Tory peer Baroness Nicholson thinks calling women ‘people’ is misgendering. People isn’t a gender
Baroness Nicholson. (UK Parliament, cropped. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Baroness Emma Nicholson thinks that referring to women as “people” is misgendering them.
Nicholson has a long anti-trans history, having claimed it is “very dangerous” to explain pronouns to children and having been the subject of hundreds of complaints to the House of Lords for sharing “racist and transphobic” abuse about Munroe Bergdorf.
She also previously said that marriage equality had come at the expense of women’s rights.
But on Wednesday (24 February), Nicholson took to Twitter to make one of her most confusing claims yet – that referring to women as “people” was misgendering them.
She shared a tweet by NHS Health Education England, which described misgendering as “one of the most common unintentional blunders made by cisgender people”.
But Nicholson wrote: “The Maternity Bill misgenders women through calling them people.”
Thé Maternity Bill misgenders Women through calling them People. https://t.co/CYE0FYwMvJ
— Emma Harriet Nicholson (@Baroness_Nichol) February 24, 2021
Her comment refers to a bill which would allow ministers to take paid maternity leave, and which includes non-gendered language such as “the person is pregnant” and “the person has given birth”. This is in line with a long-standing and previously-uncontroversial convention to use gender-neutral language in legislation.
But Nicholson was convinced that anyone who referred to her as a “person” must be misgendering her.
Twitter users were quick to point out the obvious: that “people” is not a gender, and that women are most definitely people.
One wrote: “So what are you trying to say Emma? That women aren’t people?
“Btw people isn’t gendered language just like human being isn’t gendered language either. You absolute buffoon.”
https://twitter.com/FleurduIys/status/1364901587861336064
People isn't a gender – though all genders are people, even women! Hope that clears things up.— Ell Balson Art (Commissions OPEN) (@EllBalsonArt) February 25, 2021
“Trans ideology is the radical belief that women are people,” wrote another.
One Twitter user joked: “As a woman and a person, I can confirm only aliens would be upset by this.”
