Request to share pronouns

If I were talking to you or asking you something I would refer to you either by your name or as you.

A point I would make, privately rather than publicly if you prefer to be non-confrontational, is that sharing pronouns disadvantages women.

There is abundant evidence that women still face sex discrimination in the workplace and work-related activities (e.g. publication/dissemination of reports) and thus anything which makes sex more salient in a work environment - such as sharing pronouns in meetings or email signatures - disadvantages women. Sex (and gender) should almost always be irrelevant in work contexts and placing additional emphasis on sex is runs counter to a commitment to equality.

Just as forgetting or misremembering a new or temporary colleague’s name is a non-issue, easily dealt with, so should be inadvertently using the wrong pronouns for someone.

I can understand where you are coming from - however, I don't think that it was a discussion for the past - it is very much a discussion for now.

• in the past people were scared of the repercussions of challenging pronouns
• the SC judgement has given a huge amount of confidence to being able to say that a man is a man for all that (to misquote RB)
• It is a part of the discussion which takes our country back to a place of truth - if media still uses the wrong pronouns then they are still creating a fake illusion that you can change sex, again with the ECHR code of practice - how can we on the one side say that a man is a man and then call him she?

We need to go back to a place of truth and honesty because that is the only foundation for properly supporting children / young adults / adults when they have mental health issues in this area, it frees society up to look after people better, it makes all discussions more honest and open...

So, I do think it is vitally important right now...

I don't disagree with you necessarily. However, I think it is something that would have been worth discussing in the past. As I said, now that people are well aware of the issues with new pronouns I doubt there is much appetite for that discussion now.

They should never have been something that would be coerced. But I also don't see anyone except a rare one or two who are even trying to use Neo pronouns now. So, I doubt they would have really become mainstream even if there was interest.

Personally I would just ignore the suggestion. It's too tempting to be sarcastic about it and lead to trouble.

If pulled up in a meeting then ask "what do you mean by pronouns, could you give me an example?" and get them to waste precious minutes by discussing it.

We are through the looking glass here.

I made a post emphasising the importance of the right to share pronouns and the right not to. (The latter being my emphasis, given the OP’s situation).

You then replied saying you “fundamentally disagreed” , because words have a “clear definition” and are “not for choosing” and that sharing pronouns in the workplace stepped “over a line” and was not “fine” (by analogy with claiming to be a cat).

The very clear thrust is that you think staff should not be permitted to do this. If you think that’s materially different from a “ban” then fine, but I think you are splitting hairs.

Requiring newly invented pronouns has huge issues:

• It is coercive behaviour - controlling how others act (if someone is a man and is obviously a man, then their pronouns are clearly male, so requiring anything else is controlling)
• It is deceitful - it pretends that one thing is something else
• It denies the binary immutability of birth sex by implying that people can change sex - they can't.

2 sexes:

• male: he/him
• female: she / her

There is nothing else.

#returnToTruth

I've always gone with "I will always respect the preferred pronouns of others, but I am not comfortable with being asked to publicly disclose my gender identity and I don't mind what pronouns people use to refer to me".

I'm not particularly one side or the other on the gender debate - my general stance is each to their own and I will use whatever preferred pronouns other people have if they share that information with me. But I don't want to be forced to share pronouns myself. It shouldn't be mandatory, just as it isn't mandatory to disclose in professional settings that you have a disability, or your ethnicity or religion.

no-one can ban use of words by another, everyone is free to use whatever they want - but in doing so they need to choose whether they wish to be understood by others.

If a man sits in a room and introduces themselves as she / her - then that is going to confuse the situation - you are a man, not a woman - that doesn't make sense - and I will assume that person's thinking to be mixed-up and confused, or to have a nefarious / deceitful purpose in pretending to be what they are not.

If that same man insists that I have to refer to them as she / her then that is coercive behaviour which is not acceptable, they are controlling my behaviour.

To tell me that I must 'use pronouns' can only come from a place where pronouns must be used because they are being used contrary to their definitions and must be stated as otherwise they are not obvious - that is a) deceitful and b) coercive.

I am very clearly a man - there can be no confusion, so I do not need to use pronouns - I was born a boy, became a man, have a male name, look like a man - it really isn't tricky!

