Father arrested and jailed for calling his biologically female daughter "she": this week in the strange death of Canada

[laughing dog]

I can understand that this father is upset. I can understand he disagree with what is happening (even if I disagree with him). But his insistence to hurt his child is to me the real issue here. It makes me wonder if he should continue to have parental rights.

You 'wonder' whether the State should strip a man of his parenting rights because he called his female daughter 'she'.

I did not say that. He is being verbally abusive towards his child. That is an indicator of an abusive parent. I cannot parse whether your mischaracterization of what I wrote is driven by obtuseness or intellectual dishonesty.

I can't even.

No need to confirm what your OP established.

 

[TomC]

The parts that I addressed with that comment were read but observed to be filled with baggage and drama. Thus, I wrote that it was too much drama and baggage.

Did you read the quote from [MENTION=136]Toni[/MENTION]; ? I was responding to her assertions about me personally.

I've mostly stopped responding to Toni. Too much strawman and dramatic mind reading. You've given me another reason to stop responding. Clearing up her strawman arguments is "too much drama and baggage".
Tom

 

[Keith&Co.]

No, it has nothing to do with your biological definition of sex. There is no "the biological definition of sex".

According to Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, by Olivia Judson, the biologist definition of sex is the exchange of genetic material.
So, two bacteria can have sex, while a man and woman using a condom are not having sex.

 

[Metaphor]

Calling anyone anything that they have repeatedly asked you not to, is offensive.

It is not offensive to use the pronoun 'she' to address a female child. But, even if it were, the State has no right to arrest and jail you for it.

The state has the right to call a halt to harassment. And to punish those who ignore court rulings on the issue.

It is not 'harassment' to call a female child 'she'.

The state did no such thing. The state mandated the cessation of language that had passed beyond mere opinion, to become harassment. The state at no point mandated that anyone say anything at all; Only that they STOP saying something that the plaintiff reasonably demonstrated had risen to the level of harassment.

The State ordered that no language be used that contradicted the transmasculine identity of the child. This is like the State forbidding somebody from saying 'Jesus is a prophet of Islam'. The State can think that the utterance is wrong, the State can think it's an insult and harassment of Christians, but the State has no right to stop somebody saying it or punish them for it.

Nonsense. The state has always been in the business of punishing insults.

I did not say that the State did not have the power to punish people for using insults. Obviously the State has that power and uses it. I said the State has no right.

And the accused didn't merely 'acknowledge somebody's biological sex'; He repeatedly and consistently persisted in contradicting a person's sexual identity. Sexual identity is hugely complex, but one thing about it is obvious - the final and absolute authority on a given person's sexual identity is that person themselves.

Since gender identity can be anything and is a thought inside a person's head, I do not doubt you that the best authority on someone's sexual identity is the person holding the thought.

But I think it is plain the father thinks that pronouns that conform to somebody's sex are the appropriate way to use pronouns for humans, and their gender identity is irrelevant.

Repeatedly, and after having been asked to stop, taken to court and ordered to stop. Yes.

If your new roommate turns out to be a flat eath believer, you are perfectly entitled to discuss his beliefs, and even to call him an idiot for believing something that is clearly untrue. You are NOT entitled to call him 'idiot' every time you see him, and when discussing him in his presence, after he has asked you to desist from doing so. And you can expect to be arrested if he gets a court injunction against you for consistently referencing him as 'the idiot', and you defy the judge's ruling and continue to harass him in this way.

Truth isn't a defence here, because the facts are not in dispute. The issue is the persistent and repeated insults, which even if founded in truth would constitute harassment.

Truth doesn't need to be a defence; you ought have the right to call somebody an 'idiot' without the State arresting and jailing you for it.

 

[Metaphor]

I did not say that. He is being verbally abusive towards his child.

Calling your biological female daughter 'she' is not verbal abuse. I can only think you have never actually experienced verbal abuse for you to think so.

