Gender identification Etiquette

This whole subject is a minefield of potentially getting it wrong!
I now especially get worried about wrongly addressing someone over the phone and tend not to use the Mr/Miss/Mrs or Madam/Sir forms of address, even though when addressing clients it has historically been the polite etiquette to do so! I now ask to speak to Jane Jones or whatever. The problem here is that some people object to being addressed by their names in this informal way and would prefer to be addressed by Mrs/Mr etc! I have to make a lot of calls to clients in my job and this is now a further level of anxiety especially if I have not yet met them and have no other indicator of the situation?

In my area some are moaning that health literature promoting smears now say

People of person with a cervix.

In my day all women at ante, post natal and in hospital in labour or for a week afterwards were referred to as ‘’Mrs’’.

Now when I need to ring Adult Social Services they call me ‘’ Mrs’’. I haven’t been one for quite a while.

I think if we become too rigid & afraid for fear of being offensive,we are in danger of become more divided .surely the aim is to be inclusive. IF a person deliberately refuses or insults another by addressing them incorrectly on purpose or to offend , they should face the consequences ,but we need to be very careful that we don’t loose our freedom of speech for fear of being offensive when none was intended.Imo there is nothing more simple than a sincere apology if an unintentional,potential insult has been perceived.

This raises the question does it really matter?

It matters because if being female is re-defined as "feeling girly" it sets womens rights back decades!

It's possibly because for one reason or another Belgravian the amount of abuse they may be receiving is increasing. There is an increase in awareness of some people being transgender and not knowing how to address a transgender person brings up all sorts issues and for some people the easiest way to get over such embarrassment is to be unpleasant which of course is not right. It's only recently that I've come into contact with quite a few transgender people and I found it better to be straightforward and ask how they wish to be addressed. That said there have been some occasions when I've not known that the person I've been talking to is transgender. This raises the question does it really matter? We are all human - none of us is exactly the same [unless we're identical twins] - and we should be accepting of who we are or choose to be. Gay people had a similar problem. Live and let live is still an important maxim in my view

I'm quite interested at why this gender identity has now become a 'thing'.

In my youth it was straightforward so I m wondering were people in their own minds desperately wanting to identify as something or someone else but couldn't come out with it because no one else had?

Why now is there such a big focus on gender identity?

Forgive me if I'm wrong but it's like one person says something and all of a sudden loss of people are following suit?

babies and animals know what sex people are. People cannot identify away from that!

I had a dog who was afraid of men. She was afraid of my male friend who had long hair. She was afraid of men in unisex clothes. She was not afraid of women in trousers or women with short hair.

Newborn babies "root" more when cuddled by women, even if flat chested. Than they do men with "man boobs".

Im not going to pretend that biological sex doesnt matter.

I dont think its okay to call "deadnaming" or "outing" when people refer to things people did in the past under their old name/identity. I am wholely responsible for my action and history under my old maiden name!

I'll call you Jim, Jane, Sir Diddleboo or Thomas the Tank if thats what you prefer though.

stella1949

When I was pregnant with my first child I had my first appointment to see the consultant and sat in the waiting room whilst names were called out.

There was a visibly pregnant girl with her parents and she was wearing school uniform. She looked 14/15.

The nurse who came out to call people in looked to be in her 60s and she was Irish. Not sure if the being Irish is relevant but I'm guessing she was religious?

Everyone she called out was "Mrs .....".

I was not married and therefore a Miss.

She called the pregnant teenage girl's name out but referred to her as Mrs! The girl looked puzzled but her parents shrugged and off the three went to her appointment.

I was called and referred to as Mrs. I politely corrected her and said I was a Miss only to be sternly told that everyone was referred to as Mrs! This seemed ridiculous as it had drawn more attention to the pregnant teenager.

This was 1995!

Yes that was what I was trying to say.
Opinions can & should be held or delivered with out fear of being confused & interpreted as prejudice. But the goal posts seem to me to be changing. Also outside of the obvious, one persons opinion can come across as prejudice to some but not to another ,which I suppose is why these laws are in now in place .

No, Bridgeit no offence at all, I was attempting to elaborate on the bit of your post "any opinion given that doesn’t fit any given trend or opinion will be jumped on instantly"^ as it often is by those who so involved in a cause that they see an attack where none exists.

