Need help to stop my organisation compelling us to use preferred pronouns!

[Appalonia]

I'm a facilitator for an international self development organisation and we have recently been given a code of conduct instructing us to use participants preferred pronouns. I'm absolutely fuming about it! I'm sure this has been done to be ' inclusive' but I really don't think it's been thought through. It's particularly galling as the whole ethos of the work of this organisation is about truth telling. They run trainings to help pp to uncover unconscious beliefs and help pp verify whether they are really true or not. So if a man stood up in a training and said ' I feel like I'm a woman', using this methodology, this belief would be verified as false.

I want to have a conversation with the head of DEI, to discuss why compelling the facilitator s to take on this belief system is potentially so damaging. There's so much great info out there, but I'm looking for an article that is clear and succinct that I can send to them to explain the issues. I think a lot of this has come from America, but I need to at least try and say why I object to this, but I need some compelling facts to do it. Can anyone please help?

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic I can understand that with your child it must be much more difficult than with a random colleague.

i don’t know how to make the judgement as to whether someone is genuinely trans. My point is i don’t need to as i’d use their preferred pronouns in both cases.

That was to answer OldCrone’s question

But they'll do that anyway. Pretending that you subscribe to their quasi-religious belief system will only encourage them to think that it's OK to call you 'cis'.

Capitulating to unreasonable demands by others, whether because they are potentially violent or because they have unsubstantiated beliefs about themselves, is how we got into this mess. It won't solve the problem.

When one of my male colleagues ‘came out’ as a TW I just used their chosen name and if I needed to use a pronoun I used ‘they’.

So I didn’t used sexed pronouns at all to refer to them.

I'm not capitulating to anything. I believe that referring to people with their preferred pronoun is the right thing to do, especially in a work setting. I'd be capitulating if I used sex based just because people on here told me to.

I didn't say anything about how you should interact with people in the workplace. I'm sure most of us would be polite to these people in such situations. I was responding to this:

I think insisting on using sex pronouns for people who would prefer that we didn't gives license to those who want to refer to us in ways we don't like.

My point is that it doesn't matter what you do, they'll do what they want anyway. They're not waiting for us to object before deciding to call us 'cis cervix havers'. Go ahead and use the language they want. They'll still use the language they want to when they talk about us.

that’s the difference between us I think. I don’t see it as capitulating to unreasonable demands to call someone by their preferred name/pronouns. I think it’s just good manners.

If we're being truly gender critical I think we can argue that there is no such thing as a "masculine" or "feminine" name except social convention.

So accepting someone's name change doesn't imply that you accept they've changed sex.

Understood.

Perhaps they will and perhaps they won't but I think it is harder to argue that our request not to be called cis should be respected if we don't respect a transwoman's request not to be called he.

I'm not trying to change the way you speak here, it's up to you to make a judgement on what is best. I think it's good that we are discussing our differing opinions on this.

Pretty much where I'm at too, and you've expressed it with beautiful clarity.

Although Naomi Cunningham also makes a convincing case here for anyone who hasn't seen it:

https://twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1727034930604237278

So you can't go up to a tw, and keep saying you're a man, you're a man, because that would be seen as harassment. And deliberately going out of your way to correctly sex someone, might be viewed the same.

Just out of interest, how would the aggrieved transperson prove that you had deliberately gone out of your way to correctly sex them? Did anyone else follow the Jo Phoenix and other tribunals where trans and NB people were fairly consistently correctly sexed by their own counsel and no one said anything about it? How could they have been shown to be guilty of deliberate correct sexing? The instinct to correctly sex is incredibly strong and natural.

I think there would have to be a fairly consistent pattern of open hostility, harassment or discrimination as well as correct-sexing.

You don't need to prove intent in discrimination cases. If you did it would be neigh on impossible for people to get justice because someone can always argue that they didn't mean it in the way it was taken. The focus tends to be on the impact to the person who is being discriminated against. I think this would be the same priciple if a trans person reported feeling uncomfortable in the workplace due to being misgendered / correctly sexed.

Again, I'd set more store by people's claim that it's polite or courteous to use preferred pronouns, if not doing so didn't result in being ostracised, disciplined, fired, abused or arrested.

You're actually agreeing with me. In my post just before yours, I said "I didn't say anything about how you should interact with people in the workplace. I'm sure most of us would be polite to these people in such situations."

That’s a very interesting point. But we are in a position where one group of people is uncomfortable if gender-based pronouns are used, and one group of people are uncomfortable if sex-based pronouns are used. Which group should have to back down? Identity ideology asks “which group is more marginalised?” But how can that question be answered definitively and repeatably?

Is my son more marginalised because he thinks he is transgender, whatever he means by that (he seems unable to articulate it)? Or am I more marginalised because I am elderly? Or is my wife more marginalised because she is elderly and female?

I don’t believe in a hierarchy of oppression. I do believe that oppression of some (most?) groups exists in some circumstances. I do believe that compelled speech (and colonisation of another group’s spaces without their permission) is oppressive.

Whether we should be subject to compelled speech requirements is a big one

Should we?

Gender ideology is based on a major untruth so it’s a toughie

It's just a courtesy and it's actually helpful if you're in online meetings with international colleagues. Because they may not know if you're male or female and vice versa, it helps to avoid any awkwardness.
It isn't a hill I'd die on.

You can see the sex of international colleagues the moment you’re on a teams call with them

They tried this at my workplace.
I said "My pronouns are sex based like my oppression".
Cue eye rolls & mutterings of "ffs she's off again" (I work in male dominated profession)
Then I said "My pronouns are try/me" (saw this on tiktok😉)
No one tried me 😁
I'm live and let live, no hate in my heart for anyone but leave me alone.

Like it or not we are already bound by rules about what we can and can't say. Generally we allow groups of people to determine the appropriate way for others to refer to them.

Do we?

I might want people to say I look 25 not middle aged but it’s not my call

It’s only because women have been overridden by the law we feel powerless. I question whether we should go along with it

If you honestly think that pronouns on request/demand are just a courtesy, please do some research around the subject and consider why this divisive so called option is being imposed, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, upon us.

Also consider what it is a part of and what it has already led to, with its blurring of boundaries, obfuscations and the erasure of women's and girl's rights and single sex spaces.

Wake up and smell the kool aid.

It's all a bit one-sided though, isn't it? We're being compelled to refer to men as 'she' even when they're not present. Maria MacLachlan was expected to lie in court and refer to her attacker as 'she', and when she refused the judge decided not to award her any compensation for her injuries.

At the same time we have numerous organisations using 'cis' and calling women 'cervix owners' and 'uterus havers'.