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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

For anyone who thought the Guardian had seen the light...

39 replies

RoyalCorgi · 26/11/2022 11:23

A whole article on pronouns in the Saturday paper:

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/26/pronouns-gendered-language-revolution-britain

OP posts:
zen1 · 26/11/2022 11:29

I see the author of the article is championing Bragg. Enough said.

JellySaurus · 26/11/2022 11:30

I suppose I'll have to read the entire article, but just the subheading already grates:

There’s a quiet revolution happening over how we address people, and behind it lies a surprising history …

No! It is not about how we address people! It is about how we refer to them.

It is not about addressing them in the way they would like, by their name or rank. That is courtesy by the speaker. It is about controlling how the speaker refers to somebody else. It is about coercive control by another person, even when they are not present.

ZandathePanda · 26/11/2022 11:31

This bit made me laugh:

In 1932 the Guardian made its own contribution, when it awarded second prize of a guinea to Arthur L Dakyns, of Didsbury in Manchester, in a competition to suggest the 10 most needed additions to the English vocabulary. His offer included three “personal pronouns of indefinite gender”: ha, ham and shas. Dakyns’s list also included “Bronk: to raise and lower one eyebrow while keeping the other steady (indispensable to actors aspiring to film work)”, suggesting he was not perhaps being entirely serious. The tone of his entry is instantly recognisable. It’s mockery dressed up as wit – the ancestor of the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme that emerged on Reddit in 2014 and has since multiplied across the internet.

bellac11 · 26/11/2022 11:32

I have stopped reading at the point where a dad is putting money in a 'naughty jar' when he 'misgenders' his child

zen1 · 26/11/2022 11:33

If declaring one’s pronouns, and accepting that “they/them” doesn’t ruin a sentence, can help to raise awareness and enable an embattled minority to live happier lives, then bring them on.

”Embattled minority”.

MoirasSaggyBundles · 26/11/2022 11:35

Middle aged CEO with a paraphilia = embattled minority. How the Guardian has lost touch with the ordinary working man and woman, who has no time or resources for these luxury beliefs.

OldCrone · 26/11/2022 11:35

bellac11 · 26/11/2022 11:32

I have stopped reading at the point where a dad is putting money in a 'naughty jar' when he 'misgenders' his child

You got further than me. I got as far as "As a writer, reader and feminist who is also the parent of a transgender child".

bellac11 · 26/11/2022 11:35

I was trying to write a report yesterday where I had to refer to a they/them who lives with a couple.

Trying to distinguish which they/them I was referring to in describing domestic situations and decision making made a complete farce of everything.

Rubidium · 26/11/2022 11:43

Heaven help these people if they ever encounter anyone who doesn’t have English as a first language.

WomenShouldWinWomensSports · 26/11/2022 11:51

MoirasSaggyBundles · 26/11/2022 11:35

Middle aged CEO with a paraphilia = embattled minority. How the Guardian has lost touch with the ordinary working man and woman, who has no time or resources for these luxury beliefs.

This really sums it up. The dominant group, dissatisfied with the fact their power has been challenged by those they disempowered, now refuses to take responsibility for what they did whilst further cementing their stranglehold on power systems by creating an identity for themselves that they define and that enables them to unquestionably retain power whilst taking it from the others and convincing the oppressed that the oppressors were, in fact, the victims all along.

Brought to you by big pharma.

It’s the ‘poor me’ control drama James Redfield discussed in The Celestine Prophecy (putting aside the woo aspects of the story).

RoyalCorgi · 26/11/2022 12:12

JellySaurus · 26/11/2022 11:30

I suppose I'll have to read the entire article, but just the subheading already grates:

There’s a quiet revolution happening over how we address people, and behind it lies a surprising history …

No! It is not about how we address people! It is about how we refer to them.

It is not about addressing them in the way they would like, by their name or rank. That is courtesy by the speaker. It is about controlling how the speaker refers to somebody else. It is about coercive control by another person, even when they are not present.

This really irritated me too. You'd think the Guardian subeditors would know better.

