Mandated to give my ten year old's pronouns - how to respond

[Gofastboatsmojito]

I've recently had to fill in a form for my daughter's hobby, she's joining a group to rehearse and perform which builds on the standard teaching class.

As part of this I had to fill in a form which asked for her gender and her preferred pronouns. She's 10 FFS, and her school luckily don't go in for teaching gender ideology, sticking to a more factual PSHE curriculum. So she hasn't got a gender or pronouns.

I've filled the form in because I don't want her to miss out on this further opportunity, and I have no reason to believe the group, which is council run, are gender ideologues. I think they're just trying to be modern / some secondary children also do this hobby so maybe there have been requests from older children's parents.

I'd like to email my contact, who I email relatively often, expressing why this question is problematic.

How does the below sound? I'd like to add something about Cass but I'm not sure what the best point to include woukd be at very grateful for your ideas.

Preferred pronouns is a mandatory field (with only 3 choices! She/her, He/him, They/them - not very inclusive) but ethnicity has about 5 different questions where you can choose an Asian ethnicity or n/a, a Black ethnicity or n/a, a White non-European ethnicity or n/a, White European, or just opt out entirely. Its a badly designed form tbh.

Thanks

I hope you don't mind a little bit of feedback. I'm not happy being asked for my child's gender or pronouns. She doesn't have a gender or pronouns, she has a sex (female).

Asking for pronouns is akin to asking for a religion without giving the option of 'none', so I respectfully suggest you consider adding 'no preferred pronouns' or similar to the list of options, or adding an 'opt out' as you do for ethnicity

The point I am making is that in OP's draft email she says that her daughter doesn't have a gender or pronouns.

If the point OP is trying to make is that she doesn't subscribe to the idea that a 10 year old can pick and choose their gender or pronouns (which I would agree with), then this isn't the best way to articulate it, since presumably OP is saying that she would use girl/she/her to describe her daughter. In its current format, the email is ambiguous enough for the reader to assume that OP doesn't subscribe to gender and pronouns on a general level (and presumably would want her daughter to be... It?). Essentially it isn't making the point that OP wants it to.

Mairzy- what does that even mean. Are you saying that I can’t talk about Richard, the man down the road to my dh, without first popping round, knocking on Richard’s door “Hi Richard, dh and I are going to be talking about your bad parking. Should we use he/ him or she /her?’. Absolute nonsense!!

We know people’s sex and we know grammar, no one ever needed to check until a couple of years ago. It’s just embarrassing, made-up, brainwashing garbage!

Using pronouns is not the same as "having" pronouns. I think your response is perfect OP.

I think it's fine. The OP's daughter doesn't have pronouns and doesn't have a gender identity - "Girl" is not a gender. Various pronouns can be used about her daughter depending on situation. Just because a few male pronouns are never used about her doesn't mean their female equivalents are somehow hers.

Great post.
Nailed absolutely all the issues.

I get the point, but I'm not sure the message will 100% land.

I do hope OP gets a response though, as I fully agree with her principles.

Struggling to see how you/they don’t obviously prefer “she” over “he” or “zhe” or “they” for your female-born daughters. So yah, you do have a preferred pronoun.

My son has been repeatedly mistaken for a girl all his life just because he wears his hair a little longer than is typical for a boy, and likes the colour purple. So when people say, “she” about him to me, or says to him and his sister “What icecream would you like, girls?” he corrects the pronoun they are using. “He” is the pronoun he likes, he doesn’t like being called “she”. “He” is his pronoun. It’s not rocket science, babes.

My daughter does not have preferred pronouns. There are sex based pronouns which it is obvious most people would use for her because she is female, but she has not chosen these and she has not stated how she wishes others to talk about her in the third person.

Did you ask her if she'd rather be called she, him, they, or it?

I expect she'd say 'she'.

What is your son's date of birth and what is his preferred age?

If female pronouns are used to the exclusion of male pronouns, yes, it does mean the female pronouns are “hers” and the male pronouns are not. Or should I say the female pronouns are “his”?! Or the male pronouns are also “hers”? Of course not, as that would be self-contradictory.

The first is none of your business and the second, when it comes to referencing sex/gender, is “he/him/his”.

No, it’s not. The pronouns her daughter uses are “l/me/my”.

