Working with teens, I'm struggling with the pronoun issue in the office.

Quz
Hypospadias is a condition in which the urethral opening does not exit the penis at the tip of the penis. Every child with hypospadias is a boy, not an "x". How incredibly offensive to suggest we should we register such boys as "not male or female" and neither are they ambiguous genitalia in the way you imply.

Similarly, I know of a child born with a condition where the genital area had failed to fuse (rather like a cleft lip) in utero. Sex wasn't obvious visually and medical investigations were necessary prior to registration of birth. However, again, the investigation identified a male child and he was registered as the boy he is. His genitals not forming as was intended does not make him not genetically a boy, just like if you are born without one leg doesn't make you a separate one legged category of humanity who doesn't belong in the two legged category. It makes you a two legged human where something went awry.

I have also known several Klinefelter men all of whom had male genitalia and none of whom had been identified at birth for having "ambiguous genitals", because they don't. They have male genitals.

In any case there is no "gotcha" in terms of the use of intersex conditions to justify trans kids. The two things are completely unrelated. Being intersex is not the same as being nonbinary and it's grossly offensive to say so. The vast vast majority of "trans kids" are simple XX or XY. We don't tell kids born with hypospadias that they are a third sex and not a boy because they have a minor plumbing defect, and thank God we don't.

Here's the start of Feminism 101:

Sex = biological category: male and female/men/boys women/girls; unchangeable/immutable
Gender = culturally and historically constructed roles and stereotypes: femininity and masculinity, changeable/mutable.

Sex is a given of our animal existence as mammals.
Gender is a social system.

There is an overlap between sex and gender roles - largely because of the sexual difference between men and women in the reproduction of the species.

In the past, sex was thought to determine gender roles: this is what "biological essentialism" is. The work of feminists - for the last ooooh, 300 years at least - has been to question and unpick that tight connection between women's sexual role in reproduction and their gender roles as limited to reproduction, rather than production (of ideas, art, things, money, status etc etc etc)

Biological essentialism is NOT the action of pointing out sexual difference; it is the insistence that those sex differences are determining of people's life actions eg. arguing that because women conceive, bear, and birth children, then this is the only thing they may do.

There, I've given you that for free @Quz

@Quz Man and woman are not words which refer to gender. They refer to sex. They have have referred to sex throughout history and there are words to refer to the sex of humans throughout cultures. Male/ female refers to the reproductive sex class of any living creature or parts of plants. Man and woman are the only words to refer to the sex of humans and they are vital words to communicate accurate meaning.

These are not ‘traditional’ meanings. They are the meaning. What genderists have done is seek to colonize that word with another meaning ( that they do not define which is why they can never answer the ‘what is a woman’ question) to enable them to advocate for their ideology. They have not provided a definition for their new meaning of woman or man, let alone present a case as to why their new meaning should replace sex in policy and practice. They provide no case as to why the impact of doing so on woman and girls is justified. They present no case as to what the impact is.

By arguing that if someone’s gender identity (again, genderists provide no evidenced or meaningful definition of this concept) is say, woman, then this means they should enter the sex class spaces of women, then your movement is very clearly conflating gender identity and sex.

If you weren’t both genderists and everyone else would be happy for men to present as women, but not used sex segregated spaces for women. Because they would understand that their sex is not that of a woman and so those spaces are not for them.

I took it to mean a feminist who is "critical of" the existence of gender dysphoria.

You need to do some research @Quz . Don't expect women to do it for you (I get paid quite a lot of money to do this research - I'm not going to give you Feminism 101 for free).

For a start, your understanding of DSDs is ludicrous - pornified fantasy.

Very rarely, a baby is born with genitals which are not immediately recognisable as either male or female, for a number of reasons eg. an influx of cross-sex hormones in utero. The labia might be fused, or enlarged; the penis may be a "micro-penis", or the testes may be inverted.

Genetic testing then usually makes a straightforward observation of sex. There are some DSDs which are chromosomally more complex.

But all the women with DSDs I've heard or read speaking about this, are VERY aware of their sex, and very clear they are female & women - probably more so than the majority of us born with straightforward and clear sex/genes/chromosomes. This is necessary as the complications with their sex differences are often central to their medical care.

Ah, now I think this is the root of your confusion. You’re muddling sex and gender. Females are women/girls, males are men/boys. Yes, I agree, but women, girls, men and boys are names associated with the sexes not with gender. When I say that a young female is a girl, I’m not suggesting, as you seem to be, that all females must be feminine. Somebody can be a girl and like masculine things. Great! The point is that liking masculine things doesn’t make them a boy.

