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 !

The article you linked is not disproving the finger-length ratio studies, it’s merely saying that some scientists disagree with it, while many others are convinced. It’s true that the measurements can be tricky, but your article says there are 1400 studies indicating broadly same thing, and many reputable scientists also agree with it.

To answer your second question, if large-scale studies were done, I suspect you would see more typically female finger ratios in trans women and more typically male finger ratios in trans men. Obviously, those finger lengths would have been the same as they were when pre-transition adults.

I know this is just one person, but my niece is gay and she’s in the air force. Her index fingers are way shorter than her index! Then there’s me, who’s ultra-girly, and my index fingers are way longer than my ring ones. My husband and my boyfriend both also have longer ring fingers than index.

We are on topic. Some posters don’t believe someone can be trans, so why should we use their preferred pronouns? I’m putting forward reasons why, one of which is a strong biological basis for sexuality and gender identity.

At the blob stage, genotype doesn’t matter either. It’s all waiting to be expressed later.

We don't start out "phenotypically female" because being female isn't just an absence of male sex characteristics, it's its own development path.

I know this is just one person, but my niece is gay and she’s in the air force. Her index fingers are way shorter than her index! Then there’s me, who’s ultra-girly, and my index fingers are way longer than my ring ones.

Give me strength.

Why? I said that I know it’s just one person. Since I can’t go round measuring everyone’s fingers, I took a look at those closest to me when I was studying this stuff. The four of us happened to correlate with the studies. What’s wrong with reporting that? It’s fact. Why do you need strength?

Why is it SO hard for some people to believe that there might be a biological basis for sexual orientation and gender identity?

My youngest (23) is they/them and I can still slip up and say "she". It is respectful to use chosen pronouns, but if you slip up then you do... its respectful of them to allow human errors.

CeruleanSal
If you want to be respectful as you say, just use the pronouns they ask you to?! Or their name?
Not difficult.

And what about the person being respectful to those of us who only believe in sex based pronouns? Or does that not count?

Then you can ask them to use your sex based pronouns for you.
They is a perfectly normal pronoun.
"I saw Sam at the front but they went round the side"
I could swear I saw Mel but it can't have been them".

No sweat.

If he's been employed less than 2 years at the company, as his line manager you can consider terminating his employment. He does not have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment so it's not discriminatory. Just say he doesn't fit in with the culture.

Women get fired all the time for being female - the experience would help affirm his gender fluidity. Win win.

Getting off the computer for the night. What I meant to convey is that a reason for people to be respectful of trans folk is that there's a lot of scientific evidence that much of our gender identity is influenced by hormones; that this can start in the womb; that yes, there's controversy about it, and I don't know the answer 100 percent, but that there's enough evidence for it that if I had my feet held to the fire and was told to pick, I'd err on the side of yes, the majority of it's down to biology. Obviously I don't know for sure. I just feel that this amount of smoke is more likely to be right than wrong.

TLDR: Be nice to trans people (and gay people) because it's probably not a choice!

Yes, it is, but before the hormones start doing their thing at about 6 weeks, that development part hasn't happened yet. It's laid out that it will happen, but not before 6 weeks.

TLDR: Be nice to trans people (and gay people) because it's probably not a choice!

It’s not ‘nice’ to keep bundling lesbians together with biological males. It’s offensive. If you want to be nice to this lesbian, please stop.

So how come for tens of thousands of years there have been lesbian women and gay men and gender non conforming girls and boys who have grown up to be happy as women and men apart from a teeny tiny number of gay men who have preferred feminine dress into adult life but everyone agreed they were feminine men? And a few women carried on wearing trousers to get a job or be safe?
But only in the last 15 years has everyone else been forced to agree that many, many of the lesbian girls, gay men and a huge number of men with a fetish will LITERALLY DIE if we don't say they've changed sex?
Or has biology changed in the last 15 years?

There may well be a genetic/biological influence on how feminine or masculine men or women are. But this does not mean that some people are trans. It just means that by nature or nurture or choice, or most likely a bit of all three, some men are more masculine than others and some women are more feminine than others.

It does NOT mean there is such a thing as a gender identity or that some men are women or some women are men.

Come on, when will people see this is all about stereotypes that are regressive and unhelpful.

Born That Way is a slogan of gay people.

No bundling here.

@Belichtofalicht You do know that correlation is not proof of causation don't you?

Sorry, I pressed too soon. Have a look at the correlation between the price of copper and the height of women's skirt hems from the ground.

Yes. I thought I made that clear when I talked about associations. And mentioned how you can only see certain associations in large scale, but that individuals vary a lot.

I don’t understand. Too tired to look it up.

But some people feel so very strongly that they are in the wrong body that they go through horrendous treatment to switch sex. Nobody would go through mastectomy, have their penis removed, have their vagina turned into a penis, or take lifelong medication unless they felt so wrong in their body that their existence is an utter misery if they don’t transition. I gather that it feels as wrong as a cisgender person would feel if they were in the opposite-sex body.

Which makes sense. There can be no other reason to put yourself through the above.

If you plot a graph of the (inflation adjusted) price of copper from 1900 to the present day by year and then overlay it with a graph of how far skirt hemlines were from the ground in the USA by year over the same period, there is a startlingly high level of correlation. When the price of copper goes up, so do hemlines. When the price of copper goes down, so do hemlines.

Is there any possible causation between them?

The rea

The English language has a long standing singular neuter pronoun, (unlike French or Italian).
There is really no need to elevate people who do not wish to use the male or female pronoun to plural status.

Extremists. As ever, the nutters obscure the reasonable message with their insanity. Most regular trans people just want to transition and live their lives in peace. It’s the extreme activists, insisting there are 986 genders and that trans women should be able to compete in women’s sports, and access women’s changing rooms with no transition proved by a gender-change certificate, and get people fired from their jobs for “misgendering” them. I’m appalled by all of this.

Non-extreme trans people just want to live free of prejudice and violence. And they have always existed, they were just miserable.

The extremist activists have driven society mad and set everyone against each other.

Nobody would go through mastectomy, have their penis removed, have their vagina turned into a penis, or take lifelong medication unless they felt so wrong in their body that their existence is an utter misery if they don’t transition. I gather that it feels as wrong as a cisgender person would feel if they were in the opposite-sex body.

Entirely an assumption. Do you assume you know what other psychological conditions feel like? Also, "feeling you are in the opposite sex body" is pure science fiction. You have no idea that's what identifying as "trans" feels like, and nor do they. You might as well fantasise about what it would feel like to go back in time and meet your own parents at their high school dance.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

It’s not an assumption. I have listened to what trans people have to say about the way they felt pre-transition and afterwards. And even if it was as assumption, it’s a very reasonable one. I can think of no other reason for someone to put themselves through all that treatment unless they felt so wrong in their body that they just had to. What other reason could there be to go through all that?

I don't think it's a reasonable assumption and I don't think "trans people" can compare their perception to the experiences of others without any knowledge either.