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 think it's all a nonsense and I am not gender critical.

I simply think that we need to stop "gender" (ie sex) stereotyping and then people wouldn't feel that they must be women because they want to do womanly things. I am not a transman because I wear trousers and not skirts.

People are not in the wrong body, it's all to do with stereotyping.

The non-binary/bi-gender thing IS just attention seeking in my view.

I don't have pronouns in my signature though it is encouraged where I work. I've noticed quite a few people don't, though.

As you say, "they" can also be construed as a specific pronoun preferred by some non-binary people. I prefer not to be referred to by "they" as I don't consider myself non-binary. So I provide my pronouns so that I can be referred to as "she", which also matches my sex binary.

I will use "they" if it's impossible for me to determine the gender of the person I'm referring to based on the information I have. For those who say that this isn't possible in a workplace, I sometimes just work with database identity numbers, which do nothing other than represent the existence of a person - all other attributes unspecified.

But using "they" to represent missing knowledge feels very uncomfortable, especially when I also have colleagues who prefer to be referenced by "they". So where possible, I'd prefer to know. Obviously if all I've got is an ID number, I'll never know, but when I know, it's nice and respectful of others to get it right....

You had to suss out the sex from the name of the person and when in doubt ask someone to confirm.

And/or just default to He, and we all slightly seethed about seeing ourselves described as male by default, while writing it off as an inevitable sign of inculculated patriarchy.....

I am honestly struggling to imagine a situation in which you need to discuss someone in the third person in enough length to need pronouns, and you don't already know whether they're a man or a woman tbh.

I think to most people it would be obvious that I am female and identify as female from my name and appearance.

But if my name were androgynous - Charlie, Fred etc I don't think I would be in a hurry to point out my sex in an email, as actually you can open yourself up to sex based discrimination.

Or indeed if I were non-binary or androgynous in appearance, why should I be forced to be a "they" or say either way what my pronouns were should I not wish to indicate my biological sex or gender identity?

Some people may want to wear their identity as a badge and others may not for good reasons.

Surely it's obvious? Two possible and probable scenarios below....

A: They're a user of an IT system who has logged a helpcall, you've never met them or even spoken to them verbally, but have had a lot of back and forward correspondence and are now discussing the helpcall and subsequent discussion with another team?

B: You've been exchanging emails with Dr Alex Doe in a third party company regarding a situation. Dr Doe is now on holiday, so you're emailing the person specified in the Out of Office, but need to describe the advice and discussions you've had with Dr Doe.

Seems like Scenario A is what the singular "they" is for (not for people who believe they're neither a man nor a woman) and Scenario B is what the forward function is for in Outlook.

"Hello,

I have just received an out of office message from Dr Doe, who has been dealing with the below matter.

Please can someone help?"

I am happy to use she/her for a transwoman or he/his for a transman, but anything other than that is a big no. There are supposed 72 genders, am I supposed to fucking remember that Adam is an em/er, Sheila a hir/hir, Tommy is a hu/hu, etc etc. It is so attention seeking and don't encourage mental illness please. This shit is created by someone with a mental age of 8.

Because the nonsensical pronoun recital is signalling allegiance to the gender faith, which I will not do. If that’s what you want to signal, that’s fine.

Those people claiming that it’s just a handy way to ensure their correspondent knows the sex of someone are either being disingenuous or have given no thought to the fact they are making a religious declaration.

Situation A: my work's helpdesk literally use "the user" for this.

I am absolutely certain I could manage either of those scenarios without needing to use pronouns

I'm struggling to imagine how you could know that Dr Hayes is the best person to treat this condition and that their patients are always satisfied without having the foggiest idea whether Dr Hayes is a man or a woman.

Same.

And even if you couldn't, what happens if you say, "I've been emailing your colleague Sam Briggs and they - I'm sorry, I don't actually know whether Sam is a man or a woman because we've only emailed - they said that...."?

Nothing. Nothing happens and no one is offended. The other person will probably tell you whether Sam is a man or a woman as well.

Now let's talk about how pronouns can be UNhelpful.

Imagine you're a rape survivor and you contact the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre for help.

You're told that your counsellor is called Kai Reed (they/them).

You know that if they're the male kind of non binary person as opposed to the female kind of non binary person (lol) you won't be able to talk to them because you're traumatised by male people.

So you reply saying, "Excuse me, sorry to ask, but is Kai Reed female or male?"

You receive a response saying, "Kai is non binary. Our organisation is fully inclusive of trans and gender diverse people and we do not tolerate any kind of transphobia or bigotry. Regretfully, we are unable to move forward with you and have cancelled your appointment."

(This actually happened, by the way. And the female member of staff who objected got fired.)

The problem is that because of the contested use of the same language to mean both sex and head-gender, there is no "right".

Just as you don't want "they" because the word has been appropriated to label a non-gender identity that you do not consider yourself to have , I find "she" problematic because it's been appropriated to label people who experience themselves as a non-biological woman-in-the-mind and I am not one of those people.

As English does not, as I previously noted, have a third party pronoun for "person of either sex", and also now no longer has a pronoun for "biologically female person" either, I am somewhat angry about being de-existed from my own language.

My compromise is to accept people will have to use "she" for me because what else is there, but I'm no way going to actively declare it in an email sig because in the belief system of people who do that, what they understand by "she" is not what I am. And to the OP's question, of course I judge the people who do, because they signed up to the belief system that undefined women!

Exactly, thank you for pointing that out @MissScarletInTheBallroom.
The normal way of speaking is to just use he/she depending on the sex of the person and give a wide berth to all this nonsense of gender neutral talk.

Oh I see. I misunderstood your post.

I thought you were suggesting that it's helpful to put pronouns in our email signatures so that people know whether to use "he" or "she".

In the real world this was never actually a problem until about five minutes ago when people started pretending that whether you are a he or a she or a they depends on how you feel inside and we can't always tell what sex someone is anyway.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom what if you had an email of Sarah and needed to connect her to Joe - 'hi Joe, Sarah needs some help with this report - please could you help Sarah' just sounds ridiculous and overworked.

I would go even further than that. Those who demand to be referred as they/them should have one of the other two options picked up randomly. We would get it right 50% of the time.

I think most people would automatically refer to Sarah as she, wouldn't they?

@MissScarletInTheBallroom I certainly would!

What about Irfa, Kashmin and Zed?

'hi Joe, Sarah needs some help with this report - please could you assist?' Sarah

I guess that could work, but frankly I don't want to put that much effort into wording every email I send so i can avoid using pronouns.
Also, because I guess the point of this thread wasn't about how useful it is to have them, I don't have a problem sharing my own pronouns because I'm proud to be a woman and don't have any issue advertising that I am on to anyone I correspond with.
I also am happy to be inclusive and make it that little bit easier for anyone who wants to share pronouns but hasn't been comfortable to do so.
I don't really care if that makes some narrow minded people on this thread think I'm thick or stupid 🤷‍♀️ I don't exactly hold them in high esteem either ....