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?
Ah Hedge. Women’s rights. Who cares anyway, amirite? Unless the “women” have a penis, of course! SUPER important they have their rights then!
But let’s just imagine you do actually want to educate yourself about this.
So. There’s what NotBadConsidering said:
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.
I do not share the irrational, misogynist belief that men who identify as women actually are women. You would compel me to act as if I do, because the feelings of the man who identifies as a woman are more important than my feelings. That’s sexism 101, female (and male) socialisation in all its glory - and bugger all to do with equality. So my rights to my beliefs have already been taken away.
A religious equivalent would be to demand that non-Muslims utter the words “peace be upon him” after any mention of the prophet Mohammed. In an environment where the prophet Mohammed was regularly and routinely referred to. Nobody expects this as it would be an obvious infringement of people’s rights to their own religious beliefs or lack thereof. Having to refer to people we categorically KNOW to be male as if they were female would be exactly the same infringement of our rights as compelling non-Muslims to use terms like PBUH, or non-Catholics to make the sign of the cross, etc etc. It’s a sign that you believe in and agree with the ideology, which those who don’t believe should be free from any obligation to do.
Then, as NotBad, also said, there’s the question of where pronoun usage leads to. Language is powerful. TRAs know this, otherwise why would they (oh alright, you, Hedge!) be so invested in controlling the language of everyone around them? If we agree that Dave from accounts is actually Danielle and refer to him as “she”, then it becomes easier for Dave/Danielle to demand access to the women’s toilets, and harder for women who aren’t ok with that to deny him.
It may be particularly hard for women who aren’t really comfortable with it but can’t articulate why, whose instinct, as a result of female socialisation, is to want to “be kind” to Dave/Danielle, but yet who aren’t in their heart of hearts happy at the idea. These women will have been on “equality and diversity” trainings organised/led by someone like Hedge and will have been told that their discomfort is a sign of their unattractive bigotry, which should be rooted out. They may feel ashamed of their true feelings and that they must hide them at all costs. Meanwhile, other women are also feeling uncomfortable but because the prevailing doctrine in the workplace is “TWAW”, no one dares say anything. And of course as well as the bearing the internalised, misplaced shame, women actually fear disciplinary action or losing their jobs if they speak out.
In the context of the historical suppression of women’s voices, the social pressure placed on women to be kind, to think of others first, the weight of guilt and shame that is still placed on women in all sorts of ways, the still widespread notion (whether conscious or unconscious) that males, not females, are the default humans - this is a very serious breach of women’s rights.
Add in the truly shocking prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual violence against women and the need for single sex spaces that are truly single sex becomes even more pressing. Whether Dave/Danielle is himself a predator or not, giving him permission to be in what was formerly a single sex space makes it easier for any male who is a predator to also gain access to those spaces. Even if Dave/Danielle has no predatory intentions whatsoever, and not even a hint of AGP (unlikely, I know, but let’s imagine), his presence in a space that women could traditionally rely on to be male-free could still be triggering and traumatising for someone who has suffered male sexual assault.
And it’s not just the toilets, is it? Perhaps there are showers at work and communal changing rooms. If Dave/Danielle now has access to the women’s toilets, it’s that much harder to deny him access to other single sex spaces. Or to programmes aimed at redressing the inequality between the sexes. So Kevin/Kathy in IT, who has was not socialised as a female, who has forged his career with all the benefits of male privilege, with none of the disadvantage of being perceived as female, none of the discrimination around his childbearing potential, who has never faced the challenge of being the only female in a male dominated environment, never had to cope with everyday sexism in his life and work - Kevin/Kathy is now entitled to a place on the Women in STEM programme. Or a place in the networks set up by and for women to support each other, to combat their specific disadvantage, meaning that those networks now have to accommodate someone with a very different type of life experience.
And given the reality of female and male socialisation, the likelihood is (and this is borne out by many stories I have heard from those who have experienced just this) that the network will become massively about Kevin/Kathy, at the expense of the women involved. The focus will shift to him and his issues. Women will set their own needs aside in deference to his. And it is certain that this will no longer be a women only space, the dynamic will have shifted for ever.
Dave/Danielle and Kevin/Kathy are of course now too eligible for awards intended to highlight women’s achievements. Like Pips Bunce, they can be ”recognised” and honoured for having contributed to women’s advancement, despite the fact that the reality of their achievements has only been to further disadvantage women, to further perpetuate entrenched stereotypes, to invade women’s networks, to block an actual woman from receiving the award that has gone to them instead. Just as sportswomen are being denied places in the podium, winners’ medals, college scholarships because men and boys who identify as women and girls are taking the places that were meant for them, the actual women and girls.
The idea that it’s “only” pronouns is a myth. Even if it were “only pronouns” it is still an infringement of women’s rights in a supposedly free society, but it never is “only” pronouns.
And fundamentally it’s about making women collude in their own oppression. Transactivist ideology is at root misogynistic. It rigidly reinforces sex stereotypes, propagates the myth of the pink lady brain and the blue man brain, reduces people to conformity with outdated, offensive ideas of men’s roles and women’s roles.
Transactivism seeks to remove women’s much needed boundaries, in a world where we are still (and always will be, in physical terms at least) the more vulnerable sex, and deny us the autonomy that we have fought so long and hard for and only relatively recently started to gain.
The issue of “preferred pronouns” is a part of this misogynistic removal of women’s boundaries and autonomy, and forcing women to use pronouns we know are false is forcing us to enable a system that is attacking us and our rights.
To come back to the religion analogy, it’s much as if we were living under a fundamentalist religion which was very clear and overt about women being the second sex (as they usually are) and we had to continually show by some physical or verbal sign that we subscribed to our own oppression. It’s not that hard a leap; it’s still reality in many parts of the world today.
I know it’s already been linked but Barracker’s peerless Pronouns are Rohypnol piece is always, always worth looking at again:
fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
So, Hedge, now you know exactly in what ways women’s rights are being erased, can you tell me exactly why it is women’s rights are so unimportant and irrelevant to you?
I’ll wait.