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?

But that's not the way English does work and we don't need to change our language to pander to a tiny minority.

Well this is exactly the absurdity of all pronoun preferences.

I expect that I’m called you/she/they regularly. I don’t actually care if I’m called he either, but can’t imagine it comes up all too often. For the most part, I won’t even be there when I’m being referred to as most of these so I’m none the wiser anyway.

I’d actually like to start listing my preferred adjectives (funny, intelligent, beautiful) and become upset if any other adjective is used to describe me. I think it might catch on eventually…

Jeanette Winterson wrote a book eons ago with a protag whose sex was never revealed. It was weirdly opaque and confusing- whether because we constantly make judgements based on sex, or whether omitting references made the book laboured - or both - i dont know.

'Written on the body ' iirc

Put them all together , & you get neutral "sheit".

But her explanation is the very opposite of what she is hoping to achieve.

I don't think so. I think sex is irrelevant in many contexts - whether you should have a promotion, whether you should be expected to sort out the office dishwasher, whether you should be wolf-whistled etc.

Some (many) people consider someone's sex to be a discerning factor in these situations. By attempting to remove that factor - by saying it's ok to refer to you as "they" so a 3rd party doesn't disadvantage you due to your sex - that's in line with that aim.

It means she’s a narcissist.

But then we'd all have to go round announcing our preference, and remembering everyone else's preferences in every situation where you are interacting with other people.

What we need is for sex to not matter in some contexts, not to start mangling language to fit around it.

It means she is kinder and cooler than you....
I prefer she/kettle.

I will never put pronouns in my signature but were I forced to I would be tempted to put "he/she/they/it/whatever"

As for remembering everyone's special beliefs, there is no chance of that happening when I meet hundreds of students and colleagues each year as part of my job and can't even remember their names and faces.

The only way to win is not to play.

I've a bit of sympathy towards the impulse to try and swerve ingrained sexism by hiding one's sex.

Sometimes I use just a first initial (no honourifics) on the understanding that the default male assumption will work in my favour and potentially achieve a better outcome.

However, I'm unsure if in the long term this is not solving sexism, just sort of kicking it down the road.

I joined a subthread about whether pronouns being neutral would make them obsolete, in order to point out that neutral pronouns work fine in the languages that already have them.
You seem to think I'm making some sort of political demand. I am not.

@ArabellaScott Ursula Le Guin flirted briefly with U., but decided it was counterproductive if her achievements were being assumptively credited to the male sex and that she would prefer to be a visible example to other girls and women who might want to write speculative fiction. (I hope I'm remembering her essay reasonably accurately; I can't retrieve the book it's in without causing a bookshelf to collapse...)

Thanks for explaining this, I’ve not thought of it that way. 🙏🏻

If you’re not sure what she’s trying to express, why not ask her? It will give you a more accurate answer than our guesses!

True....

Sounds reasonable, but some might take exception to being questioned about the reasons for their pronouns, which are holy and not to be queried.

Crazy to me that the humble pronoun, once a harmless and rarely mentioned part of speech, has become such a hot topic!

It means: attention seeking.

She’s a div.

Having one third person pronoun would be a nightmare of confusion:

"Martin and Brenda went shopping. They was looking for a good charity shop, while they was hoping to pick up a bargain at Wickes. They said to them that they should split up and run their separate errands and then they would meet them at the coffee shop by twelve. But secretly, they was planning to meet their affair partner in the paint aisle."

how unpleasant are you

Didn't JK Rowling go for JK rather than Joanne, because an obviously female name would put the boys off?

I don't mind being she or they, but if I hear anyone referring to me as he, I will correct them, because I am often literally the only woman in the room, and they should not forget women can do these roles too. I similarly object to mails addressed to "gents" and similar.

I had a load of colleagues in HK and Singapore - I don't have the cultural background to know whether many of the names are male or female, so if I needed to refer to them, I used they - "asked Tan to check in the datacentre - they said all cables are firmly seated and lights are green,, but we still have no connection," that sort of thing. It doesn't matter if they're a man or woman, as the important thing was they had physical access to the datacentre there. In reality, if I guessed "he", in most cases, I'd have been right, but I know how it annoys me for people to assume I can't be in a technical role, so I don't want to do that to any other woman. So sometimes, it does matter, though I also know it's not going to work against me if they don't realise I'm a woman.

I understand that it doesn't impact you. However, it will have impact on those who the CV has been sent to.

Receiving a CV with those pronouns is a signal that someone has indeed got expectations about pronoun usage, otherwise they would not add them or would not add ones that differ from the person's sex. And adding 'them' does indicate that.

She might not intend that outcome, but that is actually what she has done.

The point she has told you she is making, is not the point that she is making, in my opinion. She may as well point a huge sign that says, 'I want you to think about what sex class I belong to' simply because she has been the one to make any statement at all such as adding pronouns to her CV.

Haven't read the rest of the thread yet but assume the description of 'navel gazing attention seeker chasing praise from a quickly demolishing ideology'has already been mentioned for the woman mentioned in the OP?

Where's that gif of 'hello, fellow teenagers'?

Bloody hell. Who has the energy to put this much thought into their sense of self 🤦‍♀️