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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Edinburgh University to hand out pronoun badges

251 replies

BiologyIsReal · 26/08/2018 10:26

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/25/edinburgh-university-student-union-officials-hand-pronounbadges/

I will break every rule in MN's be nice to trans policy if I even make a comment.

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SurfnTerfFantasticmissfoxy · 28/08/2018 10:52

At the Festival Fringe a few weeks ago and the lovely young lady 'manning' the que had a badge on that said 'check my pronouns babe'
Was sorely tempted to ask 'what for' as she was clearly and recognizably either an adult human female or someone who was going to great lengths to be 'read' as an adult human female.

user1499173618 · 28/08/2018 10:56

My DD’s identity card for her other nationality has her mistakenly as a male, not a female. Much hilarity...

sociopathsunited · 28/08/2018 11:00

FFS. I spent my childhood and teenage years being terrified of the nuclear bombs being dropped during the Cold War. My parents lived through listening to bombs being dropped on Birmingham during WW2 and told us all about it. My mother, on earning her first wage in her job in the 1950s, had to get her Dad to come down to Bath from Birmingham to OPEN her bank account for her. For the wages she'd earned herself. She lived in the 1970s, with a bank who phoned my Dad to check it was allowed, when she wanted to withdraw some money from their joint account.

How the fuck has a generation that lived through all of these things raised this generation, where saying you "don't care" what pronoun people use for you will cause offence? Where being called "he" instead of "she" is something that is considered violence?

I'm 50 and I can't tell you how bloody glad I am that I didn't have kids. To think that offspring of mine might actually believe this kind of shite......I'd curl up and die, from shame.

FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast · 28/08/2018 11:03

excellent post, sociopathsunited.

I am pushing 54 and recall some of this shite you mention.
Now 'they' (entitled white men) are finding other ways to oppress women.

user1499173618 · 28/08/2018 11:03

sociopathsunited - I’m 52 and I do have children. It has been incredibly difficult to raise DC who can think straight and have good BS detectors. The ambiant culture is incredibly corrupting.

LetsSplashMummy · 28/08/2018 12:36

Thank you everyone, I am fairly new to this topic but already I feel like I am already translating it for people in my department. When the student made the comment about assuming gender, the woman he used as an example thought "do I seem a little manly, why would anyone think I'd have an issue?" It is rude, like publicly asking a fat person if they are on a diet, with no reason to think they are. You couldn't defend yourself in that case as a healthy eating advocate, so I think it's okay to remind people that basic manners still matter (I might find out otherwise when I get a reply). Strangely, last year we had a student at the other end of the spectrum, Trump supporting and a bit sexist - I think this one is being put in the same "self important and rude, but amusing to discuss," category - I don't get them impression normal people are taking it very seriously, so that's one positive.

Magpiesarehuge · 28/08/2018 12:38

I just went with my son to enroll for 6th form college - this possibly explains why no one questioned or looked in any way surprised that all his details/paperwork had him listed as Miss John Doe - Female

sociopathsunited · 28/08/2018 12:49

It IS the whole culture, isn't it, User? Who knew we'd have to work so hard to raise children who can think for themselves and who are prepared to go against popular opinion or fashion. Before anyone jumps on me for being ageist, I know being a bit easily led happens with other age groups as well. My mother in law believes anything she reads in the papers or watches on the tv, even if it totally contradicts a statement she herself made just a few moments before. If questioned, she doesn't even realise it's a contradiction. She looks at you like you've grown two heads if you ask her how both statements can be true. Her answer - it said so, on the telly. So it's not just the youngsters. Am I right to blame the internet?

NoLeslie · 28/08/2018 14:49

My teenager today told me 'Its 2018, no one is sexist, you can't assume gender'. I was asking if people are sexist on his social media). Apparently this is what you tubers all say....

FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast · 28/08/2018 14:52

'no-one is sexist' is quite funny coming from a young man.
tell that to my daughter who was the only girl in her year to sign up for Engineering, and had to sit and listen to pointed comments and jokes about all kind of porny sex. The teacher didn't hear...

5000KallaxHoles · 28/08/2018 15:02

DD2 is forever calling biologically female humans "he" and vice versa.

Fuck - I could save a fortune on speech and language therapy to try to work on things like this in her speech and just claim she's being inclusive when her he/she pronouns are all over the place.

Shit like this actually makes it fucking impossible to google and discover if this is a common issue some children have developmentally as well.

I'd have been kicked out for my intolerance to bullshit if I went to uni these days. I tend to call a spade a spade but these days it's probably defining itself as a motorcycle.

ErrolTheDragon · 28/08/2018 15:13

four - my DD has been aware of sexism, and hopefully immunised against genderism, by being told in yr1 'girls can't be builders'. She's now just about to start the second year of an engineering degree, nearing the end of an internship in a massively male dominated company. Both the company and the uni dept are very aware of historic sexism and current structural sexism, and the harm of gender stereotypes.

sociopathsunited · 28/08/2018 15:22

Ah I remember my youth. Wearing a CND badge outed you as an "extremist". Now, you need to demand that everyone agrees that some women have penises, demand that men with penises are allowed into rape crisis centres if they say they are a woman. Using the wrong pronoun is literal violence that could make someone kill themselves, and if you don't have blue or green hair, you're a weirdo.

The aliens must be sniggering their faces off (assuming aliens can laugh, and have faces..)

NameChangedAgain18 · 28/08/2018 15:28

So many threads on here about the policing of speech at the moment. Pronoun policing. A Plaid Cymru politician threatened with suspension for saying women don’t have penises. Linda Bellos and Venice Allen facing private prosecution for “offensive” (really not) speech.

FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast · 28/08/2018 15:29

Errol - that is great - you must be so proud of her x

AsAProfessionalFekko · 28/08/2018 16:49

I'm just going to get 2 nice badges made up - 'witch' and 'bitch'. Both perfecly accurate.

Lacypants · 28/08/2018 17:37

I have the misfortune to be assumed to be One Of Them as my hair is Very Green. I'll take witch/bitch badges pls. My pronouns are witch/bitch Grin

AsAProfessionalFekko · 28/08/2018 17:52

'One of Them' I like that. But only if I can also have a 'One of Us' one too.

Lacypants · 28/08/2018 18:10

I went to a women's place event and there were some women meeting attendees who were arriving on public transport to accompany them past the half dozen protesters and when I got off the bus they were like "are you here for the meeting" and I said yes, then they looked at me again and went "are you here to protest or attend" Grin

I then got a bus home with all six protesters.

sociopathsunited · 28/08/2018 18:17

How did that journey go, Lacypants?

Lacypants · 28/08/2018 19:54

Uneventfully. They made a show of ignoring me and talked about snacks a lot. But everything they talked about was Literally The Best or Literally The Worst. They Literally Will Never Not Think About a variety of mundane occurances.

Suddenly the Literal Violence and Literal Murder made sense. The hyperbole was unreal.

There was literally no vegan option in the pub the went to the night before. They thought they were going to literally starve. I literally couldn't stop rolling my eyes.

annandale · 28/08/2018 20:00

Literally no chips?? OMD.

AsAProfessionalFekko · 28/08/2018 20:00

I would have literally laughed my arse off.

howonearthdidwegethere · 29/08/2018 10:35

Edinburgh: once a great city at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Now a hotbed of stupid.

CarolDanvers · 29/08/2018 10:37

There's a Sky poll on Twitter at the moment about this. Fortunately 98% of respondents think it's a complete waste of time. There's still hope.