Hilary Mantel
I'm thinking about reviving this journal as a tentative step towards getting back to writing about my day to day life.
I was on Twitter today for work (not in a personal capacity) and came across the following extract from an interview with Hilary Mantel. I thought it was worth sharing. If anyone reads this and is moved to respond, all points of ( Read more... )
Hi Bel, I'm so sorry I missed this at the time. I hope all is well with you.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I stopped checking LJ after Amy's response as I wasn't as resilient expressing my views on the topic as I thought.
Germaine Greer's point is correct, I think, as is yours. For me the end point of the argument is that no one knows what it's like to grow up, live and grow older in anyone's body other than one's own. I'm not a philosopher and that's not an argument in favour of solipsism. Rights should be based on all the evidence, with medical/scientific evidence given the greatest weight. Personal accounts of lived experience have their place and ideology has no place, in my view. Should everybody's rights be based on one group's stance about what constitutes sex and gender?
I wasn't taught at school that it's grammatically incorrect to use "they" as a gender neutral singular. Not that I remember anyway. My school was old-fashioned in its teaching methods. I would have thought it was correct in some contexts, because I've seen it used in books. It can be confusing when it's used inappropriately, but don't ask me to define what's inappropriate because my understanding of grammar is pretty tacit! So Hilary Mantel calling it a grammatical error rather weakens her argument I think. The strength of her argument is that it was imposed on her and it caused her pain.
I didn't like it when I was instructed to declare my pronouns in my email signature at work and I dislike it when I've been referred to "cis". I don't subscribe to the theory of gender that wants to compel me to label myself. I refused to do the pronouns thing, and there were three other people in the team I inadvertently spoke up for because they declined to add their pronouns as well. It was difficult to speak up against management - growing up as a girl has impacted on my self-esteem and expectations ;) - but I was glad I did it.
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