just checking - since the SC there is no such thing as misgendering on Mumsnet? Or is there??

[loveyouradvice]

Just checking we can refer to TIM as he now? I think so... The deeply admirable Helen Joyce does and I share her rationale...

Goes all the way back to the sublime Pronouns are rohypnol from a much loved mums netter...

But earlier in the thread you were framing people refusing to say it as “unnecessarily confrontational “?

A name is a name. It would be imposing a particularly rigid set of stereotypes to refuse to use a name that is usually associated with the opposite sex for someone.

We do it all the time. My boss is female but has a traditionally ‘male’ name - it is her given name.

Using a persons name is not the same as being required to use inappropriate dictated pronouns.

Whilst I agree 100% that "using a persons name is not the same as being required to use inappropriate dictated pronouns", I also believe that "using a persons new name bears some similarities with being required to use inappropriate dictated pronouns, and this becomes more true if the new name you are being asked to use jars massively because it is a name you have only ever come across being used for people of the opposite sex to the perosn concerned".

I literally cannot even bear the thought of changing my own name... I have a formal real christian name as per my birth certificate, but as a young child my family called me by a shortened version. I grew to dislike the shortened version as I (wrongly) perceived it as being childish, and at the same time I would always answer with my formal name if asked, because that is my name, not the shortened version. As I got older my family increasingly called me the formal version, as did all my friends (most of whom never knew me by the shortened version). Nowadays I would much prefer to be known by everyone by the shortened version, but I could never ask people to change what they call me, and introducing myself as the shortened version when that is quite simply not my real name feels utterly wrong to me,

When I can't even bring myself to use my own preferred correct sex name I really object to the idea of being forced to call someone by their own preferred wrong sex name!

And rude.

This follows the fairly typical plea for speaking with moderation so that others will listen. While totalling ignoring that women have been speaking moderately for years to now be able to reach the point that women like Sandie Peggie can have a court case where she and her legal team don't have to use obfuscating and confusing language any more.

I noticed just how many people stopped using preferred language after Adam Bryson. Because no one had to use kind language for a rapist. While forgetting the logic that if one sub group of men don't deserve the 'kind' language accommodations, why should the others?

Then the next shift was Khelif after Khelif punched women in the face. Now, of course, Khelif is not a male person with a transgender identity. But the result was the same. The pressure to use female language was there being enforced by many. And the response was startling in how many people again started to drop that language after realising how that language had allowed two male athletes to be rewarded with gold medals for punching women in the face.

The visceral response was one of disbelief for many, I believe. And how the fuck we got to that point?

One of the next major turning points was Sandie Peggie's court case. The pronouns were dropping quickly. The support was quite wobbly by then. And people realised just how deceptive obfuscating language is and the harm that was happening because of it. Not just rapists in jail, not just male athletes punching female athletes in the face, now it was a nurse being significantly bullied for asking to have a female only changing room. And was supported by the 30 Darlington nurses who made a complaint to their employer and now a smaller group is about to go through their own tribunal case.

Because of obfuscating language, many of the public were still unaware what was happening. Because after all, listening to the media reports using 'she' or even the neutral 'them' simply allowed people to not question further. After all, it is not clear and frankly, who fucking cares if another 'woman' is using a changing room.

Then came the Supreme Court judgement and it has come to a head. By now so many people have dropped using preferred language, because for discussions about single sex provisions, the SC declared that those male people who claim to be female but are male are 'men'.

So, why is it considered more important to prioritise a man demanding that he is treated as if he is something he can never be? Why is correctly sexing him considered 'rude' and 'unnecessarily confrontational' by some?

In the words of Magdalen Berns, 'I would rather be rude than a fucking liar.'

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3806206-Magdalen-Berns-for-the-newbies

And isn't it really odd that this seeming non ability to tell other human being's sex is an affliction which has only affected people in the last five years or so?

No, it's always been like that. That's why the human race died out within 60 years of the invention of clothes. So tragic.

Well some people think we can't even tell when people are naked unless they tell us

They died out first.

🤣🤣🤣🤣. Your posts have made me laugh a lot.

I am terribly sorry if you're upset by my sweary masculine language. Let me be far more feminine:

ODFOD.

