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?

What marievanarkle said. What an utterly brilliant post.

I have an ambiguous name and deliberately don't clarify on email that I'm a woman as I do a lot of work via email and get much less hassle this way.

I'd 'forget' to update my signature unless pushed - sex discrimination is still alive and well and I'm not giving anyone an easy opportunity to continue it.

I've been grumbling all my adult life about the use of Mrs/Miss/Ms against the nice simple non marital defining Mr.
Am I hell going to add to this with preferred pronouns - no I am not.
I've been resisting gender stereotyping for my life so this deeply annoys me.
My default in the absence of knowing how someone wants to be addressed would be to use their name...

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

Thankyou for your well worded post, I agree wholeheartedly. I'm too busy raging about this and other stuff to articulate myself properly.

jelly That's not really what I meant. I meant from a trans perspective. Which is presumably the point of the post, no? "My pronoun isn't what you thought it was, tah-dah! I win, you're phobic" kinda thing.

I can't imagine having so much hubris that I demand and expect that an entire culture changes its language to suit me.

We had similar in our work place and i said i didnt have a gender so any pronoun was likely to upset me as I'd feel differently on different days. They said but you are a woman youve had kids. I said thats my biological sex not my gender. They said oh god i don't really understand this.

I don't put my pronouns

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.

Which encapsulates this entire ridiculous charade incredibly succinctly.

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

Of course. Women must always be polite, regardless of how they feel about an issue.

It’s pretty much their primary goal: self-sacrificing politeness in every and all situations. Never speak up, never make a fuss. Cheer up love, it might never happen. Give us a smile.

@DuMondeB

Women have been using their initials (eg JK Rowling) or male pseudonyms to get away from being discriminated against for being female for decades

Bit longer than that. Ask Currer Bell and his brothers Ellis and Acton

I answer the phone and people assume I am male/dh, but I'm not going to start answering by saying I'm female!

how about just writing the word

No

in the space provided for preferred pronouns?

My company have requested that we all sign off with he/him/his or whatever. I have refused. I agree that my gender has no relevance to my professionalism and ability and therefore I will not be adding my preferred pronouns to my email signature.

@AlphaBites I was wondering if you can share why you dont want to or what makes you feel uncomfortable about this?

Icequeen how many do? Is there a skew towards one gender?

I quite often have no idea what sex people are from emails, especially if they have names like "Chris" "Sam" "Alex"

Why does it matter unless you’d respond differently if you did know?

I think I must be massively missing something.
What's wrong with Ms, Mr or nothing, or Mx (I saw it on a form recently)
The preferred pronoun thing seems clumsy.
What happened to "prefer not to say"?

I do not want titles, I’d be happy to do away with those in general life

I hate the Miss/Mrs/Ms thing to. When I didn’t want it on my bank card when I got married, they tried to help but ‘computer said no’ so I was ‘dash’ then first name then surname. I noticed the title is not on my credit card now nor dashes.

How utterly ridiculous! love the comment about the gynaecologist though!

I'm with the mysteriously forget to camp tbh, not worth the hassle

I really fear this happening.

I don’t want to put pronouns on my work email, on the basis of being a “good ally”.

I don’t misgender and I’m always polite. But it’s just not needed in emails. The vast majority of the time an email is direct contact where you’re not using she/him/her/their pronouns anyway.

If I was asked to do this I’d have to object - because I don’t like gendered stuff - and that would single me out for discrimination. So it’s not a “tiny gesture” at all. Not if you don’t believe in it. Then it’s “othering” me!

I have absolutely no problem at all with addressing people however they prefer, and getting on with my job and life like a good human being. But I don’t want to be forced into being complicit in something that I am uncomfortable with in this way.

@NicciLovesSundays

I just don't want to, why should I? I think it's all bullshit.

I couldn't care less if Chris becomes Christine, they can crack on an do what makes them happy. But when I'm expected to join on the parade, to state what I feel I am? Absolutely not. I don't feel anything (except cranky at certain times of the month) I just am who I am and this is a female.

And this is why the Chinese are busy taking over the world economy while the English-speaking West stagnates- no pronouns in Chinese! They are free to get in with doing the work instead of pissing about debating the ethics of email signatures...

When I worked in Hong Kong, even my colleagues with near-flawless English would often pick pronouns randomly and mix and match throughout a conversation. If you corrected them (which was a bit rude anyway) they would smile and nod but they genuinely didn’t understand why it mattered to us.

We have been asked to do the same but I haven't. I'm a Dr so titles don't help "gender" me. My names are also both possibly male and interchangeable as first and surnames (think Kim Michael / Michael Kim) so I am regularly assumed to be male which in my line of work is sometimes a bonus!

I do get great joy from the regular 'misgendering' we receive from our DCs school however "Dear Dr Inky and Mrs Smith"

Ah yes hazell42, because a man would be asked "you do want to be polite, don't you?"

This rhetoric is just another way of trying to keep women in their lanes.
Be polite. Just be accommodating.
Women have been trampled on polite and accommodating since time immemorial.
And still they want more.
Nah. Fuck that.
My sex has absolutely no bearing on my ability to do my job. It isn't something I need to draw attention to, for reasons pp have highlighted a lot more beautifully than I ever could.

FWIW, I don't give a fiddlers what someone identifies as. Be whoever you want to be, and live your life. I don't misgender people, and I will defend the rights of trans people to live their lives and be equals in our society.

I quite fancy being her Ladyship, do you think anyone would even notice? I don't think I ever look at email footers anyway.