Employee using pronouns. Help!

[OfNobody]

Hi all,

A friend of mine has just taken on a new recruit and he's just realised that she uses pronouns after her name on her email signature.

He'd love for her not to do that because he's GC himself (and has a very traditional client base) but can he ask her to stop? Is that in itself discrimination?

Would love to advise him but generally, all the work issues I see around this run in the opposite direction (employers asking employees for pronouns).

Any experience of this, or any insight into how he can politely request that she drop the pronouns without ending up on the front cover of The Guardian?

From what he said, she doesn't sound like a massive raging handmaiden. She's just fresh out of uni and obviously thinks this is the way to go.

Of everyone had the same pronoun... there’d be no point would there?

@Arbadacarba

This is why we should be pushing for gender neutral pronouns and honorifics. Takes the whole thing away.

Yes, that's one solution. What are your suggested words - 'Mx' for honorific and 'they/their' as pronouns?

I don’t mind as long as it’s generally adopted. I’m quite fond of xie/xym myself.

I have considered going gender neutral if I am pressurised at work to state pronouns but their current use as an ideological shibboleth puts me off.

I’d be happy to use gender neutral pronouns for myself today if they were read as “polite, gender irrelevant” and not “performative, non-binary”.

But toffee, my understanding is that we put pronouns to show that we are allies. We just all put the same pronouns in and we all show that we are allies of everyone.

And we add an inclusive race statement as well, and an inclusive sexuality statement.

Three extra little lines on every single email….all identical, all signalling how much we care.

@BatmansBat

Yes! Mx and they /them

And “citizen of the world” instead of race?
And “sexual/non sexual being” instead of sexuality?

Just so we normalise everything and put less emphasis on what not is conforming. Then every time we see an email signature and they all are alike, we will know that everyone is equal.

Well that’s the way it does work for sexuality and race. It’s entirely possible to talk about someone without referring to their sexuality or race. It’s just sex/gender that is so fundamentally built into language that it’s impossible to talk about someone without it.

Are you seriously proposing that we can’t address racism or homophobia without special race- and sexuality- disclosing pronouns? Then why is sex/gender different?

@BatmansBat

But if everyone had the same pronouns they wouldn’t be disadvantaged.

And we could add an inclusive race marker as well, and an inclusive sexuality marker. Just so that we all know that we all are against bullying, racism and all sorts of phobias as soon as we get an email. It would make us feel good inside.

Ah hang on, I see where we cross wires. I’m not suggesting this as a marker on an email. I’m suggesting it as a wholesale change in the language.

It’s just sex/gender that is so fundamentally built into language that it’s impossible to talk about someone without it.

Not in Finland!

@merrymouse

It’s just sex/gender that is so fundamentally built into language that it’s impossible to talk about someone without it.

Not in Finland!

Yes, sorry about that! I realised just as I hit post that I should have said “our” language, ie the one we on this thread are currently using

Best advice for businesses that don't want to offend their clients AND to foster a safe working environment for everyone is to never discuss sex, politics or religion. That would include pronouns, yes? While I'm rather progressive in politics, I have appreciated not knowing the political or ideological viewpoints of colleagues when working in very formal companies with cultures discouraging any discussion of sensitive topics. Frankly, sexual harassment was rarer because of this.

I successfully worked 3 years with a woman who I respected and we did great projects together. It was only after i left and became FB friends with her that I learned she was a massive Trump supporter. I'm very happy I didn't know this in the 3 years we worked together-it'd been less successful if we had known.

TL;DR Taking your whole self to work isn't good for anyone

Yes, sorry, I was still thinking about the email signatures .

I think it may be difficult to change all languages. Some language have no pronouns, some have pronouns. Some languages have adjectives adjusted based on which pronoun is used. Some languages have multiple gender neutral pronouns which adjust adjectives. To completely de-gender languages may be a bit much.

All for the feel good email signatures though!

I totally agree that putting your pronouns at the end of the email is totally unprofessional in the work place. The same as signing off your email with any political agenda would be.

Your employer can simply say that “guys going forward we will have a new email template please can we all follow this specific one and without deviation” any issues after that then she is not following reasonable company policy. I would not tell her it’s because she’s using gender pronouns but simply that you want uniformity in the company.

I’m baffled by the amount of people saying there is nothing wrong with this, I work for a very big business who you would all know and if I ever signed off my emails with that I would be called out on it. I’m there to work and follow company policy, I’m free to show my identity in my own time

@BatmansBat

But toffee, my understanding is that we put pronouns to show that we are allies. We just all put the same pronouns in and we all show that we are allies of everyone.

And we add an inclusive race statement as well, and an inclusive sexuality statement.

Three extra little lines on every single email….all identical, all signalling how much we care.

Ally... you know in vampire films where there are humans who are the ‘pets’ in the hope they don’t get sucked... that’s what the word ‘ally’ makes me think of.

Basically, it would be like a straight person making the entire convent announce their sexuality. The nun can't admit she's a lesbian can she? So who is going to end up feeling shit at the end of this? Who will end up feeling they scored a few woke points? So who is it actually for?

