Should ‘misgendering’ someone be a disciplinary offence? One Oxford college seems to think so. Yesterday, Regent’s Park College posted a ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’, burnishing its existing bullying and harassment policy. On a long list of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ that might warrant punishment is ‘consistently using incorrect titles, pronouns or names to refer to a trans person’ – also known as ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ someone.

The obvious problem here is that the list of speechcrimes provided could apply to almost anyone who simply doesn’t believe in the eccentric tenets of gender ideology

The timing can’t have been coincidental. All eyes were on Oxford this week due to the strangely controversial appearance at the Oxford Union of gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock, whose great heresy is to believe in biological sex and women’s rights. There were protests and demands the event be cancelled. Regent’s Park College says it has been working on this policy ‘since 2022’, but just so happened to choose this week – of all weeks – to publish it.

‘Regent’s Park College celebrates and values the diversity of its student groups, workforce, and visitors, and we aim to create a place for them that is welcoming and inclusive’, the statement begins. Which might sound reasonable enough. After all, no sane person is in favour of bullying and harassment, certainly not bullying and harassment fuelled by hatred of a minority group.

But the more you dig into the document, the more it becomes clear just how stretched the definition of bullying and harassment has become these days – and how, certainly where the trans issue is concerned, this poses a direct threat to free thought and speech.

Alongside the prohibition on ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ we are told students must not deny or dispute ‘the validity and / or existence of a trans person’s identity’, make ‘jokes about trans people or their trans status’, or refuse ‘to treat a person in accordance with their affirmed identity’. Such behaviour, the document suggests, is tantamount to abuse.

One could easily see a situation in which some unpleasant person could deploy all these tactics and more to make someone’s life hell. But harassment is harassment, regardless of how you go about it. The obvious problem here is that the list of speechcrimes provided could apply to almost anyone, however reasonable or well-meaning, who simply doesn’t believe in the eccentric tenets of gender ideology – or who simply shows insufficient deference to them.

Take ‘misgendering’. There are an awful lot of people who cling to the view, held by everyone until about five minutes ago, that you cannot change sex – not least because it is an observable scientific fact. Some will happily refer to trans people using their ‘preferred’ pronouns, because they see it as somewhere between a courtesy and a harmless fiction. But others would just rather not. Must they really be compelled to do so – to lie, essentially – under pain of punishment? Compelled speech corrodes freedom of speech.

The pronouns thing is particularly insidious given the fact that we mainly use someone’s pronouns when that person isn’t around. (When you’re out for a drink with a friend you don’t turn to them, at the appropriate time, and say ‘would she / her like another pint?’) What is ultimately being demanded here is that you change how you think about someone, and how you describe them when they aren’t there, not just how you address them.

As for this demand that all staff and students treat people ‘in accordance with their affirmed identity’ – which according to the policy needn’t mean he or she has had any medical treatment – this is an affront to safety as well as conscience. What if a female student would rather not have a male-bodied individual in the women’s loos – and dares to say so? This whole approach seems particularly foolhardy given the small, but not insignificant, number of abusive, nefarious men who have abused the notion of ‘gender self-ID’ in recent years in order to gain access to women’s spaces.

The Regent’s Park College policy is testament to the doublethink of our age: it exhorts its residents to be ‘inclusive’ while excluding anyone of an opposing view. Worse, it would happily compel students to say things they don’t believe and act in a way that is against their conscience. We need to rediscover the true meaning of tolerance. Everyone is entitled to their views so long as they don’t impose them on anyone else. Is that really so difficult? In the gender wars of today, apparently so.