Preferred pronoun badges at the Halifax bank.

Maximillian

Do you mean me? If so I apologise, I was just following the conversation.

No, she didn't. There are two men posting in this thread and she didn't mean you.

It was, in the way that Sir Humphrey put it, the person whom I am in the habit of referring to using the perpendicular pronoun.

Threads drift - it happens all the time.

Anyway, this didn't start about gender-neutral pronouns, it started about Halifax offering staff badges on which to display preferred pronouns, (which may be 'gender'-specific or not ), but which are virtually never necessary when the staff member can be seen by the customer, who can see if they are male or female, and when the staff members are wearing badges on which to display their name.

No. Pushing women into hedges and satellites and ethnicity which have nothing to do with gender indentity and trans issues.

Feels like a man trans or otherwise in a women’s locker room who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Uncomfortable tbh. #genderneutral

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I'm confused. I thought this was a discussion about gender-neutral pronouns. As I read, it became about trans issues. I can see how that developed. I agree with the person who said,

In some scenarios that may mean keeping trans women and cis women separate and while I think that is uncomfortable and saddening, something that both trans women and cis women understand is the danger posed by men. Now we can and should keep trying to work on that as a society.

Now, a man seems to be taking the discussion in another direction entirely. What is going on? Hijacking? Can we get back please?

Demographic information is often collected to check how many people from various groups are using a service or facility. If it is discovered that one or more groups is under-represented, then steps can be taken to find out why, and see if it is possible to correct any deficiencies in marketing or whatever. So, if it is found that there are very few people from one geographical area using the library, for instance, the council could look at sending a mobile library to them, or running a shuttle bus, or putting up leaflets in public places in that area. It's not that when they get there they are representing the area, but that they are not going in the expected numbers. So, if a course provider finds that the majority of students are men, they might find that changing the times of the classes helps, or that running classes for women is the best way to encourage women to attend. Again, nobody would be representing women.

How about 'antediluvian' for a word? Extra points if you can include it in a post that replies to another (ie you can't start a thread about it). Anyone can join in, but we'd better agree not to hijack threads by discussing it .

Hey Doodledog a new game!

You name a word of your choice and I will try to work it into a post.

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The under-represented thing always makes me wonder.

Employment and so on are not Membership of Parliament and there has been no election.

So, if say, there is a course on some topic and there is one woman on the course, she is not "representing women" on the course. she is a woman, she is on the course, that's it.

Like when companies advertise that they particularly welcome applications from members of ethnic minorities, women and people with disabilities who are under-represented in our workforce.

I am told that most people on Gransnet are women, I am male, but I don't consider that I am representing men on Gransnet nor that men are under-represented on Gransnet.

Ah, it is interesting that the Halifax name badges do not state ethnic origin.

I had an email survey some time ago from The British Library. Seven questions about British Library services, then a question asking about my ethnic origin.

There was a note that if any questions about the survey here is an email address.

So I wrote and asked why they asked about ethnic origin.

I got a reply that as The British Library is funded by the government, they have to ask.

I found that answer interesting, no mention of using the answers for anything. I wonder if they do use the answers for anything or if they are told to ask , so they do.

Years ago I would have thought that wondering that was utterly stupid of me, but having observed over the years the way things go on sometimes, these days I would think it entirely possible that the information is just collected but never used.

Thank you for telling me about 'geosynchronous'. I am going to try to get it into the conversation by the end of the day .

I disagree, however, that anything I have said suggests that all men are vain, but I apologise if I have offended you.

I completely agree that the majority of men respect women's right to female-only spaces. I don't know any, personally, who do not.

I am not sure about women-only courses, but assume that where they exist it is because women have been under-represented for some reason. It is difficult to comment without knowing the detail. On the face of it, they seem unfair, but I think that to comply with the law there will have to be a rationale behind them.

FarNorth

It has been known for attacks to start by pushing into a hedge.

What I was meaning by my being concerned is concern that what a man is doing, by moving to the outside, thinking he is being polite, could result in a woman feeling frightened. Not blaming her for being fearful, not blaming him for acting in what he thinks is the corect polite way to behave, a system effect.

I accept that although most men would not hurt her, some men would, and she does not know whether the man moving to the outside is doing that because he thinks it polite or because he has a nasty motive.

So she needs to be wary of all men in such a situation.

It is all very difficult to resolve.

Hello Doodledog

It is not necessary to qualify everything with the word some, as in the example of the flowers in your garden.

However, you wrote As ever, it is women who take the brunt of men’s vanity, ...

To me, that reads as inplying that all men have vanity and all women suffer because of that vanity.

Parlance is important for clarity, but can also be loaded politically.

So for example, the term "cis women".

Anaytically, it conveys a precise meaning.

Yet using the phrase has a political overtone, as if recognising it as reasonable to say that rather than say "women". So some women refuse to use the term.

New words and phrases are fine if not politically charged, so, for example, geosynchronous as a way to describe in one word the orbital characteristics of a satellite being used to broadcast television programmes direct to people's homes: the satellite is moving in space, but the orbit is at just the right distance from the centre of the Earth that it does one orbit in the same time as it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis, so it appears to be in a fixed position relative to a given place on the surface of the earth.

