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?

I have a unisex name. There are 5 of is w the same name in the organisation - four men and one woman (myself). As my corner of the industry is a male dominated one, I am assumed to be a male all the time - unless someone actually meets me/speaks to me face to face. Not only have I never found this traumatic, its actually very useful, given the amount of misogyny still out there.

Could we use (adult human female) if we fancied or would that lead to disciplinary

Ugh. I have a name that is unisex (although technically I have the female spelling FWIW) Ive occasionally had emails addressed to 'sir' etc but honestly it's such a non issue. Frankly I find it more annoying when people spell my name wrong - I mean c'mon its literally in my email AND the signature so how do you spell it wrong!?!

As a poster said above, highlighting that a person is female increases bias against them. So this thing you are being asked to do might help a tiny number of people, but it it hinders a whole half of the rest of the population.

YABU. Why do you care? The two seconds it takes you to write (she, her) is going to have an at most miniscule effect on you.

Bias.

Remember this: www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html

I don't see the problem.
You are giving people information about how to be polite to you.
People dont like to assume.
And they are asking all staff to do it so as not to single people out.
Which is them being polite, too.
Wouldn't you want to be polite and address someone the way they want to be addressed?
I see no difference between that and the lady at the bank asking if it is ok to call me by my first name. They want to be polite and friendly and they don't want to presume.
You do want to be polite, don't you?

You do want to be polite, don't you?

Fuck that.

That's what I figured

I'm not sure I do want to be polite in this instance. Women have been polite for far too long.

About pronouns?
Not the hill I want to die on

No but there's a wide range of options between docile compliance and dying on a hill.

I'd be tempted to say it's a GDPR issue.

My pronoun is "Their Grace"

“Could we use (adult human female) if we fancied or would that lead to disciplinary”

The ‘preferred pronoun’ culture demands that we identify ourselves according to gender, not sex. However I believe that alongside people who feel that their central identity is gender, and that’s fine by me, I also have a right to identify according to my sex.

And that is where politeness becomes a problem because putting Adult Human Female could well lead to a disciplinary, actually.

Politeness usually depends on reciprocity to be genuine.

I get misgendered all the time (I use a shortened form of my name which isn't the "usual" female shortened form, but isn't the male one either), it's vaguely annoying when the school email Dear Mr Visions as they've known me for over 15 years, and causes confusion when I speak to suppliers in the Middle East who have been merrily emailing Mr Visions but then get Ms Visions on the phone.

I've never felt the need to report a hate crime though.

You do want to be polite, don't you?

That's the attitude that's got women into the mess we are in in the first place. We are conditioned to 'let him down gently'; not not say a forceful 'no' when they're trying, as strangers, to force us to accept their help in order to find a way in (read Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear if you're unsure of the kind of dark places to which this can lead).

I'm a feminist academic - precisely the sort of person you'd expect to support this utter lunacy. I've long-since championed LGBTQ rights, I've attended queer conferences, I have LGBTQ students whose rights and interests I've stridently fought for. But there's a difference between protecting my trans students and ceding over every right women have gained inch by painful inch, when equality is still a pipe dream.

The currently overwhelming pro-trans rhetoric is dangerous. It's dangerous, for one reason, because lesbians (who have been badly let down by the likes of Stonewall) are being told they need to 'get over their genital fetish'. This is coercive: another rhetoric with which women are historically all-too familiar. It's also - and let's call it precisely what it is, and would have been called by Stonewall et al until only recently - homophobia.

This whole groundwell is extremely concerning for all women. I don't want to state my 'preferred pronouns' as an email signature, because women the likes of me have spent decades asserting the truism that our gender has absolutely no relevance to our professionalism, our ability, or our commitment (but it does have relevance to sustained sexual harrassment in the workplace, which many female academics - me included - have found directed at us).

The very last thing I'm going to do is draw continued attention to my gender in the workplace. And any requests to do so will be met with a flat refusal.

It's not about 'making others comfortable'. It's about rolling over and ceding our hard-won rights to the strident rhetoric of one very aggressive, misogynistic, homophobic group of people.

And for me, for one, it's not happening.

Of course, in giving people information about how to be polite to you you are also giving them information about how to be impolite.
So, I guess, if you felt affronted by the request for politeness you could choose to ignore it and it would cause double the offence, since it is right there, in black and white, how they like to be addressed.
Opportunities abound for rude people with a chips on their shoulders.
So, win win

Also as another poster says above, I don't give a fuck if someone assumes I'm male or female and I certainly won't be offended if they get my pronouns wrong, so no, adding pronouns isn't being polite either (and also I'm not about to put politeness above disadvantaging women in the workplace)

I’m happy to call other people whatever pronouns they wish but when there’s such a bias if I signify I am female then no one should force me to in a work situation.
Should we also make people sign off with other things people have a bias about? Black, gay, Muslim, pregnant, disabled etc?

*Sigh.
If people realised that most people are self obsessed... Most people couldn't give two hoots about your gender. They give it a fleeting thought then move on with their day while you bang on and on and on about it because it's the sole focus of your life life.

Most other people couldn't give a stuff and are happy for you to just crack on. They are as aware as they need to be and not very interested, as you aren't in them.

If they are abusive or discriminative, call them out. Otherwise, please shut the fuck up!

I don't mean OP, I mean the You that is banging the drum and creating all this self obsessed fuss.

This whole groundwell is extremely concerning for all women. I don't want to state my 'preferred pronouns' as an email signature, because women the likes of me have spent decades asserting the truism that our gender has absolutely no relevance to our professionalism, our ability, or our commitment (but it does have relevance to sustained sexual harrassment in the workplace, which many female academics - me included - have found directed at us

This is it.

hazell42 - what are you on about? No one is talking about not referring to people by their preferred pronouns. This us about whether we want to tell other people what pronouns to use for us.

You do want to be polite, don't you?

What, more than I want to be treated as an equal member of society?

No

Most people couldn't give two hoots about your gender.

But many actually do, to the point it’s clearly noticeable in just a week of signing off as female on an email:

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html

Is it really so hard to understand the negative impact on women of this 'tiny thing' we are slowly but surely being railroaded into complying with.
I like to be gender neutral as long as I can because you are treated differently, better if others assume you are male or are unsure. I refute your 'tiny thing'.
Gender should not matter at work and your tiny thing ensures it does.