Asking someone’s pronouns is as important as finding out their name

Depends on context I guess. Helpful if you haven’t met Phil and want to copy Phil in to an email to someone else and say “I’m copying Phil as she will be able to help you with finding the document you want”. Obviously not relevant to how well Phil does his or her job. I mean, I get that stating pronouns is bullshit when it’s all about virtue signalling, but just sayin’ that for unisex names or ones from an unfamiliar culture it can sometimes be helpful for entirely collateral reasons. (I have a unisex name. My sex, gender and pronouns all align. But I still like to be referred to by the correct pronoun so it’s quite convenient that the bullshit brigade have given me a way to state what it is).

Yep. Very useful. Anyone with genderist beliefs should use them; loud and proud, please.

😂😂

How to know who you can't trust to say anything to at work.

No, goodness, those would be far too factual and in certain circumstances useful. Unless you mean that they state the height and weight that they identify and suchlike😆

Indeed. Or they could take the old fashioned route of adding Mr/Ms/Mrs if they consider it vital that their sex be known.

But does Phil, short for Philippa, need most of her email correspondents to know that she is a woman? Does Phil, short for Philip, need most of his email correspondents to know he is a man? If either sign off as Phil, they're likely to get a response starting with 'Dear Phil' and then responding to the actual text of their email.

My brother in law is an eco activist type but the world of gender fluidity and pronoun-specifying had somewhat passed him by till he was at some group meeting a couple of years ago when they all went round the circle and introduced themselves as Bob she/her, Dave he/him. He said he thought they were surnames and they were all related 🤣🤣

I come on threads like this purely for the replies, to remind myself that there are some sane people left in the world (since I spend my days working for an organisation where every fucker declares their pronouns in emails and even worse, some tell you them at the start of a meeting too despite it being blatantly fucking obvious because you can see them 😂)

I have a female friend Philippa who goes by Phil. It’s also short for Philomena.

Quite.

Though I do like AbacusAvocado's response, eg ten you have no choice but to acknowledge and interact with an oversharing evangelist.

There's a video kicking about on Twitter at the moment in which some fuckwit explains, very earnestly, that they use colour coding in their bio to indicate which pronouns they feel like today - purple, pink or blue.

It's just such narcissistic navel gazing. As if anyone else gives a tiny, shiny shit.

If someone chucks their pronouns at me, that reminds me to engage as little as possible with them. Colleagues at work put it in their email signature but I know them well enough from before this shite started to ignore it

As a woman with a unique name - I prefer it when people guess my pronouns. Weirdly I've noticed I sometimes get a more positive response when people assume I'm a man (apparently why J.K Rowling went for such masculine sounding initials)- and I don't get offended.

I understand that some people do get offended. But we are so easy to offend eachother these days.

I’ve only once met somebody who introduced themselves and immediately announced their pronouns (“Hi I’m Hannah and my pronouns are she/they!”).

I responded in almost exactly the same tone of smug excitement “Hi I’m AbacusAvocado and my favourite dinosaur is the stegosaurus!”. She/they looked completely nonplussed but somebody nearby overheard and we had a lovely chat about different dinosaurs.

Just tell me your 1 rep max, we cool, I don’t judge.

Leaving aside all the issues with pronoun pronouncements generally, the claim is nonsensical. The main function of learning someone's name is to be able to distinguish that person to others. If we're talking one-on-one, it doesn't matter if I don't know that your name is Caroline. If I have to talk about you to someone else, it's useful to be able to identify you by name and say that Caroline has done or not done X, rather than to try to identify you by descriptions. Preferred pronouns don't carry that same function in communication.

I like the idea of "Hello my name is...and my favourite crystals are tourmaline and feldspar"

Precisely. Their only purpose, as far as I'm concerned.

I’d ideally like everyone to also state their weight (in kg for gods sakes), height without shoes, original hair colour and religious faith right off the bat. Favourite colour and whether they eat meat, egg, dairy or if they still consider themselves vegetarians because they only eat chicken and fish a few times a week.

Also if they mind swearing or not, to avoid awkwardness after jokes and such.

Do they object to me dancing my mood daily at 9 am?

Anything I have forgotten now that really shouldn’t be left out?

This.

Only if you think it's important that everyone knows in the first two minutes of meeting you that you're a self-obsessed bore.

They can be very helpful - It's like an instruction to back away from a tedious narcissist 😂

The whole article is just one big long whine of ‘I’m special and you should all acknowledge it and if you don’t buy into my delusion you are mean and I’ll be sad and why would you do that to someone so special?’