to not want to sign off my emails with preferred pronouns?

[AlphaBites]

We've had an email do the rounds today at work saying in the next few weeks all staff are expected to sign off with their preferred pronouns, to save any embarrassment for any staff.

I don't want to.

Can I fight this somehow?

When I have been misgendered I am generally pleased, but it can then cause problems when you meet face to face. ( panic faces )

SO I amn’t too sure what pronouns I would choose. I am clearly not Male and so it would seem pretentious to insist on male pronouns , but I really dislike using female ones,I don’t gender identify as female

ANy suggestions when this comes our way?

Idk. It's useful when people have unfamiliar names.

Why is it useful? Why does it matter?

This is such utter nonsense.

I'm so glad I work in a small firm where we all just treat each other as human beings.

Why does it matter what sex the person is? We seem to be going backwards with this regressive crap.

YABVU, Everyone should be able to get an email where they feel rightly addressed due to their gender. I would be a bit offended if someone thought I was a man, when I'm a woman. Imagine how it feels for trans, especially ones who haven't yet transitioned, don't be a dick OP.

However does it help a trans person if the OP states her pronouns or not?

Nowhere in this thread has anybody said that people should not be allowed to state their preferred pronouns, if they so wish and/or are not conventionally obvious.

If you have a very obvious female name and identify conventionally as she/her, or male and he/him, going to the trouble to mention this is just pointless.

A deaf employee might reasonably add a note to their signature saying "FYI: I am unable to use phones, so could you please correspond with me via email, text or whatsapp."

Only a weirdo would add a note saying "FYI: I have no visual or auditory issues, so I am able to communicate by all standard methods."

It's useful when people have unfamiliar names

OFGS...its not about that though is it... it's a fucking lunacy that has taken over the world. All this pronoun bullshit. We live in a time where the word 'woman' is now considered offensive. I'm sick of it I am sick of all the wokeness where just about every aspect of being female is being challenged and eroded by a bunch of loud, entitled mummies boys. Im just so fucking sick of it all. It is just everywhere. Yes I will be flamed for this but I just dont fucking care anymore. It was even in a cafe I go to sometimes......a sign about pronouns FFS above the tray of chocolate brownies.

I know people whose email signature includes their title (Mr, Mrs, Ms etc) because they have names which could be either gender or (often) are names which aren't typically British origin sounding ones, and they get a lot of "Dear Mr X" when they're a woman for example. I guess it saves having to go back to people all the time and explain that actually they're "Ms X" so that's fair enough. I don't think anyone should have to do that if they don't want to though!

I'm in a job where I write a lot of formal emails and letters where it wouldn't be appropriate to use someone's first name as a greeting. If I'm not sure I'll usually do a google search to try and work it out, or if it's a less formal email I might fall back on "good morning/afternoon"!

I send emails to a range of people regularly from abroad that I have not a clue whether they are female or male. It does not matter. Why would it? You don't use personal pronouns usually with people directly, they are very easy to avoid.

I notice that a survey this week is saying that the public's acceptance of LGBT issues is going into reverse. It is these kind of things fuelling that.

I deal with people from all over the world and as pps have said i often don't know if they are male or female. It has nevr been an issue

Oh FFS how ridiculously woke.

Although I might find it useful for other reasons if everyone did this: the business I work in is very international and I often can't tell if someone is male/female from their name and people don't tend to include Mr / Mrs in their signatures. sometimes I have to refer to them in an email to someone else ('he/she said') and I'm unsure which they are. But it's not a major problem.

The whole thing about getting everybody to state their pronouns is clearly designed with the tiny minority of people who don't fit into the traditional male/female self-identity in mind. Very silly indeed: nobody's stopping those people where there's any ambiguity from doing that of their own free will.

If it were a case of helping people in international companies know how to formally address somebody with an unfamiliar/unisex name, they would just ask you to put Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms or even just M/F in brackets after your name.

There seems to be a strange dichotomy whereby people who identify non-conventionally with regards to sex/gender are trying to spread the message far and wide that it's nothing to be ashamed of; and yet they are trying to make the huge majority of people to whom it doesn't apply join in pointlessly, seemingly to avoid those to whom it does apply having to feel ashamed by standing out. Which is it?

