Gender swap situation

I don’t understand your question really. I think people can choose their pronouns. I don’t know what’s humpty dumpty about that.

@Sabire9 It’s really very very unlikely indeed that you or your university-age son really can’t tell what sex the “non-binary” university friend is, so I suspect you aren’t being completely truthful here.

“Gender identity”, as you admit in your posts, is a metaphysical and subjective internal “feeling” that is a belief of a person. Sally can believe it all she likes, but no-one else can be made to believe it if they don’t want to. Sally’s friends may refer to her by a male name and pronouns to be nice to her, but they will all know that Sally isn’t really a boy, and that they are engaging in a pretend role-play.

No matter how much fulminating you or Sally or anyone else does about “gender”, that still won’t actually alter reality, nor will it magically change Sally into a boy, nor will it mean that everyone else sees Sally as a boy instead of a person who everyone has to pretend to and about. And generally, people don’t much like having to engage in pretences all the time in their social life (or at all in life). That’s why we don’t still have blasphemy laws, and you can’t make atheists go to church, nor can you in democratic countries force anyone to pretend they believe in a particular political system.

You can scold “terfs” until the cows come home, but the reality is that forcing or scolding people to engage in a pretend play for someone’s else’s benefit doesn’t end well. Sally’s friends may well valiantly try to comply, but it’s likely that they drift away from what they see as exhausting, self-obsessed roleplaying. Just as any adult tends to drift away from someone who is insistent on always making them engage in pretending.

And you do young people, and “trans” people no favours by encouraging them to believe that it’s okay to try to force everyone around them to play pretend games. They will likely end up socially isolated, and not quite able to reconcile the polite pretence others put on socially with the fact that they struggle to form deeper connections with people who don’t really want to be made to pretend things that aren’t true. I see this with the trans people I work with, who are already often autistic, and don’t quite get why the apparent polite acceptance of pronouns and new names seems to also go along with many of their friends and colleagues politely retreating or disconnecting from deeper relationships.

It’s a sad effect of all of this gender ideology, especially combined with a very British kind of distancing politeness, that young people who insist on this have no real sense of how they are setting themselves up for social isolation and frustration.

Hmm. You’re not quite the nice, kind, inclusive, progressive person you think you are, are you?

You haven’t answered my question. Is there anything that needs further clarification so you can?

Many TERFs are gender non-conforming ourselves, often labelled as tomboys in our youth. That's why we know that teenage girls who don't want to dress like a Kardashian clone are not literally and actually boys, they are just girls with personality. We also know that many teenage girls struggle with autism and see identifying as a boy/nb is an escape route from our sex-obsessed pornified misogynistic society. So there is no "hate", just concern for those vulnerable to a damaging ideology.

I would suggest OP advises her daughter that many teenagers grandly announce a (usually stupid) new name, which she should try to remember, but not to worry about pronouns, especially if the brother isn't bothering. If Sally/Ron makes a massive drama about pronouns, she should rethink the friendship.

The girl is mixed up but should be left to get on with it. I would be encouraging your DD to make new friends. Friends you need to tread on eggshells around are very stressful.

your DD can back away or cool a friendship for any reason she wants and doesn't need to explain herself to anyone.

She is getting "dirty looks" when she slips up with pronoun use? meh. Sometimes dirty looks are imagined by the receiver, sometimes not. If she's not doing it maliciously, her friend needs to get over themselves and get on with life. If she is doing it maliciously, time to knock the "friendship" on the head for both their sakes.

It is a big adjustment, and even if you are fully on board with Gender Identity, it can be difficult not to revert to old names or pronouns after a lifetime of using them.

But if your DD wants to cool the relationship, better do that with no complicated explanations/excuses. Just, "we've grown into different people, we had fun but we'd be better off pursuing new interests and friend groups". But only say that if there is an absolute need to do so.

It's understandable at only 14 yrs old and barely into puberty your daughter is confused and upset especially when this girls brother gets away with using the birth name. I would tell your daughter to say to herself it's just a new nickname which has stuck. There is every chance it's a phase. If not and she starts altering her body by removing breasts etc then it will become more understandable and acceptable when she starts to look like a man.

Wait a moment.

Most of GC women absolutely support gender nonconformity. Gender nonconformity means that my adult human female me can wear what I want to, work in a field I want to, and share cooking and cleaning evenly with my partner.

Gender nonconformity means that an adult human male should be free to be as feminine as he wishes. Just it doesn't make them a woman, doesn't allow them to woman's spaces and so on.

