They know at work that I am a woman, so why this?

[EmiliaBassano]

I bought a new phone yesterday and rather than make a total pig's ear of doing the job myself, I asked my work IT department to help me set up the work email access as it didn't work last night when I tried it at home. They logged it as:

Emilia called to ask for help with getting access to their emails as well as getting MFA setup for their new phone.

Just why? I don't identify as anything other than what I am and I don't have pronouns on my emails, which I refuse to do. But I have worked here for 10 years.

AIBU to be irritated?

I couldn't get upset about this, because it's been common to use 'their' in this context for decades before it became linked to gender neutrality. Also in my experience IT teams are the least likely part of an organisation to be gender affirming so I doubt it was even deliberate?

For some reason non binary cables never took off.

I think that if GC people (like me) maintain that we get to choose the pronouns we use when referring to other people and that we are not mandated to use their chosen pronouns - we have to accept that other people have the right to choose which pronouns they use for us likewise. If someone wants to refer to me as they/them then I say let them go ahead and fill their boots.

Your overthinking it just be glad they used the correct their

I'm only irritated. I'm not wound up, got my knickers in a twist or outraged or moaning, or complaining or giving anyone "shit" @daisychain01 I'm just commenting. I have to use my personal phone to get into my system at work, and access emails on the move. We do not have work phones.

It's just a discussion.

As opposed to the correct "you're"? 😉

Agree. I’m not sure I would even have noticed tbh

I'd worry much much much more about that than piffling pronouns. Especially if you have had to install any apps for your work.

I'm GC and dislike it when people expect others to use they/ their as a pronoun in conversation with people who know very well whether the person is male or female.

But, in this instance, I'd imagine it's standard practice, not just because of genderwoo but also because foreign names are much, much harder to get right. It'd be accidentally racist to get pronouns right for Hannah and Matthew but get them wrong for Chinese names, for example.

If someone typed that individually it's odd. If it's a common enough problem to have a copy-paste response it's normal.

I agree with you, OP. No, nobody has died; but it just seems so clunky. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if they did actually go generic and wrote "The user asked for help in accessing their emails"; but when they go to the trouble of using your actual name, it makes no sense to associate it with 'they' when they know your sex very well.

I also find it irritating when we used to get texts from my DS's last school, where they would send something like "Barry* has been awarded a praise point for their outstanding work in Maths today". I know it's nice of them to send positive acknowledgments, but it comes across as insincere, generic and nothing like as special as it's probably meant to be. Why go to the effort of personalising it, rather than just saying 'your child' and then fall at the first hurdle?

School reports were the same as well: I completely appreciate that they use software and select stock phrases when compiling the reports; but could they not just have added one more little line of code to give the option to select M or F (or even X as well, for any children who actually want to use 'they'), so that the child's own actual pronouns can be inserted? It just spoils the ship for a hap'orth of tar and makes it all look needlessly amateurish and roughshod when I presume 'professional' would be more what they're ideally aiming for.

I'm firmly middle-aged and have lived in various different parts of the country, and I've never observed anybody routinely using 'they' to refer to a known individual who is obviously either male or female and has never claimed to be anything else.

*not his real name

I couldn't get upset about this, because it's been common to use 'their' in this context for decades before it became linked to gender neutrality.

Really? I'm several decades old and I've only started seeing it recently. All my working life has been office-based with a lot of written communication.

I've noticed some of our recruitment staff using "their" in emails about individual people were it's obvious from their name what sex they are. A lot of our applicants have non-traditionally-British names so perhaps recruiters have adopted using "their" for everyone to avoid having to wonder which pronouns to use.

It's rather insulting and othering of people of different races and from different cultures, isn't it? If you haven't spoken to or seen somebody with a name that is clearly one sex or the other to an average British person - or even a Brit called Pat or Alex - why bother paying them the basic human decency of asking how to properly address or refer to them, eh?

@AntiqueBabyLoanSmurf - our recruitment staff don't meet candidates, it's almost entirely written communication looking at names on screen. They're looking at thousands of names a week, and probably dealing with a couple of dozen candidates who they're emailing directly with job offers. Most applicants for jobs in my department have "foreign" names from which I can't infer the sex, so I guess it makes sense to avoid sex-based pronouns.

Our IT department is outsourced to somewhere outside the UK. They can speak English, but probably aren’t familiar enough with British names to be sure of someone’s gender from the name alone ( before you even get onto names that could be either), their is fine to use when you don’t know.

A charity I used to work for mandated that clients had to be referred to as "they", because you shouldn't make presumptions about "gender" unless the client tells you what to use.

It is not a neutral policy. It's about forcing gender bollocks on the staff. My friend, who still works there has got into a habit of doing this and will even do it in WhatsApp messages to me and refer to my daughter as "they".

I'm glad I don't work there anymore. I couldn't have complied with this nonsense.

Exactly is see you spotted my deliberate mistake

😂

It's annoying but fairly common usage with younger people. A lot of them do it for everyone.

You're not being unreasonable. Why not have a quiet word and ask why it was logged that way and maybe say you would rather they used correct language.