How best to answer 'What are your preferred pronouns?' in an intervew

Stop dismissing women's carefully considered and expressed concerns as 'bizarre'.

Thanks for this

If someone asked you if you were an man or a woman, how would you answer, knowing that some people use man and woman differently to you? Would you refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer was sex based?

Great question! I feel like we are getting somewhere now.

I'd ask them what they mean by "man" and "woman", and answer appropriately based on that. That appropriate answer could be "neither" if the questioner's definition of "man" and "woman" both exclude me.

Which is exactly my point about "What are your pronouns?" - there is no valid answer I can give to a person who asks that question because the question itself delegitimises the language I need to use.

Sure, in this theoretical interview I can add the qualifier "sex-based" - and I hope you are in the interests of fairness also advocating that those who use the contented feeling-based meaning also qualify their use? - but that's not really a solution because that meaning doesn't travel with the word. I will be known as "she", and I will therefore be lumped into the same group as people who identify with the to me extremely offensive concept of "feeling like a woman".

Honest Dad, I get you struggle with this but really it's not rocket science! Genderism may have created a new and different concept of Woman-as-gender-identity but it's not like the old group of people-with-female-bodies stopped existing. Woman-as-a-gender and woman-as-a-sex are clearly two separate things and as such they need separate language, not a double-meaning language and a bunch of clumsy and divisive qualifiers.

People refer to you in the third person with pronouns...other people want to be referred to differently has not impact on you.

Absolutely yes, people who want to be referred to differently than with sex-based pronouns has no impact on me, and good luck to them.

My issue is that some people want to be referred to the same way as me, with the same sex-based pronouns "she" and "her", but mean something different by it.

That's the problem.

Not that gender-feeling people want others to use language that reflects that but that they want repurpose sex-based language to do so and therefore leave others who do not feel gender no language that unequivocally describes who we are.

So what is the pronoun set that I could give in answer to the question "What are your pronouns?" to signify I am a natal female who wishes to be respected and understood as a biological female but without the assumption of any mental gender identity?

Honestly, once you've got to female pronouns, what's holding you back from just saying she and her?

If I was asking people what their pronouns were, and someone said "female pronouns," I'd say "So, she and her?" because "female pronouns" is what they are, grammatically.

https://www.scottishtrans.org/trans-equality/use-of-pronouns/

This has been discussed at length.

Stop dismissing women's carefully considered and expressed concerns as 'bizarre'.

The only bizarre thing is your refusal to listen to the women on this thread. Or maybe you have an issue with reading comprehension or maybe short term memory, in which case perhaps re read the thread?

The power imbalance and excluding people who do not subscribe to a harmful ideology is problematic

It shouldn't be a question

I think I'd be either turning down the job when offered, or rejoicing that I'd dodged a bullet if I didn't get an offer.

Yes female pronouns could do it

But it's all a dance at this point.They believe in gender ideology and are looking to find people who subscribe to it

Will they discriminate against anyone who does not buy into gender ideology?

I'm happy to say "female pronouns" and see if they choose to take it further. If they did it would no doubt be enlightening to some people why she/her pronoun people can be anything other than female. And amusing to see the pronoun asker squirm.

Same. It's akin to asking a question aligned to a religious belief that I do not hold

Plus it's an ideology I find harmful to women and girls

It's gender based jargon

Why is it necessary to say both "she" and "her" anyway? They go together.

You can easily say "my pronouns are she/her"

No thanks. This is genderist jargon. No one calls them "she/her pronouns" other than people who subscribe to gender identity ideology. I do not subscribe to it.

Given that everybody else, bar the Indian woman, who got the job was very pronouny, I doubt it. He said "He/they for inclusivity". The Indian woman would have ticked the race diversity box and, as they have a lot of Indian students, would have been a sensible person to recruit.

My adjectives, incidentally, are "highest paid", "professional" and "valuable".

@FlirtsWithRhinos it makes absolutely no difference to the answer to the question you would give if you think pronouns are sex-based are not. People refer to you in the third person with pronouns. Those utterances happen, you know that, and you know what they should be. Tying yourself in knots and being deliberately obtuse because other people want to be referred to differently has not impact on you.

You can easily say "my pronouns are she/her, and they are sex based," if you want to first, let them know your answer, and second, be sure that your gender critical beliefs are known.

I'l ask another question.

