To ask HOW he/they or she/they works?

[Henuinequest]

On a DE&I video call at work and the session panel did intros with pronouns stated - 2 of them said ‘I’m he/them’ and one said ‘she/they’. All panellist were trans identifying.

asking a practical question - if someone is he/ them, I’m fine just to to refer to him as he or him? As in ‘ let’s wait 2 mins to see if Josh is coming. He said he could make it’ or I’m I supposed to be saying them ??
the panel was all about trans day of remembrance or something like that so it didn’t feel appropriately to start asking them…

@AlisonDonut and you disagree on whether people with DSDs are men and women - this SHOWS that the terms aren’t definitive and people interpret them differently. I haven’t muddled anything - I’m saying some bisexual people take bisexual to mean “only attracted to men and women who define themselves as such”. I don’t fit that label, so I choose to define myself differently. You’ve then said you can’t define yourself as bi because you haven’t experienced discrimination. So does bisexual mean, attracted to men and women, attracted to everyone regardless of sex, or “person discriminated against based on their sexuality”? I also don’t understand your last bit at all, how have I invented a categorisation system that excludes the majority of the population?

@AlisonDonut and you disagree on whether people with DSDs are men and women - this SHOWS that the terms aren’t definitive and people interpret them differently.
No we don't. She is talking about the majority of people with DSD who are still clearly a man or a woman. I am talking about the much much smaller number who are genuinely unclassifiable. It's not about interpretation.

I also don’t understand your last bit at all, how have I invented a categorisation system that excludes the majority of the population?
Because if it's about the gender identity of the person you fancy, it is only answerable by you small number of people who follow that religion. How can you categorise someone who does not have a gender identity and does not fancy anyone according to their gender identity.

You're not finding flaws by my not wanting me to call myself bi btw. I don't think most people are 100% only straight or whatever. But if it is the very, very very biggest majority of who you fancy then it fits better to call yourself straight because that is the most meaningful - even if that straightness is 'only' 99.99%. There's nothing about the slight wooliness with that that magically makes a person with a penis a woman.

As i recall, people with DSDs have asked not to be brought into this argument for the simple reason that they don't want to be
a - dehumanised
b - used as a gotcha.

And what makes someone with DSD unclassifiable? It’s not a “religion”, call yourself whatever gender you want, it makes zero difference to my life and whether or not I will fancy you. If you want to label yourself as straight, that’s fine. It’s fine I want to call myself gay/queer/bi. Most of my past relationships have been with men, but I’m still not straight. The people I’ve entered into relationships with don’t care about my “religion”. I don’t care if people have no gender identity, I will still fancy them if they’re a decent person. I’m not making the argument for bi people who aren’t trans inclusive - I’m not one of them, so I don’t know.

I didn’t.

I don't think anyone with a DSD is 'unclassifiable''. It's still obvious to a medical professional whether their body is originally geared towards making eggs or sperm, regardless of how the disorder manifests.

I'm not getting into DSDs as it's a derail. This info is easy to find. I suggest reading Kathleen Stocks material girl book.

I can't call myself any gender. That's the point. I don't have one. Thats your faith not mine. So I'm agender and fancy some people, but not other, based on very obvious physical differences but no clear gender identity differences. What am I in your categorization then? Not straight as that's fancying people the same gender as me. Not gay as that's fancying people of the opposite gender. What am I in your world view?

What's my husband who does not buy into the gender faith either and only ever fancies people with one body type. In the olden days he would have been considered 100 percent straight. Is he agender pan sexual with an absolute fetish for natal vaginas? Should it be LGBTQAPSAFNV to include him and the loads of other agender natal penis havers who have similar proclivities? Or do you think he's captured in the +? Seems odd tonhave letters representing a teeny tiny percentage of the population and then everyone else lumped into a large + category. What's the purpose of a categorisation system like that?

If we go down this route how do the agender natal vagina havers who fancy other agender natal vagina havers, and get treated badly as a result, organise themselves to fight their oppression?

Call it a faith if you will instead of religion but it's undefined, undebated and makes no sense to most people. Feels very much like a religion to those of us looking in particularly given its lack of clear purpose. Why do we need prisons, sports, other facilities segregated by an identity which has no correlation with physical body types and which only a small number of the population have?

