Yay! I've finally found my gender label

For the same reason I have no problem with Mx. I'd take the piss if they came up with a title for all 71 genders though.

How come "Ms" isn't special snowflaky glitterpants? Demanding that companies change their databases/forms/etc to accommodate YOUR snowflake identity bullshit about not wanting to be IDENTIFIED by your marital status. How much more special snowflake is that, if judging by the same criteria here?

Good grief I haven't read a feminist book or studiin my life and I can answer this one.

As Lass said, it's because you're talking about a situation where women have been specifically singled out and discriminated. We want exactly the same thing as men have been allowed. Nothing special, nothing different. IN fact you're giving far less information rather than asserting your specialness.

A better analogy would be people who are Goths/punks/Emos. They got told it was a fad and they were doing it to be edgy. Adults didn't get called bigots for not recognising their oppression on account of being Emo.

The goth fad...ahh I was so into that. I still carry a small part of that with me in my love of excessive eyeliner. I remember fondly the day the teachers sent me home for having too much eyeliner on so I returned to school in my full ripped outfit complete with studded leather jacket, a totally white face in FULL goth makeup rather than just a bit. Heh

I remember people talking about lesbians being a high school fad and how the majority were doing it because it was edgy and would grow out of it - pretty offensive stuff.

This was a 'thing' in my school, I don't think its offensive to point this out? Though the trend was to be bi, not lesbian. It would be no fun pretending to be lesbians because the whole point of pretending to be bi was to 'tease' the boys by kissing girls. It WAS just a fad.

Of course this is not true of all bi people (I feel like this has to be said even though surely everyone on here will understand I am not bashing bi people in this post). But in my year at school there were maybe 80 'bi' girls. I have kept up with many of them after school and oddly enough, most of them grew out of it as soon as we left school and are straight now.

This trend was harmless. This transgender trend is not harmless. It is very very damaging. Being bi as a trend at school didn't mean changing anything about yourself. Being trans...sets you on route to blockers and cross sex hormones, which are near impossible to come back from.

AFAB A-gender non-binary transwoman. Who would have thunk it

I can see that perfectly, but I also see that ever since I started using Ms 30 odd years ago, there have been people sneering at how ridiculous it is, god how trivial etc.

Do you call them misogynists for 'mistitleing' you?
Do you try to get them sacked if they call you Mrs?
Do you report them to the police for committing a 'hate crime'?
Do you insult them far and wide on social media?
Do you send them death threats because they ridicule your chosen title?
Do you accuse them of literal violence if they call you Mrs?
Do you accuse them of causing women to commit suicide by laughing at their title?
Do you try to stop them speaking in public, about any subject, if they call you Mrs?
Do you have them thrown out of parties just in case they might say Miss to someone?
Do you claim to feel unsafe around people who call women Mrs?
Do you tell Mrs Smith that her name is really Ms Smith, and refuse to use her chosen title if she objects?

No, of course you don't. You just want parity with adult males in the information which your title discloses, and you go about it in a calm and reasoned manner.

This is why Ms is not a snowflake issue.

Hasn’t really got much “Look at meeeeeee!” value, is why. Which is a shame, because both things you describe have much more value than messing about with appearances, fun though that is.

Playing with gender roles would presumably involve afab people doing engineering degrees and amab people looking after their elderly mum. Of course you do get people genderbending in these ways but they don't seem to talk about it so much.

I can see that perfectly, but I also see that ever since I started using Ms 30 odd years ago, there have been people sneering at how ridiculous it is, god how trivial etc.

I'm not sure if that makes it a better tactic or a worse one for discrediting something.

I mean really slighyglitter can you not see how fundamentally unequal men and women are if on every single occasion they have to complete a form men do not have to disclose their marital status but women do?

How come "Ms" isn't special snowflaky glitterpants? Demanding that companies change their databases/forms/etc to accommodate YOUR snowflake identity bullshit about not wanting to be IDENTIFIED by your marital status. How much more special snowflake is that, if judging by the same criteria here?