OP posts:
ZandathePanda · 26/11/2022 12:20

ZandathePanda · 26/11/2022 11:31

This bit made me laugh:

In 1932 the Guardian made its own contribution, when it awarded second prize of a guinea to Arthur L Dakyns, of Didsbury in Manchester, in a competition to suggest the 10 most needed additions to the English vocabulary. His offer included three “personal pronouns of indefinite gender”: ha, ham and shas. Dakyns’s list also included “Bronk: to raise and lower one eyebrow while keeping the other steady (indispensable to actors aspiring to film work)”, suggesting he was not perhaps being entirely serious. The tone of his entry is instantly recognisable. It’s mockery dressed up as wit – the ancestor of the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme that emerged on Reddit in 2014 and has since multiplied across the internet.

A: What did you say to ham?
B: I was laughing and ha was upset.
A: Why was ha upset?
B: Because ha didn’t think the pronoun award was funny.

I think The Guardian back then had a better grasp of reality and shas (?) were having a laugh too.

WeeBisom · 26/11/2022 12:30

This psychologist says that some people experience “physical pain” when the pronouns they have selected aren’t used. Sorry but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s possible to experience physical pain by someone saying words. Extreme mental anguish, maybe, but pain?

To be honest, I find all this navel gazing and reflection about the “self” really tiresome. i think that some people are incredibly fascinated by their sense of self and enjoy preening it, cultivating their personal identity like a hobby (see the person in the article who finally decides they are a “boy”.) it’s a little bit like people who find religion and suddenly it’s the most all consuming, interesting thing in their lives. But I find it quite narcissistic and consumerist , and I resent the pronoun shit because it means that I’m dragged in as a participant in their self-building.

StrawberrySquash · 26/11/2022 12:39

@WeeBisom I wonder if what was really meant is the same bits of the brain light up? Like there is research to suggest the social ostracism lights up the same brain parts as physical pain. So it hurts - I get that. But also physical pain is hardly cut and dried. We know it's subjective and not always proportionate to the actual harm done.

transdimensional · 26/11/2022 13:01

As a linguist, I quibble with some bits of the article. It is not true to say that if Lewis Carroll had used "they" when referring to Alice, he would "merely have been following" Dickens and Austen. Dickens, Austen and other writers used singular "they" to refer to a person of unknown gender (an indeterminate individual, as in Austen's "“I would have everybody marry if they could do it properly"). Occasionally, "they" was used where the gender was known but considered irrelevant, as in Shakespeare's "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me as if I were their well-acquainted friend" (though this could also possibly be interpreted as the old use of "man" to refer to a non-gender-specific individual). But all these usages are a different kettle of fish from "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by their sister", which would have seemed very odd to Carroll, Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare.

Secondly, we are told that "Old English used variations of the same word – “he” and “heo” for “he” and “she”, and “hi” for third-person plurals of all genders. But in day-to-day life these could be confusing." OK, if it was confusing to use a similar word for singular and plural 3rd-person pronouns back then - so confusing that "hi" was replaced with "they", even though the pronouns were only similar and not indentical - why then are we be encouraged to think that using "they" as a singular (to refer to a definite individual, not the traditional indefinite usages) won't be confusing and that anyone who says it is is some kind of bigot?

"In April this year, the US became the 17th country in the world to introduce gender-neutral passports, offering the option of “X” alongside “M” (male) and “F” (female). We live in a globalised world where many languages, such as Finnish, don’t have gendered personal pronouns; there’s no one size that fits all."

This is lumping different points together in the same paragraph. The fact that Finnish lacks gendered personal pronouns has never stopped them from distinguishing M and F. They don't all feel nonbinary. I don't think Finland allows X on passports yet. In fact a Finnish government website states that you must be entered on the national population register as M or F - you cannot be nonbinary: "The Finnish law only recognises two genders: man and woman. In Finland, a gender-neutral person is always entered as a woman in official documents and registers." ( dvv.fi/en/gender-recognised-abroad )

ControversialOpening · 26/11/2022 13:01

Heaven help these people if they ever encounter anyone who doesn’t have English as a first language.

