Declining to put my preferred pronouns in my email signature

That article came to mind when I was reading about the current Employment Tribunal on Tribunal Tweets. There was someone complaining about misgendering only for the judge to misgender whilst questioning it and the complainer went onto misgender.

Once you try to disconnect the word from its meaning, strange things happen to people's brains. 🤔

Respectfully, yes. It's a play stupid games, win stupid prizes situation for trying to force somebody to declare them when they don't want to. Because they will lose, hoist by their own petard.

Better not to insist upon it in the first place - you know, like they have to offer a decline option on ethnicity monitoring. You can't demand somebody specifies their ethnicity (although the NHS manager demanding that I tell her whether I'm Traveller or not in 2005 because I looked like it wasn't fantastic) or sexual preferences in every email. You can't demand that they announce whether their reproductive organs have resulted or are soon going to result in issue in every meeting request on Teams.

Try to make me tell you information when it's only ever resulted in discrimination and there will be trouble.

I rec the article above 'Pronouns are Rohypnol'.

A relevant tangent; those declaring their pronouns at my workplace also have a link under the pronouns saying "why I declare my pronouns" which goes to a site to explain.

I'm wondering whether to put "Why I don't declare my pronouns in my signature". Anyone got a good website to link to? Or maybe I could just put a statement in a word doc

Oh that’s priceless.

Felix asked Naomi to declare her pronouns (he actually said “her”, because he can see she’s a woman.)

Naomi declined, and later said to Vanessa “it’s not necessary for you or me to declare our pronouns, because everyone can see what we are.”

And the Felix referred to Naomi as “they/them - because I don’t know their pronouns.”

It’s a little bit bonkers.

I think Felix said “my pronouns are he/them”, but I may have misheard that.

Only trans people and handmaidens care.

Give it 5 years, the bandwagoners will get bored and move onto furries or adult babies or similar.

Someone who I’ve never met emailed me an invoice at work the other day. Her email footer says “my pronouns are private”. I like her already!

Presumably someone at her work asked her to complete the sentence in her footer but hasn’t even bothered to read it!

I feel the same as @Ourladycheesusedatum. I find it impossible to care what pronouns people use about me, especially when I'm not present.

And that, ladies, is how you deal with daft requests.

'No' is a complete sentence, as they say round here.

It's a hill I will get slightly wounded on.

😁

This! 😁

Like others have said, if I see someone declaring pronouns, they automatically go down in my estimations... I don't want people to think badly of me!

@Nousernamesleftatall hahaha brilliant 😂😂

I absolutely read it the same way you did @DollyTrolly - even on re-reading.

Because queer theory is toxic BS and shouldn't be pandered to.

...And of course the they/them thing is annoyingly grammatically incorrect. I wonder what happened to 'Xe' / 'Ze'? I see the need for a 3rd pronoun to accommodate gender neutral people, but why must it be a plural?

The 'they' has caused significant confusion (for me) more than once - not least with a pregnancy, where the mother thanked me for a gift saying 'they' will love it. I hadn't realised it was twins and went to buy a second gift - only to discover the unborn 'they' was singular, but the mother wanted the baby to be able to choose its own gender.

That’s the one @Waitwhat23 😁

I'm really not seeing the issue of someone assuming my pronouns.

The people I work with dont care, they call me by name.
If they are talking about me when I'm not there, I simply do not care what words they use about me. I cant hear it, I'm not affected by it.
If someone is emailing me outside my life or work, I dont see how their pronouns matter. I dont care, I wont be talking about them, if I did they wont know I'm talking about them.

If I get called sir, I still do not care. It's not important in life to be correctly sexed in person. Over email or phone it's even less important.

My life wont end, no ones life will end if they are miss sexed or correctly sexed.

I dunno, it actually would feel quite patronising for me to say to a trans person “I’m Gladys and my pronouns are she/her” when that is the assumption that 99.9% of people are going to make when they see me.

You can’t get away from the fact that humans are very good at recognising what sex other humans are. It’s the small minority of people who present mixed cues that confuse us.

Ooo, it's a while since I explained why I can't in all honesty declare pronouns.

Let's recap.

She/her/hers are the third person pronouns used for women and girls in English.

There are currently two conflicting definitions of the word "woman". (And "man" also, but for now I'm explaining the situation in terms of women).

1. A sex based definition: "adult human female". The definition under which women were oppressed, and the definition under which women-only mitigations to counter that were set up.

1. A mind based definition: not sure what this actually is because it's never defined in a non - circular way, but I do know it's not related to physical sex because it's the definition under which TWAW is claimed, and the definition leveraged to appropriate provisions intended to be single sex for the benefit of trans women.

Since declaring pronouns is done in support of trans people, whenever pronouns are declared they are always using the second definition of woman.

I understand myself to be a woman by the first definition only. By the second definition I am not. So, in any context where pronouns are declared I cannot honestly say She/her/hers because this is claiming a gender identity I do not have.

However, although genderism has pushed me out of the language that hitherto described me, it also does not allow for the existence of people who simply exist in their sexed bodies. There are no names within genderism for female people, no pronouns that can describe female people alone. Therefore, omitting declaring pronouns is not simply a defiance of genderism, it is the only honest position I can take within genderism.

There's no arguing with that.....ironically.

Sadly not. There are also possessive adjectives which are pro forms, but not pronouns. Grammar is complex and quick to anger if you play around with it foolishly.....

You've misunderstood/misread my point. I was suggesting - an interrogative suggestion - exactly what you are saying (I do research on discrimination against women for a living). You really need to read more carefully.

I'm sure you didn't mean to sound so patronising? Apologies for misunderstanding but it did read a little like you were asking people to provide evidence of discrimination.... I wasn't the only one who misunderstood and these things happen on a forum like this.

I also do research in this particular area for a living

This one?

Hahaha I think I love you @tonyatotter
that's bloody brilliant 😂😂.
(Or should that be 'I think I love clip')

This is a very quick Google, so one specific example for now:

https://sopro.io/resources/blog/email-conversion-rates-by-gender/#:~:text=The%20chances%20of%20a%20male,the%20gender%20of%20the%20recipient.