Just been told to remove my pronouns from my Teams profile

[Horrace]

I'm weak 🤣
My manager just phoned me to say there has been some serious complaints made about me that he must urgently address.
I panicked.
In the Pronouns section of my Teams profile, I have

'Take a Wild Guess'

Its been there for a few years. Its finally been noticed and I've been told to take it down because it's made someone or more than one possibly, FEARFUL of me.

If they're fearful of a woman making a joke about pronouns being bullshit, which let's face it is just words, and mild ones at that, then why can't they take seriously the fear that many women have told them they feel when they are forced to accept makes in their single-sex spaces where they are uniquely vulnerable?

But putting pronouns such as he/ze or whatever, isn't a joke

What????

I totally agree that there are very distinctive groups that have been lumped together under a 'trans' umbrella, particularly among males who identify as trans. These groups do not have the same motivations or profiles.

However there is absolutely no way for women to distinguish these different groups on sight or any way of distinguishing them legally

But a man deciding that he 'feels like a woman', demanding access to women's changing rooms as a result, no matter how actual women feel about that, isn't ridiculing, mocking and antagonising women?

I would recommend reading the OPs posts. She says herself she is ridiculing others. So I'd go with her self description of her behaviour on this one.

'doesn't identify with maleness' what exactly does this mean? Didn't play with toy cars as a kid? Doesn't like the colour blue?

She's ridiculing the idea of pronouns, not a specific person. It's fine to ridicule ideas, although probably best not to do so in your professional profile, I admit.

It's so sexist and regressive. Most of the things I love are not stereotypically female, doesn't mean I'm a man or that I have a masculine brain or any of that rubbish. I just have hobbies and interests that have been traditionally associated with women, which should be completely fine and not even worth noting in 20-bloody-25.

I would support you if like me you did not declare your preferred pronouns if you have them.

I would support you if as much as possible you ask everyone to call you by name and not use pronouns at all.

Your 'take a wild guess' is unprofessional. Not sure your manager's response had the best language, I would not have said urgent, though two wrongs don't make something right.

I'm not personally offended if people assume from my name I'm male. But I can see that other people might be embarrassed having made that assumption, so people knowing in advance I'm female avoids that.

I'm occasionally tempted to get my hair cut short, but having a male-sounding name too I don't want to be regularly misgendered. I don't mind people thinking I'm male up until the point they meet me, but I think I'd find it upsetting if they STILL thought I was male after they met me.

So from that perspective, normalising sharing pronouns is helpful to me and lessens the extent to which I feel bound to make my sex/gender clear in the way I present.

This thread reminds me of this saying:

Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.

Why do you keep mentioning spaces when that's nothing to do with this thread? How do you know 'they' don't care about women being fearful of being forced to share spaces with men? Where does it say the women at this workplace are being forced to do this? How do you know it's transwomen who even made the complaints? What if it was transmen, so biological women, who read OPs answer as she had intended them to read it and it's now made them feel worried how they're going to be treated in person by OP?

The thread is about being told to remove a childish answer which was given solely to upset others (and worked) on a professional page, that's it.

I can guarantee they would not think you were male after seeing and speaking to you. Men's and women's bodies are very different; short hair and a masculine name do not make a man. My butch friends have never had this problem. They occasionally get called sir until they turn around and all becomes clear.

Actually snow/flake would be great

This. I’m assuming that adding pronouns wasn’t compulsory.

Because if you take a look at Twitter or terfisaslur.com, it's very clear that the kind of people who cry about pronouns call any woman who cares about single-sex spaces a bigot at best and send them rape threats at worst (not all sure, but a huge huge number).

Pronouns were a gateway to getting men into women's spaces, that's why. It's all related.

If they're worried by a bad joke about pronouns, then I'm sorry for them, but a transman generally has nothing to fear from another woman, and also it's no worse than the way many women feel when they see pronouns and wonder if they'll be hounded for their gender critical beliefs, is it? And, let's face it, that's much more likely.

If men are allowed to use she/her pronouns and vice versa, which is utterly ridiculous, then you’re going to get equally as ridiculous comebacks sometimes. Biological reality isn’t transphobia. And if people think it is, whatever. They need help. Bringing dangerous ideology into the workplace is hardly professional now is it.

@Helleofabore off topic but so glad to see that a professor at UCL is so openly being a sex realist.

Gives me a tiny bit of hope.

When you think of what is going on at KCL down the road though, ....

If I were you I would carefully read your employers bullying and harassment policy and reflect on how much I'd fancy the risk of being taken through a disciplinary or grievance procedure.

If the answer is not very much I would adjust my attitude and behaviour at work accordingly (suggest that laughing in the meeting with your manager wasn't the best move you could have made if you wanted to avoid risk).

Of course if you don't care that much about your current employment, future references etc just behave how you see fit. It wouldn't be considered good professional judgement in many workplaces.

It made them “fearful”? God help us all if we end up going to war. People really have become weak and need to get a grip.

All of this discussion about single sex spaces etc is irrelevant.

The long and short of it is that OPs behaviour has been unprofessional at work and she's been pulled up on it. And apparently, according to OPs posts, not just for the mocking pronouns themselves, but also for the way that they came to light.

It doesn't matter how right you are, you still have to be professional and courteous in the workplace. You can't goad, insult, mock others, be deliberately antagonistic. The trans / pronouns angle is irrelevant.

I know what you mean.

Prof Sullivan has been a welcome and clear voice.

Possibly, though I reckon it could be exaggerated language to get attention, or that the OP portrays an image of being difficult which contributes.

Notice how overused 'devastated' is, for example.

Men saying they’re women is mocking women in many of our opinions. But of course that never counts as mocking.