Forstater judgment tomorrow

[achillestoes]

In case we hadn’t had enough drama.

Good luck, Maya.

It’s fine, I identify as a Harris Hawk.

Well I identify as rat poison, so top trumps I win.

My pronouns are now cough/choke/thud.

Yes, I was thinking the same as PP abovyt re the "oh I take my cardi off and men get aroused" pronouns analogy. (Really sorry for not finding all the posters names right now,)

If you were told to take your cardigan off despite that being completely counter intuitive, eg it's bloody cold and you wouldn't do it without being asked, that would be the same.

Pronouns are demanded from you by AGP men so they can get off on it. I am not taking part.

Obviously not all men / not all TW have AGP, I'm seriously not suggesting that, but seeing as 1 in 5 men have a paraphilia and cross dressing is in the top 5 most common paraphilias..... I'm just saying. You just can't tell which is which when it comes down to it can you.

SupportWren

I await the others.

But that’s not real. Whereas I’m definitely cat gender. According to BBC mermaids training there are only 150 genders, and hawk isn’t one of them. I recommend you contact Mermaids to add your hawk gender.

New gender just dropped! 🤣

I’m another who’s been radicalised on Mumsnet. I don’t have any children, so I found myself here through Googling issues and just being thoroughly bewildered by the world. I’m in awe of brave women like Maya and Allison, who’ve stood up and said a resounding “No” for all of us.

I’m not yet in a position where pronouns have had much impact on my life. I worked with a young woman who claimed to be trans a few years back, though only for a few months. She said she was ‘genderqueer’, and I didn’t understand what that was, so then she said her pronouns were they/them. I was very blunt and said I didn’t understand what she meant by that (true at the time) - and she said it was fine, she was used to people referring to her as ‘her’. I just said ‘righto’ and carried on like before 😁 I find the whole pronouns thing very weird tbh, and mildly sinister. The PP who talked about Authoritarianism earlier seemed spot on to me. I’ve a lot of self-educating to do!

I think identifying as Ratatouille will work better with HR! Miaow.

My pronouns are now cough/choke/thud.
😂

The PP who talked about Authoritarianism earlier seemed spot on to me

The first hour has an interesting discussion of Solzhenitsyn's Live not by lies with spillovers into a broad range of topics; this includes Havel's greengrocer as well!

Thanks for these links, @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus. I must follow them up properly. My first thought about truthtellers/liars/bullshitters is that it seems to parallel moral/immoral/amoral. My vague, not very well thought out hunch is that amoral is more of a problem than immoral as they simply have no grasp of what morality means or why it matters. Must be related in some way to psychopathy and narcissism - all people unhindered by worrying about what other people feel/want/need. I feel in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic we've had an object lesson in why such people should be kept away from high political office.

it was a good point well made - this is news worth shouting about 😁

I've been trying to think through and articulate something lately about why I won't go along with pronouns as a 'courtesy', and it's because it seems to me to fall into the same area of social compulsion as being required to call a particular group of people 'your royal highness' or 'your majesty', having to curtsey or bow, and in general treating them as special, when you don't believe that system is right.

However, I have never worked anywhere where curtseying or using titles for visiting dignitaries was mandatory. We would be asked to observe the 'courtesies' if we wished, but it certainly wasn't ever regarded as a disciplinary offence to decline to do so. Employees and employers were free to believe and express themselves how they wished, in the sense of not observing the social courtesies of using particular forms of address and body movements.

Where it would cross into a disciplinary would be extremely offensive behaviour that would apply in any work situation anyway, i.e. threatening or intimidating behaviour, grossly offensive language - you know, the stuff already in the HR handbook.

So pronouns seem to have gone beyond normal 'courtesy' practice in some workplaces, if saying No Thank You isn't the end of the matter.

@SpinningForTheWorld

Yes, it’s the difference between, on discovering your colleague has a title (Sir/Lord/Lady), choosing not to use it, and calling them a privileged c*nt.

My sadly serious point would be that you should be able to simultaneously think someone's a massive dick in your workplace (although not say it to their face); but be permitted to decline to use their honorific title without any repercussions (permitted expression of belief).

This is the comparator situation for me, I think.

