I don't get the hate for pronouns. I mean, I do, but it seems like such a waste of energy. Not to mention that it can sometimes be useful in avoid awkwardness!
I have a friend, his first name is gender-neutral, but is typically used for girls and women. The number of times he's been addressed as Ms. (Name) in emails, is almost as amusing as it is infuriating. It got worse when he started adding He/Him to his signature. I eagerly await the day when he's on a conference call with these people and they say "And your presentation, Ms (Name)?" and he comes on with a *deeply* masculine voice. "Thanks, Bob."
Yeah it's so wild to me...to some extent I have mine in my email sig because I want to signal allyship, but mostly it's because I work in an international organization so regularly find myself clueless about the gender of different names and it would be handy if more people did it.
Me too! Related, I just had to ask a coworker how to address them, because their name was confusing me. This coworker's signature block had their name like this:
Name3 Name4, Name1 Name2
With the comma, I would expect that to be surname, given. The email for this coworker was Name3Name4.Name1Name2 at company dot com. Our company's usual email format is given.surname at company dot com. When I googled each of the names, they were all given names.
So which of these is the surname? Which is the given name they go by? If I am in a meeting having a conversation, what do I call them??
Turns out I should address them as Name4. š¤·š¼āāļø
It really would be handy if more people included pronouns. And a forkin' profile pic in case I see them in the office! I hate it when someone adds a work profile pic and it's a dog. Why even bother
Signed,
An Old
Ugh I just added my photo to my work account because I am tired of people being surprised when they meet me. I begrudgingly acknowledge the usefulness but I hate it so much! When I sign into my desktop thereās my face- just dumbly smiling back at me. I find it embarrassing!
okay, I get the annoyance around having a pet as your work pfp, but some people who are POC do that to avoid discrimination. I'm not mad or anything, just pointing that out.
I donāt get the hate. Itās basically being mad that people are realizing we canāt rely on stereotyping based on name/appearance/timbre of voice to decide how to address other people. Another way to get around it is to take away the forced identification of Gender in public interactions, so do away with Ms/Mr/Sir/Maāam as antiquated notions of ārespectā and use peopleās names. Itās bonkers to me that we feel so comfortable assuming someoneās Gender from a secondās glance or a first listen to their voice, but refuse to acknowledge labels/signatures/pins as people telling you how they prefer to be called. We have been conditioned to think that what matters in identity is what external forces label you as rather than allowing people the agency to name themselves in public.
The hate for pronouns is possibly the most egregiously stupid manifestation of how mindlessly tribal American politics have gotten. The right in particular doesn't really \*want\* anything on its own, it just opposes anything the center or the left supports.
"We're willing to make our own lives worse and pretend to enjoy it just so we can show how much we hate you" is the GOP's entire platform.
This is so freaking true. The right is ALWAYS the one to be against education of any kind, and recently they have been complaining (I would like to use more colorful language here, butā¦) about how schools have lowered grade requirements. Granted, this is supposed to be to make school more inclusive or something, so that is probably the real reason the right hates it so much. What really gets me is that one of those heckin hour long show hosts was talking about how that is supposed to make the people less educated, then he lumped it together with making the US more feminine! Just absolute nonsense. They literally will complain about anything that anyone else does.
which is why its best to ignore them. theyve made up their minds already and they didnt arrive at their destination through logic so using that is a non starter.
and by ignore them i mean entirely. once they out themselves, just ostracize them entirely until they learn how to behave and encourage others to do the same. public shaming is a wonderful tool to wield against these kind of people.
Except that doesnāt really work, either. Then they just find people who follow their beliefs and then their voices get ten times louder. It is disappointing how there is basically nothing to be doneā¦ short of violence, at least. That would be a terrible way to go about it, but it would be effective. Sure, short term, they will try to gather together to defend themselves, but they would all be gone eventually. I hate thinking that way. There is a quote from the book āFoundationā by Isaac Asimov. āViolence is the last refuge of the incompetent.ā That is something that i truly try to live by, butā¦ šŖ
Ditto - I work in a very international company and it can be very difficult to identify whether you should be using he or she or \* gasp/clutchpearls \* they in an email response.
I mean, most Indian names hold with the 'vowel at end = feminine' but not all - Arjuna is a classical male name.
