I find this almost unbearable. In real life, people are actually assaulted. Someone takes their body and enacts violence on your body.with it. I take the point that misgendering might 'feel like assault' but nonetheless, it's not an assualt.

You can accept a child's experience without agreeing with any particular conclusion about that experience. My children, no slouch in the self reflection stakes either, experienced dysphoria. I disagreed that made them 'truly' the opposite sex to their observed sex. The distress, though temporary, was real; the conclusion was faulty. I think that disagreement was ultimately very grounding for them.

Yes. And as the evidence base is currently so weak, I don't think we should be organising society around it. If strong, replicable evidence emerges with a plausible mechanism for innate gender identity at odd with ones sex, and a way of clearly identifying 'transness', I'd reconsider some aspects, like social transitioning of children.

It's illogical, there's no evidence for it, brain scans don't show such a difference (transwoman on oestrogen have brains like gay men's).

Nah-uh. It's up to proponents of gender identity to demonstrate this 'internal gender' exists, independent of sex and socialisation. I don't experience it, I see no plausible mechanism for it...

Being gender dysphoric is to experience having a multi-causal, under-researched condition of psychological incongruence which may or may not be temporary. No, I don't believe children are born trans.

I don't think there is anything internal called gender, no.

Also, it's just wrong? We do have some choices available to us, but this idea that we are can choose to be anything is clearly incorrect.

You can give your pronouns, sure, just don't expect others to do so, particularly if they find it regressive. I've had two gender dysphoric (diagnosed) children, btw. Lived experience here.

Yep. All the more reason not to have people moral grandstanding about making workplaces enby-safe.

Lots of people struggle with mental illness and trauma. No need to heap coals on them by making them jump through coerced gender rituals.

I am very clear in what abuse is and isn't, unfortunately. 'You f***ING sl*t' = abuse 'she' for a female person = not abuse

I am truly mind blown ppl cannot generally tell males from females. Go and ride a bus. Look at who gets on and who gets off. Can you truly not tell that some people are female and others are male? You really don't know until someone gives you their pronouns? Was this always the case? Did you grow up not knowing?

And this is why I do not wish to play along with children's trans identities. For me, to do so would be deeply unethical.

Until Billy hits puberty, not very We should still know. Her femaleness is relevant to a number of things, including safety during sport, learning challenge presentation, safety and dignity, menstrual needs etc

I find is very gaslighty, this insistence that you can't tell most of the time. It's not meant to be abusive (I don't think) but it is out of an abuser's playbook. Make you doubt evidence of your own eyes. It's a really unpleasant way to prosecute your case for asking others their pronouns. Most of the time, you can tell a person's sex without having to think. There are good reasons a woman might want to be aware of a person's sex, as well. Male persons are always going to be more of statistical risk to her than females.

All you need to understand is that it isn't cost-free for everyone. Having a significant history of living with coercion, people playing language games with me - and forcing me to go along with said language games - is extremely triggering. You might say, 'well, go deal with your triggers'. Fair. In which case, so can those who are triggered by 'wrong' pronoun use. It's only fair.

I find this astounding. Males and females, particularly in person where height, body fat distribution, shape, Adams apple, voice etc are able to be observed- are distinguishable 99% of the time.

Ugh, I'll just note that my workplace context is an elementary school. Nobody is talking about/thinking about 'packages'. If a girl says she is a boy, I will have many concerns about what is going on for that student. If I am directed to address her as a boy, I will do so, because I can't afford to lose my job. I will have serious concerns about whether I am behaving ethically in terms of reinforcing something that is harmful to the individual.

Which is why the whole thing is ridiculous. Is it really going to kill you, destroy your well-being, if your tutor or professor says 'she' about a woman instead of 'they'? No. It doesn't matter. None of these language games matter. Seriously, the planet is on fire, society is failing to meet the social contract in a million and one ways, and this is what we use our limited and precious time on? Someone's pronouns? I don't even think it is responsible of me to add weight to the idea that any of this matters. It's the most unbearable luxury belief, that human rights can be reduced to pronouns.

Seriously, are some of you actually confused when you see a butch woman? Do you think she must be NB or trans? I think there may be some internalised stuff for people to deal with if they think that. Femininity has nothing much intrinsically to do with being female, or even with being a woman. Women comes in all sorts of presentations, from masculine women to hyper feminine women and everything in between. This was once thought to be a good thing?

I have random thoughts in my heads about this hyper-focus on gender as distraction from culture/empire ending issues.

Females look like females to me. I grew up around soft butch lesbians. They look like women to me. I don't have this internalised, woman means feminine thing going on in my head. Women in all their presentations look like women to me, unless they have taken testosterone at doses designed to produce transmen. If having short hair is a death sentence in your neck of the woods, I'd advise moving stat, as unfair as that might be.

Omg, why is Sally so invested in how Sally is referred to, especially when Sally is not there? People could be talking about me in my absence as he/him and I would not give a toss, because I am not there. It's just so controlling.

I do wonder if it's an elaborate societal form of defence against death anxiety at times.