Q&A thread for New Posters

None of this should be a problem if society doesn't assume that the default norm is male. However to do that you need to acknowledge the impact of sex.

You should probably read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.

Indeed.

Regarding Covid, it's just come out that a covid test is less accurate for women and produces false negatives.

If you carefully avoid seeing sex, then how are you going to pick that up? As it is, it's taken about a year for anyone to notice.

I am all for fighting against the stereotype that women are inherently more nurturing or suited to being a primary child carer than men.

Women also need specific services and rights if they want to avoid having children.

IVF is more of a burden on women than on men.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding require specific accommodations.

Many drugs are not tested on pregnant women.

Diseases impact differently on men and women (sometimes to men's disadvantage - also see Covid).

Even leaving aside the topic of single sex spaces and any social or cultural norms, men and women use toilets differently because their bodies function differently.

None of this should be a problem if society doesn't assume that the default norm is male. However to do that you need to acknowledge the impact of sex.

You should probably read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.

It's pretty standard on the tube to be groped by men.
It's pretty standard for the lift doors to open and close constantly.
It's pretty standard for meeting rooms to be fairly visually open- if I were in a meeting room with a man who reached out and closed the blinds for no good reason, I'd be alert.

I absolutely think that all language should stop operating in a way that requires people to be marked as male or female. While we’re on the subject, I very much hope all theistic religion will eventually go the same way as gender norms and become a relic of the past

You might like Finnish. No separate equivalents of he or she. They've got one third-person singular that is used indistinguishably for a person of either sex.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you.

Names are often clearly delineated by sex, yes. Women with unisex names report that they think it gave them a boost into the workplace, regarding getting interviews.

But once in the workplace, being clearly female, sexual discrimination comes into play.

I have never told anyone to use a particular set of pronouns. Other people choose them. In practice, when I overhear people talking about me, they seem to use female ones, apart from some autistic children who struggle with language and use he for everyone. I don't melt when this happens. I think that if everyone calls me he, people will still worry about me taking maternity leave.

You'll find the prevailing view on this board is that we shouldn't have to declare pronouns, because it will exacerbate sexual discrimination in the work place. This is where strands of the trans rights movement are at odds with the strands of feminism espoused on this board! They want us all to declare pronouns on profiles, CVs and email signatures.

@Sophoclesthefox

“The problem with dropping gender from daily interactions, helen is that you’ve unfortunately neglected to notice that the whole world doesn’t speak English, or even a language that would be amenable to such reforms.

In Arabic, for example, the conjugation of verbs is gendered- you have different verb endings depending on if you are talking to a man or a woman. So your whole conversation from hello, how are you to goodbye sounds different if you are addressing a man or a woman. How will you solve this, other than by whole scale overhaul of a language that has existed for thousands of years, and also forms the underpinning of an extremely widespread religion?

Completely colonial, and clearly not progressive. Back to the drawing board.

(Also, humans are sexually dimorphic)”

I absolutely think that all language should stop operating in a way that requires people to be marked as male or female. While we’re on the subject, I very much hope all theistic religion will eventually go the same way as gender norms and become a relic of the past

@picklemewalnuts

“@Helen8220 it's not unusual- I think it's fairly typical of women, to be honest, even if they haven't explicitly thought it through.

I know very few women who wouldn't hesitate at being in a confined space with an unknown male.

As a teacher, you take care to avoid being alone with a child unless it's somewhere open and visible.
As a woman I take care to avoid being alone with unfamiliar men, ditto.

The first is for the protection of both the child and teacher, the second for my own protection.

Vicars also have safeguarding awareness.

It's really not unusual.”

Back before covid I and my female colleagues were frequently in lifts/meeting rooms with male colleagues (who we might never have met before - it’s a big organisation), and it’s pretty standard on the tube to be closer than you’d like to many strangers of both sexes/all genders. I’ve never heard anyone say it makes them uncomfortable (or at least, in the case of the tube, specifically uncomfortable because of the sex of the people). Outside work, as far as I’m aware my friends see male doctors (including for gynae issues) without hesitation.

I hate the idea that women are like children in needing special protection. We are not children and we can look after ourselves

Oops, hit ‘post’ prematurely by mistake....

