"What are your pronouns?" Best response for a 14 yo?

[RhymesWithOrange]

DD is as well informed as I can manage on pronoun nonsense but we're both stumped for the best response if a friend asks her "what are your pronouns?"

Any advice on challenging/deflecting? With close friends she jokes (she's identified as a Samsung refrigerator, pronouns ice/tray, for a while now) but with people she knows less well it's harder to pull off.

Thank you

Some people go by pronouns which do not necessarily reflect their physical sex or obvious appearance.

Well, yes, this is exactly the point, barley.

This practice - of asking someone else’s pronouns (as well as declaring your own) - is reflective of an ideology that says some clearly male people are in fact and should be seen/treated as women.

As Ajl46 put it, I don't subscribe to the ideology which necessitates a response to that question.

If someone is clearly male then I’m not going to pretend he’s a woman or girl or call him “she”. And you know exactly what the reasoning is of those of us who refuse to go along with this. If we agree that Dave is now Danielle and call him “she”, then suddenly he’s entitled to use the women’s/girls’ changing room, access women/girls only services, take part in women’s/girls’ sport, and we are now the mean ones for “excluding” him because after all, he’s a woman/girl/she/her just like we are.

Which nicely obscures and indeed turns on its head the fact that actually Dave is the mean one for using his male privilege to impose himself on the more vulnerable, less powerful of the two sexes, to override our boundaries, to carry out an act of male oppression and call it “progress” and make it taboo for women and girls to even resist this oppression.

That’s where going along with pronouns that don’t accord with biological sex gets you. No thank you. Stop being so mean to women and girls, barley. Misogyny is not a virtue.

"HRH will do nicely!"

Deleted for speaking the truth. Whilst more children fall prey to this and their parents haven't yet noticed or don't yet know the significant and irreversible harm that is coming for their children.

Astounding really how the feelings of adults trump the safeguarding of children. On a parenting site of all places.

Whilst it's reassuring to know that the legal profession are getting ready to sue, it's heart breaking that so many young people's lives will be irreversibly damaged whilst time passes. And to what purpose? It's certainly not to their benefit is it.

These people may think they have captured the online world and bent it to their will. But many adults who actually do adulting properly work out in the real physical world, in education, in healthcare, in social services, alongside these children and their parents.

Here we will share knowledge and information that reduces harm. And there's fuck all the online activists can do about it.

Tell her to quote Huge Grant's character in Death to 2021 "Here we go. I expect you want to know my preferred pronouns? Well I don't have any. I don't have any. I do not dance the wokey-cokey."

At 14, I would have been firmly “undecided” on pronouns and said “just use my name”

@RhymesWithOrange

DD is as well informed as I can manage on pronoun nonsense but we're both stumped for the best response if a friend asks her "what are your pronouns?"

Any advice on challenging/deflecting? With close friends she jokes (she's identified as a Samsung refrigerator, pronouns ice/tray, for a while now) but with people she knows less well it's harder to pull off.

Thank you

If pronouns are such a problem for you and your daughter, how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post? Could it be that those are her pronouns?

If pronouns are such a problem for you and your daughter, how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post? Could it be that those are her pronouns?

They're not "her pronouns". OP chose them all by herself, presumably on account of her DD being female.

@HipTightOnions

If pronouns are such a problem for you and your daughter, how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post? Could it be that those are her pronouns?

They're not "her pronouns". OP chose them all by herself, presumably on account of her DD being female.

So if OP chose to refer to her DD as a "he" this would be fine also, since it's OP's choice? In that scenario does DD have no right to say "uhh actually it's she" because they're not her pronouns?

'Private' is normally my response.

So if OP chose to refer to her DD as a "he" this would be fine also, since it's OP's choice? In that scenario does DD have no right to say "uhh actually it's she" because they're not her pronouns

If shes not on mumsnet how would she know?

@RufustheFloralmissingreindeer

So if OP chose to refer to her DD as a "he" this would be fine also, since it's OP's choice? In that scenario does DD have no right to say "uhh actually it's she" because they're not her pronouns

If shes not on mumsnet how would she know?

Do you think OP only talks about her daughter on Mumsnet?

@mamalovebird

'Private' is normally my response.

So you prefer for people to refer to you by a short redacted silence?

You literally said ‘how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post?*

Whether OP refers to her daughter as he or she it doesnt matter as the daughter isn’t on mumsnet

And actually if she talks about her daughter to friends again it doesnt matter as daughter is not there

You know what, this is so obviously ridiculous I don't know how you can say it with a straight face. Try referring to the next woman you interact with as "he" in her hearing. Or the next man you interact with as "she". Then when they correct you, you
tell them it's your choice to call them whatever you want. See how well that goes down.

