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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Told I was 'phobic' for not using pronouns!

684 replies

NewStartIn50s · 08/12/2022 17:48

Asked for my preferred pronouns and I said ' I don't use them', pushed on what I use to refer to myself and I said I don't use on emails or when I introduce myself or at all. Apparently, if I use them I am showing inclusivity to others and being accepting. I'm not quite a dinosaur yet but why are these things forced on us. I don't have a beard (yet) and I think you can tell what I am/but does it really matter if you can't.

So AIBU

YANBU - don't have to use pronouns if you don't want to

YABU - you should state what your preferred pronouns are

OP posts:
EasterIsland · 08/12/2022 18:45

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 08/12/2022 18:41

Impossible.

As a woman, 'gender' has caused me nothing but trouble. Like most women I've faced a good deal of sex-based discrimination in my workplace. I've also been stalked and sexually-harassed in my workplace. Owing to a changed, 'inclusive' policy, my stalker could now follow me into female facilities and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.

Having fostered that environment of bullying and sexism, my workplace now have no right to demand that I draw attention to the (protected characteristic) that led to these situations in the first place. Hell will freeze over before I willingly - or unwillingly for that matter - gleefully announce the basis of my own oppression every time I enter a meeting or send an email.

They can fuck right off. I will never comply. This is the hill I'm willing to die on.

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Fab-U-lous

Thank you a million times @MarieIVanArkleStinks

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 08/12/2022 18:45

Thankfully this view seems to be an older person one and therefore in 15-20 years time when you’ve aged out of the workforce it will be a much better place all round. Until the next drama.

You are, I'm happy to say, wrong.

I work with young students every day. They're as sick to the back teeth of forced compliance, and a dearth of critical debate because the whole topic is an unexploded bomb, as I am.

Mogwire · 08/12/2022 18:46

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TheKeatingFive · 08/12/2022 18:46

But people are still entitled to their reactions

What, that everyone should collude with their science denying new religion? 🤔

Soontobe60 · 08/12/2022 18:46

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Reported for ageism.
I know many many young women and girls who believe the whole pronoun business is an absolute joke. They’ll be part of the workforce for at least 40+ years.

Dreamwhisper · 08/12/2022 18:47

TheKeatingFive · 08/12/2022 18:46

But people are still entitled to their reactions

What, that everyone should collude with their science denying new religion? 🤔

I am entitled to my opinion that I choose to respect chosen pronouns yes. Literally yes.

JackTorrance · 08/12/2022 18:48

How hard would it be to just say she/her?

How hard would it be to just declare that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour?

venus7 · 08/12/2022 18:48

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Black is a fact, not an ideology.
Curious...who provides the dramas?

dolor · 08/12/2022 18:48

Oh no, you are being forced to use pronouns, it's clearly the end of the world. 🙄

ApplePieOrCry · 08/12/2022 18:48

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HeatwaveToNightshade · 08/12/2022 18:49

YANBU. Unless someone is thinking of bellowing 'OI, SHE' at me, then they can all refer to me however the fuck they want behind my back. I won't know and I won't care. Bloody sodding hell. The world's broken.

loislovesstewie · 08/12/2022 18:49

Another vote for @MarieIVanArkleStinks . I've been in much the same situation. I'm not going along with the 1984 nonsense either.

TheKeatingFive · 08/12/2022 18:49

I am entitled to my opinion that I choose to respect chosen pronouns yes. Literally yes.

This is really worth a read

fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

JackTorrance · 08/12/2022 18:49

Oh no, you are being forced to use pronouns, it's clearly the end of the world

Compelled speech is quite a serious issue, actually.

venus7 · 08/12/2022 18:51

Dreamwhisper · 08/12/2022 18:47

I am entitled to my opinion that I choose to respect chosen pronouns yes. Literally yes.

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'Literally yes'? Not just 'yes' then?

TheKeatingFive · 08/12/2022 18:51

YABU, But you have asked on here as you know MN is rife with those who will agree with you, so you’re just after some attention.

convince us then. What good will reality-denying achieve?

ApplePieOrCry · 08/12/2022 18:51

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Delphinium20 · 08/12/2022 18:51

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Comparing compelled pronoun declarations to the very real discrimination perpetrated by racists is really shitty. Black people do not need to be used as a prop for manufactured oppression. The very real, historical and current discrimination and abuse of descendants of slaves in the US is not even close to comparable to a disinterest in putting 'she/her' on an email signature.

ApplePieOrCry · 08/12/2022 18:52

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Pallisers · 08/12/2022 18:52

Fairislefandango · 08/12/2022 18:30

I bet in 1960’s America a fair few white people didn’t like working alongside black men and women, those people got used to it as cultural attitudes and norms change.

More relevant comparison: I bet if some white employees started identifying as black and the bosses decreed that these employees' demands to be recognised as black should be granted, and that all staff should from now on declare what race they identified as, their black colleagues (and most of their white colleagues) would not want to comply with this.

This.

Dreamwhisper · 08/12/2022 18:53

JackTorrance · 08/12/2022 18:49

Oh no, you are being forced to use pronouns, it's clearly the end of the world

Compelled speech is quite a serious issue, actually.

You're not being compelled to speak. It's a false equivalence that being asked to use preferred pronouns is automatically assuming any and all beliefs around trans genderism.

People using preferred pronouns is not asking to you believe that those people are biologically belonging to that sex. It's recognising that someone else is trans, not saying they are the opposite sex. It's not at any odds with holding gender critical beliefs that state, I don't believe a male can become female.

Somanysocks · 08/12/2022 18:53

Are people still doing all that twattish pronoun malarky?

How very last year.

Helleofabore · 08/12/2022 18:53

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 08/12/2022 18:45

Thankfully this view seems to be an older person one and therefore in 15-20 years time when you’ve aged out of the workforce it will be a much better place all round. Until the next drama.

You are, I'm happy to say, wrong.

I work with young students every day. They're as sick to the back teeth of forced compliance, and a dearth of critical debate because the whole topic is an unexploded bomb, as I am.

There are a whole slew of young women now on tik Tok who are also coming out as being absolutely over being told that people such as Dylan Mulvaney is in day x of girlhood and has already got to meet the President of the USA & speaking engagements and beauty endorsements.

Thankfully this view seems to be an older person one and therefore in 15-20 years time when you’ve aged out of the workforce it will be a much better place all round. Until the next drama.

Yeah... Dream on.

Mariel is absolutely spot on.

Anonykunt · 08/12/2022 18:54

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 08/12/2022 18:45

Thankfully this view seems to be an older person one and therefore in 15-20 years time when you’ve aged out of the workforce it will be a much better place all round. Until the next drama.

You are, I'm happy to say, wrong.

I work with young students every day. They're as sick to the back teeth of forced compliance, and a dearth of critical debate because the whole topic is an unexploded bomb, as I am.

Yep. I've had this view since my late twenties, now in early 30s. I know lots of people from their middle twenties to early forties who are sick of the transagenda.

Original poster
NewStartIn50s · 08/12/2022 18:54

@dolor

It's not the end of the world. Why is it so important to you that we all state pronouns though? Forcing beliefs on others is important to you for what reason?

OP posts: