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).

represent a serious challenge to gender as a binary system of domination

How? It's all navel gazing luxury beliefs, from where I'm standing. Meanwhile, in the world everyone knows which of the two "genders" (sexes) should put up and shut up and do what they're told.

Great post, OldCrone

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.

Thanks for that explanation Charlie. And the rest of that fascinating post.

Many young people I come across are more sexist and stereotype-obsessed than people my own age (late gen X). So not sure how this amazing paradigm shift is going to occur.

@Siameasy

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

It really depends on the context, nudity is actually a bit of a grey area in UK law and a lot would depend on whether it was intended to cause distress or found to be sexually motivated. But your right, a prosecution would be unlikely, however that doesn't mean their might not be social consequences for breaching a social convention.

@Siameasy

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

Women can certainly expose their breasts in public...many of us have done so, feeding our babies. It's the sexualisation of breasts which means that otherwise we're supposed to cover them, in our culture. A feminized male breast is similarly sexualised - arguably moreso.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

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.

There are many more. If a straight man sexually harasses or assaults a trans woman is it on the basis of her sex or gender? If a straight man chats up a trans woman is it on the basis of her sex of gender. If a man beats up a trans woman is it on the basis of her sex or gender? When men straight men uses a trans sex worker is it on the basis of their sex of gender? Are trans people much more over represented in sex work than men because of sex or gender? Are trans women paid less than men because of sex or gender? The fact is how trans people are treated, whether as men or women or freaks inbetween, varies considerably according to different circumstances, cultures and the attitude of individuals they come across. It is not simple, and so simplistic solutions and explanations don't work. Trans people have to find a way to muddle through.

Anyway night.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Many young people I come across are more sexist and stereotype-obsessed than people my own age (late gen X). So not sure how this amazing paradigm shift is going to occur.

Well it doesn't matter does it?

When people pointed out that referring to 'people with cervixes' meant that many women wouldn't know it referred to them the Twatterati all started going 'Ah, well, that just means we should have better education in schools' but they didn't mean it, they didn't give a shit about it, weren't ever going to think of it again, it's just 'ooh! Look! A squirrel!'.

No TRA has any interest in dismantling ideas about gender. Gender is where they live. It's all just casting around to deflect.

If a straight man sexually harasses or assaults a trans woman is it on the basis of her sex or gender?

Who knows? And he would be bisexual unless the trans person passed better than 99% of MTF trans people and he was genuinely unaware of their sex.

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.

It doesn't dismantle the culturally created concept of gender if someone violates the gender roles built for his or her sex but then immediately amends that violation by stating that they belong to the other sex instead. Even identifying as non-binary does nothing for the existence of gender roles and stereotypes, because it still argues that all the other people are binary walking gender stereotypes.

It is the gender classes themselves that need to be dismantled so that how one dresses etc. is not assumed to reflect a particular biological sex or its name (women, men).

The only way in which the gender ideology is not swiftly rowing backwards in terms of sexism is that it allows someone to jump from one rigid gender box to another box, but doing so is far too often combined by performing a retrogressive interpretation of what it means to be that other gender.

Who knows? And he would be bisexual unless the trans person passed better than 99% of MTF trans people and he was genuinely unaware of their sex.

Actually I've rethought that. It's irrelevant what sexuality the man has as those things (sexual harassment and assault) are arguably more about power. Men sometimes rape other men because they have power over them. So a male committing sexual assault on another male doesn't necessarily tell us anything about sexuality and not sure why you mentioned it. If it was consensual and the "straight" man and MTF trans person knowingly slept together it would. It would mean that the man is bisexual.

Quite a few of jj's list of hypothetical 'sex or gender' questions quite likely have a variety of answers of 'something else'.

Well when men do those things it is because they are men and men are responsible for the vast majority of violence - sexual and otherwise - in the world.

And they murder, beat up and rape everyone from babies to centenarians and both men and women. Although - when it comes to sexual violence - they do like weaker victims, so more women and children than men, and most of them are heterosexual so a disproportionate amount of girls and women.

Does that help?

YY Errol.

Men beat up ajd harass non conforming males while there's pages of pages telling us we are the problem for not using pronouns

Don't add up really does it

@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.

Curiously, this is exactly how the sociologists/sex researchers who coined the terms cissexual and cisgender framed it - as healthy to conform to the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with one's own sex.

So women not seeking to identify as trans were seen as normal, but only in the context of also conforming to gender norms. Of course there wasn't even a hint of a critical analysis of gender as the tool for the oppression of the female sex.

*Curiously, this is exactly how the sociologists/sex researchers who coined the terms cissexual and cisgender framed it - as healthy to conform to the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with one's own sex.

So women not seeking to identify as trans were seen as normal, but only in the context of also conforming to gender norms. Of course there wasn't even a hint of a critical analysis of gender as the tool for the oppression of the female sex.*

Indeed. The gender ideology argues that everyone has an abstract gender identity (very doubtful), but that some are very lucky in realising that their identities match their biological sex while for others there is no match.

So the first group is now viewed as privileged, whether they are women or men.

The next step, then, is that sex-based oppression is erased, partly, because remembering it would highlight the fact that trans women have enjoyed male privilege and still might, and because maintaining gender norms is important for those who transition as they can more easily appear their desired sex.

jj1968
Pronouns have always been based on gender, that's how things like ships ended up being referring to in the feminine.

Like le bateau is feminine, for instance, and le navire. (In Dutch both are neuter, I think.)

FWIW, the Lloyds shipping register now refers to ships as 'it', presumably because they're unsexed objects and the grammatical genders used by different nationalities were a mix.

Pronouns have always been based on gender, that's how things like ships ended up being referring to in the feminine.

Fuck what?

I thought I might read this thread but this has just made me chuckle and it's pages ago. Does it get better? Can anyone summarise?

She sells seashells on the seashore.

Snap Errol.

Men referred to ships as she partly for their pining for female company they were far from and so the important love that their lives depended on was like a loving woman and partly because they acknowledged they didn't fully understood the opposite sex. No matter how skilled men were at sailing, a ship would behave the way a ship would because of its unique build, which was different to the build of a man.

I essentially said I didn't think jj was being genuine because they wouldn't explain how anyone would work out their gender.

This was the response:

The topless trans woman who gets arrested, is she being arrested on the basis of her sex or her gender?

I mean, wtf?! What's that got to do with anything? I still haven't seen any responses about what having a gender identity actually involves.

Does it get better?

Define better.

Better? I suppose I live in hope that the confrontation will end.