Ok, I take your point that if I’m directly talking to another person I don’t need gendered pronouns. But more broadly, via the combination of our name and pronouns, we are expected to declare our sex (or gender) in order to interact socially with others

@PotholeParadies

“I think I normally refer to animals as ‘it’.

I don't think we'd get on in RL.then.

My point isn’t about whether pronouns are or should refer to sex or gender. My point is, why on earth do we need gendered pronouns if they purely refer to sex? When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are

I am a trifle confused about this. When you interact with someone in RL, while using the medium of English, you will be using the unsexed, ungendered pronouns of you. The only thing telling you their sex will be your eyes.

If you interact with people in exactly the same way, whatever their sex, good for you.

The pronouns will only come up if you want to tell other people about your interaction. If you think sex is irrelevant, deliberately avoid using pronouns in those later conversations and see if other people complain.”

I also often refer to babies as “it” - not sure if that makes it better or worse in your view though!

Carers UK do have a lot of good research on this.

One very important point with caring roles is that although it can look like it is not massively different between men and women, as caring intensity (ie weekly number of hours of care) increases, the split changes. Care to take a guess in which direction?!

The problem with dropping gender from daily interactions, helen is that you’ve unfortunately neglected to notice that the whole world doesn’t speak English, or even a language that would be amenable to such reforms.

In Arabic, for example, the conjugation of verbs is gendered- you have different verb endings depending on if you are talking to a man or a woman. So your whole conversation from hello, how are you to goodbye sounds different if you are addressing a man or a woman. How will you solve this, other than by whole scale overhaul of a language that has existed for thousands of years, and also forms the underpinning of an extremely widespread religion?

Completely colonial, and clearly not progressive. Back to the drawing board.

(Also, humans are sexually dimorphic)

I should clarify, the breakdown by age and sex. So, are more working-age women losing out on pension contributions because of caring roles than working-age men.

@Helen8220 it's not unusual- I think it's fairly typical of women, to be honest, even if they haven't explicitly thought it through.

I know very few women who wouldn't hesitate at being in a confined space with an unknown male.

As a teacher, you take care to avoid being alone with a child unless it's somewhere open and visible.
As a woman I take care to avoid being alone with unfamiliar men, ditto.

The first is for the protection of both the child and teacher, the second for my own protection.

Vicars also have safeguarding awareness.

It's really not unusual.

I think I normally refer to animals as ‘it’.

I don't think we'd get on in RL.then.

My point isn’t about whether pronouns are or should refer to sex or gender. My point is, why on earth do we need gendered pronouns if they purely refer to sex? When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are

I am a trifle confused about this. When you interact with someone in RL, while using the medium of English, you will be using the unsexed, ungendered pronouns of you. The only thing telling you their sex will be your eyes.

If you interact with people in exactly the same way, whatever their sex, good for you.

The pronouns will only come up if you want to tell other people about your interaction. If you think sex is irrelevant, deliberately avoid using pronouns in those later conversations and see if other people complain.

In German, there are three grammatical genders, male, female and neuter and the words Mädchen (girl), Fräulein (young lady- note, not a PC word these days, don't use it in a cafe) are both neuter.

Mysteriously, everyone knew and continues to know what a girl is and whether she should help her mother with the housework, and historic Germany was not a sexism-free utopia.

@picklemewalnuts

“That's nice for you, Helen.

If I'm physically present with someone, I need to know their sex. If they are male I'm extremely careful about knowing where the door is, who else is present etc.”

I’m sorry to hear that, that must make life very difficult. I don’t think I can really get into a discussion about your personal situation or feelings without risking causing offence.

@PotholeParadies

“Right, I'm going to need a separate post for this.....”

I take your point about the analogy with a person claiming to be colour-blind, and I agree that that stance does nothing to address structural racism. I have thought a lot about how and why my views on issues of sex and gender differ from my views on race and my conclusion is that the issues have some similarities but also some important differences which make it difficult to draw direct comparisons.

I know that changing terminology or concepts wouldn’t stop sexism overnight, but I also think a blurring of the boundaries between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ over time will help to erode sexist stereotypes

"When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are"

That's nice for you, Helen.

If I'm physically present with someone, I need to know their sex. If they are male I'm extremely careful about knowing where the door is, who else is present etc.

@PotholeParadies

“Yes, it was explained to me that way too, Helen.

I went along with it for years but eventually the cognitive dissonance built up too much.

Let's take the bored board through some of my ramblings.

