Recently I saw an article announcing the death of a prominent poet whose work was completely unknown to me. What caught my attention was the use throughout the article of plural pronouns to refer to the deceased. I went online to find pictures of the poet, which showed me a rather young looking person of ambiguous sexuality. The cause of death, however, gave me the answer to my curiosity about the sex of the poet. She had died of ovarian cancer. Males don’t have ovarian anything. The poet’s sex was clearly female.
So what was the poet’s gender? I turned to a good dictionary for a definition of the word “gender”. Webster’s New World Dictionary 4th Edition, published in 2010 by Wiley Publishers in Cleveland, Ohio. That volume ot 1770 pages is on my home reference shelf. In refence to being persons its definition of gender is “the fact of being either a male or female human being.” The same dictionary distinguishes singular pronouns to denote the person referred to being either a male or female. “They and their and them refers to two or more persons without refence to sex. That dictionary and I agreed in 2010 that the poet was a female person or a male, therefore a he/him or a she/her, but could not be correctly designated as either “they” or “them.”
Ah, but that was way back in 2010, fifteen long years ago. Back then I was unfamiliar with any argument to the effect that a person could change his or her gender. In searching the internet for refences to this poet, I found nary a refence to “she” or “her”; all of the pronouns referring to her were plural. I find the change disturbing. Worse perhaps I am disinclined to refer to “transgender” folks by different pronouns than those tha apply to their sex. When and if science figures ou how sexual males can get pregnant by having sexualized encouners with sexual females, then and only then am I open to pretending that self described trans individuals have actually changed their identity from male to female or the opposite. My experience has included watching a self-alleged trans female sexually molest a female who trusted the molester’s apparent identity as being that of someone without any sexual interest in her. Yes NPR fans, trans females may be more interested in aggressive sexual encounters with women and girls than consensual sex with the males they allegedly “used to be”. Since the first such incident I have encountered several more incidents of trans women who had been arrested for extremely aggressive behavior towards either females or towards males who the trans women called “whore” or “bitch”. I am a criminal lawyer who has also represented many other sexual aggression cases involving folks who had no trans issues. But my experience leaves me with very negative feelings about the Biden administration insistence on forcing schools to endorse demands for males to be inserted in the private spaces the public pays to provide for women. I have also learned that several European countries have had negative results from endorsing transgender “care” for adolescents who identify with the opposite sex. Adolescents frequently have sexual interests and fantasies which change later. Blocking puberty and medically reinforcing those interests and fantasies frequently has led to regret in later life.
Journal of Public Law 