Pronouns- here to stay??

[StuffLikeThat]

Can I get people's thoughts on whether the act of stating your "personal pronouns" (after your name on LinkedIn or in your email signature etc) is here to stay? Is it just a fad or will this stick and just be a thing for ever more?

@StuffLikeThat

So do you think that the vast majority of people who are declaring their pronouns are aware of the underlying ideology/ reasons for it... or do you think they are just naively doing it because other people are and they think it's a nice thing to do?

Yes I think most people doing it have not considered the implications. I think lots of people are appalled by homophobia of the past and think this is the same, so fall over themselves to show they want to include everyone. But it’s not remotely the same and it’s not possible to give everyone what they want here.

@PermanentTemporary - out of interest, what's wrong with using sex-based pronouns? The number of people who are trans/ NB must be relatively small, percentage-wise... just wonder why everyone is adopting this practice for a very small minority. We don't declare other characteristics in our email signatures to make other minority populations comfortable, so why do it in this case? We don't state our sexuality, for example.

I won’t ever do it, it’s just pointless and meaningless and yes, largely plain old virtue signalling. I don’t care if I’m the only one not doing it, I have no problem being in a minority of one.

I think most women don’t understand the way their rights are gradually being eroded with practices like these and ‘don’t see the harm’.

^ Well put

No thank you.

^ Also well put

Non binary are narcissists, just trying to find the latest way to make sure they are different. They’ll hopefully move on to the next thing soon enough and we can put this pronoun bullshit behind us.

I think my favourite is when people put she/her/hers. Are they trying to show they know grammar?

I refuse to engage in any nonsense like this and if anyone told me they were non binary I would laugh.

Fad hopefully. You cant be non binary you were born a sex. Change that if you wish through science and medicine but you cant be neither. Its just not possible.

@tootiredtospeak well Laurie Penny claims she's non binary AND a woman! Anyone figured that one out yet?

DH is public sector and it was getting very pronouny for a while. They were strongly encouraged to attend a training session on pronouns, apparently lasting an hour…

Over a couple of months it just died off, the workshop stopped running, the higher ups took pronouns off their emails, HR had never used them in signatures, no further discussion.

In those months the big boss was sent a copy of Trans by Helen Joyce. May have been a coincidence, may not

Oh god, I hope that happens in my industry. D&I is MASSIVE at the moment and everyone is falling over themselves to demonstrate inclusivity. No one talks about trans inclusivity, not like they do about other areas, and yet pronoun declarations are ubiquitous. It's supposed to make people feel included and yet it has the absolute opposite affect on me. I feel more and more excluded.

And then the other day I spotted that a female colleague had put her pronouns on LinkedIn.... this is a female colleague who lives not far from Marion Millar and who I alerted to what was happening up there. She was horrified at the time.... and now she's gone and put pronouns after her name. WTF?

I wonder how "non-binary people" would feel if all pronouns changed to they/them. Not special enough anymore?

Compulsion to declare pronouns isn’t inclusive of trans people who aren’t ready to go public either.

I’m not sure.

Dd aged 19 who is at university told me her and her friends now call everyone “they / them” initially when they meet someone new as they don’t want to offend them and they wait to be corrected.

It's a lot of bollocks and I will not participate.

It’s a fad - although I think calling it that actually undermines the seriousness of how regressive and misogynistic the ideology behind it is.

Everyone is non binary because gender is just regressive stereotypes 🤷‍♀️ Doesn’t change peoples sex though.

I actually would welcome a more general shift to they/them when a persons sex doesn’t matter when it really shouldn’t - eg processional context. And I think that will continue to increase across the board but just as a natural linguistic development rather than an ideological diktat.

The language rigour of gender ideology is so complex and against material reality that it really will not be sustainable over a long period

@TeacherJen

I don’t see the harm in it. I think a lot of younger people want to show solidarity with non binary people. My friend’s son is now non binary and it took me and my husband a while to get used to saying “them” instead of “him” but if it makes them feel more comfortable. I think the point of putting “she/her” is so that the few people who put “they/them” feel less weird for specifying it if we all do it. I must say I haven’t done it on my work emails or anything but was thinking about doing it.

When did sexism become stunning and brave?

That male non binary friend; what changed except that he as a male may decide (stunning your son) to (bravely) do female things?
That's the underlying ideology, that boys doing girl things is now revolutionary.
As for girls doing boys things thats been done before, but we taught the girls that it was girls doing girl things.

Your son's friend has an added bonus of being able to control your sons ability to relay his personal impressions of this friend. Your son would not be mean to or about someone who is stunning and brave would he?

As for no harm, is that applicable to medical professionals claiming that female and male are no longer important, while ignoring that male never pregnant has been the base model of medical teachings since doctors (male) drove healers (the female ones) out of medicine and midwifery?

The pregnancy differential bit as the basis for sex based discrimination. Itss why "he/him, she/her, they/them" males will never need to worry about that inequality.

[quote StuffLikeThat]@PermanentTemporary - out of interest, what's wrong with using sex-based pronouns? The number of people who are trans/ NB must be relatively small, percentage-wise... just wonder why everyone is adopting this practice for a very small minority. We don't declare other characteristics in our email signatures to make other minority populations comfortable, so why do it in this case? We don't state our sexuality, for example.[/quote]
Because sexuality is not intrinsic in how you address someone. Pronouns are. I think that’s the reason.

@TeacherJen

I don’t see the harm in it. I think a lot of younger people want to show solidarity with non binary people. My friend’s son is now non binary and it took me and my husband a while to get used to saying “them” instead of “him” but if it makes them feel more comfortable. I think the point of putting “she/her” is so that the few people who put “they/them” feel less weird for specifying it if we all do it. I must say I haven’t done it on my work emails or anything but was thinking about doing it.

🙄

I hope it's a fad, but I got an email from my child's HT the other day...guess what was in their signature...?

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo

Hoping it's a fad, it's not something I will ever support. Work have recently formed a Diversity and Inclusion forum so I'm expecting this kind of rubbish to start filtering out to us soon.

I see no reason to have pronouns in my email signature, if someone wants to refer ti me and doesn't want to risk being wrong then they can just use my name. So instead of 'she wrote the notes' they can say 'halfshrunk wrote the notes'.

That doesn’t always work.

Lucy is coming to dinner, shall I ask her what she wants to drink or will she bring her own bottle?

Lucy is coming to dinner, shall I ask Lucy what Lucy wants to drink or will Lucy bring her own bottle?

The second version is just mad and nobody talks like that. Pronouns are a necessary part of language.

I don’t have a strong opinion on this but no idea why people are so against saying “they” instead of her or she if asked to do so.

@Wizzbangfizz

It is a hill I'm prepared to die on - totally agree about the erosion of womens rights

This

Not for me. Having spent my adulthood strenuously resisting the idea that my sex has any relevance to my professional commitment or competence, I've never done it yet, and am not about to start now,

@TeacherJen but you don't address people with their pronouns, it's how you refer to them, most often when they are not present. People declare their pronouns because they don't want to be offended if someone gets their gender wrong. How is it different to chatting to a new female colleague and asking if, say, they have a boyfriend? Assuming that they are heterosexual when actually they are lesbian? The assumption of heterosexuality can be offensive to people that are homosexual... yet we don't state out sexual preferences on our email signatures.