Trans issue at work

[NooneToldMeItWasRaining]

I work with someone that is a trans activist and while i support their right to identify as they wish, I don't subscribe to the philosophy that you should be able
to change your biological sex on your birth certificate or that gender stereotypes define who you are as a person.

I really like this person, but i struggle with their outspoken views e.g. that transwomen should participate in women's sport and to say otherwise is hateful, that some women have penises, that she is a lesbian (they are a transwoman in a relationship with a biological woman) and trying to get us to add pro nouns to our emails.

I haven't said anything and I do like her, but I am struggling with these outspoken views so at odds with my own beliefs (and common sense!). I don't want to add sodding pro nouns to my email!!

Is there any way of politely refuting any of this stuff or do I have to sit and smile and nod along

I don’t put my pronouns in my signature block. At a recent training course I declined to give my pronouns in the opening circle and stated that as I don’t believe anyone should be treated differently on the basis of their sex, I wasn’t going to reiterate mine.
This week we dead-named two of our trans clients. And by dead-named, I mean we addressed them in writing using the name they filled in on their paperwork.
One emailed and politely asked if it was possible to use a different name. I changed the paperwork, reissued it, apologized for any distress caused, and asked them to let me know if they needed to use a different name for the government filing. They thanked me, told me which names needed to be on the legal paperwork. Job done. Ten minutes.
The other took to Twitter. It was flagged to me after around an hour. I updated the records and sent essentially the same email to them, and notified the manager, communications, and liaison that they might need to check in.
Several hours of vitriol later, (including social media offers of violence towards my staff, the organisation having been named) we were subjected to a clumsy email from our comms department which basically said ‘this is very serious. Explain how you fucked up and how you are going to fix it.’
I thought it was very interesting that of two trans people who were in essentially the same position (we used the name they gave us) they reacted so very differently. Until I noticed that one was a transwoman, and one was a transman.
Ain’t no cure for male entitlement. It doesn’t disappear because you slap on a bit of lippy.
Still hasn’t replied to my email. Doubtless I will be in the wrong again when the government paperwork is filed in the wrong name and I was actually SUPPOSED to deadname them.

Just stay away from the aggro. The crazy trouble makers are good at self identifying as such and if they’re actually sane they’ll keep their head down and you’ll have no issues

This thread is everything. In the US, we are never allowed to question how the trans movement affects women's rights--not just in our country, but worldwide. If you try to do a search on this issue from my location, only trans-first sites pop up.

I think 'she' is trying to get a reaction so she can make a complaint.

My preferred pronoun is Your Majesty and that is what I will be using if I'm asked to sign emails off with my pronoun

@texasgurl wholesale silencing of women.

I have to work with people who have all kinds of views I find offensive and can't agree with. I move on. They are entitled to them and as long as they do their job properly I don't care what they think. If their opinion impacts patient care then I care

I agree - just be professional and avoid outburst / rudeness or PA attacks that will damage your professional reputation and lose you your job

Yes
Discuss on a rotating loop

Breast ironing
Female domestic murder rates
FGM
The poor diagnosis of women’s health issues

Or less
Controversially steer the topic to work
Always

Namechanged as I panicked this was too identifying and it might be picked up by the shit rag that is the Daily Mail ....and now I will have to name change again, but I wanted to thank everyone for their advice.

I think I will continue to respect their wishes on their own identity (obviously), stay silent /change subject on the whole, but if it gets too much go with 'I'd prefer not to discuss politics at work' or 'we will have to agree to disagree on that' etc

It's generally only people who feel very strongly that they have been born into the wrong gender that are trying very hard to gain acceptance and to find some peace from the inner (and outer) conflicts they experience. They are generally vulnerable already, and having people shame them for who they feel they are does not help.

This might once have been true, but with the rise in visibility and the push for some men to have women’s rights extended to them, more and more cross dressers and fetishists are claiming to be women. These men are at the forefront of this aggressive campaign. Those vulnerable people are being used as a front by transvestic and disordered men.

I don't view 'Pips' as a vulnerable work colleague though. I'm more concerned around female workers. These are the group of people who are put at risk by the likes of cross dressers who feel that woman is a costume.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6197705/City-workers-hit-gender-fluid-banker-works-days-Philip-Pippa.html

YANBU OP. It must be very hard to work with someone who is using the workplace to promote their own politicised agenda, because you are effectively trapped with them for so many hours per day listening to it. And of course if you complain about this sort of harassment in the workplace, its going nowhere because its a trans women. There is no protection for women complaining of such harassment in the workplace. Men, or former men, have found a way around the law and the law has not yet caught up.

I would refuse to list my pronouns on email as they are irrelevant and my ability to do my job is not impacted by them in any way. If someone called me he by mistake, I don't imagine I'd be terribly bothered.

Thankfully I'm in the private sector- they started some of this nonsense- we have 9 different gender boxes to tick on a recent survey, as a menopausal person I was quite tempted to tick the asexual one - but most people weren't interested or engaging with it, so it's not got much airtime.

Ask her when shes getting her 20% gender pay gap reduction.

