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

How do people express their gender identity? I don't believe I have one so please explain.

But humans do recognise that distinction, whether you like it or not, and have done for thousands of years.

No, they really haven't.

For thousands of years they've been enforcing stereotypes and oppressing women based on their sex - which is a concept we now call gender, and I certainly don't fucking support!

And you want people to lie and pretend, do you?

Agreed. No one 'possesses' gender anymore than we can possess pronouns.

Even the anointed Foucault viewed socially-constructed gendered stereotypes as unstable concepts which exist aribitrarily, shift and change like the sands, and vary geographically and according to historically-specific circumstances. 'Gay' came about partly because of what he called a 'repressive hypothesis' - if we repress something we can still talk it into being - and it converged with camp following the way Wilde 'performed' his sexuality (from dandy to camp to queer) - hence David Bowie and the gender-benders of the 80s were created in this image.

We can't control the way in which these gendered stereotypes are created. Even Wilde couldn't (he doubtless would have been surprised and pleased)! And people can only reenact these stereotypes in accordance with what he called 'subject positions' - little slots in society which alter given time and into which we fit our so-called identities. Whereas 'woman' in the interwar period might have meant wife, mother, spinster, sapphist etc, in the 2020s the subject positions are more varied, but still subject positions nonetheless. Hence 'non-binary' isn't stepping outside these boundaries one iota: it's simply another subject position.

We can't control how 'gender' shifts and changes. That is beyond one person's capability. Stereotypes exist independently of us. All Wilde did was set in motion what Butler might have called a 'chain of signification'. The creation of a 'camp' subjectivity was beyond his control - stereotypes exist independently of us, and are embedded in society before we were born and will very likely change before we die. And we have no control over that process.

Hence, claiming ownership of a 'gender identity' even by the reckoning of the Queer Theorists GI claim to hold so dear (but don't seem to understand), is impossible. Gendered stereotypes control US, not we them. They are oppressive. Such as it ever was, so it still is. The GIs are not expanding boundaries or challenging restrictive binarism. They're contributing to it, in a particularly regressive, oppressive, dictatorial manner. And in trying to build a whole identity on something so shifting, ephemeral and insubstantial as 'gender', it's no wonder the whole thing is causing so much angst.

Don't blame me, Gender Ideologists. Blame the Queer Theorists.

“Has a gender identity” = “lies about their sex and demands other people pander to them”

I think you could just politely use someone’s preferred pronoun in the very rare circumstances you might be asked to without making some kind of moral drama about it.

And if you're saying your daughter doesn't have a gender that means the term you're looking for is "Non-binary".

Thats like saying nobody can be an atheist.

What penalties have you experienced from the fascist shift in expectation to respect a preferred pronoun then?

Pronouns are not that cognitively hard to change as you would know if you had ever made any real effort to do so. “It’s just too hard to remember!” is just a disingenuous complaint trotted out by those who have no intention of attempting to try.

I think you could just politely use someone’s preferred pronoun in the very rare circumstances you might be asked to without making some kind of moral drama about it.

You do you. I will continue to use grammatical gender based on sex (or as required by the language I'm speaking). I don't think it's polite to expect someone to change the fundamentals of their language to suit personal beliefs.

I think compelled speech is absolutely a moral drama, if if infrequent - especially when it's an oppressor class compelling the oppressed (eg. men compelling women to use 'she' for them), or people using it to exert control over others (eg. demanding preferred pronouns or excluding you if you won't).

Pronouns are not that cognitively hard to change as you would know if you had ever made any real effort to do so. “It’s just too hard to remember!” is just a disingenuous complaint trotted out by those who have no intention of attempting to try.

Yes they are - just like it's hard to read a list of colours where the text is a different colour to the word. If I see a man in front of me, it's extremely hard to remember to call that person 'she' which is the term for women. It's even harder if I've always known that person as a man.

Also - if they're not that hard to change, why does it take 'real effort to do so'? Either it's easy, or it's not.

You think there's no problem with women bowing to male demands to be called women? You really think it ends there? This is just a thinly-veiled reiteration of Be Kind, and we see where that gets us.

