Oh FFS! Pronouns at work. Need to rant!

[PedantWithAnAxeToGrind]

Namechanged on the grounds that I at least hope this may still be vaguely identifiable due to its rarity.

I realise this doesn't hurt me personally in the grand scheme of things, but I do work in a sector that makes it twice as hard for women, still. And yet:

Apparently, we now all get to set our pronouns in our work IT systems. We are kindly given the choice between he/she/they/define your own via text input. Yes, really. We get to use our own made up ones if we please.

They also helpfully educate us that pronouns apparently 'refer to our gender identities or expressions'. No, they really fucking don't! Pronouns are 'pro nomina', i.e. words used in the place of names. Nothing more or less. No metaphysical BS required.

WIBU I to set mine to 'fuckoff/fuckoffs (or fucksoff?)/fuckoffself'?

Sorry, dear firm, I normally like working for you. You pay me very decently and pronote me on a regular basis. But when my ex-boss stated in the middle of a team meeting that he'd like to spill something other than coffee on me, he got a slap on the wrist and a promotion the year after. When I sit in management level meetings, everyone else in there except myself has had the privilege of not being brought up to be pleasing and conciliatory and developed a thundering baritone some time during puberty to boot. That would be because - in my division at least - we literally have but a handful of woman managers. So much so that I'm trotted out like a fucking show pony at every occasion to serve as the showcase diversity hire success story. You once kindly offered me a fucking makeup course among my suggested trainings. I've had to fight twice as hard and to be three times as good as my male peers to get where I am. I've had to escalate up to C-level for you to allow me to make the best woman on my team the team manager, because she'd been on mat leave before and was still in the age range where another might be expected, so you thought the idiot man might be the safer bet.

... and then you come and try to explain to me that 'gender' is what I identify as or express? And you're making me declare that and write it into your database? As in, the crap I take every day because I happened to choose a male dominated career despite my X-chromosome is somehow my own fault because I identify into it or something?

Sorry, dear firm (not actually sorry)! The shit I take in this job is down to the fact that I have a double X chromosome and happen to look the part. 'Gender' is what makes arsehole men assume that I'll put up with it. That I'm not up to the job if I don't look pretty enough while slaying at it. That means I never get to tell arsehole men that they're arsehole men because, if I did, you'd think I was being 'emotional' rather than 'assertive' and you'd question my ability to cope.

Gender is not something I fucking identify with. I fight it to the best of my abilities on your premises every day when I turn up to work. It's limiting and oppressive and I don't want to celebrate it by putting my fucking pronouns on my personnel file. I don't identify as a woman. I am a woman on the grounds that the sperm that fertilised the egg contained an X chromosome. And 'gender' has been making this kind of a shit experience at times.

I'm not even technically a RadFem. I'm all for people being able to express themselves whichever way they bloody want to. Have penis, wear a skirt? More power to you! I realise that you'll probably take crap for that. And I'll honestly try my best to speak up when you do. But it doesn't make you a fucking woman and you don't know what it means to be one on the grounds that you have some feeling or other. Come and talk to me again when YOUR un-bepenised peers get paid more than you for less, poorer quality work at a lower level of seniority.

So, rant over!

Any actually constructive ideas about how to challenge this crap without losing my job welcome.

Yes, I'm seething. Less so about the stupid pronouns setting (though that's insulting) and more so about the friendly lecture in the mass email about what pronouns and gender are all about.

Fuck off, male HR dude ...

rant, OP!

I've recently said quite clearly and firmly that if pronouns are an issue I will avoid using them. I will be polite and respectful but I won't be forced into compelled speech.

That’s beautiful stuff OP. Nodding along to all of it. I was trying to find it for you earlier but ran out of time- one of the awesome women on here posted a link to a published paper that showed that there is absolute professional disadvantage for women to be emphasising their female credentials at work. If you look through the previous pronouns at work threads it will be on one of them. They’re asking you to promote structural disadvantage to yourself and other women by doing this.

This is an old thread from August 2018. The OP is unlikely to still be watching.

However as we are entering trans awareness week, I think this has been resurrected because lots of people will be seeing the pronoun email get dusted off and wheeled out.

There is very good evidence to show that women suffer disproportionately from bias, both conscious and unconscious in the workplace. It is therefore not good practice for employers to insist that women state their sex overtly when not necessary.

Sex discrimination should be tackled head on in any workplace. Pronouns where they are not necessary entrench discriminatory behaviour.

If I am ever asked to state my pronouns - and I work for a wokecorp so it's entirely possible - I'm simply going to say Tit/Tit/Tit's (real name equivalent, obviously). And then go apeshit at anyone who refers to me as 'she' or 'her' because I identify as pronounless, until they're heartily sick of the whole shebang.

I like those lists that offer things like Baroness and Duke