Declining to put my preferred pronouns in my email signature

[HowDoIGetThisThingOff]

It's finally happened, I've been "told" to put my preferred pronouns in my email signature at work.

I've emailed back saying my preference is that I don't do this. But I'm feeling a bit anxious 😬.

Please can I get some advice on what to say if they come back with questions or pressure to comply?

I'm holding out against declaring pronouns in my work emails. I receive emails from a wide slice of my workplace and have been noting their use in tandem with the seniority of those declaring their allegiance to the religion. It has been fascinating to observe how many managers are male he/hims and how many entry-level young people are they/them and actually females.

As an older woman who started work in the early 1980s, it's interesting to note that the better-paid and more secure contract roles appear to be men and the agency, non-contract and easily fired staff are young women (in spite of their new religious identifications). Plus ça change, eh?

I've been terminally online for two decades. I've deliberately never drawn attention to my sex in either online debate or corporate communications - it is evident that women are treated differently in both spheres. It is tedious to have to point this out to idealistic twenty-somethings as it will also draw attention to my age - I note that the 'be kind' generation are not known for empathising with older women. I have had no official approaches about my resistance to pronoun declarations, though I saw last month that the head of HR is now a he/him.

I barely post anywhere online now, due to the social media policy of my organisation and its notoriety as a Stonewall champion. Within the past few months, it has been explicitly stated that if you express any counter views to gender ideology you will be invited to an interview with the boss and then asked to leave. Therefore, I am saving my powder for that day.

Of course I have such a lot to say on this subject, but I can't. I'd quite like to be able to pay my rent.

Well I might wish I looked like Julia Robert's or Mila Kunis or bella Hadid.
I'm never going to, so it would be wishful thinking, not reality.

And in fact I don't look at other women and wish i looked like them. Or men.

Honestly bewildered at @janeinthewild thinking their ‘rough example’ was going to in any way make any of it ‘a little but easier to relate to / understand’.

I am more in the dark than before I asked the question.

I note that the 'be kind' generation are not known for empathising with older women

often, they can barely hide their utter contempt.

Because I will not compel/order/dictate that anyone use "my" preferred pronouns. I would rather they made that decision for themselves, its nothing to do with me. Anyone looking at me will know my sex, anyway. I

Exactly. How arrogant to think you can police how people talk about you when you’re not even there, and can’t hear. 😑

Because maybe they don’t want to play that silly game using made up words..

I’ve heard some not-even-thinly-veiled contempt for ‘older’ feminists, also branding anyone not drinking the gender Kool Aid as ‘a TERF’ and therefore (in their eyes) a bigot - this is coming from young women. The poor dears can’t see how dangerous it is to nod and admire the emperor’s wonderful outfit; they think they are ‘being kind’.

What? Sex based like my oppression as in the oppression of women for like, yknow, millennia. Not as in I’m oppressed because someone is asking my to include pronouns on my email signature. FFS.