I have seen many examples in the press and elsewhere where female Police Constables are referred to as WPCs.

What is this all about? What difference does it make as to what their sex is? Why aren’t they just ‘PCs’?

It’s not like they’ve got a reduced role, is it?

Like referring to a ‘woman-doctor’ instead of just a ‘doctor’. Weird.

The W was dropped (officially) in 1999. It’s like when a football commentator refers to the Czech Republic as “Czechoslovakia”. It’s just incorrect, probably down to habit rather than outright malice.

I’m heterosexual… I discriminate based on gender every time I think about sex, which according to popular lore, is roughly every 7 seconds.

It’s only a matter of time before I get sued by the gays.

I’m heterosexual.

I discovered on Saturday that I am a cisgender straight male. Gonna make filling in forms more tricky – I used to just tick the M box.

You think that’s weird, I saw a postman that was a woman. Political correctness gone mad.

I prefer the term carbon based life form.

Ugly giant bags of mostly water.

Graham, i thought about the exact same line after reading carbon based

cisgender straight male

You forgot ‘privileged’.

HTH

I saw a manhole at the weekend, life will never be the same.

Fleshy Meat Sacks. Come the robot uprising, we’re all screwed.

Had to google what “cisgender” meant… Has it really come to the point when we need to tell people that we’re default, stock, bog-standard, OEM human beings???

I saw a manhole at the weekend…

Access chamber please.

I read willard’s comment as ‘Fleshy Meat Snacks’. Are the dinosaurs about to return?

Had to google what “cisgender” meant… Has it really come to the point when we need to tell people that we’re default, stock, bog-standard, OEM human beings???

For some people, yes. I can get the meaning behind it as it allows people to correctly identify themselves however it’s not something I think about too much. Of course it renders bi-sexuals redundant and you have to be polysexual if you’re into everyone. Not sure what you would be if you are only into a few of the different gender states, probably something really complicated I’d imagine.

It’s one of those bizarre things that in the pursuit of equality people feel the need to pigeon hole as many folk as possible instead of just accepting folk for who they are. I don’t get it in the slightest but apparantly that’s because I live with privilege and as such it’s not really my place to say anything since we should all be equal. Or something.

Has it really come to the point when we need to tell people that we’re default, stock, bog-standard, OEM human beings?

I suspect the idea that transgender and alternatively gendered people are not normal standard human beings is part of what they are trying to fight.

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, women and men are quite different. I personally am quite glad of the ability to distinguish between the two

I suspect the idea that transgender and alternatively gendered people are not normal standard human beings is part of what they are trying to fight.
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Ah, so it’s other people pigeon holing us? 😉

Ah, so it’s other people pigeon holing us?

I believe they prefer the term Columbidae Dwelling.

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, women and men are quite different. I personally am quite glad of the ability to distinguish between the two

To be clear: I am interested only in why there is a convention of distinguishing between the sexes in a professional context.

Doesn’t it seem weird to anyone else that (even if it is now no longer official) there was a convention of calling PCs ‘WPCs’? Why not MPCs as well then? And why not ‘Woman-Doctors’ and ‘Man-Doctors’ as well?

Is Angela Merkel the ‘Woman-Chancellor’ of Germany? 🙄

It’s when they stop differentiating between PC and PCSO, that I’ll be more worried.

I’m heterosexual

Be honest now it’s a spectrum, just because you sit at the greyer end rather than the rainbow one

Have a play with the gender unicorn chart

Can you still get mansize tissues. And a two man tent.

True. WPC is not PC. It would be more PC to use PC. 😀

But the press are what they are, and that means they like to highlight gender when they think it changes the tone of the story (e.g. everyone knows that “getting in a tussle with a coppa” is all part of a good Saturday night, but “striking a shapely WPC (Sharon, 23, from Bournemouth, 34D)” is a completely different matter.

Can you still get Man Flu?

I see everyone as ‘Future life insurance payouts’ I think we should have a mass wedding

Ah, so it’s other people pigeon holing us?

No, it’s just basic latin… 8)

To be clear: I am interested only in why there is a convention of distinguishing between the sexes in a professional context.

