This is the fourth and final of four extracts from my book, Transsexual Apostate published by the Daily Mail
The fashion for declaring your preferred pronoun is now so ubiquitous that it is difficult to be a conscientious objector.
On the surface, bowing to someone’s wish to be called ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘they’ is surely no more than a kind and thoughtful gesture that respects other people’s situations. And perfectly harmless. Except that it isn’t harmless. It transfers power. No longer do any of us have the freedom to perceive which sex-based pronouns best describe the human being standing in front of us: we are now expected to read the label and follow the instructions. Or else.
When I transitioned – just over a decade ago – pronoun badges were unknown, and for many transsexuals also unwanted. Pronouns were the acid test of a successful transition. When, without being prompted, strangers described me as ‘she’ and ‘her’, I knew I’d passed muster as a woman. Declaring my pronouns on a badge would have defeated the exercise. Those proselytising for pronouns need to stop and think about the potential impact on trans people who are still in the closet.
Declarations of pronouns place them in an excruciating dilemma – as I would have experienced if this had been demanded of me during the first 43 years of my life before I transitioned.
That’s why, even now, I neither share pronouns nor fudge the issue but will say if pressed, ‘My name is Debbie and I am not declaring any pronouns.’
I am still surprised when I am not ‘read’ at 50 paces: I’m almost 6ft tall, my shoulders are broad and my voice broke in adolescence. But people take me as they find me. Transsexualism is not on most people’s minds when they meet someone new. The choice is instinctive: man or woman? And the balance tips one way or the other.
A new colleague who was unaware of my past once challenged me – ever so nicely – for not wearing my pronouns. ‘It’s really helpful to trans people,’ she lectured me. ‘If we all share our pronouns, trans people do not stand out when they share theirs.’ The irony was delicious: badge or no badge, she hadn’t clocked that I was trans, which was good because it just showed how successful my transition had been. As for her, the ‘she/her’ badge she wore was redundant – I read her as female anyway.
The fact is that we have evolved as humans to assess the sex of people’s bodies.
If the messages clash, the observer must choose – follow the badge or trust their instincts? I worry that, when the badge wins, the wearer achieves something remarkable.
They control the speech of other people and, in a chilling Orwellian sense, prevent them saying what they instinctively know to be true.
From Transsexual Apostate by Debbie Hayton
This extract was first published by The Daily Mail on 28 January 2024: Irony of being lectured for not declaring my pronouns.
Transsexual Apostate is published by Forum (Hardcover, £16.99)
Debbie Hayton 
12 replies on “Irony of being lectured for not declaring my pronouns”
Recently a 90-year-old volunteer for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in the UK was given the boot by a wokester in the society for not understanding what the issue about pronouns is and why she must be trained to learn how to detect what people want to be called. This lady had been a volunteer for nigh on half a century but that did not matter to the Pronoun Nazi who clearly was less worried about the sufferers of MS than the hurt feelings of the possibly tiny number of pronoun conscious people the volunteer might be dealing with. The backlash on Twitter was enormous, nearing the Lady Susan debacle proportions. The MS Society did a 180 turn and apologized. However, I think the senior volunteer was so hurt and embarrassed by the fallout, publicity, and backlash that she will possibly hang up her volunteer hat. The MS Society has lost a valuable caring individual. This should never have happened.
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Yikes, what an awful thing to do to someone who is trying to help, especially to someone who is too old to understand all the craziness.
It wasn’t long ago that I read about special needs students who were being “helped” by some charitable organization, and the first thing they did was to teach them how to treat transgender people, though these disabled students might never meet a transgender person. Transgender people have achieved such a status as special people in our society that everyone must be trained how to treat them.
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They are not special. They are just people. You don’t find amputees or people with other disabilities whining and bitching about not being revered or bowed down to. I saw a guy on BBC breakfast who was born without the lower half of his limbs/arms and legs. He is fantastic. He is a presenter on Click and they were discussing the new generation of prosthetics and how these work with AI. I forgot he was disabled because it wasn’t about him being ‘so sad, boo hoo, poor me.’ It was about an enthusiastic man who loves testing the products and how these can help others. Just from the interview I think he would be horrified if someone said they felt sorry for him. He has a great life and a great career.
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I sell beads, and I had a customer describe such a person to me. I investigated him a bit, but told the customer that whether it was wrong or right, I felt uncomfortable with that subject. She became abusive to me. Interesting coincidence.
