Gender and pronouns

[Wyki]

Before I start, the daily mail and other papers can all fuck off

I’m prepared to be flamed for this as I’ve been here long enough to know how it all works but….

aibu to tell my son he can’t have his partner over any more

It’s a new relationship. My son is 21 and the new partner is 18

He barely works and is consequently on a low salary however he does help me with childcare (that I pay a minimal amount for)

the new partner is a very petite pink haired “girl” that does ballet and dance but uses the pronoun he/him

my 11 year old daughter is finding it confusing and asked if her brother is gay. I replied with “no because the partner is very feminine and is a girl despite the pronouns” (I couldn’t care less if he was gay, sexuality isn’t important)

So am I being unreasonable in saying the partner doesn’t come over as it’s just too weird and I don’t want that example being set for my daughter

Yes, absolutely it does. My own private belief trumps everything else, especially that of frightened children. 🙄

So with those sentence ‘I'm not setting down a policy.”, can it be assumed that you would support all
male exclusion (including your friends if they wished to use female single sex spaces) if that was what was written in law?

I believe the EHRC are reviewing the current situation with a view to release clear guidance which excludes all male people (or so I believe ). Would you support this exclusion where your friends with surgery would be excluded ?

Foolishly, I put some musings and personal beliefs on the thread... Somehow I didn't expect to be held accountable for them and interrogated to the nth degree.. that'll learn me! I'm not answering any more "interested questions". Think what you like.

It is a public forum. It is usual for people to ask questions if they don’t quite understand what someone has posted to get a better understanding of the post.

Interrogated? You were asked questions on how you’d reached your views. Hardly an interrogation?

Well, I'm mid 50s and still having very regular periods. It's vanishingly rare but women have been known to carry a baby full term in their late 50s, especially if IVF is used (as would be the case with Tom Daley).

But that's because we have functioning wombs, because we are, you know, actual women. We're not just cos playing at being women.

And please, please don't [yawn] cite that plenty of women don't have wombs. Yeah, duh obviously (neither my Mum or Grandmother had wombs past the age of 40) but at one time they did.

Unlike trans women, who never did have a womb. And. They. Never. Will.

I am concerned by the degree of acceptance of these brutal and extreme body modifications and the described distress and hardship of male people’s transition being in anyway directly or indirectly treated as some kind of requirement for acceptance. I know that there are some people who cannot see how their own statements about how if someone has done the ‘work’ they are somehow deserving of accessing a space that if they access it, may cause a female person who is rightly in the space set aside for their needs.

And if more and more people claim that those who have surgery should be able to access female single sex spaces, this set up a harmful expectation that those male people
need to have surgeries to even have a chance at getting access to female single sex spaces.

That really is a concerning precedence to establish. Because nothing will change a person’s sex and extreme body modification makes fuck all difference as to whether a male person has access to female single sex spaces.

Precisely. If people want to massively mutilate their bodies then they should receive help and support for their mental illness.

We don't allow people with anorexia to be treated with weight loss injections. Or treat people who self harm by prescribing them razors FFS.

Yes. It is the opposite of kind to set up this as some kind of base requirement for some people to ‘accept’ these male people into female single sec provisions. Yet that is the result.

What is kind is to have governments to clearly state that no male people can access female single sex spaces. If those male people wish to undergo brutal and extreme body modifications, that should be only available if they pay for it and after extensive therapy. But it should never be considered a requirement for male people to access female single sex spaces.

Because no male person should be there. Surgeries or no surgeries.

Please stop asking women and girls to 'Be Kind' @Terribletwoss , that is what causes the problems the female sex.

It's always on women and girls to 'Be Kind'. When it takes so much away from us, why should OP's daughter be gaslit to use wrong-sex pronouns for someone to cosplay in a fantasy?

The problem is the male will still look male (have the male height, look, strength etc) and we'll know he's a male. He doesn't have the lived experience of being a girl into a woman. We won't feel comfortable fleeing there to escape a man when a male is there. We won't feel comfortable crying to our friend over a man. We won't feel comfortable rinsing out blood-stained underwear or mooncups at the sink. Adjust our clothes, bras. Or seek help from other women around if we're miscarrying.

See, we will know a male is there. Whether he has the dangly thing down there or not, we will know a male is there. And his lived experience as a male is not the same as ours as females. And we will not feel comfortable talking or being our female selves in front of him. He will make us feel uncomfortable and threatened and frightened, scared that he is there.