So, just as some women object to the term cis women, I object to the way that some women refer to men as if we all are guilty of the things they are complaining about.

It seems to me that a good quantity of your potential allies are men who respect women's right to female-only spaces.

Right and desirable for toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, some yoga classes, some swimming sessions, that sort of thing, though I do think it goes a bit far when it is a course about starting a business and it is solely women who are allowed to attend, though I recognise that might be for some unspoken reason of which I am not aware and if that is the case I am open to changing my mind on that.

FarNorth

It has been known for attacks to start by pushing into a hedge.

It has, but I think that singling out walking by hedges (as opposed to other outside environments) is a bit too specific to need a particular point of etiquette to address it?

Taking your clothes off in a changing room, removing underwear to use the loo, changing into nightclothes in a hospital or prison cell, however, are different situations, which is what I was pointing out.

It has been known for attacks to start by pushing into a hedge.

As far as I'm aware, that is still considered to be polite StarDreamer and Maximillian, I would certainly consider it to be so. Just as I have appreciated it if walking alone with no on else around, if a man walking behind me crosses to the other side of road and walks in front of me.

The opening door scenario always makes me roll my eyes. I've never understood why a woman would feel insulted by a man holding a door open for offering her his seat.

Just good manners and I would do either for a man or a woman.

Good post Doodledog. As you say, there was a time when women didn't feel the need to be hyper-vigilant. It had never been envisaged that an intact male, who decides to identify as a woman would access our safe and single sex spaces.

That we'd have TRA's screaming abuse at women, threatening to do things to women that is they weren't male, they wouldn't have the equipment needed to carry our their sick threats.

These are the ones who are not looked upon kindly together with those wanting to compete against women in sports, who expect to be regarded as, and accepted as women by women who are particularly vulnerable and at risk.

I agree that we shouldn't make assumptions based on appearances especially when it comes to this issue.

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StarDreamer it really isn’t necessary to qualify everything with ‘some’. There are times when it is safely assumed. The example I used before of ‘flowers grow in my garden’ is a case in point. There is no need to say, ‘some’ flowers, and nobody thinks that you are saying that every flower grows in your garden. Writing would get very clumsy if everything we said had to be qualified to such a degree.

Reluctant as I am to get drawn into discussions of 18th century manners, I think there is a difference between fearing attack when walking near hedges and being uneasy when in a state of undress because you don’t know the sex of others sharing an enclosed space with you. Where that enclosed space is one where people routinely remove clothing the sense of unease is going to be greater. I don’t think the two things (walking in the outdoors and removing one’s clothes in a confined space) are comparable, really.

And trying to blame men because some women are discriminatory really is a joke.

Doodledog

What happened to all these ‘masculine looking’ women before men were able to use women’s spaces? Has there been a sudden outbreak of them, or is it more that it has always been perfectly possible to tell that a ‘butch’ woman is female, and a ‘feminine’ man is male, but until now we haven’t needed to be concerned? It has been said over and over that the majority of people are supportive of ‘genuine’ transpeople, and always have been. We know that there have always been men trying to ‘pass’ - they are the only ones who think they actually do - but we politely pretended not to notice when this was a rarity and no harm was being done.

If it is the case that butch women are being challenged now, it is because the threat of ill-intentioned men being in women’s spaces is making women hyper-vigilant. As ever, it is women who take the brunt of men’s vanity, and (as has also been said over and over) ‘genuine’ transwomen are suffering too.

Well before some people started stirring up and inciting women to acts of discrimination and bias most women hardly looked at who was using the same space they were. They went in changed/used the facilities/whatever and came out. They didn't inspect other users, nor were they afraid of other people. Now of course some women are nervous and worried and look carefully at others. In the course of doing that it is inevitable that they will judge some woman's appearance as unacceptable, because they look different. It seems to me that a so-called movement (and I dispute it is worthy of that name) made up of biased individuals, claiming to be feminist and concerned with women's interests, is actually causing more harm to women than good. That all that can possibly result from insisting it is either possible or desirable to identify someone who was born a woman by appearance, is that the accepted appearance will become more regimented and less individual. That we will in fact be driven back to standards that should stay where they belong, in the past.

Maximillian

I was also always told to refer to a lady by that name, not 'woman'. I hope that is correct. I was told 'woman' is not polite.

Woman is perfectly polite and acceptable to most of us lady carries certain links with class.

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Well, yes, but from both sides it does seem to have (or did have) that ambience of Men! Men! MEN!!!!!

Something that I did learn though, which concerned me, is that last year I saw somewhere a comment by a woman that when meeting a man approaching from the opposite direction on a roadside pavement he would go to the side of the pavement nearer the road and therefore she would need (I think she put "be forced") to walk between him and the hedge and that she feared he might have attacked her by pushing her into the hedge, though in the event he had not.

I always thought that a polite man was supposed to go to the outside, the same as when walking along a pavement with a woman.

It's going well this policing of language isnt it

The vanity of *some* men?

Oh, it won't do bold italic.