I am embracing virtue signalling pronouns in emails

[MsFogi]

I have realised I have made too many assumptions about gender over the years. I had always assumed that Paul (name changed of course) in my company was a man simply on the basis of his appearance (well over 6 foot, well built, big beard, low voice that only someone with an Adam's apple and whose balls have dropped could have). Imagine my relief to find that I have not been misgendering him for over a decade because he has helpfully added his pronouns to his email auto signature - they are he/him/his. There is no company diktat to add pronouns on emails so clearly this is important to Paul or maybe he has been misgendered recently.

So, I thought I would ensure that Paul was not offended on a Teams meeting this afternoon and kicked off the meeting by asking everyone to note that Paul's pronouns are he/him/his and that given that he has stated these that everyone please be sensitive to ensuring that they use them. No one said anything so I think they all took it on board, no one misgendered Paul and I like to think that his move to include his pronouns at work has been embraced in my meeting. Maybe as a result others that attended the meeting will add theirs to their auto signatures too.

What a bizarre choice.

Because a trans woman wouldn’t have a uterus (or any of the accompanying biological features) that would enable them to conceive and carry a child.

If transwomen were women, you couldn't possibly know that none of them had a uterus. So what makes you so sure that no transwoman has a uterus?

Because a trans woman wouldn’t have a uterus (or any of the accompanying biological features) that would enable them to conceive and carry a child.

But transwomen are women. In every way.
You sound transphobic.

I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say that the existing words have always exclusively been used to refer to ‘biological sex’. There are examples of individuals who ‘lived as’ the opposite sex throughout history, and were referred to using their acquired name and pronouns (even if many people using them were not aware that the person’s ‘true’ sex, some were). And in the twentieth century it became increasingly common to talk of people who had undergone ‘sex change’ surgery in terms of ‘they used to be a man/woman’ rather than ‘they are really a man/woman’.

I also wouldn’t agree that the majority of people who advocate for trans inclusion insist there must be no words available to refer to a person’s ‘biological sex’ - whether you like the terms or not, ‘AFAB’ and ‘AMAB’ are commonly used for that purpose. I recognise that these terms do not directly capture what you mean by ‘biological sex’ (and are founded on beliefs about the nature of sex and gender that you reject), but they will capture almost all of the same people in reality, given that the sex recorded at birth for the vast majority of people (on the basis of their genitalia) will reflect their chromosomes and align with their other primary and secondary sex characteristics.

On the point about insisting gender and sex are wholly separate and distinct, this is something where I disagree with many on ‘my side’, as I think it’s a simplification. I believe sex and gender are deeply intertwined and cannot be easily or clearly separated.

If that’s what you believe we will have to agree to differ.

There are examples of individuals who ‘lived as’ the opposite sex throughout history

So - what does it mean to 'live as a woman'?

Settles in, gets popcorn, waits for the answer. @aseriesofstillimages were counting on you

I suppose it may be possible in the case of some individuals with particular intersex variations to have a uterus but still be regarded as a trans woman - perhaps a person with Swyer syndrome who has XY chromosomes but has female genitalia and a uterus. If you regard such a person as being a man (in terms of their sex, because of their chromosomes) but they consider themselves to be a woman, then you could say they were a trans woman. But the only person I know with the condition I think would consider herself a cis woman. Certainly they were assigned/recorded female at birth, so in that sense their gender matches their sex.

Are you saying people with DSD are trans now? Really? That’s how low you’re going? Oof. I’d expected better.

We aren't talking about DSDs, aseriesofstillimages, we're talking about trans people.

to some extent it depends on the specific historical and social context, but I suppose going under a name and pronouns generally associated with the opposite sex, and likewise wearing clothes and otherwise physically presenting and generally behaving in a way likely to be expected of the opposite sex. This is a good real life example en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willmer_Broadnax

The DSD thing is bizarre. Unless every trans person has a hidden and undiagnosed DSD (I suggested mass testing to put us terfs straight once and for all, but they seemed reluctant) then it’s completely unrelated - like saying the existence of cheese must mean the moon is made of cheese. Plus I thought gender was not biological?

