BBC Bitsize - Pronouns

@CharlieParley

Fair enough it was a daft throw away comment and I bow down to your superior linguistic knowledge.

Again we can examine it without subjecting people to playing along. Its a big ask of a complete stranger and it doesn't benefit anyone long term

This is much the more kind of conversation I hoped to have here btw. Swapping barbed comments is all well and good

I don't believe for one second you're here to have a reasonable conversation. You deflect every time someone picks up on what you say and really ask you to explain it.

You suggested we guess people's gender without stating what criteria we should use to guess, because it obviously isn't sex. And you can't even give a basic explanation of how someone chooses their own gender.

This is all nonsense and deflection because you know, as well as everyone else on here does, that gender is a set of sex-role stereotypes. I do very much reject those stereotypes. So no, my identity is based in physical reality, not a gender feeling.

Given that I believe you are a male transgender person, I assume that means you identify as female, and as such, do so on the basis of agreeing with sex-role stereotypes, as that is the thing you need to claim womanhood.

You refuse to be straightforward about this, which is why you posting here claiming to want genuine dialogue is disingenuous. You just want us to affirm your ideas. That's not the job of a feminist forum.

Because people perceive their gender presentation as not matching their physical sex and that is socially punished

agreed

it's shit

what's your view on prescribing puberty blockers to gender questioning children so their sex can be more easily hidden and surgery used to make their sex appear to align with their gender presentation? how do you feel gender questioning young women having their healthy breasts removed?

utterly repugnant and totally unnecessary, no?

The thing is gender doesn't need to mean everyone is a walking stereotype for it to function. Gender needs people to conform just enough to maintain the system of gender, it doesn't have to be optimal. And people clearly do conform to the level necessary, otherwise gender as a system of social control wouldn't exist. Now why people conform, whether comfort, fear of punishment, social conditioning or maintenance of a dominant role in the case of men, is probably one area that needs examining.

@Bessica1970 You’re lumping non-binary in with your anti-trans agenda and and I’m not going there!

Couldn't give a stuff what gender a person chooses to present as. My agenda is anti double mastectomy when healthy which seems to be what Lachlan Watson named on that page as a famous non binary person and age 19 now has undergone. Not a role model for BBC Bitesize intended audience.

@CharlieParley

Thank you, that was fascinating.

The fact is gender exists as a social force. It works, sadly, avery effectively in it's intent which is to re-inforce patriarchy. And I think this is where I find a contradiction within a lot of Gender Critical arguments. If everyone is really gender free and the only people doing gender are the trans then how is gender still so ubiquitous? Why hasn't patriarachy crumbled?

If you think that gender 'reinforces patriarchy', why are you so keen on 'gender'?

What makes you think that everyone is 'gender free' and only trans people are 'doing gender'? The whole of society is much more 'gendered' now than it was even 20 years ago. Feminists have been fighting against this for decades, but it's getting worse now rather than getting better. I don't think that means we should just give up and stop fighting.

And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not.

What do you actually mean by 'presentation' here? Are you talking about clothing and hairstyles (stereotypes) or what?

What is more likely is that people will recognise our sex whether we want them to or not, no matter how much we might try to disguise it.

Personally I think telling trans people what they consider is kind or humane even when they experience it as hurtful is somewhat condescending.

Are you saying that telling people 'dress how you want, live how you want (as long as you are not harming others), but you can't change sex' is hurtful? Is it tolerance (dress and live how you want) which is hurtful or scientific fact (you can't change sex)?

Socially punished?

In the UK trans people are the safest demographic. Check out channel four fact check.

Male and female police officers get called all sorts. They are spat on, physically injured and verbally abused.

Killed too.

How on earth would that copper react to all the other horrors police officers face on a daily basis, if an autistic teenage saying 'are you a boy or a girl' made them traumatized and unable to patrol alone?

And people do assume gender based on presentation. A trans woman, on hormones, who walked round a city centre topless would very likely be arrested for indecent exposure. A man wouldn't. Is the trans woman being arrested based on her sex or her gender?

Gender ID is where we feel most comfortable?!

Is the quoted poster actually saying that when women conform (or are forced to conform) to expectations of femininity, it's because they are comfy?!

Very close to suggesting women choose to ID with their oppression, because they like it.

They quite possibly would if they shouted it at a female copper.

Did you land on this planet straight from the moon?

Male and female police officers get called all sorts. They are spat on, physically injured and verbally abused.

If front line female coppers could get people done for street sexual harassment, every force in the country would pass a new case for prosecution to the CPS each week. At least!

And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not

So what. Why does it matter what the sales person thinks. They see hundreds if people a day they don't give a shit tbh. And what if they think something avbut u? Are you going to see them again? Send a birthday card? What?

Don't you think we ought to stop assuming everyone gives a shit about what 1 of thousands if people a week do when all they are doing is ringing up your bar of soap.

Men buy tampons women buy condoms no one and I mean no one cares . So why does it matter and why is then knowing your gender so important.

It's not a lie, pronouns are based on gender in pretty much every language on earth.

Why do you keep doing this, jj1968?

Only one in four languages on the planet are gendered, that is they use grammatical gender, an organisational system which requires that all adjectives, pronouns, articles and verbs are inclined to match the grammatical gender of the noun.

Some languages, like English, no longer have a grammatical gender at all, others never used this organisational system at all. While they may use personal pronouns all the same, these are always based either on sex or on grammatical gender.

But grammatical gender has nothing to do with the social concept of gender. In some languages grammatical gender depends on the sex of the living organism referred to, in others it doesn't. Some languages sort all nouns into male and female, always corresponding to sex in living organisms, some male, female, neuter, some animate and inanimate, other have male animate, male inanimate, female animate and female inanimate. (And a number of other options.)