As this person is senior to you I don't see how you can reasonably or safely argue your case (even if you wanted to - which you don't), so I would employ a tactic of peaceful non-compliance. Listing pronouns is not compulsory, nor is it necessary for the 99.999% of us who are happy to inhabit the sex and gender of our birth. If pushed, I would say 'I don't wish to do that'. However, I think I would raise this with HR. It's not your place to address this person's workplace aggression on this issue, but it is HR's. No other set of beliefs would be so readily accommodated and pandered to and it's ridiculous that you should have to listen to this shit day in and day out and be able to do nothing about it. If this person was trying to convert you to any other personal belief of theirs - political, religious, whatever - then you wouldn't be walking on eggshells. This should be no different.

Wait but asexual isn’t a gender, is it? Is an orientation.
What were the other options?

The whole thing smacks of a modern method of men controlling women.

We got the vote.
We got contraception.
We were allowed to work post marriage and babies.
We slowly became directors and CEOS.
We suffered til the 90s before we could take our husbands to court for rape.
How dare we try and live a happy life.

Now the damn menfolk are acquiring our "gender" (which lets face it is a social construct rather than actual science) to keep us down.

EL2019 it maybe it said orientation I can't remember the wording but did wonder why who I chose the have sex with - or not - had any relevance to a work related questionnaire. Pansexual was one of the other options- DS 13 who has been doing modern studies explained what that meant - can't see why it's different from bisexual but there you go.

Here's what you say.
"In your opinion". That's all.
TWAW!! "In your opinion"
I'm a lesbian! "In your opinion"

Never start the conversation, but end it with a flat denial of agreement, politely, with this one golden sentence......"in your opinion".

This exact issue is going through the courts right now. A woman named Maya Forstater was fired for stating (on her personal twitter) that she didn’t believe all those things your colleague has been saying at work.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/05/women-are-being-silenced-from-speaking-about-transgender-rights/amp/

The whole thing smacks of a modern method of men controlling women.

Absolutely this.

I used to have the view that there was no such thing as transgender but transsexual only. As in you were entitled to be known by the opposite sex once you had a full blown sex change. I didn't much tolerate people wanting to dress as the opposite sex and be known legally as the opposite sex unless they had a sex change. My reasoning was that people who 'seriously' wanted to be the opposite sex, would go to the lengths of a sex change and we wouldn't have a world full of people chopping and changing their minds, pervy men pretending to be transgender in women's changing rooms etc just so they could perv.

Then I read up on the complications of a sex change. Unless it's done by a very good surgeon and the aftercare is great, a lot of people end up mutilated with non functioning bits and a handful of people have also lost limbs and the use of their bladder through these operations. Some also end up looking nothing like they wanted to either which further fuels the hatred of their body. There's tiny, slim men getting implants so they can truly be a woman and ending up with lung and chest issues then scars all over their bodies once they inevitably need to be removed. So then I changed my mind. I don't think they NEED to have a sex change now. However, this is what I think should happen to stop people taking advantage of the system and others by freely being able to identify as and be known legally as the opposite sex.

They should have at least 12 sessions of counselling before they fully 'transition', as in get to change their gender legally and the counsellor has to sign off that this person truly does want to identify as the opposite gender.

They have to live as the opposite sex for 1 year at least before they get legal status as the opposite gender.

They are not allowed to apply for roles that sit outside the sex discrimination act where a woman or man is specified for the job. These are few and far between and it's not a lot to ask to give up applying for a handful of jobs.

They can use the toilets of their assumed gender freely but private organisations should be allowed to have their own rules.

When it comes to sport, any sport that uses physical strength like rugby or wrestling, they have to play on a team that is their biological sex. Other sports like tennis and badminton, they can play on the team of the gender they identify as, as they don't use physical strength.

My rules or laws might seem silly but there needs to be a balance between trans people being comfortable but also everyone else feeling safe and comfortable too. At the moment, especially in Scotland, it's like anyone can be anyone and it doesn't sit well with me. If I want a female child minder for my child, I'm entitled to that I feel. I shouldn't have to take on a trans person that I have no idea actually has a penis

I can imagine refusing to express a preference if I was forced to declare a pronoun in my email. A simple "I don't care" would be the total statement.

For the record, I don't care about mispellings of my name in casual contexts, either. Life is too short.

TabithasMumCaroline, I had to look up what 'deadnaming' means. Very enlightening. I'm wondering two things:

First, how can you be blamed for using the name a client has filled in for you themselves, assuming you haven't ignored previous requests from them to update their details? How would you know?

Secondly, is it acceptable, when asked for your pronouns in a work context, to opt for I, me, mine, or if being addressed verbally or by email, you, your, yours? Or would that be perceived as mischievous, obstructive or trans-exclusionary?

I only retired three years ago and already it seems work is a different world!

I'm self-employed now so I have these professional conversations with the mirror.

I think it's a way of men caricaturing women. You aren't a proper woman just because you are biologically female any more, you have to behave and think in a way men imagine women to behave and think in order to be female. Caricature has no place on a birth certificate. And biological males and females should not be obliged to confirm they also imagine themselves to be male or female. They just are male or female.