Pronouns, yet again
A trans-identifying man’s threats against me, and why some excellent journalists continue to call such men she/her
Readers may have seen that a trans-identified man pleaded guilty this week to making death threats against me (see above) and Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker). The man in question is a real charmer: in 2020 he was found guilty of threatening a shop worker with a claw hammer and only avoided going to prison for six months because the judge fell for the sob story that he’d be vulnerable in a men’s prison. I’ve had a lot of sympathetic messages about it, so I wanted to say here that I’m fine. An awful lot of very nasty things are said about both Kellie-Jay and me – and everyone else in this fight – and although I can’t ignore the possibility that a deranged man like this one attacks me in some public place, my address isn’t in the public domain so I’m not really that worried.
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I found out about this man’s threats against me last year, some time after he made them. I wouldn’t have taken them seriously if it wasn’t for the fact that he was using his own name, and a quick search turned up the story about his previous conviction. On the plus side, that also made it more likely that the police and Crown Prosecution Service would take it seriously – and although the process has been inexplicably slow, in the end they did.
I had high hopes that a man so stupid as to make death threats online under his own name shortly after avoiding a prison sentence only because the judge was a sap, and who was quite possibly still under supervision by probation services, would be stupid enough to plead not guilty despite the overwhelming evidence. But no. I was quite sorry. I really wanted to be called to give evidence so I could commit a misgendering so large it could be seen from space. As a friend said, we could have sold tickets.
What to do about this sort of thing? I’m what a friend told me is called “micro-famous” – totally unknown in general but well-known in certain circles. For most people, micro-fame is fun – the friend in question was well-known among people who played a certain nerdy game, and when he attended conventions he could walk along the street in peace, and then be enjoyably mobbed by fellow enthusiasts asking for selfies and autographs. My much less pleasurable version is to go about my everyday life as normal but have to pay proper attention to who’s around me when arriving at and leaving speaking gigs. I’ve applied for a restraining order for this particular man, ordering him to stay away from any event I’m known to be at. But of course he’s not the only one.
When I talk about all this to other women, there are two big issues that turn an annoyance into a serious worry. The first is whether you have identifiable family members, especially children; the second is whether or not your address is in the public domain. It has turned out to be quite consequential for many of us that we chose not to take our husbands’ names upon marriage, and have ended up not having the same surname as our children. It seems overly paranoid to think about this when you’re marrying – but here we are.
Regarding addresses, any government that seriously wants to tackle so-called “online hate” couldn’t do better than make it so that addresses on the electoral register and company records are hidden rather than published by default. At least in the UK, these are the two main sources scraped by online aggregators like 192.com. You can easily keep your address on the electoral register private simply by ticking a box; concealing your address on the records at Companies House, which stores information about directorships, is a bit more complicated and involves a fee.
When I tweeted about Layla Le Fay’s guilty plea, I complained that the local paper, the Brighton and Argus, had referred to him as a woman. The police did the same in every conversation with me – although at least they didn’t correct me when I called him a man. It’s of course common-or-garden male violence against women, and misrecording it disguises that fact.
And then the people who have made the past fortnight such a joy online by engaging in a circular firing squad on the subject of “preferred pronouns” seized on my tweet as evidence of my supposed inconsistency. I swear, if I didn’t know how to use the mute button, and how to mute conversations, I’d have left Twitter by now.
Hmm, what was your advice about policing pronouns again, Helen? https://t.co/gbDHKIWIi1
— Julia Long Ultra (@OnChairs) February 9, 2024
In case it’s not obvious, there’s a difference between courts, police and crime statistics misrecording a man as a woman, and private citizens, or even journalists, doing so. I found this response, and others like it, deeply unpleasant, indeed pretty damn close to victim-blaming. It’s nastier than LeFay’s lawyer trying to “both sides” it by arguing that his client was merely caught up in a heated debate. That’s just the sort of rubbish lawyers have to say when their clients are headcases caught bang to rights.
