Are pronouns misogyny

[FoggyFriday]

Me and my daughter are disagreeing about pronouns (as in having them in bios, email signatures etc) I feel they pander to men (who are the main % of pronoun users)
Do you think it is considered misogynistic to preface the term She/Her etc

They have been shown to disadvantage women

I understand that for some people it is seen as being more inclusive. One organisation that I deal with regularly, people have how to pronounce their names too. (Irish names, international organisations).
However, I remember reading somewhere that women are treated more poorly professionally. While my name is not gender ambiguous, my personal feelings are that they promote gender inequality through unconscious bias.

Are men really the main users? I wouldn't have thought so, but happy to be corrected.

No, it's mostly women who put them in bios, in my experience. You could perhaps say that is largely to pander to men, although I think it's more about virtue signalling and tribal signals.

Certainly gender ideology as a whole is bad for women.

I would tend to call it stupid, more than misogynistic, though there are certainly misogynists who are involved. But in the end the issue is really that it's idiotic.

Declaring pronouns is misogynistic in the sense it confers validity to an ideology that believes men can declare themselves as women through the advertisement of wrong sex pronouns and the demand for their use.

If women state their pronouns - whether that’s she/her, he/him, they/them - they are declaring their support for that ideology. Even if they’re doing it for the perceived benefits of themselves or women who might say their trans, we all know that any perceived is a distant second to the needs of men, who have used the erosion of definitions to further their gains as the expense of women.

So yes.

Stereotype threat.

And any number of women who report that when they use male names, the abuse they get diminishes.

The only men I know who I would call misogynistic would be the least likely to use pronouns at the end of emails, and, like Trump, be outraged by being asked their pronouns.

There is loud misogyny, like Trump. And there is quiet misogyny, like all the leftie men who showed up in Me Too, and Epstein and on and on.

At least the former are obvious.

Exactly.

There are a lot of men who are performatively 'allies' and pro-feminism, but lo and behold the private picture is quite different. Or, when it comes to the crunch, you discover that their misogyny is insidious.

The impact on women collectively from the changes to the established English language conventions can be described as misogynistic. That male people demand that the words for female people include the very opposite of what the word was established to describe just for those male people’s needs is something I consider misogyny. So too the impact of where that leads- to female people losing single sex provisions.

Two examples of trans 'spokespeople' saying that people using pronouns and changing identity documents does mean that society views them as women and that therefore they should absolutely be treated as women.

F Wallace

https://twitter.com/Isla_macy/status/1706382987682554144 at around 2 hr 5 mins

Ivy/McKinnon

https://news.sky.com/story/trans-cyclist-rachel-mckinnon-defends-her-right-to-race-in-womens-competitions-11838131

And McKinnon in this video too (you might need a VPN for this)

McKinnon was the first that I came across but I am sure that there are many many examples from prior 2019. However, I believe that McKinnon used this as an argument in a meeting with policy makers in the IOC as both a ‘champion female cyclist’ and a philosophy lecturer at that time and contributed to the detriment of female athletes.

There is also the trauma where female people have been forced to use female language for their rapists and abusers.

In the CPS guidance on hate crimes, not using female language for a male spouse when he demands can be used for recording a hate crime against the spouse refusing to change their language. A male person can report his spouse or ex- spouse for domestic abuse (ie. not accepting that transition, and using the correct sex pronouns) and this would also be coded as a 'hate crime - violence against the person.'

There are plenty of other instances where the negative impact to women individually, but certainly collectively, is misogynistic in nature. Using demanded wrong sex languishes is not ‘harmless’ at all. However, there are times when people are coerced into using that language.

What other language demands that suit a specific group’s philosophical belief about themselves that doesn’t reflect the material reality of that individual’s situation has been codified for usage in law and in organisational policy to this degree?

I have not understood one single post on this thread but I have never felt marginalised as a woman, either professionally or socially.

My title is Mrs, my first name is feminine. My pronouns are obvious and don't need to be stated but when they are, by others, she/her are perfectly acceptable. I am also a wife and a mother and happily am far too old to have been referred to as a pregnant person, although I was not impressed with my husband being referred to as my partner, 30 odd years ago.

I don't think it's misogynistic. I find it useful, particularly for names I am less familiar with (as a person who learnt English as an additional language, Jo/Joe always tripped me up in emails).

Why do you need to know the sex of someone in an email when knowing is not important to the situation? Do you treat the person differently knowing they are male or female?

This is exactly how I feel about pronouns. Thank you for explaining it better than I ever could.

It's useful if I'm referring to the content of the email in a group thread, or to others (e.g. xxx stated in her email dated whatever that ...)

There is certainly plenty of evidence that women are disadvantaged professionally if they are seen as women and putting pronouns in bios absolutely rams this home. It’s also deferring to the trans ideology and tells anyone who is GC that they are not welcome.

Allowing men to declare themselves women because they 'feel like one' assumes there is a single way that ALL women feel

allowing men to use female pronouns because they live like a woman is propagating the belief that there is a correct way to live like a woman which men can imitate. This involves the performance of female stereotypes eg long hair, dresses, make up, heels.. it's extremely misogynistic to believe womanhood is some kind of a performance

By allowing Mary who used to be Mark to use female pronouns it becomes much much harder to defend female only places and spaces for example the difference between

he followed her into the women's changing room and when asked to leave he refused

she followed her into the women's changing room and when asked to leave she refused

there are numerous incidences of TW being described as she/her in crime reports which completely changes the impact of the criminal behaviour on the person reading it

Outside of that situation, can you see the harm that using demanded pronouns that are the wrong sex for the person’s sex category?

I believe so. Because the purpose behind the push to include them was to further GI, which disproportionately harms women and advantages men.
It may also be disadvantageous to a woman to declare her sex and problematic when a male person uses female pronouns in situations where sex matters.
Personally I find the idea that if I don't declare my pronouns there may be doubt as to which are correct (when told to do so in person) ridiculous and offensive. A view shared by many in the trans community as it happens.
So misogynist and misguided.

I don't understand what you're asking, sorry.

We call boats, countries etc 'she'. Languages often have a feminine/masculine which isn't even tied to living things.

It honestly doesn't bother me

Others in the thread appear to agree with you though

I will Google but could you point me to any sources about this please? It would be so helpful. Thanks.

Mostly used by women, in my experience.

Though in a world full of workplace sexism, I doubt throwing "she/her" in the face of everyone you write an email to puts many people at an advantage.

But those languages don't typically interchange their use of m/f as people feel like. If I decided that my house has a masculine vibe to it, I couldn't expect French speakers to refer to it as le maison, because that would be asking them to use their own language in a different way.

You are talking about grammatical gender. That's not what the OP means. The OP is talking about biological sex.