Agree 100 percent.

Putting pronouns in your own signature isn't forcing a gender ideology belief on others. Others are free to ignore them. She isn't asking anyone else to add pronouns.

Yes it is. I wouldn't allow anyone to make that kind of political statement when they're representing my company. Leave it at home.

@Arbadacarba

Should we also add our race to our signatures to be inclusive to ethnic minorities?

And maybe also our sexuality (heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual/pan sexual etc) to be inclusive ?

If not, why not?

Because you don't generally refer to people by their race or sexuality.

You'd say: 'Miss Smith called, did you send the invoice to her yesterday?'
You wouldn't say: 'Miss Smith called, did you send the invoice to the lesbian yesterday?'
You wouldn't say: 'Miss Smith called, did you send the invoice to the black woman yesterday?'

No you'd say "Sam called and asked about an invoice, did you send it out yesterday?" No pronouns required.

You'd say: 'Miss Smith called, did you send the invoice to her yesterday?'

How very old fashioned of you. These days you generally refer to them by their name, either first name or first and last name. I haven't used pronouns to address people for over 25 years. Probably more.

I experienced for the first time today someone putting their pronouns up in a Zoom meeting - a young woman, she/her. As the only one doing it, it seemed to draw all focus to her, probably why she was doing it. The virtue signalling instantly got my back up, and I was proved right in my reaction. This woman proceeded to lecture and patronise the other older people in the meeting, basically teaching her grandma to suck eggs, interrupting the chair to tell us what we should and shouldn't be doing. In conclusion, I find pronouns incredibly helpful in indicating who I need to avoid like the plague.

@Delphinium20

Best advice for businesses that don't want to offend their clients AND to foster a safe working environment for everyone is to never discuss sex, politics or religion. That would include pronouns, yes? While I'm rather progressive in politics, I have appreciated not knowing the political or ideological viewpoints of colleagues when working in very formal companies with cultures discouraging any discussion of sensitive topics. Frankly, sexual harassment was rarer because of this.

I successfully worked 3 years with a woman who I respected and we did great projects together. It was only after i left and became FB friends with her that I learned she was a massive Trump supporter. I'm very happy I didn't know this in the 3 years we worked together-it'd been less successful if we had known.

TL;DR Taking your whole self to work isn't good for anyone

I came off FB for this reason, found out a bit too much about one colleague's views on immigration etc and couldn't feel the same way about working with them after that !

Yeah, agree that 'bring your whole self to work' is doing more harm than good at the moment. There's a whole middle ground between 'never mention who you're married to or what religious festival you're celebrating at the weekend' and 'tell your coworkers about your fetishistic sex practices' (literally happened at my workplace, thanks Pride month). Bring an appropriate amount of yourself. This may be more or less, depending on whether neutrality is key to the job, i.e. teaching.

If I encountered an org where everyone used pronouns-in-sig (not just the woke new recruit, all the way up to senior leaders), I would get the impression that:

1. they offer a hostile working environment to women,
2. they consider clarity of communication, free verbal expression and disability inclusion in language an afterthought, and
3. they are unaware of current market operating conditions / 'way the wind is blowing' and their business practices will reflect this

I wouldn't get 'this organisation is inclusive'; I would get 'this organisation has problems'

That lawyer who became a cat in the zoom meeting might have needed pronouns though.

No you'd say "Sam called and asked about an invoice, did you send it out yesterday?" No pronouns required.

Well, that's a rather vague way of putting it. Its efficacy would depend on how many invoices you send out in a day and whether the named person's always invoice goes to the named person.

In any event, the point I was making wasn't that there are no ways to refer to people without a pronoun, but that pronouns are used in everyday speech to refer to people, whereas race and gender aren't - so the example of adding race or gender to an email isn't relevant or analogous.

^ignore the random 'always' in my post above.

but that pronouns are used in everyday speech to refer to people

They really aren't. Apart from at school. Grown ups tend to use actual names.

If this was the other way round, and someone was being asked to use a company template including pronouns against their will, would you so freely be advocating dismissal for non-compliance?

I don't think you can compare a neutral position to one which clearly supports a cause. In the same way that it's perfectly understandable to ask somone to remove a reference to their religion in their email signature, but asking them to include a preferred religion would be massively unreasonable.

@Etorih

but that pronouns are used in everyday speech to refer to people

They really aren't. Apart from at school. Grown ups tend to use actual names.

So the OP isn't a grown-up then - there are 11 pronouns in the OP?

Toffee, I do know what you mean.

I personally would fee uncomfortable disclosing any personal details (including gender, politics, sexuality etc).

However, there seem to be a lot of people out there who needs to feel included and validated. If these people would feel better know that I had a pronoun, that I had a race, that I had a sexuality (including asexual) and that I was against any kind of discrimination, I would add that at the bottom of my emails - as long as everyone else did it as well.

Maybe that would make everyone feel included? As we all would have the same statement?