Do you secretly judge people who announce their pronouns in their emails?

[Mewmin]

I was reading the thread on BBC pronouns earlier and it got me thinking about my own reaction when I come across people who I had previously respected and looked up to who have put their preferred pronouns in their email signature (all female with obviously female names like Annabelle and Rebecca).

Personally I believe it shows a lack of critical thinking and, working in the academic field, I am finding it very difficult not to alter my view of the (very) few colleagues and work contacts who have done this. In one case it has actually made me think twice about working more closely with someone.

Am I alone in this?

I should add that I am supportive of transpeople's rights but don't think that they should override women's rights and I cannot go along with the lack of logical thinking and tautological definitions used in gender ideology.

I work in the creative industry, and it’s very woke. I don’t judge, because I can see that people need to do it because of the virtue signalling. If they don’t do it they’ll be assumed to be transphobic.

However, I have worked with nobody for whom it wasn’t absolutely obvious, so it seems ridiculous. There are a couple of high profile people in my industry who’ve attached their career to being trans or non-binary. Maybe two/three out of thousands. It’s obvious with them. It’s obvious with everybody else- so why bother?

I think it’s making an enormous fuss about one thing, and inclusivity in one area where people are predominantly white and middle class. It enables us to ignore the large groups of underrepresented BAME people, or working class, and address the real big problems in our industry.

I think it’s making an enormous fuss about one thing, and inclusivity in one area where people are predominantly white and middle class. It enables us to ignore the large groups of underrepresented BAME people, or working class, and address the real big problems in our industry.

Really important point.

Why do people care so much? It's just how people like to be referred to. If someone said my name is Kimberly but please call me Kim would you think:

You dickhead
You just want attention
You're hurting your career
You're making it awkward for everyone else
Fuck off "Kim" ....?

Or would you just accept it and call the person Kim?

Who cares. Just call them what they want and move on. It's important to them and it is literally nothing for you to just say "she" or whatever

You are all the dickheads

I only know one person in real life who does this. School friend. Always a very vocal feminist from a very young age (probably 7 or so). Deemed to be highly intelligent, in hindsight just very precocious and peaked way too early.

She hasn't lived up to her early promise (she has floundered in her career due to not being as hugely intelligent as first thought) and not functioning all that well in the real world) but she has found herself an ok position (London) and she very much talks the talk.

She is very woke, so the pronouns don't surprise me in that regard, but I do wonder how it aligns with her previously such feminist viewpoints.

She was the first person I heard use the term cis, and she is the person I hear it most from. All the time on social media and quite often on the phone. I do suspect she is quite often hoping to get a rise out of me (despite my never mentioning my views) but I I would never get into a discussion about it with her.

She has achieved a lot academically however I do feel there is something in her which is lacking. Possibly critical thinking, I'm not sure. But she has always read a lot and been able to regurgitate it later on in discussions. She has a lot of time on her hands and is able to devote a lot of time to reading on this matter. I do not have anything like the time to do that and so whilst our viewpoints differ I know she would annihilate me in an argument due to all the prep work she does.

But yes, it makes me cringe, and I would love to see her challenged my somebody more knowledgeable than me.

What is exclusionary is that although 99% of people on this thread seem to disagree with the idea of putting pronouns on emails I bet hardly anyone would feel able to express that opinion within their workplace for fear of wrongly being labelled transphobic. That's what I call discriminatory and exclusionary.

It's up there with putting your qualifications after your name.

I think I judge people who use "woke" sneeringly more.

No. However I do secretly judge people who feel the need to get worked up about how another person wishes to be addressed. When it is absolutely no business of theirs!

@OnSilverStars but we're not talking about someone called Kimberley asking to be called Kim. They just have to display their name as Kim not Kimberley and everyone would refer to them as Kim. This is a completely different issue.

It is also lazy thinking (and a sign of privilege) to assume that "it is nothing for you to say she". It is an important point of principle for so many reasons, including the fact that a woman highlighting her gender is more likely to be discriminated against, and the level of feeling on this thread shows how strongly people feel that they shouldn't have to prominently and publicly draw attention to their gender at work. This affects women's rights and telling people they are dickheads for caring about this speaks volumes about your own level of critical thinking.

@OnSilverStars

Why do people care so much? It's just how people like to be referred to. If someone said my name is Kimberly but please call me Kim would you think:

You dickhead
You just want attention
You're hurting your career
You're making it awkward for everyone else
Fuck off "Kim" ....?

Or would you just accept it and call the person Kim?

Who cares. Just call them what they want and move on. It's important to them and it is literally nothing for you to just say "she" or whatever

You are all the dickheads

I agree that if someone refused to use the preferred version of someone’s name, they would be a dickhead.

But that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it? Maybe read through the thread title and posts before you start throwing out insults based on a wrong assumption. It doesn’t reflect well on you.

@OnSilverStars

Why do people care so much? It's just how people like to be referred to. If someone said my name is Kimberly but please call me Kim would you think:

You dickhead
You just want attention
You're hurting your career
You're making it awkward for everyone else
Fuck off "Kim" ....?

Or would you just accept it and call the person Kim?

