Tesla Billionaire and new Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, has hit out at what he describes as “forcing your pronouns on others when they didn’t ask” – referring to the demands from transgender activists that everybody declare whether they are male to female and sign off emails with statements on whether they ‘identify’ as she/he.
He argued that such compulsion “is neither good not kind to anyone”, and pointed out that those who did not comply would be “ostracized”.
While only a tiny fraction of people are ‘non-binary’, aggressive campaigns by activists have led to controversy and cancel campaigns when high profile figures either refused to engage, or in the case of comedian Dave Chappelle, made a joke of something he considered absurd.
Musk’s comment came in response to a reply on his assertion that his pronouns were ‘Prosecute. Fauci’ – a reference to his belief that the Chief White House adviser should face questioning about gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab where some believe Covid originated.
“Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community. They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives,” one Twitter user replied to Musk.
“I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone,” Musk said in response.
I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.
As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
Musk’s use of the word ‘forced’ provoked a strong reaction, since free-speech advocates and women’s groups have long argued that a push to make everyone declare their gender amounts to “compelled speech”.
BBC is just one of many corporations who have urged staff to state their pronouns in email signatures in order to be more inclusive to transgender employees.
Staff were asked to declare their “preferred pronouns” such as “she/her”, “he/him” or “they/them” – with the move described as a “small, proactive step that we can all take to help create a more inclusive workplace” by the media giant.
Women’s groups hit back, saying it was another step in the “pretence” that biological sex doesn’ matter and in pushing the belief that gender is fluid, even though that is not, and has never been, the experience of the vast majority of people
Legalfeminist.org described the move to force employees to declare pronouns as “highly political” and said “it also suggests that there may be repercussions for failing to remember a colleague’s preferred pronouns. ”
Speaker and author Jordan Peterson, shot to fame when he said that legislation which forced people to use the preferred pronouns approach was tantamount to compelled speech.
The pronoun controversy got the Ricky Gervais treatment in this hard-hitting sketch as part of his Supernature tour.
Ricky Gervais on Trans Woman (SuperNature) https://t.co/JelrdfQPKR via @YouTube
— Ginger (@63_susan) June 13, 2022