Asking people to use preferred pro-nouns is abelist and discriminatory - what affects your ability to comply?

[DJLippy]

I wanted to start a thread because I am really going to struggle to stay within Mumsnet talk guidelines.

I struggle to use preferred pro-noun's with those who I genuinely don't believe are the sex they claim to be. Because I have dyspraxia pro-noun policing creates a barrier for my fluency. I have to stop and think to change the pro-noun. I can go back and edit my post for 'mistakes' to comply but I miss out on pro-nouns (again because of my disability.)

I have spoken to those with autism and they've told me similar things - that they genuinely find it difficult to lie.

I also think that it is difficult for those for whom English is a second language. Un-learning sub-conscious grammar structures is hard enough for English people - I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be for those from other countries.

I think this is a real issue when Mumsnet creates a three strike rule. I have stopped posting since the new rule change because I honestly and truly do not mean to break rules - I can't abide by this code and I don't always have the mental energy to police my sub-conscious like this.

Does anybody else have a reason (other than the fact that they don't agree) that they find it difficult to follow the new language laws? Is it right that social media platforms and public institutions create more barriers for those who are already disadvantaged?

Not sure... I got the impression that the guidelines were aimed at maliciously misgendering someone, so maybe if you were contacted about a post and explained your position, they would be sympathetic. However, generally, I think the talk guidelines are based on how it comes across to the reader, so whether the person posting it had a disability or suffered from a MH issue would not be directly relevant. They might take a more sympathetic view re banning though.

Adhd here. I'm also finding the rules hard to understand and comply with for some of the reasons already given by women above. I also really struggle not to respond to goadiness and my only good coping strategy to deal with that is to stop reading a goady or dishonest persons posts and refuse to have any further communication with them. I am worried that refusing to communicate with certain people is in itself going to be translated as breaking some unsaid rule if they get 'upset' by that and claim victimisation.

I mentioned this on a Spartacus thread.
I am autistic, I am gender critical because logic tells me that penis = male and vagina = female.
I can (and do) lie, but it leaves me feeling very uneasy with myself, so I don't do it often.

In the case of trans stuff, I don't want to lie, particularly having seen how aggressive TRAs can be towards GC women, and seemingly get away with it. It's like school all over again, the nasty bully children somehow know how to be on the right side of the teachers.

Using the preferred pronouns for someone like Miranda Yardley is no problem, plus if I get it wrong it's not a massive problem.
However, for certain trans people in certain political positions, using she and her feels wrong.

Imagine being told that you should always refer to green as red - those trees are red, grass is red - you know it's wrong, it feels wrong to say it and you know that if you keep saying it you're going to confuse and screw people over, so you probably wouldn't do it.
Well, calling men women, and allowing them to appropriate female oppression and spaces feels like that X 1,000,000. It doesn't help that I can be mistrustful of men anyway having been bullied throughout school, and being belittled and treated like an idiot by many in my adult life.

TBH this whole trans agenda just feels like more of the usual shit from men, but the clothes are different. It amazes me that it's come this far, and I'm as distressed over it all and at MNHQ's stance over this and their censorship of words and how trans people are referred to as I was over Brexit, and that was a very unsettling and upsetting time. Which sounds dramatic probably, but it really was a difficult time.

I'm autistic. I find it very difficult to understand why people are being told to say something that is obviously untrue. I can understand why people with dysphoria might genuinely believe that they are the opposite sex, or want to, but I can't understand others being compelled to lie about it.

I refuse to use 'preferred pronouns' because to me that's what they are, compelled lies. Having rules around it honestly seems like something out of a dystopian novel. I'll try to use no pronouns at all, but I'll probably slip up.

And I also mentioned how MN's stance on disability and ablist threads and posts has been appalling over the years. To the point where posters who were targeted by trolls were banned for standing up for themselves.
Yet here we are, in the feminist chat section of MN, discussing perhaps the biggest threat to women we've known, and immediately steps are made to protect the aggressors.
That's not right.

