Why is misgendering a big deal?

[FortunateCookie]

Hope someone can help because I’m really trying to understand why not affirming someone’s identity is that big of a deal.
I understand that it’s polite to go along with whatever someone’s chosen gender identity is, but I can’t believe that it’s actually a big problem if you don’t?
Surely if your friends and family accept your identity, it doesn’t matter if someone at work doesn’t?
Would it really make someone suicidal?
Do any of the trans organisations say why it is so important?
I just don’t get it.

I get mis-sexed occasionally. I'm short, flat-chested, & have extemely short hair, due to diffuse & slowly worsening alopecia. (It looks even thinner if it's long, I tried it & I can currently manage a ponytail as thin as a pencil.) The mis-sexing doesn't bother me much. I was more bothered at having to go from Rapunzel length, thick hair, to a buzzcut in a couple of years, because of a medical condition, than people assuming I'm a boy... that's just funny, TBH. I am what I am, my ego isn't that fragile.

If a woman kept her surname on marriage but someone insisted on calling them by their husbands name that would be seen as rude, nasty and probably mysoginistic. it would be seen as devaluing the woman sense of self.

Its not hugely dissimilar.

I guess you could look at it as if you had a friend who needed to lose a bit of weight. You might think that she really does for her own sake. It might be true. It might be in her best interests to do so.

You might even have a quiet word with her and suggest it tactfully.

What you would probably not do is every time you meet in front of others say here comes my big fat pig of a mate. She is really a fatso, isn't she? I've told her she needs to lose weight.

Not sure if it is the same thing.

It's not a big deal unless you are a narcissist who doesn't have any actual problems to be bothered about.

It's amazing how many perfectly ordinary people manage to go through life with strangers constantly mistaking quite pertinent details about them, and yet don't suffer extreme meltdowns as a result. But "not making a fuss about something trivial" doesn't seem to be on the to-do list of too many activists.

I have no doubt that it is difficult for people with gender dysphoria to be misgendered.

One of the interesting things I've noticed on here, is that the transwomen who have gender dysphoria become shocked at the way we speak.

It's not because they really believe they are women, though. They say they know they are male. It's that they have lived for such a long time with people affirming their views, And women talking, unpoliced, is a novel experience to them.

Despite feeling uncomfortable, they acknowledge that it is factually accurate and there is a very good reason why women are now saying it.

In my experience, the ones who threaten you, are those with AGP.

The anger at being defied is obvious. The crucial need to believe in their innate 'womanhood', rather than their male fetish is undeniable. Hence the rage when it is pointed out. And yes, narcissism is prevalent, according to the statistics.

Let's just stop for a moment and think about this. I'll use the recent NUStrans conference as an example:

• The conference was held at a hotel. It was open to trans-people of all chosen genders.
• A significant part of radical trans-activism at the moment, is to "educate" people that just because someone looks like a natal man (or woman) and has male (or female) features, a male-sounding (or female) voice), male (or female) sex organs, this does not mean they are a man (or woman).
• Consequently there has been a significant rise in the number of trans-identified people who look, talk and behave like their natal sex but claim to be the opposite.
• There were multiple complaints of "mis-gendering" from the attendees, who were upset that hotel staff were addressing them according to what they thought the attendee's sex was.
• If you subscribe to radical TRA logic, this means that men can have breasts, women can have beards and adam's apples (using some common and visible biological features as illustrations).
• In view of this how are hotel staff supposed to know what pronouns to use? And that's before we get into those identifying as non-binary and who wish to be addressed as "ze".

Can you honestly not see how confusing this is for ordinary people who don't spend their lives following trans-activist policies and campaigns? Can you understand how intimidating it is to be a hotel receptionist on minimum wage, doing your job to pay your bills and being accused of "literal violence" because you addressed someone who looks like a bloke as "Sir"?

