Refusing to use

He won’t stand for it, I tell you.

Holyrood’s newly elected presiding officer will crack down on MSPs who misgender their new trans and non-binary colleagues.

In an interview with The Times, Kenny Gibson, who opposed Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reform legislation in 2022, said he would take incidents as they come.

But he made it clear that he would not tolerate politicians deliberately or maliciously refusing to use the chosen pronouns of the newly elected Green MSPs Iris Duane and Q Manivannan.

But why?

There’s no such thing as “chosen pronouns”. That’s not how it works. We don’t get to make tiresome rules about language that require other people to call us something Special and Fictitious. Very young children can do that, but nobody else can. Pronouns exist to save trouble, not to generate more trouble. It’s a nuisance for all parties to repeat someone’s name with every mention, so we have generic pronouns that save us that labor. Trying to force us to use special luxury ones for just this one special person creates more labor, and anxious labor at that. The anxiety part is revealed by this silly promise to rebuke or punish legislators who get it “wrong”.

Luxury pronouns are the kind of thing you expect from kids in first grade. They are not the kind of thing you expect from grown-ass adults legislating for a nation.

“You have to respect what that person wants to be called,” Gibson said. “And if someone doesn’t do that, then you have to call that out in the chamber and you have to take the appropriate action.”

No you don’t. No you don’t. No you don’t. That’s a ridiculous claim. What if that person wants to be called King Charles, or Keir Starmer, or JK Rowling, or Peter Tatchell? What if that person wants to be called Xmfzlxnx? How about BigTits or ThrobbingCock or RapeyMcRaperson?

No, you don’t necessarily have to respect what that person wants to be called, because there are infinite possibilities of grotesquerie like the above. This fact should make the absurdity of the claim obvious, but of course it won’t.

Nevertheless it is grotesque for adults to demand to be referred to as “she” when they’re men or “he” when they’re women. It’s a toddler game transported to a national legislature. It’s about as grotesque as grotesqueries can get.

“If there’s a clear issue of it looks like it’s being deliberate, then you have to act on that because you can’t have someone, a member of the parliament, feeling undervalued or disrespected.”

What about the women who are members of that parliament who feel undervalued and disrespected by men who insist on being referred to as “she”?

“So whatever your personal views are of what they call themselves, it is what they want to call themselves, I think, which is significant.” 

Oh yeah? What if they all want to be called Kenny Gibson? Eh? What if even one of them wants that?

A Scottish Greens spokesman said: “If any members were to be misgendered in the chamber we would expect the presiding officer, alongside other parliamentary authorities, to ensure MSPs feel safe, secure and respected in the environment they work in.”

At the expense of everyone else, and especially of the female part of everyone else.

The new presiding officer said he was not expecting trouble in the new parliament with an influx of new members, a new party in Reform and a bigger Green group, but added: “If there’s trouble, it will be dealt with.”

Gibson said: “I was shown a magic button actually yesterday where I can immediately cut it off, if necessary. I don’t expect to have to do that.”

Great. So the MSPs have a choice between lying and being silenced. Brilliant.