You're still trying to argue with someone who politely agreed to differ several pages back.

It's impossible to continue this discussion with people who don't accept that trans people have lived among us for millenia and sometimes we haven't even known.

I get why some women who have felt threatened by men (and few women haven't at some point in their lives! ) might find that a frightening thought. But if you didn't realise, then they are very unlikely to be one of the ones who would hurt you.

I get why there is such anger against the trans activists who have disrupted everything for everyone, including trans people.

The worst wrongs (women's sport, women's spaces, women's shortlists) are finally being righted. But the genie is out of the bottle. You cannot turn back the clock. And society will find a way to talk about it and, yes, accommodate it.
.

Sure.

“And society will find a way to talk about it and, yes, accommodate it.”

Has anyone said that people with transgender identities don’t exist? And we ARE talking about it.

Accommodating people’s philosophical belief doesn’t mean just giving them access to rights where this conflicts with the needs of the group the rights are there to protect. Hence we have these very discussions.

We disagreed with you that using ‘they/them’ was ‘OK’ which is fine because you agreed that not one person should feel coerced to comply with someone else’s philosophical belief that doesn’t reflect material reality.

In what way do you think we would disagree with “society will find a way to talk about it and, yes, accommodate it.”?

You missed a bit of my post, I think.

It's impossible to continue this discussion with people who don't accept that trans people have lived among us for millenia and sometimes we haven't even known.

Pretty sure nobody around here disagrees with that...

Why was this part so important that you have doubled down on it?

What point are you trying to make?

Or maybe I should ask why do you think people with transgender identities have existed for millennia and that we haven’t known? Who are you referring to exactly when you refer to people with transgender identities in this statement ?

I didn’t think it was relevant either. I don’t think people disagree that people with transgender identities exist, but this poster obviously has a point to make.

I do query which people they are referring to with the ‘for millennia’.

I not sure you've read the thread?

People have repeatedly stated that is always possible to tell men from women from how they look and sound.

Well that's the point. People think this issue is new. It's not. The only thing that changed was the trans activists demanding that people accept that they were actually physical women and entitled to any rights that went with that.

And some people can always tell. Some people can usually tell. And some people cannot tell at all.

What do you find controversial with that?

Is it that you, personally, cannot correctly identify a person’s sex when interacting with them and you feel that that is the norm?

Please tell us who were the people with transgender identities who you referred to as being amongst the UK population a millennia ago?

Particularly that people would never have identified as having a transgender identity?

Yes, some people think they can always tell.

I can only repeat what I've already written, just as everyone on this thread is now repeating what has already been written.

It's impossible to continue this discussion with people who don't accept that trans people have lived among us for millenia and sometimes we haven't even known.

So I'll bow out again and agree to differ.

So, you are not going to answer about to whom you were referring when you said that there had been people with transgender identities for a millennia that we would not have known about?

Was that in the UK? Were you leveraging other cultures? Where? Did you just throw that in as embellishment?

And do you think that prior to hormones and facial feminisation surgery that people in the UK would not have been very easily able to correctly identify another person’s sex?

So you can’t reliably and correctly identify a person’s sex category with interaction with that person, so you feel that this means that no one can do it 100% of the time. I believe there will be a few people out there who will be able to.

I believe many of us will be able to reliably correctly identify someone’s sex category with interaction most of the time, particularly female people correctly identifying male people. I generally can tell because I have deteriorating vision so my brain focuses on movement. Listening to footsteps, and voices. I am a runner and can reliably pick the sex of the runner about to over take me. It is not magic.

Repeating the statement doesn’t give it clarity except that you find this discussion you entered impossible.

It's impossible to continue this discussion with people who don't accept that trans people have lived among us for millenia and sometimes we haven't even known.

so 'we haven't even known', but you know, about people who lived more than a thousand years ago.

Like the fairies.

It's impossible to continue this discussion with people who don't accept that trans people have lived among us for millenia and sometimes we haven't even known.

@Imdunfer can you define what you mean by ‘trans people’ in this context and why their existence means that we should be bullied and coerced into using language with which we disagree?

Your claim that sometimes we haven’t known (about these trans people using our spaces) is highly questionable, as you say you really struggle to tell what sex people are but the majority of people can reliably tell immediately.