William Congreve’s popular line mentioned “a woman scorned”, which only goes to show how long ago the 17th century was.
I bet Congreve didn’t even know the word ‘trans’, although he could have observed the underlying phenomenon. There’s every chance he might have visited a county fair in his native Yorkshire, with a bearded woman as a star attraction.
As to the word ‘misgendering’, I’m willing to bet my house that old William neither knew the word nor could even guess its meaning. One has to celebrate the constantly expanding English language, if not necessarily every way in which it is expanding.
The noun ‘gender’, for example, used to designate a grammatical category only. It then took on an extra job, one formerly held by the word ‘sex’. But even then it remained a noun.
No longer. We can now ‘misgender’ someone, which by inference suggests that ‘gender’ is also a transitive verb. Isn’t English wonderful?
Then there is the word ‘Karen’ that I’ve only learned this morning. Do you know it? Don’t fret, you can always rely on me to expand your vocabulary. As I found out, ‘Karen’ is a pejorative American term for a white, middle-aged woman.
The term is so essential that we have imported it along with other American products, such as hot dogs, Coke and verbs made out of nouns. Anyway, put the words ‘trans’, ‘misgender’ and ‘Karen’ together and you get an unsightly clash at a Starbucks in Southampton.
A ‘Karen’ ‘misgendered’ a ‘trans’ working at that coffee shop. Oh by the way, I forgot to mention ‘transphobe’, another word that would have puzzled Congreve. That’s what the misgendered trans called the offending Karen: “You’re calling me a man, you’re being transphobic, Karen. Now get out.”
Karen disobeyed and a scuffle ensued. When the trans saw that another customer was filming the action, he/she/it knocked the phone out of his hand and was subsequently sacked for his/her/its trouble.
That has produced a torrent of Internet comments, some in support of the trans, others extolling the Karen for her courage. The first group wields the term ‘trans rights’, and I shan’t even mention Congreve’s possible reaction to it had he lived improbably long.
These days the word ‘rights’ has the same effect on me as the word ‘culture’ allegedly had on Dr Goebbels. This term has always been in circulation, but never as widely as these days.
The ‘rights of Englishmen’, for example, were invoked by the rebellious American colonists, who went on to prove, somewhat illogically, that one such right was to stop being Englishmen.
But these days we are served up any number of rights: to marriage, education, health, development of personality, leisure time, warm and loving family or – barring that – warm and loving social services, employment, paternity leave and so forth.
Using the language of the rebellious American colonists, the assumption is that all rights are created equal. They aren’t. Some, such as the right to life, are natural rights, inherent in the very nature of man. Others are strictly a matter of consensus.
It’s easy to tell them apart. Natural rights don’t presuppose a concomitant obligation on someone else’s part. Other rights, such as those I mentioned above, do.
For example, one’s right to employment would mean something tangible only if there were someone out there who consents or is obligated by law to give one a job. One’s right to education presupposes the existence of someone obligated to provide such education – and so on.
Negating a natural right is usually a crime. Murder, for example, denies the right to life; keeping someone locked up in the cellar denies the right to liberty. What about trans rights then?
That all depends on what we mean by the term. If a man wishes to live his life as a woman, it’s his right to do so – inasmuch as his right doesn’t impinge on someone else’s, specifically mine.
If that man decides to go the whole medical hog, his right becomes rather dubious, in some cases downright bogus. There he depends on other people’s consent to facilitate that transition. Doctors must agree, for example, to prescribe a course of hormonal treatments. A surgeon must agree to perform the necessary operation.
Moreover, our saintly NHS must agree to pay for all that. That’s where I sense my rights being curtailed. After all, the NHS is financed by the public, of which I’m a small, but to me rather significant, part. Don’t I have a right to object when my money is being used to an end I find deplorable?
We are in a grey area there because a right doesn’t have to be natural to be valid. But it’s worth reiterating that the right to change sex is consensual and therefore not natural. And the beautiful thing about consent is that it can be not only given but also withdrawn.
Thus it should be reasonably clear that our ‘Karen’ had a natural right to refuse to accept the Starbucks trans on his/her/its terms. At the same time, the trans had no right at all, natural or otherwise, to insist that the ‘Karen’ refuse to believe the evidence before her eyes and agree to misuse the English language accordingly.
Here we observe a clash of two rights, one real, the other virtual, which is to say bogus. When such a conflict arises, common sense suggests that actual reality should defeat the virtual kind every time. So it would have done, in William Congreve’s time.
In our time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sacked trans appealed to a tribunal and won compensation for unfair dismissal. After all, it’s not only the English language that evolves, but also our understanding of reality. That’s progress for you.
The term ‘Karen’ is more about behaviour, than demographics. Here are a couple of the best definitions from the Urban Dictionary:
– “Middle aged woman, typically blonde, makes solutions to others’ problems an inconvenience to her although she isn’t even remotely affected.”
– “Karen is a pejorative term used for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary.”
More often than not, a ‘Karen’ adheres to Woke ideology. Those that use the term are part of the resistance.
No always though, by the sound of it.
Hmm.. I think ‘trans’ is an adjective. Eg I am trans. I am a trans man.
Another wonderful article.
It is too bad that we have progressed beyond the point of civil debate. It might be interesting to hear a debate on natural versus other rights and watch a progressive try to explain and convince us that all of these “wants” of theirs are somehow actually “rights”.
You mention two very important facts: 1) “Natural rights don’t presuppose a concomitant obligation on someone else’s part”; and 2) the right to life is “inherent in the very nature of man.” These are things that should be taught at every school in the western world. If they were, I think we would see far fewer of these “trans rights” outbursts – in fact, far fewer trans people as well. Let’s get you your own television show where you can debate these matters.
I accept. Do you think any TV channel would?
It will be interesting to see how the current argument about pecking order between two conflicting groups of rights-holders is finally resolved. On the one hand we have the old-fashioned ultra-feminists, notably represented by Jenni Murray and J K Rowling, who think that men are so bad that their badness isn’t expunged even if they try to turn themselves into women. On the other hand, we have almost everybody under the age of forty, who think that almost any kind of human behaviour that would have been thought insane forty years ago ought to be considered normal today. I think the latter group will win, not (0f course) because they have better arguments, but because they’re louder and potentially more violent.
Needless to say, you and I, who understand that the debaters on both sides are insane to almost the same degree, will be ignored unless we become popular enough to be punished.
(That was meant to be posted as a comment on your article, not a comment on your comment on BrianC’s comment on your article. Apologies for any confusion. If anybody has been adversely affected by my typing in the wrong reply box, no doubt there’s a helpline available that can suggest appropriate remedies, such as a civil suit for sexual assault.)
This Congreave judging from his portrait might fit in well with the current trans-gender element.