BBC Bitsize - Pronouns

[OhHolyJesus]

I mean I'm not surprised but Bitesize is used by schools through the country as a supposed reliable, unbiased source of education material.

mobile.twitter.com/SafeSchools_UK/status/1319025713475952641?fbclid=IwAR0rTBD2j5PKOeTKvYSSX90c4RUDmJDo7Zg613qnDBXNaAncv3J8epYWLSQ

You can complain here:

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint

Or email your MP and cc MPs Safe Schools Alliance on info@safeschoolsallianceuk.

In the tweet thread there are some people already complaining. I'm not a defund the BBC kind of person but I can see why license fee layers are questioning what the BBC are doing with their money (there is a website 'BBC complaints' that's all about biased Brexit coverage).

That's such insane hubris it actually makes me feel sad for you. There are 8 billion people on this planet. Every single one of them knows what a woman is. That you have convinced a tiny fraction of maybe as much as a tenth of a percent of those people to deny what they know to be true is really not a battle won.

You've been going at this what 4/5 years now? During that time we've had one of the most right wing Tory cabinets in living memory, Trump in the Whitehouse, Putin in the Kremlin, almost the entire national media on your side from Murdoch to the Morning Star, you've got billionaires, barristers and baronesses, admittedly mostly washed up celebrities galore, factions in all the main political parties, everyone from Evangelicals to militant trade unionists, a solid flow of cash and what's been achieved? The government recently announced they are making it easier to change your legal sex. If that's the best you can do with the wind in your sails then victory seems far from assured I'm afraid.

If that's the best you can do with the wind in your sails then victory seems far from assured I'm afraid.

You make this sound like a war. Why can't you just be kind?

What is it about womanhood that you identify with jj? You don't seem to like women very much.

I don't think you read my post properly. 8 billion people. It's incredibly parochial to end a response to that with 'the Government...'

But also if something is true it's just true. So it wouldn't really matter whether people believed it. If you wanted to make a puppy and you had a dog you'd still need a female dog. I get that life can be a bitch but let's not pretend we can alter reality to suit our desires.

4/5 years? No, I’ve been actively engaged in feminism for about thirty years.

oldcrone

But also if something is true it's just true

Ah but truth and reality are just constructs...

@EvenSupposing

Except that this person has a diagnosis of autism. Do you actually have any empathy? Under the 'be kind' mantra?

A diagnosis of autism does not give people a licence to behave abusively to people in the street. If the nature of his condition and resultant behavourial difficulties led to this incident then I would of course hope and expect the court to take that into account via either mitigating a sentence or finding a verdict of not guilty. That's not what happened. Of course the court may have got it wrong, but there is certainly no need to assume they did based on the fact he's autistic. In fact it is somewhat offensive to suggest that a diagnosis of autism automatically means that people are likely to behave in an anti-social way or have no control over their behaviour.

Gaslighting is a firm of abuse too

@Whatwouldscullydo

Gaslighting is a firm of abuse too

Indeed it is, but I haven't seen anyone on this thread attempt to convince someone they have a mental health condition to manipulate and abuse them, have you?

I'd say lying to kids about their sexed bodies and demolishing their boundries qualifies...

In fact it is somewhat offensive to suggest that a diagnosis of autism automatically means that people are likely to behave in an anti-social way or have no control over their behaviour.

It would absolutely be, if I had said that.

This debate is full of examples of neurodiverse people finding these multitudinous yet simple ()pronouns absolutely unmanageable. Rather than a 'I said you said' about this case why don't you respond to those concerns? How can you reassure neurodiverse people and those with neurodiverse children that they can communicate effectively - and safely - in this Brave New World of exciting pronouns?

He didn't go up to him and ask politely did he? I've had people shout crap like that at me in the street before. It's not very nice as it's intended to draw attention to someone and humiliate them. It's bullying basically. I doubt I'd have much luck getting a prosecution but then I'm not a copper. But if you think this was just some poor confused autistic child politely asking an innocent question then I suggest you are somewhat naive. That's certainly not what the courts found as the verdict means intent to cause alarm, harassment or distress.

