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.

Sidelight from history, with an extract from this.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4281733-The-Trans-Umbrella-Is-Older-Than-You-Think?reply=108674196

Gay Liberation Front journal - Come Together - issue 11: Lesbians Come Together. The GLF Transvestite, Transsexual and Drag Queen group, contributed this to a special issue about lesbians, originally published in 1972.

A more central question is how to relate to other women. When we talk about our hopes and fantasies, it becomes apparent that what we want above all is to be accepted as women, primarily by other women. But will we achieve this by looking for ways in which we share experience with regular women or by developing a unique transvestite consciousness?

Sometimes the second approach seems real militant and proud, at other times it seems a cop-out, accepting the prejudiced view that we're not women…Possibly we can find some light by considering the situation of black women and gay women, who develop black pride and gay pride, but still explore their feelings as women. Think how much more inspiring and beautiful the women's revolution will be when it joyously includes all women. Think of a Holloway demo with transvestite, transsexual and drag-queen women, gay women and heterosexual women, black, yellow, brown and white women, working women, housewives and career women. Certainly, whatever course we take as transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens, we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us.

I note the emphasis on "other women" as a source of validation. The final lines and the rhetoric about the need to "first destroy the trap" that is grounded in the standards and boundaries of "regular women" and their right to say, "No" has some chilling echoes in similar claims by PPs here.

Can't help speculating how different things would've turned out if only they chose the 'militant and proud' route of developing a 'unique transvestite identity' rather than insisting on TWAW. Is it too late now?

They do when they get pregnant, or strip their clothes off. Just like their sisters.

Quite.

TWAW Until/Unless.....

does not work any better than 'well just the lovely ones like my lovely friend X' or 'the ones who pass'.

It's all or none.

And the rights and equality of females requires that it is none. No males. At all.

Third choice spaces can be provided if wanted, where the females privileged enough to not mind and male people wanting to be with females can be, and those spaces will serve other inclusion needs too.

Sacrificing all females and all female spaces and rights and words? That's not inclusion, that's male supremacism hiding under a damn great rainbow coloured figleaf.

whatever course we take as transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens, we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us.

Basically: We must destroy female boundaries and refuse them autonomy. It is not the right of females to say no to males.

How plain do you need it?

I note the emphasis on "other women" as a source of validation. The final lines and the rhetoric about the need to "first destroy the trap" that is grounded in the standards and boundaries of "regular women" and their right to say, "No" has some chilling echoes in similar claims by PPs here.

Another quiet bit odd loud - showing that validation and destroying the boundaries of women and girls is the aim and has always been.

Think of a Holloway demo with transvestite, transsexual and drag-queen women, gay women and heterosexual women, black, yellow, brown and white women, working women, housewives and career women.

Three of those is not like the others as they say on Sesame Street.

Gosh that's chilling. Pride in bullying people until lack of consent is not accepted as a barrier by mainstream society.

And rubbishing women's voices, reasons, feelings, humanity, autonomy, privacy, dignity, trauma, cultures, faiths.....

until it's normalised that female consent is meaningless and she must never say no to a male.

Absobloodylutely!

You have this arse about face...it's the insistence by TRAs that TW should be entitled to infiltrate female spaces rather than campaigning for or creating their own. It's not women's job to sort all this out for them.

Part of my reasoning, for example, is that I know many trans women also feel deeply under threat from male violence – they have profound vulnerabilities too.

Women are not human shields or collateral damage to be used for males under threat from male violence @Didimum.

If TW truly didn't want to encroach on women's spaces they would lobby and fight for separate spaces and services and a major part of that strategy would be to say to Government that they are not prepared to infringe the safety, privacy and dignity of women and girls and therefore require different spaces, it would be incredibly difficult for any Government to ignore or dismiss that. Much like disabled people had to lobby and fight for spaces for their requirements, trans people are way more visible, vocal and listened to than disabled people ever were or indeed are.

@Didimum I know many trans women also feel deeply under threat from male violence

They are the safest demographic in the UK.

Certainly, whatever course we take as transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens, we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us.
Translation: We get to say what 'regular women' are allowed to think.

Fucking hell. That mindset has some deep roots.

Us non-believing, resisting women are a bit of a fly in the ointment for their plans, aren't we?

Pesky regular women are just so tiresome. How are we have an opinion on such matters.

I know it's impossible, or deeply inadvisable, but I would love to know what Paul would think about this thread.

Sadly there are women in the submissive camp who've bought the whole most oppressed, had such a hard time, etc., etc. line that is being sold. I've said it before and I'll say it again if they think for one minute that TRAs respect them, value them or even like them they are in for very rude awakening, they are being used and once they have served their useful purpose they'll be dumped and dismissed quicker than lightening.

Agree, Vest

I've seen some of these women get turned on and it isn't nice.

Turned on and criticised by the people they are throwing other women under the bus for, for the avoidance of doubt, not in the sexual sense!

I thought that was a bit Freudian Eresh!

When we talk about our hopes and fantasies, it becomes apparent that what we want above all is to be accepted as women, primarily by other women… we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us.

Does the author even see the contradiction? Maybe it’s not even a contradiction, maybe “acceptance” that’s coerced suffices. But of course, nothing ever suffices and it’s so easy to see why. The bottomless need for validation combined with the violent desire to destroy any possibility of rejection, so that there’s always the deep down knowledge that the validation they are getting isn’t completely sincere.

Yes.

Hey @antifascist , have you finished installing protective software on your mum's phone/laptop, just in case she comes across something GC, let alone (stage whisper) Jordan Peterson?

You'd better get on with that anon instead of wasting your time here in the us 8Chan desert, 'cos you know, these
GC fascists, they speak with serpents' tongues.

WHAT IF SHE LIKES WHAT SHE SEES