@ShirleyPhallus I agree to a certain extent. To use religion as a comparator if someone regularly told a Muslim colleague to her face that there was no god and not drinking alcohol was a stupid pointless rule without any relevance to the job, the context of what was going on or what the colleague was doing or saying, they would be being a huge arse and I hope hr would intervene quickly and strongly to tell them to sort it out or they'd be out. It is clearly possible for a gnc person to be harassed at work and I totally agree with them having support from hr if they are

To me pronouns are words you use about a person when they aren't there, with that in mind, the ability to talk about your experience of and with a colleague in ways and words that they may not like or approve of is an essential protection.

Imagine trying to have the following conversation with HR

He makes me uncomfortable because he watches me a lot, when I go to the bathroom he follows me, it makes me feel like he's been waiting for me to go. When I'm in there he engages me in conversation that often strays into very uncomfortable territory including my underwear and sex life and it's very hard to figure out how to get him to stop without being openly unfriendly. He may genuinely not know this but women do not routinely share the information he's asking for even with friends and we're not friends. I don't want to make him unhappy or uncomfortable but he's making me unhappy and uncomfortable.

Now switch the pronouns, this is what in my experience people mean by 'pronouns are rohypnol'.

Women do sometimes need to be able to use our words to describe the things we experience.

But IMO, it's worse than that. The Royal Family are an objective reality. The Queen has a legal role and status within the constitution. The forms of address are ultimately based on the power and responsibilities that they used to have - also a reality. And yet we are still allowed to just say "the Queen" or "Liz" or even "Brenda", if you're Private Eye. We don't have to say "her majesty", or call her "good Queen Bess".
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, just articulating my unease.

To me pronouns are words you use about a person when they aren't there

I do definitely understand this point. I've been in workplaces though where we've had regular large staff / board meetings and pronouns are used continuously after first use of the name.

E.g. 'that's a crucial point from David, especially what he says about the depletion of government grant in that area. It ties in with Marion's graph where she displayed the rising demand for this service, and how her department's already creaking.'

Having to 'Think Pronoun' would affect fluency, and affect my rights not to be compelled to express myself againt my will.

An employer that doesn't force me to address, say, Sophie Wessex on a visit as 'Your Royal Highness' shouldn't be turning the screws over pronouns. It's hypocrisy. For me, this is about re-focusing on the the rights of the polite employee with the acceptable belief, not the employee or visitor who wants to be called a special thing.

Same here, @BellaAmorosa - I haven't articulated this properly yet, but it's an interesting discussion of preliminary thoughts.

I suppose my personal feeling is that when a pronoun that's based in material reality is changed unilaterally into one that's not based in material reality, and then the word 'courtesy' is thrown into the mix, that new pronoun ceases to be a pronoun and becomes a form of title.

And we don't force people at work to use titles if they don't want to, not even if they're in the receiving line greeting visiting royal dignitaries. It has long been accepted that you can't compel employees to 'believe in royalty' as it were. Or, they could meet Alan Sugar and call him 'Mr Sugar' or 'Alan' all day long, and while they might piss off Alan Sugar, they wouldn't get sacked for it as long as they otherwise did their job.

HR Departments have not been exploring the implications of compelled pronouns against a range of comparators and policies. They've just swallowed what Stonewall told them.

‘E.g. 'that's a crucial point from David, especially what he says about the depletion of government grant in that area. It ties in with Marion's graph where she displayed the rising demand for this service, and how her department's already creaking.'

In some places it’s worse than this. Imagine I said, ‘E.g. 'that's a crucial point from David, especially what David says about the depletion of government grant in that area. It ties in with Marion's graph where she displayed the rising demand for this service, and how her department's already creaking...’

Would David accept this? Or would David accuse me of being facetious and transphobic?

Running with my thoughts on this, @achillestoes ... David might like not it, but the workplace should accept it, just as it accepts other non-use of titles.

@SpinningForTheWorld

Agree. If I do everything I possibly can to avoid upsetting or harassing David, and David still insists I have to use words that indicate beliefs I don’t share, it’s David who ought to be liable to accusations of harassment, not me.

Yes, workplaces should allow for 'conscientious objection' while requiring all parties equally to maintain civility, using the same bar for every employee.

Equal rights.

Used to be a thing.

Conscientious objection to a workplace policy that differs from the law?

I'm wondering who would need to be categorised as a conscientious objector? It used to be (broadly) people who demurred from a national policy/law (it had its origins in anti-vaccination in C19) and came to wider prominence as a way to refuse active military service on the basis of religious or moral principles.