“Gender” bloody everywhere

[DevilinaCardigan]

I’ve just been looking at pet insurance quotes for my cats. Several different sites have asked for their gender instead of sex. I’ve asked them how they identify and what pronouns they use, but they’ve all fucked off for naps in warm spots around the house.
What am I supposed to answer?

**This is a lighthearted thread, but it does annoy me.

Please tell me you emailed them

'Sorry I just have a question, how do you tell? What do we need to look for to check?'

My cats - both male - firmly reject the modern concept of gender-as-identity. They understand it as meaning sex-based stereotypes (varying according to time & place); however, alsinthey consider said stereotypes to be oppressive & indeed often harmful, & reject them with a firm paw. Floral [bowtie] collars? Why not? A pink cushion? Perfect place to nap. Valerian unicorn with a pink mane & its pastel-hued llama pal? Perfect for cuddles, thank you. The human’s pink fleecy blanket? Possession is 9/10ths of the law & we have about that much of the blanket 😸😸

Absolute nonsense asking about cats’ gender. It stopped being a polite synonym several years ago & forms etc need to catch up. Am optional section on humans’ gender - in addition to, never instead of, gathering information about sex - is not wholly unreasonable. Asking about pets’ gender is like asking about their religion - sillier even, given there are church services for pets & abundance of cathedral-dwelling cats…

To be fair, it was the pet insurance forms not the vets that asked about gender. The only options were male or female though 🙄.

@NeuroWasabi my point was that gender is a social construct. Humans can vocalise how they feel about gender. My cats can’t. I still think gender is an outdated concept and people should just wear whatever they want (try not to scare the horses) and have whatever interests and hobbies they enjoy. It has nothing to do with their physical bodies which are either male or female.

Remy (male) is wearing a pink collar, but I don’t think it was particularly his choice. Elmo (female) is often misgendered but she gives zero fucks.

For all of the cats their hobbies include sleeping, eating, hunting, and annoying me when I’m trying to sleep or work. No differences between the sexes there.

6 months ago I was asked to sign an NHS consent form. In the demographic section, it said ‘gender’. I’ve just been sent the form again and it says ‘sex’.
Maybe someone spotted it, maybe they were fed up of complaints. Either way, a step in the right direction

The church services for pets are to bless your pets. We don’t actually think your dog is an Anglican - unless you propose to offer us a large donation so you can bury their ashes with yours (old church joke).

Exactly (in reference to wear what they want but sex is immutable).

A client of mine asked about the gender of a garden plant we were discussing. I shouted 'Sex not gender!' at him and he laughed.

One of dd’s friends consistently refers to our dog as ‘they/them’. I did try to explain he is definitely male, but castrated, so maybe….

OP, I appreciate the cat pictures to illustrate the point.

It's so annoying!!

Dd and her friend (both 11) were in the back of the car the other day and dd was telling her friend how when we went on holiday there was a shop called The Sex Shop on the High Street. Obvs we didn't go into what they sell.

Her friend piped up "shouldn't that be The Gender Shop?"

Shot that down

Bernadette, a shop where you can buy everything you need for your shiny new gender - it’s a goldmine!

It all irritates me at the moment. I had to fill in a medical form recently and it asked if my gender identity is the same as the sex recognised at birth.
No option for "I don't have a gender identity"
However was happy they used the word Recognised as opposed to "assigned"

Any time I have to fill out a medical type form for me or the DC if it asks for gender I score it through and write sex in its place. Easier on a hard copy form obviously.

I recently had to fill in a consent form for my 11 year old DS to get his flu vaccination at school. It was a hard copy form, so I crossed out gender and wrote in sex, and then ticked male. I didn't mention it to DS, just gave him the form to hand in at school. He glanced at it and said in a hushed and totally scandalised voice, "Mummy, you have written SEX on my form!"

I do the same thing which gets me an eyeroll from the kids. It’s nice to hear you do the same. I wonder how many forms they get back from us and if it makes anyone processing the forms pause for thought.

It does reassure me somewhat that most people aren't captured by gender ideology, they're just a bit dim when it comes to correct language.

