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

I agree, so the OP should tread warily. As PPs have said, the pronouns issue is best dealt with by making the issue about sexism at work, not gender identity.

OP, when the TW makes comments about women's sport etc, I would strongly suspect these are intended to provoke. I'd suggest just saying, "We'll have to agree to differ" or "I prefer not to discuss this sort of issue at work" and refusing to be drawn further. That way, you haven't been manipulated into implied agreement but you also can't be accused of anything so 'transphobic' as being in possession of an opinion as a biological female

"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."

Well done for throwing women's racket sports under the bus
Do you have any idea of the difference between men's and women's service speeds or men's and women's badminton smash speeds?
Why do men play five sets in tennis instead of three?
Why would Venus Williams be unable to beat any of the top 500 male players?

@JenniferM1989

Unless there's been a scientific breakthrough that none of us are aware of, you cannot change a person at the chromosomal level. Therefore, it's a scientific impossibility to change sex. Sex and gender are conflated in your post and you sound misinformed so your arbitrary rules have no credibility.
I don't care how much these men believe it. They will never be women and have no place in our sex-segregated spaces. This is male coercion, control, misogyny and privilege and it's stripping us of our rights.

Sex is much more than simply our genitals. So flipping a penis inside out and tucking it away doesn't make you a woman.

we don’t need millions of men to access women only spaces for women to suffer. We only need ONE in other for numerous women to suffer.

Yes. If an egg is only partly rotten, do you still gobble it all down?

Since when is disagreeing with a work colleague's view on something "an issue"? I don't agree with loads of my colleagues views on things but that doesn't matter because we are at work, not down the pub and are conversations are about work. Just get on with your work and stop chatting or listening to conversations that have nothing to do with work.

It's generally only people who feel very strongly that they have been born into the wrong gender

More wide-eyed and naive bullshit.

I don't have a gender and I mostly wear masculine-style clothes. According to Stonewall that puts me safely under the trans umbrella.

Trans gender has become so wide ranging it is meaningless now; and does a huge detriment to the transsexual community of old, who are being dragged into the shitstorm with it.

Jennifer 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.

Sorry, but that's ridiculous. All sports use strength but the sports you are referring to involve size and bulk, not just strength. Male bone structure (e.g. narrower hips, bigger shoulders, height, even things such as the shape of the femur and how it fits into the joint socket) don't change after taking hormones for a few years. The effects of the secondary sexual characteristics might be slightly lessened as well, but they don't go away.

That's why sports such as athletics have recently taken steps to ban athletes based on testosterone levels. Caster Semenya for instance, although not apparently trans, is now banned due to a regulation that applies to athletes who have a sex disorder which mainly affects XY individuals and who cannot naturally produce testosterone within 5 times the average that a woman produces. Note that limit is very generous and still an athlete identifying as female from birth cannot comply with it.

Theres an awful lot of upset people in Canadian cycling just now because a male - female trans athlete has been dominating the sport and winning medals for a few years now. The athlete in question is dead against even measuring testosterone levels in trans athletes, and the women who have lost medals as a result aren't happy:

www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=12143308

There is also this British example of a trans athlete who refused to cooperate with a British athletics investigation into their testosterone levels and attacked 3 officials with knives, badly injuring one, and who was jailed. Former winner of several British hill running championships:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/14/champion-runner-lauren-jeska-jailed-for-attempted-of-uk-athletics-official-ralph-knibbs

In both cases, the athlete in question has gone from being a mediocre male athlete to winning championships as a woman.

Do people in your workplace talk about other political issues, e.g. Brexit? If you have no objection to that, it would be hypocritical to object to this person giving her views on other issues. If you do object, it would be sensible to say that you don't want to discuss politics of any type in the workplace, and that includes trans issues.

I would tell him to stop mansplaining what a woman is to me and roll my eyes

Oh goodness, if you said that, you'd have a visit from the police for transphobic abuse.

OP, just get your head down and ignore.