I have always been a bit bloody minded. I worked in a building in the 1990s where everyone knew everyone when instructions came to wear our staff passes on display. I seem to remember that my head of HR went apoplectic in a large open plan office when I was made to remove a picture of Ronald Reagan that was over my own. What did for him was I had Maggie Thatcher and Guy the Gorilla under Ronald before my mug was exposed. I liked to rotate the pictures.

Anyway, if it were me I would send as many emails as I could think of signed

Preferred Pronouns
Grumpyunleashed

Good luck

I’m going for

Mine/mine/mine.

Everyone should be able to get an email where they feel rightly addressed due to their gender.

Absolutely, everyone should be able to get an email where they feel rightly addressed due to stereotypes associated with their sex. It is important in the work place to make sure women are recognised as wearing skirts, makeup, and long hair, and ensure they make the tea, are paid less and offered fewer promotion opportunities. Ensuring everyone treats women appropriate to gendered expectations is vital!

Everyone should be able to get an email where they feel rightly addressed due to their gender.

Are pronouns used according to sex or according to gender? It makes no sense to use pronouns according to someone's chosen gender, which might change from day to day. Everyone has a sex which can't be changed, and is what we have always used when deciding what pronoun to use.

Keeps things simple, and doesn't force anyone to endorse an ideology they don't believe in.

If it comes in where work I think I’ll use:

Signed Mr/s Manc Life

If they say anything I’ll they’ll them I’m gender fluid.

I have an ambiguous name and have been misgendered (mis sexed? Do pronouns refer to gender or sex?). Honestly I could not give a flying fuck.

And presumably a trans woman would usually call herself something quite clearly feminine so wouldn’t have this problem anyway in terms of email sign offs?

If people aren’t sure they can use a range of grammatical techniques to avoid the problem.

If someone is offended by being mis labelled they can put it in their signatures.

I just don’t really see how this helps anyone except those with ambiguous names. If I get an email from “Chris” I’ll respond “Hi Chris” and refer to them as “you” where necessary. There is no sentence I can think of where I would use she/her or he/him to refer to someone when in direct contact with that person. I doubt many trans people choose ambiguous names (I guess non-binary people might). Certainly the transwoman at my place of work has chosen a female name. What would “she/her” add in an email context? No one is going to refer to someone with that name as “he”.

If I then need to speak to someone else and refer to Chris, it is really none of Chris’s business how I refer to him or her. I may think Chris is a tosser, and refer to Chris as such. Or I might say “Chris has asked if you can send the paper to them”, or more likely I’d see if the person I’m discussing Chris with knows what sex Chris is.

The whole “normalising” it so people get used to it is nonsense, as is the idea that it is only a little thing to make others comfortable. No one gets to police my speech when they’re not there.

I used to work with a man, let’s call him Nigel. Except he had a nickname, Benny, which he really hated. So me and a few colleagues who didn’t really like Nigel, we’d always call him Benny when he wasn’t there. Of course we’d never do it to his face (and I know it sounds very childish - it was 20 years ago!). We weren’t bullies, we were just having a bit of petty fun. But Nigel could no more control whether we called him Benny when he wasn’t there (as he wasn’t there to hear it) than someone can insist I use “they” or “xe” or anything else when they’re not there.

Everyone should be able to get an email where they feel rightly addressed due to their gender.

It is rare to use pronouns on an email to an individual. This is a non issue.

Just say that you don’t use pronouns as you are genderfree and of the opinion that your gender indentity doesn’t fit gendered pronouns or standard non binary options. And insist that that is respected

I have a few colleagues who have been doing this for several months. At end of emails ‘preferred pronouns she/her’. (Both adult female humans doing this btw).
Omg had no idea it could be enforced policy. Hmmm

Why does this bother you though? It takes 2 seconds to add into your email signature, and on the off-chance that you email someone who it affects, you will be helping them feel as though the world is a slightly nicer place.

Because a world in which women are expected to collude in a narcissistic pantomime which erodes their rights to single-sex spaces, fair participation in sports, political representation, and even penis-free lesbian sex is NOT a "nicer place".

bitoffun exactly.

Would "Mother of dragons/First of her name"? suffice?

tarts people would never dare cross you!