I am embracing virtue signalling pronouns in emails

To women who do not believe their womanhood is simply a mental difference between themselves and those who identify as men, being called "cis women" is as offensive as being called a man is for a trans woman.

Thank you, a very, very clear explanation of why I am not 'cis' and will not be called 'cis'.

Even apart from my burgeoning stargender, of course.

Doesn’t ‘trans woman’ do the same job?

Eh?

@aseriesofstillimages

I checked the guidelines, the use of cis is not forbidden, though it can be reportable if used in a specifically offensive or hostile way (like if I referred to someone here as being cis, knowing they find it offensive).

The convention on this board is to only use cis when referring to a person or group who you know to use it, in order to avoid misgendering those who may to you appear to be cis but do not in fact identify that way and may find it offensive.

So for example, 100% OK to refer to yourself as cis...you should know! Talking about an individual friend or public figure who has identified as cis is again entirely defendable.

Moving on to larger groups is shaky ground...you might have to defend why you feel confident the women you are talking about identity as cis. An example here might be that female women in an explicitly TWAW group like Stonewall can probably be assumed to identify as cis, but women in most other contexts like, for example, the female staff in a supermarket probably should not be.

Statements that divide all women into cis and trans, implicitly forcing cis identity onto every female person who has not actively identified as trans, will be robustly challenged, as will statements like "but cis just means not trans" which is only valid if you accept the implicit underlying belief that womanhood is mental rather than physical, again forcing a gender identity onto others.

Describing a specific individual, especially a poster on here, as "cis" when they have not told you they identify as such, and may even have asked you not to, may well be reported and deleted. To women who do not believe their womanhood is simply a mental difference between themselves and those who identify as men, being called "cis women" is as offensive as being called a man is for a trans woman.

Thank you

It is biologically accurate.

The acronym though is TIM and they don't like being called TIMs. The monitors that is.

I haven't read all of the thread. I'm not particularly gender critical, but neither am I a TRA, and am very far from being "woke" - in the diminished sense of that word.

One can't get the full nuances without having been at the meeting but my take on it is-

It's not funny and it wasn't done in good faith. As an employer, if I'd been at that meeting I'd have been thinking what the hell OP was up to?

An excellent argument against enforcing /announcing pronouns is they are not used face to face.

If one were at the meeting and needed to refer to Paul, one would say "Paul". Zoom, Teams etc has the benefit that if you've forgotten their name/ weren't listening- it's there on-screen. Ergo there was no need to announce Paul's pronouns other than to score a point.

Unless your workplace is centre court at Wimbledon, scoring a point over a colleague generally isn't in the job description or conducive to amicable working relationships.

In the old days one wouldn't refer to another person in the meeting as "he" or "she"- that is more impolite than 'fessing up you don't know their name.

(One side effect of the great pronoun debate and having to think about pronouns is I find I now swap out he/ she in written correspondence- not because of "wokeness" - far from it- but actually it's frequently clearer and more polite to use a person's name)

Why would trans identifying males be offensive? It’s biologically accurate? I suppose we could call them males who wish to present as females but often fail but that’s a bit of a mouthful isn’t it?

I have yet to meet anyone in real life who used anything other than those three. I’m not sure how I feel about the many others - social interactions require compromise and reasonableness, and I’m not convinced it’s reasonable to expect people to remember essentially individualised pronouns. I have enough trouble remembering names.

If the words CIS is going to be routinely used, then so will the term TIM (trans identified male.)

That was the deal at the time.

It wasn’t my example so I’m afraid I can’t answer that. The pp didn’t go into details but said it was a non-work situation and that it made a difference to them. I was just responding to the suggestion that if you receive an email from someone stating their pronouns are she/her it doesn’t tell you anything about the sex or physical presentation of the person. I was saying that in reality it gives you a probabilisitic indication.

I thought you weren’t in favour of policing speech? I find many things said on these threads offensive (eg references to ‘trans identifying males’) but I don’t report it or tell people off for using it, because it is not in breach of the rules. However, I consider myself a cis gender woman, and I know many other women who also consider themselves cis, and there is nothing hostile about saying that.

You missed out about 600 other pronouns there.
isnt there a word for that?

If I had a one to one meeting booked with someone whose pronouns on their email were she/her, and said colleague turned up with a beard, 6 feet tall and sounding like Barry White, why would knowing their pronouns in advance have any bearing on how you feel about meeting them?

exactly. She/her now means it could be male or female. Words now actually mean nothing thanks to the lovely Gender ideologists.

I thought we were talking about a specific situation where a pp said she felt better about meeting someone having seen they had ‘she/her’ pronouns?

why though?

If I had a one to one meeting booked with someone whose pronouns on their email were she/her, and said colleague turned up with a beard, 6 feet tall and sounding like Barry White, why would knowing their pronouns in advance have any bearing on how you feel about meeting them?

Please do not use cis. It is offensive, demeaning and a reportable offence on these boards.

No, you can use it just not apply it to people who aren't Cis. Which is most posters on this board. In this case she's right - she pronouns in a signature generally do indicate a woman who 'identifies' as 'Cis'. Although of course another likely group is women who are not Cis who've been coerced into adding pronouns against their wishes.

I find it offensive. Please do not use it. I will count any further uses as hostile behaviour.

Do you, do you really?

A - is anyone going to call Paul anything other than he?

B - if anyone called Paul anything other than he, what happens?

The one time in my life it mattered whether the person with the unisex name I was arranging to meet was male or female, I just asked them. Because it was an entirely reasonable question in the context.

It's sad that there are social contexts where sex matters because of how some male people behave to female people and I hope over time that goes away. However, as long as those risky situations exist, asking someone their sex is a reasonable question in those contexts.

It scares me that TRAs want to make it an unreasonable question in any context while doing sweet FA to take away the risks that make it necessary.

I checked the guidelines, the use of cis is not forbidden, though it can be reportable if used in a specifically offensive or hostile way (like if I referred to someone here as being cis, knowing they find it offensive).

I thought we were talking about a specific situation where a pp said she felt better about meeting someone having seen they had ‘she/her’ pronouns?

Please do not use cis. It is offensive, demeaning and a reportable offence on these boards.

I’d say it’s likely the number of cis women who include their pronouns in their email signature is much larger than the number of trans women (and specifically, those who include their pronouns in their email signature), so it was quite a good indicator that it was likely to be a cis woman, if not a guarantee.

Ummm....

And if the pronouns are they or zie, what's your expectation?

So OP was right to tell everyone Paul’s pronouns then? Otherwise how would they have known he was identifying as male that day? She did a very kind act. What if someone had referred to him as she? It could happen.

depending on the situation, you don’t need to know either their sex or their gender. You just need to know how to refer to them - like checking how to pronounce their name, or asking if they prefer ‘William’ or ‘will’