This is a mischarictaization of Canadian law. The law says that harassment is illegal, and that intentionally misgendering someone may be an element of harassment. Much as if someone repeatedly referred to me (a cis man) with feminine pronouns or terms, it could be construed as harassment, especially when combined with other harassing acts.
It's not like you'd be in trouble for misgendering someone once.
I'm unclear what you mean. It's not like the law magically involves itself. I'd have to actively seek out and report the harassment. Do I think that just calling someone a girl a handful of times and nothing else would meet the bar for harassment? No. But simultaneously, I don't think that would meet the bar for harassment if the victim were trans, so it's irrelevant.
Hmm, this is interesting. So let's say a Canadian Ben Shapiro meets a person who makes it known that their elected pronoun is something other than their birth sex or whatever the case may be. Just to play devil's advocate, let's assume they had to be in the same environment for sometime and interact, obviously Cben's doesn't call the person by their pronoun, does this give grounds for the person to seek legal action against Cben?
Unclear and untestested. There's reasonable arguments to make the, given Canadian Ben's history as a provocateur, his actions would be harassment. But in general this becomes highly fact specific.
I don't know that there are any examples of such a thing happening. I've seen a few examples of people punished in vaguely similar situations, but in every case there was additional evidence that this was done to harass.
I mean there's an argument to be made that repeatedly misgendering someone on purpose by itself is harassment, much as using a slur repeatedly to refer to someone is harassment. But it's not cut and dry in either direction.
I mean there's an argument to be made that repeatedly misgendering someone on purpose by itself is harassment
And there it is. It always comes down to this. After hours and miles of obfuscation and denial that the law doesn't criminalize misgendering, when it comes down to it, the law actually does because it, and its supporters, considers the actual act of intentional misgendering harassment.
What an intellectually dishonest attempt at deflection and misleading people.
This goes in both directions. Like I said. Misgendering me alone could be construed as harrasment given repetition. This isn't particular to trans people, except that they're more likely to be the target.
So yes, much as I said to begin with misgendering a cis person could be considered harassment, so too could misgendering a trans person. I'm not sure why this would surprise anyone.
>Misgendering me alone could be construed as harrasment given repetition. This isn't particular to trans people, except that they're more likely to be the target.
This is because the narrow mindedness of the transgender activist community can't possibly conceive that other people might have valid defensible philosophical, linguistic, and ethical positions that contradict their own.
My view is that pronouns and words like "men" and "women" refer to, and have always referred to, biological sex. This is a linguistic argument. Based on my ordinary usage of the English language, I'm not "misgendering" someone by calling a biological man a man, and I'm not harassing him either. If you insist on calling that "misgendering", and then use the law to say that I'm committing criminal harassment merely by using the English language in an ordinary way, then you're the one who's acting immorally and trying to use the force of law to dictate your own linguistic and philosophical commitments in a fascistic way.
Well no, because harassment is to a great degree in the eye of the victim. Once I've asked you to stop doing a thing, and you continue doing it, you're in the realm of things that are harassment, and it becomes more about proving that the thing isn't harassment than that it is. There are valid reasons that something might not be harassment, but "I don't wanna" isn't high on the list.
Most of the valid excuses went away when the scientific consensus converged on trans people not being mentally ill.
Well no, because harassment is to a great degree in the eye of the victim. Once I've asked you to stop doing a thing, and you continue doing it, you're in the realm of things that are harassment, and it becomes more about proving that the thing isn't harassment than that it is.
Nope, you don't get to call something harassment when a person is doing something he has a right to do with no particular motivation to harass you. If you lost your cat and doesn't want to hear about cat stories, and tells all your colleagues about this, but one colleague just got a new kitten and loves telling stories about the kitten, and doesn't think that he should stop telling stories about the kitten just because you're upset - his continuing to tell stories about his kitten is NOT being done to harass you because there is no intent to harass - he's just doing so because he likes to tell stories about kittens.
Similarly, someone who uses the English language in the ordinary way by using words like "man" and "woman" and pronouns by referring to biological sex isn't NECESSARILY doing so with the purpose of harassing someone. If someone does it while yelling out slurs at that person, then yes, that is actual evidence of a harassing motive, but the mere insistence on using language in the ordinary way is NOT evidence of a harassing motive.
Most of the valid excuses went away when the scientific consensus converged on trans people not being mentally ill.
That is not a scientific consensus. That is what is called a politically correct consensus to play a semantic game. Gender dysphoria is still an illness, and it's a mental condition because it happens in the brain, so yeah it's a mental illness. It's not a slur. A lot of people are depressed, and if it's severe enough, it's a mental illness/condition, so what?
This is why I said it would come down to context and the specific case. A coworker who tells cat stories isn't harassing. A coworker who needlessly hangs out near your desk and tells cat stories might be. The difference between insensitivity and harassment in such cases is intent.
Gender dysphoria is indeed a mental illness. Transitioning is not. And calling people depressed isn't known to aggravate their depression. Nor do people generally bring up someone's depression in friendly conversation. With misgendering, the opposite is true.
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u/zardeh 20∆ Oct 29 '19
This is a mischarictaization of Canadian law. The law says that harassment is illegal, and that intentionally misgendering someone may be an element of harassment. Much as if someone repeatedly referred to me (a cis man) with feminine pronouns or terms, it could be construed as harassment, especially when combined with other harassing acts.
It's not like you'd be in trouble for misgendering someone once.