What would you do? Re school staff member and colleague calling himself 'miss'

[Icantpeopleanymore]

So it's a delicate situation...I work with a man who is lovely, very young, known him as both a student and now a colleague, he's not a teacher but has occasional contact with kids, I barely need to refer to him by 'Mr ...' but would have to in front of students, he's 'transitioning', on hormones, up until now on staff nights out etc he would wear dresses etc but I would just ignore it (he has a following of woke girls who are more than ready to compliment him on his outfits and I've just ignored it until now) he did once make reference to HRT when I was having a hot flush and compared it to his hormones, it was in a social gathering and not the right place so I just ignored it and changed the subject. However, he's now changed his email to Miss.. surname and I just cannot bring myself to do it. To me, it's actually teaching our students to lie and it's also plainly obvious he's a man, albeit a slightly built long haired one who wears trousers and jumpers to work so fairly gender neutral clothing too.

It just leaves a horrible taste in my mouth and it goes against everything I believe but I also don't want to hurt his feelings or be rude, he's a decent human being, but it's just not on at the same time. It'll only come up once or twice a term at most but others I know who also think it's a load of bollocks and deal with him daily are just going along with it, because he's a nice person and a friend, we've all known him years. They just don't want to be rude. I appreciate he's being brave to make this change of name but he's just so misguided...

It makes me so angry he's put us in this position but I cannot call him miss, it's just ridiculous! Plus I can imagine our students going...who?! As he's clearly a bloody man! Oh and is a scientist 🤦

How do you deal with it when it's at work, you want to be kind and not appear rude, but can't just use a first name? (It's a gender neutral first name thank god, just a shortening of a man's name that could be a woman's) but I can't do that in front of students...

That's just about the most irrelevant 'analogy' I've heard. Religious people don't require me to join their religion, if they did (which is the proper analogy here), yes I would 'go on a rant' as you so dismissively put it about being required to e.g. go to church every Sunday, do lent and tell everyone that I think the book of genesis is a factual record. If this person is 'miss' then there is no reason for actual women to be 'miss' so it completely invalidates the language we use. Pronouns and titles are not neutral and when one person tries to change them, given that they are a shared resource, of course it impacts others. This bloke can change his name, put on women's clothes, call himself a TW. All good. But commandeering the word 'miss' is not neutral and not respectful.

You need to stop using the concept of 'correct pronouns' as if this is a neutral comment. Correct are sex based in mine, and most of the rest of the country's opinion. You don't get to just state something completely opposite to that and have it as a fact. Your arguments are impossible to follow when you dump this kind of hyperbole into the middle.

Also, your obsession with genitals is odd. The difference between a man and a woman is systemic and yet you are obsessed with talking about cocks. Odd.

Another piss poor analogy. Trans people do not represent a safeguarding issue per se - like gay people. However, the gay rights movement was not campaigning to have men allowed into women's spaces or to promote extreme and life limiting surgery and medication as a non-evidence solution to a supposed problem. Those are the safeguarding concerns and they have absolutely nothing in common with the fight for gay rights.

@Holeinamole if the title for teachers is Miss X and Mr Y, which would you use?

@literalviolence so your argument is that being trans is somehow contagious, and might afflict children with “trans ideology” and an unhealthy lifestyle. Oh, that’s miles away from gay panic!

Show me where I said that.

Surely the difficulty with insisting that people use female Pronouns for male bodied people, in school, is that it is using children to validate the male bodied persons belief, over reality.

Use his surname. Perfectly acceptable for a man. He needs some heavy counselling btw and allowing him to transition by being kind is, in the end, not kind at all as he is heading towards sexual malfunction, sterility and a life-time on drugs. Poor young man needs help to escape this trap.

Being gender critical is a protected belief for which you cannot be sacked. Child safeguarding is important, too, and making children use language they know is wrong about a man who thinks he is a woman is highly dangerous. Schools are not supposed to do this. The young man needs to stay a young man at work - with luck and counselling he will get over his problem.

