The Free Speech Union is an unusual organisation. It spans the political spectrum from conversative to liberal in its pursuit of free speech. I think it would be fair to say that the further ends of the spectrum tend to be more concerned about free speech than the middle, potentially because they both have more controversial things to say that the other end of the spectrum might not want said.

When I first came across the Free Speech Union (FSU) I was sceptical about its activities and intent. Then I ended up doing a subcontract for them and was very impressed by their CEO who is intelligent and dynamic and juggles an impressive number of issues simultaneously. I still feel like some of their causes seem worthwhile and others less so. However, they supported the right of Posie Parker to come to New Zealand and I tend to agree with them. They are highlighting major changes in censorship regulation in New Zealand which the public definitely need to be aware of. They are running a worthwhile series of debates during the election on the government’s role in reaching Net Zero Carbon, the fairness of the tax system, the fairness of ‘one person, one vote’ in regard to indigenous voices and the concept that ‘some discussions will cause only harm’.

This week, though, I have got close to unsubscribing from their emails because I think they may have gone too far ...

A few weeks ago, the FSU took up the cause of a maths teacher who was deregistered for not using the preferred name or pronouns of a 14 year old student. The student had changed their pronouns and name from female to male. The maths teacher refused to use the changed pronouns and name because the student was transitioning from female to male and the teacher said the transition was against his Christian beliefs. When challenged further, the teacher made comments on other issues, including homosexuality and abortion, disregarded instructions from the principal to use the name and pronouns and then resigned from his job.

A complaint was laid against the teacher, eventually resulting in him being deregistered, including because his conduct made students ‘unsafe’. The FSU took the contrary position that the teacher should be allowed to continue teaching because he could 'safely' do so in schools that require the biological pronouns of students will be used (I'm not sure what these schools do for gender indeterminate pupils). However, the FSU said this was a hard one and asked their readers for thoughts.

My reply was as follows: “In your article on the teacher you emphasised the non-use of personal pronouns. According to other articles, the student suggested in a meeting (after the initial issues) that the teacher could use their original pronouns as long as the student’s preferred name was used. If this is true (and I don’t believe everything reported in the media!), I would say the teacher isn’t a fit person to work with students - if the teacher can’t use a person’s preferred name they have a problem relating appropriately to human beings. Using a correct name has nothing to do with religious beliefs but, rather, respect for the person being spoken to. One could infer that the teacher did not respect their students if the students’ views differed from the teacher’s views. This isn’t a case I would be fighting for.”

Now the FSU has returned to the issue of whether teachers can be mandated to use the preferred pronouns of all students. They are now calling for the Teaching Council to leave discretion over preferred pronouns with parents, teachers and principals. Put another way, that group of people will decide for any school whether teachers must use the preferred pronouns of children, or whether this is optional. The FSU is arguing teachers are being forced into an idealogical position they don’t believe in if made to use pronouns they consider are not applicable to the child to whom they are talking.

My first thought is that I wish English was like Georgian. Georgian doesn’t have different pronouns for male or female. Māori, like Georgian, also doesn’t differentiate gender in the 3^rd person. I wrote about this in ‘How About Thia’. Georgian goes even further than Māori, using a single word for husband/wife and for girlfriend/boyfriend.

However, a gender neutral 3^rd person pronoun doesn’t solve the 'inappropriate' name problem. Should a teacher have to call a student by the name the student prefers? At what age? Might 5 year olds ask to be called a different name every day? Presumably schools could reasonably limit name changes e.g. only at the beginning of the year? I hypothesise there would be very few cases where this would be a significant issue. Also, students' progress and qualifications a tracked through the education system – they need a unique identifier. That's solvable too - use of a legal name to track students and use of a preferred name associated with that legal name, as is done in many schools.

Are there really idealogical problems with using a different name for a student? If a male student changes to another male name, is this idealogically challenging? If a student with an androgynous name changes to another androgynous name, is this idealogically challenging? Or is it only challenging when the old name is typically used for one biological gender and the new name relates to a different gender? When you start down that track … how do we determine which gender a name belongs to? Is it just because we are accustomed to use of a name for a particular gender? I don’t think there is any definitive list in New Zealand telling you whether a name is female or male. There’s also the interesting matter of how teachers know what sex children are in order to determine if a pronoun/name is appropriate or inappropriate. Do teachers or schools check birth certificates? What do they check exactly? This gets into the same sorts of difficulties as checking whether people using gendered toilets are the appropriate sex!

In the end, I think the FSU is both right and wrong. They are right to bring this issue to the fore, because the best way to resolve these such questions is by discussion within  affected communities and approaches will change over time. They are also likely right in that this type of complex issue is probably not amenable to an arbitrary ruling by the Teaching Council – there are calls for the Teaching Council to require teachers to use preferred pronouns in all situations and FSU is standing against this.

However, the FSU focuses on use of pronouns, while the student in the original case was comfortable with the teacher not using these pronouns. The student just wanted their new name used. I also feel there is something wrong with the FSU fighting based on this case where the teacher was so openly expressing their idealogical biases against homosexuality and abortion – biases which teachers should not be acting on in their teaching role. Perhaps FSU should let the cause  lie till they have a better cause celebre? What do you think?