Sir, – Language is an important tool for accurately describing the world around us and effectively communicating with each other.
Fintan O’Toole mentions names, titles, and slurs and insulting language in his article about preferred pronouns (“It is good manners to address someone by their preferred pronouns”, Opinion & Analysis, October 10th).
It could indeed be considered rude, for example, not to refer to a man by his given or chosen name, or by the title that he has earned, or to call him a “Paddy”, instead of an Irish man. However, to be required to use words to mean the exact opposite of what everyone understands them to mean, under threat of sanction (be it legal or social), seems to me to be another matter entirely, with no consideration given to the particular impact of this requirement on the very young, elderly, neurodiverse and people with intellectual disabilities. – Yours, etc,
E BOLGER,
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Dublin 9.
Sir, – Using preferred pronouns seems benign, but it’s akin to genuflection in the canon of “wrong body” theology. What’s the harm in a little bend of the knee? A lot, for non-believers. – Yours, etc,
RÓISÍN MICHAUX,
Brussels.
Sir, – Contrary to Fintan O’Toole’s statement that “we are all transitioning here” in his opinion piece, the vast majority of us are not transitioning in the way that people who have gender dysphoria and who are socially transitioning changing their name and pronouns are transitioning. According to Transgender Equality Network Ireland, social transition “describes when trans people take social steps to express their gender identity. This could include using a nickname or different pronoun”. Dr Hilary Cass, who led the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People in the UK, reported in 2022 that it is important to view social transition as an active intervention. Dr Cass noted that social transition may have significant effects on a young person’s psychological functioning and that better information is needed about outcomes of social transition.
The recent sudden increase in the prevalence of gender dysphoria particularly among children and young people is a new phenomenon. New evidence on the optimal ways to help a person manage distress relating to their gender identity is emerging and evolving. We do not yet know in what contexts and for whom affirmation of a person with gender dysphoria’s request to use their pronouns is beneficial, and in what contexts it may be harmful.
The South Eastern Technological University pronouns policy that Ms Colfer is objecting to makes the use of a person’s pronouns compulsory in all contexts without exception. Ms Colfer’s concerns that this policy is problematic are not unfounded. Fintan O’Toole’s ill-informed opinion that anyone who raises concerns about the compelled use of pronouns is being an a**hole moves the already complex and polarised debate about gender identity issues backwards not forwards. – Yours, etc,
LOUISE WHELAN,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Of course your columnist Fintan O’Toole thinks it “costs nothing” to doff the cap – the control exerted by the Catholic Church on Irish life didn’t cost men like him anything. It was children, women and gay people who paid that cost. Women do know this all too well: your columnist would do well to listen to us. Demanding a form of address has also “long been a way of asserting power over” others. I thought we were supposed to learn from history.
The long-established convention is that “woman” means adult human female, not a male (and vice versa) and that pronouns refer, inter alia, to a person’s sex. No coherent argument has been presented to overturn that agreed convention; however, there are obvious risks associated with it.
Without being able to identify an individual’s sex, safeguarding practice is fatally undermined: 99 per cent of violent sexual crime is committed by people of the male sex, primarily against people of the female sex, and children. When we are required to say men are women, single-sex services for victims of this violence are harder to preserve. Patients in hospital are denied the privacy, dignity and safety of same-sex wards: in the UK, hospitals have even denied rape because there was no “he” present. Men convicted of violent crimes against women are housed in women’s prisons. Fair sporting competition for women is impossible when males are allowed to compete against female people. Lesbians are told their sexual orientation is transphobic.
I name just a handful of risks – all of which cost your columnist nothing, but cost women dearly.
If any country should understand the dangers of using educational institutions to promote a belief system not grounded in facts or evidence, it is this one. Your columnist promotes a belief system which is highly contested, and which does not have the broad degree of societal acceptance Catholicism once enjoyed in Ireland.
That one of Ireland’s foremost intellectuals can construct no more compelling an argument for requiring people to observe the rituals of a belief system inherently hostile to women and homosexual people than calling them “rude”, a “churlish pain in the behind”, an “a**hole” surely indicates the intellectual bankruptcy of such a position.
That The Irish Times would chose to print it is an indication of how little value it places on freedom of expression. – Yours, etc,
C LOFTUS,
Dublin 7.