New job wants my pronouns and I'll admit, I don't get it

[Igloo71]

Just to be straight up here, I will be doing what new employer has asked of me and provide my pronoun, this is more of a I don't get it thread...

So, new job for a national charity has shown me the standard footer text for emails, which includes pronouns. OK I'll admit, my instant reaction is that it feels a bit cringe, but just to give you a bigger picture, I'm very pro rights of all (this is a huge part of my job) so I will 100% comply.

But, now that it's been asked of me, it feels like someone is telling me to put Mrs/Miss/Ms in my footer which surely never happens, does it? Who cares if I'm married, so why would anyone care if I'm he/her? Why, just why?? I'd love to ask, but then it would sound like I'm questioning an entirely other rationale which I'm absolutely not.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Woke crap that needs to be put in room 101.

I agree with you. Why should it matter? You shouldn’t be forced to amount you are “she”, whether that is by the sex you were born or the gender you identify with. It’s no-one else’s business, when you are emailing them, is it?

*announce

If it's about pro rights of all for your employers, because surely those who don't want to do it should have their rights respected. Seems it's only for the rights of those who want to do it, then forcing everyone else to comply.

Not very pro-right of all if you ask me.

Isn't it just so people know to address you as him/her/they when speaking to you or referring to you

If it's about pro rights of all for your employers, then surely

Not "because surely".

This has started in my workplace too

There was a similar thread started a couple of days ago but I can't seem to find it now. Doesn't look like it was moved to the Feminism board. Anyone know where it is? Might be easier to link to the existing replies on that thread.

Just say you don’t have any pronouns

@twoastars

Isn't it just so people know to address you as him/her/they when speaking to you or referring to you

Isn't it more polite to just use peoples names? Then there is no issue. She is the cats mother after all ( I have no idea what that means but my mum used to say all the time. )

Just put 'he/zhe/it/them'

That'll confuse them 😄

Ah, it's in AIBU:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4459063-to-not-get-the-e-mail-sign-off-with-pronoun-s

14 pages of replies already.

@twoastars

Isn't it just so people know to address you as him/her/they when speaking to you or referring to you

It really is just this. I don't get the outrage. It's just to avoid being misgendered which can lead to issues in the workplace. Unless you're happy to be addressed with whatever people think fits, I don't see the issue.

Rights of all.
Except people who don't want to enforce the speech of others,
or don't want to 'out' themselves,
or don't want to make it obvious that signing as Sam or Alex they are female (as studies have shown that females get treated less favourably).

I'd just write in the signature "Pronouns" and leave it at that. They want pronouns included, you include the word

Unless you're happy to be addressed with whatever people think fits, I don't see the issue.
This has worked pretty well for hundreds of years...

The rationale is that it normalises people who might need to announce their pronouns (because the ones they’d prefer to use don’t happily fit their appearance, for example). So it’s to signal you’re an ‘ally’ for trans people.

I think it’s regressive personally because as you point out we’ve moved on from announcing our marital status or thinking sex should be a defining factor in professional workplaces so I don’t think announcing gender is a great thing. And I don’t really believe in gender anyway.

I’m a bit worried a central part of your job is being ‘pro rights for all’ but you don’t understand any of the arguments around this stuff though.

Here's the other thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4459063-to-not-get-the-e-mail-sign-off-with-pronoun-s

Isn't it more polite to just use peoples names? Then there is no issue.

Think how ridiculous this would sound in practice:

"Kurt would like to meet with you at 4pm because Kurt wants to discuss next weeks quota. Kurt also asked that you knock before entering the office because Kurt may be on a call"

It's literally taught to primary age children that we use a pronoun instead of constantly repeating the name of the person/dog/car/whatever to make conversation flow better. Because it sounds bloody stupid otherwise.

@twoastars

Isn't it just so people know to address you as him/her/they when speaking to you or referring to you

But what if I haven't yet decided what I prefer as I am still trying to work it out and I strongly object to being forced to commit to a particular pronoun. While I am deciding I don't care how people address me and am happy being referred to as him, her, them or whatever they prefer

Whilst this is completely made up, I feel that the logic works to illustrate that forcing people to give their pronouns is impinging on them in an unacceptable way.

I am very very happy to respect the preference of others when they tell me which pronoun to use when addressing them. I am much less happy to be forced to provide a pronoun for addressing me with when my pronoun is obvious in my name and what I look like and when I don't care if people addresses me by the wrong one as it just makes me laugh rather than upsets me. I have no need of external validation of my gender as I know what it is

I work for a charity and have declined to put this in my email signature for various reasons. If people want to talk to me, or if they want to talk about me, they can refer to me by my name. If I talk about service users to a manager I refer to them by their name. Using a name is more polite anyway.

Ah, sorry, I totally didn't know a different thread was going on with the same question. I will read and learn!

Glad it's not just me then. My working ability is not reflected by Mrs, Mr or Miss or even Master and it most definitely isn't by him or her. It just seems like a huge step backward in that context. So made me wonder if I was missing something outside of the whole woke thing.

There was a good guide kicking around on 'National Pronoun Day' about how to handle this. I forget which org it was from. But their suggested deflationary / non confrontational approach was to say 'that is not a practice I follow'. I plan to use that if it ever comes up in a meaningful way in my workplace - hard to argue with.

Unless you're happy to be addressed with whatever people think fits, I don't see the issue.

As most people are. I've dealt with many Sams and Alexs and not known what sex they were. It doesn't make a jot of difference to my professional dealings with them. And if I were a Sam or an Alex, and someone who had never met me called me 'him', I can't imagine how tortuously fragile I'd have to be to care.

So made me wonder if I was missing something outside of the whole woke thing.

You're definitely not. It's nonsense, and I understand if you're happy to swim along with it, but you'd also be quite reasonable to resist it.

@twoastars

Isn't it just so people know to address you as him/her/they when speaking to you or referring to you

I kind of see where you're coming from, but again when I'm responding to people via email (most of my client group I never meet and sometimes due to ethnicity, I don't know if they're male or female) it doesn't reflect on the service I provide. If I don't know their gender, I just adapt my grammar around it - easy.