Pronouns in email signatures - advice and arguments please

[AdultHumanFemale77777]

I work in a medium sized organisation and have influence in decisions around equality and diversity. I am due in a meeting in the next few weeks where we will discuss whether to suggest(/mandate?!) pronouns in email signatures. I would like to do some research and have well reasoned arguments as to why this is a terrible idea. So far I have - I don't fucking want to, it's performative wokeness at best and actively damaging to women. If we cared about trans identifying people that much we'd pay for proper counselling for dysmorphia.
I would be very grateful for any advice or suggestions for points I can bring to this meeting. Conscious of being branded xyz-phobic for wanting to stick up for actual women.

Thanks for clarifying and also being open to genuine dialogue on this @ASugarr

I also think it's important to acknowledge that using they / them pronouns are not helpful to people who identify as she / her but don't want to disclose or feel pressured to. If they don't agree with labelling genders and are jusy themselves it doesn't mean they want to use they / them as a matter of course, it means they don't identify with him / her. Or that they do but in relation to their sex and consider it private and personal or just totally irrelevant.

Maybe you said that in good faith earlier that they / them pronouns are precisely "for" people who think that, but it isn't helpful to them, in many cases it's like asking for an atheist to describe their relationship with god. That implies there is one. Atheists don't believe in one so the closest they could identify with is agnostic as that's the farthest away from a specific belief that implies god is really. I hope that analogy makes sense, it might not be something I've explained articulately!

*that implies god is real

Yeah @youvegottenminuteslynn I can see want to engage with AnxietySugar as a reasonable person here however where are we really?

1000s and 1000s of post of people talking about the intimidation one ASugarr can create at work. Here and all over social media.

One person with fixed rigid opinions who can't let them go.

This has resulted in a visceral hatred of HR.

A lack of trust generated by vexatious complaints no different to what is seen here. This has created a complete breakdown in respect for women in HR.

HR is not just Diversity and Inclusion. The D&I people that engage Stonewall have ZERO responsibility for employee relations and NEVER end up in tribunals.

Sugar and driveway et al think they are feminists? A small group of women, shilling for men and turning women against the women in HR who have done the best for women's careers they possibly can. Turning a female career in HR into a hated group of people?

Its going to take a long time for women to realise they hate HR because men made you hate us while Sugar is telling you we want you to put your fucking pronouns in your bio.

@ NeverRTFT that is an unnecessary personal attack against the OP

@NeverRTFT

Doesn't work if it's mandatory. The idea is to make it a safe space for anyone whose gender might not be totally obvious to other to state their gender identity. Making it mandatory doesn't achieve that and could forcibly out people. Making it optional but recommended creates a safe space and makes allies identifiable. You have already made up your mind about this so I don't think you deserve your place on whatever D&I committee gives you influence over such matters.

Don't DERSERVE. What a hideous IDENTIFIER word.

As neopronouns have been mentioned, here's something that baffles me. This list here lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Neopronouns mentions 12 sets of commonly used neopronouns and other less commonly used (though there seems to be many other neopronouns listed on different sites). These are used in many cases instead of the 7 main pronouns.

In a large company, there may be many employees who may choose any of these pronouns or neopronouns and indicate (by stating these in their email signature) that they want other people to use them while referring to them in day to day life.

Seriously, how would you remember all this? I can possibly see it working in small companies where there are very few staff but some companies have hundreds or thousands of employees! I think there would be a fear that there would be consequences to forgetting these details if someone has stated them in their signature.

If pronouns aren't harmful Sugar, why is using the wrong one literal violence in some situations?

I care about women. However I care about ALL women. That's the difference.

Your words and actions provide ample evidence that you don't ASugarr.

I love Mumsnet. Thanks for the input all

Me too AdultHumanFemale77777. It’s the one place we can talk honestly and openly about this sort of thing. I take comfort that we are in the majority of adult human females, supporting other women as we fight through this current misogyny covered in in the woke cloak of puritanical righteousness.

It could force people who are questioning their gender identity ’out’ before they are ready

This argument has tactical merit.

@RedDogsBeg

I care about women. However I care about ALL women. That's the difference.

Your words and actions provide ample evidence that you don't ASugarr.

I think it’s relevant here that ASugarr has described women before as (paraphrasing) ‘anyone who wants to be called a woman & use she / her pronouns’.

I am due in a meeting in the next few weeks where we will discuss whether to suggest(/mandate?!) pronouns in email signatures.

It sounds like a specific solution is being proposed, but what is the problem that needs to be solved? Is there currently a policy that prevents people from putting pronouns in their email signatures, and there have been complaints about that and/or requests to change it? If there's a required template for signatures (I've worked places that have this) and there are good reasons people are wanting to add pronouns, then maybe an optional element could be added to the template? Requiring it's a bad idea, but I also wouldn't suggest or recommend it as (1) there's some evidence it is damaging to specfic groups and (2) you may pressure people who haven't asked for this and aren't comfortable with it, or aren't aware of the potential damage, to go along with it when there is no need or benefit in that person's case.