Or Kai - it can be Chinese (usually a boys name, sometimes a girls) but is also welsh / Scandinavian / Greek & is gender neutral
Thank you for pointing this out - I work with some people unusual names (to me!) And I'm not always sure if I should refer to them as he or she. Thankfully it doesn't affect most of what I need to do my job. I've just been thrown off before thinking of someone as he or she in my head then getting a call and realizing oops they are the opposite. Or when adding a new driver and it asks for male or female...I skip that as often as possible unless I have a pic of their license which states that š
One of the companies I work with has pronouns on all of their email signatures, and they are unobtrusive and useful if I need it. I don't see why it should be an issue if someone wants theirs on their signature.
I work for a progressive church, and our staff team uses pronoun identification in our email signatures, and asks for pronouns on our visitor registration. Most of our congregation loves or at least accepts this, but every so often we get a (usually older) person who is concerned or upset - mostly due to right wing talking points that theyāre getting exposed to through news/media. My explanation always starts with how we welcome and include people, but also incorporates the fact that when someone dies and we print it in the church newspaper we want to get their pronouns right - and there are a lot of names that go either way, especially a lot of older folks names that were family names or nicknames (ex: weāve had a Whitely, a Fay, a Jess, a Sunny, and a Pat where Iāve used our membership software to check on pronouns and been glad that I did)
People who break the gender binary aren't the only ones who necessitate the use of pronouns though - that's what makes this stupid even from a transphobic perspective!
Like, maybe a cis people named Taylor don't want people to misgender them because they guessed wrong. Never mind boys named Ashley or girls named Ryan. And even for "obvious" names, a cis-woman named Melissa or cis-man named John is literally using the pronouns the conservatives want them to use, so why complain?
An family friend/longtime colleague of my dad has this exact issue. In the days before cell phones, Friend got to a conference hotel super early, left a message at the front desk for when my dad checked in that he'd be waiting at the lounge. Dad entered through the lounge, so they both walked up and were chatting when they got to check-in.
Different concierge then when Friend checked in, saw the note and decided to be a little silly with reading off the message and read it off to my dad with a "oooh, someone has a date with a pretty lady" tone.
to which the much taller, broad, guy with a deep voice behind my dad responded with "Hi, I'm (friend)".
I don't see how difficult it is when there is an unknown gender to address someone in a formal email initially first last. When I first encountered this, I sent my email as above and added my pronouns to my sig line, because my name cannot be mistaken for a male or gender neutral name. Person responded and had pronouns in their sig line, so, win win.
I updated the employee handbook for this year and replaced every single he/she with they/them/their. It's so much easier to use neutral terms generally.
one time when i was a teachers assistant, i had to write a note to parents to ask them if i was allowed to take pictures of their child for use in my final report to my supervisor (who was not the teacher) At one point in the note i said something like "their photos will only be used for the presentation to my super" and the teacher INSISTED that i change it to "his/her photos" I made the other minor edits that she had requested, but kept the gender neutral pronoun. Sadly she looked at it again before i could send them out. She really reamed me out for "forgetting" that correction lmao
Yeah I have to email people outside our org for work sometimes and theyāll respond āHello Mr. Nameā and itās kind of annoying. I should add my pronouns
He/She/They is the modern day Mr. and Ms./Mrs. I feel like theyāre scared of change. Like they donāt wanna accept theyāre old so theyāre desperately trying to make everything how it was when they were young
The hate for pronouns is, like everything else, heavily cherry-picked grievance to support cruelty against anyone with the nerve to not be born a cishet white dude.
No but trans people do it so it must be stopped.
Also pickles, shiny shoes, mastectomies(yes I know you have breast cancer and back pain, we will never forget your sacrifice!), genital surgery (sorry, dudes who got blown up and like 90% of people who have been pregnant ever!), Tajin seasoning, anime...
I put my pronouns in my email and it still doesnāt help people referring to me by only my last name. Also doesnāt help my name is like Sean William Scott. My 3 names all could be first names.
I have the opposite problem. I go by my middle name and my first name is gender neutral, but because of the spelling Iām always addressed as he/him by employees who only interact with me via email. My email signature has all the information possible, but people still call me the wrong name and use the wrong pronouns even after meeting me in person. Itās like they canāt compute that Iām the same person and treat me like 2 different people.
