'They': being expected to remember the requirement to deny reality

Bambie's birth name was Linnea Lagerqvist.

More detail on background here in this short vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jcS3YOyODLA

A colleague left my workplace a while ago and I didn't know she was non-binary. So in a casual meeting in a corridor I said oh has Susie gone that's a pity I hear she did great work bla bla.

I got glared at and then told 'Oh yes THEY have gone to Canada' - Followed by more they/theming and exaggerated enunciation.

Eejit that I am and with the bloody hearing loss I thought she'd left for Canada with a partner and couldn't work out what the glaring was about. I only worked it out afterwards.

So I was basically pointedly being 'corrected' over 'misgendering' someone who no longer worked here and who wasn't present in the conversation. By an 'ally' I presume.

“Unless you interpret disagreement as getting 'mauled'?”

I think that about sums it up.

People pointing out the logical flaws in this weak comparison will be ‘mauling’ a poster I suspect.

And no, remembering an individual’s choice of pronouns is nothing like remembering a new surname. Firstly, you can spend a very long time working or interacting with a person without knowing their surname or even their marital status. It is rarely relevant. And that person’s old identity has not been changed either. Also, if there is a group of people you are interacting with at the same time, when is it relevant to remember each person’s marital status and address it individually these days. We no longer introduce women as ‘Mrs [insert husband’s first and surname].

Secondly, the change of year is material reality that changes at a constant rate of life and cannot be changed in any way materially. It cannot go back and forth between years, it cannot be any other year. We can change the label, but then that requires a complete overhaul of every single person’s reality who uses that label. Still doesn’t change the reality. And if a year was then called a ‘minute’ it would not make a year into a ‘minute’ nor does it change the concept of time and how long a year is using the comparative point of the revolution around the sun.

The two situations are not analogous to a person who adopts a pronoun that falls outside of the established and taught parameters for clear communication. For a person who then may insist that everyone else complies to the demand to act as though they believe in that person’s philosophical belief.

You are a lone voice because you don't get it.

It's not like someone changing their name because pronouns (in English) also signify sex, and while not everyone identifies themself by gender, everyone has a sex.

So when someone uses pronouns to make a statement about their feeling of gender they are unavoidably also making a statement that imposes an identity onto everyone else, an identity which I and many other find offensive.

When Bambie Thug decides "They" is more accurate than "She", why does she do that? Because she perceives herself to be different to other women. Is that a physical difference? No. So at heart Bambie is saying "my mind is so different to other women that I'm not even a woman at all".

And to believe that, she must believe that all other women have some sort of "womanny mind" so that unlike her we are happy with the social constraints, limitations and at times straightforward abuse that society imposes on us through the construct of mental womanhood.

I find that breathtakingly arrogant and naive of Bambie and insulting and offensive to me as a woman.

Now, I'm not saying Bambie should not hold those offensive beliefs personally. I might wish she didn't but she has the right to her own thoughts. But I sure as hell don't have to play along with something deeply insulting to me just to be "polite".

The solution is, of course, to have separate language for gender and sex. Kerp the words that have until very recently been unproblematically used for sex to refer to sex and invent some new exciting words for gender. After all, gender people love finding new labels for ever more specific nuances of gender and coming up with new flags, I'm sure they can harness some of that creative energy to coming up with a handful of nouns and pronouns so man/woman/he/she/them can go back to being just based on sex.

Just a handful of new words would defang all this fear, anger and division!

Again, that is the entire purpose of names: they are intended to be (generally) unique to you.

And, on top of that, they don't have meaning. They are arbitrary signifiers, so changing your name isn't changing the meaning of anything, or changing the common language.

(Okay, they may have connotations, such as indications of sex, ancestry, etc, but those are just connotations, not concrete meanings. That's why you don't find names in the dictionary...)

I don't know why you think you'll get 'mauled'?

Unless you interpret disagreement as getting 'mauled'?

Bambie Thug reminds me of the woman who invaded Kathleen Stock's speech at the Oxford Union and sat there, having glued herself to the floor, looking like an absolute plum.