Do you actually read what people write? Intersex is an outdated term, and I do have a person close to me with a DSD. That’s why I responded - because what you wrote was inaccurate, othering and upsetting. Do you get it now?

Moreover, DSDs have nothing to do with trans people, and many DSD organisations have asked not to be brought into this.

Fausto-Sterling’s 5 sexes thing? That was a thought experiment not an actual belief that there are five sexes.

You seem confused between sex and gender. Yes, there are gendered expectations for men and women (males and females). We were well on the path to getting rid of those until this regressive nonsense appeared where people are told they need to identify as the other sex to perform gendered activities/appearances linked with that sex. This is the message many young people are getting. When I was a teen a fair few male teens wore makeup. They knew that they could do that because makeup wasn’t just for girls and such gendered expectations were silly. Now that same male teen could think they were ‘trans’ or ‘non-binary’. The reason they might think that is because gendered expectations have been reinforced by gender identity ideology. We are going backwards. Most of these people don’t have gender dysphoria. They have a simplistic view that being a boy and liking ‘girl things’ must mean they’re not a boy 🙄 This is the complete opposite of gender non-conformity. It’s regressive, boring gender conformity.

This is a pragmatic approach.

I do think though that services should be alert to a trans identity being a potential signifier of a distressed child and that transitioning may be a harm enhancing, rather than helpful, reaction to that inner distress.

Gender critical feminists aren’t critical of gender dysphoria. We aren’t critical of the conflation of sex and gender. We’re critical of gender itself. We think it’s a negative thing. We’re critical of thinking that any behaviour or presentation or expectation should be tied to any sex. When we use the words woman and man were aren’t accidentally mixing sex and gender because woman and man refer to sex, always have done, always will. Gender is how we describe the social expectations placed on a particular sex, and whilst we acknowledge these external pressures exist, we deny any universal internal basis for them.

Dunning Kruger again.

@Hepwo

You don't know what traditional means?! If it weren't for tradition, as it applies to sex and gender (males are boys/men; females are girls/women, since you were wondering what they are), this OP would never have happened!😂

Have a great night, all!

Quz also told us there are traditional genders!

the gender that traditionally matches their sex.

I wonder what the traditional genders are?

Struth @Quz , I wish I had your ability to spout intellectual bollocks.

@BreatheAndFocus ; @BaronMunchausen

I am including both of you as you covered some similar points.

Perhaps I misunderstood the meaning of "gender critical feminist" because of the context of it's first use in this post. I took it to mean a feminist who is "critical of" the existence of gender dysphoria. Maybe you mean a feminist that is critical of the conflation of sex and gender? I would think that would be every feminist?

So, we are all three in agreement that sex and gender are different, and that sex is not determinant of a person's characteristics or preferences. Let me start by pointing out a thing that many people do, that both of you did in your responses, that I also sometimes do, because the fact of the matter is that our culture teaches us, from the time we are wee ones, in many ways, that sex and gender do go "hand in hand." So it isn't a criticism, just an observation and one that I hope will help you when talking about these issues in the future.

@BaronMunchausen, you stated that, "...the idea that nonconformity means you may actually BE the opposite sex is actually antithetical to it because it denies gender non-conformity." Shouldn't "sex" be gender? Trans people don't say, "I'm a male/female," they say, "I'm a man/woman."
@BreatheAndFocus, you stated, "We have no problem with a man being feminine, doing the dishes, liking sewing, etc. Doing those doesn’t affect his sex though." Again, these activities are about (socially) gendered activities, and have nothing to do with sex. (It also doesn't affect his gender, if he identifies as a man. It just means he is a man that is willing to step outside of traditional gender roles and YAY!)
As I already stated, I have also caught myself making that error, so not a criticism. The point is that we only do that because the conflation of sex and gender is so deeply entrenched in our culture. This is relevant because...

Some trans people do decide to also change the appearance of their sex. (Because sex is biological, they can't actually change their sex.) They do this because they want people to treat them/respond to them/have expectations of them, based on the gender that is conflated with that sex, rather than the gender that is conflated with the sex of the body they were born with. To my way of thinking, being critical of anyone being trans goes against feminism, because it is essentially saying that they should not be who they feel like they are. Isn't that exactly what "men" have done to "women" that we are against? @BaronMunchausen, forgive me if I misunderstood that point, and/or help me understand that better. @BreatheAndFocus, also feel free to weigh in on that.

Also, intersex/DSD issues are not irrelevant to this discussion. There is a great deal of research and people that have experienced some of what is now called "gender affirming care," in an effort to force a body that was born intersex (because, yes, that does happen) to become a body that will be identifiable as either "male" or "female."

