If you're non-binary...

Thanks, that's helpful.

I'm also thinking about context - titles are used in forms, not in speech.

My choice of title on a form really doesn't impact anyone or interactions.

Disrupting or controlling everyday speech is going a bit further.

Seems we are confusing the applied linguistic label (married/unmarried/feminine/masculine) with the actual fact (woman/woman/woman/woman) here. The former is a matter of choice, the latter is not.

I can see NB might be an appeal for others to not apply stereotypes or assumptions or prejudice to someone.

However we are going to observe a person as one sex or the other before we then temper that with the requested 'identity'.

There seems an increasing drive to solicit all these different 'identities' and labels out of people to classify and sort them, and often I just am not interested in even trying to work out which of a bewildering array of made up terms I 'identify' with.

I'm a Buddhist, ffs, we do our best to avoid identifying with anything.

(That's a joke; I'm not a Buddhist.)

Re: basing legislation on undefined concepts, I think Joyce Grenfell nailed that part of the debate.

Yes, what we wear and how we have our hair changes the way we view or feel about ourselves. So what? That is an entirely normal, and, private matter.

I've always gone back to short hair when i want to feel most myself ( if that is what you mean by 'masculine'?); most liberated to 'be myself'. Long hair feels, to me, like a dead weight of gendered expectation. That doesn't change my sex though, nor does it demand that others conspicuoulsy refer to me in artificial or specific ways, either.

I am definitely not gender critical.

So you believe that everyone's personality, interests, abilities, roles in society, and behaviours are primarily defined by and can be deduced from their sex?

Is that not just abother form of " check your privilege, and when someone speaks just shut up and listen to them".

revolve around you

Nobody understands it because it doesn't mean anything to anybody, apart from the individual proclaiming it. And to be frank - that's their issue and their issue alone. Just leave everyone else out of it. The world does not revolve you.

If something is continually being constructed and deconstructed it suggests that thing is essentially meaningless. Simply a evolving discourse about evolving discourses.......It is all 'introduction to philosophy' stuff - which people do at a-level - or in the first term of their degree.

This.

And, in the context of the current discussion, especially this bit: If removing sex based pronouns is actually making someone consider and change their sexist behaviour, that says more about that person whose actions are influenced by pronouns than they probably know. Because it is simply creating a new stereotyped behaviour and response.

Why not treat people as individuals? All people, as default. Why only those who use pronouns to remind you that they may have wants, needs and interests not entirely defined and limited by their sex?

That seems very regressive, doesn't it?

That is an interesting question, @ArabeIIaScott . I don't think 'Ms' is similar though.

Because they are not nouns or pronouns, the titles Miss and Mrs are not used to refer to objects. They do have associated nouns of course - 'unmarried woman' and 'married woman' - but they are not themselves nouns.
If you were to behave, in relation to your marital status, as people using the term non-binary do in relation to their sex, you would be asking people to accept that neither of those nouns (married woman or unmarried woman) can refer to you. This would be unfairly burdensome on people because you are, in fact, either a married woman or an unmarried woman.
Correspondingly, the title Ms isn't used to refer to an alleged third kind of object that doesn't fit the married/unmarried binary - it isn't used to refer to anything at all because it isn't a noun. Like 'Miss' and 'Mrs' it does have an associated noun. But the associated noun is simply 'woman', since Ms is intended as an honorific for all women regardless of their marital status.

Perhaps they don't want to be referred to as " sweetheart" or "mate" by random strangers? 😉

If everyone is having to "respect their wishes regards how they wish to be addressed, and with regards to the way they relate to the male-female gender binary discourse and practices ( whatever that means?)" it suggests someone who takes themselves way too seriously and feels they are somehow outside of, ar above, the same sets of conditions as everyone else. Just tiresome! Especially if they are beyond their teenage years.

Sorry. I mean ‘now’ it should only impact on where salutations are needed.

I think people would argue that you being married or not doesnt offend their status where as them claiming not to be a woman does

It doesn't offend my status if someone claims to be NB. It irritates the fuck out of me because it doesn't make any sense, but that's not the same thing and I'm RHRN trying to understand so I'm not dismissing out of grumpiness.

Having watched a few NB Tik Toks I find it difficult to come to any other conclusion than it being about control. Control over ones self and control over the external.

I agree. From what I've seen irl, there must be a real sense of exhilaration for teenage girls in making your entire extended family, friends and acquaintances dance to your tune under threat of being ostracised. And it's not enough to be polite and use preferred pronouns/new names/not express confusion that a female, presenting in a very stereotypically feminine way, is somehow non binary. You must be a true believer.

I don’t think ‘Ms’ is comparative. It only impacted on where a salutation was used. To be fair, some countries had dropped ‘titles’ in a great many instances so they are becoming irrelevant. I was surprised when I arrived in the UK how everything required me giving a title.

And when you think of it, it is not obvious from looking at someone over a certain age who is a miss or mrs. It is probably also not important to know someone’s marital status.

Plus, mainly, ‘Ms’ was also a statement about fighting female oppression. I am a child of a woman who had to give up work when she got married because she was now married and her employer fired her. I have also experienced discrimination in going for jobs for being married.

Claiming not to be a woman, ffs

Oh, sorry, not claiming to be a woman, I misread.

Who is claiming to be a woman, though? We're talking about being NB.

I think people would argue that you being married or not doesnt offend their status where as them claiming not to be a woman does.
Hence why I struggle with the argument that the feminist view ismt self centred.
It's perfectly okay to be who you are and do what you want until, well, it's not.

@ArabeIIaScott I don’t see not wanting people to know your martial status as equal to opting out of being a woman. The Ms was all about equality to men who don’t have such a thing.

But I think that's the side that's self indulgent.
Their feelings on their identity is not a rejection of you.

I am definitely not gender critical.

I mean, I'm still not. I'm still a Ms. But it's widely accepted now, there's not really that much tutting. Or maybe people just don't tut at middle aged women.

If it's JUST pronouns, then this seems similar?

I'm trying to consider whether my requests as a young woman to use 'Ms' instead of 'Miss/Mrs' are in any way similar.

That was often met with resistance, frustration. But I didn't want to be defined by my marital status, especially when men didn't face the same categorisation.

I work in a university STEM department that still struggles with low numbers of women in senior positions; this goes all the way down the pipeline to the numbers of girls choosing to do Maths and Physics at A Level. I wonder who is likely to be more inspirational to teenage girls; a confident successful female scientist (like Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock for example), or a NB?