These email pronouns at work

People are frightened of losing their jobs if they don't

A French speaker doesn’t really think that a chair is female ( I am tempted to say, any more than many people really think that E. I is a she, or that a human being can not have a sex).

Yes and no. There was some study which compared adjectives used to describe a generic bridge by native Spanish speakers (el ponte - m) and German speakers (die Brücke - f), and the choice of adjectives were strong, sturdy, vs elegant, that sort of thing. Can't remember the details, but I think it was referenced in Guy Deutscher.

While = female. The poor autocorrect is generically confused.

That’s an English language problem,,isn’t it? Most Romance languages ( and I think Germanic from my dim memories ) have singular and plural forms of the second person in pronouns ( tu/ vous) , although of course, the simple use has been overlaid with courtesies. When you get to know a French person, they will usually ask you if they can ‘tutoyer’, that is call you ‘tu’ , because it signifiiez intimacy and friendship. Children , though, will be tu in the singular to adults.

plus of course, there is no neuter pronoun, even a chair or table takes a ‘while gendered’ pronoun.

I think this is not as irrelevant as it may seem, as it demonstrates that ‘gender’ is, at least grammatically, totally different to biological sex in some languages - and this difference is at the heart of my unease with the whole ‘state your pronouns’ fad. A French speaker doesn’t really think that a chair is female ( I am tempted to say, any more than many people really think that E. I is a she, or that a human being can not have a sex).

Yes, which is why Zelda using it was normal and appropriate. 'Pronouns' that others have to remember to apply to a specific individual are no longer functioning as pronouns.

On the other hand I also have a male name and don't care in the slightest how people think of me. I think it often works to my advantage to be read as male, why would I purposely tell everyone different.

I have questions for the man who had a half hour conversation with me and THEN called me Mr in an email...

They as a singular is for a person of unknown sex. But if you know the sex of that person, insisting on "they" is a demand to kowtow to an ideology. No different to demanding I use a particular word of phrase to refer to a God. Or not use a word to refer to God - which some religions do.

Ah, I hadn’t considered this.

Which is understandable, because we just use these pronouns without thinking about them - which is exactly as it should be.

Ah, I hadn’t considered this.

I’d do the same.

In answer to the OP: I instantly lose respect for him/her/it/them/whateverthefuck. My heart sinks especially if it’s someone in HR, particularly if rainbows have been added (looking at you, Serena. I know you’re a woman, no need to tell me).

On 'they is'... do you feel the need to say 'you is' to an individual?

'They are' is long established for referring to a person of unknown sex.
If using a pronoun makes your communication unclear - this applies to all pronouns including 'you', 'it' etc - then at that point you need to use the name(s) or noun instead.
As soon as a pronoun makes anything unclear or less fluent then its lost its function and shouldn't be used. This is one of the reasons for particularly rejecting 'neopronouns' which are more like grammatically more complicated nicknames. If you need to think about which pronoun to use or what it means, avoid it.

@ErrolTheDragon and @ZeldaFighter just pondering … when using ‘they’ when they means one person, wouldn’t it be more linguistically correct and clear to write ‘they is’ etc?

'They' is perfectly correct as a pronoun for a person of unknown sex.

I'd worry about a vet that can't tell the difference between a dog and a bitch, it's usually obvious.

I actually had to use "they" for someone the other day. I was writing about them but as I only know them by name, didn't know whether to write "he did" or "she did". Couldn't bloody find out, could I do "they" they were!

My dog has an ambiguous name. Unfortunately the vet continues to refer to her as 'he'. The dog is yet to be offended however It makes me slightly worried given she's currently got a UTI (the dog not the vet)

It's the only circumstance I can think of where pronouns might be important. Not whether John in accounts thinks 'Susan' might actually be a man after all.

The place I volunteer at has told(not suggested) us to put pronouns in our signature.

I am a volunteer. I haven't complied. I've been there over 20 years. There has been no need to identify my sex in writing. It doesn't help do the job.

It will be interesting to see how far they take this. It is definitely a hill I'm prepared to die on.

Why not just put "I am female" in your email signature then?

a lot of the Chinese people i used to work with had (Mrs) or (Mr) after their name in their sigs, just to save any "embarassment" over misgendering. Nothing to do with modern issues, just politeness back then (blimey, 20 years ago now)

Good point. I might add 'cat person', 'fully vaccinated' and 'unapologetic carnivore' to mine.

Why not just put "I am female" in your email signature then?

What other characteristics should we add?

Best wishes,
Stella Andcrow (She/her, Black British, 25, Catholic, Unmarried)

I like it. I have a male name and people have been confused meeting me if we've never met in person. I honestly don't see how knowing if someone is a man or woman when you can't see them to work it out is causing problems for you.

35 years of (predominently male) workplace sexism and discrimination will help you see it from a different pov. I've spent approximately that amount of time carefully expressing myself in written communications, signing off as Initial + Surname and not referring to my sex unless it is absolutely necessary. And it isn't 100% foolproof (at the latest if we speak or meet in person) but it has provided a buffer and screened me from instant "argh, a woman, no how can this be? i must ignore all she says in favour of listening to a less well qualified or incompetent man"

HTH

(but: some people are compelled to use pronouns in email sigs and for that reason alone i just ignore it as any kind of indicator of levels of capturedness. Unless i get several from an organisation and only one has pronouns. Then i know.)

The thing with something like God Bless it most of the time it is something like a sign off statement which requires nothing from the other person. It's not really different than someone saying "best wishes".

Pronoun announcements, at least notionally, are telling others they need to do something.

In my experience at my workplace it's as a pp said. Nice people have been told it's the nice thing to do. And so they do it. They don't connect it with more egregious elements of gender ideology.