Recently I’ve had two interactions that have startled me. One was with legal aid (I’m in Canada) where the young lawyer rang me and said “Hello this is Thomas from xx, my practice is x and my pronouns are he/him.” Just in case I thought someone with a male voice and whose name was Thomas might like me, when speaking to him, to refer to him in the third person as she/her. I laughed and pointed out that as I was speaking directly to him, his pronouns wouldn’t be relevant.
The other interaction was after I’d written my member of parliament’s office asking for an answer on something I couldn’t get a Ministry to answer me on. 3 months later I finally got a reply suggesting I contact that Ministry 🙄 and signing off “Benjamin Lastname, he/him, Useless Twat, Your MP’s office”.
I replied telling him it was useless information that should not have taken 3 months to cough up, and I didn’t care what his pronouns were and I wasn’t going to proffer mine as doing so for women tended to increase sexism in professional interactions.
Is this as rampant in the UK? It just seems so unprofessional and so “look at me!” I’ve no interest in how they hope people refer to them when they’re not there, I just want answers to my questions that they are qualified to provide.