I echo others who have pointed out studies showing that women drawing attention to their sex not only affects how they are treated by others, but also their own performance (isn't that shocking?) I also echo the several other excellent points made here about forcing people to 'out' themselves who do not wish to do so (and I would say that 'they/them' is potentially just as outing as choosing any other unexpected pronouns).

To be perfectly frank, the other insidious harm in adding pronouns to your email signature is that many people you work with (internal and external) will give you the mental side-eye, not particularly because of anything to do with transgenderism, but because it tends to suggest to many that they are dealing with a bit of a woke naval-gazer who is on high alert for any sort of heresy to denounce! No-one is likely to tell you this - indeed in the current climate they may well deny it if you ask - but in my experience, that angle very much exists.

It’s against GDPR for work to ask things that are irrelevant and not mandated for them to ask.

It is exactly the same thing as work asking you to put your religion/lack of or political affiliations in your email signature.

Also - for those genuinely having difficulty with gender identity - it is outing.

Remember - women have been fighting to have their sex made irrelevant at work (in most circumstances) due to discrimination - this is taking us backwards.

Also - it removes us from our biology.

”To be perfectly frank, the other insidious harm in adding pronouns to your email signature is that many people you work with (internal and external) will give you the mental side-eye, not particularly because of anything to do with transgenderism, but because it tends to suggest to many that they are dealing with a bit of a woke naval-gazer who is on high alert for any sort of heresy to denounce!”

^^This.

I highly doubt that this will be "enforced", so if you don't want to do it then just don't do it?

There's no need to make a big deal of it or be disrespectful to those who do want to do it.

A couple of things to add:

If I am writing an email where I want to be taken seriously, I end it with my initial and surname only (my first name is generally given to females in English speaking countries) because I think I am less likely to be fobbed off (and my sex is irrelevant to the subject of the email).

Secondly, rather than adding pronouns to email signatures, wouldn't it be easier to have a company-wide agreement that all people will be referred to as 'they/them/their' in the third person? I'm not sure whether that would actually work in practice and it's a long time since I was part of a large organisation, but that would take away the 'outing' aspect and the fear of accidentally offending someone by using the wrong pronouns if that person does not use the obvious ones. Not so good on the virtue signalling or performance of a gender role, though

If misgendering someone, or using pronouns not to misgender someone is important, should we also be putting our disabilities or mental health conditions in our email signatures? We use language like “that’s crazy” or “he’s going to go mental” or “that’s a bonkers idea” in conversations which could negatively impact those with MH conditions if you weren’t aware of them.

I’d argue we need to put our sexuality, our level of ability/disability and any MH conditions in our email signatures too - just for full disclosure. There might be more too, maybe ethnicity...

I’m joking. Obviously. But why are pronouns more important than other parts of our identity? How far should personal disclosure in a work setting go?

Not giving a shit what sexism comes with letting others know you are a woman. If that isn't a feminist then I don't know what is.

This is perhaps one of the most entitled things I've heard said recently.

'Not giving a shit' is totally grand, if you're not providing for a family, paying rent, you are protected enough to have a safety net, to not care if you get sacked, to not be that fussed about career progression, to not care about sexual harassment.

Do you understand what sexism actually means, entails, and the consequences thereof? The consequences of sexism are real, have impact and can actually ruin women's lives.

But I hear you don't care about that.

There are 300 people in my company I’m in the UK and I don’t know , around 10,000 worldwide. What are you supposed to do with all this pronoun information.
Pronouns are supposed to make English easier. So - ‘Elizabeth is booking the meeting. She will arrange it for tomorrow. She’s going to check her calendar.’ Rather than repeat Elizabeth which would be clunky.

Let’s say I’m writing this email to a group of other people - I have to try and locate Elizabeth’s personal pronoun list - to check I’m using the right one’s to not offend.
I send tonnes of emails a day- I don’t have time to check pronouns.
Then say Elizabeth has ‘he/him’ pronouns.
Someone else tells Elizabeth that I have inadvertently used ‘she’ so Elizabeth complains to HR. Or - maybe just asks me nicely to say ‘he’ instead of involving HR, and so I apologise and use ‘he’ because I’m trying to be nice. But the next time , I use ‘she’ again because, well I’m taking about a woman and I’m English and for over fifty years of my life that’s the language norm!
It could become a nightmare with people taking offence all over the place on behalf of other people.
I’m so glad my company is not woke, and I’m so glad that my boss is sane.
Not many years left until I retire thank goodness!

From a business point of view - receiving emails from a company with pronouns attached gives a strong signal to recipients.

I would suggest it worth considering how that will impact on the branding and culture and perception of the company.

Maybe even a spot of market research is in order, be interesting to see that.

Pronouns are extremely useful, as highlighted upthread, for signalling who is in the in group and who is in the out group.

The ingroup are allies, they can be relied on, they are fully aligned with the progressive cause.

The out group can be identified as a pernicious influence which can then be “dealt with” and “don’t deserve” positions of influence.

I simply can’t imagine why anyone would find any of this worrying at all! Just pop them in your signature like a good ally, and then we won’t have to have the difficult conversation about what you’re thinking. Thanks, as always, for the clarity and sunlight