 

[Toni]

No, you and I did not just meet. I feel as though I've known you all my life. Perhaps we even went to high school together. Would not surprise me one little bit.

Perhaps you should leave your own personal and obviously very bitter experiences with former spouses out of this discussion. Unless your former spouse refused to acknowledge one of your children's gender.

I suppose the fact that I'm male is why you assume that you can read my mind?

The closest thing I have to a bitter ex-spouse is a guy I bought a house with around 30 years ago. The breakup was acrimonious, but once I got clear title to the property I completely stopped caring.

However, I'm not particularly fond of gay people as a group. Too much drama llama, promiscuity, politically correct group think, etc. for my tastes. Most of my social circle is the "married with children" sort of people. But I've seen lots of bitter ex's manipulate their ex's by manipulating the kids.

Based on the sketchy information available, that looks more likely than the non-costodial parent deliberately abusing his child. But there isn't enough information available to be sure. So I'm not.

Unlike many other posters in this thread.

Tom

You brought up 'bitter ex spouse.'

I assumed you had a reason to do so.

While I have no personal experience either having or being a bitter ex spouse, I've certainly known some people in both categories--actually, usually belonging in both categories. While it is possible that the mother of the child in question is a bitter ex spouse, we don't really know anything about her at all.

I highly doubt that she is attempting to manipulate her child into believing they are transgender, if that is what you are suggesting. If it were that easy to convince someone that they are a gender that is not how they feel, I strongly there would be even fewer transgender people. If it were that easy to convince a 14 year old of..anything, at least intentionally, parents would have many fewer gray hairs and I am guessing somewhat less stress in their relationship with their child and perhaps even with each other.

I have no idea whether the non-custodial parent in this case is otherwise abusing his child. I am more than willing to assume that the non-custodial parent is struggling mightily to understand his child and to come to grips with the fact that the child isn't who he believed them to be and also that he is unable to control his now 14 year old child the way that he possibly once could 10 years prior----and if he is like most divorced/divorcing parents, is struggling with a lot of issues as well. Heck, most of us who are NOT divorced/divorcing struggle with some issues, possibly no time quite as much as when our children reach adolescence.

My reading of the case presented in the OP is that this issue has somehow come before a judge---most likely because of some child custody issues between parents. I've seen parents do absolutely crazy things in situations regarding custody issues and children, most particularly adolescent children. This is tragic and makes life so much harder for everyone, including the child. It would be great if people could manage to not do this to their kids but some people cannot seem to help themselves.

Nonetheless, if one is brought before a judge who instructs you to discontinue (whatever it is) that you are doing to your child that your child indicates is very hurtful and experts in this issue agree is hurtful, it behooves you to follow the judge's instructions and stop hurting your child, even if what you are doing seems 'normal' to you and 'not hurtful' to you.

 

[laughing dog]

I did not say that. He is being verbally abusive towards his child.

Calling your biological female daughter 'she' is not verbal abuse

It is when she takes offense.

I can only think you have never actually experienced verbal abuse for you to think so.

Again, no need to reconfirm that you cannot even.

 

[Toni]

Human female children are sometimes born without a uterus or Fallopian tubes or even without one or both ovaries (or occasionally with an extra ovary) but with normal female external genitalia.

A male child can be born without testicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penile_agenesis_and_testicular_agenesis

There are many situations where an individual is born without the 'standard' gender conforming external genitalia or internal gonads and other reproductive structures.

So what? That has nothing to do with the definition of biological sex.

I posted examples of biological females and males which do not conform to the narrow definition you provided.

Is a man who lost his testicles due to accident or disease no longer male? Is a woman who is post menopausal no longer female? What if she has undergone a radical hysterectomy with uterus and ovaries removed? What if only the ovaries are removed? What if only the uterus is removed?

What about individuals who appear morphologically female but are born without a uterus? Without ovaries or fallopian tubes? Without a vagina?

What about individuals who are born without testicles? Or whose testes are undescended?