@Pineappledancer

As you'll see if you read some of those materials, the statistic I cited could be seen as conservative. (It depends on how you count them.) Sadly, there are extremely few people who have much knowledge of intersex issues. As for terminology, I like intersex because it references a fact, without judgement. Referencing something as a disorder (as in Disorders of Sexual Development) implies a determination/judgement that something is wrong. If I were intersex, I would not want to be thought of that way.
https://isna.org/ was an organization that advocated for transgender people. Their work has been continued here: https://interactadvocates.org/. I would recommend that you start with those, unless you really like reading academic articles. 😉

On pronouns, Malay works perfectly well with “dia” which means he/him/she/her. No articles or tenses either. Cool language.

@BreatheAndFocus

The article that you cited took their information from https://www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/.
The basis of Sax' argument is in what Fausto-Sterling counted as intersex. It is commonly understood among researchers that different people/organizations count differently. The fact is, though, that what you count as intersex will likely be dependent on your objective. You'll find a discussion of that here: https://isna.org/faq/frequency/.
Given the number of people in the world, I don't consider 1 of every 5,555 "a tiny amount of people." You wouldn't think of it that way, either, if you, or a child that you loved, were that 1 person.

"When I'm with the teens I treat them as individuals, that's no problem, in their presence I will respect their requested pronouns, and of course in written records. I have done it before in the past, but I didn't know as much then as I do now.

What I'm really struggling with is my colleagues using female pronouns for clearly male teenagers, when we are alone in the office."

So you are happy to use their pronouns when talking to them but it's an issue when they are not present?
It's hypocrisy and lack of respect in my book.

I have this video on my "watch later" list, it may have some useful tips. This is How We Fight and Defeat the Woke - New Discourses

@Quz I think everyone here is positive about females and males not conforming to the stereotypes society has constructed for their sex. It’s kind of feminism 101 as the Americans say - but the idea that nonconformity means you may actually BE the opposite sex is actually antithetical to it because it denies gender non-conformity.

Counterintuitive pronouns come in the context of a movement (as represented by Stonewall UK and many other pressure groups) that demand access, based on gender expression, to spaces, services and sports that have been segregated on the basis not of gender but of biological sex. This obviously affects women and girls. Not all men see the inequality - or they take the blanket approach to safeguarding personally.

The construction of gender goes hand in hand with biological determinism - the idea that biology determines our roles (e.g. women give birth ergo should look after kids, men are stronger ergo should be the breadwinner etc) has been used historically (and still is) to oppress women and girls. The belief that sex is determinative of social gender expression is false and entirely regressive and oppressive. DSDs (‘intersex’ as you put it) are entirely irrelevant.

While there is a debate to be had about 'womanface', most people were happy enough to use feminine pronouns for drag queens - gay men who assumed the persona of a stereotypically feminine woman - but they have different implications when the pronoun is for real and a pass to female safe spaces for males, or to life-altering surgery for girls who understandably want to flee what society has constructed for them as women.

Also - ‘being trans’ is a radically different experience for females and males.

Also if I sometimes use he or she or they and not all the same for the same person, I get mixed up - I work with a lot of teens!

It's almost impossible to have a conversation which flows talking about someone else without using he/she/they.

I'm in a similar role. I can do it by thinking of the individual rather than the larger concept/questions/concerns I have. The vast majority are females using he/him pronouns though. And lots of they's.

I object to everyone being 'they' which some staff use seemingly for ease, my preference is not they, it is she/her so in same vein I can can call someone by their preference whatever that might be.

I also work with vulnerable teenagers and I do think they are often exploring and questioning identity - so if I respect their choice and preference of pronouns in a safe place, then they can also think about and question this with me and their peers and that's got to be a good thing.

(I strongly advocate for female only spaces in my role mind)

I had this in my last job. A young man who worked for us came out as trans and everyone instantly started with she / her. The thing is, I spoke to most of my colleagues about this and none of them, even his equally young peers, thought he was a woman. All of them thought he was a deeply troubled young man ( we all knew of multiple issues and vulnerabilities in his life which would make him particularly vulnerable to believing being trans would solve the difficulties he faced) and that transitioning would increase, not decrease, his problems. Yet all of them called him she/her when he was not there, even after he stopped working for us. It really bugged me that they did this despite saying they knew he was a man, wasn’t trans and trying to be trans would cause him serious harm.
I dealt with it by referring to him as he/him in conversations with them and most of them followed suit when I did.

Call them by their requested pronouns. This is not your circus, not your monkeys.

Refer to everyone as 'they'

Christ. you are in the wrong job