Are pronouns misogyny

I don't see it as misogyny. I will defend the option not to state them and a preference to call a person by their name.

I have spent years "de feminising" my written correspondence. Starting with letters, going on to faxes and telexes and the emails.

I sign off with Initial + Surname.

And invariably when, at some point as they always do, the people i've been corresponding with discover that i'm not actually a bloke, the tone changes.

Even with the one with whom i discussed my time in the army and my love of beer and football.

So no. No pronouns for me. Without a massive fuss, but they will not be included.

Pronouns are grammar

pronouns indicating sex are just one way that sex is brought to the foreground when it shouldn’t matter -making and reinforcing sexism

I say this as someone who managed a lot of working life without revealing sex early in working relationships ( lots of international email based working ) and saw first hand how much difference it made when people didn’t get that my name was female and referred to me as he until we met

it matters - more than many people will ever know

To cut Spacek some slack, they are are non-native English speaker who is failing to comprehend the arguments (although recognising that rather than implying there is nothing to understand might be a better approach for them)

Given that some of those "other people" have explained on this very thread why they have well considered reasons to object to this practice (which is not a grammatical practice but an ideological one) I am surprised you still don't understand and have only managed to gather some people find it "upsetting". (And honestly, even that is a pretty poor reading of what was said; "offensive", "belittling" or "sexist" are more accurate representations).

So, to help you understand I'll put it very simply.

"Preferred pronouns" is a practice born out of the sexist idea that the fundamental, defining difference between men and women is mental.

It is just the new face of the same old fashioned sexism that was once used to exclude women from certain professions, from voting, from even owning their own property, and it should have no place in modern society.

Adding pronouns is absolutely telling others how they should refer to you. If it is just a statement about your material sex category, then there is no real impact.

The impact is when people are directed to use language that doesn’t reflect material reality. It imposes one person’s belief above another’s material reality. There is no respect in that action yet it is described as being respectful. Which is just another demanded change in meaning for language.

People declaring pronouns are harmless because it gives people a guide as to what sex someone is in an email footer is disingenuous to the discussion overall.

At one of my first jobs I worked for a company where the communication policy changed to a less formal style. Instead of signing off “Yours sincerely, Miss J Saurus” we were now expected to sign off “Yours sincerely, Jelly Saurus”. It was noticeable that the older women would (Mrs) or (Miss) after their names, but none of the men bothered with (Mr). My name is not obviously feminine or masculine, so it was suggested to me that I put (Miss) after it. Because I was young and unsure of my standing, I complied.

But I soon quietly dropped it. I realised that I missed the anonymity of not revealing my first name. Previously, if a phone caller asked for Jelly, I knew it was a social call. Once Jelly Saurus (Miss) appeared, I had several unpleasant calls from sleazy strangers. When I signed off without the (Miss), I had no new sleazy callers. I also no longer had new correspondents going over my head to check with my boss. That had been so normal before, that I hadn’t even clocked it.

Putting your title after your name is telling people about you and your status. I think it is significant that it was rarely men who would be bothered to do this - they were confident in their status as the default. Marital status and sex were also generally irrelevant to the conversations. Unless you were a woman, when, as I discovered, you were either unreliable or fair game. So it was better to stick with status being irrelevant.

Putting pronouns after your name is unsubtly different. These are not just about declaring your sex, but about dictating how others are to refer to you. There is no honesty behind them. Has I signed off as Jelly Saurus (Mr), I would have been pulled up for lying, for deliberately deceiving people. That is not going to happen with declared pronouns - they are sacrosanct. Yet they are as irrelevant marital status or religion in a work context.

Declaring your sex (or the sex you want people to pretend you are) benefits only men. It is worse than neutral for women. It is misogynistic to require declared pronouns and it is misogynistic to expect people to go along with them.

The UK organisation for Vets did an experiment a couple of years ago. A selection of CVs were sent to vets with equal qualifications but with male and female names. The results were that those vets tested chose male named CVs and the results also showed that the vets would offer female vets lower salaries than male vets.

