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.

No, some Comprehensive (both sexes attend) and Girl's schools also do the 'Sir' and 'Miss' thing from my own personal experience.

yep. I spent years honing my emails so that they didn't use typical "female" language and so on (apparently too much "please" and "thank you" and exclamation marks) and have signed off with Initial Lastname precisely so that i can establish my profficiency before I'm rumbled as a brainless clueless woman.

I worked with people from East Asia for years. They don't always know, when just confronted with a name, if the person is male or female, and they don't make a big song and dance about it. My colleagues in Eastern Europe were more likely to write Name Lastname (Mrs) - but never (Mr) - if they wanted people to sex them correctly

They aren’t going to answer. They never do.

I've spent the entirety of my adult life working on the basis - and sometimes having to make the point forcefully - that my sex is irrelevant to the way I do my job. The reason this has been necessary is that women are almost exclusively the ones to suffer sex discrimination in the workplace.

That stance is not about to change now.

The difference in status is marked. In the US female teachers are routinely referred to as Ma'am: a term of address which puts them on an equal footing with 'Sir'.

Why do you assume it's a single-sex school?

I'd tick all the boxes and add "human" or "carbon-based life form."

It wasn’t single sex.

Most women in the work place dealing with people via email benefit from being mistaken for a man. Women are still very often treated worse than men.

No, but I'm interested in Alpha's reasons for assuming it was.

I work with a lot of young adults. They mostly call me ‘miss’. It’s very amusing (and none of them has ever even asked me for my preference, so maybe there’s hope yet).

It's Sir and Miss at my dcs school too. Every female teacher seems to be Miss *** whether they are married or not

When I say young adults… they are adults (higher education!). It’s quite sweet really but makes me feel ancient!

DD brought home a permission slip to take part in an Into University trip, the registration form asks for gender and then pronouns, no mention of sex, no mention of parents education level or salary though which you would think are far more relevant to an organisation designed to increase likelihood to attend uni in a disadvantaged area.

I just put “any pronouns” when I was asked. The people who really care, really hate it when you don’t indulge them 😂

I said I was misgendered, not that someone used my pronouns incorrectly. I was addressed as "sir".
Pronouns are an indicator for other things like form of address, etc.

I also had a headteacher I was going to work with - they had a gender neutral name, and their photo on the website showed them to be quite ambiguously presented. I had to talk to another person about this headteacher whilst setting up the meeting and not knowing their pronouns made it a very difficult conversation. I also had to talk to other professionals about this headteacher and none of us knew how to refer to them - it was a very clumsy conversation with lots of use of their name in a way that wasn't natural in conversation. If they had just popped their pronouns on the school website next to the staff list, it would have made things far easier and less uncomfortable for us and the headteacher.

I know mumsnet refuses to acknowledge ambiguous looking people, but they do exist and the use of pronouns ad indicators is super helpful.

"Pronouns are an indicator for other things like form of address, etc."

No they really aren't.

Regarding your ambiguous photo of a headteacher, @VivienneDelacroix why on earth did you not just ask the person setting up the meeting what sex the HT was? Or, just make your best guess and plump for either she or he. No harm or issue would have resulted if you had done that, rather than used unnatural language instead.

*Bollocks.

That's how you can tell the sex.
Speaking to people and using their names is preferable to pronoun insistence.

Where's Shiloh?
Shiloh is in the house.

Is it Shiloh's House?
Not it belongs to Shiloh's Aunty Brian. *

I bet you use pronouns all the time though, everybody does. You wouldn't say:

Where's Shiloh?
Shiloh's in the garden. Shiloh is doing a lovely job on the cottage border and said Shiloh is going to take some cuttings to take to Shiloh's Aunty Brian when Shiloh goes over to visit Aunty Brian tomorrow.

Or: Where's Shiloh?
She's in the garden. She's doing a lovely job on the cottage border and said she is going to take some cuttings to take to her Aunty Brian when she goes over to visit her tomorrow.

Obviously the first one is bonkers!

My understanding of normal usage of English is to use the third person plural if the correct form of the third person singular is unknown.

Yes, just using "they" would do, if the sex of this headteacher was not possible to determine from their photo.

BTW there is plenty of research that shows that humans are nearly perfect at identifying the sex of a subject from a straightforward headshot photo, even when cropped to remove hairstyles, and even when quite heavily pixilated. This ability develops early in childhood, and girls/women are better at recognising that a face is female than men are.

n/a is fine.
If challenged you can reply "putting me on the spot to answer that question would be forcing me to out myself if the answer wasn't what you were expecting. Forcng someone to out themselves is wrong, so it is an inappropriate question to be compulsory. I can choose not to answer"

That’s an excellent response, thank you @YireosDodeAver, and is half of the reason that I’m so uncomfortable with it being compulsory.

I have read quite a bit from trans people saying that they hate the fashion for pronoun declaration so I don’t feel that it’s necessarily something that genuinely trans people want. I also feel that it’s a politically/ideologically loaded statement which is inappropriate for a work environment unless you genuinely have the need or want to clarify whether people should address you in a particular way.

And to clarify, by ‘genuinely trans’, I mean people with gender dysphoria who live their lives presenting as the opposite sex.

Why use pronouns, though? Why “he/him” etc. not male, M or Mr?

Why not say “I’ve just realised I don’t know whether Chris Smith is male or female. Do you know?”.

Why not just use the third person if you don’t want to ask?

None of the pronoun people will answer this.

Ambiguous looking people? The sex of very very few people - once you see them move and hear them speak - is a mystery…

I know a lot of people who dress and carry themselves in a very androgynous way. i certainly wouldn’t assume!

Do you mean you wouldn't assume what sex they actually are, or what sex they want you to think they are? I'm 52 and I have never met an adult whose sex I didn't immediately know, whatever they were wearing.