These email pronouns at work

[TheOGCCL]

Reading round the trans topic one thing I think we can say is it’s incredibly contested.

Do people who use email pronouns at work realise this? Have they done their research and then consciously decided to come down on one side and want to publicly announce this? And why this particular topic, you wouldn’t put Black Lives Matter in your email signature.

Personally I don’t think work is a place for getting involved in this debate at all, I have no interest in what gender any of my colleagues are/were/want to be and it has no bearing on how I’d treat them, so why do so many think this is a good idea?

I have a colleague whose daughter is caught up in all of this and changing pronouns. Colleague is at a bit of a loss & not too sure how to handle but is adding pronouns to emails to try & be supportive.

So probably not overly aware of the bigger picture but the family situation is guiding the decision making. Very casual at work if you do or don't want to.

There are loads of reasons to do it. People with foreign names, people who want their gender / sex known, people who often get mistaken for the other and yes, people who are trans or want to show support for trans folk. I work in a discipline where lots of people go by unusual pronouns and it's really helpful to know what to call people. Of course these people typically know it's a debated issue, but they don't care. Just as I wouldn't care if other people interpreted my lack of pronouns in email as malinformed "coming down on one side of the debate".

If you don't want to do it, just don't do it.

It's because it feels like bullying to me

Assertive stating of one's sex in front of the sex that is known to have been trained by society to defer to the male sex

firstly I am going to say that I am ‘worried’ about people who might be trans or non-binary but have not yet fully disclosed this to everyone. Making them use pronouns kind of forces the issue and they may not be ready which is unkind to them.

this is why it should not * *be mandatory, and forced solidarity is no solidarity at all, so fairly pointless. Am I to take from your use of '' that you are in fact not worried about trans people being outed but its a convenient out?

I haven't chosen my pronouns yet. I am considering 'thingy/whatsit' or 'fuckoff/outofmyheadwithyourbonkersideologyyoumoron'.

I bin any CV that I receive with pronouns on it. I don't want that sort of nonsense on my team.

That's the whole point. You can't know whether someone is a man or a woman from the pronouns on their emails. That will only tell you what gender they think they are.

Pretty sure a lot of people do this without having given any thought whatsoever to what kind of statement they are making.

My company has invited people to do this now, a few people have done so.

I think it’s pointless tbh, I won’t be doing it.

Its up to other people if they want to, but if it becomes mandatory, which I believe some companies have made it, then I will have an issue and have to make the point.

Just to add, I think they’ve done it as they’ve been taken over by an American company, and I believe that’s where it’s coming from.
I didn’t see any desire to do so before, and it was very much stressed it’s not compulsory, so somebody has obviously grasped it’s a contentious issue

I find this interesting...and many of the other threads that crop up along similar lines. It's very thought provoking. But I feel massively uneducated on these matters, please can someone direct me to good resources so that I can read up?

Because including pronouns on emails is a statement of a political position. It was quite deliberately created by activists for that purpose. The fact that you find it useful doesn’t change that. (I for example have a name that’s usually used by black people. When people meet me they are sometimes surprised that I’m white. By your reasoning I should add “race: white” as part of my email signature. But I don’t because (a) that’s inappropriate and (b) who cares if people are surprised for a moment when they meet me?!)

OP you’re so right. I don’t want businesses telling employees they must state their politics in every email that’s sent. Employers should not have that level of control.

TransgenderTrend
www.transgendertrend.com

Good responses.

I, too, was thinking of the male & female colleagues who used each other's email accounts for a while. I hadn't heard of the vet experiment (the 'we would pay the males more' really made me seethe).

There was a similar experiment done with recruiting for orchestras, in which the musician playing their audition piece was hidden from view, & the number of women who were chosen was higher than when it was obvious which were men & which were women.

I also love Sister Wendy Beckett talking about a painting which was taken as being by a male artist & nobody had a bad word to say about it; then it was reattributed to a woman, & suddenly the painting developed a number of faults!😂

My name is Prince

And my pronouns are fun/ky

www.bva.co.uk/media/2988/gender-discrimination-in-the-vet-profession-bva-workforce-report-nov-2018.pdf

This is the experiment conducted by the British Vets. I may have been a tad confused about the specifics, but the results were undeniable.

So no. I will never be reinforcing my sex in my signature block or in any way at work.

Anyone who honestly thinks that negative sexist discrimination is 'not a thing' and cannot see how 'pronouns' will negatively impact females in the workplace perhaps has not thought about it deeply enough.

@AgathaAllAlong we have Ms, Mrs, Mr, Miss to resolve any confusion if someone has an ambiguous or unfamiliar name but isn't present. The pronoun ritual is an ideological/religious statement.

We have a lot of Dr in our place so mr Mrs doesn't help

The email pronouns are nothing to do with your sex. Its to do with your gender. Gender and sex are different.

We're mostly Drs and many nationalities, lots of different locations... not knowing someone's sex has never been a problem.

Totally agree.
It's not a neutral thing to do, it's bullshit.

I was named after my father so a name that could easily be for a man or woman. It's never been an issue for me although being married to someone with another ambiguous name it has been funny at functions where people were seated male/female alternately at tables and they've guessed the wrong way round for us. Swapping the place name cards wasn't very traumatic.

Errol I would say not knowing the sex is often a huge advantage

From my perspective anyway 😀

Not so long ago we were pushing to hide sex in the workplace as much as possible because of the well established fact that females face discrimination simply for being female. CVs were submitted with initials instead of full names. Cover letters were carefully worded. I’m 48. I’m not talking about the dark ages here. Now we are supposed to declare our sex in every interaction.

I don’t think the people making these signatures have really spent the time to consider the ramifications of their choices. They consider the positive impact in one regard, but not the negative consequences for so many others.

they know they are on the correct side in terms of acceptance and tolerance. I completely agree with them on that. So there is no controversy if you just look at the issue at that level. It’s a shallow level of examination though. It’s the messy little details that are worthy of debate and discussion that raise legitimate controversy. It’s hard to separate those out though, because for every person who does want to focus on the implications of muddying statistics by mixing sex and gender or the safety of male bodies in female prisons, there are plenty of people who just hate those that want to be act and dress differently than societal expectations. I suspect the pronoun people feel like they are taking a justifiable stand against that hatred, without thinking about the implicit endorsement of problematic policies.