Line Manager just "come out" as Non-binary

[SpinningTooFastWantToGetOff]

My line-manager emailed everyone in the office last week to say she was non-binary and we should use they/them pro-nouns.
Today I inadvertently called her she in an email to a colleague in another office, but line-manager was copied in, plus her line-manager. Are you keeping up?
My line-manager responded to the email and added at the bottom a reminder about her pro-nouns.
I do not believe in the gender identity ideology and so object to being told to speak in an unnatural and incorrect way, but what I am incandescent about is being called out in front of 2 other colleagues.
Am I over reacting?

👏🏼

statsgeek, I do appreciate you engaging here.

We're all square and 74NewStreet, severally:

If you look back and RTFT you'll see that my earlier post on this thread deals squarely with the point I've 'missed'.

And yes, I do think it possible that not everyone sees the usefulness of the passive construction in this context, hence the post. If you know all this already, you're perfectly at liberty to ignore, scroll on by and leave it to those who might find it useful. Several PPs had commented that pronouns were impossible to avoid: they're not; it's quite easy but it is a grammatical trick that was clearly not known to all.

It is now.

I actually don't have any strong feelings on using different pronouns if someone wants me to, or even calling them "your highness" if it really matters to them. But the whole thing IS kind of illogical and circular.

The more people who request specific pronouns that don't match their sex, the more difficult it will be to remember how to refer to everyone. Then the whole thing becomes a mess and nobody remembers any of it, so the obvious solution becomes to just use the exact same pronouns for everyone. An entirely neutral set of pronouns with no meaning attached. That would require a major language change though.

I sometimes use passive voice in posts here to avoid the 'mis gender' or mis-sex choice. As a scientist, I was taught to write that way (although nowadays it's fallen out of favour, most journals style guidelines recommend active voice). But even for me it adds mental load, and can often come across as stilted.

Which toilet is LM going to use at work do you think? As a non binary person who doesn't identify as male of female does LM now identify as disabled to use the toilet facilities of a group of people who have a protected characteristic, or is LM going to use the one designated for the sex LM actually is. I'd be watching if I was you OP.

And 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 to Barracker as ever.

@Findumdum1 Do you call every opinion that doesn't match yours an agenda?

Please tell me my agenda, since you seem to know what you, and everybody else, can see?

I don't see it. My point is that everybody has a right to ask to be called whatever they want, as long as no threats are made. It's up to others whether they choose to respect it. Where's your problem with that?

so some perhaps found it difficult to let go of the past

But the GC view would be that they are very much reading the present.

What a pleasure it is to read such incisive posts from Barracker . Thank you for your clarity and wisdom - and for consistently centring women

Spot on Barracker well said.
Op- just use her name every single time. No pronouns just Ms Jones said, Ms Jones would like etc.

Barracker 👏🏼 👏🏼👏🏼 👏🏼

@Findumdum1 Do you call every opinion that doesn't match yours an agenda?

No, but I think all the people who come on the MN FWR boards and say oh women, just be kind, be nice, what does it cost you? Don't make a fuss, it's fine, don't worry about MRAs invading female spaces, definitely have an agenda. I won't bother reiterating what that is as many, many clever women have already done so, many, many times before.

OK. But bare in mind that many other clever people have also opposed them. Also, I didn't say any of those things.

My 13 yo has just come back from a day at a debating competition at Imperial College. They all had to say their pronouns first. So angry with this shit. Stop brainwashing my child

*bear, sorry. Always mix those up.

My 13 yo has just come back from a day at a debating competition at Imperial College. They all had to say their pronouns first.

Because teenagers really need to be misled and lied to, when they're at the most confusing stage of their lives, don't they?

Words fail me, Binterested. Except ones that would get the police on me to "check my thinking", and I have plenty of those.

To make matters worse she just mentioned that there was a weird man at the bus stop this morning who was trying to talk to her - she kept walking away and he kept following her. Fortunately another man at the bus stop told him to lay off and he walked off.

She only mentioned this in passing just now because it’s not the first time. She had a similar incident a couple of years ago and was flashed at last year on her way to school.

This is what teenage girls already deal with. I am so angry. You can bet all those weirdos knew her effing pronouns

everybody has a right to ask to be called whatever they want.... It's up to others whether they choose to respect it. Where's your problem with that?

Eckhart, no, it's not up to us. That is exactly the problem. We do not have a free choice about whether to call men "she" or women "he" or whatever they order us to call them.

If we choose not to obey, we could, like Kate Scottow, be arrested. Or, like Harry Miller, be told by the police that we do not have that right. Or like Maya Forstater, lose our jobs, and then be told by a judge that our beliefs are not worthy of respect.

If we can't afford to lose our jobs, reduce our employability or be arrested, it is not up to us what we 'choose'.

There's a sort of grim irony in all this, Binterested. The sex predators who are being given free access to women's changing rooms etc are, as you say, perfectly well aware of our sex and their own!

Yes, disrespect doesn't go down well.

@Binterested that would have had me marching up to the organisers asking why the hell they were goosing gender politics crap on a load of children - when back in the real world creepy guys were chasing little girls (and boys too). So stop messing with the children’s heads and get real.

Yes, disrespect doesn't go down well.

Funny that, since disrespect towards women, in particular, seems to be very acceptable. Isn’t it strange how the woke brigade, demand respect but refuse to give it. Respect should be earned and not demanded.

Was that in response to Thinkingaboutit’s post, Erkhart?
“Yes, disrespect doesn’t go down well”?

@74NewStreet You refuse to answer my questions but continue to ask them of me, and then consider yourself to be arguing in the cause of 'respect'.

It certainly should, TotallyFuckedUp