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?

The girl is mixed up but should be left to get on with it. I would be encouraging your DD to make new friends. Friends you need to tread on eggshells around are very stressful.

Many TERFs are gender non-conforming ourselves, often labelled as tomboys in our youth. That's why we know that teenage girls who don't want to dress like a Kardashian clone are not literally and actually boys, they are just girls with personality. We also know that many teenage girls struggle with autism and see identifying as a boy/nb is an escape route from our sex-obsessed pornified misogynistic society. So there is no "hate", just concern for those vulnerable to a damaging ideology.

I would suggest OP advises her daughter that many teenagers grandly announce a (usually stupid) new name, which she should try to remember, but not to worry about pronouns, especially if the brother isn't bothering. If Sally/Ron makes a massive drama about pronouns, she should rethink the friendship.

You haven’t answered my question. Is there anything that needs further clarification so you can?

Hmm. You’re not quite the nice, kind, inclusive, progressive person you think you are, are you?

@Sabire9 It’s really very very unlikely indeed that you or your university-age son really can’t tell what sex the “non-binary” university friend is, so I suspect you aren’t being completely truthful here.

“Gender identity”, as you admit in your posts, is a metaphysical and subjective internal “feeling” that is a belief of a person. Sally can believe it all she likes, but no-one else can be made to believe it if they don’t want to. Sally’s friends may refer to her by a male name and pronouns to be nice to her, but they will all know that Sally isn’t really a boy, and that they are engaging in a pretend role-play.

No matter how much fulminating you or Sally or anyone else does about “gender”, that still won’t actually alter reality, nor will it magically change Sally into a boy, nor will it mean that everyone else sees Sally as a boy instead of a person who everyone has to pretend to and about. And generally, people don’t much like having to engage in pretences all the time in their social life (or at all in life). That’s why we don’t still have blasphemy laws, and you can’t make atheists go to church, nor can you in democratic countries force anyone to pretend they believe in a particular political system.

You can scold “terfs” until the cows come home, but the reality is that forcing or scolding people to engage in a pretend play for someone’s else’s benefit doesn’t end well. Sally’s friends may well valiantly try to comply, but it’s likely that they drift away from what they see as exhausting, self-obsessed roleplaying. Just as any adult tends to drift away from someone who is insistent on always making them engage in pretending.

And you do young people, and “trans” people no favours by encouraging them to believe that it’s okay to try to force everyone around them to play pretend games. They will likely end up socially isolated, and not quite able to reconcile the polite pretence others put on socially with the fact that they struggle to form deeper connections with people who don’t really want to be made to pretend things that aren’t true. I see this with the trans people I work with, who are already often autistic, and don’t quite get why the apparent polite acceptance of pronouns and new names seems to also go along with many of their friends and colleagues politely retreating or disconnecting from deeper relationships.

It’s a sad effect of all of this gender ideology, especially combined with a very British kind of distancing politeness, that young people who insist on this have no real sense of how they are setting themselves up for social isolation and frustration.

I don’t understand your question really. I think people can choose their pronouns. I don’t know what’s humpty dumpty about that.

@JohnnyLuLus

I’ve got to say many colleagues still ‘slip up’ and call me by my maiden name 2 decades after I married. It’s hard to shift and even harder the older you get. Tbf, I answer to my name, my maiden name, last year’s teacher and, occasionally Mum in the classroom!

3 years ago, I got my first Gran…

DH's 15 year old niece is now his 'nephew' and has changed their name to one that isn't even a recognised human name which makes things even more tricky (it's actually kind of embarrassing calling them by this name). We are all expected to go with it and we do try but it's hard going and we slip up all the time.

I understand that it's a difficult time for our 'nephew' but they can't see how difficult it is for some of the older family members. They go into a complete strop if my in-laws mistakenly call them by their birth name.

For the words we use to communicate with others to be understood, rather than just being incomprehensible garbage, they need clear definitions. The word “she” is the third person pronoun used for female people, just as girl and woman are also words used for female people. As we all know, humans can’t change sex. Born female? Die female.

