Pronouns she/they - what does that mean?

I think it means
"I'm a 'cis' woman, so I am a she/her. However, as a 'cis' woman, I'm super privileged and probably going to be the absolutely least vulnerable/important person in any room. So if other more important/vulnerable people want to call me they, because it makes them more comfortable not to use sex based pronouns, then their view is obviously what matters most."

Wear a flipping badge then if it's that important to you. (Maybe with some sort of flap or slider to select the pronoun. This probably exists.)

Though don't expect people to necessarily get it right even then.

This has to be the absolute height of self-obsessed nonsense.

Are any of these people in long term gainful employment?

Yes, all the pronoun nonsense doesn't really work in French.

Trans women can ask to be referred to as "elle" and trans men as "il", but it's not such a big change because possessive pronouns are gendered according to the thing being possessed rather than the person doing the possessing.

So for example, "He is sitting at his dining table" in English would become, "He is sitting at her dining table" in French because the table is feminine. This effectively cuts the possibility of using wrong sexed pronouns in French by half.

Word endings may change according to the gender of the person, but usually by adding on an extra "e" for a woman. The extra "e" is silent so it makes no difference in spoken French, and in written French there's no real way to tell whether someone has got it "wrong" - or right, depending on your point of view - deliberately, or by accident because mistakes are very common.

People who identify as non-binary are screwed because there is no such thing as gender neutral in French. They have invented a gender neutral pronoun, "iel", but I have never seen or heard it used in real life. It's quite difficult to say without it sounding like either "il" or "elle". And the only impact on the rest of your sentence is going to be in your word endings. Since the only options are "extra e" or "no extra e", in reality "iel" will default to the masculine and become virtually indistinguishable from "il".

I also think it would be a little easier to avoid using wrong sex pronouns for someone in French than in English. Although I don't know any trans people in France so it's never come up in reality.

Say you work with a trans woman called Susan and you need to tell someone where Susan is but you don't want to refer to Susan as a woman or get into trouble for referring to Susan as a man, you can say, "Susan is in his office" without anyone batting an eyelid, because office is masculine and so this is correct French.

The word "personne" is also feminine, so if talking about trans women in general, if you can avoid talking specifically about trans women and talk about trans people, you can say "une personne trans" and everything defaults to feminine.

It's a language which is pretty resistant to gender woo in the first place and pretty easy to use in a way which doesn't make any statement about someone's gender.

TRAs must have trouble in French, Italian and Spanish is all I can say! 'you' is the formal plural in English and we use it in the singular in place of the informal singular, i.e. the equivalent of 'tu' in French - it's 'thou'.
Using 'they' for everything would be utterly confusing, and sex is important (gender, otoh, is non-existent so doesn't need to be catered for).

I had a colleague who started out as she/they and then progressed to they/he and finally he/him. So for that person it was about signalling where they believed themself to be on their “gender identity journey”. Obviously this was extremely difficult for everyone to keep up with but she/they/he seemed to have think it was obvious from her/their/his hair length, existence or lack of jewellery and make-up and clothing choices where they were on any given day. Reader, it was not.

This colleague had a lot of young friends at work who were all very supportive of her/their/his journey but, whaddya know, kept getting the pronouns wrong. And to all those who say “you never use a third person pronoun to someone’s face” I will say this scenario played out several times in front of me:
Friend 1: Do you like Wotsits?
She/they/he (quietly): No I don’t.
Friend 1: eh?
Friend 2: She said no she doesn’t.
Deathly silence descends. Everyone looks at She/they/he who is glowering.
Friend 1: You mean they?
Friend 2: Sorry I mean they, no hang on, he, er, you?

I remained impassive on all these occasions as my job likely depended on it I am a professional. I no longer work there.

Their pronouns are me!/me!/me!
It's time they grew up.

Don't let's forget there is a small group who have made a point on social media that they expect you to ask their pronouns before talking to them at any point during the day. Because they change pronouns regularly in the day depending on what they are feeling like right then and there.

Because they are 'genderfluid'.

I'm told that's how it's done in publishing now with YA novels. I've read an extract from such a book where they cycle through the lead character's pronouns, and finding "Alex" referred to as he one minute and they the next made it incredibly hard to follow, as I thought the 'they' referred to his friends who were with him. It is ridiculous and doesn't work. I feel sorry for kids having to negotiate all this stuff.

Bloody hell!

@Helleofabore said ...She may as well point a huge sign that says, 'I want you to think about what sex class I belong to' simply because she has been the one to make any statement at all such as adding pronouns to her CV.
This is one of the reasons I won't add pronouns to my email signature. Women still face sex discrimination and declaring my sex in this way would make it more salient in professional contexts, where it should be irrelevant.