Let's just stop for a moment and think about this. I'll use the recent NUStrans conference as an example:

• The conference was held at a hotel. It was open to trans-people of all chosen genders.
• A significant part of radical trans-activism at the moment, is to "educate" people that just because someone looks like a natal man (or woman) and has male (or female) features, a male-sounding (or female) voice), male (or female) sex organs, this does not mean they are a man (or woman).
• Consequently there has been a significant rise in the number of trans-identified people who look, talk and behave like their natal sex but claim to be the opposite.
• There were multiple complaints of "mis-gendering" from the attendees, who were upset that hotel staff were addressing them according to what they thought the attendee's sex was.
• If you subscribe to radical TRA logic, this means that men can have breasts, women can have beards and adam's apples (using some common and visible biological features as illustrations).
• In view of this how are hotel staff supposed to know what pronouns to use? And that's before we get into those identifying as non-binary and who wish to be addressed as "ze".

Can you honestly not see how confusing this is for ordinary people who don't spend their lives following trans-activist policies and campaigns? Can you understand how intimidating it is to be a hotel receptionist on minimum wage, doing your job to pay your bills and being accused of "literal violence" because you addressed someone who looks like a bloke as "Sir"?

Because when a lie is as obvious as this one, the only way to sustain, protect, and propogate it is by fostering unquestioning compliance.

It is the destabilising effect that noncompliance has to the lie.

It isn't the pronouns in particular that are important to the issue, although they do have the helpful effect of altering the perception of the speaker and listener.

The important thing is to make people comply. It might just as easily be a dictat to curtsey.
What is important is compliance establishes a dominance and reinforces your submission. And submission in one seemingly insignificant act increases your likelihood to submit to increasingly disturbing demands.

I recommend Derren Brown's 'The Push' for a masterclass in how we can be groomed to obey others and submit using tiny acts of helpful compliance.

I do get that it would be distressing to someone who truly believes they were born into the wrong body

BUT the only reason it's become so distressing appears to be because society has gone so far into erasing and morphing what it is that makes a woman a woman that the person genuinely feels they have a right to demand others conform to their own belief that they are a woman

If we had stuck with what it is that makes a woman a woman - you know - a vagina rather than a penis

All the feeling in the world wouldn't make transwomen personally feel disrespected/literally violently assaulted by those who hold this view if we hadn't gone so far with erasing what makes a woman a woman

I really don't mind transpeople. I don't mind how they live or what they believe and I sympathise it must be awful to feel you can't identify with the body you're born with - but it doesn't mean you can demand I share your beliefs to make you feel better. You're not doing that for me either.

I believe you were born in the right body. I'm utterly confused what it "feels like" to be a woman - the closest I can come as a bio female to knowing what it feels like to be a woman is being on the end of mysogany. I see you wearing "women's clothes, make up etc" ok that's cool with me... but am I not a woman because I don't? The only time I've ever felt I HAD to (not chosen to) wear stereotypical women's clothes and make up is when it's been expected of me by a mysogenistic society.

If someone can own up to the fact they're still a bio man while living how they perceive a woman to live without actually living in a way which is erasing my rights and identity as bio woman - go ahead. That's literally all I'm asking - to be a woman! Like we've fought to be since time began. Problem comes when you tell the world you know how to do that better than me and reduce my identity to a "cis" woman. Fuck off...

I don't think mentally healthy people, who are happy in their own skins, give a toss about random people 'misgendering' them.

Most transgender people are not mentally healthy. They are dealing with their psychological issues by constructing a narrative that they are 'really' the opposite sex. Their whole sense of who they are is thus based on a lie, and being 'misgendered' exposes that lie and is an attack on their whole self identity.

The current response to this seems to be to try to make the rest of society maintain the lie, rather than helping them, through counselling and psychotherapy, to true self acceptance.

There are also the autogynephiles - I think they know perfectly well what sex they are, but use complaints of 'misgendering' to get off on women being forced to join in their fetish.

Imagine yourself if people in work started calling you he and his etc. when referring to you.

Amazingly, there's plenty of gender nonconforming women who have this all the time, and who somehow manage to refrain from threatening suicide, or telling the other person they are a horrible bigot who deserves to be killed.

