Mick Hartley

Yesterday was International Pronouns Day apparently, as Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke of Cheshire Police was keen to remind us:

“It is so important to understand the pronouns that somebody wishes to be used for them,” the uniformed DCC tells us in her video, filmed in front of a Cheshire Constabulary background – just in case we were in any doubt about whether this is an official police communication.

“Being misgendered can have a huge impact on somebody and their personal wellbeing. It also can be used as a form of abuse for them, and that just isn’t right,” DCC Cooke says.

Indeed it is not: personal abuse is unpleasant and unkind and decent people deplore it and avoid it. But is it a crime?  

Will the fact that a senior officer has used police resources to issue a public statement telling the public to respect the pronouns of others make some people wonder if the police now view “misgendering” as a criminal offence?  

Will this sort of thing have some effect on free speech?  

Should women who really, really don’t want to refer to male-born transwomen as “she” be put under pressure to say things they don’t believe?  

Should the feelings of transwomen in such cases automatically have priority over the feelings of women who feel uncomfortable using words they believe denote something fundamentally untrue?  

And is it really the business of the police to tell us how to speak to each other?

See Julie here on Twitter – with some amusing responses.