Yy joy

yet here we are, in the feminist chat section of MN, discussing perhaps the biggest threat to women we've known, and immediately steps are made to protect the aggressors

Perfectly put joy.

I am not autistic but I really struggle with lying. I jokingly put it down to my Quaker upbringing but it feels more fundamental than that.
I have no desire to hurt anyone and would rather change the subject but I simply can't do even white lies. I know some people can do it casually but I can't. And using the wrong pronoun is a lie to me.

I totally get where autistic people are coming from on this.

I have no disabilities, and am probably over-fond of 'wordplay'. So I'm usually quite good at pronoun avoidance but sometimes it takes a lot of time and mental effort to work out how to do it. I can't imagine how hard it must be for some of you to attempt such contortions, or in some cases even comprehend what people (on either side of the 'debate') actually mean.

For example, the first post I saw from a recent new poster, the most logical reading of the words, was that this person was a transman (something like, 'I am an adult human female .... I am transgender'). But no. Turned out the poster was someone who thought the word 'female' needed redefining.

"There are reasons why you have trouble spelling but if you are at work that does not mean you are allowed to make spelling mistakes"

That only works if you are able to work. I am not. Should I therefore not be able to access a resource like mn?

"You adapt and develop to cope with challenges so as not to offend people"

Says the poster who is not autistic...

I stopped lying to appease people a long time ago.
I have been upbraided by a well known transgender person for using they them pronouns in reference to them. At the request of transgender advocates years ago I had begun using they/them for everyone.
No more.

Being compelled to tell a lie, or at very least evade the truth, is not even slightly comparable to having problems with spelling.

I struggle for two reasons

(1) I don't tell lies if I can possible avoid it. I even struggle with white lies (I'm not good at answering "does my bum look good in this" questions).

(2) The sand keeps shifting. How the fuck are any of us to know what is considered "transphobic" today that was perfectly acceptable yesterday? How am I to know that dysphoria is now a dirty word (not all trans people are dysphoric, apparently, though they were last year). How should I know that suddenly it's rude to say someone identifies as trans when loads of people have been declaring their identification for years.

It's unfair to force people to lie and to keep changing the rules with little or no notice.

Women are protected under the Equality Act. Presuming that protection extends to defining themselves and talking among themselves, what is happening here is supremely unfair.

This is a site primarily for women. The numbers of women on here with ASD or other issues must be infinitely higher than the numbers of trans people.

Sorry but the idea that you "adapt and develop" from someone who has no experience of autism is actually really upsetting me. You have trouble spelling because of dyslexia and are talking about reasonable adjustments in work, you don't seem to have any clue what it is like to not be able to work because of autism and other associated disabilities. It's the whole other end of the scale to what women are saying here that they struggle with.

Op- you're dyspraxic and have trouble with pronouns?! Seriously you may have just saved some of my sanity as we can't get dd2 to get them correct - and googling pronoun confusion these days just gets you loads of links about how not being addressed as Supreme Overlord of Planet Cornflake on Wednesdays is like literal violence man!

Mousse, you may want to familiarise yourself with the term reasonable adjustments
By law work places are required to meet the needs of their disabled employees.
Of course an individual may not be suitable for a particular job, but in this case, this is the whole of society that's being slowly expected to lie, and it isn't even a plausible truth, it's a big, whopping, out and out lie!
Mumsnet is a public forum, I don't know how many members, but we are all being asked to control our language to be polite and nice to a group of people who are trying their damndest to shove us over and take over our language, our spaces, our unique female stuff, and they're not even being apologetic or nice for doing so, we're just expected to do it, no questions, no debate, we are nasty, mean bigots because we dare to have an issue with this.
So no, your analogy doesn't hold up at all.

Well, have you posted in site stuff? Maybe they can assist.

It is SpartacusAutisticus.
Ablist.
Wonder if MNHQ will care?

How many strikes do you get before ableist behaviour gets you booted?

I really struggle with the new rules, there was nothing wrong with how things were before. Free speech is essential in a democratic society and I feel that mumsnet has really let women down.