I had never heard of this man before he tweeted violent threats about me. I have never tweeted threats about anyone. This is not "heated debate" or "both sides". It's male violence against women. (Also, I did provide a victim impact statement. It wil be considered in sentencing.) https://t.co/zO3wio4o81
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) February 9, 2024
If you’ve been lucky enough to remain oblivious to the latest round of infighting, it was started by Debbie Hayton’s memoir, first extracted in the Daily Mail and followed with an interview with Hayton by Janice Turner in the Times. Janice called Hayton “she”, and after approximately a million replies and quote-tweets criticising her for this (some in highly intemperate terms), she tweeted that she chose her own words and was willing to use preferred pronouns out of “respect”. Journalist Hadley Freeman then tweeted in defence of Janice, and Andrew Doyle interviewed Hayton on his GB News show, Free Speech Nation – and both then got caught up in the blast.
My heart heavy, I tried to say something useful. I didn’t have much expectation of success, but I have personal experience of how awful it feels when you’re being attacked and all your supposed allies each individually make a rational decision to look the other way. In her book “Bully Proof Kids”, Stella O’Malley says that you should teach children that when they see bullying, there are a range of actions they can take, depending on how scared they feel. The safest positive actions are to not join in and to move away, so you don’t give even tacit support. Better than this, if you can risk it, is to move to stand by the target so they don’t feel or look so alone. I’ve taken that to heart in my behaviour online.
This is what I tweeted:
I see a lot of people are talking about pronoun use again, and I've talked plenty about the principles I think matter before so won't repeat what I already said.
What i will say now is that something a lot of people are missing is that if you're not in full control of what you…— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) February 4, 2024
I despair of trying to explain my opinion on Twitter – again. But being called inconsistent really rankles, so I’ll try again here.
I don’t use preferred pronouns myself, though I have in the past. The only circumstance in which I can currently imagine doing so would be if I invited a trans person to my house – the obligations of hospitality are considerable, and if I wasn’t willing to fulfil them then the obvious choice would be simply not to invite that person. But I also don’t argue with other people about where they draw their own boundaries.
I hear what others say about how those who draw boundaries in the wrong places cause others harm; I even think they’re sometimes right – but my meta-rule is that more harm than good is done by this sort of speech-policing. Other people say, do and believe all sorts of things I disagree with, and I rarely think it’s worthwhile even arguing with them, let alone denouncing or shunning them. I think it’s probably true that there is literally no other person in the world who agrees with me about everything, and anyway, this isn’t how you get people to change their minds.
But somehow, a lot of people think this is me being inconsistent. Well, it’s not. I’m pro-free speech, and anti-authoritarianism. I approve of social rules that increase thoughtful communication, and disapprove of those that don’t. I think encouraging people to speak freely without fearing that they will get pounced on for using the wrong words is, in the long run, the way to maximise good outcomes. And when people pile on someone who gets things 90% right and fuss about the remaining 10%, they make it less likely that other people stick their heads above the parapet.
I also wish that people would think about how they can get the outcomes they want, rather than simply complaining when something they don’t like happens. I’m not a big South Park fan, but I love the Underpants Gnome, whose business plan goes: 1, collect underpants; 2, ? 3, PROFIT. Many Twitter warriors are very like this. They don’t think about how to get from a to b; indeed they seem to think that having a step-by-step strategy is tantamount to selling out.
Some people have no theory of change. They're like the Underpants Gnome:
1. take to Twitter to insult people who agree with them on most but not all things.
2. ????
3. EVERYTHING IS FIXED. pic.twitter.com/kwffMv9F9b— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) February 4, 2024
I completely agree that it would really help if the media stopped calling transwomen “women” and “she” – but no individual journalist has any influence over that, and contrary to what appears to be popular belief, no one at the Times is reading and absorbing replies to and retweets of Janice Turner’s articles. Changing policy on preferred pronouns requires changing style guides, and shouting at journalists on Twitter gets nobody anywhere.