First, so does this apply to horses and deer? We have stallions, and mares, stags and does. A doe is famously defined as a deer, a female deer.

I always refer to animals as he or she. How do I do that? Do I do it on gender presentation? No.

So why are people telling me English pronouns are traditionally determined by gender when I talk about humans?

In fact, pronouns have only started being determined by "gender" in the last 25 years. Why? Trans rights! Society has started slowly changing to accommodate the idea that if you see someone like Lily Madigan, you should ignore their physiology, clock that they were wearing clothes from the women's section, and remember it for later, in case you need to use pronouns.”

I think I normally refer to animals as ‘it’.

My point isn’t about whether pronouns are or should refer to sex or gender. My point is, why on earth do we need gendered pronouns if they purely refer to sex? When I interact with another person (except in some specific contexts - medical, sexual etc) I don’t need to know what their chromosomes or genitals are

Right, I'm going to need a separate post for this.

My view is that the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are too thoroughly infected with gender

You mean the terms man and woman come with centuries of sexist, patriarchal baggage in the form of sexist stereotyping? (Note word sexist- prejudice about who another person is and what they can do on the basis of their sex.)

Let me ask you a question. Does the man in management who proudly declares that he "can't see colour" do anything positive to end racial discrimination with that statement?

I say he doesn't. He congratulates himself on how wonderful he is, and wends his way through life, never noticing that he is more likely to chuck CVs in the bin if they have a name at the top that suggests the applicant isn't white. He never notices that he never promotes people who aren't white. He never notices that the only department that does employ Asian people in a ratio typical of the town's population demographics is the cleaning one.

Now I ask, what happens when someone says "I can't see sex"?

If you call men and women something else, people will still joke about one sex not being able to parallel park. And they will still assume that a female HCP is a nurse, and that the male one is the doctor.

If I switch into French, in which the words for men and women are totally different, do I drop my conditioning about the roles that men and women play in society?

@merrymouse

“You are missing the other side of the oppression coin - structural discrimination.

Women face unfair discrimination because it is assumed that they will get pregnant. However most women do get pregnant and they get pregnant between the ages of about 25 and 35.

To enable equality - equal participation in public life, access to work etc. - you also need to create structures that support women, like maternity rights.

You can’t just chop this up into maternity rights/period rights/menopause rights/breastfeeding rights etc. etc. Because everyone knows these things only affect women (Such a shame we don’t employ any of these people who need these minority rights...) and the impact of not providing these rights only affects women.

To deny that ‘woman’ means more than biologically female is to deny inescapable reality.

That is just accepting sexism. No more reason to accept sexism than there is to accept any other form of prejudice.”

I do take your point about women disproportionately carrying the burden of childcare, and being disadvantaged economically as a result. Rights to parental leave are clearly essential both from a point of view of protecting women as the group currently disproportionately affected, and also morally more generally to allow people of either sex to take time off to raise a child. I think shared parental leave is a huge step forward, and hopefully we will eventually reach a point where women and men take time out from work equally for childcare purposes.

I am all for fighting against the stereotype that women are inherently more nurturing or suited to being a primary child carer than men.

@9toenails

“You are right; being complicated does not entail it is not real. However, it could still be that it is not real, no?

This looks likely to be the case here.

"I feel like a ... " has the same sense as "I have a sense of myself as ... ". And 'female' is a cognate of 'woman'. So your purported explanation, though indeed a little more complicated, suffers from the same defect as the original: it is circular and so completely non-explanatory.

We are trying to get an explanation of what X is. It is clear that 'an X is anyone who feels like X' offers nothing towards understanding what X is. Equally, 'an X is anyone who has a sense of themselves as a defining-character-of-X ' suffers the same fate.

If that is the best on offer then it surely is not real.

And no, pointing out logico-semantic errors is not sea-lioning.”

My problem with a purely biologically-based definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (eg a woman is any person with xx chromosomes and a vagina” is that it fails to capture the huge social significance that attaches to the terms. When we interact with a person in most everyday contexts we don’t need to know about their chromosomes or genitals, and yet we are almost universally expected to publicly declare whether we are a man or woman (via our name, in the first instance) before we enter into any interaction with another person. If saying that I am a woman was simply conveying information about my chromosomes and genitals, why would this need to be such a central part of how I engage with the world?