Gender swap situation

[TenThousandYears]

I know you're all probably fed up hearing about this subject...I just need to vent.

DD has been friends with "Sally" for 10 years. (Both 14) Since nursery. In the last few months Sally has decided to change gender and now wants to be called " Ron"

DD just can't wrap her head around this. If she slips up, she gets nasty looks from "Ron" and so she's treading on eggshells.

Ron's brother still refers to Ron as Sally so DD is very confused by it all.

I'm on DDs side. Personally, I would hate to be in her shoes right now. I think if you meet someone and are introduced to them as whomever then that's easier to accept than having to change names and pronouns of someone you've been friends with for 10 years. On TV shows people just accept this straight away and move on but I'm not convinced that it's really that easy.

I also think 14 is a bit young for these changes but that's just my personal opinion.

Are me and my child horrible people for not being able to accept this right away?

Well, the only education that seems to be required on this thread is the very simple fact that human beings cannot change sex.

Transwomen are still men, even if they announce that they want to be regarded as women. It doesn't mean they actually are women.

Of course it's power.

You call me Ron, you see me as a male, otherwise you're a bigot.

It's totally manipulative.

Edited to add - we know this because of the glares at OPs child for making mistakes.

“compelled speech“.

Is it compelled speech when people expect / ask you to call them by their name?

Ron isn't her name.
Sally is.

Maybe she's a Malory Towers fan - not many male character names to choose from, unless she wanted to be a schoolchild known as 'Mr Parker'!

That's not her name though. It's what she wants to be called.

You are conflating changing a name with a denial of reality that’s imposed on others. The words for a female person are girl, woman, she etc. Sally is still and always will be female.

That is your problem not the problem here. You are worried about being called a bigot. The OP’s daughter just has to decide whether she wants to be friends with Ron or not. She doesn’t have to be. She can dump him. No problem. She doesn’t have to give a reason.

If she likes her old friend and enjoys their company and conversation she can keep them. But she doesn’t have to stay friends with them if its too much trouble. OP can teach her dd to just shrug and say “Ron stopped being someone I wanted as a friend.”

One thing that strikes me is that it's all on the other person to change their speech. My daughter ties herself in knots to use her non binary girlfriend's name instead of a pronoun and she's constantly policing herself whereas her girlfriend is always on the lookout for errors. The fallout of using 'she' can last for days, even though just a year ago she was she. This isn't good for the relationship or their nerves.

Pronouns aren’t preferred, though. That’s nonsense. It’s not a preference to call a cat a cat rather than a dog, is it?
Pronouns have definitions. Those for female people, which Sally is, are she, her etc. Using male pronouns for a female person isn’t using “preferred” pronouns, it’s using the wrong pronouns.

That sounds like quite an unbalanced friendship, though, given the effort your son must have had to put in to deny reality and deny the language he’s known since babyhood to describe that reality - something that his friend never had to do for him. And if he had to put up with glares for describing reality using the correct words, that’s really bad.

She should try to call Sally Ron. As that is what she is asking of her friend. It doesn't matter what your daughter believes

How ridiculous.

People who believe that sex is real are not bigots.

The bigots are those pushing this agenda on young people in order to advance the rights of males to enter spaces reserved for women.

Thankfully, the game is almost up. It's so harmful to these young people to go along with the lie that they can change sex. Everyone knows they can't in reality.

Well I disagree. But I have trans friends and see how much happier they are since transitioning. I am happy to use their preferred pronouns.

Even though she's female.

But I have trans friends and see how much happier they are since transitioning

What does this mean, though?
Transitioning?

Yes we went through something similar at school. My daughter was actually asked a really inappropriate question at school which I emailed the head of year and the head of LGBTQ group. Both were really apologetic and believed that things had been taken out of context combined with a core group who couldn't stop talking about their sexuality and policing others with their new found knowledge. School dealt with it really well and it stopped. I'm pleased we went down the route of letting the teachers deal with it rather than my daughter trying to tackle it. That said it all passed and the noise really reduced by there GCSE year, 6th form happened and it was barely a thing.
OP if you feel like your daughter is being bullied or policed in what she says then obviously speak to School.

This.
We're talking about children who are routinely being gaslit that sex change is possible by trusted adults (teachers) who should know better.
Girls (and boys) are being groomed to believe that they have no right to boundaries from the opposite sex when undressing if boys demand access to the female changing rooms.
That it's bigoted to do anything other than comply when a girl demands that you refer to them as a boy etc etc.
This is not harmless - either to the child caught up in a delusion or to theoir peers. It's promoting a lie to children before they have the maturity to negotiate these complex ideas. And this is the psychological damage that a clinical psychologist explains can happen when we lie to a teenager that they've changed sex:

www.transgendertrend.com/teenager-says-theyre-transgender/

This is such a lovely, calm, reasoned response. Thank you for making me smile today.

The other problem with using the wrong pronouns, is that women and girls need to be able to quickly ascertain who is female (not a threat) and who is male (possibly a threat) - this life-saving instinct is being disrupted making all women and girls less safe.

The problem is that people like you are willing to give up any and all grip on reality by referring to a female as he, thus contributing to an ideology that is built on lies that other people are expected to both abide by and parrot out of "kindness".

It is this capitulation to a dishonest premise that has contributed to women being raped and assaulted in spaces that were designed to protect them, women and girls losing sporting events and their places on squads/leaderboards, and the attempted erasure of women as a sex class.

There are significant repercussions to the lie above and beyond being seen as a "bigot" if you don't go along with it.

Presumably you're speaking about adults - who are entitled to behave as they choose as long as they're not harming others. The OP is referring to her 14 year old. Children caught up in all the changes of puberty and growing up.

It's a regular feature of these discussions - that people ignore the immaturity and developmental needs of children and instead talk about adults. Children are not mini adults and are entitled to be safeguarded from age inappropriate demands.

That must be exhausting - and no way to have to live. It actually sounds quite abusive to me. Your poor DD.

Surely, if you see yourself as non-binary in a binary world, you can't be surprised to realise that language has grown up around that commonly understood sex-binary world. If there are two standard pronouns in English (apart from 'they' as a plural or to refer to an unknown or theoretical person), would you not just figure that neither of them specifically applies to you anyway in your 'special' circumstances, so who cares whichever one somebody happens to use?

It's controlling behaviour, and I'd let your child step away - just as I would say if a friend was insisting that they always play a certain game, or demanded any other kind of obedience.

Kindness should go both ways. If one person is expected to do all the accommodating it's not being nice or kind, it's being bullied.

What utter rubbish, of course it matters what OP's daughter "believes" because she's knows it's the truth and does not have to call Sally Ron or use preferred pronouns if she doesn't want to ....whereas as Sally who believes she is Ron, has disconnected from reality & is living in a fantasy of her own making while expecting everyone else to take part in it.
The truth is not bigotry it is simply the truth, clarity & facts are important.