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

It doesn’t avoid mental gymnastics though does it?
”Hey Mark, has Sheila handed in the report she was working on? She was due to meet with me yesterday but I haven’t heard from her.”

vs “Hey Mark, has Sheila handed in the report Sheila was working on? Sheila was due to meet with me yesterday but I haven’t heard from Sheila.”

You’re telling me that’s intuitive and natural?

Being trans does not foster gender stereotypes.

Trans is 100% solely about gender stereotypes and based on gender stereotypes.

Wrong. Trans is a social contagion, it is nothing whatsoever remotely like being gay.

However on an individual level I’d assess each situation on its own merits - individual relationships aren’t the place for me to play out my political, social or religious beliefs to the detriment of others.

I agree with this. I absolutely understand that pronouns are a trojan horse for eroding women's rights and hell will freeze over before I refer a be-penised rapist as a woman, ever, in any context.

But here in my own home, with my lovely son and his lovely-but-confused female friends, I am not going to make a deliberate point of 'misgendering' them. Instead I quietly avoid pronouns altogether and try to create a warm, accepting, but gently questioning environment in which they can figure this stuff out for themselves. Drawing unnecessary battle lines with teens is just inviting them to double down, and it makes it harder for them to come back from.

Being trans is literally built on stereotypes.

If you remove biological sex from your definition of man and woman there is absolutely nothing left other than stereotypes.

Believing it is not a pretence is what is truly ignorant.

Hey Mark, has Sheila handed in the report Sheila was working on? Sheila was due to meet with me yesterday but I haven’t heard from Sheila.”

or “Hey Mark, has Sheila handed in the report that was due yesterday? I haven’t seen it, and Sheila hasn’t been in touch”.

No they identify as trans (woman or man). It is a pretence. No matter the naivette of your arguments.

This 👏

Being gay is not an ‘identity’ and imo it’s quite homophobic to say that. Men in Iran don’t get thrown off tall buildings because of their ‘identity’, it’s because they are caught being intimate with other men. Being gay is a sexual orientation and is protected as such in law.

There is no evidence at all of a ‘biological underpinning’ to a self declared identity. We might more accurately think of those things as part of our personality. But this is irrelevant as the OP is talking about the sex of her DS’s partner. Sex is our inescapable biological reality - DS’s girlfriend will have to deal with periods and the risk of getting pregnant which wouldn’t be the case if she was actually of the male sex. OP rightly doesn’t believe that identity overrides sex and is acting accordingly.

Personally I wouldn’t ban the girl from my house, I’m sure I would be very welcoming (as long as she behaved reasonably) but I would make it very clear to DS and DD that her sex is female and that I use the appropriate words for a female.

All you’re doing is illustrating my point. I’m either expected to use wrong sex pronouns or completely alter the way I’d naturally speak to avoid using them at all…

That is all that needs to be said. 👏

It leads to rape victims calling their rapist a 'he'.
It leads to male crimes being ascribed to women.

It starts with 'pronouns' and leads to males in female spaces, female sport etc.

Re-word it as; "what is the actual harm in calling a white person an African American if the white person identifies as an African American?" If transgender is ok, then so is transrace.

Maybe I'm a bit dim, but I don't understand this. He is with a lady, how can he possibly believe he is in a gay relationship ? A woman cannot in any way possible be a man.

But here in my own home, with my lovely son and his lovely-but-confused female friends, I am not going to make a deliberate point of 'misgendering' them. Instead I quietly avoid pronouns altogether and try to create a warm, accepting, but gently questioning environment in which they can figure this stuff out for themselves. Drawing unnecessary battle lines with teens is just inviting them to double down, and it makes it harder for them to come back from.

Absolutely, how I respond to issues depends on the situation and appropriateness of that response. At work I need to be professional so avoiding pronouns is fine, it’s not the place for me to take issue with a colleague. There are spaces where it may be right for me to “fight the fight”, and I do that where I can.

At home, relationships matter more. I’m not going to double down and risk my relationship with my kids, which then removes any influence I might have to help them navigate this maze much less other more complex risks they may come across. It’s not about wishy washy notions of kindness, it’s about giving them space to grow while keeping them close enough to help, and keeping relationships positive and strong because they will need me and I’d hate for them to think they can’t come to me because I don’t agree with them.

I have real life experience of avoiding using a colleague's pronouns and it does require a lot of conscious mental effort in every sentence when you are talking about them.

Its particularly annoying when you know ( because they have each separately told you so) that absolutely no-one you are talking to believes the person is their ' gender identity' either, but still everyone is participating in this mass delusion even when the person is not present.

Because it sets an expectation which becomes an entitlement and combined with some institutional madness becomes a huge power over others.

There is another board on this very forum where women are getting deleted and banned for referring to particular man as ‘he’. That is where this takes us.

You're not being dim but this is happening.

Have you not heard about the terrible time that Lesbians are having? They are being branded 'akin to sexual racists' for not accepting male people in their dating pool. That was by the head of Stonewall no less.

Trans ideology is deeply homophobic because it erases same sex attraction in favour of same gender attraction.

It's quite awful.

All you’re doing is illustrating my point. I’m either expected to use wrong sex pronouns or completely alter the way I’d naturally speak to avoid using them at all…

Well I guess your other option is to use pronouns they don’t want you to use, which puts you in the crosshairs of Equalities legislation.

Seems like a good time to share this again:

https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

So @PoppyTheGuineaPig according to gender ideology the OPs son is in a gay relationship.

Which is, of course, not only complete nonsense but also utterly homophobic.

A 'she' that first line should read.

I’m not sure there’s anything in the Equality Act that compels anyone’s speech to that extent?

From your posts it sounds like the person is female i.e. calling them she/her wouldn't be an issue.

Pronouns is a way of controlling other people speech towards you. Developmently it is something that a lot of teenagers do to assert their identity. Its like a punk in the the 1980s asking you to call them Rocky when their name is Derek.

I notice that when people who are obviously not trying to be seen as the gender they say they want to be seen as (i.e. Lily Tino) are doing it to create drama and are generally emotionally immature. These are usually people who also think they are the sex they want to be because they just can, rather than accepting that they can never fully become that sex.

There are a lot of trans people who actually do want to blend in and not cause drama, and I tend to find these people not worried if you get their pronouns wrong. Especially if it was a genuine mistake.

There’s nothing in the Equalities Act that compels me to use wrong sex pronouns