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).

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

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?

Because people perceive their gender presentation as not matching their physical sex and that is socially punished.

And people do assume gender based on presentation. A trans woman, on hormones, who walked round a city centre topless would very likely be arrested for indecent exposure. A man wouldn't. Is the trans woman being arrested based on her sex or her gender?

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

Killed too.

How on earth would that copper react to all the other horrors police officers face on a daily basis, if an autistic teenage saying 'are you a boy or a girl' made them traumatized and unable to patrol alone?

Socially punished?

In the UK trans people are the safest demographic. Check out channel four fact check.

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?

If you think that gender 'reinforces patriarchy', why are you so keen on 'gender'?

What makes you think that everyone is 'gender free' and only trans people are 'doing gender'? The whole of society is much more 'gendered' now than it was even 20 years ago. Feminists have been fighting against this for decades, but it's getting worse now rather than getting better. I don't think that means we should just give up and stop fighting.

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

What do you actually mean by 'presentation' here? Are you talking about clothing and hairstyles (stereotypes) or what?

What is more likely is that people will recognise our sex whether we want them to or not, no matter how much we might try to disguise it.

Personally I think telling trans people what they consider is kind or humane even when they experience it as hurtful is somewhat condescending.

Are you saying that telling people 'dress how you want, live how you want (as long as you are not harming others), but you can't change sex' is hurtful? Is it tolerance (dress and live how you want) which is hurtful or scientific fact (you can't change sex)?

@CharlieParley

Thank you, that was fascinating.

@Bessica1970 You’re lumping non-binary in with your anti-trans agenda and and I’m not going there!

Couldn't give a stuff what gender a person chooses to present as. My agenda is anti double mastectomy when healthy which seems to be what Lachlan Watson named on that page as a famous non binary person and age 19 now has undergone. Not a role model for BBC Bitesize intended audience.

@BlackWaveComing

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.

Not because they like it perhaps, but because of fear of social consequence if they don't which becomes ingrained into a set of behaviours from very early childhood. Men do the same, and plenty of men are uncomfortable with spects of masculinity despite the dominant role. Patriarchy hurts both women and men, although not of course equally.

The thing is gender doesn't need to mean everyone is a walking stereotype for it to function. Gender needs people to conform just enough to maintain the system of gender, it doesn't have to be optimal. And people clearly do conform to the level necessary, otherwise gender as a system of social control wouldn't exist. Now why people conform, whether comfort, fear of punishment, social conditioning or maintenance of a dominant role in the case of men, is probably one area that needs examining.

Because people perceive their gender presentation as not matching their physical sex and that is socially punished

agreed

it's shit

what's your view on prescribing puberty blockers to gender questioning children so their sex can be more easily hidden and surgery used to make their sex appear to align with their gender presentation? how do you feel gender questioning young women having their healthy breasts removed?

utterly repugnant and totally unnecessary, no?

This is much the more kind of conversation I hoped to have here btw. Swapping barbed comments is all well and good

I don't believe for one second you're here to have a reasonable conversation. You deflect every time someone picks up on what you say and really ask you to explain it.

You suggested we guess people's gender without stating what criteria we should use to guess, because it obviously isn't sex. And you can't even give a basic explanation of how someone chooses their own gender.

This is all nonsense and deflection because you know, as well as everyone else on here does, that gender is a set of sex-role stereotypes. I do very much reject those stereotypes. So no, my identity is based in physical reality, not a gender feeling.

Given that I believe you are a male transgender person, I assume that means you identify as female, and as such, do so on the basis of agreeing with sex-role stereotypes, as that is the thing you need to claim womanhood.

You refuse to be straightforward about this, which is why you posting here claiming to want genuine dialogue is disingenuous. You just want us to affirm your ideas. That's not the job of a feminist forum.

Again we can examine it without subjecting people to playing along. Its a big ask of a complete stranger and it doesn't benefit anyone long term

@CharlieParley

Fair enough it was a daft throw away comment and I bow down to your superior linguistic knowledge.

@yourhairiswinterfire

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

Killed too.

How on earth would that copper react to all the other horrors police officers face on a daily basis, if an autistic teenage saying 'are you a boy or a girl' made them traumatized and unable to patrol alone?

I said I thought it was a petty prosecution. Having been involved in political activism for many years I've seen coppers be a lot more petty and sensitive than that when it suits them though.

I said I thought it was a petty prosecution

I did see that jj, my post was more thinking out loud about it than aiming it at you.

Not because they like it perhaps, but because of fear of social consequence if they don't which becomes ingrained into a set of behaviours from very early childhood. Men do the same, and plenty of men are uncomfortable with spects of masculinity despite the dominant role. Patriarchy hurts both women and men, although not of course equally.

The thing is gender doesn't need to mean everyone is a walking stereotype for it to function. Gender needs people to conform just enough to maintain the system of gender, it doesn't have to be optimal. And people clearly do conform to the level necessary, otherwise gender as a system of social control wouldn't exist. Now why people conform, whether comfort, fear of punishment, social conditioning or maintenance of a dominant role in the case of men, is probably one area that needs examining.

You're getting so close to understanding why the concept of gender is so toxic. But now can you see how the idea of transgenderism reinforces these stereotypes and is making people conform more?

Every time a man decides that his gender non-conformity makes him a transwoman, rather than a gender non-conforming man, he reinforces the idea that certain presentations and behaviours are only for women and not for men. Breaking this down requires him to say that the way he likes to dress and behave doesn't make him any less of a man.

Breaking down gender means making all possibilities open to both men and women.

Hear hear OldCrone.

You're getting so close to understanding why the concept of gender is so toxic. But now can you see how the idea of transgenderism reinforces these stereotypes and is making people conform more?