In some languages, like German, you'll find that the Genus (grammatical gender) usually but not always matches the Sexus (biological sex) of living organisms.

But even where it doesn't, like with the example of Mädchen for girl mentioned above by OldCrone which has as a Genus Neutrum (neuter) even though the Sexus of a girl is female, where the referrent (the actual girl) is known, named or visible, it is actually much more common to use the ungrammatical she and all declined forms thereof even though das Mädchen requires es.

Because personal pronouns are based on sex in German, they can override the rules in common usage.

Moreover, many languages do not use personal pronouns at all, instead preferring demonstratives (so it's not she for girl but that instead). German actually has both, but it's considered quite rude to say die or der instead of sie or er for she and her.

Of course, one in three humans living on this planet speak languages that do not have third person pronouns or use third person pronouns that do not distinguish between the sexes in using them. Everyone is a form of they.

Which is why it's very common for speakers of Finnish, Chinese, Persian, Yoruba, Swahili, Maori or Hindi and Urdu (to name but a few of many hundreds of languages) to use he and she interchangeably when they first learn a language with third person pronouns that reflect the sexes.

In English then, the language the BBC is talking about, third person pronouns are based on sex. So it's completely wrong to claim the decision as to whether he or she is used is based on whether the person referred to conforms to the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with one or the other sex.
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I can't help thinking that a little Bitesize lesson on international pronoun usage might be far more beneficial for our kids than this coercive one demanding kindness. It could teach them that not everyone does things the same way without labelling those alternative approaches as wrong, unkind, unfair, hateful or exclusionary.

They quite possibly would if they shouted it at a female copper.

Do you think there is a single policewoman in the country who doesn't hear this on a depressingly regular basis?

You really don't get it at all do you?

And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not

they won't you know. they'll identify your sex

butch lesbians get a VERY hard time

their sex is female and in your weird system their gender identity is also 'woman'. so why do they get such a hard time?

I think we really need to analyse the many and varied ways in which gender manifests, which range from the crude, frocks or trousers, to the roles we find ourselves in, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, pink/blue collar workers etc and also to more subtle manifestations of gender like how it acts on how we speak, move, experience our bodies, desire, and even fuck.

Well crack on then. Let us know when you've got something.

Is this the Bitesize thing the BBC tweeted and were massively slammed in a huge long thread. Then they took the tweet down but re-posted it with no comments allowed?
Not really on.

for him to have intended to cause harm would have required theory of mind - to understand the other person’s perspective - and that is a skill many autistic people lack.

Yes this was my point. But it got turned into 'why do you think autistic people are anti social and have no control over their behaviour'

@OldCrone

Now this is where we disagree. I just behave as I wish, according to my own personal preferences. I am aware that some of these behaviours comply with what is expected of women, but many of them don't. I don't view this as a 'gender identity', but simply a personality.

I think this depends on a very narrow view of gender and how it is both imposed on us and how it manifests within us even if we don't want it to. The fact is gender exists as a social force. It works, sadly, avery effectively in it's intent which is to re-inforce patriarchy. And I think this is where I find a contradiction within a lot of Gender Critical arguments. If everyone is really gender free and the only people doing gender are the trans then how is gender still so ubiquitous? Why hasn't patriarachy crumbled? I think we really need to analyse the many and varied ways in which gender manifests, which range from the crude, frocks or trousers, to the roles we find ourselves in, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, pink/blue collar workers etc and also to more subtle manifestations of gender like how it acts on how we speak, move, experience our bodies, desire, and even fuck.

I'm not going to comment on 'how we internally experience our sexed bodies within a gendered system' because I don't understand what you mean.

Well I think it's currently unknown. Gender dysphoria certainly exists, trans people and how much of that is purely down to the social and political environment we find ourselves in or whether it represents something physical, or inherent about our brains is really something we can only speculate on. Personally I'm not sure it matters that much.

Again, describing the way I dress or other aspects of my appearance in terms of 'gender' is reinforcing the notion that certain presentations are only acceptable for one sex or the other.

I think it's just recognising the reality of the society we live in. You can barely buy a bar of soap without it being somehow gendered. And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not.

I think it would be more humane and kind to say to everyone 'dress how you want, live how you want (as long as you are not harming others), but you can't change sex'.

Personally I think telling trans people what they consider is kind or humane even when they experience it as hurtful is somewhat condescending. Kind of reminds me of Iain Duncan Smith insisting benefit cuts are good for poor people.

This is much the more kind of conversation I hoped to have here btw. Swapping barbed comments is all well and good but I really think if this is ever going to move forward then the conversation needs to move away from sniping about toilets to really analysing gender, how it manifests, who it hurts, and what we can do about it both as long term goals and to mitigate its impact in the here and now.

How can you reassure neurodiverse people and those with neurodiverse children that they can communicate effectively

oh I don't think jj wants anyone to be able to communicate effectively.

Gender identity is where we feel most comfortable within that system regardless of physical sex

Oh right. so when i was invited to take a 10% cut in my hourly rate because i was returning to work from maternity leave, do you think that was regardless of my physical sex?

it didn't feel especially comfortable at the time if that helps

I've had people shout crap like that at me in the street before. It's not very nice as it's intended to draw attention to someone and humiliate them.

I think you'd be hard put to find a single woman who hasn't had the experience of having things shouted at them in the street with a view to humiliating them. Humiliating, intimidating, threatening violence and sexual assault. But no-one ever got prosecuted for shouting "get your tits out love" at a passing woman. Just saying.