Pronouns - pros and cons

[Springwatch123]

Can someone remind me the pros and cons of pronouns, having a blank moment.

There are no pros.

Just cons. Load of attention seeking crap.

What for?

See here Anti-pronouns letter to companies www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4389215-anti-pronouns-letter-to-companies

Or here. https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

No pros

Cons - offensive and excluding to many, baffling to most as your sex will often be clearly visible. Assumes you have a gender and 'fit' stereotypical fluffy girl / macho man clothes / make up etc. pretentious but also shows you up as a bit of an idiot.

No pros at all.

Draws attention to the fact you’re female, which has been demonstrated again and again to increase sexist behaviour.

Invisible Women has some stuff in that, I think.

That’s not quite true.
Gender woo motivated pronouns, whatever.
Advantage of pronouns in normal life, you know how to refer to someone who you can’t sex based on their name eg from a different cultural background, with a gender neutral name. Or whose appearance makes their sex slightly unclear in the first instance, risking hurting someone’s feelings.
Disadvantage, if used in place of sex it negates all efforts to ensure equality of access to both males/females, it also negates any effort to ensure equality of access for transgender people (since you can’t identify them without knowing sex).

Pros - you get your naval gazing feelings stroked and reminded how special you are

Cons - you get your naval gazing feeling stroked and really should be reminded how special you aren’t

Cons - perpetuates the gender woo by normalising the whole topic

Collectively using pronouns has allowed activists such as McKinnon/Ivy to leverage ‘but society sees us as women therefore it is so cruel to exclude us’ from where they want to access. We are still campaigning to reverse the policies where harm is being done.

People using pronouns need to understand what is happening because of this usage and consider their contribution. I don’t believe they can ignore the collective harm that results, they can try to ignore it. But it has already happened and to deny it is dishonest.

Pros: anyone instructing others on what pronouns to use marks themselves out as someone to avoid

Pros: you can suss out the walleys before having to converse at all.

Cons: if you are in the unfortunate position of being in a pronoun friendly work culture you are guilt tripped into using them.

I like pronouns, they save have to remember peoples names, help to differentiate between sexes , and are useful if you are referring to a group of people.

The problem is when people appropriate them to make pointless points and to stroke their own egos , but I am not not too worried, it’s a fad, it will pass.

cons:
Wrong-sex pronouns makes it more difficult to uphold sex-based rights.
Wrong-sex pronouns make it more difficult for socially-transitioned people to desist
Wrong-sex pronouns use cognitive capacity which is better employed doing something useful, or at least interesting!

Cons - disrupting girls intuition as to the truth of who is male and who is female, making them less safe.

I have a name that is more often used for males, it is so much easier to get info from people or get things done if they think I’m male, sadly advantage disappears as soon as I meet them in person but nice while it lasts.

Not a chance I’d put female pronouns on my email.

pro-a bit like rainbow lanyards, they save you time identifying who the twats are.

Yes, there’s definitely that.

Pronouns in themselves are not an issue. The issue is the forcing of language which expects people to use a pronouns that is either made up and therefore meaningless, or relates to the opposite sex that a person actually is.
Freedom of speech is vital.

My favourite pronoun is, "whatever."

I like pronouns, they save have to remember peoples names, help to differentiate between sexes , and are useful if you are referring to a group of people.

Quite so, it's what they're for. Useful grammatical constructs we apply without any thought to make communication more fluent.

If anyone tries to subvert their normal evolved usage by imposing personal rules you need to remember then they are breaking the utility of pronouns. It's like having to remember extra names for them so in that case it's likely to be easier and more fluent to just use their name. Sometimes using 'they' generically will work ok as we do use that for single unknown people entirely naturally.

Cons: it’s not always a straightforward decision to avoid someone, because of the ramifications of doing so, particularly in wider family (and sometimes friendship) contexts.

In my experience, people who use wrong-sex pronouns are not always twats. But I take your point.