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!

You could answer, "My pronouns haven't changed since the last meeting."

Every. Single. Time.

I understand your point, but this stuff in the workplace is actively harmful. People from disadvantaged groups, which includes women, perform worse in tasks when their particular trait is highlighted beforehand. And it puts people on the spot who may not want to share that information, either because they don't approve of the question being asked or they're gender nonconforming but not comfortable disclosing. It shits all over the Yogyakarta Principles.

If it were just some pointless crap that would stop mattering as soon as you'd said it because it's a meeting full of bullshit, fair enough, but that's not what this is.

Re the left wing/ right wing thing - it is

part of identity politics, very left. I am not right wing - I recognise this is a problem of the left. Look at any trade union - this stuff is their baby. Most resistance to it is actually coming from right wing parties. Hence why SNP, Green and some parts of Labour are obsessed wih trans rights.It is actually creating a massive split in the left. Right wing does not mean -bad and oppressive of women. Left wing does not mean- good and champion of women's rights. I used to have this left = good, right= bad, but having worked for years for a left organisation, I can clearly see trans ideology is ultra left ideology and obsessed over by bullies and mysognists on the left. It really is not a right wing thing AT ALL and to see it that way is a failure to understand right v left.

So pleased I am retired. I think I would have to say he/him just to be contrary.

You can be left or right wing without agreeing with every ideology of your general political leanings. Trans stuff comes from left wing extremists - fact.

Awful. I don’t subscribe to gender woo either.

You should be able to say ‘I’m a woman’ when asked your pronouns.

Or I’d be tempted to call their bluff and come up with a difference, nonsense set of pronouns each time to illustrate how ridiculous it all is eg ‘Ze/ zir’

I’m sorry.

I would just say something like this:

"I don't care which pronouns other people use when they talk about me. Use whichever.¨

That way you are not complying, but it also does not appear as though you are judging people who do, which wouldn't be worth the trouble.

It's just work in the end. These people are not family or friends. In the end you hardly socialize with them beyond some general chit chat.

No, it doesn't. The idea of a "female brain/mind" or a ¨male brain/mind" is extremely conservative and has in the past been used as a argument to prevent women from participating in full life, denying them full citizenship, denying them the vote, denying them their own bank accounts without a father or husbands signature, and so on.

It is old-fashioned misogyny in the extreme.

I think it would be perfectly fair and reasonable to say privately to your manager “I am concerned at all the emphasis being put on gender. Studies are clear that women are disadvantaged in the workplace when their gender is emphasised so we are creating a less equal, not more equal, working environment by drawing attention to it every meeting. Which I know is not your intention”

(and yes it is sex not gender but play them at their own game)

Ok, it's the left spouting it. You might think it is truly a right wing opinion but is coming from those who describe themselves as left. Name a right wing party or person spouting this stuff. I can name every TU and huge amounts of left politicians who are pushing this! Dig into this and you will see. Right wing organisations like the horrible GB news/ Tories don't spout it and are actively against trans stutt

I’d say ‘none of my protected characteristics are relevant to the purpose of this meeting’.

If pressed I’d ask them to clarify (so I can note it down) why they felt it necessary to the meeting for me to publicly share that particular piece of private and protected information, and then why they were not asking me to also share my sexual orientation, faith and disabilities.

And then I’d be writing a complaint to HR.

And yet it was a right wing Conservative PM who tried to introduce self ID. No left of centre administration has ever done that. Sure, the people on the UK right who bought into it like Penny Mordaunt and Theresa May aren't making much noise at the moment. That tells us the Tories realised earlier than some parts of the left how unpopular it is.

The trans rights left, sex realism right analogy comes from North American politics. In the UK, our gender critical activism actually exists across the spectrum. I presume you'd agree that the Communist Party are pretty ultra left, yes? They're proper TERFs!

They may be against the "trans" stuff, but they are not against forcing women to "act like women" by restricting their choices such as reproductive choices and indoctrinating little girls into behaviors and interests they deem acceptable. Purity culture is a big part of it, as is restricting access to sex-education that actually teach girls about their bodies and how to prevent pregnancies.

Surely, this isn't news to you.

These are just different sides of the same coin.

Perfect response

I agree that in the uk in particular it's more complex/mixed and that true hard core communists believe in material reality therefore have no time for this bullshit.

But in general, it's very much a left leaning phenomenon and entrenched in left leaning areas of society like the universities and trade unions. That's just undeniable.

In the US it's been pushed by the Democrats beyond all sense and reason. They show no signs, even now, of pulling back.

"We're here to discuss X. I'm not sure people need to know my private info"

or

"I don't feel emotionally safe to declare my pronouns in public"

or

"I don't mind what pronouns people use for me"

or

"my name's Squirrel. You can call me that"

I'd speak to manager in private, rather than confront them in public

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!

A genuine trans man? All of these trans identifying people are taking the piss to expect us to lie to validate their delusions. It’s all such nonsense.

In meetings when asked pronouns, I sometimes say that I’d rather not say as I find it triggering. It shuts them down as they’re scared to offend… and I’m not lying about finding it triggering as such.

I would have said (prolly after a few drinks) - "if it's really not obvious enough, it's she/her" and then🙄

Yanbu just don’t do it. Use one of the suggestions in pp

I think perhaps the better way of putting it is that UK left wing pro trans people and organisations are more likely to try and claim their stance is the authentically left wing one. Whereas the right wingers who've done things like support self ID don't seem to explicitly locate it within right wing politics. So that makes a difference.

Equally, the GC right wingers in the UK often do very much want to claim it as a right wing stance. Which is a smart call, they can see that they benefit from importing the US cultural model on the issue. It obviously worked very well for the right over there.

Please put an end to this op, report back on how it goes.

I either ignore the request and just state my name, or, depending on circumstances and the others present, I say that it’s transphobic forcing people to declare their pronouns when they might not be ready, or might be struggling - or I tell them I’m gender-fluid and launch into a prolonged speech about what pronouns I use when, including stupid neo-pronouns and ending with noises. That completely stopped one person in their tracks 🤣

You do have some, we all have some, it's just that it's mostly obvious.

'Please call me by my name' should be the response.

Asking for this information or insisting on it could be an issue of personal safety. Someone may not have stated their gender identity to their family who if they found out might ostracise them or worse happen. Or they may simply be undecided.

Oh I agree!! Just explaining why people are all of a sudden on the pro noun train