In case you missed it on page 2:

Okay, you do you too, if it’s that much of an issue for you. I don’t feel super-oppressed by using “they” to refer to an “oppressor class” colleague or “non-oppressor class” friend, or “he” to refer to a friend’s late teen who has socially transitioned. That’s about the extent of the issue on my life… how does it affect yours?

lol nothing like that nutso cartoon has ever happened to me despite my willingness to bow to the “demands” of both male-born and female-born persons (mostly female-born actually) to be referred to by unconventional pronouns so yep I think it’s quite possible that most of the time that’s where it ends.

you do know that your position is fundamentally illogical?

you say that you don't believe in gender identity, but you are happy to state that people who aren't prepared to behave as if they can't determine the sex of others have no fucking nuance or care for others as human beings

so failing to pretend that you can't tell a person's sex in one situation (say when deciding what prison to send them to) is OK. but in other circumstances shows 'no fucking nuance' (I'm guessing that's bad).

it sounds like your job means it would be pretty hard for you not to do the pronoun dance. In your position I might also reason myself into believing my behaviour is logical and indeed moral. I like to think that I wouldn't shout at people on Mumsnet about it though.

Shout? lol

I can tell people’s sex, almost all the time. Never said otherwise.

Just think there’s an obvious difference between agreeably referring to a perfectly pleasant person by a preferred pronoun in the course of normal life and deciding which prison to put a rapist with a penis in.

TBH I’d even use the female pronoun for the rapist if shed been identifying as a woman for a considerable period of time before she was arrested, it just wouldn’t have any bearing on whether I thought she should be in a prison with other people with the same genitals or not.

Well aren't you lucky? I guess all the women who've lost their jobs, been imprisoned with rapists, the lesbians who've had "trans lesbians" demanding sex, just don't exist, then. The other feminist sites that listed these men's abuses for years must have all been made up.

This is where #NoDebate has brought us.

In my job I'd be disciplined for using pronouns that were against someone's specification (or even, possibly, for not being a mind-reader and automatically deducing that specification). All it would take would be one complaint.

To me, linguistic contortionism has therefore become a game - something akin to Patriarchy Chicken. If I skirt around pronouns to avoid their use at all, I a) avoid this unhappy circumstance and b) am not in danger of either offending someone else or compromising my principles. I will happily use any given name that person prefers.

Win-win. Surely the ideologues would be happy with that? Because, if not, and if they will only be happy with the pronouns they demand, then I know I'm not the one who's being unreasonable. More importantly I can't be hauled into HR for something I did not say.

Here you are just plain wrong. Pronouns in natural speech are very hard to change and the cognitive load is high. Have you studied linguistics? As for penalties, many women have been penalised at work for refusing to go along with forced language change. I don't believe in forcing people to pretend they believe something they don't.

it sounds like your job means it would be pretty hard for you not to do the pronoun dance.

It’s not a dance. If you are capable of remembering people’s names you’re capable of remembering pronouns as it’s very rare for anyone to have unexpected ones. It’s literally like remembering any other small personal detail about someone; their Mum’s name, a food allergy, where they went to school, how many kids they have.

Wrong again.

TBH I’d even use the female pronoun for the rapist if shed been identifying as a woman for a considerable period of time before she was arrested, it just wouldn’t have any bearing on whether I thought she should be in a prison with other people with the same genitals or not.

And here we have it. The covers are off. A crime that can only be committed by a man, but because he's been lying about his sex since before he committed the crime, he gets pandered to - regardless of the effect that has on his victim, presumably. No care for women here, it's all about male feelz.

i don’t think you can presume anything about what the theoretical victim actually feels or what I would think about an individual case or what care I have towards women or victims of male violence in general.

As you’re clearly only interested in making me into a heartless bitch because my position on pronouns differs from yours, 👋🏻

I don't have to make you into anything, you're doing fine with your responses, or lack of, to all the points many posters have made about why this matters.

no fucking nuance or care for others as human beings.

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I absolutely care about all other human beings. We all deserve to live our lives whilst remembering we share this planet with others.

I'm embarrassed that diversity and inclusivity don't extend to all people who genuinely need it and that respect and compassion often seems a one way street

The earliest recorded use of a gender neutral pronoun was in the 14th century.

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I'm sure you are right however accusations of literal violence when the wrong pronouns are used seems a relatively recent concept