Pronouns at work/being gender critical at work etc

[Leafstamp]

If you are a woman and have your pronouns in your email signature at work, can I ask why?

If you haven't given it much thought, are you open to being persuaded that, albeit in a small way, this practice of declaring pronouns is contributing to a movement that harms women, children and LGB people?

Equally, if you are already clued up on this and consider yourself a sex realist/gender critical are you able to be open about this at work and challenge instances were gender identity ideology is being unduly promoted? Do you find that others agree with you?

I work in a small company where none of this goes on, so I am curious.

I used to just put Miss and now Mrs on my signature but I don't mind if people put pronouns on. I find it helpful actually and I like to make sure I'm addressing them in the way they prefer.

I've noticed this too - so much more disproportionately anti-trans than the people I know in real life.

”Anti-trans” gets bandied about when really what I think you mean is people who don’t think gender identity is an appropriate category to base policy and practice on - typically people who don’t believe in gendered souls and don’t believe men should access women’s single sex spaces.

In terms of why it looks like there are more people here who understand the threat of trans ideology to women’s rights, I think the reasons are two fold:

1. It gets discussed her more than IRL so more people understand the issues. Surveys have shown that once you explain to people that a transwomen is a man and what their demands typically are, then people are not in favour of meeting those demands.
2. People can say what they really think here, more so than in real life. I suspect many people look like they don’t object to TRA demands IRL because they are scared or their job/quiet life depends on not voicing their true feelings.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom course it is, because it tells me what pronouns to use when referring to them in subsequent emails.

Honestly too busy doing actual work at work to have time to judge anyone who has put their pronouns on their signature.
To the PP who said they avoid anyone with their pronouns - great. One less email to deal with.

I really don’t understand this. How does it help you to know how to address someone?

The reason it matters to me is because I build personal relationships with people via email - a lot of my work is remote and we don't always connect via teams to begin with.
I'm not sure where some of you work, but the issue in your environment isn't that you shared pronouns, it's that the culture in your business is completely off if you are getting a different response based on sex or gender.
That's what you should be fighting.
I'm happy to be a woman. I'm happy to be seen as a woman. I have no need to hide it and if I felt I was getting a raw deal simply based on that fact alone I'd leave - life is too short to waste it working for a company with that sort of damaging and outdated culture.

@Soontobe60 but the outcome would be the same? If I had MrsZaffa instead of she/her, you'd still be understanding what my preferred pronouns would be?

Why does it make any difference? Why do you find it helpful to know? Surely you just engage with thé in the same way regardless?

It is pretty 50/50 at my work whether people have pronouns in their email signature at work. Personally I don't as I don't subscribe to the ideology.... it's a belief system. I see it as no difference to being asked to put my religion in my email signature.

I have an androgynous name and it would do me absolutely no favours to highlight I'm a woman. The gender pay gap is real.

@SnakesAndArrows but what difference would it make? If I said she / her or Mrs or (female) - I'm still just posted providing the additional context - surely you're not proposing that I use (female) but still someone might use her/him as my pronouns?
You'd just be having the same argument about people putting that additional context instead of pronouns onto their email.
Also adding in my title is terribly old fashioned and not in keeping with my personal culture in the office.

I would generally use "you" when emailing someone.

helpful to know they're a virtue signalling handmaiden?

What’s offensive about it? Genuine question

I have a unisex name, and work in a male dominated industry. My title is Doctor (I have a PhD), so not very helpful in determining my gender, and I do the type of job where I'm often referred to in the third person by others. So I have pronouns on my signature as I do get a little riled by hearing myself described as "he" in email after email.....

But what about when you're referring to someone else in a trail? For example "I contacted roundaboutthehillsareshining who advised we need to consider the impact on the production system. <Pronoun for roundaboutthehillsareshining> feels this action will generate unnecessary risk".

That's when, for people with unisex names and titles, pronouns can be really helpful to stop us being misidentified....

The first time that poster claimed it "harms no one" I took the time to post a deep explanation of why this is not true. The poster knows this because they replied to it. They replied with nothing more than the words "That's just offsensive".

They then made exactly the same claim without any reference to the fact that they now know whether or not they personally consider the practice harmful, other people do.

So my reply works on two levels.

Firstly, it is offensive to claim it's harmless when it isn't. It's publicly declaring allegiance to a sexist and homophobic belief system that is being used to abuse and silence women and LGB people. No one would accept people declaring they are racist or ablist at work but somehow sexism and homophobia gets a free ride.

Secondly, it is offensive for the poster to continue to claim it's not harmful without making any reference to the fact they now know some people do consider it harmful. They may not agree, and that's ok. Their opinion is ther own. But to simply pretend no other perspectives exist when you now know they do, in front of the people who told you that, is an offensive way to behave.

I think the context of the previous exchange would probably make a difference to understanding this as I still don’t understand what is offensive about it but it’s nothing to do with me so it doesn’t really matter.

It seems like a problem because you are imagining a scenario where you do know someone's sex and thinking how you'd change your natural use of the sexed pronoun to hide that knowledge. Of course it feels clumsy.

But there are plenty of times in life when you genuinely don't know, and then it's natural to use "they".

"I need a recommendation for a plumber but I have to be at work in the afternoon so they'll have to be ok to lock up when they leave"

"Bob recommended his plumber Sally. She'll be fine locking up when she's finished".

It's not quite the same grammatically because singular "they" is the placeholder for a generic person not the gender neutral pronoun for an actual one, but in natural speech if you genuinely don't know someone's sex you find you do naturally use "they".

FWIW I don't especially like the use of "they" as a gender neutral pronoun for a known person. I also don't like the fact that our grammar makes it impossible to refer to a known person without referring to their sex. English could really do with a word that means "this person whose sex is not relevant right now". It's a shame all that genderist pronoun energy went into people demanding specific labels instead of ways to not label people.

Of course there is. But do you think that is a natural way of communication? It reads a like a telegram from the old days, you just need to put the STOPs in between.

Could you point out an Wikipedia article with no pronouns? I am genuinely curious.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon) because some people think that Margaret Anne Bulkley was a transman and others think she was a woman who disguised herself to enter a male-only career.

Replying to myself...

Also the more people have human connections that are entirely online, the more natural gender neutral language becomes because you genuinely don't know and it's incredibly creepy to ask.

"FlirtsWithRhinos is by far the most annoying MN poster, their posts are so wordy and pedantic!"

"I had a great game this afternoon, WaspHead156 really knows how to lead a team. I always try to join their squad."

how would this have worked before the use of pronouns in written signatures started? After all, doing so is pretty recent.