Composing student, 22, is killed by truck

True North says:

You can’t even resist spewing your hateful vitriol on an obituary notice, of all places. What a sorry excuse for a human being you are.

V.Lind says:

You do not seem to have read me very carefully, Ms. Buechner. I advocate respect for people, whatever their situation, quite explicitly. And I certainly did not accuse you of in any way abusing J.K. Rowling — I specifically referred to “an element” of the trans community.

You seem to operate mostly in North America, so perhaps you are unaware of the vitriol that has been directed at her because she objected to someone from the trans community referring to what you prefer to call “cis-gender women” as “people who menstruate.” There is a raging debate in the UK between trans extremists and “cis” women.

I am not remotely upset by people like you existing as part of the human diaspora. Nor does your situation particularly interest me, at least not to the point of attending groups to hear their discussions. In any case, where I live I would be hard pressed to find any such group.

And you do seem to expect the courtesy of people like me and some others here of breaking the habit of a lifetime spent as people professionally devoted to language, as writers, editors, teachers and even just as readers by observing a newly imposed pronoun usage that flies in the face of grammatical logic.

As my opening sentence in my first post implied, I would be prepared, even if reluctantly, to offer this courtesy as long as it was part of a mutual respect, which a small but extremely vocal and aggressive part of the trans community has been withholding from anyone who does not jump to their demands.

There are still some issues, such as competitive sport participation, especially at elite levels, and certain problems in vulnerable housing, such as prisons or shelters, that need to be resolved. So are questions regarding the transition of very young people, some of whom are merely experiencing uncertainties as to their identity that are not unknown to the majority that would never consider such drastic alterations. Those resolutions require mutual “understanding and empathy,” not just a craven caving in by the majority to demands by people who do not seem to accept the reservations of others as subjects for discussion, let alone negotiation.

If you cannot admit that the emergence of a debate on trans issues is something relatively new — perhaps overdue, and I would hope we have learned something from the removal of legal barriers faced by gay people for far too long — then it is unlikely that there will be much of either understanding nor empathy in this ongoing review of societal behaviours.

That admission begins with appreciating that most of us grew up in a world where there were men and women, hes and shes, M and F, and changing the majority to accommodate a minority is usually a slow process. I would still argue for mutual respect.