Pronouns - sooner than expected - help

[IamAporcupine]

I work in academia, in a medical research setting, and was quite pleased with the absence of the pronouns nonsense.

We are setting up a new large research proyect (which I will be coordinating) and have a couple of organizational meetings coming up next week. There is quite a bit of information to collect from each participating centre so we decided to create a survey for them to fill in beforehand. A young male new employee was assigned this task.

He's just sent it to me to review. There, on the first page, after 'Name' and 'Email address' is 'Pronouns'. Fuck.

I was certainly not expecting having to deal with this at work so soon, and at this level. I have filled in surveys myself where I made clear I did not believe in GI, but those were either anonymised or I did not care who read them. This is different. This will likely be me coming out as GC. I have no idea what the rest of the team thinks.

Can anyone in a similar situation help me find the best way to deal with it?
Shall I simply send it back with a 'delete this' amongst all the other changes (if there are any, I haven't even checked yet) and wait?

I will be working with this guy for the next 3-4 years. He seemed nice enough. Young and unexperienced, but keen. And kind, as I will likely find out.

'No idea what any of this is about. Please explain it to me.'
'I don't do gender.'
'As far as I'm aware gender ideology is not something I'm legally required to believe in and I don't.'
'I'm a gender-free zone.'
'Really? Seriously?'

Has anyone managed to formulate a short, polite response to why they don’t want to declare their pronouns? I’m thinking ahead to the scenario where you have an outside speaker/trainer in work, who asks everyone to introduce themselves & give their pronouns. I’m not particularly bothered about being seen as GC, but I would get in trouble if I was rude/hostile to an invited speaker.

I would go with something like "I don't think people should be compelled to declare pronouns so don't worry about me" said casually and calmly, then look to the next person to move things along.

You believe in Christianity and you say grace before meals. I'm an atheist. I may decide to say grace with you, but I don't have to go along with it and I'm not required to please you. You may want me to go along with your belief system but you can't expect me to do so. I won't harass you or discriminate against you because of your beliefs, but I am free to believe something different and to express that belief. You may feel hurt and upset that I don't believe what you do but that's your problem to manage, not mine. We live in a democracy where freedom of thought and expression is allowed and no one has the right not to be upset or hurt.

Now substitute Transgender Ideology for Christianity and pronouns for grace.

By choice my name is Ysta Beria.
If forced to give a title I am Dr Ysta Beria.

I have no wish to ever be Miss, Mrs or Ms Beria.

I have no desire to announce my pronouns as She/ her.

If we haven't met, I am not offended if you think Ysta is a male name.

In over 50 years, not one person I have met has ever thought I was male (my ample cleavage is a clue).

I will be respectful of others wishes regarding how THEY wish to be addressed, but I do not agree with this trend of assuming everyone needs to declare a gender identity. For the vast majority this is not an issue.

Our uni is rife with very strong pressure to state pronouns. Very tempted to add them to my email along with a list of other irrelevant and overly personal info:

Nutella spoon (she/her, presents as white but identifies as quite tanned actually, prefers sex with men but could be persuaded, middle aged, middle class but I know a fair bit of cockney rhyming slang, like eating biscuits)

I think you are confused. This has nothing to do with me not wanting to affirm trans identities. My discomfort was because I did not want to look a) unprofessional and, if I am very honest, b) stupid.

Again, the survey will be sent to 15 colleagues. I know most of them personally, I've worked with them in the past - I do not need to ask them their pronouns to know if they are male or female. For the few that I do not know in person, I can work out their sex by their name. Simple.

Also, if I was not aware of any drastic changes or realisations any of them might have experienced in the last year or so, I trust they are capable of letting me know directly.

Again, the survey will be sent to 15 colleagues. I know most of them personally, I've worked with them in the past - I do not need to ask them their pronouns to know if they are male or female. For the few that I do not know in person, I can work out their sex by their name. Simple.

And I'm guessing that it doesn't make any real difference whether you know their sex or not. So it's non-essential information for the survey and can be safely omitted.

No, of course knowing their sex or not would not make any difference. I only mentioned it to clarify they are not 'Sams' or other hypotethical people.

I was once misgendered by the butcher. I was wearing a baseball cap and a puffy coat, and he said, "can I help you, sir?" before looking up, seeing me, and immediately correcting himself. I'm 5 foot tall, fat and large of nork - even the blindest butcher couldn't really think I was a man.

I would actually be fine with “any pronoun”, but that isn’t an option in the drop down menu provided by HR at my work, so I stick to not declaring on the basis that I don’t feel comfortable specifying (because I don’t).

I’m happy to comply with whatever anyone else specifies for themselves.

Not half as disingenuous as a man claiming to be a woman.

No, that’s not true. It’s one of the first things that we learn as babies, and is a skill that we never lose.

No-one “passes” in real life; they barely do behind a digital thumbnail and twenty different filters.

This idea that we don’t immediately know someone’s sex on meeting them is an article of faith in the trans community every but as much as transsubstantiation is amongst catholics.

The interesting thing is that it’s so often, though not 100% reliably, possible to tell sex from writing style and especially from casual posting style.

I would have said that that’s a truly ‘gendered’ thing given it presumably isn’t physically determined, except that transwomen so often post ‘male-style’ and transmen ‘female-style’.

(Professionally, I tend to ensure I’ve taken out all the apologetic female phrasing before pressing Send.)

People are complicated.

Cool.

Then in that case, let me frame another thing this way: "sex-based" labels and spaces are your religion.

And I am under no obligation to partake in your religion, either.

And so what? Ideally it’s completely irrelevant. If you’re getting to the point of chatting about stuff where it is relevant then you would know by then- eg comparing birth experiences, I wouldn’t do that with a male colleague but would with female. I definitely wouldn’t do it with anyone until I knew them well enough to know if they were male or female! But for work and general amicable chat, it doesn’t make a difference. If you were wrong for 3 years about someone then it can’t have been a big deal!

That’s true, but you are really going to struggle as an adult, particularly in the world of work, if you refuse to use the language the way the vast majority of other adults do.

You’re also gliding over the fact that sex is real whereas there isn’t even a coherent description of what an innate gender identity means, let alone what one is.

No-one “feels like” a woman or a man; we don’t know what that concept would even mean. We are either female or male dependent upon our bodies though.

How much do you have to ignore to be able to type that with a straight face?

You have a humongous capacity for it, @SeldomHere even if we only use this thread as a measure!

And that is why many women are pushing back hard. You can choose to ignore us, to misrepresent us, to decide that we haven't got a clue what we are saying, that our words mean only whatever you decide their meaning shall be.

And we shall carry on wondering where your logic went!

It's extremely rare to not know whether someone is a woman or a man. It's never happened to me in 40 years of living.

I'm guessing that @DodoPatrol and i have read the same literature, since i have spent years doing the same thing: taking any indication that i may be female (apologies, overly polite requests, exclamation marks!) from my emails (previously faxes previously telexes) so that people can't identify me as not-male. I sign off with initial + lastname. I have worked with many many many people in various countries over the years, a lot of whom i have never met.

And many of them have been south Asian, so non-gendered names. I have never been met with blame or hostility if i have called them he when they're a she or vice versa. usually just a quick message in their reply that they're a wo/man. As i do if someone gets it wrong. It's not a biggie. To me the "greater evil" if you like is being disregarded in my profession because i said please in a mail once too often and outed myself as a woman and can therefore be dismissed.