What about individuals who are born with ambiguous genitalia?

External organs/morphology do not always match X Y chromosomal arrays.

Science suggests that brain structures also do not always match X Y chromosomal arrays.

 

[bilby]

It is not offensive to use the pronoun 'she' to address a female child. But, even if it were, the State has no right to arrest and jail you for it.



It is not 'harassment' to call a female child 'she'.

The state did no such thing. The state mandated the cessation of language that had passed beyond mere opinion, to become harassment. The state at no point mandated that anyone say anything at all; Only that they STOP saying something that the plaintiff reasonably demonstrated had risen to the level of harassment.

The State ordered that no language be used that contradicted the transmasculine identity of the child. This is like the State forbidding somebody from saying 'Jesus is a prophet of Islam'. The State can think that the utterance is wrong, the State can think it's an insult and harassment of Christians, but the State has no right to stop somebody saying it or punish them for it.

Nonsense. The state has always been in the business of punishing insults.

I did not say that the State did not have the power to punish people for using insults. Obviously the State has that power and uses it. I said the State has no right.

And the accused didn't merely 'acknowledge somebody's biological sex'; He repeatedly and consistently persisted in contradicting a person's sexual identity. Sexual identity is hugely complex, but one thing about it is obvious - the final and absolute authority on a given person's sexual identity is that person themselves.

Since gender identity can be anything and is a thought inside a person's head, I do not doubt you that the best authority on someone's sexual identity is the person holding the thought.

But I think it is plain the father thinks that pronouns that conform to somebody's sex are the appropriate way to use pronouns for humans, and their gender identity is irrelevant.

Repeatedly, and after having been asked to stop, taken to court and ordered to stop. Yes.

If your new roommate turns out to be a flat eath believer, you are perfectly entitled to discuss his beliefs, and even to call him an idiot for believing something that is clearly untrue. You are NOT entitled to call him 'idiot' every time you see him, and when discussing him in his presence, after he has asked you to desist from doing so. And you can expect to be arrested if he gets a court injunction against you for consistently referencing him as 'the idiot', and you defy the judge's ruling and continue to harass him in this way.

Truth isn't a defence here, because the facts are not in dispute. The issue is the persistent and repeated insults, which even if founded in truth would constitute harassment.

Truth doesn't need to be a defence; you ought have the right to call somebody an 'idiot' without the State arresting and jailing you for it.

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

 

[Metaphor]

You should take your science skepticism over to the "What do you want to do with the little people" thread where this person is quoting scientific study after study to presumably prove that genetics condemns the poor to be poor and that there is nothing that we can do about it.

I am male. There's nothing I can do about that. I don't 'identify' as male, I simply am male.

I'm ethnically a Slav. I don't 'identify' as a Slav, I simply am one. Nothing can change the fact of my ancestral lineage and genetic inheritance, no matter how hard I wished it were so.

 

[Trausti]

You should take your science skepticism over to the "What do you want to do with the little people" thread where this person is quoting scientific study after study to presumably prove that genetics condemns the poor to be poor and that there is nothing that we can do about it.

I am male. There's nothing I can do about that. I don't 'identify' as male, I simply am male.

I'm ethnically a Slav. I don't 'identify' as a Slav, I simply am one. Nothing can change the fact of my ancestral lineage and genetic inheritance, no matter how hard I wished it were so.

 

[Metaphor]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant. The State has no business interfering in the exercise of your speech, whether you imagine it to be 'harassment' or not.

 

[Metaphor]

it behooves you to follow the judge's instructions and stop hurting your child, even if what you are doing seems 'normal' to you and 'not hurtful' to you.

The fact that a judge has the power to hurt you if you don't do what he says is no more to the point than the fact that a bully has the power to hurt you if you don't do what he says and it would behoove you to follow the bully's instructions.

 

[bilby]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant. The State has no business interfering in the exercise of your speech, whether you imagine it to be 'harassment' or not.