Who cares. Just call them what they want and move on. It's important to them and it is literally nothing for you to just say "she" or whatever

You are all the dickheads

No if she wants to be called Kim then her signature should just say Kim, and everyone would call her that. What you wouldn't expect is for the other Kimberlys to sign off with "Kimberly Smith (Kimberly)" just so she didn't feel left out.

If a trans person wants to be referred to as the opposite gender to their sex then choose a name that's gendered accordingly and job done. Bizarre to me that others feel a need to get involved by highlighting their pronouns when it's not needed.

I agree @RolloTomassi but it seems that’s exactly how things are. The minority forces a label on the majority.

Women are now ‘cis women’ and not just women. Why do we need a label in front of women? It’s like a horse painting stripes on itself to be a zebra, calling itself a zebra and then zebras are now cis zebra - or something like that.

It's absolutely navel gazing bolleaux and yes, I very much judge people with it in their work emails.

I have received quite a few emails from people who put their pronouns in their email signature. I work in HR, which is closely aligned to Diversity, so people I communicate with are more involved in these things.

Personally, I can't be bothered to put my preferred pronouns in my signature. I'm obviously female but if someone referred to me as male, I would correct them. Job done.

Hate it and have ruled out working with people (independent contractors etc) on that basis.

@The90swereadecadeago couldn't agree more, and great zebra analogy!

Yes. It's ridiculous.

Thanks @RolloTomassi I couldn’t think of another animal example, maybe bear and panda 🤣

I have two first names. People may assume they are middle names and argue I can’t but I do. An English name and then the how the hell do you pronounce that name from my Fathers home country. Most people would not have a clue if I was some type of exotic fruit, human or a type of obscure endangered moth. If I did use my foreign name it would cause a kerfuffle in these virtue signalling times.

I agree with @Darker that rejecting all applications with pronouns on is exclusionary. It might be an application from a trans person to whom this issue is genuinely important.

But I disgaree with Darker about not understanding the issue. I understand it very, very well. Often someone putting pronouns is a political statement, and I don’t like someone expressing their political views on gender/sex in a work email anymore than I would like them expressing their views on Brexit.

@The90swereadecadeago

I agree *@RolloTomassi* but it seems that’s exactly how things are. The minority forces a label on the majority.

Women are now ‘cis women’ and not just women. Why do we need a label in front of women? It’s like a horse painting stripes on itself to be a zebra, calling itself a zebra and then zebras are now cis zebra - or something like that.

@The90swereadecadeago - I really like that analogy about the zebras. I’ve screen-shotted that.

Yes, I would judge , and eye roll. Only seen it once, a few weeks ago from a woman (I think probably youngish) with a very clearly female name - works in Brighton council so not unsurprising. But yes I did think FFS.

I am old now and if asked to at work I would just refuse. We have a set ‘signature’ that we just adapt to our name, title and phone number - no request for pronouns as yet.

@OnSilverStars

Why do people care so much? It's just how people like to be referred to. If someone said my name is Kimberly but please call me Kim would you think:

You dickhead
You just want attention
You're hurting your career
You're making it awkward for everyone else
Fuck off "Kim" ....?

Or would you just accept it and call the person Kim?

Who cares. Just call them what they want and move on. It's important to them and it is literally nothing for you to just say "she" or whatever

You are all the dickheads

But ‘Kim’ is that persons name so of course you’d be a massive bell-end not to use their chosen name. When addressing an email to them or talking about them.

There’s literally hundreds of people whose emails are officially registered by companies as ‘Kimberley Smith’ when they go by Kim, or ‘Isabelle Smith’ when they go by Belle, or ‘Christopher Smith’ when they go by Kit. It’s totally commonplace.

But pronouns aren’t the same. There’s a push to try to make it the same - to normalise having pronouns that are different so if we all are ‘good allies’ and state our own totally unremarkable sex-related pronouns it will apparently make it normal for those people whose pronouns are not sex-related. But it won’t! Because no matter how many people state them they will still be in the minority.

It really is not an issue that trans rights advocates should be spending any time or attention on, IMO, as it’s just a pointless exercise if they want to be taken seriously on other, more meaningful points.

@EwwSprouts

I remain shocked at the number of people who are freely admitting to making recruitment decisions based on an issue which has nothing to do with a person's ability to do the job.

A person's ability to do a job well usually includes the soft skills, being able to work well with others. Narcissism is disruptive. Why do you think psychometric testing is still used in recruitment?

It's a pretty massive and insulting assumption that someone like my non-binary adult child are narcissistic and lacks social skills, just because they have a different view on gender than you do.

I have a female colleague with a feminine name whose email signature includes: "they/them, genderqueer, pan, ask me for more info". This has only appeared in the last year, and she's definitely a natal woman. Lunacy.

The better option in society at large is if a person just unremarkably says, in person when it is needed, ‘By the way, my pronouns are they/them if you ever need to use them’ and then everyone says ‘cool, thanks for letting me know’ and the conversation moves on. Stick them in your own email signature if you need to, but most people don’t and won’t ever need to.

Your ‘gender’ should be unremarkable in the workplace.