Now they want to erase gender altogether
Discussion
Randy Winkman said:
doogz said:
It's not a choice, it's to do with what reproductive organs you were both with.
That's simply not true.Your sex is defined by what bits you have - you can only change that by changing your bits. Your gender is a social construct, and is therefore subjective - you can self-identify as being female, or male, or neutral, or no gender at all, regardless of what bits you have. It sort of makes sense when you consider that sex is a biological term - animals aren't generally assigned genders - and gender was originally a grammatical term (think le, la, latin agreements etc.). No, I don't really understand why the distinction is necessary, but those who do seem to care a lot about it, and it is at least a reasonably well-defined distinction.
BlackVanDyke said:
That article's a load of bulls
t.
What is being requested is that there be at least one non-gendered option available. That's all, nothing more. The impact on ordinary cisgendered and binary-gendered people is exactly nil.
According to the article they already have Mx on council forms which is apparently a non-gendered version or Mr/Mrs/Ms etc, this is still not enough so the activist in question wants to do away with titles altogether, thus affecting the 99.99% for the 0.01%. Again.t.What is being requested is that there be at least one non-gendered option available. That's all, nothing more. The impact on ordinary cisgendered and binary-gendered people is exactly nil.
wolves_wanderer said:
BlackVanDyke said:
That article's a load of bullst.
What is being requested is that there be at least one non-gendered option available. That's all, nothing more. The impact on ordinary cisgendered and binary-gendered people is exactly nil.
According to the article they already have Mx on council forms which is apparently a non-gendered version or Mr/Mrs/Ms etc, this is still not enough so the activist in question wants to do away with titles altogether, thus affecting the 99.99% for the 0.01%. Again.t.What is being requested is that there be at least one non-gendered option available. That's all, nothing more. The impact on ordinary cisgendered and binary-gendered people is exactly nil.
Steph Scott for example would prefer to receive letters from the bank that say "Dear Steph Scott..." rather than "Dear Ms Scott...". That's all it is, honestly.
The people working themselves into a froth over such a trivial change, which has so impressively little impact on the majority of the population, is hilarious. If we could harness that energy we could probably power Slough for a week or something.
The misreporting really doesn't help, mind.
It's reminding me of the hysteria over Manchester student union making one of its half-dozen sets of toilets genderless: the set chosen was in the basement, so far from any area frequented regularly by - well - anybody that I don't actually believe the majority of students would ever have known about it at all, had it not been reported. Except of course for the few dozen students who don't feel safe using gendered toilets, who were glad of having somewhere to pee that wasn't the disabled loo, and a few 'cool' types who decided it was interestingly radical and decided to use them too.
In summary: fuss about nothing. As you were.
Actually I've felt for ages that Mrs/Miss/Ms should be done away with in favour of a common title, but when I think about it, why have Mr either? I'm not gay or transgender, it's more that why does it matter?
When I changed a couple of years ago from Miss to Mrs it annoyed me. When you're older then having to put Miss on paperwork can lead some people to think - oh you're old and unmarried there must be something wrong with you - when actually it's none of their business whatsoever.
And weirdly conversely, when I changed to Mrs I felt ancient and didn't like it at all.
What does our title say to anybody? Why is it relevant? Who ever cares !
When I changed a couple of years ago from Miss to Mrs it annoyed me. When you're older then having to put Miss on paperwork can lead some people to think - oh you're old and unmarried there must be something wrong with you - when actually it's none of their business whatsoever.
And weirdly conversely, when I changed to Mrs I felt ancient and didn't like it at all.
What does our title say to anybody? Why is it relevant? Who ever cares !
I think women are massively insecure about that.
No one really casts judgement on you for being 35 and not married. It just makes people aware that there's a biological time bomb ticking away in there and then we know to tread carefully around these people, and not talk too loudly or enthusiastically about our kids or marriage.
No one really casts judgement on you for being 35 and not married. It just makes people aware that there's a biological time bomb ticking away in there and then we know to tread carefully around these people, and not talk too loudly or enthusiastically about our kids or marriage.
eldar said:
Marf said:
Yes! The OP's money is apparently being wasted, despite him not living in brighton and hove 
75% of their spending comes from general taxation, so he does have a point. Sure, there may be some merit to the "money could be better spent" argument, but you can say that about any public expenditure.
TL:DR - Storm in a teacup get over it.
Edited by Marf on Friday 26th October 09:40
BlackVanDyke said:
cisgendered
Horrid made up word 
. I wasn't cisgendered when I was 18 as there was no such thing in 1987. My gender hasn't changed in the intervening 25 years, so I'm not now either. Just as Steph Scott doesn't like being pigeonholed by council forms, nor do I like being pigeonholed by the LGBT(QI etc etc, I lose track of the alphabet soup and which groups are included right now and which aren't) community and their horrid made up word. I've had arguments with my (lesbian trans woman - she self identifies as such so I'm happy to so describe her) activist friend about this, I think she's finally accepted my point that if she's going to campaign against labels being placed on people in the trans (and particularly) intersex communities to try to force them into a gender binary system then perhaps she would also do well not to start sticking made up labels onto other groups. Particularly not on to me.I self identify as a person. I would be entirely content for any question of title, gender specific or otherwise, to be removed from governmental and other forms and to just be addressed by my first name (or to adopt the Commander's single field system) and consider a letter addressed to me using my name with no title to be correctly addressed.
onomatopoeia said:
BlackVanDyke said:
cisgendered
Horrid made up word . I wasn't cisgendered when I was 18 as there was no such thing in 1987. My gender hasn't changed in the intervening 25 years, so I'm not now either. Just as Steph Scott doesn't like being pigeonholed by council forms, nor do I like being pigeonholed by the LGBT(QI etc etc, I lose track of the alphabet soup and which groups are included right now and which aren't) community and their horrid made up word. I've had arguments with my (lesbian trans woman - she self identifies as such so I'm happy to so describe her) activist friend about this, I think she's finally accepted my point that if she's going to campaign against labels being placed on people in the trans (and particularly) intersex communities to try to force them into a gender binary system then perhaps she would also do well not to start sticking made up labels onto other groups. Particularly not on to me.I self identify as a person. I would be entirely content for any question of title, gender specific or otherwise, to be removed from governmental and other forms and to just be addressed by my first name (or to adopt the Commander's single field system) and consider a letter addressed to me using my name with no title to be correctly addressed.
I wish there was a more elegant word for it (which is not negative towards other groups), do you have any suggestions?
AJS- said:
I think women are massively insecure about that.
No one really casts judgement on you for being 35 and not married. It just makes people aware that there's a biological time bomb ticking away in there and then we know to tread carefully around these people, and not talk too loudly or enthusiastically about our kids or marriage.
Hehe !No one really casts judgement on you for being 35 and not married. It just makes people aware that there's a biological time bomb ticking away in there and then we know to tread carefully around these people, and not talk too loudly or enthusiastically about our kids or marriage.
I just feel it's not really anybody elses business, and I'm not really sure of the relevance of it on forms!
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