While Ukrainians fight for their independence and Israelis for their survival, we are manning the verbal ramparts of wokery.
Yet another Christian teacher has been led up to the employment gibbet and strung up for ‘misgendering’ a pupil. Last year, Joshua Sutcliffe was drummed out of his profession by a TRA (Teaching Regulation Agency) panel for failing to treat a trans pupil “with dignity and respect”, meaning forgetting to use the pronouns said pupil preferred at the time.
At that point Mr Sutcliffe let the side down by apologising profusely. That abject surrender had no effect on his prosecutors, predictably.
Now, I turned my own back on an academic career some 50 years ago precisely because I sensed which way the wind was blowing. Following the Delphic maxim of “Know thyself”, I realised I was too bloody-minded to be told what to say and what not to say. So why kill oneself trying to get a job one knows one won’t be able to keep? And that time offered only a vague hint at things to come in the 21st century.
Now I can afford the luxury of smirking smugly at Mr Sutcliffe’s ordeal and saying that, if I were him, I wouldn’t have apologised under any circumstances. I might have even asked whether I was supposed to bark at a pupil identifying as a dog or neigh at one identifying as a horse. However, the point is that I displayed the same weakness as Mr Sutcliffe but, unlike him, I did that pre-emptively, by refusing ever to put myself in his position.
Now he is appealing to the High Court, citing his Christian faith and referring to freedom of speech and religion, a freedom that’s now defunct or at least severely limited. This is especially noticeable when it finds itself on the wrong side of the pronoun war.
Hence Mr Sutcliffe was deemed to be “unprofessional” because he jeopardised his pupils’ spiritual wellbeing. His transgression was dire: this reprobate praised the work turned in by a group of pupils by saying: “Well done, girls.”
That was ignoring the supposedly obvious fact that one of the ‘girls’ had decided she really wasn’t one any longer. Moreover, even though this nuance didn’t come up at the hearing, the word ‘girls’ can anyway be easily construed as demeaning and traumatising.
Such shamefully binary words must be replaced with open-ended salutations. I’d recommend something like “Well done, persons”, “Well done, beings” or perhaps “Well done, individuals”. These may sound less mellifluous, but hey, we aren’t after sonorities here, are we? We are after protecting young souls from the life-long wounds that words like ‘girls’ can inflict.
The prospects of the court overturning the TRA verdict strike me as dim, especially in light of the defence put up by Mr Sutcliffe’s lawyers. They claim that there is “no legal requirement to use preferred pronouns” and, tautologically, that Mr Sutcliffe had a right “not to believe gender identity belief”.
By the same logic, I have a right to relieve myself in my own lavatory, but I’d be nicked if I did so on Piccadilly Circus in broad daylight. Also, as a Christian, Mr Sutcliffe ought to know that there exists a higher law that transcends the casuistry written into human codes.
In this case, this higher law comes down from the god of wokery, and he is athirst. His commandments, shining from up high, supersede any laws passed by Parliament. Thus, talking about “legal requirements” is futile.
The Department for Education knows this. That’s why it opposes his appeal, saying that the teacher failed “to distinguish between his role as a teacher and his activities as a preacher”.
I often say that the only good Muslim is a bad Muslim. A bad Muslim can easily adapt to life in any Western country, which a good Muslim, meaning one who follows all the commandments of his religion, can’t. The former can be a valuable member of society; the latter, at best a nuisance.
The D of E seems to apply the same logic to Christianity. The only good Christian under its aegis is a bad Christian.
A teacher is welcome to espouse that outdated cult at home, but he dare not act as a good Christian at work. Specifically, he must ignore the unequivocal commandments to proselytise: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” or “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
The logic may be the same, but the religions aren’t. We aren’t a Muslim nation yet, although we are doing our utmost to inch in that direction. Hence, whenever a Muslim tries to trump our laws and traditions with the Koran, we have every historical, moral and legal right to tell him where to go and where to put that book.
The British nation has been Christian longer than it has been the British nation. Moreover, we are one of the few Western countries that have an established church and no laws separating church and state (such as France’s laïcité). I realise that Britain is Christian only nominally these days, but the weight of 14 Christian centuries can’t be shifted easily and quickly.
Therefore punishing a man simply for being guided by his faith is… I almost wrote ‘unconscionable’, but then realised that ‘only natural nowadays’ would be more appropriate.
We should have more teachers like Mr Sutcliffe in our schools. Instead, before long we shan’t have any. I do hope he’ll get his (their? ze’s?) job back. But I fear he (they? ze?) won’t.
P.S. Speaking of France, TV comedian Guillaume Meurice has caused a bit of a furore there by describing Benjamin Netanyahu as “a sort of Nazi without a foreskin”. His employer subsequently defended Mr Meurice’s right to l’outrance (over-the-top outrageousness).
I agree. Insulting the Holy Spirit apart, jokes are either funny or unfunny. C’est tout, as they say in those parts. If someone is offended by a joke, it’s his (their? ze’s?) problem, not the comedian’s. Yet I doubt that even Mr Meurice’s mother would describe that little quip as a funny joke.
It was an expression of a moronic political opinion tinged with anti-Semitism. Hence I wonder whether the comedian speaks English. If he does, he should tour the tent encampments on our campuses. He’d find a receptive audience there.