Introducing yourself by name and pronouns

[FlatteredFool]

I started an online course last week. It will be fun I thought. How wrong was I on that but I had my first, real-life experience of pronouns being a thing. The facilitator introduced herself by name followed by "and my pronouns are she/her" and my face was because it speaks for me without any filter or conscious thought. We were then invited to introduce ourselves if we wanted to. I was worried I'd have to give my pronouns if I did so I kept quiet. This is perhaps the norm now but it struck me as very weird especially as the course is run by a local Women’s centre off the back of the Freedom Programme where our experiences of abuse are due to our sex.

Dd has a student in her school who identifies as a helicopter. Seriously. Are her pronouns ?? Good for her as it shows the madness for what it is. DD has been called transphobic for saying I respect everyone no matter what they identify as but you can't change sex. She really struggles to do the mental gymnastics of calling a girl they/them when she is presented with a very female body. Dd is hopefully being assessed for ASD as am I and we both struggle so much with falsehoods and are sticklers for rules so I don't think we will ever be able to state that someone is the opposite of what they are. It's the same as trying to say 10-5=3. Or that the sun is actually the moon or cold. It doesn't compute as it goes against all logic and facts.

Oh and then on a TA course when looking at stages of child development the PowerPoint included gender as an area of development. I queried what she meant by gender as there are so many genders and got a slightly embarrassed look and a description of make and female sexes so I got her to clarify that actually she meant sex. When I write my assignment I might highlight the issues there because I'll be damned if I discuss puberty in terms of gender when it should be sex.

When will the madness stop??

I wasn't referring to pronouns. I was referring to speakers describing their appearance.

I had this at work training recently for the first time and it rather blindsided me, so I ended up blurting out what I think were the relevent pronouns but I get confused about which grammatical bits they want.

What I find really awkward is that while I feel strongly about this as an issue, I think there are good reasons getting into controversial political discussions at work isn't a great idea, and I don't really want to make people I work with feel like I am taking a swipe at their political views which they have a right to even if I think they are wrong. And I will say especially if some of them seem to be mentally fragile which was the case here.

So I end up feeling pretty resentful but also like there is no good option in the moment.

I don't really want to make people I work with feel like I am taking a swipe at their political views which they have a right to even if I think they are wrong

But they're happy to compel you to acceded to their political views, and not respect yours?

@SenecaFallsRedux

I wasn't referring to pronouns. I was referring to speakers describing their appearance.

In that case I apologise.

I identify as to answer 'European' to make my view on the economic self-harm called Brexit known.

@peak2021 - my local "County for Europe" group emailed the other day to say that in the 2021 Census, we can indicate 'European' as one of our national identities. You can tick as many boxes as you like in that Question, and add text in the "Other" category. I'll be ticking English, British, and adding European.

And of course, the High Court has brought sanity & reason to the sex question. Thank goodness - as an historian who uses the 1851 census quite a bit, I am relieved for future historians, and also for current policy-makers.

If we don't know how many citizens declare themselves to be trans, how can public services which they need, be planned for?