Pronouns in email

[Sammiesnake]

I’ve just been asked to identify my pronouns on my email signature at work and I’m finding it hard to put into words why this upsets me.

For the record, I’m not bothered at all what others choose to call themselves and accept any pronouns asked of me just as I do anyone’s name. It’s up to them.

However, I don’t want to be pointing out that I’m a female in my email signature. Why do I have to announce my gender in a work email? Why is it even relevant at all to my work? I want to be responded to as a competent adult at work, not as a female particularly.

I can’t explain how it makes me feel but basically I find it upsetting that I should have to have my gender visible on every single email I send which really has nothing to do with my gender at all!

Does anyone else feel like this? Have you managed to explain this to your workplace?
Thanks

'The cat's mother!'

After today's debacle on twitter, you could use

Supershe
Superher

just to add, we've been sent new email guidance and it has a space for preferred pronouns if desired.

However the 'champion' who requested this is not happy about it being optional (she/her)

The way our email works, the notification comes through in the bottom left hand corner and shows their name and pronoun together - so it's not just at the end of an email, it's plopping itself there at every notification and is very distracting

I'm glad I've retired.

@Alexandernevermind

No idea why that posted twice

Because it is important and worth repeating! 😂

Some good ideas on this thread

It has moved to Zoom now. Academics meeting a few days ago. Of 55+ attendants only one use them. Have a guess?

Yes he/him white, young male with unkept beard.

I know, I know I’m stereotyping the occasion. But, it felt a bit woke. Maybe with those pronouns he still felt female some of the time. Well, I was pleased No one else followed suit.

I believe uni admin teams are starting to go back to their offices in the coming weeks. Good luck to everyone!

The only person at the place where I work (so far and as far as I know) who uses pronouns in their email address is a woman (she/her). With a small daughter. And announced it to the team. She either believes in gender identity or is doing it for the diversity points. You do wonder about some people’s ability to join the dots.

All these demands on the basis that 'it literally doesn't harm you at all' (therefore you must capitulate to our will, because we say so). And then there's this:

You want to try working in a university. It's every bloody day.

Tell me about it. It's now even appearing under people's names in Zoom meetings. People who, I have to say, I thought had more critical faculty of thought.

It does do harm. I've been sexually harassed and assaulted in their workplace - a fact which is on record - because I'm female. I've negotiated countless setbacks and forms of discrimination - because I'm female. In universities, female lecturers consistently score lower in the module evaluation questionnaires than males. That's everyone from Professorial level to graduate teaching assistants. I've spent most of my adult life arguing against the fact that my sex has any bearing on the way in which I do my job. And 'gender' has no bearing on any of it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that mixed/'gender-neutral toileting provision is on its way into my workplace. Had this been there whilst my harasser was stalking me, he'd have been able to follow me in there. He's left now but still hangs around the campus despite having been removed by security more than once.

He could, theoretically, still do it.

I'm scared.

@SecondGentleman

"Having pronouns" is the latest fashion of a subset of the middle-class intelligentsia. Participating in this ritual is the new way of marking out who is U and non-U. No company that takes social mobility seriously should be promoting this.

This is the way I view it, as things are. But I am running into the earlier comment made that was "One of the things I find upsetting about the avalanche of this bullshit is that it’s getting to the point where if you don’t announce your pronouns you are automatically assumed to be a bigot."

This is a workplace that traditionally encouraged (in fact, existed to promote) critical thinking. I feel increasingly excluded and judged because of the peer pressure sense that I'm among the few that has so far resisted the pronouns-in-signature wave.

It has just occurred to me that any push, however light, for people to disclosure of any protected characteristics could be seen as an infringement of their rights. And ppl asked to put pronouns could decline saying they do not wish to disclosure to the public their protected characteristics.

Is this sound? I’m going to post on all the pronouns threads to check.