The pronouns others naturally use about her will be according to how they perceive her sex. These don’t belong to her, they are to aid communication about her in the clearest way possible.

We are only asked to ignore sexed pronouns (which is what we learn to use in English as we learn to speak) when someone is asking us to validate their belief that they are of the opposite sex, or no sex.

@CheekyHobson Your son is he/him/his years old? Interesting.

😆

The point I am making is that in OP's draft email she says that her daughter doesn't have a gender or pronouns.^^

Because she doesn't - at least not as the form means. I don't either.

I had gender expectations imposed on me, but they aren't mine. I have a sex, people use grammatically gendered pronouns to refer to me based on that sex - but I don't control that.

I don't have any internal sense of gender, I don't expect people to use special language for me - I would opt out of that field if it was possible.

Cheeky - but kids don’t ‘prefer’ a pronoun and shouldn’t be spending time thinking about it.

As they grow from babies to children they learn the difference between boys and girls, what they are and gradually become able to identify the sex of others with a very high degree of accuracy (and a few embarrassing mistakes along the way).

They also learn grammar, this means that they KNOW that people should call boys ‘he’, it’s not that they prefer it, it’s that the other people have made a mistake if they get it wrong.

Sorry misread your question. He doesn’t have a preferred age, but if someone guessed his age wrong, I’m sure he’d tell them his correct age.

If you are trying to make this argument about whether I “believe males can become females” etc you’re wasting your time as I actually don’t, however I do believe people have the right to choose pronouns that they
prefer, whether or not they match their sex.

Happy now?

My son has been repeatedly mistaken for a girl all his life just because he wears his hair a little longer than is typical for a boy, and likes the colour purple. So when people say, “she” about him to me, or says to him and his sister “What icecream would you like, girls?” he corrects the pronoun they are using. “He” is the pronoun he likes, he doesn’t like being called “she”. “He” is his pronoun. It’s not rocket science, babes.

My son too - although it's not the pronoun that he doesn't like - it's the presumption that he's female when he's male. If it's a stranger who he'll never see again, he doesn't normally bother correcting them, the most he does is direct an eyeroll at me subtly, or complain about it in the car later if there is a repeat offender.

Nobody "has pronouns". They are part of the language people use about other people, not personal possessions.

That's irrational, talking about grammar as if it's something you have.

My son clearly prefers a pronoun, which is the one that matches his sex as it is apparently quite hard for people to pick it with a high degree of accuracy.

A fairly small number of children quite steadfastly prefer a pronoun that doesn’t match their sex and all your wishing it were otherwise won’t make it so.

Some adults prefer pronouns that are different to their sex and it may be easy or hard to tell that there is a mismatch. I’m happy to accommodate this particular linguistic preference though not some extended accommodations.

Cheeky - but that’s not the same. I also believe that people can dress how they want and if someone wants to be referred to as she when they are a man they can ask (but not force) people to do that. This is a very rare situation though! And it doesn’t mean that everyone has to ‘declare their pronouns’. In the case of a club like OPs dc wants to join the form should ask for name and sex. There should be space for special requirements somewhere anyway (health, allergies etc) and the person can say that they are trans or whatever in there, if not they can send an email. It really isn’t something that needs to be asked.

I'm not trying to make it about anything.
Even if you think people have the right to choose pronouns that don't match their sex, it doesn't follow that it's a good idea to prompt ten year olds to do so, or assume that they already may have.

"Gender" means sex role stereotypes. What OP's daughter, like all mammals, has, is a sex. She's female. Third person pronouns refer to that, and aren't a matter of preference but of fact. The only confusing of the issue is by the people conflating sex and gender and claiming the roles override the biology.

Cheeky - but kids don’t ‘prefer’ a pronoun and shouldn’t be spending time thinking about it.

When I was 10, I would have known that I wanted people to refer to me as 'she' rather than 'he' or anything else.

That's all 'preferred pronoun' means. It's not a big deal.

Quite, under, the fact that a tiny number of people suffer from ‘gender distress’ doesn’t mean that all children should be asked to ‘choose their pronouns’. Just asking the question implies that there is some kind of choice or that it is something that needs thought. It implies that a complex mental health condition is somehow normal.