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?

Dd has a friend who appears to be female, very outwardly feminine, traditional female name, has a boyfriend, but identifies as “they / him” and gets annoyed if people refer to them as “she / her”. It’s all a minefield. I’m glad I’m not their age

My guess is she’s had an easy life and likes the drama and victimhood which comes from the way she’s set things up. Of course if you’re called Julie and are female, people will refer to you as a woman. So she can get annoyed and feel justified in her own little world.

@DancingBarefootOnIce

Dd has a friend who appears to be female, very outwardly feminine, traditional female name, has a boyfriend, but identifies as “they / him” and gets annoyed if people refer to them as “she / her”. It’s all a minefield. I’m glad I’m not their age

My guess is she’s had an easy life and likes the drama and victimhood which comes from the way she’s set things up. Of course if you’re called Julie and are female, people will refer to you as a woman. So she can get annoyed and feel justified in her own little world.

There’s another group who are identifying themselves out of trauma. They’re desexing themselves.

It's extremely wanky and the more people who refuse to do it, the quicker it will disappear. It's pointless

It will last until they start requiring it of ordinary (non woke) men, or twattish men, or men who are otherwise not beholden to whatever pressures there are to conform to this, frankly bizarre, expectation.
As a somewhat woke man, but also quite twattish, if/when I’m ever asked, my pronoun will be “Sir”. If pressed further, “Sir Saucisse”.
And don’t you dare mispronoun me, and definitely don’t dehumanise me by third person pluralising me.

I am waiting for it to be compulsory at the office. Mine might in that case be formidable, adult human female, or the bitch queen from hell. I don't suppose either would be allowed.

I could go for Ma'am, or Madam I suppose.

They're here to stay. I don't understand the angst around them tbh. If you don't want to use your pronouns then surely the answer is to.... not do it.

I’m so out of date.

Male/Female
Mr, Mrs, Miss, Master, Ms.

I didn’t know we were supposed to put She/Her or He/Him nowadays.

I was rather hoping that the inward focused navel gazing wokism might have been jolted back into reality with the looming prospect of further conflict in Europe. Those nice Russians pointing guns and artillery won't be bothered about your pronouns or misgendering you, and a bullet doesn't care either way.

I hope they're not here to stay. It's bloody ridiculous. Surely no one fits into the male/female stereotypes?!

We've just had a non-binary person join my team at work. I'll call them "they/them" if that's what they want but I'm not putting pronouns on my signature. It's incredibly offensive.

In my workplace it’s not just email signatures that now include pronouns. The latest top trump move is to include them in your zoom name - so you’re confronted with loads of ‘Jane Smith she/her’ type boxes.

Luckily it’s all optional, for now anyway…

I think it should be acceptable to not include your pronouns. Surely some people just don't even care? I quite like the idea of getting rid of gendered pronouns completely (I like how it's more acceptable these days to say "actor" for either a man or a woman) but I can't see that happening.

Fad, for sure. Once the majority of people wise up and realsie how damaging it is to women and girls and we're already well down that road, in the uk at least.

I will refuse to have my pronouns in my email signature. I have an obviously female name.

I think it might be here to stay in a work environment as the people who are ignoring it (like me) start to leave the workforce as they retire.

Pronouns have been around pretty much as long as language has. People who take offence at acknowleding they exist are absurd.

Pronouns in email signatures has recently led to some confusion and embarrassment at my work.

I work with a young trans woman who transitioned and changed their name after a year of being employed as a man. They now use their female name and have "she/her" pronouns stated on emails.

Last month I had a manager phone me and explained that they had contacted "Mia", not knowing that she was a trans woman. When "Mia" answered the phone the manager thought they were talking to a man and explained that they were looking for "Mia" and must have dialled the wrong extension.

So... not always helpful.

@nosyupnorth

Pronouns have been around pretty much as long as language has. People who take offence at acknowleding they exist are absurd.

Literally everyone knows what the OP meant. Don't be obtuse.

@Kanaloa

I think it’s here to stay. I’m at uni (mature student) and it’s huge there. Seems every first class starts with an hour long piss about where we all have to share our pronouns and a fun fact. My favourite was one teacher who asked us to just say a bit about ourselves and our hobbies. I said ‘well I have four kids and when I’m not busy with them and work I like to bid x & y.’ The teacher then went ‘your pronouns?’

I am very obviously female and I just told you I have four kids. Shall I tell you I’m white and quite short and wearing jeans and trainers?

I'm a lecturer. I find it's usually unnecessary to use pronouns when addressing students or directing class discussion, unless it's tantamount to the silly linguistic contortionism mentioned upthread. That's actually rare.

If necessary I'll use the obvious one unless asked to do otherwise (in which case I'll respect that request. Courtesy aside, in this job you'd likely not last five minutes in this job if you did otherwise).

What I'll never do in a million years is ask students to divulge 'their' pronouns and engage in the hollow, pointless, virtue-signalling exercise of plastering mine across every Zoom screen or piece of correspondence. And I immediately think less of those who do.
I protect my trans students to the hilt and have done so behind the scenes, such as constantly closing every paper trail to avoid accidental disclosure of deadnames, for example.

I wonder if this cuckoo movement would rather I did this, or label myself as an adherent (unwilling or otherwise) with a BS ideology which has zero substance. They can believe in this gender cobblers if they like. What they can't do is force ME to believe it.

@thegcatsmother

I was rather hoping that the inward focused navel gazing wokism might have been jolted back into reality with the looming prospect of further conflict in Europe. Those nice Russians pointing guns and artillery won't be bothered about your pronouns or misgendering you, and a bullet doesn't care either way.

Many commenters thought the pandemic might do this, alas we now know that it all got rather worse over that time. I'm not sure there's anything that can tackle the pernicious weed of wokeism, except time.

@Notgettingbetter

I think it should be acceptable to not include your pronouns. Surely some people just don't even care? I quite like the idea of getting rid of gendered pronouns completely (I like how it's more acceptable these days to say "actor" for either a man or a woman) but I can't see that happening.

Actor is a noun, not a pronoun.

Why was the female word "actress" removed and the male word actor remains to remove sexed words from the English language?

I fucking hope not.

@Bouledeneige

I think it might be here to stay in a work environment as the people who are ignoring it (like me) start to leave the workforce as they retire.

I’m early 30s so I’ve got a long time to go until retirement. I know lots women my age who will also refuse

@thegcatsmother

I was rather hoping that the inward focused navel gazing wokism might have been jolted back into reality with the looming prospect of further conflict in Europe. Those nice Russians pointing guns and artillery won't be bothered about your pronouns or misgendering you, and a bullet doesn't care either way.

Completely agree. It also emphasises to me just how irrelevant pronouns are in isolation, and what actually matters is the power structures.

Someone can identify as trans, non-binary or whatever the hell they like, but what actually matters is how other people - the people with power - view them. I can’t see the Russian army conscripting men and then when one says ‘actually I identify as female’ they’d say ‘oh no problem we won’t conscript you then’! Identify, and self identity, only matter if the people with power say they matter. Regardless of how many she/hers you put on your emails, LinkedIn profile etc in the cold light of day they mean very little.

If one human being is upset about being described as he or she, I have no problem, but I so wish that a new word could be invented to refer to said person, which is not the third person plural "they". It is grammatical pooh. ONE person is not a they.