To shriek from the rooftops that there is No Such Thing as “preferred pronouns”?

If they were only bothered about what they called themselves it would be fine, but they're so very bothered about what others call them. And that is the issue.

Gender is not sex. You have been told this a billion times and you refuse to accept it, even though it has ALWAYS meant a different thing to sex.

Exactly. Gender is not sex. I have always used pronouns to refer to people's sex as did everyone else until about five minutes ago. This is clear from the fact that we use pronouns for animals and babies, none of whom have a 'gender identity'.

And all of a sudden this is supposed to be terribly cruel according to you. Despite there being zero proper discussion about why we should change it and why it's preferable for society as a whole to do this. The only reasoning that's been presented is 'transpeople want us to'. Nothing more.

I know and I'm in awe of what these women have accomplished.

I'd argue that numbers make a difference, though. GC women, no matter what percentage they represent of the total population, are massively more numerous than a group of GC trans people would ever be. So it would be the same risks, for a fraction of the means, power and support. Not viable, really.

I agree. Unfortunately, the TRAs are every bit as violent towards trans people who don't toe the party line as towards everyone else, so it's a daunting task to oppose them. I'm not even in the UK, where the TRAs have gone mad, and I still preferred cutting ties with the trans community to trying to reform it, because of the way I was treated just for not thinking exactly like I was supposed to. I can only imagine that I'd be terrified to speak up in real life if I were in the UK.

I am so happy to hear it, and you all have my 100% support (and love).

Aww, thanks 😊 !

Just so you know: there are quite a few of us trans people out there who understand that it's not other people's duty to bear the consequences for our choices. You won't hear much from us, but there are more of us than the TRAs would ever admit.

I think I've just fallen in love.

"Gender is not sex. You have been told this a billion times and you refuse to accept it, even though it has ALWAYS meant a different thing to sex. "

Er, no. Gender and sex literally used to be synonyms when applied to people. It's in every dictionary.

"The words he and she in many languages don’t refer to men and women at all, they refer to chairs and tables and eggs and jumpers and any other noun."

That's the other definition of gender, as a grammatical concept - which has nothing to do with sex, which in turn means you can't use it to argue that sex in humans doesn't have the binary nature it has. What applies to grammatical gender is irrelevant to biological sex.

" No one is claiming biological sex can be changed, literally nobody."

One example: https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1kds4yq/im_not_trans_im_gender_incongruence_so_im_a/

I'm not trans I'm gender incongruence so I'm a biological woman!
Came to me last night. I've decided to stop using the term transgender, I haven't become or moved across I've always been who I am. Now I've been diagnosed as gender incongruent and suffered gender dysphoria my cure for this condition is to live as my real self. So I'm not transgendered I'm a natural woman i. e. I'm a biological woman after all! So thanks SC for clearing up what I already new.

Another one: https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1k1tliv/trans_women_are_biological_women/

Trans women are biological women
I’m a straight cis man but I just wanted to put it out there that the whole argument that trans women aren’t biologically women and vice verse is idiotic. if someone is born male and has more estrogen than the average man and that causes them to be feminine and identify as trans, how is that not biological? Is biology only about genitalia now? Why does having male genitals outweigh having more estrogen than testosterone? And who decided on this arbitrary decision? The effects of excess estrogen in those born male are; reduced libido, erectile dysfunction, infertility, and gynecomastia (enlarged breast tissue) If you’re gonna be transphobic use something other than the biology argument because it’s not on your side

So yes, some people are very much claiming that biological sex can be changed.

Gender is not sex. You have been told this a billion times and you refuse to accept it, even though it has ALWAYS meant a different thing to sex. Regardless of anything to do with transness, sociology class taught me that distinction in the 90s.
The words he and she in many languages don’t refer to men and women at all, they refer to chairs and tables and eggs and jumpers and any other noun. He and she are gendered words as well as biological sex related words, in many languages.
No one is claiming biological sex can be changed, literally nobody.

Also, don’t take a statistic that there are higher than average trans people who are also autistic and use that to imply that my autism means I’m to stupid understand the issue at hand. That’s patronising and ableist.
A higher than average number of autistics being trans is not even vaguely the same thing as being ‘vulnerable to gender identity ideology’. There is no ‘ideology’ involved in why I can’t understand people being cunty to other people for no reason.

"People have always been mean and cruel to trans people. "

I completely disagree. I live in a more conservative country than the UK, and I have zero problem living as a trans person. Everyone is perfectly nice with me, whether they clock me or not.

"It doesn’t make ANY difference to anyone’s life to just not engage in discussion around transness."

Ah but they don't, do they? It's trans people who demand that people engage in cognitive dissonance by using pronouns that don't align with their sex. Or that everyone indicate their pronouns when said pronouns are perfectly obvious and don't need to be indicated at all. TRAs are the ones you need to blame here.