There is still significant sex discrimination in the UK workplace against female people. Why would it be an advantage to proclaim being a female person in the workplace?

Did you need to know whether Jo/Joe is male or female though? I can’t think of any situation where I need to know the sex of someone who’s emailing me. In addition, if Joe says their pronouns are she/her, would you assume their sex is female? What about they/them?

Google stereotype threat.

There is a huge difference between correct sex pronouns and wrong sex pronouns. However, I don’t believe there was an announcement of correct sex pronouns before the move to add wrong sex pronouns was attempted to be normalised by groups supportive of people with transgender identities. If I remember correctly some people might have added sexed titles to their emails in the past if they wanted to state their sex.

It seems disingenuous to ignore that the statement of pronouns has come about as a support tool for transgender identities or has been popularised (attempted to be normalised) for that purpose. If posters and readers are unaware of the background, maybe they should look further and gain some understanding in the background for usage and how it directly and indirectly negatively impacts female people.

Here is just another reason why using wrong sex pronouns is harmful to female people.

archive.ph/wLUBN

‘I objected to a man using my gym’s women’s changing room. Now, I’m banned by the council’

“Among the charges, she says, was a claim that she had “misgendered” the person she found in the changing room, by using “he/him” pronouns instead of “she”.”

Have a read of the posts on this thread to help you understand why it bothers other people.

The whole thread is about pronouns, a facet of grammar.

It doesn't bother me. I don't really understand why it bothers other people (but I have gathered from this thread that some people find pronouns in emails very very upsetting)

You are talking about grammatical gender. That's not what the OP means. The OP is talking about biological sex.

But those languages don't typically interchange their use of m/f as people feel like. If I decided that my house has a masculine vibe to it, I couldn't expect French speakers to refer to it as le maison, because that would be asking them to use their own language in a different way.

Mostly used by women, in my experience.

Though in a world full of workplace sexism, I doubt throwing "she/her" in the face of everyone you write an email to puts many people at an advantage.

I will Google but could you point me to any sources about this please? It would be so helpful. Thanks.

I don't understand what you're asking, sorry.

We call boats, countries etc 'she'. Languages often have a feminine/masculine which isn't even tied to living things.

It honestly doesn't bother me

Others in the thread appear to agree with you though

I believe so. Because the purpose behind the push to include them was to further GI, which disproportionately harms women and advantages men.
It may also be disadvantageous to a woman to declare her sex and problematic when a male person uses female pronouns in situations where sex matters.
Personally I find the idea that if I don't declare my pronouns there may be doubt as to which are correct (when told to do so in person) ridiculous and offensive. A view shared by many in the trans community as it happens.
So misogynist and misguided.

Outside of that situation, can you see the harm that using demanded pronouns that are the wrong sex for the person’s sex category?

Allowing men to declare themselves women because they 'feel like one' assumes there is a single way that ALL women feel

allowing men to use female pronouns because they live like a woman is propagating the belief that there is a correct way to live like a woman which men can imitate. This involves the performance of female stereotypes eg long hair, dresses, make up, heels.. it's extremely misogynistic to believe womanhood is some kind of a performance

By allowing Mary who used to be Mark to use female pronouns it becomes much much harder to defend female only places and spaces for example the difference between

he followed her into the women's changing room and when asked to leave he refused

she followed her into the women's changing room and when asked to leave she refused

there are numerous incidences of TW being described as she/her in crime reports which completely changes the impact of the criminal behaviour on the person reading it

There is certainly plenty of evidence that women are disadvantaged professionally if they are seen as women and putting pronouns in bios absolutely rams this home. It’s also deferring to the trans ideology and tells anyone who is GC that they are not welcome.

It's useful if I'm referring to the content of the email in a group thread, or to others (e.g. xxx stated in her email dated whatever that ...)

This is exactly how I feel about pronouns. Thank you for explaining it better than I ever could.