Pronouns an essential box on the application form for new work ID card.

[NoAuthorityAtAll]

Started a new job recently in a public sector organisation and was filling out the online form for my ID card. It had preferred pronouns as an essential box (ie you couldn’t progress to the next stage without putting something in it - I did try leaving it blank). I’d noticed that everybody had pronouns on their signature, but for it to be compulsory to declare them on one’s ID card seems inappropriate for a public sector (or any actually) organisation.

I put n/a and am now panicking that I’ll get questioned about it or labelled as transphobic (which would be really damaging in my new role). My job is person-facing and I have no problem whatsoever with respecting people’s pronouns and gender identity in the course of my work (nor with colleagues), but I don’t want to be pressured into including pronouns on my ID and communications.

Is this a common situation? If anyone else has experienced similar, was there any comeback/ were you pushed further on it? I’m really quite worried.

Clever cat!

When did mistaking someone for the opposite sex at work as has been cited here become such an ‘OMG this is such an impossibly embarrassing & difficult thing that we’ll literally never get past it’ matter?

I mean so what?? So what if someone initially thinks a woman is a man? What’s the worst that happens? A little bit of social awkwardness that’s all. There are no hideous far reaching consequences

Exactly.

My kids are / were constantly assumed to be the opposite sex because of their hair and clothing choices.

I taught them it was no big deal. They corrected people when it mattered, but not when it didn't eg strangers on the bus etc

To teach them it is a huge deal would be to teach them the opposite sex is lesser than.

I will not go against my value of equality between the sexes simply because of a rather backwards current fashion.

We survived for centuries without people stating their pronouns, nothing terrible happened.

I have a lot of colleagues I deal with exclusively by email. Because of company demographics we have a preponderance of people called Chris - of both sexes. It's never been a problem. People get it wrong occassionaly, are politely informed of their mistake in a couple of words (or it's ignored, because really it doesn't matter) and everyone carries on.

But we do now have a non binary man [for clarity] who finds being called 'him' 'very upsetting because he's they's been misgendered and has to work out what to do'.

I get misnamed a lot. My name has various shortenings, I use one and have it (twice) at the end of my emails, but frequently get called by one of the others. It got a bit confusing when I had a line manager who went by the other one but we generally worked out who they meant. And nobody huffed about it.

white sharpie or tippex or scratching it off with a coin...

Do you mean you didn't have to lie down in a dark room for two days, or have to have a screaming fit because your whole sense of self was utterly destroyed by not only being misgendered, but also by someone not knowing your name indicating that you were not the centre of everyone's universe?!

Love many of the ideas here!
Wonder if emojis are ever used to fill the required field?
Maybe eyeroll/eyeroll?
Or green face/greenface?
(Flippin emojis on strike today!) Eyeroll.

I've been wondering, if I'm ever pressed on the matter, whether to declare that I reject the use of third-person pronouns for myself and that people should refer to me by my name at all times. (And make sure they spell it correctly.)

If there's a free text field for preferred pronouns, one could enter one's name? Eg:

Name: Jane Bloggs
Pronouns: Jane

As someone with a name that has various spellings and shortened-versions, I'm long-used to being addressed by a variety of incorrect names in emails, even in replies to emails I sent with my name clearly evident in the signature. Which makes me sceptical about how much attention people really pay to the contents of email signatures. If people aren't even observant enough to spell someone's name correctly in a reply email, what is the likelihood they will remember what pronouns were displayed and use them in future conversations?

Have a word with yourself! How is it transphobic to not want to refer to oneself in a certain way?

People who want pronouns on their labels can have them but to the rest of us we just find them unnecessary, silly and in some situations rather unhelpful. Some people can choose to state their pronouns and others can choose not to - unless you believe in enforced, compelled speech of course? Do you?

It’s so utterly tiresome 🥱having to deal with people forcing their belief system on the rest of us. Even Scientologists leave you alone eventually if you say no enough times.

