To be irritated at being asked to give my pronouns?

[purpledaze24]

I work in a very “progressive” organisation who are constantly trying to be sooo pc about everything 🙄
Almost daily I have meetings with colleagues, clients, and people from other organisations. At the beginning of EVERY meeting my manager asks everyone to go round and give their pronouns. It’s SO annoying! Every single person is always the pronoun they look like, my work also has nothing to do with supporting trans people or anything related, many of the people I’ve known for years, yet she still makes us do this every single meeting!! AIBU to be unbelievably irritated (and actually kind of offended) by this?

On a slightly different topic, I was at a friend’s barbecue recently and there was a young woman there who asked what my pronouns were. I answered she/her through gritted teeth and she said back “I’m he/him” (!) She was (what I assumed) was a slightly boyish lesbian. She didn’t appear to be making any attempt to look like a man. She even had long hair. She was just wearing “boyish” clothes (but stuff I’d wear sometimes). I thought how annoying it must be to go through life constantly having to “correct” people. Am I being overly judgmental by being annoyed by this? Like it feels like she’s just making a total mockery of gender and actually if I was a genuine trans man who desperately wanted to be recognised as he/him I’d feel like she was taking the absolute piss!

I'd say "well I have a vagina". Surely that answers itself or you'd hope it does.

Like you, I work in an environment where people are encouraged to share their pronouns (though not at every meeting, that sounds extreme). I’ve never done it and never will. I just ignore encouragement to add pronouns to written documents and if people are verbally adding their pronouns to their names when introducing themselves in a meeting, I just don’t do it, I just say my name. In years, no one had ever challenged me.

Just to be clear, it is left wing stuff this!

Tell them you're a he/him and watch them trip over themselves to try and get it right 😂

YANBU, I just say no thanks though

I would change jobs.

Even if you feel compelled to do this at work, you should have stood up for yourself at the BBQ. In a social situation don't let yourself be forced 'through gritted teeth' to comply with someone else's belief system. Stand up for yourself. Just refuse to play along.

I disagree! denigrating women and asserting the rights of men over them is right wing, in my opinion

Hi - I’m titchy and I’m atheist. What’s that - you want pronouns? Oh, I assumed we were allowed to pick any of the 9 protected characteristics and say which we had to show allyship. Why does Acme corporation only want to show allyship to one of the nine? Aren’t the others just as important?

Were there some words missing at the end there, or did the initiator genuinely want to be referred to as 'it'?!

Also, aren't pronouns only relevant when you're talking about the person, in front of them? How often would that even happen? If someone told me their pronouns I'd be tempted say "you're assuming I'm going to be talking about you"

I do the same, just my name and when appropriate my role. I’ve never been challenged - if you don’t want to give pronouns just don’t.

The BBQ woman was pure and simple just an attention-seeker. When would she actually need to refer to you in the third person if your only interaction is that you happen to have both been invited to the same get-together?

In the unlikely event that she did need to refer to you, she would surely say "The person over there in the purple top". After all, if she said she/he/them or whatever, people would ask for clarification about whom she was talking, and she still wouldn't know your name anyway.

I volunteer for a charity and we’ve been asked to add our preferred pronouns to emails. I’ve refused and have made it clear that if it becomes mandatory I will leave.

At a private, social event I would reply with ‘What interest could you possibly have in my preferred pronouns’.

Yes, that's a large part of it: they tend to love to think that they'll be foremost in people's minds and discussions continually. It's usually an attention-seeking goal that drives them.

What I want to do in such situations is say “thee/thou”, because second-person pronoun usage is much more likely to trip people up and help them see that it is silly to mess around with normal language usage (& also I like the humility associated with the old thee/thou like tu in French and part of the problem with this trend of compelled speech is about being self-centred rather than seeing oneself as a small part of wider society).

What I actually do is ignore the request wherever possible or mutter “whatever” if absolutely pushed.

If it was meeting just between colleagues I’d be tempted to provide a different set of neo pronouns every week.

Totally agree. Its pretty damn obvious that I was born female and have remained that way, I find it irritating to have to spell it out, just to tick a box

I’d say sorry I don’t have any, I’m not indulging in performative nonsense.

I have only once been asked to provide my pronouns; as a consultant visiting the local council with a client. I just said , they are private and protected.

That shut the conversation down pretty sharpish, other than my client trying to suppress a guffaw.

As pp said, no reason to need them in a meeting ; referring to me as she or he in front of me is pretty rude.

💯

@Lemniscate8 I don't think you fully understand what left and right wing means. Anyway, it is a fact - the trans lobby is firmly left wing and embedded in the Labour Party/ trade unions/ academics. I consider myself fairly left wing but on this, I firmly disagree with the trans insanity and can see it is rotting left wing politics from the inside. It is factually wrong to say it is right wing. Do some research and you'll see.

Why does she need to do this? Seriously. Surely people just speak and say what they want to in a meeting. I don’t have to tell my team at every meeting who the hell I am.
If you need to address anyone surely you can just
say ‘I had a similar experience to Daffodil.’
I would tell her in every meeting I prefer not to say. Hopefully others will do the same and make her stupid point worthless.

I answer - “Sex based. Like my oppression”

Can you not just do it in a bored monotone (at work) to express your feelings on it and instantly move on? We all have to do things at work we think are BS.

What you do in your private life is different. If you really want to, you can just say, that's private, and move on. Yes, others may thing you're an arsehole, but given they're people you're diametrically opposed to, presumably you won't care?