I’d allow her to come, but just tell her that you will be calling her she/her, and you hope she’s OK with that, but if not… meet at her house.

And it's unworkable anyway, forgetting that it's hideous.

We simply don't know which males have had their penises removed.

The far simpler and fairer solution is that no such expectation exists and all males stay out.

If women counted as much as men in society none of this would have happened in the first place.

Whilst we are no longer, exactly, shouting into a void it is amazing that these things still need to be said.

I don't feel like it's a 'heated debate' like Little Charlotte does, but I find it exhausting and depressing. All these claims that trans people don't exist or their feelings matter more than anything else just demonstrate how little women matter and how little we are listened too.

It seems no matter how many women and children are actually physically harmed by males who claim to be trans and no matter how many women lose sporting opportunities we matter less than these men to some people.

Then they claim that we are not feminists because we don't include a bunch of men in our feminism. No thank you.

We had a non binary friend of ds1 round for Christmas, it was explained to him that people might struggle with the whole ‘them’ bit but he’d be more than welcome to come as long as he was happy with that

the transman friend referred to him as her and the gay man referred to him as him….and quite honestly if they can’t get it ‘right’ there was no hope for anyone else!

Yes life.

How many times do we need to repeat that those people who don’t know someone’s friend / family and don’t know that the male person in question has had their penis and testes removed will still likely be able to correctly sex that person? But in then answering, some posters will then use that to weaponise our response as ‘being obsessed with genitals’ and ‘demanding genital inspections’.

Making the distinction about whether or not someone has a penis is and always was a no win situation for anyone campaigning to exclude those male people.

Plus, in addition to people not knowing there is the other issues.

That there is no evidence that the removal of a penis lowers that male person’s risk of committing sex offences at all.

And that it is irrelevant because even without a penis that male person shows how little they respect women and girls by entering that space they know male people are excluded from. Those male people entering that space is proving that women and children’s boundaries mean nothing to that person. They will happily simply ignore those boundaries.

In entering the space they know as a male person they are excluded from. they turn a single sex space into a mixed sex space.

It is interesting to see just how many female people don’t understand how their dismissal of other female people’s consent works.

If a female person declares that they are fine with that breach of boundaries when their lovely male friend / family member / or even a stranger enters a female single sex space the outcome really is dismissing other female people’s needs. It also says they will prioritise their friend’s wants over anyone else’s needs.

It is like saying ‘I am alright, Jack’. In doing so, it shows a complete disregard of the needs of other female people. But they don’t seem to understand that outcome, and I suspect in their discomfort in facing the truth, they would deny it.

It is also surprising how many of those who make statement’s about their male friends who have transgender identities, make reference to the attractiveness of that male person. It is almost as if they think if that male person presents as a ‘stunning’ woman that makes any difference at all.

The truth always is that a male person will always have male body cues. And I doubt that facial surgery that successfully removes all those male facial cues. In photos you can still see cues, I suspect in person that female people will see them clearly too. But the skeletal proportions, leading to movement, gait etc will never change.

Sure, a male person might be hugely attractive. It is completely irrelevant. Just because their friends think they ‘pass’ doesn’t mean other people think those friends ‘pass’.

Hence no one should be in the position of arbitrating who enters a female single sex space based on who ‘looks’ female. It is not only logically incoherent but it is discriminatory and unfair.

You go to the weirdest public toilets. Women approaching random strangers for medical advice, blood all over the place, break up drama by stall two.

Where do you live where this is all happening? I've (thankfully) never seen anything like this in my life.

You go to the weirdest public toilets. Women approaching random strangers for medical advice, blood all over the place, break up drama by stall two

well bearing in mind you’ve exaggerated everything that was said and specifically mentioned public toilets i haven’t either

i have seen what doddles describes though….and the old ‘keeping the bog door open so you can wedge the pram in’ 😀

to clarify i have seen everything doodles mentions in both private and public loos 😀

Yes. Me too. I have done most of what Doddles mentioned except thankfully miscarried. But I have at least two friends that have.

It was rather startling to see the dismissal in that post you are replying to though.

I have seen almost all the situations described here over the years.

I don't think you can say your son isn't gay on his behalf. He doesn't seem 100% straight.

I think the OP is saying that her son doesn't consider himself be gay

I mean… he’s in a relationship with a girl. So what indication do you have that he isn’t “100% straight”?