Can you explain why you would need to state pronouns though, and why state both the objective and subjective? Why not just use a sex based honorific or M or F?

I work in a humungously multi-cultural environment, and as an IT person, I have to talk to everyone, often over slack. I don't care a fig if someone is male or female, because it's entirely irrelevant to my role, and since we all speak different languages as a first language, no-one cares if someone does get pronouns wrong, because it just doesn't matter.

I would find it a red flag if someone (outside of HR maybe, for practical reasons like room booking or health coverage), did make a big deal of checking if I was a woman or not.

It’s not reasoned though is it in a public facing role? It’s basically saying to customer/clients they must be a bit thick if they need to look at a badge to recognise whether someone is a woman or a man -which in 99% of cases is pretty damn obvious. If organisations want to treat their customers as though they’re idiots that’s up to them but they won’t be getting my business.

I would find it a red flag if someone (outside of HR maybe, for practical reasons like room booking or health coverage), did make a big deal of checking if I was a woman or not.

Exactly. Sex is relevant at work only for a few very specific circumstances - facilities might need to know overall numbers for things like ensuring adequate toilet provision, but almost nobody actually needs to know on an individual basis unless they are planning to discriminate (there are some H&S exceptions about things like exposure limits to toxic substances and providing suitable protective equipment, but only for a very small number of jobs).

And for work purposes nobody at all needs to know if you have a gender or what it is.

No we haven't 'always used them' in this way ... 'declaring' our preferred pronouns.

I lived and worked on four continents (I won't count how many countries or jobs). Thousands of colleagues, over the years. No-one ever declared their pronouns to me. No one ever asked me to declare my pronouns. Not once. Ever.

Of course this 'declare your pronoun' nonsense is all new. It derives from these absurd new beliefs around hermaphrodite humans and all that shit. So you do well to circumvent it as much as you can, those of you who do.

(Why do people get their 'kickers [sic] in such a twist', you ask, @Laurdo ? -Because all this new pronoun malarkey is bollocks ... and bollocks might easily get your kickers in a twist if you're a man who thinks he's a 'she'.)

There were enough reasons already to be doing that !

MagpiePi · Today 10:03

Do you mean you didn't have to lie down in a dark room for two days, or have to have a screaming fit because your whole sense of self was utterly destroyed by not only being misgendered

I'm on a ship, the bridge crew have my passport and discharge book, I also signed the articles. On the cabin list, they've spelled my name wrong and on the shift rota too, in another way. There are five letters in my name. It took over a week of correcting people, before they got it right.

My hair didn't fall out, nor did my teeth and I didn't need a sedative.

After all that LITERAL VIOLENCE!!

I have a female first name but a male first name as my surname, I've had people think I'm a guy and call me by my surname on emails, I didn't care I just replied to their questions and thought how funny it would be if we ever spoke or met in person

I stronly suspect that if you only remember that Dan in Guǎngzhōu is female because she highlights it in every single email, she's not thinking how respectful her British colleagues are.

Actually lots of terrible things happened but I am willing to bet that very few of them were down to a lack of pronoun sensitivity. Shame really, if we knew for a fact that being mindful of pronouns would solve every one of the worlds problems we would possibly all be a lot more willing to share them.

pronouns I /me

We had them on our old workplace cards. What's worse is I'm certain I wasn't even asked them!

Anyway it's nothing a bit of acetone and a q-tip didn't fix.

Have a quiet chat with HR. Just because someone in charge of formatting name badges (who may not be particularly senior) has selected the "pronouns" option doesn't mean that everyone in the organisation is a rabid genderist. Quite often people just want to do the right thing and have no idea that there could be a downside.
IMHO, even letting people state "their pronouns" at work is inappropriate, because it's making an implicit statement in favour of a contested philosophical / political belief. As an environmentalist, I might like to put "everyone should cut down on driving" at the end of all my emails, but even I recognise that wouldn't be the right place to make that statement.
Requiring people to do it, however, is discriminatory.