A man living in the sky is more believable than that you can change sex, which is impossible. Besides, the man living in the sky doesn't want to enter women's safe spaces, take part in their sports or lie to children about his sex.

In your situation I would have a quiet word with him and express my feelings and views on the matter. Nothing aggressive; just honestly.

Anything that necessarily involves you, is about you. She should speak with him in an open, honest and respectful way - explaining why she cannot comply. Respect goes two ways.

Being gender non-conforming as was my late DH (who wore nail varnish and had long hair, wore elaborate kaftans and also sported a beard) is fine. Saying your inner, unverifiable feelings make you a woman in a man's body is nonsense. Facts come before feelings. Males produce small gametes and females produce large ones, and this is the basis of sex, from which its immutability flows and every part of the sexed body recognises. If you produce small gametes you are a man and nothing in earth or heaven can change that. Gender expression is just a current social construct. In Saxon times men wore tunics and long dresses and had long hair - they were not women inside. Louis XIV wore his hair long, wore frills and lace and high heels, he too was not a woman inside.

How totalitarian of you.

" Being trans" only exists within a conceptual framework. If you don't buy into the framework then what you have is someone who is "identifying as the opposite sex" - whatever that may mean. That is their issue, and their choice, but it does not mean you have to play along with situations in which you are deeply uncomfortable or compromised.

One can be polite to someone without having to kow tow to their oprivate belief system.

Being gay requires no validation from anyone else in order to exist.

I think the point is that he is a 'mr', not a 'miss'. The children know he is a man and he dresses like a man, so they are being gaslighted into pretending they do not know this. That's a dangerous lesson to teach children.

@DadJoke
Until I have clear instructions and in the absence of a clear declaration from the colleague, I would refer to ‘Mr Y’ as I would respect this person’s privacy and not draw premature conclusions from a manner of dressing.

If my employer insists on certain appellations in the workplace, I would expect to have this made clear, and I would also expect to be given a warning before dismissal. Given that there are all sorts of gender identities out there now (anyone remember the LSE student who identified as ‘genderfuck’? Would I address such a person as Fucker X??), no employer can reasonably expect employees to navigate this on their own.

Self-proclaimed trans allies often remind me of busybodies who like to stick their noses in other people’s lives. How can they be so confident that they know how somebody identifies? This rush to validate, what are they getting out of that? And as for being behind the times … do spend some time with teenagers, especially male teenagers. The kids are alright.

@Holeinamole in this instance your colleague has come out as a trans woman. Would you refer to them as Miss X or not?

What do mean by ‘has come out’?

Miss XX
Mr XY

Gay marriage requires acknowledgement. You couldn’t at work say you were religious and don’t believe gay people can get married, so you’re not going to use gay people’s married names or titles. Not using trans people names and titles, because you don’t believe people can change sex is the same, as society / the government allows people to change legal sex.

That's a really poor analogy.

Heterosexual marriage too; birth and death are all aknowledged by the state in the form of registration and a certificate. They are the major life events the world over. Hatches, matches and dispatches.

Being gay is just about fancying and being romantically attracted to someone of the same sex. It makes no demands of anyone else; it does not require people to believe one has changed sex. Gay men make no demands to enter into women's spaces and services or sporting competitions. And they make no specific demands on pronouns.

The current legislation for 'gender -reassignment' was drafted before the legislation for gay equality was introduced. Its purpose was to allow people of the same sex but who had 'transitioned' to marry. It was never intended for the sorts of situations we see, today; and it was never intended as a passport for men to enter into women only spaces or services. It was also introduced before the current craze for Post modernistic Queer Theory and enforced pronoun use.

People cannot change sex. That is not a belief. It is fact.

People cannot change sex. That is not a belief. It is fact.

Legally they can and the government specifically protects people doing so via the equality act and gender recognition act.