Request to share pronouns

[Paulettamcgee]

I feel this question has been asked and answered to death but.....

I've always ignored any request to share my pronouns. I'll introduce my name and role and happily hand over to the next person. I'm fine if someone else wishes to share their pronouns but I do not wish to do so.

I'm very senior at work in an organisation which has a lot of colleagues under the age of 30 ( I think that's relevant as I notice it is younger people who are more keen that pronouns are shared). Generally every introduction in my workplace included sharing pronouns along with your name and role.

I've received some feedback that I should be sharing my pronouns when introducing myself. Especially as a senior leader as it is meaningful for many colleagues and sets the tone for meetings. I don't need to respond to this feedback individually but there is a meeting on Wednesday where it will be expected I share my pronouns when introducing myself. I can foresee not sharing may become problematic.

I don't want to share my pronouns or feel that I have to. I've considered doing it to fit in and make colleagues feel more at ease but I really don't want to. But I also don't want to create an environment where others feel that they can't share theirs.

How do I navigate this?? All help gratefully received.

Sorry - that response was intended for the poster to whom you were responding.

I disagree that they are comparable. You don’t have to believe in a god to use an honorific or title. The honorific or title in and of themselves don’t deny reality or distort words.

The distortion of language around gender isn’t an evolution, and it’s designed to deceive.

I think the way you’re framing this is playing into the hands of those who want to distort and deceive.

I disagree that they are comparable.

That’s fine that we disagree. But that should make you hesitate before deciding that only reality-based terms should be permitted. Why? Because what if fate chose me not you to be the permitter? You might discover that I feel all sorts of words you use ‘really’ imply something different from what you mean by them, and have them banned.

I don’t think you, me or anyone should have that power, at least for self-description. [should edit to say: at least for pronouns].

I disagree that Reverend is based in ideology only. It is actually an earned qualification whether you agree with the ideology or not. Is there also any expectation to use the term outside of the church? It is like Dr. Do you use Dr as the title for your GP?

Would you call the Prime Minister, ‘Prime Minister’ when needed? What if someone is a Lord appointed to the House of Lords? Would you use their title when it was appropriate?

While you focus on freedom of choice only, I prefer to focus on both material reality and choice.

Because if some random person who held a belief they were PM asked me to call them Prime Minister and I knew they were not, there is no way I would even consider doing it just because they sincerely believed they were. As I said, I don’t believe using the title Reverend is comparable to the choice of using correct sex pronouns because there is the element of materially real qualification.

Sure. But your examples of Reverend and Ms were not comparable to someone with a philosophical belief about their gender because their gender is not based on a materially real fact such as adult female status or an earned qualification.

Language is a communication tool that requires a clearly understood base to be successful. If a group chooses to change the meanings of words to suit the purpose of the group to mean the very opposite of what the established meaning is, why should that be acceptable?

Why should one group or one person be able to demand that their changes to already established words be accepted by the entire population? Particularly when those changes make significant and harmful changes to already established language?

So they only really apply if other people are talking about you?

How would you know if they were using the appropriate pronouns or not?

Stick to your guns OP.

Moral courage is one of the principle characteristics of leadership. Demonstrate some moral courage and don't pander to this utter nonsense.

There's a hairdresser on tiktok who "went viral" for always asking her clients if she was allowed to touch them and what their pronouns were.

In every single video I have seen so far she refers to the client either by their name or as "you" (do you want this, how do you like that). Never once has she ever used the she/her they/them, etc. pronouns that are given and requested.

Which kind of proves it to be performative and irrelevant.

@Helleofabore MN isn't great for nuance, because I agree that Revd and Ms are slightly different from each other and slightly different from pronouns again (and slightly different from His Holiness, too). The point connecting them is that if we are deciding what are permissible self-descriptions we need a permitter, to judge the meaning of each and how they measure up to the permitted standard. That worries me a lot more than someone calling themself something I don't buy into.

