Can I be forced to use pronouns?

I wish to be referred to by the title of Duchess from now on.

Duchess Pots of Devonshire will do me nicely.

I am one of those people 'blessed' with an unusual name, and I can count the number of people outside my family who pronounce it as my parents intended on the fingers of one hand.

If I made a fuss about it, people wouldn't be on my side about it, either. Funny that.

It does the OP no harm to address this person as they wish. It may do them harm to have people refuse.

What sort of harm? Do they melt?

name, title and set of pronouns

One of these is not like the others.

Everyone has a name, title and set of pronouns they wish to be referred to by. If you introduced yourself by your name and someone said 'I don't want to call you that, I am going to call you Steve' that would be considered rude and a bit odd. We don't choose what we want to call people. It does the OP no harm to address this person as they wish. It may do them harm to have people refuse.

vm.tiktok.com/ZMF3NR9rJ/

I mean, there's the kind thing to do, and the right thing to do and they are not always the same thing.

TRAs are often likened to toddlers on these boards (and for good reason) so here's my analogy.

This afternoon, my toddler woke up from his nap in a grump. He'd done a poo in his nappy and furiously denied it to the point of tears.

I could have done the "kind" thing and respectd his wishes and agreed there was no poo in his nappy. He'd have ended up with a raw arse, and I would have had no working smell receptors left. Or I could do what I did, changed his nappy and parented him.

Indeed. Even two years' ago, I was saying I would honour people's pronoun requests. I think now I'd choose to exclusively use the asker's name, now I've found out that women in prison are punished for not deferring to the pronoun requests of male rapists placed in the women's estate.

Every time we choose to defer to unexpected pronoun requests out of a wish to be kind, it solidifies the cultural expectation that all people must comply, and it's those who are least able to play these linguistic games who will suffer most from that. That's not kind.

Beautifully put.

Exactly

No, @Squiblet. They do not. Gender in the sense you are using it, reified, is relatively new. Pronouns match the sex of the person. Always have. I do not care how long anyone's hair is or whether they wear makeup or carry a little handbag. On occasion, I care what sex they are, and if I do need to know, I don't have to overly scrutinise their physique. You hate hearing this, but it's quite easy in real life to tell males from females.
Being referred to as she or he when you are actually of the opposite sex is not a prize for best stereotypical approximation of the appearance or behaviour of someone of the opposite sex, nor is it a courtesy. It's bad grammar and more importantly legitimises beliefs which harm women and children disproportionately and in horrible ways.

How we feel about ourselves has no bearing on how others perceive us so how far can we expect other people to alter their language to reflect our own self-perception?I have listened to someone, I'll call her Jo, I listened to Jo telling me about her 'sibling'. Jo was very careful to use the pronouns they and their and obviously the gender neutral term, sibling. But while I was listening to Jo I was very aware that I wasn't hearing Jo's perspective of this relationship. I wasn't hearing how Jo defined this relationship, I was hearing how this person wanted Jo to describe it. And this person wasn't even there. This person would be totally unaware that this conversation had even taken place.I work with victims and survivors of domestic abuse. That conversation with Jo reminded me of a woman I worked with once whose husband was so controlling that she didn't have any thoughts or opinions of her own. Whenever I would ask her what she wanted for her future or from her relationship, she would tell me what he wanted. And Jo reminded me of her so much.
My question is, how free are we to define and describe our own reality? How free are we to use language in the way which is most comfortable and natural for us in defining and describing that reality? And what happens to reality if we have no shared language to define and describe it?

Certainly 20, or even 10 years ago I saw no issue with being polite and calling a man "she".

But that was on the assumption that it was just being polite, and we all agreed that obviously he wasn't really a woman.

The moment I realised "trans women are women" was now a thing was basically the moment I realised I had to stop. A world in which that wasn't slapped down immediately as offensive bollocks was a world in trouble.

(I saw that the first such man I had significant dealings with has since accepted some sort of "woman in X" award. He lost a lot of my respect - I had assumed he wasn't the sort of person who wouldn't dream of doing anything like that, what with women being severely underrepresented in X).