You don't seem to grasp that "misgendering" isn't a new thing, Hideandgo. Humans have been making snap assumptions, without hostile intent, about other humans since time began. It's only recently that a bunch of men have decided that it's The Worst Literal Violence Ever.

Are we talking about misgendering or mid-sexing?

A person’s gender is whatever they want it to be, their sex is determined by biology.

I guess some people think/want pronouns to refer to gender (which is pretty complicated considering there are infinite genders) and others want them to refer to sex

What is important is compliance establishes a dominance and reinforces your submission. And submission in one seemingly insignificant act increases your likelihood to submit to increasingly disturbing demands.

I completely agree with this. There is a certain faction for whom compliance is the goal. Forcing pronouns is a wonderful way for them to dominate women.

It goes from pronouns, to establishing that sex is determined by the way you think, to the male persecution of lesbians, and dominance of women in general.

I keep reading on Twitter that misgendering is a crime. Is that true?

There could be any number of reasons for people 'misgendering' from a genuine mistake to deliberately being malicious, from making a political point to mis-speaking. I don't see any of those as violence or as criminal.

We need to be able to tell the truth. Truth is important and I refuse to lie.
For one thing, the constant 'mis sexing' in the papers leads people to conclude that some violent crimes have been committed by women, when they have been committed by transwomen.

Jessica - as far as I know, it is a crime in New York. Not here.

If a colleague has asked you to call them a certain name it is bullying to persistently refuse to call them that name. Bullying can lead to poor self-esteem and depression. It affects your sense of self and makes you question your value.

Basically it's common courtesy to call people the name they ask you to call them.

Because it’s just common deceny maybe?

Assuming that everyone adopted this and were polite to transpeople by using the requested names and pronouns, would it be acceptable to be saying this while thinking "but I don't believe you are the gender* you say you are".

Or would that also be wrong?

• gender being used as a proxy for sex, obviously

I think it's because they know that it's not really true.
@Hideandgo, I completely disagree with you. It really wouldn't bother me if someone thought I was a bloke, or referred to me as one; I'd just think they were a bit odd.
The difference is I know what I am, so I don't care/don't need, to be validated by others.

Wow, some really interesting posts to get my head around, thank you.

It seems to go from some people saying it is being polite, to actually it’s upsetting, all the way to it being critical to their sense of self. So quite a big scale of how important people see affirming someone’s gender identity. That’s really interesting too. And I’m glad that no one has said it is so triggering it could lead to suicide, so we seem to have debunked that one.

If people at work were to call me a bloke, so what? I mean, I'm short even for a woman and have massive boobs and obviously female facial features, so it would be a bit baffling, for others as much as for me, but ultimately what does it matter? I know what sex I am.

It's those who are aware that they're asserting something about themselves that's not true who find it upsetting when the truth is pointed out.

Being mis sexed as a female is the opposite situation, in that the person doing it has made a mistake. I don’t think being forced to shift language and lie in order to shore up someone else’s delusion is helpful to anyone. Of course it is nice to be reasonably polite, it is kind not to deliberately hurt someone’s feelings, but being nice and kind is not always the most helpful way forward for women. It is so entrenched in us, and in this case I think it perpetuates the whole problem.It has allowed male trans people to push forward with an agenda that is damaging for women and girls.

Ultimately I care far more about girls and women’s rights than I care about any male’s feelings.

“How others see us is a huge part of the affirmation of who we are.”

But you aren't though. You may wish you were. But you are not.
I don't believe in transubstantiation.

I have no problem with you wearing a dress if that makes you happy but you are still XY.

If a woman kept her surname on marriage but someone insisted on calling them by their husbands name that would be seen as rude, nasty and probably mysoginistic. it would be seen as devaluing the woman sense of self.

Its not hugely dissimilar.

Exactly. It would be a lie to call her by a name she has never had. So to call men women, when they can never be, is also a lie.