Forstater judgment tomorrow

Thing about blokes getting turned by pronouns or when you remove your cardigan, the analogy only works if they demanded you get undressed.

I don’t think you can reasonably compel people to lie, which is what this is about.

As someone posted on a thread about this recently — what happens if a catgender person is sharing an office with a mousegender person? 😮

Yes — and I think that they will be hoist by their own petard with some of the obvious contradictions in gender ideology. For example: the latest fashionable claim that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness — something mods on here are even deleting posters for “implying”.

But so much of the whole pronouns/Bekind thing has been predicated on the notion that if you don’t use someone’s preferred pronouns or whatever that it causes great mental anguish to the point of suicide — the whole “transfolx will die!” narrative. So far, most people have been complying with this because they think “Shirley in the office who used to be Dave” is a vulnerable person with great mental health issues around “her” identity, and they want to be courteous and compassionate.

But if you move on to the “it’s not a mental illness!” stage, then compelled pronouns and controlling others’ language starts looking really manipulative and dishonest. Either it’s a social nicety and a legal fiction which people perform to be kind to those who are vulnerable or suffering from psychological stress and might feel suicidal; OR it’s an “identity” you can just take up — and unfortunately if you push the latter, it becomes very obvious that the aim is control and manipulation of other people in a way that is either passive-aggressive or just plain aggressive.

Being often tone deaf to the contradictions of the whole ideology, many gender activists simply haven’t thought about what happens if you abandon the “Be kind/Dysphoria/suicide risk” narrative for the “it’s my civil right to enforce how you speak about me even when I’m not there” narrative.

Indeed - or any of the other hundreds of neo-pronouns.

What happens if in work you are Cat Gender with the cat pronouns. Can your employer force you to use cat pronouns?

Yes, I totally see this point and those raised up thread.

I suppose what it comes down to for me is the individual vs society level expectations. So on a personal level, for the most part I’d have no problem using the preferred pronouns, but I’d also expect some clear whistle blowing / Hr policy if there was something more sinister to it (ie is it a clear piss take? How do you police it, I don’t know) whereas at a society level I absolutely agree that language matters and that it is the thin end of the wedge

That's not the same. You're not being mandated to drink through a straw or take off your cardigan by those who are turned on by it, backed up by your work and political party.

There are many self-confessed AGPs. The Internet is littered with them. Also, see the trans widows threads. Men for whom pronouns are part of a fetish.

There is, beyond doubt, an element of arousal for a lot of men who say they are transwomen.

With Maya Forstater's judgment, I'm assuming, that we can I talk about it? Reference it. Provide examples. Ask about the implications.

Yes, that was what I was trying to say, surely I can't be forced to call a man a woman? Or can I?

I'm beginning to think Posie Parker has a point with refusing to use preferred pronouns, maybe it is the thin end of the wedge? The "kind" end?

I also think for some women, it can seem a bit light gaslighting...if I can get you to say something that you don't agree with, that you know from what you can see with your own eyes isn't true, but I want you to say it anyway to make me feel better, even though it makes you uncomfortable - is that just a kind accommodation, or is that some sort of manipulation?

It feels like we're caught up in a very large scale social conformity experiment - one in which we're expected to forget that the pre-conditions for successful propaganda are reasonably well understood.

Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism argued that a: “mixture of gullibility and cynicism... is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements":

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true... The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

Aside from the obvious, horrible parallels with EA and DV, compelling others to repeat your lies is a well established interrogation technique that is known to break the spirit of those being interrogated. It's also a means to assert your dominance over subordinates.

I think Cialdini and various social psychologists argue that when individuals can be coerced into abandoning their integrity by being compelled to repeat untruths they can then be bound to the coercive force by a need for consistency, mixed with shame and complicity.

Jacob T. Levy's piece about Authoritarianism and Post-Truth Politics highlighted this:
[The] great analysts of truth and speech under totalitarianism—George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is. Sometimes—often—a leader with authoritarian tendencies will lie in order to make others repeat his lie both as a way to demonstrate and strengthen his power over them.

Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.

www.niskanencenter.org/authoritarianism-post-truth-politics/

And there's Havel's Power of the powerless (aka the greengrocer's window sign) and Solzhenitsyn's Live not by lies.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

I agree with you achillestoes, apologies - my reply was badly edited, I was trying to quote that bit from Shirley Phallus upthread.

Sorry, my reply above was to this from ShirleyPhallus:

My point was that if someone asks you expressly to call them something then it doesn’t take much to remember that and do as they ask (either him / they but also not to call you love / darling / cis)

My point was that if someone asks you expressly to call them something then it doesn’t take much to remember that and do as they ask (either him / they but also not to call you love / darling / cis)

I think you're right, and most of us would use common courtesy.

However in some ways it can be used a slippery slope, because for many people the requested use of pronouns is not simply a nicety or an accommodation, it is a declaration of their self image or belief, or even statement of their 'truth'.
So for example if that man who asks you to call him she/her then uses 'but I am a woman' as a means to access the women's bathroom, it's not simply about 'doesn't take much to be nice', it is supporting their belief that has consequences for others.

I also think for some women, it can seem a bit light gaslighting...if I can get you to say something that you don't agree with, that you know from what you can see with your own eyes isn't true, but I want you to say it anyway to make me feel better, even though it makes you uncomfortable - is that just a kind accommodation, or is that some sort of manipulation?
What about the kindness to the person who doesn't accept that people can change sex? Is their comfort level ever considered?

Might as well sign off

Nooboonoo
She/her
Straight/bicurious
Atheist/agnostic
Able-bodied
Pregnant
Parent

None of those things are relevant in a work setting - what matters if I can do my job

I don’t think that article addresses what we are discussing here. I completely agree that adding pronouns to your email signature is pointless to the point of being harmful, but it’s unnecessary.

My point was that if someone asks you expressly to call them something then it doesn’t take much to remember that and do as they ask (either him / they but also not to call you love / darling / cis)

I don't think there's much we can do about that. I've been known to turn men on by taking off my cardigan, drinking through a straw and talking in my natural accent.

The important thing is that the safeguards against predatory males remain.

What happens when there is a cohort, who in Naomi Cunningham's parlance are erotic cross dressers, and they are included in those who want you to address them as women?

What happens if using female pronouns for men are part of an arousal process?

Another thing that bothers me - using pronouns isn't about respect. Taking account of a person's view or preferences is not the same as sharing those views or preferences. What is labelled respect is actually deference.

Just wanted to say if anyone wishes to support Maya and what she is doing, you can join Sex Matters and become a monthly subscriber. You even get a nifty mug 😀

I don’t think it takes much to be respectful to someone else and if they asked you to use “they” instead of “he” I think IRL you’d come across as a bit of an arse if you went out of your way to still say “he”, even if you secretly thought it was a load of old tosh (as I do)

There's an interesting piece on the pronouns issue by the Legal Feminist: www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2022/04/26/grammar-and-grievance/

@ShirleyPhallus
I think you've misread - Xenia was talking about the colleague not using Janet/James's preferred pronouns., not their chosen name.

FWIW, @Xenia , you've described my attitude exactly. Janet is a name, James is entirely within their rights to choose a new name and it wouldn't bother me to use the new name. Pronouns are different.
IMO it's not a courtesy to use preferred pronouns - it's a kindness, something you do privately for loved ones. Calling it a courtesy implies that a person has a right to impose new rules of grammar (no such right exists) or that they have changed sex (impossible). I honestly don't see how a workplace can have a lawful policy which insists on observing preferred pronouns. It's not neutral or live and let live. It's actively favouring one philosophical belief over another.