So - no, it is not possible to ban anyone from using whatever they like - but:

• don't expect to be taken seriously as you will come across as either confused or deceitful
• don't insist on what I must do as that is coercive bullying

I think there could have been a discussion about using new pronouns at one time. I am not sure now if it would work. Your suggestion of she to he could have had merit where xir / xe seems to not be accepted.

“Who's banning anything?”

I have just looked back half way and cannot see any discussion about ‘banning’ pronouns. I have seen plenty of arguments about why they shouldn’t be used, why they shouldn’t be forced or expected in any way, and why people will choose to just continue to use established language conventions, but I hadn’t read that anyone said they should not be permitted or banned.

Lots of things aren’t permitted in the workplace, including sharing personal, political or ideological positions in email signatures.

This all feels very similar to those who claim that books are being banned from school libraries, when what’s happening is age-appropriate curation.

Words matter, don’t they? It’s almost like people misunderstand when you use the wrong word or are inaccurate or unclear.

@GenderRealistBloke

"All I’m saying though is that many people don’t see it like that (sincerely, I think), and they get to shape the language too. So no banning of how others use pronouns to describe either themselves or others, in my view."

Who's banning anything?

That said, the logical side of my brain says that we should ban using cross-sex pronouns for trans people, simply because the result is an incoherent system where the same word is used to designate someone who is "an adult female human", and someone who is "an adult male human who lives as a woman, whatever that means to them personally."

The obvious solution would be the invention of new pronouns for trans people, which would cover the entirety of their life, and immediately inform everyone as to their trans status, thus making life easier for everyone including the trans person themselves. "This is Seethlaw; she-to-he will work with you on this project" would be a far more honest and inclusive statement than using "he". It wouldn't require that I either expressly come out as trans, which can be damn awkward, or that I hide the whole part of my life I lived as a woman, including for example my pregnancy and my being the parent who gave birth to my son, which are important things to me.

So yeah, I think I'd like it to go the Ms way, and that new pronouns were invented for trans people. But at the same time, there are so few of us that the logistics required to effect such a change would be utterly unreasonable. So we're left with an incoherent system - but it must never be forgotten where that incoherence comes from: it's trans people who introduce the twist, not people wishing to use pronouns the way they have always been used.

@Seethlaw

It's literally asking people to lie about what they know, for the trans person's comfort.

I agree that for many people it is that, yes, which is one reason why it must never be compelled or pressured.

All I’m saying though is that many people don’t see it like that (sincerely, I think), and they get to shape the language too. So no banning of how others use pronouns to describe either themselves or others, in my view.

(sorry have to go — hopefully for real this time!)

@Helleofabore

Who is talking about ‘banning’ people using cross sex pronouns though? Have I?

We’ve been discussing for a few hours whether people should be permitted to use cross-sex pronouns and to invite others to do so. By banned I simply meant not permitted, I’m not trying to open up a new front in the discussion (I need to go actually).

Who is talking about ‘banning’ people using cross sex pronouns though? Have I?

There should be a ban on any coerce to use them and they should not be enforced or used in any law or policy. Because to use them introduces potential for confusion and I don’t agree at all that “large swathes of the population” believe pronouns refer to gender as well as sex. They may say that superficially and a small group with that ideological belief will believe. But the vast majority of the population?

I am not confused by your examples. I don’t believe I treated them as ‘the same’. I did however find that there was fundamental problems with your attempt to use either of them for the purpose you did and with the degree to which you believe society believes the meaning has changed in language - when these meanings being demanded to be adopted are the opposite to what the established meaning are.

Of course people disagree on some
things while agreeing on others. That is part of life.

@GenderRealistBloke

There's a major difference between Reverend or Ms, and wrong-sex pronouns: cognitive dissonance.

Calling someone Reverend doesn't imply denying your own beliefs. You can call them that even if you think their beliefs are false. All you're doing is saying, "I acknowledge that you believe in a specific worldview." That doesn't cost you anything.

It's even simpler with Ms: "I acknowledge that you're a woman." No need to deny anything you believe in or know.

But wrong-sex pronouns demand that you go against what you know about the other person's sex. It's literally saying, "I can see that you're one sex, but I have to use the other sex pronouns for you specifically because Reasons." It's literally asking people to lie about what they know, for the trans person's comfort.