If you think that media style guides are wrong on the issue of "preferred pronouns" - I agree! But individual journalists have little to no power to change them. And outlets are highly unlikely to be monitoring responses on Twitter, especially those to individual journalists.1/2
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) February 4, 2024
Some people got what I was saying about the pointlessness and unfairness of the hyperfocus on Janice, who was very early to this fight and has done more than almost anyone else to raise awareness of the harms done by gender ideology. But I didn’t see anyone picking up on what I said about how people who are working in an institution that is overall good to them are not going to pick away at the single sore point remaining.
I’ve had the experience of working somewhere I really liked, and strongly identified with, but where I didn’t agree with all the strategic decisions. (Actually – who even are these people who agree with literally every decision taken by their boss?) When your employer is good to you, and has protected you against attack, you are more likely to accept the things you disagree with and can’t change. And then what’s the point of fussing about the things you disagree with, even in the privacy of your head?
I don’t want to speak for Janice, whom I’ve met a couple of times but don’t know at all well. I’ll just say some things that are in the public domain. One is that the Times has published her columns and opinion pieces on trans issues for years without any visible interference – contrast this with the treatment of Julie Bindel, Hadley Freeman and Suzanne Moore, all of whom had long and successful careers at the Guardian ended by the issue.
That alone is likely to inspire a great deal of loyalty. But there’s more. In 2018 Helen Belcher – one of two transwomen who, along with Sarah Brown, has brought the Liberal Democrats to the brink of destruction, claimed that Janice’s articles had led to a wave of child suicides. I don’t think people can really understand what it’s like to be the target of such a vile unfounded allegation. I’m certain it hurt Janice deeply.
Belcher took his vendetta against Janice as far as complaining to the press regulator, IPSO. And the Times stood up for her, defending her journalism in robust terms. In the end IPSO dismissed the allegations in their entirety.
Last year, the trans activist Helen Belcher claimed that that my journalism for The Times on gender issues had precipitated a wave of suicides of teenagers.
— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) April 25, 2019
That wasn’t the only occasion the Times really stood up for Janice. In 2019, a transwoman employee of the newspaper who had been made redundant took the paper to an employment tribunal, claiming discrimination. The claimant’s barrister, transwoman Robin Moira White, tried to run the argument that the paper’s editorial position and coverage constituted a hostile environment for trans employees, specifically citing articles by Janice. But since White raised this line of argument for the first time right before the hearing, instead of in the written outline of the case, he was refused permission to make it in court. (That didn’t stop Patrick Strudwick, one of Britain’s worst journalists, writing it up in breathless terms.)
Again, the Times refused to roll over. The paper’s editor gave evidence at the tribunal in person (contrast this with recent cases taken against the Open University and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, in which the bosses stayed away). The claimant lost.
I never came under this sort of attack while at The Economist, but I too was institutionally protected. And I can tell you it inspires a deep and abiding gratitude. Reflecting on the differing ways I’ve thought about this whole issue during that period and afterwards, I’ve come to realise that there’s no point probing things too closely when you’re working for an employer you like, in a job you want to keep, when that probing could bring you to an unwinnable clash. I know that if I was writing somewhere else it wouldn’t just be my words, it would be my mind that stayed away from dangerous places.
I’m also aware of how much my thinking has been shaped by the intensive conversations I’ve had within Sex Matters over the past two years to know that I wouldn’t be in the same place if I’d stayed at The Economist. This is one of the standard arguments for freedom of speech: that it’s also freedom to think.
I don’t want to speak for Janice, Hadley and the rest. Maybe – probably – both these women would arrive at a different point on pronouns than me, even if they didn’t both write for a mainstream outlet. But if I’m right, then arguing for Janice and Hadley to speak differently is extremely close to asking them to leave the Times. Which would be a huge disservice, if you assume that the aim is to win. It’s incredibly important that some gender-critical women continue to work in mainstream journalism.
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I had intended to continue with some thoughts about anonymous accounts and theories of change. But this is long enough, so I’ll save that for next week.