The iron fist in the velvet glove. Senior academic who runs @FutureGender study argues "It should be legally unacceptable" for someone [me] to suggest that "whether she recognises another person’s gender is up to her"
It's a slippery post, eliding sex & gender all over the place. It comes to the conclusion that people should be re-educated to pretend they believe that men can be women and not allowed to "withdraw" from situations in which this pretence is unacceptable to them.
This is expressed as being all about pronouns (despite the fact that I said I would use preferred pronouns), but skates over how any of this plays out in the real world of bodies.
Should female prison officers be allowed to withdraw from body searching a fully intact male who identfies as a woman and gets sexually aroused by the process?
Should a female firefighter be forced to share showers and sleeping quarters with a male colleague who decides to identify as a woman on a full or part time basis?
Should a woman whose husband transitions be banned from talking clearly about her experience?
Should she have the right to withdraw from the situation of her marriage or must she accept she has always been married to a woman?
Should she have the right to withdraw from the situation of her marriage or must she accept she has always been married to a woman?
Should a woman harrassed, attacked or raped by a male be forced to call her attacker she, and all those dealing with and reporting the case call the person she and pretend they are a woman?
Cooper sees no problem w any of this because she sees the woman as holding more power than the male who wants to force her to do something (when did that happen?)
Vague academic language & misdirection towards pronouns also serves to sweep these kinds of situations out of sight.
Vague academic language & misdirection towards pronouns also serves to sweep these kinds of situations out of sight.
Interestingly the first results of Cooper's big survey on attitudes to sex and gender are just out (great week to bury bad news?) and show that the majority of people who answered agree with me that being a man or a woman is not simply a matter of self ID 
That's a lot of re-education that's going to be needed!
Or alternatively organisations could stop playing the language game of eliding sex & gender ID & stop trying to pretend that there is no problem w allowing people to self ID into "single sex" facilities of the opposite sex
Or alternatively organisations could stop playing the language game of eliding sex & gender ID & stop trying to pretend that there is no problem w allowing people to self ID into "single sex" facilities of the opposite sex
Working out how to do this humanely, respecting everyone's rights would be an academic project worth funding @ESRC
