Pronouns at work

I full agree that you should NOT be forced to put pronouns in your email signature and I don't see how not using them would be hateful or discriminatory to anyone else.

But - I think it's unfair to say that those who do use pronouns are "prize pricks" or similar.

I am a woman, I have she/her in my email footer because I am regularly misgendered due to an ambiguous first name and working in a male-dominated industry. I don't want to be called he/him - I don't want people to ask to speak to "Mr bord". I am proud to be a woman working in my industry so I want people who would otherwise assume only a bloke could be doing my job, that they are wrong!

?

What do you mean?

I don't much care for your use of a lazy slur.

You do realise that trans people wouldn't feel the need to be trans if we didn't gender stereotype. Maybe you should put your energies into combating that?

I think some kind of genderist bat signal has just gone out for this thread

Forced pronoun disclosures harm the most vulnerable trans people, the ones whose family and community situation forces them to be closeted at work or study. These people have to lie or out themselves. No one should be put in that position.

It's also important that we stand up for the right to be gender critical that Maya won. We should not be forced to lie either.

I thinking you're dying on an unnecessary hill- what's the problem with just adding pronouns? I don't see the big deal with addressing people in a gender neutral way either, it doesn't really change anything and just takes a few manners. People should surely offer you the same courtesy?

And yet the courts support our right to hold our views.

The thread was started by a gender critical woman and most posters have been to advise her. It would have stayed that way until you lot derailed.

Forced pronoun disclosures harm the most vulnerable trans people, the ones whose family and community situation forces them to be closeted at work or study. No one reasonable supports forced pronoun disclosures.

I have this in one of my online accounts where aggravatingly gender was required to be stated.( Pension maybe, can't remember).

I agree with you and very grateful to all the information shared by pps. I don't see anything but disadvantage to me in reminding people im a she/her and suggesting to them that I embrace 'female gender' in all its ensmalleningness.

Until he gets a girlfriend/boyfriend/enby friend and your indoctrination becomes irrelevant to him. 😁

LOL I wouldn’t be so sure. My 15 year old son is a bigger TERF than me and thinks gender ideology is a load of shit

And a lot of women who have stood up have had their careers damaged. It's unfair to blame a woman who takes the path of least resistance through patriarchy for its continued existence.

First Rule of Misogyny: Women are responsible for what men do.

I think playing along and deliberately hiding the fact that you're a woman in the signature benefits patriarchal mysoginistic trends in your company @magicmole
A lot of women stood up in our company and as a result the top management had a complete revamp and we now have one of the best woman CEO and her team in house!

Employment tribunal decision from yesterday that may be useful. Builds on Forstater

Meade v SWE

@magicmole - I confused people at work previously when I wrongly assumed the person I was referring to (named Ash) was a man. I'd recently met a male Ash and hadn't thought that this other one might be a woman. It's not about how you treat the person direct, but how you refer to them in conversations with others. In my job, I'm often relaying information from one person to another. It's not essential, but I'd support those with ambiguous names including pronouns if they want to, to help others refer to them more easily.

I don't understand why it would be particularly useful. I've worked a lot with people from China who have names that are not obviously "sexed" to English speakers (although it's often clear if you know Mandarin) and I've never needed to know a person's sex/gender identity/pronouns to interact with them. Surely on those rare occasions where you really don't know if a name is "male" or "female" you can just use their name if you're referring to them?

I've used a gender neutral version of my name in emails for years as I'm in a male-dominated field and have been treated differently (worse) by some in the past when they realised I'm female. Women have fought to be taken seriously in the workplace and there's no way I'm going to deliberately put myself at a potential disadvantage to my male colleagues.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html

Same. Why would we even need to know them? If I was replying to someone by email or phoning them I would address them by their name and would be saying "you/your" when speaking to them so pronouns aren't even relevant.

On a side note I have a colleague with a unisex name but it has a very unique spelling and people always think they're going to be speaking to a man. She just laughs and says she's used to it.

I used to use ‘(Mrs)’ after my name in my signature as I have a unisex name/spelling that can be interpreted as the male form in the US.

Whilst the feminist in me hates the fact that female titles (Miss/Mrs) infer marital status whereas male ones don’t, I frankly feel that a return to using titles in professional correspondence is an easy solution. Ie by adding Mr/Ms if you have an ambiguous name - and if you get offended by being misgendered. It used to tick me off a little, my first NHS ID No card at 16 arrived labelled ‘Mr’ - but other wise I would shrug.

Significantly, Mr/Ms can actually be useful because it impacts how they address you in person, not how they speak about you in your absence.

Just tell them that you find it triggering.

My first name is in my email signature- the number of people who misspell it is quite significant.

Do people really scrutinise email signatures?

I HATE this! It's basically telling people they need to 'out' themselves ... what if they/he/she doesn't want to?!

Especially when their qualifications are ten a penny!

Adding my "womanness" to this thread🙆🙋💃👸💪💅👪👚💼🎓🍟🍷🍺❤🎨🎪📚

If I ever meet Maya, she's not paying for a single drink all evening.

https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/guides/2023-pdfs/2023-transgender-non-binary-edi-workplace-8363.pdf

page 28 of the document, two thirds down

(Or, page 34 on screen)

@justteanbiscuits genuine question, I wonder why you find it useful?