Today is International Pronouns Day.
Just in case you weren’t aware of it, here’s a senior British police officer explaining its significance.
Julie Cooke is currently Deputy Chief Constable of Cheshire police. But she managed to find time in her busy schedule to announce the following:
Today is International Pronoun Day which is particularly important to people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming.
Being misgendered can have a huge impact on somebody and their personal wellbeing. It also can be used as a form of abuse for somebody and that just isn’t right.
Today is about raising awareness, getting people to have conversations and understanding why it is so important to understand the pronouns that somebody wishes to be used.
I suspect that thanks to Cooke’s video people are indeed having ‘conversations’. But I doubt that many of these conversations concern which pronouns to use on someone who was born a man but thinks he’s a girl, or vice versa.
Rather, I think these conversations might be including one or two of these questions:
How does this woman’s BSc Honours Degree in Transport Management and Law – from an establishment so lowly she won’t even name it on her CV – qualify her to lecture anyone on at all on the correct usage of pronouns?
Why is this woman appearing in police uniform, in front of a police logo, in order to proselytise on behalf of a niche, identity politics movement which is anathema to the vast majority of people she is supposed to serve?
Given that we are paying this woman £124,000 — plus benefits — out of our hard-earned taxed income, is there anyone, anywhere who believes that we are getting value for money?
The post of Deputy Chief Constable means that this woman is being groomed for the very highest roles in policing. Why?
What is the point of the police if it insists on focusing on niche left-wing political issues at the expense of dealing with real crime?
Home Secretary Priti Patel: we know you hate all this nonsense. So when are you going to stop it happening?