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 live in France and am a fluent French speaker.

Words in languages such as Italian and French do not have a sex. They are not male or female.

They have a gender. They are masculine or feminine.

And that is the proper use of the word gender BTW.

The word for strawberry is not female in French or Italian because words do not have a biological sex. It is a feminin gender word because grammar.

The words for girl or woman in French or Italian are also not female (see above for reasons). They are feminin gendered grammatical words words used to refer to beings of the female sex.

Only living things have a sex. Words are not alive or sexed and neither are the inanimate objects they refer to.

I just wanted to point that out because there is so much confusion nowadays about simple concepts (that everyone seemed to understand before genderist ideology came along).

Haven’t studied linguistics formally though my job involves language. I have just lived the experience of adapting to different pronouns and found it not especially taxing, and have observed numerous colleagues and friends adapting with relative ease. So I don’t really get the angst. Maybe we are all genius outliers and exceptions to the rule!

Or maybe you don't actually do it very much. Or maybe you are only used to speaking in English - in many other languages, changing a pronoun actually has a knock-on effect on other parts of the sentence. Or maybe you just don't fully realise how language works. I have a PhD in linguistics by the way and I can assure you it is far from simple.

Or maybe you don't actually do it very much. Or maybe you are only used to speaking in English - in many other languages, changing a pronoun actually has a knock-on effect on other parts of the sentence. Or maybe you just don't fully realise how language works. I have a PhD in linguistics by the way and I can assure you it is far from simple.

It's forcing them to lie about their preference, not reality.

@CheekyHobson Can you explain a system for those of us who are less gifted? I don't know how to memorise pronouns for lots of people, they seem arbitrary to me and it feels like a large volume of information with nothing to anchor it to.
I can remember faces but it takes time to memorise the names that go with them. Also once I have learned a name, I struggle to relearn it when it changes.
I don't struggle to memorise large amounts of other types of information. I suppose I might be gifted in that department.

You make a fair point. There’s really nothing you can say here. There are posters claiming they don’t have pronouns 😬

Very true about lingusitics.

I think the cognitive dissonance is higher in languages such as French when you are forced to speak about a man as though he female.

For example if I say "she is French" when referring to a male human being in English I only have to lie once. But in French "elle est Française" involes 2 untruths and twice the amount of double think.

Not that that makes it easy or acceptable in English but it is even harder and even more jarring in languages with gendered adjectives.

We don't have pronouns.

What are your adverbs by the way?

They don't. There have been clear explanations as to why given upthread. They are not difficult to follow or comprehend.

So you still haven't understood the difference between using pronouns and "having" pronouns?

Running - no one ‘has’ pronouns. They are simply words used to replace nouns, and they are sometimes based on sex.

And a small proportion of children, the ones who are distressed about their sexed bodies and disproportionately likely to be autistic, will be compelled to come out or else lie about their preference.

To protect these vulnerable children, make the question optional. It's really not a big ask.

Presumably everyone has pronouns that they prefer to be referred to by though? Isn't that what we're talking about here?

Yes, being pedantic, I don't 'have' she/her pronouns but I would certainly correct someone if they referred to me as he/him.

For anyone in any doubt, this is what a woman is:

Paris 2024 Olympics: Fencer Nada Hafez competes while seven months pregnant - BBC Sport

• Cleverly.
• Angrily.
• Idioticly.

The first and third are not necessarily in conflict.

Do you know what pronouns are?

I don’t think you understand what pronouns are. They replace your name (I/ she/ her/ my/ mine) Even if you only ever refer to yourself in third person (serafinasgoose will be home at 8 tonight, for example) other people will use pronouns (presumably she/her) about you. So yes, basic grammar means everyone has pronouns

Oh the irony. It’s spelled idiotically. And I’m not the one who doesn’t know what a pronoun is

Yeah of course.
Just like adverbs (or adjectives, nouns, prepositions etc.) they are a part of speech.
Just like adverbs, there are some that I prefer being used about me. For example I prefer incisively and athletically to stupidly and clumsily, but it's not really my choice how others choose to refer to me. Respecting preferred pronouns makes no more sense than respecting preferred adverbs.

Yes I know what pronouns are thank you. I teach linguistics. You “have” pronouns as you “have” a name. If you prefer the term “use” that’s fine but it doesn’t actually make any difference. Everyone has/ uses pronouns so posters they don’t are ridiculous

Transgenderism is an ideology. That is to say that it is a system of ideas and beliefs. It is not evidence based. And lots and lots of people do not hold the ideas and beliefs of transgenderism. Instead, they agree with and hold ideas that come from evidence based science and concrete reality (and things like physics and biology[.

If you want an analogy one could compare transgenderism to creationism or to any other religious or faith based set of beliefs.

Asking a person what their pronouns are or they "have" is an act of ideology. It is therefore perfectly reasonable for a person who does not hold the beliefs of that ideology to decline to engage with the ideology and by consequence the question.

That is quite clearly what posters mean when they say that they do not "have" pronouns. They are saying that they do not wish to engage with an ideological set of beliefs that they do not hold and that are neither evidence based nor manifest in reality.

Which is fair enough if you are a fan of Article 9 of the Human Rights Act - Freedom of thought, belief and religion or of Article 10 which protects your right to hold your own opinions.

Many people may think that pronouns are not important because they are just words. But words are thoughts.

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?

Yep, I will. I do feel oppressed by having my language controlled to my detriment (both politically, and personally through the extra mental effort it takes to do so).

It affects my life because I have two children who might be affected by this, and because professionally I work in IT, where there is lower female representation, higher numbers of men who want me to call them 'she' (I've personally worked with 2), and use women's facilities.

And because most importantly, if I use 'she' for a man, I am colluding in him collecting the evidence he requires to get a GRC, which I absolutely will not do, as I think that falsifying identity documents is morally wrong and legally suspect.

Am I not allowed to tell jokes now?

I wasn't sure of the spelling and the proper way looked wrong.

Presumably everyone has pronouns that they prefer to be referred to by though? Isn't that what we're talking about here?

Weird way to put it - and not preferred no - just linguistically correct. If you refer to me by anything other than 'she' when speaking English you're just wrong, as my sex is female.