Please update your email signature to include your pronouns

I wouldn't suggest this if you're planning on omitting the ablative 😉

We had this at my work - put forward as an update from IT. Almost everyone has ignored it except for the junior staff. Even my TWAW colleagues haven’t done it.

Pity you forgot the full stop.😎

n 1983 I drafted my first business letter in my name. My boss made me change A N Smith [ were that my name] to Mrs A N Smith so the recipient would know how to address the reply. I can understand the reasons for that then

I have gone by Initial + Lastname for most of my working life for the same reason. One, early on [old git of a dinosaur, had connipations when i wore a smart trousersuit "you look like a mechanic"] said that he didn't approve and that the replies of "Dear Initial + Firstname" was an affront to grammar.

Lucky me, i was a bolshy twat even back then and just ignored him. But this is the main reason I'm not using pronouns.

I've ignored it and also the request to update protected characteristics with what we identify as .

If they can't tell I sure as hell aren't gonna tell them .

If forced I will be writing that I identify as a fishfinger and wish to
Wear only breadcrumbs.

In 1983 I drafted my first business letter in my name. My boss made me change A N Smith [ were that my name] to Mrs A N Smith so the recipient would know how to address the reply. I can understand the reasons for that then , but it was annoying as my signature was and is deliberately just the two initials first and in those days women had a harder time with equality even in law firms so my original plan had been to ensure the people getting my letters would not know if I were female or male.

I am certainly not putting "preferred pronouns" on linked in for example, although in my case anyone can google search my name and see a photo and video and articles and work out I am female anyway.

To me / To you
Grand/Pooh/Bah
Right/Hoarding/Dinosaur

Outside of the odd email from a HR/diversity person I haven’t seen pronouns becoming a thing in the City.

Sex discrimination is enough of an issue without being obliged to emphasise your femaleness on every written communication.

I would question how employers could guarantee that people expressing legitimate and lawful gender critical beliefs won’t feel they are facing discrimination if they were pressured to include pronouns.

Hi OP, I read this article the other day that articulates very much well the arguments for not adding pronouns to your signature. I plan to use it as an inspiration if my workplace start this nonsense.

It really is frustrating. I've experienced direct discrimination in the workplace, as well as sexual harassment, in the workplace. I've taken the stance my whole adult life that my sex has no bearing on the way I do my job.

same. The only time i came remotely close to being asked to state my pronouns i made a short speech like the quote above. We all moved on.

I don't make any judgements, some are compelled to add pronouns, some do it voluntarily. I try to be professional and handle things as they come. That is the extent of my engagement with colleagues. I am not their friend, i don't want to know about their lives or their politics unless i get to know them organically. And that is it.

If i get asked again i will reply "no, thank you" and leave it at that.

I just say 'that isn't a practice I follow'. I've never been pressed further on this, and if I were, would probably just say something like 'my sex is irrelevant'.

It really is frustrating. I've experienced direct discrimination in the workplace, as well as sexual harassment, in the workplace. I've taken the stance my whole adult life that my sex has no bearing on the way I do my job.

Now, this sudden preoccupation with pronouns is completely undermining those principles. I'm glad for so many here, this is apparently a hill to die on. Me, too.

Just don’t do it. Many won’t. I haven’t and if anyone asks I’m happy to give them my many and varied reasons.

This really is one case where that old MN adage 'No is a complete sentence' applies.

This to me?
You could take your own advice and address me direct, in stead of making snide remarks about 'people who...'
Anyway, your post is irrelevant to the topic in hand. Being lonely and cut off during covid doesn't mean you need to know someone's pronouns before responding to them in a work email.

I literally said I'd never met half my colleagues in real life and hadn't see the rest in two years, it's actually more: my office shut for Covid in March 2020 and never reopened. The half of my colleagues who joined since then have never been to the office. People make snide remarks about their privilege showing, it's obvious they have no empathy for people who don't see one human from one day to the next. Privilege indeed. Perhaps they shouldn't make mean remarks about being 'boggled' and ask me direct instead of snarking to other posters. And you had no need to join in, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt you had just not seen the background.

Because she said she met her colleagues in real life, or they had pictures on their emails. I am not lucky enough to have that. Which I said, in the post you must have read, to be able to respond to it. Christ.

The first two words of your reply were 'lucky you' which was what made me think that you thought it was important to know the sex/gender of someone you were emailing.

Why else would you say 'lucky you'?

So you you didn't read the first two words of my reply?

I don't. I was responding to someone who said that all the emails with pronouns she had seen, matched their sex. I asked how she knew.

What background? I read Dragonskin's post and your reply (as well as the rest of the thread). What other background is there?

You implied that it was necessary to know someone's sex and/or gender if you were emailing them.

Reading comprehension is obviously not your strong point. Old Crone asked the question obviously not having read the background. You couldn't even read the reply. Wow.

Yeah that boggled me too.

Maybe it's my privilege showing, being able to respond to an email on topic?

I feel a little pop of disappointment when I see they've been added to someone's footer, especially when it's a woman I previously respected

This ^^ Particularly colleagues who are feminists.

That sounds great,but I don't think our email system would cope (it can be very Anglo-centric, despite us being global.) I don't think we have an office in Seoul. Might check when I'm back at work...

Why stop at Spanish? I'd be going for French, Latin, German, Dutch, Welsh, Italian, Greek, Russian... do Chinese languages or Japanese use pronouns?

Korean has different pronouns for formal and informal use, depending on the relative social standing of the speaker and listener. That’s ALL pronouns, not just second person like e.g. French. So that could be ’fun’, demanding formal pronoun use even if the person reading your email is senior to you (standing and/or age).

I work for a large well known. We have been encouraged to add ours but in the main part people are not doing so, including my gay colleagues.

the only time I see it is in the signatures of the 20 something new grads who are either woke or too scared not to follow the request.

on the private HR info I put that I am adult human female and am gender critical. Fuck them.

Great post.
All this time wasted but are they devoting the same resources to accessibility for people with reduced mobility or making their documents available in braille etc?