They / them at work

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I've just written a long post and it's disappeared so in brief - how do you deal with staff who are they/them at work? I will really struggle to call a very obvious biological male 'they'. I also can't loose my job and do want to be respectful but also can't change my view on this nonsense !

Discrimination towards women and girls is a massive problem thanks to the extremists in the trans movement. If I were queen for a day, I would insist on some bloody common sense. No, people are NOT allowed to self-ID as the opposite sex and then gain access to women’s spaces. You would have to have a certificate issued by a medical professional after completing your transition and living as the opposite sex for a couple of years, like the NHS used to require before treatment, twenty years ago. That should weed out all the non-genuine trans people. And it’s common sense that bio-born males have many physical advantages over females, so they should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports. COMMON SENSE! Transitioning doesn’t make your bones and ligaments shorter.

Your first sentence hits the nail on the head - transwomen don't have the body of a biological woman. And that's kind of the point, because biology is what makes a woman a woman. It's not feelings, or clothes or hairdos. Go to parts of the world where women truly have it bad, and ask yourself why those women don't just identify out of being women? If all the girls in Afghanistan identified as boys, they could go to school. So why don't they just do that?

OK, I need to get on. We have different beliefs about all this, and that’s OK.

Good points.

I will need to read some of the replies on here when I have more time. It’s all very thought-provoking.

P.S. Any trans people in Afghanistan would be murdered before they could ever get near a school.

Sorry folks, I can’t keep up and need to get on, but I’m interested in all the replies and the things people have linked, like the Lifton’s thing. Probably wrote that incorrectly but am in rush now.

THANK YOU GOD! Someone who gets it.

I don't think that Cerulian fully understands the situation. It is much deeper and more complicated than it first appears.

The post about Afghanistan is important.

Think about Iran and the way that they 'trans away the gay' with Government funding. Read the articles below to show that I am not making this up. Now think about how chilling it is that there was a dark joke at the Tavistock clinic about 'soon there will be no gays left'.

Iran set to allow first transsexual marriage.
Woman wins court battle for father's approval to marry schoolfriend who has undergone sex-change operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/iran-transexual-marriage

Why Iran is a hub for sex-reassignment surgery. It is not because the regime is liberal. https://archive.is/vckk1

Linguistic contortionism, often using the passive voice.

It's like a game. It felt unnatural at first so it takes practice, but now it's becoming more of a habit.

I’ve worked with young people who I think were genuinely confused and it seemed like the right solution to their problems. But what they need is support (ie to be listened to, counselling etc) to work through these things to see if they really are trans or non binary and want to live like that…

Cerulian would have no dissent and nothing but active substantial agreement from many FWR posters. However, this intervention would count as the sort of conversion therapy that all of the major political parties wish to ban.

P.S. Any trans people in Afghanistan would be murdered before they could ever get near a school.

I don't believe for a single second that every male who identifies as a woman in the UK would do so in Afghanistan. It's a first world luxury issue for the most part. Women cant identify out of oppression.

You’re not getting this - the days of trans people (mainly men who wish to present as women) living quietly and going about their business, keeping out of female spaces, not insisting on pronouns etc etc are long gone. I would imagine that the majority of GC posters on here really don’t care if a bloke wishes to grow his hair and and wear a dress, but this is far from what trans and non-binary people want. I hope you can understand that - it’s not just extremists who are making these demands.

Males have no idea what female feels like. Whatever they think they feel like has nothing to do with the female experience. Again I don't know what you mean by real but keeping a male out of women's spaces is not being horrible to them.

Returning to the topic of the thread, the 'they/them':

Just be kind to trans people and use their preferred pronouns at work. It costs nothing.

There actually is a small extra cost for trying to remember which people (who mostly look exactly like other people of their sex) wish to be called by 'they/them' as there is no external clue.

