious liberty argument is dumb and obfuscates the real problem here… Thanks doc!
“Oiiiii meh. Oiiiiiiii meh.”
I think we need to make more use of the religious liberty argument–from the other direction.
What right have transgenderists to force anybody to echo their beliefs? “Gender identity” is essentially a matter of faith; the term as used by trans activists is not supported by science. And the concept of transgenderism as currently promoted by its proponents is non-falsifiable.
S.I. Rosenbaum in the Boston Globe recently made my argument for me, apparently not noticing that it should spell the end of these attempts to compel people to echo trans beliefs at work and elsewhere.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2019/07/05/trump-wants-deny-transgender-rights-religious-grounds-but-what-gender-identity-itself-matter-soul/A7VFzaO6rUCn3krlLum4tO/story.html?fbclid=IwAR0bZKoSw9Pd33KjyrSmUwSy8kM1hd-3varQnyjZLwSGwVzsWw5qLEiP7_s
I have to say, were it by some chance possible, I would love that. So many commentators here display strength, intelligence, compassion and knowledge that I’d love to hang out with them, even though I have a nagging fear of being the dumbest and most boring person in the room.
However, I’ll raise a glass to the anniversary tonight and wish you all well.
Does that make Rob our spokes-person?
Happy anniversary, Ophelia.
It never occurred to me I could be Poland! Wow. Now I may be dissatisfied with being a mere otter.
Happy Anniversary from me, too. And Rob, I doubt you would be either dumb or boring. Look me up if you ever get to Nebraska; I’ll take you out for coffee.
Happy anniversary! I raise my bowl of cereal (before bed snack) to you all, be you bicycles, Easter European countries or horses. I could be any number of things, perhaps several at once.
But on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog
LOL, love you all.
It’s been four years, Ophelia, and yet Twitter still recommends Stephanie Zvan and Greta Christina when one browses your profile, like it’s 2012. I’d have expected The Algorithm to have cottoned on by now.
Cheers!
Happy Anniversary! But if you want to be Poland, avoid people who identify as Germany or Russia.
[Apologies in advance for the long comment] Hey, have any of you actually looked into the science of being trans? I think it’s pretty fascinating stuff, actually. I believe it has to do with the gray v.s. white matter content in one’s brain. I can’t remember which is higher for which gender, and the system I’m typing on won’t let me Googlr it and type at the same time, but white is higher for one and grey for the other. It’s more complicated than this, obviously, but if one’s body is exposed to the wrong hormones during pregnancy, the brain won’t match the body, which causes gender dysphoria. This GD causes a lot of distress for the sufferer, and the best way to relieve it is to transition; changing your name, asking people to use the pronouns that match your brain, and eventually (hopefully) changing your body so that you won’t experience as much distress from having the wrong body. Please, take a second and imagine having the body of the opposite sex. Most likely, like me, you’re getting a small, watered-down version of the daily experience of trans people. Now, obviously there isn’t a grey/white matter ratio for objects, animals, or a whole fucking country, and anyone who would claim otherwise is either a troll or an idiot. But being a guy in a girl’s body, or vice versa, is a scientifically backed ~1% possibility, and refusing to call people who have gender dysphoria by their pronouns is kind of a dick move- they’re already suffering enough.
By the way I didn’t actually mean it was the anniversary day…just the season, really, or maybe the month. But I’ll take all the happy annivs anyway! Back atcha!
Drake – well, cool, that’s very convincing. You believe it has to do with the gray v.s. white matter content in one’s brain, but you can’t remember the details and you can’t look them up because you’re typing. Ok then! I don’t see how anybody could possibly dispute any of that.
Or is it a parody?
Yes, we have.
The male brain/female brain dichotomy is based on, at best, dubious science. Perhaps you should read further on this topic. It actually is fascinating as a study of how scientific biases can lead us to interpretations that are skewed.
This again assumes the male brain/female brain dichotomy. That is not accepted by all scientists, because the evidence is iffy.
Obviously? Yes, for objects and countries, of course, because they have no brain. But there is white matter in other mammalian species; it’s just that the amount of white matter varies based on species. Humans have larger amounts of white matter, partially because of our larger brains.
No one here is refusing to call people by their preferred pronouns, though most of us note a salient fact – you don’t refer to people by their pronouns in the second person.
Drake, I’ve performed your thought experiment many times; I’ve even, on more than one occasion, donned a skirt and tried makeup. I didn’t have an inner crisis or an overweening catastrophe of identity. It may well be that I am ‘non-binary’, as the cool kids say, but if that’s true then I strongly suspect the great overwhelming majority of people also fall into that category. In the whole of my life, exactly zero times have I felt, intrinsically, like a “man”; I’ve felt social consequences for my actions which either failed or succeeded in living up to the general consensus, though I also know that this consensus is itself highly context-specific across different times and different cultures.
