The addressing of people involved in a criminal court case.

The OPs question was about the witness referring to the accused, not the prosecutor.

I understand that, and Marcusm’s point was about balancing the rights of the accused and the rights of the complaining witness. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that the prosecution would be hoping their own witnesses wouldn’t tank their case against the accused by deliberately misgendering the accused at every opportunity.

As much as I appreciate the sentiment TT, I thought we weren’t doing this? Legal Discussion is not the appropriate forum for it in any case, where a certain standard of conduct is expected, and humour such as your caricature above of a person more likely to be found guilty of crimes against fashion bears no relevance to a person who is accused of committing a crime against society. There are far more serious implications for the latter than the former.

When it comes to people accused of sex crimes in particular, I care less about their gender or sex than I do about ensuring they receive a fair trial, as opposed to the idea of witnesses believing they have free reign of the Courts. That kind of behaviour risks not only the prosecution failing to make their case, it’s a distraction which is likely to lead to the Judge getting browned off if they have to keep reminding witnesses to conduct themselves appropriately, and it certainly doesn’t curry favour with a jury who are likely to end up becoming disinterested and failing to examine critical evidence which would ensure a successful prosecution.

We’re both aware of the dismal conviction rates for sexual offences, though I’m not sure if you’re aware of jury bias in terms of how a jury which is made up of a majority of women tends to deliver a favourable verdict for the defence in sex cases where the accused is a man and the complaining witness is a woman. It’s a phenomenon that’s observed across multiple jurisdictions, and while legal academics and researchers and psychologists have multiple theories to explain the nature of the phenomenon, the kind of biological determinism that you’re engaging in, isn’t one of them.

You have to wilfully ignore mountains of evidence in order to come to the conclusions you do about sex offenders and their victims, not the least of which is your caricature of what constitutes a vulnerable woman. One only has to look at a recent case where a woman fought the law, and while the law did win eventually, the officers involved didn’t come away unscathed from the encounter with a male officer being package checked and a female officer being kicked into the chest. It doesn’t mean the woman wasn’t in a vulnerable situation with five officers against one ordinary indecent criminal.

Similarly, in the context of women who are subject to sexual abuse, assault and harassment in the female estate of prisons where prison officers are primarily of the male sex, you appear to wish to ignore the wood for the trees and zero in on transgender sex offenders among the prison population. That you would then question my compassion for women seems a bit, well, dare I say - oblivious to reality.

In spite of that, and by way of returning the compliment, I too wish you well in your advocacy endeavours, in the knowledge that one of the first signs of cult behaviour isn’t that one loses their sense of reality, it’s that they lose their sense of humour, and thankfully at least for society at large, you’re nowhere near that point.

A trial isn’t about the victim, it’s about the accused, who has the right to the presumption of innocence. What you’re doing is presuming the accused is guilty. You’re also assuming that by default the victim will have an issue with referring to the accused in accordance with their preferred gender. A trial isn’t about establishing or affirming anything about the accused’ gender or sex. It’s entirely about establishing whether the accused is guilty or not guilty (or in Scotland - a verdict of not proven exists, for now) of the crimes they have been charged with.

A victim is giving evidence as a witness in the prosecution’s case against the accused. If having to refer to the accused in such a manner as directed by the Court which they find objectionable is something they are unwilling to do, the witness can find themselves in contempt of court. There’s no need to go back to the drawing board, there are already established procedures to address those circumstances if they arise.

A witness who refuses to give evidence or testify, can also find themselves jailed for contempt of court -

https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/insight-forcing-rape-victims-testify-tips-scales-294688

The Courts aren’t adding to anything, it’s also not the function of the courts to fulfil the role of victims support services -

https://www.gov.uk/get-support-as-a-victim-of-crime

I don’t doubt it A, but more mainstream feminists in the UK at least have much greater concerns than the use of anyone’s preferred pronouns at trial. They’re still reeling from the fallout of Dame Cressida Dick’s oversight of the Met Police and the many scandals involving the conduct of officers under her leadership, as well as her decision to abandon the policy of automatic belief of complainants in sexual assault and rape cases given the disaster that turned out to be -

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-ditch-practice-of-believing-all-victims-jsg6qd2ws

Only matched by the litany of disasters among the male police officers and their attitudes to women on display during her time as head of the Met Police -

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-misogyny-that-led-to-the-fall-of-londons-police-commissioner

The current feigning outrage over pronoun use serves as nothing more than a political distraction from the fact they aren’t able to deal with a rather grim reality.

Surely you mean men in that case? That men don't behave like women? They most certainly do, some of them anyway, and they have done for quite some time. So much so that what has historically been regarded as the greatest threat to civilised society, in the UK anyway, was the threat of homosexual activity among men. I'm guessing you've never had cause to wonder where the idea of 'mollycoddling' came from? During the 18th century at least, venues like Mother Clap’s Molly House and Miss Muff's Molly House were popular with men. In their enthusiasm to pass laws prohibiting a behaviour which was considered so heinous that it could not be spoken of among Christian men, they kinda overlooked women, for about 200 years -

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 made no change to the law regulating buggery committed between a man and a woman and, as a consequence, left in place the total prohibition of such acts. This was, at the time, regarded by some parliamentarians as an ‘extraordinary state of affairs, and one not less calculated to preserve respect for the law’.102 However, following the act of 1967, legislators consistently overlooked this aspect of buggery law because, as was often the case, buggery was mistakenly understood as a ‘homosexual offence’. This was probably also the case with the general public who, as Baroness Mallalieu argued in 1994, ‘are astonished to learn’ that consensual heterosexual buggery remained a criminal offence attracting a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Nicola Sturgeon hasn't backtracked on anything, she had her leash yanked by the UK Government, and with regards to the case in hand, she didn't say what she is reported as having said in certain media outlets - this one being a good example -

“But I don’t think Douglas Ross and I are disagreeing here, because what I think is relevant in this case is not whether the individual is a man or claims to be a woman or is trans, what is relevant is that the individual is a rapist.

“That is how the individual should be described, and it is that that should be the main consideration in deciding how the individual is dealt with – that is why the individual is in a male prison, not in the female prison, these are the issues that matter.”

And the thing is, she's absolutely right - she correctly identifies the individual as a rapist, removing all doubt as to whether or not they were in possession of the requisite appendage at the time when they committed the offences which they had been charged with. Whether they continue to maintain possession of said appendage, or have since disposed of it, is irrelevant, as a charge of rape can only be applied if the individual possesses the requisite appendage. Women can be charged with rape under UK law, but as an accomplice. Otherwise they would stand to be charged with sexual assault, and that's where there may be considerable difficulty if anyone is troubled more by the idea of ambiguity around a person's gender, or statistics regarding same in terms of criminal offences committed. Circumstantial evidence about the prevalence of men who are violent is easily rebutted by the fact that the vast majority of men do not engage in any form of violence, nor do the vast majority of women.

I take it you're not referring to me personally, because as far as I'm concerned it's not even something worth questioning in the context you're trying to put it in to suggest that someone who the law regards as innocent be deprived of their right to fair procedures, not because you're certain they committed rape or sexual assault (and even then it couldn't be justified), but because in your mind it would somehow assuage the Lefties outrage, when one thing really has nothing to do with the other. Besides, I don't think it would achieve what you're hoping it would, given the UK Supreme Courts recent ruling on a similar issue -

UK Supreme Court rules against gender-neutral passports

I don't have to jump through hoops at all.