The strongest argument (your argument) is of course: "that word's already taken". You can't call yourself a surgeon, and you can't call yourself she if you are male. The issue with that is that, descriptively, large numbers of people really do believe that he/she refer to someone's self-identity not their sex. It's not a movement I have much sympathy with. But it is, in fact, real and widespread. I don't think we want a system where one side gets to say "my" view of what pronouns means is the permitted one and others are banned. The other lot tried that, and it was wrong. I don't think we can do it either. At least for self-description.

@Helleofabore Why should one group or one person be able to demand that their changes to already established words be accepted by the entire population?

Absolutely they should not. I agree. Language meaning should be organic and not compelled.

“The issue with that is that, descriptively, large numbers of people really do believe that he/she refer to someone's self-identity not their sex.”

It is a recent change and there are large numbers of people who are confused too, not just those who are ideologically driven. Going forward, I assume that Society will revert back to the vast majority using the established use of language, schools will teach those established language conventions.

Sure there will always be people who choose to use gender identity language. Groups of people have always created specific language for their cultural group. The difference was that they never made the demands that this group is making. This group has been allowed significant over reach and people declaring that they should have the freedom to do so are ignoring the power that the group have obtained where their demands are now in policy where freedom to choose seems to have been removed, if it has not actually been removed.

But hopefully in the future, we will not have that coercive pressure and without it, I suspect people will just revert back to using the established conventions of the language.

@Helleofabore I agree, and I hope so too. I expect that asking for pronouns will disappear eventually. I’d guess that cross-sex pronouns will continue but be much rarer than now. I’m hopeful that the whole compulsion edifice will fall down.

Once upon a time, I believe that "plum" referred to all sorts of dried fruit; "nice" started out meaning foolish, then shifted to lascivious, then extravagant, then precise/scrupulous.

It is entirely possible that one day "he/she" will cease to be sex-based but instead refer to "people who wear checked flannel shirts and drink ale/people who have long hair and gesture softly" 🤷🏻‍♀️ but at this present moment, I think the majority of English speakers are still languishing in the former category awaiting educational updating.

Which kind of proves it to be performative and irrelevant

And as I posted at the end of the last page (where it got missed), that performativity comes at a cost. Adding pronouns to emails generates additional carbon emissions that add up cumulatively to lives lost.

I mean, there are plenty of languages that don't have sex or gender based pronouns at all, and people manage if that ambiguity is long-established. There are other ways to signal it. The problem in English is introducing a new ambiguity.

“The point connecting them is that if we are deciding what are permissible self-descriptions we need a permitter, to judge the meaning of each and how they measure up to the permitted standard.”

Surely the permitter is general society if left to freely and without coercion / emotional manipulation to either accept or reject language changes.

And again, sorry, but your examples really are not ‘slightly different’ I consider them weak. I do understand what you are trying to say but they simply don’t support your argument.

The permitter for titles and honorifics would be generally liking at established facts. Society understands that a female person can use Ms, and permitted it. It was a new word without prior use. If people went and created their own titles and they were optional to use, we would be having different discussions.

And maybe, IANAL, the use of an assumed qualification title could probably be said to even legally challenged for fraudulent use. The permitter in the case of qualification titles is often a regulatory body. Do you see why I said material reality is significant in these cases?

I have to say that amongst my teen’s friends there is already a change. I am with you in hoping it crumbles away and people are left to feel free to accept or not.

@Helleofabore

Surely the permitter is general society if left to freely and without coercion / emotional manipulation to either accept or reject language changes.

Yes, this is what I’m arguing for.

The illustrations I gave were each to test a slightly different thing, which is why they’re (intentionally) different from each other and from pronouns. Revd implies a worldview but is conventional. Ms was at one point new and weird. They aren’t meant to be the same thing.

You say that society accepted Ms and it passed into use. But when society accepted cross-sex pronouns you are saying ‘no. Not society’s decision. Helle’s decision’. I think that’s more dangerous than the alternative.