I also strongly suspect that if we built a world with fewer expectations, suppositions, and different consequences for what it meant to be a man versus a woman, we would see fewer people distressed that they did not fit into these categories as tightly as our current world seems to expect people to. There is no such thing as a lady-brain. There are only brains, as plastic and varied as you can imagine, molded by genes in response to social forces.
So I got curious and looked it up and the literal anniversary is pretty close – it was July 20.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/07/glasgow-pride-says-no-drag/#comment-5229574
I really didn’t remember that “terf” was in use 4 years ago.
Boy was it ever.
I had also forgotten just how far up their own asses the Pharyngula commentariat was. (Is?) I remember reading those comments at the time, but yikes! The intense scrutiny, the faux-scholarly parsing of suspect opinions, the endless cross-referencing!
The Pharyngulariat and the Slyme Pit really deserve each other, don’t they? (Is the Slyme Pit a thing any more? Has it factionated just like FTB/The Orbit? …who cares?)
I remember I thought that TERF was an actual term that people called themselves, instead of a label slapped on them by their opponents. Which led to some dumber-than-usual comments from me.
Ah, so that’s where the “are trans women women” question popped up. I had missed that comment at the time and for a few days was completely in the dark about the nature of the fuss. Happy Anniversary.
Um, Drake, it is you who made the typical “dick” move. We are very used to men cheerleading for trans and scolding women blog owners.
Mansplaining? Transplaining? Transmansplaining? We need an entire dictionary just to keep up with the trans movement.
“The father-of-four alleges he was asked in a conversation with a line manager: “If you have a man six foot tall with a beard who says he wants to be addressed with barks and growls, would you do that?””
Since, you know, furries exist… and some take it to its logical endpoint, believing themselves to be an alternate species in a human body.
The only things that have been observed with respect to physical differences between brains of males and females are in relative numbers of inter- and intrahemispherical connections, as well as relative mass.
That the brains of males tend to be larger than those of females is as irrelevant as the fact that male bodies and body parts tend to be larger than those of females. That my brother’s hands are smaller than my sister’s neither makes her hands male nor his female. The same response applies to hemispherical connections.
You can’t get to a sexed brain just from relative proportions.
Even if there were some amount of brain difference between men and women, that has nothing to do with cultural gender roles and nothing to do with being “a guy trapped in a girl’s body”. It’s just a brain with some opposite-sex characteristics. It doesn’t define a person as male or female.
It irritates me to see science-y people claim the science is on their side, and the other side is ignoring science, when they must deny obvious biology and they use incoherent definitions for “man” and “woman” in order to make their arguments. There should be able to be a substantive discussion about the science, but attempts are eclipsed by ideology.
Drake, a ‘dick’ move? We don’t use gendered slurs around here*. Seriously, though, if you think the people here are arguing from nothing more than gut-feelings rather than from informed positions through researching the subject, you are very much mistaken. If you would like acceptance and cookies for your faux-scientific nonsense from people who speak authoritatively on subjects they don’t really know much about except that they are the woke cause du jour, may I suggest you chance your arm amongst the commentors at Pharyngula.
*an old favourite of the Horde before they became instant experts on all things trans and realised that ‘girl-dicks’ and ‘boi-pussies’ meant that genitalia couldn’t be gendered. The same thing happened with ‘feelz ain’t realz’ when they learnt that trans is all about deeply-held feelings. Bless their woke little brains, whatever the proportion of white-to-grey matter.
Seth said @ #2:
“It’s been four years, Ophelia, and yet Twitter still recommends Stephanie Zvan and Greta Christina when one browses your profile, like it’s 2012. I’d have expected The Algorithm to have *cottoned on* by now.”
I see what you did there.
White to grey matter? Pfft. The real difference between men and women is the ratio between middle finger and fingernail. On men it’s 7:1, on women 5:1. (Source: Ass, pulled out of, 2019.)
I suspect you used the exact same source as Drake (though perhaps a different ass).
Wow, so it’s been almost four years since I hit peak trans (before I knew there was a word for it). Feels like so much longer. That FTB comment thread was painful to read. They were like parents reprimanding a child.
>Please, take a second and imagine having the body of the opposite sex.
Awesome, no more horrific periods, or annoying squooshy breasts! (Con: my husband wouldn’t be attracted to me.} But aside from that, I’m okay with it. So what am I, Drake?