The reason is, by convention, men ended up in a lot of roles – so the names of the roles took on the -man suffix. Chairman, Policeman, Fireman etc. When that situation started to change (oh there is a long way to go…) we mistakenly used Chairwoman, Policewoman, Firewoman not Chair, Police Office, Firefighter.

As it happens, I got a bit narked about having to fill in my gender for no apparent reason on a form recently and made some sort of New Year’s pledge thing to challenge each and every form where I’m required to fill it in without their being a legal requirement for the info (eg I was needing to stay in a women’s refuge or something). I’ve said I would use an alternative provider if the provider wouldn’t accept a form without the info. Going to try and keep it up for the whole year. (yes, I do realise this will be hard work)

I’ve only had one form to fill in so far (Cotswold Outdoor and they allowed for a non-answer) so not much to report, yet.

Gender matters for certain things – frankly, I prefer intimate relationships with women more than men. Don’t see an issue with that. It doesn’t matter for virtually everything else, though – why would it?

Rachel

Good question: Is this going to be followed by a thread about being caught going into the ladies toilets at John Lewis’s?

Anyway, I thought it was Police Officer these days.

Man/Woman, I feel like a Woman/Man…

Gender matters for certain things – frankly, I prefer intimate relationships with women more than men. Don’t see an issue with that. It doesn’t matter for virtually everything else, though – why would it?

I suspect the issue with forms is that they often ask for gender with perfectly good intentions (i.e. trying to get some measures of equality) but to someone who is transgender or “other gendered” it must come across as exactly the opposite of that.

I suspect the idea that transgender and alternatively gendered people are not normal standard human beings is part of what they are trying to fight.

This is where I get confused… I believe that people are what they are, and if they feel they’re born with the wrong junk, they can do whatever they want to address that. But I always thought that their main motive was to change their outward physical gender and be accepted by society in their preferred gender role…

Now, as a red-blooded bloke, if things were getting frisky, I’d prefer to know… Not because I’m a homophobe, or because I think people shouldn’t have the right to reassign their gender, but at the end of the day, I’m a straight bloke and my preference is for straight women. With small hands.

So from that POV, I don’t have a problem with those who’ve “pimped their ride” to be labelled as such, but I thought they didn’t want to be labelled, so I have a problem labeling them myself.

Wouldn’t it be easier all round if we just described people by their outward appearance but tipped each other the wink if we used to be something else?

preference is for straight women. With small hands.

I’m actually imagining you, in the pub, walking around measuring people’s hands on a ruler and pronouncing “you’ll do…”

oh – and “junk”? Standards please – we’re not American.

Wouldn’t it be easier all round if we just described people by their outward appearance but tipped each other the wink if we used to be something else?

It would apparently be easier for you. Methinks you watched The Crying Game at the wrong age…

But as a ‘Red blooded chappie’ You wouldn’t notice. Thanks to modern plastic surgery and hormone treatment, you could live your whole life with the person of your dreams and never know (that goes for women not knowing about men as well)

If you love someone, why does it matter it’s not like you’ll catch anyting and start knitting or any other media stereotype definition people think of.

Of course, some of that is down to targetted marketing – just like some sites want to know your prefence for sport, cars, pets etc. If you’re a retailer of, say, mobile phone accessories it’s important to know if your latest spam mailshot should be pushing masculine black, anodyne white or girly pink.

That’s kind of my point, Scotroutes 🙂

Good to see Rachel sticking it to the man.

What about sport and athletics. Would you be happy with transgender woman competing in womens cycling events.

We walk among you, olegmcnoleg, you’d never know… 😈

(oh, and for example, I wear normal women’s size L biking gloves and have size 8 feet)

So far as biking events are concerned, I have no problem, so long as no unfair advantage is taken. In fact, I think we had a thread on this late last year.

I’m actually imagining you, in the pub, walking around measuring people’s hands on a ruler and pronouncing “you’ll do…”

oh – and “junk”? Standards please – we’re not American.

And I’m actually trying to imagine what a horrible world it must be if you’re so devoid of a sense of humour that you take every word you read 100% literally.

Maybe we should have a niche just for you! 😉

You like anodyne white?