I do understand you think pronouns refer to sex. (That’s how I use them too). But that just isn’t what a very wide swath of society thinks they refer to. In cases like that I’m not reaching for the banning hammer. It’s how language evolves.

If, in fact, pronouns had been reserved in law to be sex based (like some occupational title), I might think differently. I might not though. After all, there are plenty of official bodies and codes that say they refer to gender identity. I want the freedom to reject that. I think the price of that is that I need to allow others to choose differently.

(I need to go soon so might not reply).

If I was in a meeting with them?

Someone is presenting something, discussing something, asking or querying something that they were doing.

I would dispute that society has accepted “cross sex pronouns” or that a “very wide swathe of society” thinks that’s what they refer to.

But pronouns referring to sex isn’t what I or you or anyone else thinks (or doesn’t think) - that is their definition.

And again, none of this is evolution. Evolution is a very slow process that happens organically with the will of the majority (so far as language is concerned). That’s not how words pertaining to sex have been treated by trans activities.

You mentioned Ms - a term
coined by Gloria Steinem in the 1970s as an alternative to Miss for an unmarried woman that carried the seniority of Mrs. It’s still not in common usage and people still think it’s only used by divorced woman. Pushing 50 years later. Thats how slowly language evolves naturally.

(If you’re going to treat MN as some kind of academic experiment, I’d appreciate it if you made that clear at the start.)

@Helleofabore My view ultimately is simple: if I don’t want others banning my use of pronouns, I don’t get to ban theirs.

I’m sorry if you were confused by the Revd and Ms examples. I did, when I first used them, explain which point I was seeking to make with each, and later again that they weren’t meant to be the same as each other, which you didn’t accept (that feels like it’s on you past that point, tbh). Space is limited so it’s useful to work out quickly which points one agrees or disagrees on. That feels fairly normal part of discussion to me.

And your experience with having a unisex name should tell you why it is a bad idea for women to draw attention to their sex by adding female pronouns to email signatures. That’s been know fact for years, hence sexed titles (Mr, Mrs etc) being dropped from correspondence. So it’s a complete backwards move to add them in.

This is worth repeating. There's a whole lot of anecdote about this.

And there's also peer-reviewed research which suggests that whenever attention is drawn to women's sex, there are negative consequences (eg girls do worse at tests, women are treated with less respect etc etc etc).

@GenderRealistBloke

There's a major difference between Reverend or Ms, and wrong-sex pronouns: cognitive dissonance.

Calling someone Reverend doesn't imply denying your own beliefs. You can call them that even if you think their beliefs are false. All you're doing is saying, "I acknowledge that you believe in a specific worldview." That doesn't cost you anything.

It's even simpler with Ms: "I acknowledge that you're a woman." No need to deny anything you believe in or know.

But wrong-sex pronouns demand that you go against what you know about the other person's sex. It's literally saying, "I can see that you're one sex, but I have to use the other sex pronouns for you specifically because Reasons." It's literally asking people to lie about what they know, for the trans person's comfort.

Make no mistake: I'm damn glad that so many people are willing to do that voluntarily, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not fair to them in the first place.

Who is talking about ‘banning’ people using cross sex pronouns though? Have I?

There should be a ban on any coerce to use them and they should not be enforced or used in any law or policy. Because to use them introduces potential for confusion and I don’t agree at all that “large swathes of the population” believe pronouns refer to gender as well as sex. They may say that superficially and a small group with that ideological belief will believe. But the vast majority of the population?

I am not confused by your examples. I don’t believe I treated them as ‘the same’. I did however find that there was fundamental problems with your attempt to use either of them for the purpose you did and with the degree to which you believe society believes the meaning has changed in language - when these meanings being demanded to be adopted are the opposite to what the established meaning are.

Of course people disagree on some
things while agreeing on others. That is part of life.