Military pilot Jo Ellis said she had to hire private armed security for her family because of the false claims, which went viral on social media.
A transgender military pilot filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday against a conservative influencer who falsely claimed on social media that she was flying the helicopter that collided with a commercial jet near Reagan National Airport in January, killing 67 people.
“I want to hold this person accountable for what they did to me,” Jo Ellis, a pilot who has served more than 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard, said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s become too common that people can say horrible things about someone, profit at their expense, and get away with it.”
On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, conservative influencer Matt Wallace, who has 2.2 million followers on the social media platform X, shared a post from another account he operates stating that the helicopter pilot was transgender, according to the lawsuit. Wallace included a photo of Ellis, and the post went viral, the lawsuit states.
I literally said “some people”, because there are certainly some who don’t care if people call them “they”. Like I straight up acknowledged that in my first sentence. My point was that it isn’t going to jive with everyone, and that maybe people should reconsider that safety blanket of “non gendering”.
How is “just using they/them for everyone” not “misgendering because it’s easier”? Because asking someone what their preferred pronouns are is too hard for many
I don’t disagree with your first statement.
However I do disagree with your second statement, quoted above, because it’s so broad that even people trying to do the right thing, or least harmful thing, can be accused of misgendering or be policed by others for simply trying to be inclusive.
Whilst a technicality, it really rubs non-gender diverse people the wrong way, and makes it harder for gender diverse people, myself included, to drive broader acceptance of us in the community when all we’re known for is telling others they’re ‘wrong’ when they accidentally mess up a pronoun or three.
There’s a very fine balance to be struck between being inclusive, and being correct.
If someone gets a person’s gender wrong accidentally because they were unsure, that shouldn’t, and doesn’t in my view, count as misgendering simply because it was a misunderstanding.
However if someone deliberately, or maliciously refers to someone as their assigned gender at birth, that’s misgendering which should absolutely be called out and derided.
Its true, some people are super sensitive and look for reasons to be offended, its best to just avoid them rather then placate that type of person. Its not really about pronoun usage.
It literally is about prounons. It’s super shitty to dismiss another’s identity because you found it troublesome to respect the correct way to address them.
I find that overly sensitive people are generally not worth my time, If someone cant get over the use of gender neutral pronouns, they are looking for a reason to be offended, the issue isnt the person using gender neutral pronouns. You can’t just change other people’s vocabulary because it might be offensive to someone. Its the same with people who don’t like cussing, that’s their fucking problem not mine.