AIBU to refuse to use 'preferred pronouns'?

[BonBonns]

If someone presents themselves as transgender and says they want to be known as 'she' do I have to do that?

Do I have no freedom of speech?

I do not believe people can change sex.

I do not believe that a man can become a woman. With pronoun use. With hormones. With dresses or lipstick. With surgery.

It is just NOT my personal belief.

Is it a hate crime to refer to someone born male as a man against their will?

Even if it is against mine?

Where would that end?

I am atheist. Do I have to say I believe in God to appease a Catholic? Am I forced to refer to a priest as 'Father' even though I don't follow that religion?

If someone is called David but wants to be called Dave am I to be investigated if I choose to continue using David?

Isn't this madness?

How can my own beliefs come 2nd to someone else's delusions?

It is biology. It is science. It is common sense.

A man cannot become a woman any more than I can become 23 again or an antelope.

Well done MoseShrute. Considering the abuse and gaslighting that women receive in work, I think that’s extremely brave of you.

You don't have to call them by their pronouns. I probably would out of manners, but people don't have a right to insist that you must.

it doesn’t cost me anything to be polite.

Ultimately I believe it does cost us.

ellastellabella, what you have actually done is to illustrate the effects of lying to school students about the rate of suicide among gender dysphoric children. Stonewall and Mermaids are the main culprits.

It's not your fault you believed the lies. We teach kids to believe what they're taught at school. But it's shocking that your generation is being lied to in the service of what is essentially a men's sexual rights movement.

If you do care about women, as you say, you need to check out whether what you've been taught is true. Read the links people have provided.

But if you continue to make personal attacks you'll find yourself banned in short order.

So can someone who thinks we should be ‘nice’ 🤢 and use false pronouns, tell my how I explain to my, black and white thinking, SNs daughter, that the man should be referred to as she? It’s taken me years to help her understand pronouns but now I have to tell her that she not a ‘nice’ person for refusing to lie. Away to fuck.

The young people I know are either gender critical or just think the whole thing is bollocks. The only one who says TWAW is immensely privileged and plays women's rugby. As her exasperated DF says, if a transwoman turns up to play opposite her she'll soon change her tune.

Or indeed, turns up to play for the same team and takes her spot.

Well, quite, Betty.

Oh I implied that she wouldn't get any sex, how misogynistic of me.

No, you called a name using a sex-based insult ( you would probably refer to it as a gender-based insult )

I don’t understand the supposed hurtful and rude aspect as you don’t use a pronoun when addressing someone, so you aren’t being rude to them at all.

Just call everyone comrade and move on.

Males are not women and never will be. I would never refer to a male as a woman or use female pronouns for him. I find it offensive when others refer to men as women and use female pronouns for them. No one seems to give a damn about how that offends women though. No one tells these men how they should be nice and stop offending women by calling themselves women and using female pronouns, if they did we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Also men who have autogynephillia get sexually turned on by getting others to use female pronouns for them. I am not going to be a part of a male’s sexual fetish by referring to him by female pronouns.

Each time a person refers to a male by the wrong pronouns for his sex they are reinforcing the ideology of transgenderism, which is a deeply sexist and homophobic ideology. If others choose to refer to males by female pronouns in order to be considered ‘nice’ an ‘polite’, they are further entrenching the transgender ideology. Not a wise move unless you are happy for transgender ideology to become even more entrenched.

I'm not surprised that ellastellabella is school-aged. I'm sure that they mean well in their stated position, and clearly have been horrifically badly informed.
I'm disappointed they're unable to own their cruel and inaccurate usage of intersex people as a hypocritical attempt at a gotcha, however. That, to me, is unkind and offensive.
@ellastellabella here are some actual stats on suicide from a variety of studies globally. Please read and inform yourself, and in the future never rely on statistics from one biased source only.
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-012-0013-9
Although LGBT youth have not been found to be over-represented in deaths by suicide, at least 16 studies of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth have reported high rates of suicide attempts, ranging from 20 to 53 %. Among studies with rigorous school-based sampling designs, all found significantly more suicidal ideation and/or attempts among LGB students than heterosexual peers. The pattern of results showing differences by sexual orientation in suicide attempts, but not deaths by suicide, may reflect the methodological limitations of performing psychological autopsy studies, a tendency to over-report attempts among LGBT youth, or that LGBT youth may, in fact, be more likely to engage in non-lethal suicide attempt behaviors.
Most studies on suicidality in transgender individuals have focused on those seeking sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy. However, Grossman and D’Augelli (2007) found lifetime rates of attempted suicide among transgender youth to be around 25 %. Among transgender people of color, risk for suicidal it maybe higher in youth than in older individuals. Higher rates of attempts and death by suicide have also been found in transgender than heterosexual individuals.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2011.534038?scroll=top&needAccess=true#
Suicide attempt rates ranging from 19 to 25% have also been reported among clinical samples of transgender individuals seeking surgical gender reassignment. More recent data from nonrandom surveys of self-identified transgender people found that up to one third of respondents report making one or more lifetime suicide attempts. Suicide attempts appear to occur more frequently among transgender adolescents and young adults than among older age groups.

www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/siecno-20130200/
Of the female participants, 20.5% of bi-/homosexual students reported suicide attempts, compared to 14.5% of heterosexual female students. Of the male participants, 28.1% of bi-/homosexual students reported suicide attempts, as opposed to the 4.2% of heterosexual males within the study.