If someone asked you if you were an man or a woman, how would you answer, knowing that some people use man and woman differently to you? Would you refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer was sex based for you, and gender identity based for other employees? Or are nouns excluded?

"Would you like to share your preferred pronouns?"

Would the answer no I'm fine thanks have been ok for them do you know?

To add that's a really poor question from a plain English perspective. Why on earth has gender ideology overridden that campaign anyway, so bad

I have mentioned several times up thread that my ds attended an interview where the first question he was asked was "Would you like to share your preferred pronouns?". He was prepared for the question as when he showed me the email inviting him to interview and checking profiles, I warned him it was likely to be a question at the interview. Interestingly, he and an Asian woman were the only non-pronouny people hired for the roles.

You also keep referring to "your pronouns". I don't have pronouns. I use pronouns in my speech. Other people use pronouns to refer to me in speech. However, they are not "my pronouns" any more than the adjectives they use to refer to me are "my adjectives"

Yes, up until a few years ago nobody owned any units of grammar. And how have speakers of the many languages that don't have sex-based pronouns managed all this time?

@DadJoke

Yes, we know that your pronouns are sex-based. That's fine! And you absolutely, 100% know what your pronouns are - it's ridiculous to pretend you don't.

No, you have entirely missed the point. I understand why, because you are so steeped in a rigid concept of gender you can't see anothers perspective.

But I have very clearly explained why I do not know what "my pronouns" are in any context where the question makes sense. By definition, if the question can be asked, "she" is not understood to be an exclusively sex-based word, and therefore in that context, the context in which I am being asked, "she", which formerly was a sex-based pronoun, does not mean what I know myself be and therefore is not "my pronoun".

I get that you want to suggest that "sex-based" use of pronouns is simply one valid possibility of many under the wider, glorious, more inclusive world of pronoun basis. And you would even be entirely right if the gender-identifiers had chosen new words for their feelings of identity instead of appropriating and redefining the existing sex-based words.

But they did not, so here we are.

I cannot in good faith answer the question "What are your pronouns?" because in any world where language works in such a way that is a valid question, there is no valid answer that I can give, because the meanings of the words I need no longer exist.

So I ask you again, what is the pronoun set that I could give in answer to the question "What are your pronouns?" to signify I am a natal female who wishes to be respected and understood as a biological female but without the assumption of any mental gender identity?

The idea that the women posting here are most likely "gender conforming" is hilarious. I've been non-conforming to the stupidity of gender since I was old enough as a child to understand that it's used to hold women back.

"My pronouns are She/her" is a genderist catechism, as is having "your" pronouns. They are simply the pronouns used to denote a female noun. I would never use the phrase "my pronouns".

It's not accessible. The language of gender ideology isn't as a whole and the pronouns question fits into that. It is not plain English to talk about 'preferred pronouns'.

Maybe that's why no one does it in interviews.

Men in general do accommodate gender non-conforming men

I mean men presenting as women, why can't you include all men in your sex class. By men I mean biologically determined as male.

Third-person pronouns are not "inaccessible." I agree that being inaccessible at an interview is an issue - if someone asks you a straightforward question - answer it, or accept you aren't getting the job. But I have never heard of an interview where someone asks for pronouns.

Men in general do accommodate gender non-conforming men. What does that have to do with the price of onions?

Well I find gender ideology damaging, offensive and harmful to not only women but girls and children generally

Plus it's not plain English which makes it inaccessible. Being inaccessible in an interview is an issue.

There's no reason the male sex class can't accommodate gender non conforming men. Why wouldn't you do that?

@FlirtsWithRhinos Yes, we know that your pronouns are sex-based. That's fine! And you absolutely, 100% know what your pronouns are - it's ridiculous to pretend you don't.

@OuterSpaceCadet when some asks you what your pronouns are, they are asking you how you would like to be referred to in the third person. You aren't "controlling their speech" by telling them. If they want to be a dick, they can misgender you even with that knowledge.

"Any" is really not helpful. There was one guy who said this to me outside of a work context, so I used "she" until he said, please use he and him. It turned out he didn't actually mean "any."

@EasternStandard of course you are happy for people to guess. You are probably gender conforming. Plenty of people (more non-trans people than trans people) are not, in particular gay women. But that's why employers ask rather than guess.

I can't believe the lengths you'll go to to avoid a simple question to which you know the answer. Say "she/her and they are sex based" if you want to put your gender critical stamp on it!

No need to guess. They are sex based and on one has got it wrong

I'm happy with that