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?

Just reply with “ok chick”. See how that goes? It might just be habit if he calls everyone man, or he’s being very modern and not seeing your sex but your role in the team.

I occasionally get emails (along with the rest of the design team ) addressed to "Gents". Really annoys me. I expressed my irratation in the office and to my amusement a male technician reaplied addessing the whole group as "Ladies".

Interesting, in what context? I'm struggling to think of a situation when I'm standing in front of woman and say 'she' rather then 'you' I might with small children though, when I'm checking stuff with their parents. Its a genuine question BTW as this is one of my key confusions when people feel they need to announce their pronouns. I will use 'they' when referring to someone who I don't know what sex they are i.e. - 'I'm not sure when they are turning up', and I'm not sure what sex they are -and I guess this would follow the rules of other languages, when being more formal.

Sound like you're doing the right thing by your son, so don't be swayed and he will thank you in the end.

Hi Jo, this is Barbara. She has a place on the Norfolk Broads too, you should swap stories.

I'm resigned to the fact that the younger generation will develop a facility to entirely avoid using gendered pronouns and be able to disambiguate the plural they/them from the singular by conventions and context that will forever elude me, consigning me to being an old-fashioned, living linguistic-fossil of a bygone time.

Though, perhaps 'resigned' isn't quite the right connotation, as I secretly aspire to Diana Athill who was the last living person to speech in the authentic, cut-glass accent of her time.

thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/diana-athill

Most names are gendered so people within the same culture would know straight away whether you are female or not, so your example would mostly be unworkable within the same culture/country.

Stranger to DW: "Are you musical?"
Me: "She plays the piano beautifully."

Sam? Chris? Alex?

Plus plenty of us work with people whose names are from cultures where we don't know the gender markers. I've worked with people overseas where we've only had email contact to start either, I haven't seen a photo, and I have no idea if they're male or female - and it doesn't matter. What matters is whether they can do the job I'm asking for.

I'm learning Welsh, and while I have grown up with quite a few Welsh names, I sometimes come across ones I don't know, so I need to look for other clues in the text to tell me. Hefin caused me confusion for a while.

This! 🤣

I did say most names…

And again, I wasn’t talking about cross border communication. Half the clients I deal with are international and I get “misgendered” all the time. It’s not something that I am bothered by, so I don’t have pronouns in my email signature.

I also think that many people in UK, especially in urban areas, are aware enough about gendered names from different backgrounds/cultures.

However, I agree that it matters not a jot when it comes to job roles and performance. What I am saying is that because names are mostly gendered, it’s easy to know whether someone is male or female.

So we have reached the point where alluding to someone’s sex by using a gendered pronoun is somehow harmful or disrespectful. We do need to ask ourselves (or, one needs to ask oneself) how and why we have got to this position.
Is it a natural progression because our society has become less sexist, or is it because lobbying groups have infiltrated and influenced government, policy makers, educational establishments, national bodies, cultural institutions, the popular entertainment industry, social media and the retail sector with the idea that gender (not sex!) is a vital part of identity and that misgendering is not only a cultural faux pas but also akin to actual bodily harm?
Is this shift beneficial or has it actually worsened the position of women in society?

So we have reached the point where alluding to someone’s sex by using a gendered pronoun is somehow harmful or disrespectful.

I'm sorry, I don't really follow and I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion. Do you mean "in general" or for a small group of people with a specific set of beliefs? Are to talking about trans people being referred to by their sex?

It means 'They are for work conversations only.'

Avoid.

Haven't thought about it like that before. I quite like that.