I think that assumes a very narrow view of transgender people, which is itself based in stereotypes. I think the opening up of gender, the playing around with it, the 100 different genders and the experiments with fluidity which are happening amongst particularly younger generations really represent a serious challenge to gender as a binary system of domination. It's not perfect, not at all, as I said, I don't think patriarchy is about to crumble, but it's an opportunity surely.

Every time a man decides that his gender non-conformity makes him a transwoman, rather than a gender non-conforming man, he reinforces the idea that certain presentations and behaviours are only for women and not for men. Breaking this down requires him to say that the way he likes to dress and behave doesn't make him any less of a man.

I think there's two aspects to this. We don't actually know what causes discordant gender identity, whether it is social or biological or a mix of both. It may be that trans people would still experience discomfort with their sexed bodies even in a post gender world.

Which leads to the second aspect, which is that it seems unnecessarily harsh to expect trans women and trans men to be the trailblazers in this when they suffer as much as anyone from a rigidly gendered system in which gender is imposed on the basis of assigned sex. I know everyone thinks it's a wonderful life but it's actually not very easy being trans in this society, I don't know anyone who chose it, and under the current system then allowing people to adopt a sex role counter to the one assigned at birth seems to me the most humane way to allow people to live with some comfort and dignity.

@testing987654321

You suggested we guess people's gender without stating what criteria we should use to guess, because it obviously isn't sex. And you can't even give a basic explanation of how someone chooses their own gender.

The topless trans woman who gets arrested, is she being arrested on the basis of her sex or her gender? Sorry to repeat this but no-one answered and I'd say it's a pretty clear example of how this is much messier out in the real world then it might appear in theoretical discussion, and trans people have to find a way to somehow navigate that complexity.

@CharlieParley

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.

Charlie, you are awesome. Thank you.

I was told this week - no idea if it is right - that in Mandarin, pronouns are the same for he, she, they. It must be awful if your language doesn't validate you!

I was told this week - no idea if it is right - that in Mandarin, pronouns are the same for he, she, they. It must be awful if your language doesn't validate you!

Finnish doesn't make a distinction, either. I wonder what Finnish non-binary people do for validation.

The topless trans woman who gets arrested, is she being arrested on the basis of her sex or her gender? Sorry to repeat this but no-one answered and I'd say it's a pretty clear example of how this is much messier out in the real world then it might appear in theoretical discussion, and trans people have to find a way to somehow navigate that complexity.

It depends, doesn't it? Plenty of MTF trans people look exactly like men, and I imagine would be treated exactly like men if no one realised they were trans. So if they had breast development, that would be borne out in the way the justice system unceasingly panders to this ideology. Why should women be arrested for going topless in the street if men can, by your logic? It's about breasts rather than chests.

I know you think it's a gotcha, but it isn't.

Is it though? Really ?

Does knowing everyone's just pretending, just saying what you want to hear regardless of what they realky think, realky provide comfort?

Don't you see what you are asking of people?.you are making other people solely responsible for how you feel. Without asking . Without a thought to what it may cost them.

I'm sorry for anyone who's having a shit time. Truly. But the responsibility for getting thru it relies on close friends and family perhaps and themselves. Not strangers.

And this incessant requests to "be kind" do you know, what that actually entails? If your lucky it just costs you time and money. If you aren't so lucky it put you in dangerous situations and causes much distress and for what? Only one thing is for sure, however mind you are. Its never enough. People ( after all its human nature ) always want more.

How on one hand can it be no big deal whilst simultaneously having the power to crush people?

And isnt it meaningless if people don't really mean it?

Because if its what you wanted its not abkut kindness because its coerced , it can only be about power.

A topless man with breast implants wouldn't be arrested in E&W. Nor would a topless woman.
Exposure under the SOA requires genitals to be exposed and breasts are not genitals
It’s social convention that keeps the female breast (and presumably its imitators) covered

And being arrested in the street for being topless would be an example of a unlikely hypothetical situation these male people could share with women. It doesn't actually make them women.

Thanks Siam. So it's bollocks anyway (pun!) Good to know.

I think the opening up of gender, the playing around with it, the 100 different genders and the experiments with fluidity which are happening amongst particularly younger generations really represent a serious challenge to gender as a binary system of domination.

If you want to get rid of gender, the way to do that is to get rid of gender, surely, not make up 100s of new 'genders'. What are they anyway? Personality types?

And gender is only 'binary' because the concept of gender is attached to sex. Of which there are two.

We don't actually know what causes discordant gender identity

Gender identity just seems to be another way of saying 'personality'. What do you mean by discordant? If you mean a woman who has aspects to her personality which are considered stereotypically masculine, this shouldn't be considered to be abnormal.

It may be that trans people would still experience discomfort with their sexed bodies even in a post gender world.

'Born in the wrong body'? You were arguing earlier that transgenderism was nothing to do with sexed bodies or people's discomfort with them, and it was all about personalities and stereotypes.

Which leads to the second aspect, which is that it seems unnecessarily harsh to expect trans women and trans men to be the trailblazers in this when they suffer as much as anyone from a rigidly gendered system in which gender is imposed on the basis of assigned sex. I know everyone thinks it's a wonderful life but it's actually not very easy being trans in this society, I don't know anyone who chose it, and under the current system then allowing people to adopt a sex role counter to the one assigned at birth seems to me the most humane way to allow people to live with some comfort and dignity.

I think we have the (mainly non trans) transactivists to thank for the way things are now. They could have been campaigning for society to be more accepting of feminine men and masculine women, but instead they decided to try to force us all to believe that people can change sex. If trans people had decided to work with feminists to break down the concept of gender instead of trying to coerce women to accept male people as women, I think we could be in a much better place now.