Can someone please help me out with pronouns

[Lollygaggles]

So how do I stand in terms of the current legislation, if I refer to a person by the pronouns of their birth, rather than their preferred pronouns?

Would it be compelled speech to be forced to collude with a belief that I do not accept? Also, how does my freedom not to be discriminated against because of my beliefs ( ie that people can't change sex) play out against the protections of Gender Reassignment and the trans person's rights as a legal member of the opposite sex ( though not a biological one.)

Would I be acting in a discriminatory way under the EA by referring to a person as their birth sex, when they have transitioned?

I want to be able to articulate my position very clearly, with reference to the law, but I don't actually know where we are as the law stands on competing rights.

Can anyone help me unpick it please?

HedgeWitch79

And if they are AGP as per my question above?

Not particularly professional, and not particularly interested in answering my question it would seem

The actual neutral choice here is to accept pronouns can reflect gender as well as sex.

That is absolutely not a neutral position. Gender, aka sex role stereotypes, are about the least neutral most toxic thing imaginable.

Replacing sex with gender is like replacing modern medicine with prayers. Believing it yourself is foolish but demanding that others share your beliefs is inexcusable.

if you're using the wrong pronouns for someone - for example, referring to a transwoman as "he"

How would they know? Who’s telling them?

you are actively and repeatedly asserting your rejection of their identity every single time you refer to them.

Yes that is correct. I do not believe a man can be a woman. Why is it my job to validate that belief for them? Why is my belief - one that is scientifically accurate - not being validated instead?

I think there's a great deal of people here who really have their head in the sands as to how it looks and feels to have someone do that to you.

I don’t have my head in the sand. I just don’t care how it looks. What’s the right “look”? Who does it need to look good for? Who are we meant to be impressing with such falsehoods? And as I said, it it makes people feel negative that other people are talking about them in a way they don’t like, maybe their therapy could focus on this dependence on external validation submission that will never be fully coming.

It's absolute ridiculous hyperbole to describe a requirement to be polite to a colleague as "compelled speech". Is it "compelled speech" if your boss asks you stop calling your co-worker a dingbat? Is it "compelled speech" that you're not allowed to tell an annoying client to eff off? Is it compelled speech to have to say "Have a nice day" to a customer when actually you hope they step on lego? There are countless situations in the workplace where you can't just say exactly what you want or exactly what you think. It's not "compelled speech", it's just a fact of being an adult in a professional setting that you have to be polite and respectful to the people around you - yes, sometimes even when you don't mean it or don't want to.

The actual neutral choice here is to accept pronouns can reflect gender as well as sex.

That's not asking you to change your beliefs about biological sex

In what way do pronouns reflect 'the roles, behaviours, activities, attributes and opportunities that any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, and women and men.' (World Health Organization's definition)?

Personally, I find the idea that that female oppression across the centuries due to 'gender' was actually not about sex and instead about behaviours, activities and attributes to be pretty fucking offensive.

Whoops, I swore. How very unladylike of me...

The Jewish person analogy is just bullshit. Nothing about how or what Jewish Dave changes how I would refer to him in conversation. I wouldn’t add Dave-who-is-Jewish-which-I-think-is-nonsense because it’s unnecessary. I can’t talk about anyone without using a pronoun though. A more relevant analogy would be if Dave himself insisted that he be referred to as “Dave-who-is-right-about-religion” and insisted everyone else be referred to as “the unbelievers”.

The actual neutral choice here is to accept pronouns can reflect gender as well as sex

This is not a neutral choice and you know it

HedgeWitch79

Any chance you could answer my question about AGP.

Datun, I'm not answering your question because the very basis of it is nonsense. AGP as a diagnosis has about as much credibility as the notion that vaccines cause autism - ie none. It's a flawed concept based on weak evidence, has been thoroughly debunked, does not appear in any modern medical journal, and is not considered to have any modern relevance to the diagnosis or treatment of gender dysphoria.