The whole idea behind trans is extreme conformity to the concept of two genders and that people should follow their stereotypes. It just suggests people have a choice which of the stereotypes they want to conform to.

I remember a girl at school deciding that her name was not 'Louise' and declared that we now all HAD to call her Mary. It wasn't a middle name it's just a name she decided she wanted. Nobody called her Mary, and she eventually got over it. I want the 90s back.

I think attempting to use someone's preferred name (regardless of pronouns) is a common courtesy. I am hugely sceptical of all this non binary, trans ideology personally. But if I'd known a friend for 10 years and they decided they were changing their name then I'd make the effort to respect that.

All the people here who say 'its no big deal to use the name/pronouns they want' etc.

I worked for years with a woman who decided to use he/him pronouns at one point but retained a very female name e.g. "Susan" (they later transitioned to a trans man but kept the name). I had to completely retrain my brain to think "Susan = he" so that I didn't make a mistake. It was not easy at all, I had to stop and think every time I spoke about them because my brain just naturally associated the female name with female pronouns, which is actually mentally quite draining. But eventually (after months) it became automatic, so that was great.

EXCEPT - when I moved companies and began working with someone else called 'Susan'. Someone who was happily female. Suddenly I had to go through it all again, because my brain was so used to thinking "Susan = he" and now I had to reprogram myself again. I still have to think about when I mention Susan to anybody and its been over a year!

People who make such demands on their friends and people around them end up isolating themselves.
I respect anyone else who is happy to go along with a lie, so long as my right not to go along with it is also respected, it has to go both ways.

Sally needs to learn how her actions affect others and that it’s not all about her feelings.

@Ddakji

The 'correct' pronouns are whatever serves the social function they're intended for - language serves us and we adapt it to suit our circumstances and our relationships. My son only uses the pronouns 'they' when he's talking about his non-binary friend, out of respect for this person, because they don't identify as male or female. Their sex is ambiguous - I'm genuinely not sure what it is, and it doesn't bother me. Doesn't bother my son either.

Obviously your agenda is to enforce sex norms, regardless of the feelings and social needs of individuals. Terfs are like that. They don't give a shit about the feelings or needs of gender non-conforming people, because they hate them, and they actively want to make them feel like shite in any way they can. While also feeling self righteous and seeing themselves as 'truth warriors'.

I wonder why people get so upset that some people have no issue with trans people?
I respect that some don’t feel comfortable with it and that is their right. It is also my right to not have an issue.
This post is about a daughter’s reaction to her friend changing their name and wanting to use different pronouns. I have stated I would encourage my child to respect that. I don’t understand why on mumsnet, people are so intent on changing my opinion? It’s not going to happen.

Why are referring to Sally, a girl, as he?
It is not helpful to Dally, or the world, to capitulate so easily.

@Sabire9

no it doesn’t, shes just trying to help a confused child understand why one day her friend was Sally, is now Ron, gets upset with her daughter when they are called Sally instead of Ron, but Ron doesn’t seem upset with her brother when he calls them Sally and not Ron

Sally/Ron needs to be consistent

Op I would just advise your child to keep trying to remember her fiend is now Ron and leave it at that

It's not about it being hard, it's about it being a lie.

I’m talking more generally, these things have happened and do happen.

Teachers losing their shit for being called the wrong name by accident? They shouldn’t be in charge of a class if that’s the case.

@Takesomeofit you can disagree with someone and still be perfectly polite. People are free to identify how they want, they can't force their beliefs on anyone else.

The way women as a whole have been able to push back at the encroachment on their rights has been one woman at a time - Forstater, Phoenix, Stock, Bailey, Adams, Peggie (tbc) etc. etc.

"plenty of masculine presenting women and girls, or more feminine boys and men are told they're just self-hating trans people.

Are they? Where? Who by? Plenty of transgender women are told they're perverts, mentally ill, shouldn't be allowed near children, are a danger to women, and shouldn't be allowed to access medical care to transition. There are angry, nasty voices right across the debate - plenty at your end too. Social media gives us access to a multitude of voices and opinions. It's not ok to take the most offensive and unkind of these and say 'these are representative of the beliefs of all transgender people, and anyone who supports the rights of transgender people to live in this world on their own terms."

"and trans identified males frequently use feminine gender-norms to justify why/how they must really be women."

Who does? Who are you referring to? How people feel about their gender identity is unique to them, and they're entitled to feel anything they like about it, just like you're entitled to believe and feel anything you like about yourself.

Out of interest, how many transgender people - transgender men and women - do you know? I mean actually know? Because you talk very freely about what transgender people think and believe.