And I am not using pronouns in my emails. I have an obviously female name and am female so people can assume and they will be correct. I know people say it also helps if you have a foreign name and people aren't sure (or even something unisex, like Chris), well can't you just put Mr or Ms in that case?

How many transpeople are there? There seems to be a lot of shouting from what must be a very small number of people.

If you do object, it would be sensible to say that you don't want to discuss politics of any type in the workplace, and that includes trans issues.

Yes, this. My company implemented a ban on all employees worldwide talking about the Spanish independence movement whilst in the office (so even "watercooler chat" was not allowed)

• based on having a few very vocal colleagues in Barcelona stirring things up.

That seems like the easiest/best solution for such a hot topic.

How many trans people are there? There seems to be a lot of shouting from what must be a very small number of people.

A study from the US put the number at 0.6%. So an overwhelming 99.4% of people are not trans, yet we're all expected to play along with this pronouns crap? Call yourself what you want, dress how you want, present yourself to the world how you want and use whatever the fuck pronouns you want, but leave everyone else alone!

I've been lurking at this subject. I've got 2 trans people in my workplace. One is man turned woman, and the other one is woman turned man. They both changed their names officially and I have known them both before this has all started. And since it did, the whole workplace dances to their tune. I really could not care less what they want to identify themselves as, but please for the love of God stop shoving your beliefs and rights in everyone's face. You want to be treated as a normal person, fucking act normal and stop making a show of yourself! Where I work we have changing rooms, and the job requires us to all change into work wear before entering. The man who turned into a woman is now in ladies changing room. I have objected against it, for me I do not care what you identify yourself as, that's your business, but quite frankly, if you have a dick, then you're male to me and I don't want to be changing ( we literally strip down to our underwear) in front of that person. And before he started to change he was very much a ladies man, very confident and (too) flirty. I think it's just one of those battles that nobody can win.

Pretty sure there is research showing that references to being female, ie adding pronouns to your email, increases discrimination against women, so no way would I be doing that, or supporting a workplace policy pushing that.

TabithasMumCaroline so sorry you had to deal with that situation at work. You did absolutely nothing wrong, but you already know that.

By the way, if threats of violence were made against the organisation you work for, its staff or to you personally then please report this with or without your employer being involved in the report (if they don’t support you in that). It’s not trivial that that has happened. It needs to be dealt with and monitored.

You are absolutely right about male entitlement being extremely pervasive.
(That’s partly why you need to report the threats)

Also what you said about the individual’s government filing information now being objectively potentially incorrect, that’s just not OK. (Not saying that to get at you personally at all- you have to do what you have to do at work)

The obscuring of truth and rendering unreliable (to point of useless) effect on official statistics and official record-keeping is very concerning part of this transactivist politics.

The state’s record keeping needs to be done right for everyone’s sake, because when it isn’t , it disproportionately impacts relatively more vulnerable people in society, because they are more likely to be the users of public services.

I’m talking about things like DBS checks (which used to be called CRB or criminal records checks), the UK official census, NHS medical records and stats gathered in the NHS, employment stats, anywhere else in the public sector where they officially measure demographic information or gather it from their service users for equality monitoring purposes.

We all need the sex categories to be completed accurately for the good of all of us, but especially for women, because we disproportionately rely on public services compared to men.

We all pay for public service resource allocation, service planning and service resourcing through our taxes, so those that need them can benefit- and the evidence for how this is allocated, is taken from information about which sex of people or which social groups the provider is told, or thinks, is using any particular public service.

This is why recording inaccuracies officially just so we can validate people’s personal subjective view of what their own sex is, is absolutely wrong.

Your biological sex is an objective fact of life that just is what it is, it doesn’t belong to us as something that can be really changed, it’s just how we were made. It’s not being unkind or rude to be truthful. And so what anyhow- being truthful is the most important thing.

OP- From experience I would be concerned that an employer which allows this type of behaviour from some employees, may also run the organisation with a sexist culture in other ways too. Do you feel well supported in general as a woman in this workplace? Hope you are OK.

Freely allowing some of their employees to bang on about their sexist, homophobic, anti science personal beliefs at work is not OK and will make your employer vulnerable to complaints.