The state isn't interfering in the excercise of speech. It's saying that once you have said your piece, continuing to labour the point when addressing an individual who has clearly and repeatedly indicated that it makes them uncomfortable, eventually becomes harassment, and will not be allowed.

You can hold and express any opinions you want.

You can't tyrannise people by constantly imposing your unwanted opinions on them in situations where they reasonably expect to be left alone.

The defendant wasn't arrested for writing an opinion piece, or a blog post, or a letter to the local newspaper. He was arrested for ignoring a court order not to further annoy the plaintiff in a very specific way that he had no reasonable expectation would achieve anything other than the ongoing annoyance of the plaintiff.

It's not outrageous that the court should take this action. It is completely reasonable, normal, and in keeping with the defence of basic human rights, which do not include the right to bully or harrass people with impunity.

 

[laughing dog]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant.

No it is not. This is a parent who is being deliberately abusive to a child and who has been asked to stop.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No, it has nothing to do with your biological definition of sex. There is no "the biological definition of sex".

According to Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, by Olivia Judson, the biologist definition of sex is the exchange of genetic material.
So, two bacteria can have sex, while a man and woman using a condom are not having sex.

Bacteria only masturbate. Thank goodness we don't reproduce that way! We'd have died out from overpopulation millennia ago.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant.

It is if said somebody are experts in a field and a judge... and the person being harmed is a minor. It matters a lot!

 

[Metaphor]

The state isn't interfering in the excercise of speech.

Of course it is. The father was arrested for using certain pronouns.

It's saying that once you have said your piece, continuing to labour the point when addressing an individual who has clearly and repeatedly indicated that it makes them uncomfortable, eventually becomes harassment, and will not be allowed.

Pronouns are part of the English language and are very common; this is not like forbidding somebody from reciting 'Jabberwocky' every time he sees someone else. Nor do I agree with your threshold of 'harassment' and its actionability by the State.

You can hold and express any opinions you want.

You can't tyrannise people by constantly imposing your unwanted opinions on them in situations where they reasonably expect to be left alone.

"Tyrannise". Good god, do you know what tyranny is? Calling a female child 'she' is not tyranny, even if you do it repeatedly.

The defendant wasn't arrested for writing an opinion piece, or a blog post, or a letter to the local newspaper. He was arrested for ignoring a court order not to further annoy the plaintiff in a very specific way that he had no reasonable expectation would achieve anything other than the ongoing annoyance of the plaintiff.

It's not outrageous that the court should take this action. It is completely reasonable, normal, and in keeping with the defence of basic human rights, which do not include the right to bully or harrass people with impunity.

We disagree that it is normal and reasonable for the State to arrest and jail somebody for not using the requested pronouns of somebody in every day conversation. So why do you exempt blog posts, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor? Is that a step too far for you?

 

[Metaphor]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant.

No it is not. This is a parent who is being deliberately abusive to a child and who has been asked to stop.

That he is being 'deliberately abusive' is your contention. I disagree on both the characterisation of it as 'deliberate' and the characterisation of it as 'abuse'. I also disagree that the State has the right to punish you for speech.

 

[Metaphor]

You DO have that right.

Nobody's getting arrested for calling the plaintiff 'she'; They are getting arrested for ignoring a court order to respect the plaintiff's request to stop doing so, on a regular basis, despite an increasingly desperate series of such requests, ultimately leading to court.

Ongoing refusal to respect a person's wishes when they have made it completely clear that your actions are insulting and hurtful to them is harassment, and is and should be illegal. People do not have the right to harass others.

No matter how right they are, or feel themselves to be, harassment of this kind is the behaviour of arseholes, and society need not tolerate that shit.

That somebody finds a particular action or utterance 'insulting' or 'hurtful' is irrelevant.

It is if said somebody are experts in a field and a judge... and the person being harmed is a minor. It matters a lot!

That a judge has the power to punish you for your speech is not the same thing as the judge having the moral right to do so.