PM on Radio 4: what is gender identity?

[nauticant]

Evan Davis said that there will be a "good natured" chat about this in tonight's programme. This will give him a chance to demonstrate again his well-known impartiality on this issue.

It's not yet clear when this segment will be in the programme.

[quote nauticant]These days I wince when I see the name Angela Saini:

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-a-woman[/quote]
Oh no . Such a confusion of sex and gender.

"That’s not to say there is no need for research specifically on women’s health. There is, particularly when it comes to reproductive health and autoimmune diseases that disproportionately affect women."

Nnrgh! which women are disproportionately affected Angela? The male ones or the female ones?

Ha! at your last sentence.

Did anyone else wonder whether Lucy's wife was being entirely selfless when they persuaded Lucy to cut off their penis?

Yes, "My wife told me to do it, she encouraged me and was so happy because we became matchy-matchy unconventionals"

Hmmm. Would be interesting to know what their friends and family recall.

Evan Davis is returning to this subject in the next hour in the occasional series that's running on the PM programme. Tonight it's going to be: what is non-binary, how should pronouns be used?

Tonight it's going to be: what is non-binary, how should pronouns be used?

After sitting through the entirety of last night’s HOL prisons amendment debate, I’m all out of caring about pronouns TBH. If it’s A-OK with the wokies to expect women (adult human female) prisoners to tolerate male sex offenders in their jails, why should the rest of us accommodate people’s pronoun preferences? If the compassion only goes one way, I’m entirely within my rights to turn off my tap. Not a drop more.

Here we go, it's on now.

Jeffrey Baker. A non-binary person. They is content to say their sex is male and they have a male body.

ED: "Do you have boy days and girl days?" JB was nonplussed.

ED did ask whether if one is free to be GNC, what does non-binary add? Apparently it's JB's way of "resisting the patriarchy".

"I'm not trying to dissolve the binary." There's the tell, for their special identity to be recognised as such, they need the binary.

JB is older and is a bit pragmatic over pronoun use.

I believe the technical term is "a nonthingburger".

Oh, I forget, ultra respect from ED in his interview so it seems yet again he was able to see past the guest's gender identity and give them the respect they were due according to their sex.

Just heard it. The NB Jeffrey person - who I have not come across - was happy to be recognised as male, as a man, and according to ED, presented as a man (so no blue hair, I guess). He was aged 50. I did wonder what the point of declaring himself NB actually was - he said it was his way of challenging the patriarchy (eh?)...no further explanation.
He sounded unaggressive and not that bothered about pronouns, and just 'appreciated' other people putting pronouns in their sig etc.

It was clear to me that he was just using the tag of NB as a way of showing he resisted all stereotypes, and he more or less said that, and had no real answer to Evan when he said 'but a man can be a man with a 'feminine' side....' He just accepted that of course that was true, but he just disliked being thought of as a man. There was some personal history there, too, which involved him having been told he was 'the man of the house' which he did not want.

I found it interesting, and emphasised that not all NBs are quite as bonkers as others, mainly because Jeffrey was happy enough being sexed as a man.

Was they this Jeffrey Baker?

www.dentons.com/en/jeffrey-baker

To be fair JB (or was it Geoffrey?) had had a decent amount of diverse life experience and sounded like they had a better sense of priorities than some of the aggressive boundary-pushing blue haired NBs who tend to grace this board.

That's quite interesting. A person who recognises their sex but doesn't think it's helpful or healthy for then to be reminded of it when it's not relevant.

Like most of us campaigning against forced pronoun usage at work, etc.

I thought ED was doing a better job of asking impartial questions until ED provided an opening for Jeffrey to talk about those poor transwomen in men’s prisons.

He did seem to be very normal, in terms of not denying sex, but his position is nonetheless political. He wants to be non-binary in law (ie force other people not to enquire about or openly acknowledge his sex) and he wants his personal decision to conceptualise his own gender non-conformity as a non-binary gender identity to become the accepted position in society.

Conceptualising being gender non-conforming as taking you outside sex might make sense to him because of how he has interpreted his experience of the imposition of gendered norms, but we know on this board that people seeking to opt out of sex (or to make other people pretend that they are sex-less) does nothing to challenge the false linking of sex with particular traits, personalities or feelings. His stance is deeply unhelpful (and damaging) to those who acknowledge it is impossible to change sex and who instead seek to challenge gender norms and normalise gender non-conformity, in whatever way (big or small) for everyone.

So while his position may appear moderate, in terms of his political objective it is every bit as extreme as someone who believes sex is a spectrum or seeks to make it morally reprehensible to use sex based pronouns.