I don't think so but that's true for the vast majority. Have you read material girl? She does explain it really well there.

fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

Trans hatred my arse. Just women ( you know, the default kind ) desperately clinging on to their rights 🙄

Have you read material girl? She does explain it really well there.

No but I keep meaning to. Another reason to, thank you

Any examples of the 'usual trans hatred'?

I'll wait

I was unclear with this and apologies to people with DSDs. They are of course still men or women. Mostly biology tells us which. When it doesn't, the person themselves will tell us. I will.move on from this as I fear focus on those is being used as a distractive derail.

I think you might’ve misunderstood me - I think straight people are attracted to the opposite sex as stated previously. Gay/lesbians are attracted to people of the same sex and bisexual people are attracted to people of both sexes. There are exceptions to this - some straight people will date trans people, as will some gay people, as will some bisexuals. I have never stated that I disagree with any of this. What I have said is that some bisexuals wouldn’t class ME as bisexual, so I don’t want to be necessarily call myself part of a community that doesn’t want me.

If man and woman mean the same as male and female, why do we have two words to describe the same things?

Is this a serious question?

What is a female horse called? A female cow? A female chicken? A female human?

Someone accused trans people earlier in the thread as threatening to assault and rape women with no evidence. I’m not saying no trans person has ever acted in such a manner, but we can’t tar groups of people with the same brush like this. It’s a slippery slope into racism, homophobia, sexism etc.

Someone accused trans people earlier in the thread as threatening to assault and rape women with no evidence.

What exactly did they say?

Are people really going to be spending time thinking about how often they have used ‘he’ and how often they have used ‘they’? Do people really have time for this? It’s unnecessary complicated and attention seeking to expect this.

Son where the confusion lies is your switch from sex to identity. The exceptions you quote are not exceptions at all. They are separate issues. Some straight people date trans people. Some do not. That is more an exception than some straight people dating Tories and some not. You don't have to date every single person of the opposite sex to be straight. Do some people not want you in the bi community because actually every person you fancy is a different sex from you? I.e. do they not have the gender faith and actually think you're straight? If that's not the reason, what does it matter what they think? If some people didn't want you in the queer community would you need a new category?

Correction - should say no more an exception than...

How many females would you need to see seriously harmed before you considered that recognising a class of males as a threat to females in vulnerable spaces is a necessary precaution for females?

Just asking, as the number of raped and assaulted females in prison by male prisoners is stacking up, and Baroness Nicholson is dealing with gathering evidence of females raped on women's wards in hospital and does not think it will be a small number.

I know this is really unpleasant evidence, but it was rather more unpleasant for those women who were harmed, don't you think? One of Karen White's multiply raped victims (accessed on a mental health ward White had self ID'd onto) has been left so badly injured she may never have children. And the trauma is likely to be lifelong. What measures are fair to protect more females from this awful actual, physical harm and lifelong impact?

If man and woman mean the same as male and female, why do we have two words to describe the same things?

There are words called nouns which are naming words. Man and woman are nouns.

There are words that modify nouns, when used with them. Male and female are adjectives. They are now sometimes used as nouns, but that use is a lot less frequent.

And as someone else pointed out upthread, male and female do not necessarily denote human beings.

I very much hope, OP, that the usage of they/them goes away as quickly as the attempts to wedge it in have risen up. It sounds ugly and causes confusion when talking about individuals within groups as it fast becomes impossible to tell which you’re talking about.

The descriptions in this thread, where you’re supposed to swap between he/she and they, or use them alternately are simply confusing and anyone expecting others to use them that way must be incredibly self-absorbed. I have enough problems remembering names, never mind which pronoun I used last and which I should use, if I’m not to use the appropriate one.

You actually did both by asking if people have a DSD what does that make them?

You can't just invent new definitions and expect everyone to obey you because you have Butleresque sentence structures.

Narcissism.

Are you trying to suggest that I’m lying about being queer here? I can’t tell. I don’t know why they would exclude me - I can’t speak for other people. From the ones I’ve spoken to about this issue, they don’t think straight people are men or women and are some sort of abnormality, thus not fitting into the two sexes/genders/whatever you see it as, that bisexual people are attracted to. I don’t think it’s the same with queer because it’s used as more of an umbrella term so I can’t imagine a situation in which someone would say, you’re not queer cause queer means x y z and you’re not those things. It seems much more fluid with its definition of just “not straight” so that’s where I feel most comfortable. Without having the “well you’re not bisexual because that means x y and z”.