How best to answer 'What are your preferred pronouns?' in an intervew

Do you think coercing people to say things they don't believe and which perpetuate an quasi religious ideology they reject is a "basic level of respect", @ElleWoods15?

Exactly! I think it's a remarkable thing to call a big fuss over nothing either way. If you're suggesting I agree with it, I'm not sure what would make you think this from my above post - or indeed any of my posts in this thread or elsewhere. Apologies if I misunderstood, though.

Well, what you’re describing Catiette is people wanting to be treated with a basic level of respect. I’m not sure I’d agree that’s a big fuss over nothing.

Is transpeople's need to have language that they perceive as true to who they are also just a big fuss over nothing? If not...

What's the difference?

This. Big fuss over nothing

"TWAW is so fundamental to them they can't use the word Woman, and yet they are starting to find they need it." is, when you think about it - really think - an utterly devastating thing to have to write and read. It's astonishing to me that this has happened, and so rapidly. It really is Orwellian.

No, I have no definition of non binary be and it has no meaning in the way it seems to be used by those that use it.

I apologise for my previous post, I am not meaning to belittle you. It was a tea reaction to your post written in haste.

I don't know why you felt it relevant to say that the options I gave as an explanation for gender were reductive. Gender is reductive, that's rather my point. I was surprised that anyone could have interpreted my question as supporting that definition or somehow treating it as valuable or worthwhile.

It looks like you've used the forbidden c-word in your answer. I am not sure what you mean in this context. You've included trans women and women who are not transgender. What is this third class of women?

I don't think I understand the question. Did you mean why did I divide Women into trans and cis, a framing which as a gender critical person you wuodl expect me to reject?

I was in this context speaking specifcally of people who actively identify as women - ie not all people who may use the word Woman, which as you know includes many who use it as its original sex based meaning, but only and specifcally those people who explicitly claim for themselves to experience a gender identity as a woman. Taking that group, there are those who identify as trans women and those who identify as cis women and that's all, no third group. Which of course is exactly why I and many others avoid using the word Woman for myself unless it's clearly the sex based meaning not just for me but also for the recipient, to avoid it being mistakenly assumed that we identify as cis women.

I don't mind that you don't think you have a gender identity.

I don't have a gender identity. If you really need to fit me into your framework I am an agender female, although I'm not sure the genderist framework can accomodate that (which incidentally is why I am so sure it is flawed). And FWIW I do mind that you, a male person (1), believe you have better insight into firstly, my own identity, and secondly, into how female people experience being female, than I do.

A trans-friendly way of discussing reproductive rights is to use the term AFAB or AMAB

The "A" bit is an issue due to the ideological assumptions behind it, but I'm not going to go down that derail here.

What is interesting about AFAB is that I have recently noticed some high profile female bloggers and writers who have always been vehementally TWAW are starting to talk about the experiences/injustices of "AFAB" people - not limited to reproductive rights but their wider experience of abuse, encrochment and belittling by AMAB people and by society's sexism - describe themselves as "AFAB" or even as "non-binary AFAB". I've always thought it might go that way, as people for whom professing TWAW was a key part of their formative identity as a young person age into adulthood and encounter the annoyingly sex-based realities and injustices of our culture. TWAW is so fundamental to them they can't use the word Woman, and yet they are starting to find they need it.

(1) Up til now I always thought you might be a trans man. I'm kind of disappointed, would have been good to have a trans man's insights on womanhood and manhood.

Oh, sorry, did you have a better definition of non-binary? Or were you just attempting to bulldoze someone out of the discussion by attempting to belittle them? Not very constructive if the latter…

That's true. Pronouns were absolutely fundamental to that whole case, in which the loss of our own, clear language - sex-based pronouns - was proven to have caused tangible harm to women.

As a gender critical feminist woman, am
I "non binary"? This comes close to the point @FlirtsWithRhinos was making. I don't identify with genderist views of a woman. And I don't think "identifying as" a thing makes you that thing.

What is "non binary" based on? Why would someone choose not to identify as either sex if it wasn't based on the rejection of this set or that set of social sex stereotypes?

I don't believe in "gender" in any sense distinct from a person's sex, so circular answers like "they just don't identify as either gender" aren't going to answer this. What is a "gender" if not linked to biological sex?

It's all bait and switch.

Because it’s irrelevant to my ability to do the job. Plus batshit crazy woke for the sake of it.

@ElleWoods15 The way I see it is:

Non-binary can't mean - doesn't appear to, anyway - denying the physical reality of one's sexed body. Therefore it must mean a denial of being something associated with that sexed body. And we reject such secondary associations in their entirety.

This means that, from a certain perspective, we're all non-binary.

Alternatively, it means that the existence of the concept of non-binary imposes on us associations we neither understand nor want.

@ElleWoods15 you're so close to getting it, yet also so very far away.

Well quite but it’s not us insisting long hair, pink, make up, skirt goes spin = woman

So you accept that people can and do have a non-binary gender identity?

I accept people give themselves all manner of largely meaningless labels.

You asked why it is sexist. It's sexist, because it's based on sex stereotypes. There is nothing else to it.

I think historical societal gender roles, stereotypes, and presentation is an incredibly reductive way to look at gender.

(And let’s not forget that the company that this thread is about didn’t ask it anyway….)

Why?

How does one identify with being male or female, I wonder, if it's nothing at all to do with gender roles, stereotypes, presentation? Is it about identifying with biological reproductive sex categories, somehow?

So you accept that people can and do have a non-binary gender identity? Presumably then you are happy referring to them in the third person as ‘they/them’, or whatever other pronouns they tell you? If so, why would you not be ok answering a question about pronouns?!

I've been asked this twice by two different midwives lately and I'm so angry with myself that it caught me unawares and I essentially just looked blank on both occasions and they responded with 'just the usual ones' the first time and 'just she/her then' the second time. And I just nodded. Feel really annoyed with myself about it but this pregnancy has been fraught with worry and I'm like a coiled spring at the appointments.