The teenager didn’t argue that he did not intend to cause harm - he argued he didn’t say it at all. So the courts only found that he did.

As for how he asked the question (if he did at all): autism is a social communication disorder. It is perfectly possible for him to have innocently asked a question that appeared very blunt and rude. Indeed for him to have intended to cause harm would have required theory of mind - to understand the other person’s perspective - and that is a skill many autistic people lack.

I've had people shout crap like that at me in the street before. It's not very nice as it's intended to draw attention to someone and humiliate them.

I think you'd be hard put to find a single woman who hasn't had the experience of having things shouted at them in the street with a view to humiliating them. Humiliating, intimidating, threatening violence and sexual assault. But no-one ever got prosecuted for shouting "get your tits out love" at a passing woman. Just saying.

How can you reassure neurodiverse people and those with neurodiverse children that they can communicate effectively

oh I don't think jj wants anyone to be able to communicate effectively.

Gender identity is where we feel most comfortable within that system regardless of physical sex

Oh right. so when i was invited to take a 10% cut in my hourly rate because i was returning to work from maternity leave, do you think that was regardless of my physical sex?

it didn't feel especially comfortable at the time if that helps

@OldCrone

Now this is where we disagree. I just behave as I wish, according to my own personal preferences. I am aware that some of these behaviours comply with what is expected of women, but many of them don't. I don't view this as a 'gender identity', but simply a personality.

I think this depends on a very narrow view of gender and how it is both imposed on us and how it manifests within us even if we don't want it to. The fact is gender exists as a social force. It works, sadly, avery effectively in it's intent which is to re-inforce patriarchy. And I think this is where I find a contradiction within a lot of Gender Critical arguments. If everyone is really gender free and the only people doing gender are the trans then how is gender still so ubiquitous? Why hasn't patriarachy crumbled? I think we really need to analyse the many and varied ways in which gender manifests, which range from the crude, frocks or trousers, to the roles we find ourselves in, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, pink/blue collar workers etc and also to more subtle manifestations of gender like how it acts on how we speak, move, experience our bodies, desire, and even fuck.

I'm not going to comment on 'how we internally experience our sexed bodies within a gendered system' because I don't understand what you mean.

Well I think it's currently unknown. Gender dysphoria certainly exists, trans people and how much of that is purely down to the social and political environment we find ourselves in or whether it represents something physical, or inherent about our brains is really something we can only speculate on. Personally I'm not sure it matters that much.

Again, describing the way I dress or other aspects of my appearance in terms of 'gender' is reinforcing the notion that certain presentations are only acceptable for one sex or the other.

I think it's just recognising the reality of the society we live in. You can barely buy a bar of soap without it being somehow gendered. And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not.

I think it would be more humane and kind to say to everyone 'dress how you want, live how you want (as long as you are not harming others), but you can't change sex'.

Personally I think telling trans people what they consider is kind or humane even when they experience it as hurtful is somewhat condescending. Kind of reminds me of Iain Duncan Smith insisting benefit cuts are good for poor people.

This is much the more kind of conversation I hoped to have here btw. Swapping barbed comments is all well and good but I really think if this is ever going to move forward then the conversation needs to move away from sniping about toilets to really analysing gender, how it manifests, who it hurts, and what we can do about it both as long term goals and to mitigate its impact in the here and now.

for him to have intended to cause harm would have required theory of mind - to understand the other person’s perspective - and that is a skill many autistic people lack.

Yes this was my point. But it got turned into 'why do you think autistic people are anti social and have no control over their behaviour'

Is this the Bitesize thing the BBC tweeted and were massively slammed in a huge long thread. Then they took the tweet down but re-posted it with no comments allowed?
Not really on.

@CaraDuneRedux

I've had people shout crap like that at me in the street before. It's not very nice as it's intended to draw attention to someone and humiliate them.

I think you'd be hard put to find a single woman who hasn't had the experience of having things shouted at them in the street with a view to humiliating them. Humiliating, intimidating, threatening violence and sexual assault. But no-one ever got prosecuted for shouting "get your tits out love" at a passing woman. Just saying.

