Pronouns help please

[Springchickpea]

I know this has been done to death, but I’ve just read a work email and seen that our director has put his pronouns on his email signature. We also have some new EDI training coming up, and we take a lot of advice from ‘inclusive employers’. I fear we are about to be asked to do pronouns and I want to be prepared.

I want to approach from the angle that highlighting minorities groups’ differences are damaging and I know that there are some academic research papers that highlight this but would like some help crafting my argument please. I want to stick to why this is bad for women, why I don’t want to advertise my sex, and to stay away from the other topic.

Can anyone help please? It just feels so depressing.

Fwiw, I am a regular MNetter, came for the baby stuff, stayed for the feminism but post a lot about children and family issues and don’t necessarily want my colleagues to read.

I’m not sure that the argument re negative effects on women would hold much water in a very “woke” environment. I’d be inclined to “stand in solidarity with those who are not yet out and who would otherwise be forced to use the wrong pronoun”....

@ArabellaScott

just pop you pronouns at the end of you email - you'll be fine, and you'll be doing a nice thing.

if you don't put them, people may assume you are a bigot - not saying you are, but that may be the assumption

Come on, silly girl, don't make a fuss, be nice, be kind, why would you care, what does it matter to you

if you don't do as I tell you to who knows what might happen?

This is straight out of the coercive control handbook.

Yes, completely agree. Bullying tone sadly all too familiar to many women. Also “you’ll be fine” ... An awful lot of us feel that being coerced into behaving as though we actually believe in something akin to a religion, (but without the thousands of years of culture, buildings, and stonking music) isn’t “fine” at all. It is like being forced to declare yourself a scientologist in every email, when you are a lifelong agnostic/atheist etc

I don't understand why so-called trans allies are so keen to try to coerce people to out themselves if they are not ready to do so.

The Yogyakarta principles are quite clear that it is up to individuals to decide when to disclose their gender identity:

Principle 6:

f) Ensure the right of all persons ordinarily to choose when, to whom and how to disclose information pertaining to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and protect all persons from arbitrary or unwanted disclosure, or threat of disclosure of such information by others.

It could be very damaging for trans people to be forced to out themselves at work if they're not ready. What your employer is doing goes against best practice.

yogyakartaprinciples.org/principle-6/

The Yogyakarta principles are often cited as 'best practice' for the protection of human rights for LGBT people, so I don't understand why they often ignore this part and insist that trans people out themselves by declaring their pronouns.

This is straight out of the coercive control handbook

Well spotted, Arabella!

An awful lot of us feel that being coerced into behaving as though we actually believe in something akin to a religion, (but without the thousands of years of culture, buildings, and stonking music) isn’t “fine” at all. It is like being forced to declare yourself a scientologist in every email, when you are a lifelong agnostic/atheist etc

Beautifully put, SirVix — funny but hits the nail on the head. I think MN keeps me sane in these mad times. I will be using this analogy at every chance I get.

I saved this for future reference, which was posted on a feminism thread a little while ago. I’m hoping I won’t be put in a position where I will have to give reasons why I don’t want to use pronouns myself:

@Shizuku

Trans people have a really difficult time - more than half experience family rejection, a fifth experience homelessness, they have often lost their friends and they have high unemployment rates.

So, as an act of support for a vulnerable minority, just pop you pronouns at the end of you email - you'll be fine, and you'll be doing a nice thing.

I’m not sure you can claim that all those issues are directly down to people being trans - I’m sure you are aware that people are more complex than just their mode of identifying and there could be multiple underlying causes for personal difficulties in this group.

In terms of influence though the activists have achieved quite a major coup with every government department, schools, NHS, BBC, most mainstream media, police, CPS, local councils, google, many major employers etc. These organisations have responded to the needs of trans people so admirably that they are excluding and ignoring all other vulnerable groups and in many cases actively working against the interests of those groups.

So when you are claiming a bit of kindness for a vulnerable marginalised group I think we need to see how that balances with the withdrawal of rights and services being suffered by women in the name of trans rights.

@gardenbird48 - Shizuku's figures appear to come from a survey in the US, so as others have said might not relate so well to the UK.

if you don't put them, people may assume you are a bigot

Assume away.

By contrast, if you do put them, people may assume you're an idiot who is blindly following a baseless ideology.

Swings and roundabouts!

@Shizuku So in summary #bekind and if you choose not to then people can rightfully assume you are a bigot.

And instead of challenging the baseless assumption of bigotry your solution is to capitulate just using a different pronoun??

I recently did some training on lgbtq issues and they said it shouldn't be a requirement to put pronouns in emails or to say them. As people may not be comfortable. So you could say this.

In all honesty how many trans people do you actually work with though? So are you actually going to be compromising your morals much?

@Okbussitout I’m very sorry but I really don’t understand your point.

I don’t know how many trans people I work with, and frankly I don’t actually care. It doesn’t matter to me how my colleagues identify, what their biological sex is, their orientation, their religion or their disability status. It’s not important to me and it won’t affect how I interact with them as a person beyond offering them the courtesy of addressing them in any way in which they need.

My point is that I don’t want to assert my pronouns, draw attention to my biological sex, or to be forced to blindly follow dogma without real consideration of the meaning of any such new policy.

@Okbussitout

I recently did some training on lgbtq issues and they said it shouldn't be a requirement to put pronouns in emails or to say them. As people may not be comfortable. So you could say this.

In all honesty how many trans people do you actually work with though? So are you actually going to be compromising your morals much?

Very foolish to go down the numbers route “how many trans people do you actually work with”

This is a matter of principle and as we know with other events/issues, it’s really important that things are not brushed under the carpet because “it doesn’t really matter”.

This stuff matters.

I don't think it has anything to do with any actual trans people. Or that it actually helps them as people have pointed out.

What it's really about is scoring points for the Stonewall protection racket (other "equality" certifications exist). Not discriminating in everyday life is hard to evidence, particularly if noone is actually trans.

@FeckTheMagicDragon Actually, I've been meaning to ask if anyone has any links to studies that show women are disadvantaged by forefronting their sex, so I'd certainly appreciate the links if you can find them!

For anyone else, this is all I have - article about a man who switched his email signature with female colleague for a week. Interesting illustration of the issue, although not an actual academic study.
m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-signed-work-emails-using-a-female-name-for-a-week_n_58c2ce53e4b054a0ea6a4066?ri18n=true

This, about blind auditions (having violinists play from behind a screen) and how it led to more women being employed as musicians.

gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians

This has other rabbit holes to follow
www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias

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.

You're in a pickle then, because if you don't put them, people may assume you are a bigot - not saying you are, but that may be the assumption.

You could put male pronouns maybe?

I realise that this comment was posted several months ago.... but it's clearly a trans person's/trans ally's way of confirming their belief that pronouns aren't important anyway, as you can obviously just put any old random one and it really doesn't matter. Interesting....