I once mis-sexed a third party in an email, neither the recipient nor I was aware that the third party's name is in fact unisex and I happened to know someone of the opposite sex with the same name. The misunderstanding was resolved rapidly and without drama; it would not have been avoided by pronouns in email signatures (a practice followed by only one of the three people involved in this incident).

There are ways to ask a question to make the point that the questioner thinks it's a load of nonsense (as I and most people here do) and there are ways to ask a question to elicit information from the person being questioned. It's worthwhile to be able to ask the second way, even when you want to ask the first way, especially if you're genuinely interested in the answer!

I was thinking the OP might ask for some examples of how this person prefers to be referred to, because it's not very clear, rather than quizzing them on their motivation.

That is nice in theory, but I cannot see that that is really going to work in reality.

Start with the receipt of the CV. Simply the act of adding those pronouns has started any reader thinking about that person's sex class.

Due to the language conventions of the English language, people are conscious of people's sex class. By making any sort of statement about that such as a different pronoun, turns attention to that exact thing. The poster's friend has just created a discordant language request that will mean that people who have that CV will have to take careful consideration every time they speak about her. And what are they focused on: her sex category. Because that is the thing she has brought attention to specifically.

Regardless of the intention, this is the impact.

I am all for trying to remove negative sexist attitudes and behaviour in the workplace and anywhere possible. I have been conscious of this sexism for all my life as I am sure most women and girls have.

But drawing attention to sexism through a language demand where someone has to then think about the sex class of that person is not something I see as being effective.

But this makes no grammatical sense. Her work colleagues obviously know what sex she is so ‘they’ will never be relevant unless they are grouping her with others.

N.B. I have met some people who expect you to switch pronouns regularly, like alternating between she/her/they/them, but I don’t think that’s how the majority of people mean it and if anyone tries to enforce that they’ll soon find out it doesn’t really work)

Imagine how mind numbingly tiresome these people must be. So much spare time on their hands that they expect to police other peoples speech (even when they are not present). I think we should popularise people ‘getting a grip’.

Bloody hell. Who has the energy to put this much thought into their sense of self 🤦‍♀️

Haven't read the rest of the thread yet but assume the description of 'navel gazing attention seeker chasing praise from a quickly demolishing ideology'has already been mentioned for the woman mentioned in the OP?

Where's that gif of 'hello, fellow teenagers'?

I understand that it doesn't impact you. However, it will have impact on those who the CV has been sent to.

Receiving a CV with those pronouns is a signal that someone has indeed got expectations about pronoun usage, otherwise they would not add them or would not add ones that differ from the person's sex. And adding 'them' does indicate that.

She might not intend that outcome, but that is actually what she has done.

The point she has told you she is making, is not the point that she is making, in my opinion. She may as well point a huge sign that says, 'I want you to think about what sex class I belong to' simply because she has been the one to make any statement at all such as adding pronouns to her CV.

Didn't JK Rowling go for JK rather than Joanne, because an obviously female name would put the boys off?

I don't mind being she or they, but if I hear anyone referring to me as he, I will correct them, because I am often literally the only woman in the room, and they should not forget women can do these roles too. I similarly object to mails addressed to "gents" and similar.

I had a load of colleagues in HK and Singapore - I don't have the cultural background to know whether many of the names are male or female, so if I needed to refer to them, I used they - "asked Tan to check in the datacentre - they said all cables are firmly seated and lights are green,, but we still have no connection," that sort of thing. It doesn't matter if they're a man or woman, as the important thing was they had physical access to the datacentre there. In reality, if I guessed "he", in most cases, I'd have been right, but I know how it annoys me for people to assume I can't be in a technical role, so I don't want to do that to any other woman. So sometimes, it does matter, though I also know it's not going to work against me if they don't realise I'm a woman.

how unpleasant are you

Having one third person pronoun would be a nightmare of confusion:

"Martin and Brenda went shopping. They was looking for a good charity shop, while they was hoping to pick up a bargain at Wickes. They said to them that they should split up and run their separate errands and then they would meet them at the coffee shop by twelve. But secretly, they was planning to meet their affair partner in the paint aisle."

It means: attention seeking.

She’s a div.

Sounds reasonable, but some might take exception to being questioned about the reasons for their pronouns, which are holy and not to be queried.

Crazy to me that the humble pronoun, once a harmless and rarely mentioned part of speech, has become such a hot topic!

If you’re not sure what she’s trying to express, why not ask her? It will give you a more accurate answer than our guesses!

Thanks for explaining this, I’ve not thought of it that way. 🙏🏻