A cost to women

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Victoria Smith on the justbekind trope:

The past week saw another “reasonable” man — in this case the journalist David Aaronovitch — argue that calling a male person “she” if he so wishes is just a matter of being kind.

I like David Aaronovitch, but I don’t like this argument, which is one we all see a lot.

…there is quite clearly a potential cost to women when male people are referred to as “she”. That it may only be an emotional one, impacting on one’s psychological well-being, does not make it an irrelevance. Women’s physical safety, boundaries and access to public life matter, but so, too, does our own self-respect.

Self-respect in the form, for instance, of not helping to establish this ridiculous custom of calling men “she” if they demand it. No. It’s a fiction, that’s insulting to women, and a threat to our rights. No we don’t have to humor it anyway: it’s bad for women. Why isn’t that enough?

Respecting someone else’s religious beliefs does not require me to share them; by contrast, using language which includes male people in the category “woman” — when I am a woman myself — forces me to express a view about myself which I do not hold. 

It’s a view that says male-imagined femininity, not femaleness, is the thing that differentiates me from men. It’s one that completely erases the difference in power as I experience it. It’s a denial of my own inner life and rejection of sexist norms, and to go along with it is humiliating. Just because it is a form of humiliation that women are used to — and have been conditioned to accept in the name of kindness — does not lessen its cruelty. 

Its cruelty and its complete indifference to women’s wants, needs, rights – everything.

A woman’s right to prioritise her perception of herself, refusing to allow it to be overridden by male fantasy, is never a luxury. It is fundamental to there being any equality between the sexes. That women have used incorrect pronouns to “be kind” before is not proof it costs us nothing. It’s merely proof of how much we have given already and how much we are owed. 

How about men do some being kind for a change?

Comments

7 responses to “A cost to women”

  1. Freemage Avatar
    Freemage

    I admit, in most casual situations, I address obviously trans individuals according to their presentation (“Ma’am”, “Sir”). Of course, I tend to address Roman Catholic and Episcopal priests as “Father”, too, despite being an atheist. But the notion that such should be mandatory, in all cases? Yeah, no thanks. (And, of course, as a guy, I don’t have the same skin in the game, and I absolutely recognize that.)

    And I get why it’s become pernicious, above and beyond being mandatory. If ‘preferred pronouns’ was the actual end of it, I think there’d be room for compromise. But it’s been increasingly clear over the last decade-plus that the pronoun issue is primarily being used, not as an end of its own, but rather as a way to control the entire conversation.

  2. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    Ooh, this one’s got my juices flowing again. I’m writing a piece at my Substack about it right now. Sneak preview: it’s going to reference a classic Twilight Zone episode, which was later made into a (terrible, quickly forgotten, but absurd in a campy-fun way) Hollywood film called The Box:

    A strange man shows up at the door of a young newlywed couple who are struggling financially. He’d earlier delivered them a mysterious package: a small wooden box with a big red push-button on its top. The stranger tells the wife if she presses the button, he will return and give her $200,000, but somebody somewhere will be killed. Before the stranger leaves, he looks her in the eyes. “I can assure you,” he says, “it will be someone whom you don’t know.”

    She deliberates with her husband all night, and the following afternoon she decides to push the button. The next day, the stranger returns, collects the box, and hands her $200,000, as promised. He explains that the box will be reset and offered to someone else with the same terms attached. Before the stranger leaves, he looks the woman in the eyes once again. “I can assure you,” he says, “it will be offered to someone whom you don’t know.”

    The episode ends on the dawning terror in her eyes.

    I mention this episode because it’s a tidy little illustration of a moral puzzle, and it’s one that has similar countours to the great pronoun debate, which I’ll get to in a moment.

    In the Twilight Zone case, it’s an example of moral temptation: an action — a choice, a decision — that produces both costs and benefits, but all the benefits go to the person making the decision, and all the costs are offloaded onto someone else, safely out of sight. (Or at least, that’s how it seems at first… cue the spooky music…)

    Let’s see if I can get this hammered out by morning. Wine and caffeine, here we come!

  3. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Huh. I never address anyone that way – not on principle necessarily but because it doesn’t come up. US culture I think – we deformalize everything, which I don’t always like. I hate it that the words “mom” and “dad” have wholly replaced “mother” and “father” in everyday speech, including the news media. But even I would find “ma’am” and “sir” too stiff outside the military. This doesn’t apply in the South – there “Yes ma’am/sir” is routine.

  4. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    Since 2019:

    Pronouns are Rohypnol • Fair Play For Women https://share.google/oRmuBVCbpJeKpnaBO

  5. gary Avatar
    gary

    Here in Germany I face a ten thousand euro fine if I don’t use someone’s preferred pronouns. Hasn’t come up and probably won’t, but it is law.

  6. Peter N Avatar
    Peter N

    Arty — please let us know when your essay is available to read! Drop a note in the Miscellany Room or something.

  7. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    … using language which includes male people in the category “woman” — when I am a woman myself — forces me to express a view about myself which I do not hold.

    This is a point I keep returning to. As I have pointed out for years now, hardly anything TRAs say makes sense except in the light of a lot of implicit claims about who and what other people are and what’s going on inside their heads:

    “Women are whatever they have to be to make me one of them.”

    “Other people are whatever they have to be (“cis”, “binary”, “gender conforming”) to make me different, special, an exception (“trans”, “nonbinary”, “gender nonconforming”).

    Etc.

    If I claim to be what you are, that’s not just a claim about myself. If I am what you are, then you are what I am. If I claim that what makes me the same as you is something about my way of thinking or feeling, that presupposes that you think / feel the same way. I’m glad to see Victoria Smith spell it out so clearly. I just wish “gc” people in general would raise a much greater stink around the issue, as I think it’s one of the greatest weaknesses of gender ideology.

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