Or if you want to do it the Rufus way, pick a male work colleague and persistently refer to him as "she" behind his back. If your colleagues correct you or object, see how convincing they find the "it's my choice" argument. And when it gets back to your male colleague - which such strange behaviour inevitably well - tell him about how you get to choose. And he'll tell you that's absolute bullshit, since it plainly clearly is.

Right im off to bed

I literally spat baileys all, over my ipad…it went down the wrong way

Night all

Oooh apologies blue

Give me a sec to read your post

@BlueberryCheezecake

You know what, this is so obviously ridiculous I don't know how you can say it with a straight face. Try referring to the next woman you interact with as "he" in her hearing. Or the next man you interact with as "she". Then when they correct you, you tell them it's your choice to call them whatever you want. See how well that goes down.

Or if you want to do it the Rufus way, pick a male work colleague and persistently refer to him as "she" behind his back. If your colleagues correct you or object, see how convincing they find the "it's my choice" argument. And when it gets back to your male colleague - which such strange behaviour inevitably well - tell him about how you get to choose. And he'll tell you that's absolute bullshit, since it plainly clearly is.

Oh

I always use requested pronouns and names

Thats the rufus way

Bed now…thats also the rufus way

So if OP chose to refer to her DD as a "he" this would be fine also, since it's OP's choice? In that scenario does DD have no right to say "uhh actually it's she" because they're not her pronouns?

Well, I doubt OP would do this - because her DD is a girl.

Not because "she" is "her pronoun".

If pronouns are such a problem for you and your daughter, how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post? Could it be that those are her pronouns?

Pronouns themselves aren’t the problem, Blueberry, as I’m sure you know. OP doubtless knows better than most that her DD is female and therefore it’s pretty obvious that she would use female pronouns for her.

Once again (yet again!) the problem is with normalising the use of pronouns that are used to designate people of the opposite sex to that which the person being referred to is; normalising the idea that someone who is clearly male can and should be seen as a woman if he so wishes; normalising the idea that everyone has a “gender” which is solely determined by how they feel about themselves (and apparently entirely based on regressive, restrictive stereotypes) - and that this “gender identity” overrides biological sex. And the overriding of women’s and girls’ boundaries, the male appropriation of things set aside for women as the more vulnerable and disadvantaged of the two sex classes that that entails.

Why is it so hard for you to break the habit of male oppression of females?

I can only conclude that you don’t truly see (biologically) female people as fully human, that you don’t see the suffering and oppression inflicted upon female people by male people across the millennia the whole world over as human suffering. It really doesn’t seem to matter to you. Perhaps we really are just service humans in your eyes, here to facilitate the lives of (biologically) male “first sex” people.

Because I can’t see how anyone who really took in and understood the wrongs that have been done to women (aka biologically female people) across the ages, and are still being done, by men (aka biologically male people), and who cared anything about social justice and wanted to see the world a better, kinder, safer place for humanity in general - I don’t see how anyone in that category could even begin to think of opposing any of the things that go some way towards redressing the balance for women in this misogynistic, patriarchal world, such as single sex spaces, services, and sports.

I don’t see how anyone in that category could not want to provide women (biologically female people) as a class with the maximum of safety, of opportunity, of anything that would mitigate against the great harms that have been done and continue to be done to women on the basis of our sex.

But breaking down women’s rights to those things seems to be your sole objective, by any means necessary, including promoting this “preferred pronoun” culture, especially among young people.

It does not reflect well on you, IMO.

I like the idea of The Redacted Silence.

Shame I can’t remember my password for MN.

In fact I don’t need to change my username I’ll stick with this one but please refer to me as The Redacted Silence.

If pronouns are such a problem for you and your daughter, how come you've referred to her as she/her throughout this post? Could it be that those are her pronouns?

Pronouns have never been a problem until men started to insist on being called she/her and the ideology was forced on impressionable children. As a parent it's my job to protect my daughter from harm, and equip her with the tools to live a happy, successful life.

FYI the person who has been most insistent in asking DD for her preferred pronouns does not identify as trans, she's just being a bit of an arse, as 13/14 year olds can be, and DD wants to get out of the trap question as gracefully as possible, but sticking with her principles (humans can't change sex; preferred pronouns are bunkum).

I think I liked the suggestion HRH best.