I don’t think that’s the reason at all. People have always been mean and cruel to trans people. People have always delighted in hurting people who are different to them, whether that’s race or social class or ethnicity or religion. It’s not a new thing that has started happening since transness has been more publicly talked about. They just happen to be the target group of the moment.
It doesn’t make ANY difference to anyone’s life to just not engage in discussion around transness. Most people who are so vehemently opposed don’t even know any trans people, so it really doesn’t affect them.

It's called backlash. When a group forces another group to deny reality, to deny what they see with their own eyes, what they know with their own brains, under threat of being called a bigot or worse, it's only natural that the group under pressure celebrates when finally relieved of that pressure.

And again; it does make a difference in their life. Trans people are asking other people to willingly engage in cognitive dissonance. That's neither fair nor right. That so many people accept to do it is a proof that they do have a lot of empathy for trans people at base. But that empathy should neither be taken for granted, nor abused like it was for a decade in the UK.

I agree that no one has to agree with you or can/should be forced to agree with you, but equally no one can change my opinion that it makes them a dick to intentionally misgender you or people like you. The people who gleefully celebrate being cruel.
I can’t fathom why a person can be so cruel over something that truly makes no difference in their life. Maybe it’s the autistic in me, but I just don’t understand it.

For a post so sold on 'truth', yours is full of distortion and anecdote.

The anecdote about Queen Victoria and lesbianism is precisely that. It's an urban myth. There was no such law proposed and even if there had been, she had no power of veto. The suppression of sapphism, as it was then called, relied on silence. The Lord Chamberlain had Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness censored precisely because it risked informing women that lesbianism existed, where they were previously assumed to have been ignorant of it and that the very knowledge would somehow 'corrupt' them into similar behaviour. This is why so many lesbian, gay and bisexual writers of that time wrote about it in coded terms. And the offence was 'sodomy'. There was no outwardly gay identity but a coded performance, begun by Oscar Wilde: which of course was what caused offence. Nobody truly cared about his sodomy - he was persecuted because of his public performance of it. Thus Wildean dandyism became camp, which then morphed to 'queer' - first used to describe homosexuality in a 1926 US government publication. 'Gay' wasn't an identity up until that point. Sodomy was viewed as a separate act.

Yes, British conservative politics have been responsible for a great many travesties, likely caused by far too close an entanglement between state and church. Your usual suspects of course claimed it was a mental illness - just as it claimed women were 'hysterics' who denied their 'natural' inclination as wives and mothers. Civil partnership was the Blair government's concession to these coy conservatives: but civil partnership was marriage. The rights and status conferred via such a partnership were exactly the same as those of marriage - it was simply called by another name to appease the conservative element.

Of course homosexuality is true. It's the Gender Ideologists who have been banging the contrary drum. Consider the revolting sentiments behind the phrase 'cotton ceiling', and 'get over your genital fetish'. It's a denial of female same-sex attraction. It's as homophobic as it gets.

Trans genderism is also true. Despite the baffling lie to the contrary, no one is claiming that trans people don't exist. But they are trans. Humans cannot change sex. This, also, is inescapably true.

A voice of sanity, and also probably the most sustainable mindset that you could have.

You can add an note at the end of your signature, Miss, Mrs, Ms, Mr with your full name. Plenty of us use a short version followed by the full version (&role etc.) underneath.
I have no need to tell people what pronoun to use in my absence.

I'm trans FtM. My truth is MY truth. I don't get to force it on anybody else. I can't expect, let alone demand, that they see inside my head and agree with me on how I see myself inside. I certainly can't demand that they deny their OWN truth, what they see with their eyes: that I have a female body.

Do I hope and wish that they'll be nice to me and treat me as I would like to be treated? Yes, of course. But if they don't want to entertain any cognitive dissonance for my benefit, well, tough for me, but it's my problem, not theirs.

So you are offended if people called Charlie, Alex, Bobby or Kim clarify in their email signature what sex they are? Seems an odd hill to die on but you do you.

Because homosexuality is true. And so is being transgender.

True in what sense?

Can humans change sex? Obviously not. So not true in that sense and lends the lie to transgender people having any rights to single sex spaces that don't belong to them.

True in the sense that your 'gender identity' can be different to your sex? Again, not true in a physical sense, as there is no way of verifying anyone's 'gender identity'.

Some believe that's true in a metaphysical sense, but that's an item of faith, like religion. There is no proof for it.

And it has no bearing on single sex spaces either as, once again, humans can't change sex.

Goodness, I'm married and I prefer to be called Ms, but is the "truth" that I am Mrs because you say so?

Shall we start referring to people as fat Sue or obese Jenny if their BMI means it is factually true?

I think this world has room for us all to coexist and be kind to each other. I'm sorry you feel so afraid of a tiny percentage of the population.