I'm no expert on the whole gender/sex thing. Until a very few years ago I thought that a trans person was the same as a cross dresser, which may be due to my age. This is coming from a person who has been mistaken for a lesbian quite a few times as I'm quite androgynous/tomboy myself. However I'm certain that I'm straight and personally I'm not bothered about the whole thing, though I may be able to claim some sort of lbtq+ type of designation myself. My personal view is that the whole thing has been repressed for so long that now it's become quite 'flavour of the month', which is annoying at times. But I think the next generation will be more open and it won't be a big thing anymore... I wonder what's next though!

However, I think if people are so upset about it that they would harm themselves, those of us that don't really care could get over our minor annoyance with it and bite our tongues. Let the kids figure it out. No need to poke fun at people who are different or complain about a word on a form. I really do think that some of the people ITT would change their tune quite quickly if it was their kid or family member who was harming themselves over it. Are you aware of the suicide rates for trans people? It's really sad imo.

I hope so @EndlessTea. I hope that if enough of us calmly stick to 'sex not gender', it will sink in eventually.

@NeuroWasabi have a read of a few threads in this section. The break it down for me thread is a good place to start. Fortunately the suicide statistics have been greatly exaggerated.

I’m a pendant at heart and people misusing terms - especially people who should know better- bugs the shit out of me.

I had to fill in a medical (ish) form earlier and it said sex, not gender. I thought 'oh great, sense for once!', clicked the drop down menu and realised it says male, female...and none.

For fucks sake.

It's getting bloody ridiculous.

This week I logged into my work HR system to book holiday, and happened to have a look at the personal details section. It asks for your gender and "what gender do you identify as?" It's practically the same question!! So i edited my details to the drop down option of "prefer not to say" in both fields.

A survey from my GP practice asked for my gender, no option for sex.
Should know better!

Cute cat :D

That wasn’t the point I was making. Rather, I was using the fact there are animals who attend church (with varying regularity), to demonstrate that it would make more sense to ask if a pet belongs to a particular human faith group than if they have developed a uniquely human sense of self-as-related-to-sex. Cats may actually have the required flexibility & yet, despite ensuring they keep their bottoms pristine, there are no cases of their heads disappearing up them, so I think it’s a definite no on cats + gender nonsense.

There are certainly some Protestants who believe in Catholic dogs; but they’re also the sort who believe in setting fire to Catholic homes. (And not releasing the dog first because it is Catholic. Not “is owned by Catholics”, “is Catholic”. Sectarianism: guaranteed to rot the brain. Did they think if it was rehomed with Prods it’d be demanding fish on Fridays? Feck knows.)

Right. I've checked, and the word 'joke' was included in my post.

My point was that the idea that cats have a 'gender' is even more ridiculous than 'your dog's an Anglican'.

Given that some sectarians believe that atheists come in two flavours (Catholic atheists and Protestant atheists), the idea that the sectarianism extends to the family pets doesn't surprise me.

@NeuroWasabi you’re making all sorts of assumptions about the people on this thread. Many of us are here precisely because we had, for example, a child who identified as trans . And that’s why we object to conflating sex and gender. It’s not that I would not care if a child self harmed because they felt misunderstood, but that I couldn’t allow that hypothetical harm to justify the actual harm caused by denying reality and allowing healthy bodies to be altered by major surgery and powerful drugs. It is, after all, the job of adults to get children safely to adulthood with as many options as possible open to them. Then they can do whatever the fuck they like. Being kind is not a risk free option.

@Zebracat Are you happy about this thread? Are you happy that people think it's OK to poke fun like this? Would you be happy for your child to come across this thread? What would you say to them?

Whatever someone thinks or feels about the debate I think it's quite callous to poke fun at something that means so much to others. People (here) seem to believe the trans thing is some kind of mental illness, but even if so, I wouldn't make fun of the mentally ill. Maybe it's happening because this seems to be a space where only 1 view on the trans debate is represented, but still seems wrong to me.

Also I have to say I'm surprised that so many threads here are about the trans issue when there are so many other woman specific problems, even in our society.