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You are right, of course. But there’s another side to it. A trans person who doesn’t pass well may want to state his or her pronouns on a badge as a hint to people not to “misgender” him or her. It’s been my experience that many trans people DON’T pass well — indeed, I think it’s difficult to do. Trans people do wear their own versions of badges. A trans woman will wear a wig and a dress, and a trans man will wear short hair and male clothing. I still remember the trans man who inspected my apartment for a government agency (so I could get a rental subsidy). Despite her hair, clothing and name, her face and voice were so obviously female that I almost said, “I hope you haven’t cut your breasts off yet.” (Knowing that transitioning has become a fad among girls and young women, I was then going to try to convince her not to harm herself — but I didn’t end up saying anything.)
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Unfortunately, and perhaps Debbie will agree, many trans people have made the possibility of being ‘misgendered’ their raison d’etre. Getting on with their job or their life should be the focus. Sadly, too often I see on Twitter some guy who clearly does not pass as a woman wailing and moaning about how someone in the bank called him sir. I also see people who deliberately push the issue and then film it, hoping for more likes on social media. That says to me their ‘comfort’ is not in being able to wear the clothing of their choice or express themselves as their individuality dictates, but rather they want to be part of the ‘victimhood mob,’ a group that puts being offended by an ordinary person as proof the world hates and is against them. If I go into the bank and the teller is a trans woman, I care more about whether s/he is going to process my transaction properly than whether the person is wearing a wig/dress or whatever.
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When I transitioned, complaints of being ‘clocked’ were sometimes met with the response, ‘try a bit harder then’. Harsh? But the alternative seems to turn trans people into victims.
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I agree with this, but I’m a bit confused, Debbie. You said you’re surprised when you’re not “read” at fifty paces, and from the context you mean as male, and presumably therefore transsexual or transgender, but you go on to say that a new colleague challenged you for not wearing a pronoun badge, and the irony that you had been taken as a woman. Are you sure? I wonder if she thought you might be trans, but wasn’t sure, or was using the pronouns issue to get you to fess up so she felt comfortable.
The whole issue is, as you say, a power play. If someone wants to be addressed by unlikely pronouns for their looks – and we often forget, this is the third person, so not even speaking *to* them, just *about* them – it would be reasonable not to expect everyone to comply, for one thing, and for another, they might own it as their issue and bring it up humbly at an appropriate time. Someone came cold-calling the other day, having accosted my partner on her way out and then calling on me in the house. He’d got her name, and so said, “Hi, is it Mr…?” (using her surname). This happens a fair bit, but we’re not married. I don’t get upset and complain, I just decide whether it feels appropriate to correct them. I did on this occasion. A moment later, he referred to my partner – checking what to write on his form – as “So it’s Mrs…?”, and again I corrected him. “Actually, it’s Ms….”
It would be soooo helpful to unmarried people if everyone wore badges with their title and full name, as well as their pronouns, preferred language (people don’t all speak English, y’know!)…disabilities…”race”…species?…
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…Actually, if we codified and scored all these intersectional characteristics, we could just require everyone to wear a badge at all times with their Privilege Score on it, so we’d always know who should defer to whom on everything.
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When I meet people in real life, it seems to me that they make an instant call – man or woman. That is the binary at the heart of human society. I think it’s an evolved instinct that we share with other species. Once that decision, it is reinforced and not generally questioned unless compelling evidence appears to the contrary. I can generally tell if I am assumed to be a man or a woman. People react to me in different ways – and that is a binary as well.
Only when people are thinking about the possibility of meeting a transsexual might they question their initial assumption. And outside the transgender debate few people would consider it.
I am past caring which way it goes.
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Before I retired i used to attend Local Authority meetings where we had quite robust discussions on various topics. I can’t imagine what these meetings are like now 10 years on. I know I would feel somewhat inhibited as it just feels so ridiculous calling a person they/them. The danger being that people who are uncomfortable with the whole pronouns imposition will just avoid those who insist on it. I feel for that 90 yr old volunteer, it definitely seems to be a generational divide as if we needed any more!
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The generational divide thing reminds me of earlier today when I was watching Wicked Little Letters (great, btw). It emphasizes the discrimination against women – the rare phenomenon of a woman police officer, the attitude that women should mind the house, and the widespread distaste for the Women’s Suffrage Movement – and I had one of those moments thinking, “Could we be wrong? Are we just dinosaurs, clueless, like those well-meaning, god-fearing individuals back in the day? Will we be on the wrong side of history, when everyone identifies their gender as whatever they want, and it’s customary to tell people yours and find out theirs?
And then I remembered. No, this will be one of those times when eventually the world will look back and realise we put personal projection above simple and important facts of life, an extreme version of the surface-obsessed, self-obsessed world of social media, where avatar trumps reality. Not that nobody should ever “transition” (as scientifically informed, consenting adults), just that as a social justice movement, it turned into a mad cult, and the law suits for medical and employment malpractice will attest to what a monumental mistake it was.
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