They / them at work

[pootlefump]

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 !

I don’t have a problem with them, I just think they are irrelevant to the U.K.

Got anything relevant?

It appears you have missed the point again.
The point being that you have not read the full study or provided your own analysis of the findings of it.

In fact, I would love to hear what you think of the full study and its findings.

So this is completely unfounded: You just don’t want to accept them because they contradict your prejudice. So you try to attack my research skills as a very weak way of discrediting the studies.

Yes, this.

This.

"The studies I posted are from highly reputable institutions."- this is an appeal to authority, it's a logical fallacy.

That sums it up well and some think we should change laws and language on the basis of this incoherent nonsense.

You missed Christine Mimnagh asserting status as both a transman and transgender woman?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5021764-wpath-leaks?reply=133664267&

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5021764-wpath-leaks?reply=133665138&

Re: I’d apply a different standard to writing a paper than I do hastily posting on the web between the demands of real life!

You can always do your own research.

As I posted previously, one of the benefits of posting on FWR is that there are people who are attempting to help you to understand your own assertions and standards of evidence.

It's always unwise to Google some terms and snatch a reference from a cursory glance at the abstract.

It's a fair question to ask the person who provides the evidence to comment on the methodology, survey instruments, type of analysis etc. When you realise that you don't know any of those things, it might be acceptable to say, "I don't know, but people I trust told me this. This is their analysis."

If it's a persuasive analysis, there are many posters here who would state, "When the facts change, I change my mind?" This is more likely to happen if you provide your/an analysis.

"Similar to" and "type of" are not the same. You've used both "type of woman" and "similar to women" to describe transwomen. So yes, you are both confusing & confused.

I’m struggling to do so. This may be because I have spent a lot of time looking for a rational, coherent understanding of trans ideology, and it seems to me that all I have found depends on blurred definitions of words that used to be specific. I appreciate that you are clearly a person who wishes to be kind and reasonable. I do not understand what you mean by “woman” or “man” because it appears to change even in the same sentence, or in this case two sentences:

”I’ve said all along that trans women aren’t exactly the same as women, which is why they shouldn’t be in women’s sports. But I still believe they are a type of woman.”

So a transwoman is different from a woman, but is a type of woman? Is this not like saying that a dachshund is different from a dog, but is a type of dog? Or perhaps that a dachshund is different from a cat, but is a type of cat? Either a dachshund is a dog or he isn’t. If a dachshund starts playing with a ball of wool, it doesn’t make him a cat. If he somehow finds a vet who will give do a transplant of cats’ whiskers, it doesn’t make him a cat.

We’d all need Layla Moran’s patented Magic Gendered Soul-Seeing Spectacles before we could make ‘some women are special bepenised women but they don’t have anything in common with men beside a sporting advantage, they are harmless and should be allowed in the ladies lavvy’ work as a policy.

Good grief. The women on these boards have more patience than I do, that's for sure.

The pattern of (male) entitlement is clear: women think what TRAs tell us we think, no matter what considered reasoning we give for showing how we come to hold the opinions we hold. And TRA is unmistakably a male supremacist movement, whether this is trans activism being misappropriated or not.

'But you don't think trans women exist' is absolutist, black-and-white thinking: the stock response put forward to whatever reasoning is applied. This is the same lobby who tells us 'but it's complicated' when considering questions of sex and gender.

It's disingenuous, obfuscation, and it's transparent.

I dislike the term 'cis'. This is for clear reasons: I dislike regressive gender stereotypes, have no wish whatsoever to adhere to these, and will not signal a conformity I don't feel to a set of 'feminine' stereotypes which tell me how to present and behave as a woman. That whole noise can get to fuck. Gender is the instrument of my oppression and I don't identify with that.

The response? 'You want to normalize yourself and otherise trans women'.

Explaining your well-thought-out and considered reasons is a sheer waste of good breath. The lobby has decided what the narrative is. I will be told what others have decided I think, regardless of the fact that it bears no earthly resemblance to my actual view.

Same goes for 'but you don't think trans women exist!'

Waste of good typeface.

9th rule of misogyny: 'men always know the "real" reasons for everything women do and say'.

That's good to hear.

I had someone ring me last week to sort a badge out for me and he asked my pronouns. So I laughed and said I don't really use pronouns I'm happy for him to use my name. What he actually wanted was my title - was I a Ms or a Miss or a Mrs... Do I need that on a badge? Just call me by my first name!

You are DEFINITELY a TERF. Await cancellation. Failure to fully affirm Lia Thomas. Don't want men, sorry, transwomen, in women's sports. Want separate loos because it's just about safety. Watch out, they are coming for you.

I really wish there was a singular gender neutral pronoun. They is gramatically confusing.

That's not the right analogy. What you're arguing for is saying no one has to buy a ticket if they don't want to. Why not all.mixed sex spaces then? otherwise you are punishing all men for the bad apples.

… except that most men are content to avoid entering women’s spaces. I admit that there was a time when I did feel excluded from some women’s spaces, but when women give me a good reason or reasons for only admitting women, I no longer have any problem with it. Must have matured a little in my old age.

Edited to clarify that I mean men are not punished by exclusion from women’s spaces, unless they are emotionally immature.

So if you can't say how a TW is more like me than other males, tell me how they are similar to me? I'd ask you to try and no exclude me from the category of woman whilst doing so. I'm an adult human female who wears clothes which are only women's clothes because they're cut to match a woman's proportions. I'm not girly at all. I don't conform with 1950s female stereotype. How am I similar to a TW?

No. It's thebopposite of inclusive. ait excludes women who are more vulnerable than men. It's male supremacy.

Hmm then I guess TW are not punished by being excluded from women's spaces? some men might want access to women's spaces for reasons other than emotional immaturity, e.g. because gay men are more at risk in the men's and maybe some other men with vulnerabilities and protected characteristics.

… I believe trans women are similar to women but not the same,…

So maybe you can answer why they should be called transwomen when they’re clearly not? They have absolutely no similarity to natal women at all, but we natal women, are demanded to treat them as if they are because their mixed-up confused little minds think they’re no different?

Oh nooooesss!! Me not feel so special any more!

"These days, it feels as if an identity that, not long ago, felt unique to me in most rooms I entered has gone mass. Yes, part of what I’m personally upset about is the fact that this thing I loved isn’t so alt anymore. But more than that, it feels as if pronoun culture has contributed to nonbinary becoming just the third gender after male and female, more static and concrete than its original fluid intentions. The same nonbinary person who complained^ about nonbinary stereotypes lamented to me, “I don’t want to be a homogeneous normcore mashing of the two genders.” Ben hoped, “If man or woman can mean so many things, then so can nonbinary.” We all became nonbinary to escape gendered expectations, and now we’re stuck again.^

This is why I've said many times, lots of us identifying as "non binary" would kill the whole thing stone dead in a matter of weeks.

Agree Eresh especially if middle aged mums took it up.

(and tbf, that has sort of happened, look at that female author who has an MtF ‘wife’ and an ‘MtF’ son and is now either nonbinary transmasc or a transman, I can’t keep up!)

The whole point of words is to include the thing it is and exclude all the things it isn't.

Otherwise words, language and communication ceases to be anything.