How Mumsnet ruined a Saturday ritual for me......

[MrsSnippyPants]

A tongue in cheek title

I head out to the market pretty early on a Saturday, get the weekend groceries and the Saturday Times, along with the one of the finest brownies in the south west of England (and probably the world).
Once I have got Saturday night dinner on the go I like to sit in the kitchen and read the paper with a glass of wine.
Unfortunately, before I had even finished my glass, the paper got thrown across the room, because in the first ten minutes I had come across three articles that either used ‘gender’ when they clearly meant sex, or used ‘people’ or ‘children’ when they clearly meant women or girls.
I shall email them tomorrow (it won’t be the first time) but in the meantime, why can’t I have anything nice anymore!?

Sorry Snippy. All leave is cancelled until we've sorted this mess out.

I can relate to that! This board has been responsible for killing the joy in many of the things I used to enjoy

I find that lots of wine helps.

think will be tough for the duration

This board taught me that some people are really not nice and that it’s a dog eat dog world out there!

Sorry MrsSP, it's not a happy place to be in. Strong coffee and amazing women friends are what keep me on the straight and narrow.

I have quite a nice time shouting out “sex” when I see the word gender used incorrectly.

It’s beginning to irritate my DC.

“Can you stop saying sex mummy?”

Yup my son said something to me and mentioned the word gender I told him a, you mean sex because b, sex is what is observed at birth and gender is how you feel and can change

He asked me at the end so mam I'm still a boy right? And your still a girl? What are the cats classed as because we had some um bits chopped off and? 😂🤦‍♀️ nothing vital was removed in the making of eunuchs

This site has made me feel bad for using a loo brush.

helps

Just to be clear that’s in the fight against the patriarchy - not for cleaning the loo.

I blame FWR for no longer being able to watch films/TV without noticing the massive imbalances in male/ female roles and the number of them that use violence against women as plot development for male characters.

I crossed out gender on my speeding ticket notification and wrote sex, I also changed my Hospital notes, they had written gender Female I crossed that out and wrote sex.
Once you notice it you can't unsee it.
I mutter it's sex not gender a lot when reading any article. DH is used to me now

DH and I were both doing a small DIY job in the kitchen earlier.

There was a knock at the front door.

We are rural and live up a farm track so rarely get passers-by. All family, friends and neighbours use the back door so for someone to knock at the front door means that it is a stranger.

My immediate thought was police. Come to arrest me for wrongthink.

DH's immediate thought was police. Come to arrest me for wrongthink.

As I went to answer the front door, DH hissed "Grab your phone and record the conversation".

So I answered the door with the phone set to record in my cardie pocket. DH lurking in the background.

It was some random fella out for a walk who had noticed our car lights left on in the driveway and knocked to tell us about it.

Shouting out "Sex!" at seemingly random moments whilst sat in your armchair is very much Father Jack behaviour.

Milly, this is me watching the BBC these days.

Along similar lines, now whenever I turn my phone towards DH he simply says "man!" without even looking up from his paper to look at the picture.

In Britain we do not like to say or print in newspapers an awfully rude word like “s*x” (gasp – quick, hold your hands over the 14 year olds’ ears in case they think of rumpy-pumpy – as if they weren’t thinking of it already) so we say ‘gender’ instead and then pretend it’s all the same thing. And it really isn’t. Hence 9/10 of the confusion, I’m sure.

If we’d been able to say to young children “Your sex means your chromosomes and your genitalia” – another rude word – “and it is immutable and biological; but while being of the male sex you can like pink or dolls, and being of the female sex you can like trucks and climbing trees all you like” without the shock-horror over the three-letter S-word and its other meaning of rumpy-pumpy, I daresay so much of this would have gone away.

Instead girls who like climbing trees say "My gender must be male - and s*x is the same as gender - so I must be a boy!"

I wonder how much of this is down to language? Does anyone know of non-English speaking countries where sex doesn’t have two meanings? Or indeed where things (nouns etc) are divided between feminine and masculine (which AIU English is rare in not doing)?

Once you open that box there’s just no closing it again. You see it everywhere. Sometimes wonder if I might be turning into a joy vacuum.

It's Pandora's bloody box. I emailed a company during the week asking what bearing the gender of the product had on the bearing of my purchase (compulsory marketing questions) since the sex of the user was irrelevant. I got back a bemused reply.

However, since I can no longer watch TV without getting cross (inside out being an exception this afternoon with the dc) I've spent a lovely evening drinking wine while reading a book written by a women with two female leads (girl and woman - both fragile but ultimately each other's saviour) and two significantly flawed but very human secondary female characters. If only dh wasn't snoring upstairs it would be the perfect evening

DH has kindly recorded lots of stuff for me on the Betamax... it's everything to do with gender. Looks like he has been flicking through the radio times regularly for months...the bloody hard drive is nearly full.
He got very upset when I pressed the Delete all button ....he says he thought I would be interested in it
Bless him
Told him to not worry his pretty little man brain and go back to cooking my kippers

Popchyk

I know what you mean, DH has said to me a number of times "you better not say anything that brings the police to the door" - and it's shocking how little you have to say to bring them these days.

"Women don't have penises" has been enough for more than one woman to be expelled from political parties...

I was born a pedant, so I've been doing this for a while. I thought I was doing it under my breath - not always it would seem, judging my the amount of neck snapping that went on in a certain coffee shop last week.

I'm going again tomorrow. I may pass a hat round when I'm reading the paper.

This is to stop people writing “yes please”

Ladies I bring you a gem from my own life, a couple of years ago now.

I dropped a bit of lettice and the cat ate it, I remarked that cats' don't normally eat salad and my carer responded with, "Maybe she self IDs as a rabbit"

This lead to a conversation about possible songs or album titles, including, "don't mis species me"