You seem a bit emotionally invested in this for an HR person, Hedgewitch. Not very professional, that.

Yes indeed. Very emotionally invested. Interesting.

Totes hilair to see Hedge accusing others (me 😂) of “absolute ridiculous hyperbole”. You’re not much acquainted with the concept of irony, are you, Hedge?

And still no answer as to why Hedge doesn’t think women deserve equality and non-hostile environments in Hedge’s equal and diverse world.

It's absolute ridiculous hyperbole to describe a requirement to be polite to a colleague as "compelled speech".

We have gone from being polite to strangers to being polite to colleagues by submitting to their dominance displays.

That word you keep using, polite, does not mean what you think it means.

Stonewall includes AGP under the transgender umbrella.

There are countless situations in the workplace where you can't just say exactly what you want or exactly what you think. It's not "compelled speech”

Yes it is. It’s merely a case of whether you’re willing to agree with it to keep your job. It’s up to individual companies to decide on how much of their employees speech they want to control and each employee has the right to agree or disagree with it.

But compelled use of pronouns is part of a wider issue of the dismantling of women’s rights, so it’s not just a benign “be nice to the customers” policy. It’s about being compelled to speak an untruth, regardless of how that impacts a person. Whether someone is a dingbat or not is an opinion. Whether someone is male or female is not.

HedgeWitch79

Got it. (And my sister owes me a tenner) 🤣

The problem with that, Hedge is very many transwomen are quite open about having AGP. Plus transvestism comes under the stonewall definition of a transwoman. Talk about denying a transgender identity! Tut.

As equality and diversity officer, I don't suppose your superiors will be very pleased with your rampant transphobia and outright erasure of an entire cohort of transwomen in one fell swoop.

TalktoLang, can you name any actual concrete way in which any legal right a woman holds is infringed upon by asking her to refer to a trans colleague by their preferred pronoun?

Oh, are we doing the "there's no such thing as agp" thing again?

Oh, are we doing the "there's no such thing as agp" thing again?

Indeed. It's utterly embarrassing, given it's plastered across the Internet from one end to the other.

But, I think we all knew it was about to be denied. Avoiding the question is the first tactic. But I keep asking. And of course, the answer will be complete denial. Despite the three threads here running to 1000 posts each about transwidows and their experience of AGP.

Datun, I'm not answering your question because the very basis of it is nonsense.

Damn, you're all so much better at this than I am.

I almost believed it this time.

can you name any actual concrete way in which any legal right a woman holds is infringed upon by asking her to refer to a trans colleague by their preferred pronoun?

Meetings to discuss single sex spaces at work. Women are entitled, under the Equality Act, to single sex spaces. If a male wants to enter them at a workplace, it is imperative that that person is referred to as male - either with the word male or with “he” - in order to point out that he does not belong in the single sex spaces. If throughout such a discussion the male person is referred to as a woman and “she” then a clear discussion about legal entitlements are muddied.

To discuss such an issue without referring to a person’s maleness would be extremely bizarre.

Damn, you're all so much better at this than I am.

It's like poker dick. The tells are always, always there. Instantly and startlingly clear. They're like a klaxon.

The dismissal of AGP was even more emotional. Again, interesting.

BTW, hi, Tyro, don't think I've seen you in a while!

Indeed kittens.

So as equality and diversity officer, hedge presumably would tell women that they must use female pronouns for a man with AGP, despite him becoming aroused by it.

By dint of the fact that for some unknown reason, hedge does not think it exists, which is contrary to everyone in the real world.

There are some men who're aroused by humiliation. Am I legally required to say humiliating things to them during Zoom meetings?

TalktoLang, can you name any actual concrete way in which any legal right a woman holds is infringed upon by asking her to refer to a trans colleague by their preferred pronoun?

Like Maria Maclan you mean, who was forced to commit perjury by a judge, who claimed she must use female pronouns in court for the transwoman who battered her.