They quite possibly would if they shouted it at a female copper.

I think we really need to analyse the many and varied ways in which gender manifests, which range from the crude, frocks or trousers, to the roles we find ourselves in, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, pink/blue collar workers etc and also to more subtle manifestations of gender like how it acts on how we speak, move, experience our bodies, desire, and even fuck.

Well crack on then. Let us know when you've got something.

And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not

they won't you know. they'll identify your sex

butch lesbians get a VERY hard time

their sex is female and in your weird system their gender identity is also 'woman'. so why do they get such a hard time?

They quite possibly would if they shouted it at a female copper.

Do you think there is a single policewoman in the country who doesn't hear this on a depressingly regular basis?

You really don't get it at all do you?

It's not a lie, pronouns are based on gender in pretty much every language on earth.

Why do you keep doing this, jj1968?

Only one in four languages on the planet are gendered, that is they use grammatical gender, an organisational system which requires that all adjectives, pronouns, articles and verbs are inclined to match the grammatical gender of the noun.

Some languages, like English, no longer have a grammatical gender at all, others never used this organisational system at all. While they may use personal pronouns all the same, these are always based either on sex or on grammatical gender.

But grammatical gender has nothing to do with the social concept of gender. In some languages grammatical gender depends on the sex of the living organism referred to, in others it doesn't. Some languages sort all nouns into male and female, always corresponding to sex in living organisms, some male, female, neuter, some animate and inanimate, other have male animate, male inanimate, female animate and female inanimate. (And a number of other options.)

In some languages, like German, you'll find that the Genus (grammatical gender) usually but not always matches the Sexus (biological sex) of living organisms.

But even where it doesn't, like with the example of Mädchen for girl mentioned above by OldCrone which has as a Genus Neutrum (neuter) even though the Sexus of a girl is female, where the referrent (the actual girl) is known, named or visible, it is actually much more common to use the ungrammatical she and all declined forms thereof even though das Mädchen requires es.

Because personal pronouns are based on sex in German, they can override the rules in common usage.

Moreover, many languages do not use personal pronouns at all, instead preferring demonstratives (so it's not she for girl but that instead). German actually has both, but it's considered quite rude to say die or der instead of sie or er for she and her.

Of course, one in three humans living on this planet speak languages that do not have third person pronouns or use third person pronouns that do not distinguish between the sexes in using them. Everyone is a form of they.

Which is why it's very common for speakers of Finnish, Chinese, Persian, Yoruba, Swahili, Maori or Hindi and Urdu (to name but a few of many hundreds of languages) to use he and she interchangeably when they first learn a language with third person pronouns that reflect the sexes.

In English then, the language the BBC is talking about, third person pronouns are based on sex. So it's completely wrong to claim the decision as to whether he or she is used is based on whether the person referred to conforms to the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with one or the other sex.
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I can't help thinking that a little Bitesize lesson on international pronoun usage might be far more beneficial for our kids than this coercive one demanding kindness. It could teach them that not everyone does things the same way without labelling those alternative approaches as wrong, unkind, unfair, hateful or exclusionary.

And people will assume our gender based on our presentation whether we want them to or not

So what. Why does it matter what the sales person thinks. They see hundreds if people a day they don't give a shit tbh. And what if they think something avbut u? Are you going to see them again? Send a birthday card? What?

Don't you think we ought to stop assuming everyone gives a shit about what 1 of thousands if people a week do when all they are doing is ringing up your bar of soap.

Men buy tampons women buy condoms no one and I mean no one cares . So why does it matter and why is then knowing your gender so important.

They quite possibly would if they shouted it at a female copper.

Did you land on this planet straight from the moon?

Male and female police officers get called all sorts. They are spat on, physically injured and verbally abused.

If front line female coppers could get people done for street sexual harassment, every force in the country would pass a new case for prosecution to the CPS each week. At least!

Gender ID is where we feel most comfortable?!

Is the quoted poster actually saying that when women conform (or are forced to conform) to expectations of femininity, it's because they are comfy?!

Very close to suggesting women choose to ID with their oppression, because they like it.