Mick Hartley

While most organisations are busy distancing themselves from Stonewall, our courts – behind the times as ever – are moving the other way and embracing gender nonsense:

Judges have been told that they should refer to criminal defendants by the gender they have chosen for themselves.

New guidance instructs judges to consider whether alleged victims of sexual offences should be required to describe transgender defendants by the pronouns they self-identify with.

It will give rise to concerns that witnesses and alleged victims of rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse could be forced to refer to defendants as women, even if they view them as male.

Even if they know them as male, rather. And the victims should know, having been raped and abused by these be-penised men. But they'll nevertheless be required to go along with their abuser's fantasy.

Revisions to the “equal treatment benchbook”, a 540-page guide from the Judicial College, have told judges: “There may be situations where the rights of a witness to refer to a trans person by pronouns matching their gender assigned at birth, or to otherwise reveal a person’s trans status, clash with the trans person’s right to privacy.”

Lady Justice King, the Court of Appeal judge and the chairwoman of the college, described the guidance as a “dynamic document” that has become “a key work of reference” that is “admired and envied by judiciaries across the globe”.

The advice goes on to give a range of guidance to judges on modern mores, including the direction that they should “use gender-neutral language where possible”. That translates to meaning that ideally the term “businessman” should be banished in favour of “business person” and the description “postman” should be ditched for “postal operative”. The college advises judges to use the term “flight attendant” instead of “air hostess” and “chair” instead of “chairman”.

But it is the college’s advice on gender that is likely to be the most controversial. The guidance states that judges should be alert to issues about gender identity as early as possible in court hearings. It states that “in the rare circumstances where it is necessary in the proceedings to disclose a person’s previous name and transgender history, the court may consider making reporting restrictions to prevent the disclosure of this information more widely or directing a private hearing”.

The guidance also refers to advice from the campaign group Stonewall, as it states that “ideas about acceptable language are changing rapidly”.

Indeed they are, m'lud. 

You get the feeling that the judiciary, still smarting from the fallout from the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960 (is it the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read"?), is desperately attempting to be modern and au fait with current mores. But, alas, they've missed the boat again.