The question was, is it possible for a trans woman to have a uterus. I was trying to think of any real world situation where that would be possible.

So you’re going with sexist stereotypes. What If I wear men’s clothes? Dries that mean I’m living as a man? How does someone behave like a woman?

If we are excluding people with intersex variations then my answer would be that it is not possible for a trans woman to have a uterus.

I believe clinics used to screen for DSDs as standard. They stopped implementing this step, because the rate of undiagnosed DSDs in patients referred to gender dysphoria clinics was no greater than in the wider population.

Did you read about Willmer Broadnax? I think that’s quite a good illustration of how it can look in reality.

Of course we are excluding people with DSD. They have asked repeatedly not to be dragged into this. Even stonewall has conceded they are no part of this debate. So, a transwoman is not a woman biologically, or in any other way.

name and pronouns generally associated with the opposite sex, and likewise wearing clothes and otherwise physically presenting and generally behaving in a way likely to be expected of the opposite sex

Name, pronouns, clothes - 'physically presenting' - what does this mean, please? Hairstyle?

'behaving in a way likely to be expected of the opposite sex' - again, could you expand on this, please?

Also thanks for coming back to answer questions; it's fascinating to find someone willing to discuss these things politely and able to do so coherently! Happens almost never!

I know. It’s a miracle. @aseriesofstillimages have some cake

QUOTE

Initially the approach with GD was similar to that for disorder of sex development, with a karyotype being routinely requested. An audit of UK clinics from 2013 to 2015 (Table 1) revealed no differences from cytogenetic surveys of the UK newborn population and elsewhere.10 11 Therefore, routine karyotyping of a child or adolescent with GD is not required unless any specific clinical features determine this to be necessary.

adc.bmj.com/content/103/7/631

I read a bit. So.

I have questions!

I have short hair. I'm wearing trousers, a shirt, and birkenstocks. I don't ever wear make up. My name is unfamiliar to most people in this country/culture, so it's not recognisably male or female associated.

How can I tell if I'm a woman or a man? Can you describe it for me?

I also wouldn’t agree that the majority of people who advocate for trans inclusion insist there must be no words available to refer to a person’s ‘biological sex’ - whether you like the terms or not, ‘AFAB’ and ‘AMAB’ are commonly used for that purpose.

I said "any new terms that naturally arise in their place, arising due to the real need we have in some contexts to be able to talk about sex, cannot simply exist as a language backfill for "that thing we used to get confused with gender", but must be stopped, stamped on, either denounced as transphobic or immediately appropriated as more words for gender."

Leaving aside the obfuscation that the reason one is AFAB is not random but because ones clear biological sex was observed to be female, and therefore something (sex) preexists the assignment and should have a name in its own right, because the truth that AFAB coyly hints without saying is that one must at birth have had a certain body type that is associated with being female so yet again the ideology does not stand up in its own right but continues to need the ongoing existence of the very concepts it claims to reject - leaving that aside for now...

What do you think would happen if I set up a refuge, or a changing room, or a book club, or a discussion group, or a literary prize, or a political officership, and said it was only for people AFAB, due to the specific challenges that those with such assignment face? Do you think the dominant voices speaking for trans people would say "great, fair enough, AFAB people do need that" or do you think it would be accusations of transphobia and a concerted effort to pressurise me and anyone tangentially involved like funders, location managers, publicity channels etc to have whatever it is stopped?

All of that.

Playing along with using any of the made up terms involves complying with the agenda involved. No.

No one is 'assigned' anything at birth. The wangling and manipulating of boundaries through language is not innocent, it is a control technique that enforces a political and quasi religious agenda.

It can gtf.

People are welcome to use whatever words they choose for themselves. And I will do the same.

If we just redfine the words 'man' and 'woman' to be respectively 'AMAB' and 'AFAB' how long will it be before someone AMAB decides that actually they want to be AFAB and are self defining that way?

I reckon about ten minutes.