Using sex-based pronouns instead of their preferred gender-ID pronouns

[DuesToTheDirt]

Has anyone ever done this? What happened?

I mean for people you know in real life, not on the internet, and for adults not children.

I would love to do this, though I don't suppose I will. But I feel that by saying "she" to refer transwomen I am being forced into a lie, that I am agreeing to someone's delusion. I try to avoid using pronouns, but realistically that just results in either not talking about certain people (which is definitely one strategy!) or using really convoluted language. It's all very well being "kind" to people, but it's certainly not kind on me.

Hmm. That's not my experience.

As I said previously pronouns have been the single biggest conflict point for a friend and that's also been my personal experience. Pronouns try to force compliance and try to convert others into believers. If that doesn't happen, tantrums have occurred and talk of not being fully supportive and not caring and not loving. And 'hate'. It's just a lightning rod and blame tool for other insecurities.

Pronouns in the workplace are the means of enforcement. Sending emails around your company requiring all staff to declare them is a statement of ideological belief and changes a culture to one of fear so you can't speak up if there is a problem relating to a trans individual.

I know a few people who actively avoid employees because of their attitude with pronouns. They don't want to get sucked into the drama or put themselves in a vulnerable position in case that person kicks off and starts a complaint against them. They can't afford it. They don't want to offend and they aren't necessarily minded to not use pronouns. They don't want to make that faux pa though and it turn into a mess. It's fear of the situation not necessarily the individual.

All of this is bad for whistleblowing and makes it impossible for an employee to raise valid complaints about a colleague. It leads to an imbalance of power.

None of its cool.

To say pronouns aren't a big deal really is disengenous as far as I'm concerned.

Individuals and ideologies are not the same. But in the case of trans ideology (or, if you prefer, gender identity theory), unlike, say, libertarianism or conservatism, the ideology is at the very core of a person’s beliefs about themself. I guess that’s why this is such a difficult discussion.

I’ll not use ‘they’ if I can avoid it, sorry. I do so under duress, to protect myself and my family from poverty and social ostracism. It is coerced, by workplace policies and social etiquette embraced by the majority in this country who are GC at a basic level but also believe in politeness.

I don’t know what it’s like to navigate this in a romantic relationship. Is it a bit like sharing your life with a vegan and also not eating animal products, or an observant Orthodox Jew and keeping kosher?

Blair White is a bloke who's admitted to getting a kick out of invading women's spaces,I'd say mockery is the least he deserves.

I don't think it needs to be a big production if you disagree. You they or their name. No big deal.

I’ve seen quite a few trans people online get really arsey when people call them ‘they/them’ as a way to avoid using the wrong sex pronouns. It’s obvious in that moment that the speaker doesn’t see the trans person in the way they want to be seen and lots of them can’t deal with that.

If you are so enraged and triggered by another person using the working pronouns to address you or misgender you, then you coming from a place of huge, HUGE fucking privilege

Just an observation but ...

So often on MN I see posters being chastised for defending womens rights on the basis that trans people represent such a staggeringly small % of the population therefore what hurt can it do to let so very few individuals into womens spaces (plus if you half that tiny % by birth sex then the number of people who want unjustified access to our spaces are almost non existent.

But at the same time many of these posters also claim to know lots of trans people. I mean, what are the chances of anyone knowing so many trans people if actually such a teeny number of the population are trans?

Weird

Not just trans people getting arsey, posters on this forum on particular threads who cry transphobia when they see people avoiding wrong sex pronouns for certain people.

I used "they" in my own head for a trans colleague who identifies as "he". I couldn't bring myself to use that but wanted to have plausible deniability if I ever had to use a pronoun to refer to them. "Oh, I didn't know so thought neutral was safe......"

I'm not sure how bothered the colleague would have been - they seemed to forget themselves half the time and never made the remotest effort to appear male or adopt any of the stereotypes attached to being "a man".

This ideology is more like deity-free religion. Or perhaps a pantheistic religion, where the deity is the self. But not every person's self. Only certain persons' selves are deities.

Of course men get rape threats!

Seriously?

I mean, what are the chances of anyone knowing so many trans people if actually such a teeny number of the population are trans?

