The look at me of pronouns

[Ritascornershop]

Recently I’ve had two interactions that have startled me. One was with legal aid (I’m in Canada) where the young lawyer rang me and said “Hello this is Thomas from xx, my practice is x and my pronouns are he/him.” Just in case I thought someone with a male voice and whose name was Thomas might like me, when speaking to him, to refer to him in the third person as she/her. I laughed and pointed out that as I was speaking directly to him, his pronouns wouldn’t be relevant.

The other interaction was after I’d written my member of parliament’s office asking for an answer on something I couldn’t get a Ministry to answer me on. 3 months later I finally got a reply suggesting I contact that Ministry 🙄 and signing off “Benjamin Lastname, he/him, Useless Twat, Your MP’s office”.

I replied telling him it was useless information that should not have taken 3 months to cough up, and I didn’t care what his pronouns were and I wasn’t going to proffer mine as doing so for women tended to increase sexism in professional interactions.

Is this as rampant in the UK? It just seems so unprofessional and so “look at me!” I’ve no interest in how they hope people refer to them when they’re not there, I just want answers to my questions that they are qualified to provide.

It's pathetic.

I immediately discount the opinion of anyone with pronouns in their bio.

Some of us remember when Canadian Men were Real Men:

Pretty much every account I see on LinkedIn people have put their pronouns next to their name.

I think the world is going daft

I ignore anyone with pronouns in their bios, but have been advised actually challenging them 'it's unprofessional to advertise your religious beliefs in a work situation'.
Dunno.

DS is in the process of applying for a job as an assistant psychologist. For one of the posts he had to put his pronouns and what his gender is. The questions weren’t optional. He thinks it’s all bullshit but he needs a job so filled it in while rolling his eyes.

I was totally shocked that questions about gender ideology could be compulsory.

I'm thinking of adding he/him, or zi/zey or something else ridiculous to my email signature and
a) see if anyone notices
b) see if anyone actually changes the way they address me.

I might just change them at random too, cos, y'know, gender fluidity rocks!

It looks so unprofessional. I got a sheher answering a helpdesk query. It is flipping obvious what sheher pronouns are. Sheher has a girly name and even has a photo of sheherself on the email footer. I don’t think sheher really wants to know what i think.

Sheher didn’t fix my issue either.

We finally get away from emails addressed to 'Dear Sirs' (cos a woman couldn't possibly do the job) and now we have to announce that we're women to people who don't care or need to know. Yeesh.

Yours (be) kindly,
TheMissingMango
she/menstruator/atheist/uterus/owner/Aquarius

I still do Dear Sir/Madam. If you have to cover every possibility you’d never get it written!

I'm a millennial who works for a company in the U.K. About 70% of people in it have pronouns in their email signatures. I don't, and will not, and cannot.

Most people do it because they really don't know what it's really about, and I really think some people would prefer it that way so that everyone will play along without asking questions. I can bet most of the women putting she/her have never given a thought to the fact that they're actually reinforcing gender stereotypes. They think 'Oh I'll just put this in my email because everyone else does, and I'm a she/her anyway'. They probably think all it is is a reference to the fact that they're women and feel comfortable in their sex......but that's not what it means. There's a whole ideology behind it.

I had to explain to a friend the other day why I refuse to do it. Her kneejerk reactions was 'but it's important to be inclusive and support those who are gender questioning, isn't it?'. I replied yes, but that I wasn't going to use that ideology to define my own identity, because of a myriad of reasons which I explained. I don't think she had once thought about any of those issues and it certainly made her think.....not for long I suspect, because once you start doubting it it then requires a lot of further thinking which is clearly a lot of hard work for most busy people!

@TheMissingMango

We finally get away from emails addressed to 'Dear Sirs' (cos a woman couldn't possibly do the job) and now we have to announce that we're women to people who don't care or need to know. Yeesh.

Yours (be) kindly,
TheMissingMango
she/menstruator/atheist/uterus/owner/Aquarius

@TheMissingMango Can you imagine what they would say if you said you passionately identified with being Aquarius and would like to out that in your signature??

@MrsFin

I'm thinking of adding he/him, or zi/zey or something else ridiculous to my email signature and a) see if anyone notices b) see if anyone actually changes the way they address me.

I might just change them at random too, cos, y'know, gender fluidity rocks!

@mrsfin You might want to use fae/faer, although, unless you are Scottish Welsh or Irish, you might get done for cultural appropriation. There are people arguing about that point online, I kid you not.

I'm Welsh!

In Scottish - so bit address me as:

Hen Kong fae Glasgae, if you please

My DGD (I hope that's the right term) has they/their on her Instagram. She's just turned 15. What's the grown-ups' excuses? It's lucky I'm retired, I would be really digging my heels in over all this nonsense!....

It’s a really special kind of narcissism mixed with virtue signalling that has become endemic.

DS16 started college today and someone introduced themselves to him as “Chloe. She/her”

So it’s now happening offline too. I dread the day this happens to me…totally impossible not to eyeroll. Can get away with an eyeroll at an email while wfh

To me the weirdest ones (which I’ve seen in uni email signatures) is she/them or he/them. What does that mean? Do you want to be she/he or them? Or she sometimes and they sometimes. You might as well say Jane, quavers/wotsits for the amount of sensible information I get from that.

The only reply is ‘of course you are’. I will just demand that no one references me when they are not in my presence.

@Jaysmith71 Didn't they like wearing women's clothes and hanging round bars?

Also, why do they say she/her or he/him anyway? Anyone with a vague grasp of English grammar knows that she and her go together, you don’t need to say both.

This is the best response.

My name can apply to either a male or a female (spelling identical). I work in a male dominated field and I really like that no one knows I am female until they actually meet me. So I really do not want to add pronouns to my email!
In any case it adds nothing to professional interactions so just why?

I follow Look Fantastic on IG. They started adding pronouns a few weeks ago, but I've realised that they add them when tagging people who don't have pronouns on their own profiles.

On the plus side, the more middle aged people working at big boring corporates start to do this, the less cool and appealing to teenagers it will become.