Do pronouns feel alien to anyone else?

[janeseymour78]

By this, I mean I have friends who are 100% pro pronouns as a show of support and we've had our debates, and then there are others who say it is unhealthy to reinforce stereotypes, eg. By using them on work signatures

For me though, adding she/her pronouns to everything and even having being asked what they are verbally, she/her feels alien to me in a visceral way. I'm curious about this because I have several friends who don't share that feeling at all.

Im GC and I don't believe people are binary. I have elements of feminity and masculinity that whatever else that form who I am. I know I'm a woman, I have endometriosis so I'm painfully aware, as well as all the other reasons women are made aware of their sex.

It comes down to adding 'she/her' to everything would not feel right to me, as though it didn't reflect me. It would like I was falsely reinforcing my womanhood when I don't live my life that way or feel that way. Am I making sense? Do others feel this way?

This, unironically.

@janeseymour78 Does it also feel alien when people use "she" to refer to you? Do you think you'd feel more comfortable if they used "he" or "they" instead?

Would "she/they" feels less alien? Or "they/them"?

Note that none of these don't "mean" anything about you, aside from which of these pronouns feel comfortable to you.

Why do you insist on being disrespectful and doing something you know makes people uncomfortable?

I could ask them that? It seems we are at an impasse.

Like I said in my previous message, it doesn't feel alien as part of normal conversation. Example, if someone else is talking about me just out of earshot and another person refers to me as 'she', or 'her'. No problem. I am a woman and have been referred to his way my whole life.

It only becomes an issue when people suggest (and social media platforms suggest) I should add my.pronouns. When I am at a hobby class and they ask my pronouns (this has happened twice lately) - and if my workplace asked me to do this and I had to see it in my signature every day.

So she/her/they is all fine. He would make no sense - I'm not a man.

Do you think "she/they" would work better for you then? If you were to include pronouns on your profile, that is.

I think this is all getting beyond a joke now.

Girls are girls, boys are boys. For the 0.001 % (or whatever it is) of people who GENUINELY have some sort of medical condition from birth that means their parents decided they should be a boy, when actually they got it wrong , those people have my utmost sympath but I can't see why the whole world is starting to revolve around them.

Most of them are just teens/20's somethings desperate for attention. In my day there were goths/emos/beautiful people/geeks/metal heads etc etc. That's all disappeared. It's now just this nonsense.

I'm proud of being a woman and I'm sorry, but I'm not saying 'they' for anyone. It's ridiculous. It's either he or she. (and if you're a woman who'd rather be known as a he, fine, whatever, I'll go with it, but you're still a women the same way a bird is still a bird not a worm.

I suppose it comes down to, I'm a woman, I know this, it dictates the way I live my life most days. Taking the safest route home. Having to take time off work for endometriosis. Etc.

But I don't spend all day thinking about the fact I'm a woman. I am just a human being living life. It is the obsession with defining who you are that is the issue. I'm just me. I've lived this long without all the naval gazing and I don't need to start now. I'm probably not putting this very well but it's complex.

How are gendered pronouns any less of a social convention than gendered clothing, if you don't mind me asking?

I was walking past our sixth form college the other day, and saw a young woman whose pronoun badge said "they/it". I just can't imagine wanting people to refer to me as "it", that's really masochistic. I felt very sad for her.

Pronouns come from the gender identity ideology.
This is clear because 'they, them' exists as a singular pronoun.
As people using that are in reality either male or female, too, then consistency requires that 'she, her', and 'he, him' cannot refer to biological sex, either, but must also refer to some abstract identity.

So on the theoretical level we are supporting the gender identity concept by telling what our preferred pronouns are.
That's the dilemma for me.
At the same time I know that most people don't think that this is what they are doing:
They try to make it easier for transgender people not to be 'misgendered' by being accurately sexed.

This is a little like all men now being asked if they might be pregnant in the NHS (what I have heard, anyway), just so that the vanishingly few trans men don't feel singled out if they are asked that before an x-ray, say.
So vast, vast majorities must change everything about their own gender definitions and about what others believe their sex to be, in order for one small group to be validated.

Perhaps this is what the society wishes to do?
But other small and marginalised minorities do not get these types of accommodations, so there must be a rank order that determines who gets to change language etc.

The difference is that you misgendering (and no, I don't care if you call it "correctly sexing") people is somewhat equivalent to verbally stabbing at them. It is something directly concerning their person specifically.

Whereas trans and non-binary merely existing around you, and asking you for some basic accommodation... Why would that make you "uncomfortable" if not because of your prejudice?

I think it's virtue signalling, TBH. I choose not to engage, I look female, have a female name and work in a male dominated profession, nothing will ever make me add anything to my email signature suggesting I identify wholeheartedly with feminine gender-based stereotypes.

This use of pronouns is a bit of nonsense that I will never use. Everyone knows women are she/her and men are he/him. Anyone who thinks they're so special that people have to use special pronouns for them is just advertising their stupidity.

You keep making up that part about "stereotypes". Who said anything about stereotypes?

Not alien so much as self obsessed narcissism.
I'm not playing

Because “gender” is entirely stereotypes! It has no basis in the physical reality of sex, how can it be anything else?

Literally just a matter of which labels and pronouns feel more comfortable to you. Why does it need to be anything more than that?

I can understand where you are coming from.

I have a female name, I am a outwardly feminine woman, nobody who walks this planet would think I am in any way male.

Why do I suddenly need to announce the obvious 🤷🏻‍♀️

Why should anyone assume "she" are pronouns you prefer? Should they guess based on stereotypes?

This ^^ again and again and again.

In that Peter Boghossian video. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4549136-peter-boghossian

..a student is apparently so triggered and offended by reading the statement 'There are only 2 genders' that they have to go home and, as they used to say, have a fit of the vapours, because it undermined their whole identity.

Proving my initial point. Night night.

Yes, yes they should. I've no issue whatsoever with people assuming I am a adult female, who uses the commonly known pronoun she/her, which has been commonplace for centuries.

Assume away! Stereotype away, not a bother to me at all whatsoever.

How are gendered pronouns any less of a social convention than gendered clothing, if you don't mind me asking?

Because pronouns are about how the speaker perceives others. The only place where they are anything to do with social convention is in the old convention that the masculine gender is used to encompass both sexes. The default masculine is social convention.

A man deciding to wear a dress is expressing himself by going against social convention. He is exercising his right to freedom of expression. A man deciding that others must refer to him using feminine pronouns is depriving them of their freedom of expression.

Adding pronouns as part of your email signature is a political statement that you agree with the aggressive, sexist and homophobic lobbying carried out by Stonewall and Mermaids activists.

It isn’t something I would do and it is unethical for employers to demand their employees make political statements that have nothing to do with their job.

In the unlikely event that someone mistakes me for a man, I literally do not care.

If someone mistakes me for a Stonewall supporter I’d be quite upset.