In fairness, trans people tend to know other trans people, so if you know one then you probably know more than one. I suspect, from my own observations, there is also a degree of social contagion among young autistic adults (5 or 6 women in my old social circles came out as non-binary and changed their names during or just before the pandemic).

I knew a lot of trans and non-binary people because I took part in a hobby that was very popular with neurodivergent and (LGB)T people.

But yes, the average adult probably won't know any.

I know hundreds and hundreds of non-binary people. Over my lifetime I’ve probably met thousands.

Yes, of course I am non-binary myself. I just don’t talk about it.

I'm agender but you'd be amazed to learn that it rarely comes up in conversation unlike when I was a cold water swimmer that one winter, wouldn't shut up about that tbf

It purely depends on your social circle. You get small communities where there are large numbers together. If you live near one you are much more likely to know lots. If you know one, you are likely to know a cluster by extension.

They aren't evenly distributed throughout the national population.

This also has the effect of narrowing echo chambers and limiting their own social communities.

Even when my brother announced he was trans in 2006, he was saying he was told that at the time there was a 1 in 10,000 representation. But that it was known to cluster. Another boy in his school class (his older sister was in the same class as me - I knew the other family really well) had come out as trans a few years earlier. Both boys new another who was in the year below them. In 2006 NO ONE was coming out, yet I knew three in my small community. And one of them was probably one of the most closely linked families to mine. It made no sense at the time.

For a long time this cluster stuff made me really curious in various ways. If being trans is just something that 'just occurs', then you wouldn't get a cluster effect in the same way. It would be much more evenly distributed. So why was it happening, even back then?

Had something happened to them? (there was issues with another kid in that class which I won't go into here - he later killed himself), was it genetic in someway (both boys were bright with what id probably call now in hindsight autistic traits), was there environmental? (chemicals in the water was a theory for a long time), was it social? (younger brothers who had higher achieving sisters and were not high in the social hierarchy) were they coming out because it was more socially acceptable in our social circle?(which suggests lower expectations of transphobia in the area), did they have similar social circles? (did certain groups move to a similar area), did they have similar interests?(the internet was definitely a huge factor with my brother, I don't know about the other kid but I know his family got the internet really early compared to everyone else I knew growing up), was there something else going on? (the other kids family was VERY homophobic and my parents were very rigid on gender stereotypes).

This was very anecdotal though.

As the years have gone on, these cluster driver have become a lot more apparent though - the observations by the Cass Review are interesting as is the very high numbers working in IT, having an interest in anime and gaming and the levels of autism. It's becoming interesting hard to argue there's not an element of social contagion /influencing going on. In which case is it innate or a social construction which reflects our time in history?

Yeah so clusters. Make of them what you will.

If being trans is just something that 'just occurs', then you wouldn't get a cluster effect in the same way. It would be much more evenly distributed.

Clusters of randomly distributed things do happen, hence three buses arriving at once. There are far more ways for the things to be in clusters than evenly distributed (evenly distributed has higher entropy).

Also, yes to social contagion etc.

There's another source of bias here. I know several trans people by purest happenstance. And it's at least partly because of that that I started reading this board. * *

I'm not sure that buses are randomly distributed on a bus route. It takes time for people to board and leave a bus, so the first bus's average speed is likely to be less than any following buses, which will usually have fewer passengers to pick up and drop off.

Yes, buses were an only partly apposite example. They start off at regular intervals, then everything that happens after that only serves to make the intervals less regular (since it can't make them more regular) so they start to bunch up.

Trans people are probably clustered right from the outset. Like other attributes.

I know three transwomen. Is that above average? They don't know each other. (And I am not trans, or non-binary, or any other flavour of LGBT).

what are the chances of anyone knowing so many trans people if actually such a teeny number of the population are trans?

If you have children in high school or university in a middle class area, you will meet plenty of young people claiming trans identities. I know of seven without even giving it much thought.

I know at least 4 transboys (or know their parents at least) and probably half a dozen NBs. All are females under 25. Almost all are almost certainly ND (some diagnosed, some not- yet). I don’t personally know any transwomen (lived near and was friendly with one in my University halls back in the late 90s) though I do see quite a few transwomen out and about locally, these are mostly middle age and older, and probably arrived via Malaga airport.