People who speak languages with sex-differentiated third person singular pronouns learn those early in life and the identification of the right pronoun becomes rapid and automatic in a short amount of time. When this is altered (but only) for some so that this rapid automatic identification must be overruled, there IS a small extra effort cost, especially when the person is not someone in close proximity all the time (where learning can reduce that effort cost).

I really think that languages without sexed pronouns are the way we should go. Just call everyone 'he' or 'she' and be done with this debate.

Men who are female in their minds, hearts and souls?

How would a man know what it is like to be female in their mind, heart or soul?

I have no idea where you are getting these ideas from. The whole of the Trans issue is driven by men who have a paraphilia. And who have funded the getting of this into the mainstream. There is no 'female mind, heart or soul' just female bodies.

For example, a man's heart attack will have different symptoms to a female heart attack. Do you think that the man's heart attack when he has a 'female heart', will present with the symptoms of a male heart attack or a female one? If he starts having a heart attack with the male symptoms, would you rather the medical establishment said 'well, he says he is female, and females don't present with these symptoms in a heart attack and we haven't looked at these symptoms in females so we can just leave it'?

This is crazy talk. Absolutely crazy.

We have yet to have anyone, anyone at all, explain what "living as a woman" actually is, never mind what being a woman feels like!

Yes, Jesus loved everyone. He felt compassion for the bad situations people were stuck in and healed those with the faith to ask for it.

But it's also kind of the point that Jesus never, ever lied—not even to make someone feel better.

I feel sorry for people with gender dysphoria and those who sincerely believe they are trapped in the wrong body. I try not to use pronouns at all, out of respect for both my own integrity and because I don't take joy in hurting feelings on purpose. But just as Jesus chose truth over social compulsion, I will not collude in a lie that will have knock on negative effects for the other person / people in the exchange.

If I pretend you're the opposite sex when you clearly aren't, do you really deep down feel you can trust anything else I say? Those with self awareness are likely to realise most people aren't really seeing them the way they're describing them, they're just being humoured.

The only reason the culture of "I have a right to women's spaces and their sport" ever got off the ground is because we first agreed to pretend people were actually the sex they'd transitioned to.

I don't think the consequences of the pretence are that kind or loving to anyone.

@AlisonDonut Alison, you’re being disingenuous. When I said that trans women are female in their hearts, minds, and souls if not in their bodies, you know full well I didn’t mean their biological hearts. Stop this silly point-scoring.

How is a female soul defined? How does a female soul differ from a male soul? How do we tell?

So it’s a feeling - nothing more. All this insistence that men be called ‘she’, and given places on women’s teams, and given access to women’s rape crisis centres, changing rooms and toilets, and free speech shut down with GC people losing their livelihoods and reputations, and hate crime legislation coming into place which allows perception to be the basis of a criminal charge is based on nothing more than the feelings of men.

This isn’t point scoring - this is reality.

You are talking utter bilge.

How can a man have a male heart and also a female heart in their souls? If this was the case, what is your checklist that you use to work out if one man has a real female heart in his male female soul and let him into a female refuge, whilst keeping a man out whose heart really isn't female in his soul?

My point is that this is all utter nonsense. on stilts. And you know it. You just can't bring yourself to admit you've been duped.

If I woke up in a male body, my first thoughts would be about how distressing it would be for my family. Then again, if I woke up as a male, based on the transwomen of my experience, I would probably care about their experience a whole lot less.

I guess the difference between us is that you don’t think there are any genuine trans people, whereas I do.

This thread has given me a real insight into the prejudice trans people face. 😳

This is all very perplexing. Or maybe my experiences are odd ?

Since - in fact before - I started work, I've been in a situation where I have someones name, but no idea as to their sex (moving in an industry that has a lot of non-European players may be one factor).

If I have to refer to someone whose sex is undetermined because I all I have is their name, then "they/their" is not only natural, but good grammar. It certainly feels natural.

It's certainly not odd on MN to refer to posters - regardless of screenname - as "they/their" because I have no definite idea of their sex.

But I guess that's just me, One amongst millions.

What’s a ‘genuine trans’ person?