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

I respect that others may feel they have a gender, but I don't.

Okay, so... just respect it then...?

I don't have a gender identity that's based on anything other than my ovaries but I'm cool with people who have different ideas. I have friends who are religious, I don't believe in their god but I will bow my head and STFU if they want to say grace at the table when they've cooked me a meal, and if a male-born trans person wants me to refer to her by female pronouns I will also do that as it is no skin off my nose.

If the same religious friend starts berating me about having sex outside of marriage or the same trans friend wants enter for a sports award in the same category as me, I'll have something to say about it.

As a wise man once said, all words are made up.

People do have names. Which they can choose, and which we use to refer to them.
They cannot choose their sex, which third-person pronouns (in the English language) indicate.

the thing is, gender ideology is both bat shit and harmful

it's not like keeping quiet during a prayer, it's more like your friend bringing David Icke round to your house and insisting you and your family don tin foil hats and shun your neighbours as they're reptile people, or asking you to go along with FGM because 'everyone is different'

Funny how people have absolutely no problem remembering that their friend has gone from Miss Smith to Mrs Jones but shrivel up in a corner when she asks them to call her Joseph instead of Joanne.

ROFL - people have loads of trouble remembering when people change their name! And yes, if you not only change your name, but also change it to one that's traditionally for the opposite sex, that's another dose of dissonance that makes it harder - haven't you ever tried that thing where you have to read out colours but the words are coloured differently? It's really hard!

Also wondering how on earth people refusing to see that language is gendered would cope in a language that she's male and female words for inanimate objects, like Italian and Spanish do. "Strawberry" doesn't have a sex but is a female word in Italian. You would use a female pronoun as an object in a sentence instead of the neutral "it" to say "here's a strawberry, do you want it?" . Does this non sex based normal use of language destroy them?

Also hard! Just like people coming in the other direction, or from non-gendered languages find it hard to use the right pronouns, or use them at all - it's a language fundamental, really mentally taxing to mis-use.

And words have meaning, that's why they are invented in the first place.
If you make them meaningless, we cannot communicate meaningfully.
By arguing that you "have" a name, therefore you "have" pronouns, you are using different meanings of the word "have" as if they were the same.
My name is not an attribute. My sex is.

Dishonesty and linguistic sleight of hand is the fuel of GII.

Edited to elucidate.

Everyone has pronouns. It's a grammatical term. Presumably when you don't use your daughter's name you say she or her.

The form is going to be filled in by a parent who will just give the accurate pronouns for the child's sex, the ones they're using. It's not as if parents are going to read this section of the form out to a preschooler and then say "Oh look, actually you can decide to use any pronouns you want, are you a boy a girl or an it today?"

Your dog example is a bit weird. I have no idea whether dogs separate biological sex and social gender constructs or not. But humans do recognise that distinction, whether you like it or not, and have done for thousands of years.

Look up the US meanings of Democratic and Republican and come back to me.

People are flexible and can stand the idea that words develop and shift meaning over time. That’s how language works

I would point out that children under the age of 18 cannot legally change sex, and it is therefore inappropriate to have any mandatory fields that relate to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, particularly in view of the conclusions of the Cass Report about social transitioning of children being a non-neutral act.

This

I have no idea whether dogs separate biological sex and social gender constructs or not

deary, deary me

truly, gender ideology rots the brain

OK - that's an ideological stance though - it's not a linguistic issue as you initially said.

People are using linguistics to cover up what is essentially an ideological disagreement - so let's call a spade a spade.

People are flexible and can stand the idea that words develop and shift meaning over time. That’s how language works
Yes, language changes organically over time. Efforts to artificially force language change do not usually end well.

Asking OP to specify what pronouns others should apply to her female-sexed child is equally absurd as her veterinary practice asking for the "preferred pronouns" of her (presumably either male or female) dog. And yet it's safe to assume that even lacking such a form the vet won't refer to the dog as "it."

@GrumpyPanda lol let’s try this discussion again when dogs have evolved to the point where they can write novels and create “legal entities” and we’ll see what ideas they have about identity and social constructs then

The idea that humans can’t change sex is ideological?

I am so boggled that someone would actually type that that I had to resort to old skool Mumsnet emojis. Yikes

They’ll still be male or female at that point

I’m beginning to wonder if some of the posters on this thread understand how babies are made

Yup, nobody ever felt that the change in meaning of “gay” was forced on them, nosirree

If we're being pedantic, no, she does not 'have' pronouns. Other people use particular pronouns about OP's DD, and they use what their eyes are telling them is spectacularly obvious. Unlike with a name that is specific to them people do not retain ownership over language in this way. To specify pronouns is to instruct others on the way in which they use language and it assumes a hell of a lot. Not least, it assumes everyone we interact with on a daily basis can remember every idiosynchrasy of address each individual has required us to use. Presumptious, much?

My faith is not of the monotheistic variety. I don't end prayers with 'Amen', observe the passover, or praise 'Allah'. That is the language of the believer. Equally, the rest of the world does not need this periodic enforced language of an ideology they've not bought into, and in which they don't believe.

OP - your objection is fine (without the apologetic language). I also say 'no', and I'll say it until I'm blue in the face.

There are social penalties to not bowing to gender ideology's pronoun use. This has nothing to do with the word gay changing in meaning. You seem confused about how language develops.

Mmm, because tolerating people having sex in ways that cause no harm but you disapprove of and being asked to pretend that you think someone has changed sex and to tolerate medical experiments on children and rapists in women’s prisons are almost entirely identical

Perhaps you’re not old enough to remember the social penalties associated with not “bowing” to the shift in meaning of the word gay. It became socially unacceptable to object to it as not being an appropriate word for homosexuals and it also became socially unacceptable to redeploy it as an insult (“That shirt is so gay”).

Mmmm because giving someone you work with the courtesy of a preferred pronoun even though you don’t believe they have literally changed sex and accepting male rapists in a woman’s prison are exactly the same.

They have the same root in that both start from pretending the person in front of you is a different sex to the one you know them to be

one leads to the other

They actually don’t. Black and white thinking is how things usually start out and a reasonable balance is developed over time as is literally happening right now.