Also, this page has a great collation of studies across Europe on LGB and also some T suicide rates, attempts, and ideation.
people.ucalgary.ca/~ramsay/gay-lesbian-bisexual-suicide-studies-europe.htm
From a quick skim, it seems that lesbians have the highest rates of suicide attempts, going up to 36% based on my quick look, and rates of suicidal ideation of up to 55% in the past year.

Also, @ellastellabella, I don't have to pass "ill founded and bigoted behaviours" on to my children. They're perfectly capable themselves of recognising that sex can't change, and that gender is silly stereotyping crap.
It is childish and misogynistic to immediately jump straight to "you're ugly and no one wants to have sex with you" when a person disagrees with you, however.
Even if that were true, it would have nothing to do with the veracity of the person's argument.

I'm with you, Stopthisnow. Being nice is what got us into the mess we face now.

Every so often I get the rage at the appalling arrogance of those men who see womanhood as a sexually arousing costume they are entitled to put on at will.

They don't see us as fully human. They can't, or they'd recognize that putting on womanface is as crass and appropriative as blackface.

Yes, there is a tiny group of genuinely dysphoric vulnerable transwomen but these days there are far more cross dressers and fetishists under Stonewall's umbrella. Not to mention those who bully young lesbians into considering them as sexual partners.

These misogynists say TWAW but they don't believe it. They consider themselves far more important than us lowly bleeders.

Also EllaStellaBella, could you explain what is wrong with being so ugly that no one wants to have sex with you?

Why is being ugly a terrible thing? What is wrong with being ugly? Is it a moral failing? Why do you associate it with something negative?

If somebody is so ugly that no one wants to have sex with them, I'm wondering how you imagine they feel about that.

Perhaps they don't care? So why would you try and make something about which they don't care, an insult? What's the point?

Perhaps they do care and are very sad about it. Why would you want to taunt them then? When you're so in favour of being kind?

You do realise that women get told off for laughing at non-passing transwomen (ie males who identify as women) don't you? It's considered really not nice, horrid and cruel, to notice that someone male who believes he looks like a sexy woman, looks perfectly dreadful.

Would you laugh at a transwoman who didn't pass, who no one wants to sleep with? I bet you wouldn't, because that's a taboo women aren't allowed to break (though men are viciously cruel about non passing transwomen ).

I'd like to invite you to consider why in general, our society considers it beyond the pale for women and girls to taunt and ridicule ugly men, while it's par for the course to taunt and ridicule ugly women.

A few things for you to go away and think about. You could write an essay about it if you want.

"The correct response to female ugliness is ridicule while the correct response to male ugliness is to laud a man as brave and stunning." Discuss.

I don't know why you're so hung up about this, op. Of course no--one can change their biological sex. That's a fact. People can, of course change their appearance to look like the opposite sex and call themselves a different name accordingly, which I respect, but they are still the same sex they were born with whatever they are called - and regardless of any surgery/treatment they may have had or do have.

How often do you actually encounter problems associated with this issue in Real Life? I bet not many.

I agree with everything you believe but out of respect I would probably use their preferred pronouns. Unless they aren’t respectful to my view, I tend to mostly use neutral though to be honest.

This IS the future and giving people the confidence to be themselves is important.
This is the present. Tomorrow is the future. Until tomorrow becomes today and then it's the present, and today becomes yesterday and then it's the past. The current year meme is old. Also, I don't have to give anyone confidence, I'm not a life coach or a therapist. If they want to be themselves they will be, if they want to be someone else well, they'll still be themselves because "being yourself" is also just fluff. Mainly because you can't be anyone else.
No one has gotten anywhere by being divisive and prejudiced, acceptance, or at the most tolerance is key. Gotten?
Actually divisive and prejudiced societies have done pretty well over the course of history, I am not in favour of living in one but to argue that nobody ever got anywhere by being mean is simply untrue.
So even leaving out the sentence about people's children, this particular post was top bait. I reckon the GoadyBot v2.17 couldn't beat it.

"The correct response to female ugliness is ridicule while the correct response to male ugliness is to laud a man as brave and stunning." Discuss.

Oh I love that. That should be a compulsory essay to write for every single student across the globe.

What a shame our young visitor has gone, I was going to ask her in what way telling someone they're unfuckable is "kind".

She/he also used a slur starting with c ( no not the banned 3 letter word ).

What three letter word with c is banned? Cat?

Join the third and fourth last words of your post deep /cryptic