Pronouns she/they - what does that mean?

[MagpiePi]

A woman at work has she/they has her email pronouns. It doesn't even work grammatically as 'she' and 'they' are both 3rd person pronouns.
Not sure what she is trying to express, other than being tiresomely right-on, or have I missed something?

She’s either a mindless virtue signaller, or just wants to avoid getting into reputational trouble with the rainbow brigade in HR, or an internal work group. Either way it’s pretty pathetic.

Most people don't have a gender neutral name though, so using "they" pronouns is just performative nonsense. And of the very few people who have a gender neutral name, even fewer of them do the kind of job where they can avoid interacting with people in person.

It's not progressive to think that hiding your female sex is the best way to be treated with respect. We should be demanding that society treats men and women with equal respect.

I must be very rude. I frequently use third person pronouns when talking about someone in her or his presence, and I don't stop to think whether I have referred to them by name a moment earlier. Third person pronouns are a convenience, mostly used automatically (without conscious thought). No-one has ever had a quiet word with me about my rudeness.

On the other hand, I have been shouted and screamed at, by a third person, for "misgendering" my son; I have known his sex since a few seconds after his birth, when midwife, doctor and I unanimously agreed. Nothing since has persuaded me that he is female, not his own declaration, not even his dresses, nice haircut and new glasses, nor all the people falling over themselves to be kind to him (but not kind at all to his bemused and distressed parents).

You answer your own question
I really think some people just have a bit much time on their hands.

Attention seeker.

Remember when people were making up new pronouns right left and centre (zir, etc) - what happened to that?

the forward slash in 'my pronouns are...' gushings was traditionally meant to separate subject [e.g. 'he'] and object [e.g. 'him'] pronouns, though I was never quite sure on the point of this since we all know that he-> him; she->her; they-> them.

a few worthy individuals such as this one then interpreted the point of forward slash being to denote ambiguity/multiple identities.

the mind does indeed boggle.

I broadly agree with everything she says but whether she knows it or not she is signalling adherence to a much more insidious set of beliefs.

Like sure, you’ve put a swastika on your front door because you’re a Tibetan Buddhist trying to bring good luck to your household; but that’s not how most people are going to read it.

It means they’re a) an idiot, b) indulging in performative specialness, c) trying to hop on the GI bandwagon or d) all of the above.

It means they’re a) an idiot, b) indulging in performative specialness, c) trying to hop on the GI bandwagon or d) all of the above.

I like this. There have been studies where the same emails is sent from male and female names and the male name gets better treatment. So if you are lucky enough to have a gender neutral name why ruin it by declaring! I also have always used Ms, I feel the question ‘is that miss or mrs’ which I am asked everywhere is basically asking if I’m married, which is none of their business.

It's very good of them/her to give me options for my own speech.

Yes that was sarcastic. I can see how nice she/they would be to tell me that my speech choices are my own, and that they/she doesn't intend to take offence. And I still think it's not quite OK, because it reinforces genderists in their mission to police everyone's speech and to enforce performative kindness. It seems to me that kindness that is just to display how kind I am has little to do with kindness that values the recipient.

I think in the same way you wouldn’t indicate ethnicity/age/nationality in a pronoun because it isn’t relevant when talking about people, she doesn’t feel it is necessary to announce sex. She isn’t seeking to hide it when people meet her, just remove unnecessary (as she sees it) references to it.

Doesn’t having both mean you are expected to use ‘she’ first and then if you refer to the person again in that discussion (verbal or written) you use ‘they’?

I am sure I saw a video where someone was ranting because someone got it wrong.

But while 'they' doesn't give away sex, 'she' obviously does. So what's the point of being 'she/they' if keeping yourself sex-neutral is the objective?

All I glean from pronoun displays is that if you don’t know the person and then actually meet them there is no guarantee that ‘she/they’ is female.

She says her ideal situation would be that everyone was referred to by the same not-sex-indicating pronoun but she obviously can’t impose it on everyone so just opts to use it for herself!

Seeing as nobody here actually knows what it represents, I would assume it is entirely performative and signalling allyship to the trans cause.

That doesn't logically follow, though. There are examples where she could be GC like me (as per my pp) and considers herself not to have a gender identity, or signalling that sexed pronouns can be harmful so "they" is fine. It might be more likely that it's T allyship or something but no-one can really tell either way.

It's about saying "if you think "she"/a woman is something other than a female, then you would be incorrect to attribute that to me, so let's avoid that situation".

In this particular situation, that I'm describing, it's not about kindness or speech choices, it's about being clear on accurate descriptions where language has been mangled by genderists.

Is there social pressure at your workplace to announce pronouns? If she feels she has to, then maybe this is her way of telling people that she doesn't care how people refer to her, and maybe that nobody else should care either. If I felt pressured (and thankfully I don't), then I might do the same.

Anyone who indicates they use or want you to use specific wording to refer to them that doesn’t fit into the conventions of the English language is making a demand that requires you to make additional effort just for them. It doesn’t matter whether why. A political statement is just as much as an imposition as for gender identity purposes.

It should be purely up to you, personally, whether you choose to make this extra effort. The issues start when there is coercion attached to the demand, either emotional, employment or social repercussions. As we interact with society, we need to be brutally honest about this demand and the impact on others of this demand.

The question is the same though, what type of person makes these language demands of others?

Well, no, because some 'non binary' people want pronouns to alternate. I've seen people chastised for not alternating at the correctly desired frequency.

I've spotted a couple of instances like this where I'm fairly sure this is the intention.

Rightly or not, there are now a large group of people who will read "she" as "having a feminine gender identity" so it could be some attempt to counter that.

Well they can sod off.

So she wants people to have to think specifically about her and her political aims when they talk about her. All because she rejects that the English language does use sex based pronouns when people know someone’s sex.

By her own actions, she is the one who is making those discussing her conscious of her sex class. Everytime they discuss her.