Good grief I haven't read a feminist book or studiin my life and I can answer this one.

It is because "Mr" tells you nothing other than the person is a man. No man ever has to indicate his marital status EXCEPT when it is a actually relevant in a very few situations under family and tax legislation.

Meanwhile, women are still oppressed on the basis of their sex, on which no amount of labels has any effect.

Pretty much in the way people I knew did back in the 80s/90s.

I agree with that, it was all looking rather positive there for a while.

Femininity started to be something that could be embraced by men. Hairdresser shirts, quiffed hair, guyliner.

Instead of now where if a man wants to express femininity, he has to become a woman to do so. Or non-binary, or gender fluid. It’s yet more boxes. And they are ever more restrictive, as evidenced by the arguing over the different terms, and which one has more credibility, and who has more right to assume them.

Ms has been made fun of countless times by many people.
People who use it might get a bit annoyed about that but they don't issue death threats or accuse people of 'literal violence' for taking the piss.
The article talks about gender ideology as if it is very significant- that what makes someone female is wearing lipstick or shaving. That idea is harmful to women because it's sexist and puts us in a box. So I will make fun of it! Humour is a good defence against this nonsense.

You can play with gender presentation. You can’t play with gender. Because it is only superficially about clothing and make up.

Gender roles, which none of them seem to play with, by the way, is what constitutes gender.

I was reading those accounts as essentially playing with gender. Pretty much in the way people I knew did back in the 80s/90s.

It also misses the point that gender is a hierarchy with women at the bottom. It’s a damaging system. Not an identity.

It’s about asking people to believe in gender.

How gender can be innate, when for one human being it is fixed and it belongs to their sex, for another human being it is fixed but belongs to the opposite sex, for a third human being it can change on a daily basis, and a fourth human doesn’t have one.

It’s mocked because it’s ridiculous.

slightlyglittermaned How come "Ms" isn't special snowflaky glitter pants?

The trans equivalent to Ms is Mx (i.e. gender-neutral title), which is now used on university applications. I've no problem with this. No one is compelling me to address them by it, just as well as I wouldn't know how to pronounce it.

Did feminists ever say that using Miss or Mrs rather than Ms was should be punished as a hate crime (in New York, misgendering is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000)?

Pronouns are different. They are deeply embedded in grammatical unconscious.To demand that someone speak using artificial pronouns or pronouns that contradict physical appearance is a very onerous demand.

So it's not at all the thing itself, but the GRA and similar legislation? So WHY the big focus on mocking this then?

You can't see the difference between these two different concepts? Yet you claim to be able to make a case why the use of Ms is a good idea?

Consider how the idea of Ms, and it's uptake, has been effected, compared to this modern identity politics. The same, or different?

I'll rephrase my earlier question seeing as it obviously wasn't terribly clear:

How come "Ms" isn't special snowflaky glitterpants? Demanding that companies change their databases/forms/etc to accommodate YOUR snowflake identity bullshit about not wanting to be IDENTIFIED by your marital status. How much more special snowflake is that, if judging by the same criteria here?

Note: have used Ms since I was a young teen, and I can make an argument for why it's important. What I can't do, currently, is see any good arguments for why this thing over here is snowflake, and this thing here is Right And Proper Feminist You Know.

If we cannot make a decent argument about this with all the combined intelligence of the Feminist Chat board, then how are you going to convince teenage girls?

Stopmakingsense.

So many of our friends are being hit by this sodding movement.

genever pfft! Bloody show off!

Stig. The current validation of identity over biology is doing immense harm to the vulnerable teens and young people whose actual mental health problems are going untreated because of a magic bullet called transitioning. There is no secure evidence that this treatment is effective for this new cohort (rapid onset, teenage, mostly female, often on the autistic spectrum), so if you had a child who believes that they need to to amputate healthy body parts and take artificial hormones to be their authentic self, I expect you would be horrified too.