Heaven help these people if they ever encounter anyone who isn’t an idiot.

transdimensional · 26/11/2022 13:03

Soon Rijneveld began to feel that this didn’t represent the true picture. “I’m being billed as non-binary everywhere, but actually it is becoming increasingly clear to me: I feel like a boy. Not a man or a woman or non-binary, but a boy.”

Is Rijneveld trans-age as well as transgender? This is very odd but is not expored further in the piece.

ControversialOpening · 26/11/2022 13:16

you know I don’t actually mind the pronouns thing too much. It seems daft to me, but it’s not a hill I’d die on. if that was all TRAs were after I’d shrug.

However, it now feels like accepting preferred pronouns is accepting the ideology - that TWAW, no single sex spaces, no same sex attraction, etc. This means that I’m not going to use anyone’s preferred pronouns or announce my own, and that ant website that asks for them is going to get a comment in the ‘anything else’ box.

FlimFlam2 · 26/11/2022 13:38

WeeBisom · 26/11/2022 12:30

This psychologist says that some people experience “physical pain” when the pronouns they have selected aren’t used. Sorry but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s possible to experience physical pain by someone saying words. Extreme mental anguish, maybe, but pain?

To be honest, I find all this navel gazing and reflection about the “self” really tiresome. i think that some people are incredibly fascinated by their sense of self and enjoy preening it, cultivating their personal identity like a hobby (see the person in the article who finally decides they are a “boy”.) it’s a little bit like people who find religion and suddenly it’s the most all consuming, interesting thing in their lives. But I find it quite narcissistic and consumerist , and I resent the pronoun shit because it means that I’m dragged in as a participant in their self-building.

Completely agree. I can excuse narcissistic introspection in teenagers; anyone over the age of 25 who seriously contemplates this stuff (or worse, utters their inane musings out loud - e.g. recent guardian interview with Héloïse Letissier/Christine and the Queens) is someone who has failed to exit adolescence and is, ironically, insufficiently self-aware to realise they are mistaking arrested development for growth.

Boiledbeetle · 26/11/2022 14:41

The book’s assumption that children should be free to make up their own minds is supported by Claudia, a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in young people with gender dysphoria, who says: “Misgendering young people with an intense trans- or cross-gender identification can cause them pain and sometimes results in them not even recognising themselves. Language is a social construction which brings things into being, and pronouns are a part of that.” Sam has experience of this with Milly. “They find it physically painful when I get their pronoun wrong,” he says.

well quite if you insist on misgendering a young girl as a boy of course she won't recognise herself....but that's not what they're trying to say is it.

EndlessTea · 26/11/2022 14:51

Half a paragraph in and I’m thinking ODFOD. I cannot be entertaining the self-absorbed bullshit of others. Everyone, put yourselves and your inner lives first. Anyone who wants you to prioritise their inner life over your own, needs to do one. Tiresome, tedious twats. FOTHFSOF.

FrancescaContini · 26/11/2022 15:06

Can’t even be bothered to read this navel gazing bullshit.

For people who insist on pronouns: I will refer to you however I like in your absence. If you’re standing in front of me and I need to address you I will, of course, use “you”. This is how English works.

EndlessTea · 26/11/2022 15:09

I know Francesca. I am as interested in someone else’s self-perceived identity as I am interested in what they had for breakfast that day.

No one else needs to know fgs.

Clymene · 26/11/2022 15:12

I stopped reading at 'a quiet revolution'. Nothing quiet about it. It's being rammed down our throats by our banks, energy suppliers and supermarkets.

@ControversialOpening - this article about why pronouns lead to a slow creep of embedding gender ideology is brilliant if you've not read it before.

The author used to post here before she was banned

fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

FrancescaContini · 26/11/2022 15:13

EndlessTea · 26/11/2022 15:09

I know Francesca. I am as interested in someone else’s self-perceived identity as I am interested in what they had for breakfast that day.

No one else needs to know fgs.

I’d be infinitely more interested in what they had for breakfast. Pronoun bores can just bore off.