I'm saying two things. One, people can ask for special pronouns but no one should be expected to comply on pain of sanctions. Reason being that it represents an ideology that it is reasonable not to believe in, and it is not reasonable to compel other peoples speech or claim injury if people don't comply with using your special pronouns.

Two, if people agree to use special pronouns, it can be difficult to do and people should not be punished or be afraid of unintentionally using the usual pronouns based on someone's sex.

And outside of the world of filters it’s almost always possible to tell

see for example the filtered and unfiltered grace lavery

The sinister thing about all this batshittery is how quickly such a small proportion of people think it is OK to bully a large proportion of people into colluding in a lie, such as calling someone 'she' when they are patently a man. More importantly, how the hell have they managed to do it? Probably by relying on the instinctive "be kind" attitude of most people, who don't want to offend. However they have done it (thanks Stonewall, Mermaids et al) whole organisations have fallen for this con trick, especially HR departments.

Genuine sufferers of gender dysphoria, or what used to be called trans sexuals, who underwent horrible treatments in their attempts to make mind and body match are a minute proportion of the population and have been subsumed by this gender ideology, which owes little to trans sexualism and everything to living a fantasy life.

Its adherents can't be ordinary like 99 per cent of us. They have to be extra special people with extra special inner souls leading an extra special life. They are essentially narcissists. More fool us for pandering to it.

OP, do whatever you feel you have to. Oh, and wherever you see people posting statements like "educate yourself", be aware they have fallen for the fantasy, hook, line and sinker.

As for posters feeling guilty because they forget to play the game with their children's friends, try and remember you are the adult in the room.

It starts with “respect my pronouns beeeee kiiiiind” and ends up with men in women’s refuges, rape support groups, prisons, taking places on women’s sports teams and taking up spaces on programmes designed to increase women in under represented areas such as STEM and politics

it’s never ever just fucking pronouns, it’s only ever about men getting what they want

I would have to change my behaviour by using the wrong sex pronouns and I would be signalling a belief that I do not have (that anyone has changed sex)

Surely pronouns relate to gender, just as much as to biological sex?

If someone comes along who has clearly made an effort to present themselves as a certain gender, it's only common courtesy to try to use the appropriate pronoun for that gender, rather than scrutinising their physique to work out what sex they are underneath - which is a red herring, anyway.

My point is people can change the words/names/pronouns they use if they decide they want to try. Arguing that shifting to they/them is difficult is a bit of a strawman..people here are saying, for the most part, they dont want to use peoples preferred pronouns.

Who are you calling babe? I haven’t said I’m ok with that!! Educate yourself!

I don't think anyone is suggesting they wouldn't use this man's name? It's not at all the same as forgetting someone's new surname.

I also think people likely made sure they used he/him instead of they! And yes, it's of no surprise a thread such as this, on this forum, is going to be mostly people refusing to use someone preferred pronouns.

Yes, your point remains, in normal conversation it may be more difficult. People still use my married name even though I no longer do, and have to remind themselves. But most people have the common decency to try to get it right.

But still, at least as many or more people used he/him/his, and I think at least a couple of your examples of "they" use might well have been written somewhat with a tongue in cheek, don't you think? And my point about normal conversation, about a specific person who is known to be male, remains.

Many of the people who post on here have experience of being different and being judged for it. Why does your empathy not extend to those who feel offended by having their speech compelled? I would have to change my behaviour by using the wrong sex pronouns and I would be signalling a belief that I do not have (that anyone has changed sex) and which I consider nonsensical and from which I believe real harm results. I would never want anyone to mistake me for someone who bought into it. You must be aware of how strongly some people feel about this, so why does the harm to us not matter to you? On the other hand, I'm not insisting that people may not request use of, or refer to the concept of, preferred pronouns, or that they change their belief that people can change sex, or that sex is a spectrum or it is possible to be neither one sex nor the other.

It seems to me that all you are saying is Be Kind, but using more words. To which my response is, you first.