Need help to stop my organisation compelling us to use preferred pronouns!

She was just responding to a post. I don't think she was hoping for anything other than conversation.

What were you hoping for with your response? You haven't addressed anything she said.

You're so lovely. 💟

Was that what you were hoping for?

Email is different because obviously you can't see or hear the other people. I was replying to your earlier post about online meetings, where presumably you can hear and possibly see the other participants.

But how on earth did we manage 10+ years ago before all this pronoun stuff started? Answer: we managed, and it wasn't an issue. And I would have no problem with people who don't know me thinking I'm a man, because they would be more likely to pay attention to what I say.

Out of the faintest curiosity, does anyone know any men who have been upset by being ordered to use pronouns

I don't know any, but need to accept I may be weird.

@OldCrone I've been in an email chain where various people were referred to and using "they" was getting confusing. It was helpful to have their gender as it made the whole conversation easier.
And socially it's just more polite to call people the names they prefer- not a huge hill to die on.
Of course we could get into discussions about how people can always tell etc etc

Why do you need to know someone's sex in order to talk to them? And if you can see and/or hear the person, usually their sex is obvious.

If you're using the camera...

Yes and we mustn't forget that subverting the rules of English isn't easy particularly for those who are disabled - demanding wrong-sex pronouns could reasonably be argued to be disablist. There's a good article by speech professionals linked upthread I think which makes this very point- "including" the transperson by requesting others to use non-standard English can be discriminatory towards (and excluding of) some disabled people and non-native English speakers.

It's hard even for people fully signed up to the belief system - in the Denise Fahmy court case there was a witness who made a big thing about someone being discussed being a non-binary 'they' and then immediately started using 'he/him' again multiple times. It was hilarious - even the people trying to force others to do it and punish them for wrongthink can't get it right.

We're back to competing needs and demands and the fact we can't centre one person's demands without it affecting others, sometimes in quite significant ways. In no other circumstance do we do this, it's so bizarre that this ideology has managed to convince people that compelling everyone else is reasonable. In general when it comes to other accommodations, we accommodate one set of people without forcing others to comply with a particular belief system. So we are welcoming of religious dress, accommodate religious holiday and traditions, but we don't expect everyone else to wear the same clothing or recognise the same holidays and traditions.

My DH works with someone who is Jewish and finishes work early on a Friday, but he isn't compelled also to do so. The Jewish colleague isn't offended if he works into the evening.

Ultimately trans demands for preferred pronouns are demanding that other people not be free - that they do not have freedom of normal expression.

It's all a bit one-sided though, isn't it? We're being compelled to refer to men as 'she' even when they're not present. Maria MacLachlan was expected to lie in court and refer to her attacker as 'she', and when she refused the judge decided not to award her any compensation for her injuries.

At the same time we have numerous organisations using 'cis' and calling women 'cervix owners' and 'uterus havers'.

If you honestly think that pronouns on request/demand are just a courtesy, please do some research around the subject and consider why this divisive so called option is being imposed, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, upon us.

Also consider what it is a part of and what it has already led to, with its blurring of boundaries, obfuscations and the erasure of women's and girl's rights and single sex spaces.

Wake up and smell the kool aid.

Do we?

I might want people to say I look 25 not middle aged but it’s not my call

It’s only because women have been overridden by the law we feel powerless. I question whether we should go along with it

Like it or not we are already bound by rules about what we can and can't say. Generally we allow groups of people to determine the appropriate way for others to refer to them.

They tried this at my workplace.
I said "My pronouns are sex based like my oppression".
Cue eye rolls & mutterings of "ffs she's off again" (I work in male dominated profession)
Then I said "My pronouns are try/me" (saw this on tiktok😉)
No one tried me 😁
I'm live and let live, no hate in my heart for anyone but leave me alone.

You can see the sex of international colleagues the moment you’re on a teams call with them

It's just a courtesy and it's actually helpful if you're in online meetings with international colleagues. Because they may not know if you're male or female and vice versa, it helps to avoid any awkwardness.
It isn't a hill I'd die on.

Whether we should be subject to compelled speech requirements is a big one

Should we?

Gender ideology is based on a major untruth so it’s a toughie

That’s a very interesting point. But we are in a position where one group of people is uncomfortable if gender-based pronouns are used, and one group of people are uncomfortable if sex-based pronouns are used. Which group should have to back down? Identity ideology asks “which group is more marginalised?” But how can that question be answered definitively and repeatably?

Is my son more marginalised because he thinks he is transgender, whatever he means by that (he seems unable to articulate it)? Or am I more marginalised because I am elderly? Or is my wife more marginalised because she is elderly and female?

I don’t believe in a hierarchy of oppression. I do believe that oppression of some (most?) groups exists in some circumstances. I do believe that compelled speech (and colonisation of another group’s spaces without their permission) is oppressive.

You're actually agreeing with me. In my post just before yours, I said "I didn't say anything about how you should interact with people in the workplace. I'm sure most of us would be polite to these people in such situations."

Again, I'd set more store by people's claim that it's polite or courteous to use preferred pronouns, if not doing so didn't result in being ostracised, disciplined, fired, abused or arrested.

You don't need to prove intent in discrimination cases. If you did it would be neigh on impossible for people to get justice because someone can always argue that they didn't mean it in the way it was taken. The focus tends to be on the impact to the person who is being discriminated against. I think this would be the same priciple if a trans person reported feeling uncomfortable in the workplace due to being misgendered / correctly sexed.

So you can't go up to a tw, and keep saying you're a man, you're a man, because that would be seen as harassment. And deliberately going out of your way to correctly sex someone, might be viewed the same.

Just out of interest, how would the aggrieved transperson prove that you had deliberately gone out of your way to correctly sex them? Did anyone else follow the Jo Phoenix and other tribunals where trans and NB people were fairly consistently correctly sexed by their own counsel and no one said anything about it? How could they have been shown to be guilty of deliberate correct sexing? The instinct to correctly sex is incredibly strong and natural.

I think there would have to be a fairly consistent pattern of open hostility, harassment or discrimination as well as correct-sexing.

Pretty much where I'm at too, and you've expressed it with beautiful clarity.

Although Naomi Cunningham also makes a convincing case here for anyone who hasn't seen it:

https://twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1727034930604237278

Understood.

Perhaps they will and perhaps they won't but I think it is harder to argue that our request not to be called cis should be respected if we don't respect a transwoman's request not to be called he.

I'm not trying to change the way you speak here, it's up to you to make a judgement on what is best. I think it's good that we are discussing our differing opinions on this.

If we're being truly gender critical I think we can argue that there is no such thing as a "masculine" or "feminine" name except social convention.

So accepting someone's name change doesn't imply that you accept they've changed sex.