Body language & facial expression are part & parcel of our make up, all species were/are reliant on this to understand the sentiment of what we are expressing, this important part of communication has been lost by the advent of the communication tools we now use. Therefore open to misinterpretation

Elegran in my clumsy way I was trying to say whilst we are all being intolarent to predjudices & being carful of language we use so as not to offend, that at times the reverse happens where we are so stymied that we can cause offence by trying not to. In other words we will all be afraid to voice an opinion in case it causes offence, which possibly my last post did to you

In my nursing life I often noticed that the worst people for "taking offense at the wrong title" were elderly single ladies who would get really angry if called "Mrs". I've known them to become really rude, correcting the speaker as if they were purposely insulting the lady by calling her Mrs. I guess they took a lot of pride in having spent their lives without a partner, and didn't want to be lumped in with all the married women.

So I can attest to the fact that taking offense at the "wrong" title isn't a new phenomenon.

Bridgeit The attitude "I have the right to express an opinion that seems confrontational to you, but if you express one that I don't like, I shall throw a paddy and accuse you of being offensive" ?

We could just use the non gender specific “it” I suppose. And no titles at all. I can’t actually see why we need them.

I think what I despair of most is that in an attempt for everyone to have the ‘right’ to be, identify etc who or what ever we like, we are actually bringing about another dimension of prejudice, as in any opinion given that doesn’t fit any given trend or opinion will be jumped on instantly as abhorrent & very nearly criminal to express such an opinion,if you see what I mean?

The vast majority are being backed into a corner by the minority. I am more then happy to accept a transgener persons new gender. I do however object to the very small amount of none binary people who appear to be trying to force gender ambiguity on everyone, whether they like it or not. And I totally dispair at what seems to be a growing trend of 'not forcing a gender' on children. To my mind that is tantamount to trying to invalidate the feelings of the majority of people.

I thought it interesting myself when I thought about it properly for the first time, wh was yesterday.

Sorry for assuming both the people you know who changed their names to please a partner were female winter white. That was a telling mistake for me to make on a discussion about trans people and how they choose to name their chosen gender.
Most of us will have been young adults when homosexuality at age 21 was made legal. My parents saw it as a radical move. They were more liberal than many of their generation but expressed concern that homosexual men would attempt to seduce young men, who otherwise would be heterosexual. Those attitudes are no more, thankfully and 25 years later, wouldn't have been believed by my parents either. Attitudes change and it's likely our grandchildren will be unfazed by a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality.

I don’t personally know any transgender people (yet). If I do one day I’ll try to call them ‘he or she’ etc. as theynprefer as best I can. If I get confused and accidentally make a muddle of it then I hope they’ll understand and we’ll rub along fine together, if they don’t and make a big issue of it then that’s their problem.

I have also never heard of someone changing their first name because their partner did not like the original

Ilove an Aunt of mine did just that. She moved abroad with her husband and in her adopted country she was known as the nickname he preferred while her family at home continued to call her by the variant of her given they had always used. He was a controlling so and so.

Iam64, one person is over 80 and the other is dead. In both cases the name was an old-fashioned, but not absurdly so, name in memory of someone from an even older generation. In one case the future husband changed to please his future wife, in the other it was the woman who changed.
Point I was making is that in both cases the parents and siblings of the name-changer had used the original name for 20+ years, tried with the best will in the world to adapt, but just could not do so. Partly I think because it sounded unnatural when referring to him/her within the family circle.

I conclude from that re pronouns, wh is what the post is about, that I would find it very difficult to adapt to referring to an individual as ‘they,’ and that this would not be laziness but depend on how often I was in the person’s company.

I have a trans son/daughter.
They sang bass in the choir. They have very male bone structure.
They gat very upset when called sir over the phone!

I agree about asking people which title or pronoun people would prefer to be called by and using that.
I have also never heard of someone changing their first name because their partner did not like the original. If a man had wanted me to change my first name on his say so, I don't think I would have married him, it would feel like the first step towards total control.

I do agree about tolerance of mistakes - IF it’s a) really a mistake or b) not just laziness. Sadly ......