Use of preferred pronouns in work signature

[refusetobeasheep]

I came across my first work signature today which showed the preferred pronouns I should use. Not entirely sure why as she has an unambiguously female name and her pronouns are she / her / hers.

Anyone else seeing this in their professional lives?

Yep, I found one in the wild this week too. Also a third level institution.

Only ‘other people’ are affected by requests to use the wrong pronoun. The person doing the requesting is not affected as will not be present when it is being used.

Yup I've seen this and it pisses me off. It's invariably women identifying as she/hers which we all bloody figured out anyway.

No of course it doesn't affect your life and you should definitely calm down, dear.

Until it becomes mandatory or implicitly so and not adding pronouns to your email marks you out as a person who doesn't believe in gender ideology. What then? Should you be forced to lie in order to work? Should you be forced to partake in something you believe is supporting an ideology deeply harmful to women and children, in order to work?

But it's only your job (the thing you do in order to be alive and have a roof over your head and feed your children and maybe you even care about).

It reminds me of working for a company who expected email signatures to contain Mr or Mrs/miss.

I argued it on the grounds of stereotype threat and confirmation bias (wasn’t called that in 1995 but both concepts existed) and i won my argument. It stopped being a requirement very quickly.

I had it recently on an email from an MD at Goldman Sachs. They/them.

They identify as gender fluid and sometimes wear a dress and use an androgynous name, but they have reached their position as MD building their career as a white man with a male name, benefiting from all the male privilege in a male-dominated industry. They are passionate about "empowering females in engineering and leadership" - unclear whether they think they themselves are also female when wearing a dress and heels.

It makes me wonder why I even bother with initiatives to get more women into our industry, to be honest.

It is a bit unfair to those who aren't as clear in their gender identity as this woman clearly is. It puts them under pressure to declare publicly when they may not be ready, or undecided, or fluid. I think she is being a bit transphobic to be honest.

As well as the whole thing being a load of tripe.

It bloody does affect me.

I find it massively triggering because it was exactly what the homophobic bullies said to me whilst they were knocking seven kinds of shit out of me when I got beaten up as a young teen for being too butch.

‘You’re a boy aren’t you, go on say you are a boy, say it... we’ll stop if you say it....‘

Anywho forces someone to ‘identify‘ themselves in that way is either hopeless naive or a bullying cunt. Sorry. Not sorry. Makes me fucking angry.

More of this shite? Bored of people needing to draw attention to their wokeness . And that's just for starters!

I had it recently on an email from an MD at Goldman Sachs.

Your post reminded me of this article:

spectator.us/problem-goldman-sachs-preferred-pronouns/

It explains quite clearly what is wrong with this drive to put 'preferred pronouns' on emails.

It does affect me, if I am being compelled to talk about someone who isn’t even there in a way that they demand. If Trump demanded - with a badge, and on his Twitter profile - that we all referred to him as the World’s Greatest President every single time we discussed him the Woke would be up in arms about his fascistic demand that we comply with his preference and the compelling of speech against our will. But if someone does it about their gender and it’s all about the feelz, then apparently it’s fascistic to NOT comply with this demand.

Well, fuck that. If I’m in the room with someone with gender issues I will say “you” and “you’re”, because I would be talking to them. If I’m not in the room I will talk about them however I like and won’t be compelled to speak about them in a way I don’t want to.

Apart from on MN, where the special rules prevent me from being truthful

Yes, I see this

Ironically the one time I worked with someone who actually had full surgery to transition, this wasn’t a fashion and no one had any issues.

But now, I see it mostly from people who want to signal wokeness. If you haven’t met this person, don’t make assumptions about their sex though.

This demand conflicts with other protected characteristics and there will have to be a test case. I wouldn't want to be the judge that has to decide if disability or gender reassignment is the dominant characteristic.

Sticking this one on mine:

Some duffer (male person, male name, male appearance) on LinkedIn has his pronouns in his public LI name. So any posts of his are titled as "Dave Blokey (he/his)"

Cringeworthy.

This has reached Big 4 too, sad times ☹️

If you haven’t met this person, don’t make assumptions about their sex though.

Meanwhile in the real world, on the rare occasion a true miss-sexing occurs (unisex name etc), it gets corrected with zero fuss and nobody cares for more than 10 seconds. It's a "typo" in effect.

I like the I/Me/Mine statement for declaring pronouns.

Anything else is compelled speech.

Remembering names is challenging enough for me. I have disabilities that effect my memory, I have severe executive functioning issues. As I’m a woman I’ve also been socialised to people please and over compensate so that my disabilities don’t negatively effect others, this is a hard habit to break and most definitely detrimental to my wellbeing. Disability is a protected characteristic under EA and people can fuck the hell off if they think their need for super ultra rare limited edition pronouns trumps my needs. And ‘ask me’, seriously!?!? And they is plural and appropriating it as gender neutral is seriously fucking offensive to the DID communities (who refer to themselves as multiples and those without DID as singletons). DID is also a disability so also a pc under the EA, and people who are multiple are generally the most vulnerable and at risk group imho.

I always hated name tags when I waitressed/bar tended. In no way did I want men to have further excuse to talk to my chest, never mind ‘ask me’ planted their like it’s their fucking breasts that will answer back. Why would any woman want that?? Weirdos.

My face when HR received a request about this, before proceeding to Google pronouns and then say "Ah, so we're all 'Cis'. It's going to take me a while to learn all this."

Yes, the odd person has started doing it in the huge organisation where I work. It makes me wonder what's coming.

What would happen if I put (x/y/z) I wonder

Remembering names is challenging enough for me. I have disabilities that effect my memory, I have severe executive functioning issues. As I’m a woman I’ve also been socialised to people please and over compensate so that my disabilities don’t negatively effect others, this is a hard habit to break and most definitely detrimental to my wellbeing. Disability is a protected characteristic under EA and people can fuck the hell off if they think their need for super ultra rare limited edition pronouns trumps my needs.

Me too. Finding out I have ASD at my age was a surprise but it explains so much. I find having the diagnosis comforting.

How about 'she / his'? Anyone seen that yet?