Make no mistake: I'm damn glad that so many people are willing to do that voluntarily, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not fair to them in the first place.

And your experience with having a unisex name should tell you why it is a bad idea for women to draw attention to their sex by adding female pronouns to email signatures. That’s been know fact for years, hence sexed titles (Mr, Mrs etc) being dropped from correspondence. So it’s a complete backwards move to add them in.

This is worth repeating. There's a whole lot of anecdote about this.

And there's also peer-reviewed research which suggests that whenever attention is drawn to women's sex, there are negative consequences (eg girls do worse at tests, women are treated with less respect etc etc etc).

@Helleofabore My view ultimately is simple: if I don’t want others banning my use of pronouns, I don’t get to ban theirs.

I’m sorry if you were confused by the Revd and Ms examples. I did, when I first used them, explain which point I was seeking to make with each, and later again that they weren’t meant to be the same as each other, which you didn’t accept (that feels like it’s on you past that point, tbh). Space is limited so it’s useful to work out quickly which points one agrees or disagrees on. That feels fairly normal part of discussion to me.

I would dispute that society has accepted “cross sex pronouns” or that a “very wide swathe of society” thinks that’s what they refer to.

But pronouns referring to sex isn’t what I or you or anyone else thinks (or doesn’t think) - that is their definition.

And again, none of this is evolution. Evolution is a very slow process that happens organically with the will of the majority (so far as language is concerned). That’s not how words pertaining to sex have been treated by trans activities.

You mentioned Ms - a term
coined by Gloria Steinem in the 1970s as an alternative to Miss for an unmarried woman that carried the seniority of Mrs. It’s still not in common usage and people still think it’s only used by divorced woman. Pushing 50 years later. Thats how slowly language evolves naturally.

(If you’re going to treat MN as some kind of academic experiment, I’d appreciate it if you made that clear at the start.)

If I was in a meeting with them?

Someone is presenting something, discussing something, asking or querying something that they were doing.

@Helleofabore

Surely the permitter is general society if left to freely and without coercion / emotional manipulation to either accept or reject language changes.

Yes, this is what I’m arguing for.

The illustrations I gave were each to test a slightly different thing, which is why they’re (intentionally) different from each other and from pronouns. Revd implies a worldview but is conventional. Ms was at one point new and weird. They aren’t meant to be the same thing.

You say that society accepted Ms and it passed into use. But when society accepted cross-sex pronouns you are saying ‘no. Not society’s decision. Helle’s decision’. I think that’s more dangerous than the alternative.

I do understand you think pronouns refer to sex. (That’s how I use them too). But that just isn’t what a very wide swath of society thinks they refer to. In cases like that I’m not reaching for the banning hammer. It’s how language evolves.

If, in fact, pronouns had been reserved in law to be sex based (like some occupational title), I might think differently. I might not though. After all, there are plenty of official bodies and codes that say they refer to gender identity. I want the freedom to reject that. I think the price of that is that I need to allow others to choose differently.

(I need to go soon so might not reply).

I have to say that amongst my teen’s friends there is already a change. I am with you in hoping it crumbles away and people are left to feel free to accept or not.

“The point connecting them is that if we are deciding what are permissible self-descriptions we need a permitter, to judge the meaning of each and how they measure up to the permitted standard.”

Surely the permitter is general society if left to freely and without coercion / emotional manipulation to either accept or reject language changes.

And again, sorry, but your examples really are not ‘slightly different’ I consider them weak. I do understand what you are trying to say but they simply don’t support your argument.

The permitter for titles and honorifics would be generally liking at established facts. Society understands that a female person can use Ms, and permitted it. It was a new word without prior use. If people went and created their own titles and they were optional to use, we would be having different discussions.

And maybe, IANAL, the use of an assumed qualification title could probably be said to even legally challenged for fraudulent use. The permitter in the case of qualification titles is often a regulatory body. Do you see why I said material reality is significant in these cases?

I mean, there are plenty of languages that don't have sex or gender based pronouns at all, and people manage if that ambiguity is long-established. There are other ways to signal it. The problem in English is introducing a new ambiguity.