Your colleague is of course entitled to hold those views if they want, but not to insist on the views being taken on by anyone else and not to keep on about them to the detriment of others (and this is causing you detriment by distraction and making you feel uncomfortable in your own workplace).

On a personal level, ‘Grey rock’ is very effective for dealing with narcissism.

I'm well aware of the difference between intersex and trans, thanks very much, given that I work with both communities.

Well done that you actually recognise that they are two separate communities, so why are you conflating the two? If you work so closely with people who are intersex, why aren’t you respecting the requests of the British DSD charity to STOP using their community to score points. They are completely different from each other? One has a disorder of sex development and the other wants to live as their opposite sex. They are absolutely different from each other. For someone that claims to work with them, you’re actually rather lacking in knowledge.

@MrGsFancyNewVagina The intersex people that I work with (in the main) find your descriptors offensive, and do not consider that they are 'disordered'. Most are more accepting of 'differences in sexual development' rather than 'disorders of sexual development'.

As I have already said, I am very aware of the differences between intersex and trans; however that said about one quarter of the intersex people I know also identify as trans - they do not identify with the gender they were ascribed at birth, and my understanding is that this is fairly representative across intersex populations.

I don't know why you think you can sum up the thoughts of an entire community that you are not even a member of, but I can assure you many in the intersex community are very understanding of and indeed participate in furthering the rights of people to identify as the gender they feel most closely aligned to.

Yeah, just say "I'm sorry, I don't really do politics" smile and move on. Not your circus etc...

I don't think this situation is any different to any other situation where you have a colleague with different views to you. My last office had a very devout Jehovah's Witness working there. We switched from a Christmas party (which she couldn't attend) to a New Year Party (which she could, apparently) and didn't talk about religion. When it came up, she said some things I disagreed with. I said "hrm" and moved on. It isn't that complicated.

I currently work with someone who flogs "natural anti depressant" essential oils which I think is snake oil and dangerous. She talks about it. I say "hrm" and move on. No drama needed. You don't have to get into arguments about women's sports over the water cooler.

I know that MN has this conviction that trans women are a massive political threat to all human society like no other identity group are or ever have been but I'm really not convinced. It's just one of thousands of issues that humans don't agree on, albeit one that gets a madly disproportionate amount of press attention!

Throckmorton Pretty sure there is research showing that references to being female, ie adding pronouns to your email, increases discrimination against women, so no way would I be doing that, or supporting a workplace policy pushing that.

This.

I know that MN has this conviction that trans women are a massive political threat to all human society like no other identity group are or ever have been but I'm really not convinced. It's just one of thousands of issues that humans don't agree on, albeit one that gets a madly disproportionate amount of press attention!

Exactly. I'm sure that OP has worked with other people who she doesn't agree with but for some reason only this is a huge issue. I'm sure that it is nothing to do with wanting to have another debate about trans issues in the hope that someone will give her the opportunity to have a debate on it.

I'm sure that OP has worked with other people who she doesn't agree with but for some reason only this is a huge issue.

Given that one of the "huge issue reasons" is that you can literally be charged by the police for making one mis-statement by accident, and its not the most relaxing workplace environment. The OP's boss shouldn't be bringing their personal life into their work.

And why should people not debate the issue outside work?

The intersex people that I work with (in the main) find your descriptors offensive, and do not consider that they are 'disordered'.

Oh give over.

If you really are so well-read and deeply involved as you claim, then you would know full well that "DSD" has routinely and long been known as "disorders of sex development"; and not some personal slight made up by MrG for the purposes of this thread.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development

That's not to say it can't or won't change over time; but to try and insinuate malice where none is intended (and in fact has been deliberately avoided by using these standard terms and not older more pejorative terms), you are being utterly ridiculous.

I don't know why you think you can sum up the thoughts of an entire community that you are not even a member of, but I can assure you many in the intersex community are very understanding of and indeed participate in furthering the rights of people to identify as the gender they feel most closely aligned to.

...Yet here you are, "assuring" us of the thoughts of "many" of them?