Humpty Dumpty - that shows how infantile this all is. A small child being told it’s bedtime - “no, it’s not bedtime, Mummy! Bedtime doesn’t mean that, it means playtime! You’re silly!” Plus footstamp and general tantrum.

No different to someone insisting we all abandon the clear definition of a word we all know, and use something else because it suits that person - and then throw a tantrum when others don’t.

But it's the old 'a marathon begins with the first step' principle.

If you know that an ideology can be far-reaching and dangerous, why would you want to express agreement with, or condoning of it? Even something as apparently minor as using non-biologically-based pronouns will not be viewed as a kind indulgence on your part, but rather as your approval of the whole ideology.

"But you were happy to acknowledge that Ron is a boy before; what changed? When did you suddenly become a bigot?"

If you believe that full-on addiction to heroin is a very bad thing indeed (which I hope you do), would you think you were 'being kind' by not stopping somebody who "only want to try a tiny little bit"? You aren't being kind by guiding somebody right to the very edge of a sheer cliff, just as long as you don't actually push them off.

Ah well we disagree. The world would be boring if we all thought the same!

I would tell my child to treat Ron as a nickname and use it. I would try my best with the pronouns but people will slip up at times.

I would talk to dd discretely help her realise what an utter drama sponge Sally/Ron is and help her realise that the dignified response is to not feed the drama. Just tell her to politely apologise and teach her to grey wall any emotional response. Maybe encourage her to stick with friends who aren't so self-indulgent and controlling. Chances are Sally/Ron's behaviour is only going to get worse.

No, you’re not horrible. Just untrained. I assume your daughter will be summoned shortly for a struggle session where she’ll be made to chant “Sally is dead. Long live Ron” until she weeps with joy and gender enlightenment.

Meanwhile, Ron has magically transformed. Ovaries still intact, uterus present and accounted for, every cell still XX, but now cloaked in the sacred power of a haircut, a hoodie, and a name borrowed from a Hogwarts character. The pronouns have shifted, so reality must obey. Biology is passé. Memory is subversive. A vocabulary slip: reclassified as an act of violence.

Your daughter isn’t cruel. She’s a 14-year-old trying to make sense of a lifelong friend who’s rewritten the rules mid-game and now expects everyone else to clap on cue. She may need space because this whole performance is exhausting. Ron is making your daughter walk on eggshells, punishing her for remembering reality, and expecting her to perform belief on demand. That’s not friendship.

So Ron is looking for validating performance from your daughter, and your daughter is treating her friend exactly the same as she always has, and Ron is getting shirty.

don't be daft. Of course we don't all have to think the same. But if we are going to communicate we have to have a basic understanding of what words mean.

We all use the word green to describe the colour of a tree's leaves. If you started calling them blue, and insisting the rest of us did just because that's what you want, you would find yourself being laughed at, ridiculed, and probably eventually lose a lot of friends.

If someone in my social circle came out as trans, i would do my best to remember their new name and use it, because i am not a complete twat. But i will never use wrong-sex pronouns, so at "worst" i would continue to use pronouns that fit to their natal sex. But at best, which i would try to do, because i am not a complete twat, i would use they. But if i "slipped up" on the name, in their presence or not, i'd just say "oh yeah, sorry [name] and carry on. I would not apologise for using "they" though. They can accept that or not, and cool the friendship or not, but nobody is compelling my speech like that.

And that’s your choice. Mine would be to use their preferred pronouns.

O. M. G. You have just misspelt Sally's name.

That is literally genocide! 😂

Do you think female children should be forced to share changing facilities with male children who use female pronouns?

Do you think that's fair on female children?

Do you think it would be fair on male children to call them she then tell them that sex matters when it comes to single sex spaces and female boundaries?

Same here.

OK - I’ll just take all your posts to be meaningless gibberish then.

And by correct you probably mean incorrect, ie the preferred pronouns.

Ditto!

Like I said, @ninjahamster is just posting meaningless gibberish.

Why? I haven’t abandoned words having meaning, so my words can be clearly understood. Yours, on the other hand can’t. In fact, for all I know you’ve just sent me a short shopping list. Was that milk you wanted?