I should imagine both of them are similarly annoying, as is Greta Thunberg who has always got right on my tits with her Causes.

What happens if multiple people in your life start changing their pronouns, especially to "neo" pronouns that can be literally anything they can imagine.
And those who have mixed pronouns like "he/they" which doesn't even make sense.

I'm not prepared to start remembering specific ways of referring to people. It's not how language works. And very rarely would you use a pronoun for someone when they are actually in your presence, so if "zer" expects me to use nonsense words to refer to them when they aren't even in the room, they can piss off.

Compelled language is the start of a very slippery slope. We are already about halfway down that slope and I have no intention of freefalling to the bottom.

Have you seen the transwoman who basically films themselves on Youtube and berates every person they come into contact with who "misgenders" them? They are very obviously male and when someone uses masculine pronouns they demand compelled speech and make complaints against (usually low paid service workers) them, and generally cause them a massive headache.
I will not be told what words to use.
And I will never play the pronoun game. Because it IS a game, and one which you can never hope to win.

Well no - you can tell someone's sex so of course you use sex based pronouns.

Communication is complex for me as I'm very hard of hearing and responding to someone relies on a lot of autopilot as I'm often still working out what they've just said. I'm also hyper visual so if someone looks female that's going to be coded into a response.

It's not remotely similar to changing to a new year or using a new surname.

It's just like when someone changes their surname after marriage, or when we write the wrong year until we get used to the new one around February.
You get used to it. It's no big deal. I know I'll be a lone voice here on this matter and probably get mauled, but there we are.

Well said!

I wondered if that was the case - to be honest I didn't specifically know it was the 'non binary' flag - just a trans umbrella one which is tedious enough. So subversive! 🙄

The attention-seeking behaviour of a certain gang of contestants has been offensive throughout. Those flags should be banned, but you can imagine the uproar after everything that's gone on this year, trying to penalise people being their 'authentic selves'...

Greta Thunberg has always latched on to the current Cause.

It doesn't actually matter what the subject is, it could be pretty much anything. She just needs a Cause.

She's not unusual in that, of course.

Yup and it's not just pronouns. we know a NB child. Her own mother slips up calls her 'she/her' all the time. I find it very difficult but manage to avoid all pronouns just say her name. Trying to be nice when her brother was kicking off and she's left upset I told her she was a really kind sister she had a full toddler meltdown aged 10. Apparently I should have said sibling

Can't stand Graham Norton these days. I'm well over that camp bitchiness and meanness of spirit - posing as humour. I don't think I've ever gotten over his horrible comments about Amy Winehouse - when she was at her lowest point.

Greta Thunberg has become a new version of Owen Jones. Someone who at one point displayed youthful energy and brilliance, but who has now descended into an unthinking parody of herself. Which is what happens when you become too attached to a particular role or version of yourself and want to keep it going.

'Queer' replaces terms and words which make implicit references to sex or to sex based attraction. 'Queer' muddies the definitions - makes everything more 'fluid', which is one of the main purpose of Queer Theory.

Yeah but in that way people do when they don’t know what she said. Vaguely.

It wasn't just Graham Norton. Every single live reporter I have seen at Eurovision over the last few days kept on having to correct themselves after instinctively referring to the Irish and Swiss entrants as 'she' and 'he'.

Although I quite liked the Swiss entry and thought he gave a great performance, I did find the message of the song completely tedious. Oh, you've broken the code, have you? Do you not think that over the last several millennia a few other people might have got up one day and thought, 'You know, these gendered sex roles are a bit limiting. I might try breaking a few of the rules.'? Do you not think a few feminists might already have broken that code you've only just cracked?

However, he's not as bad as the Irish contestant, who just seems to be an immense cry-bully.

On the final night the Ireland, Switzerland and Latvia entourages held progress pride flags and NB flags. In the first semifinal the Ireland entry held a trans flag in front of her every time the cameras went to the green room (plus her trans flag bikini) and the Denmark entourage had a drag queen with a trans flag hand-fan.

Even if the various countries’ entourages were told not to display political flags or slogans it’s not exactly a very politically brave/daring thing to do to fly a gender identity flag at Eurovision 😬