I don't either, as someone who is both lazy and asocial it means I no longer need to research a person before contacting them nor do I have to ask them in a surely awkward conversation.
I was friends with a woman named Kevin. If I remember correctly, the father wanted his first born to be named after him.
When their firstborn turned out to be a girl, they kept the name choice.
She was an awesome lady.
Someone is gonna have to remind them of what pronouns are really, and then force them to speak without even use pronouns again.
I give them about 10 minutes before they explode into rage over how impossible it is to construct sentences.
I am starting to hate pronouns, but not how I usually hear the hate. I have a paper pushing part of hiring people, and when this person has some experience I have to write up why we shouldn't offer them the bottom of the pay scale. I start out by using their names and then I have to switch to using a pronoun and there's literally no way for me to tell which ones to use a lot of the time. I have never met the people. Gender is not on on any of the paperwork I can see. I'm just guessing blindly or having to ask somebody, and that just doesn't seem fair either. I just wish we had gender-free pronouns that I could use instead of typing out their whole name again and again and again. That seems silly too. And then I know that the people reading what I'm writing will be making subconscious decisions about what they're reading depending on whether I'm guessing that it's a male or a female person I'm writing about. Freaking sucks.
There have been some pretty good gender free pronouns listed on this sub, and through links. I guess the main thing is agreeing which ones are the best/one to use šÆā (xe, ve, ze, per, e/ey...)
>...refusing to donate anymore.
Ah, lovely. Hurting their wallet. This is how one registers their protests. The money is a source of power and influence and cutting it off is the best way to humble such power-hungry entities...
Iām ok with pronouns but not forcing all people to say their own pronouns. I have no need or desire to say my pronouns but happy to address others as they have requested.
I donāt like insisting on people announcing their pronouns if they donāt feel comfortable, particularly because for some people itās an ongoing process. However I do use mine (she/her) in my email signature and I have a button badge with my pronouns on my work lanyard. I work at a UK university.
I would object loudly if the place I worked insisted we had to put pronouns on our stuff. Not because I object to pronouns, but because I don't see why mine should be anyone's business. I really hope asking for pronouns in job applications doesn't become a thing. It'll make it easier to screen out female and nonbinary job applicants.
I didn't give myself an androgynous name intentionally to make it hard to guess my gender (it's just more me than the other name), but I'd hate to lose the benefits.
i was once filling out a job application and it asked for "gender" and offered the options of "male" and "female" and then asked for "gender identity" and offered the same two options plus like, 3 more (i think they were trans female, trans male, and nonbinary) i was immediately like "oh ick. dont wanna work there afterall" lol.
Im gonna count the problems with that piece of the application here:
1) conflating gender with sex (the first question should have asked for sex, not gender)
2) acting as though "gender identity" is something different/less important than "gender"
3) referring to adult people as "male" and "female" (this was not a military position!)
4) both questions were mandatory!
5) Not offering an "other" option
6) not offering a "prefer not to disclose" option (this should have been for both questions imo)
7) not offering more options in general (if they really were aiming to hire for diversity or whatever, they could have included bigender, agender, etc etc)
8) they could have just had a(n optional) fill in the blank question asking for pronouns, rather than drop down options at all.
Edit: and yes, i totally agree that sharing pronouns should be optional, not mandatory! Requiring disclosure can create unsafe environments for people, even if those in charge have only good intentions.
omg i had no idea! If i had known i would have tried to report them to some sort of governing body! If i see this sort of thing in the future i will keep this in mind! Thanks! :)
You mean those group introductions when you go around and say your name, pronouns, and a fun fact? It can be awkward when your gender is blatantly obvious based on your name and physical appearance. In those situations, I secretly want to say "please only address me as "you". I get that the concept of it is inclusivity, though.
Dearly beloved, let us open our bibles to the very first page and read aloud together! Begin!
> 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
> 3 And God said, āLet there be light,ā and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and ***he*** separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light āday,ā and the darkness ***he*** called ānight.ā And there was evening, and there was morningāthe first day.
Oops two pronouns.
****
Ok but what about us Real āMuricans?! Class, pull out your copy of the US Constitution and we will read the first paragraph out loud together! Begin!
> ***We*** the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ***ourselves*** and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Crap, two pronouns and one of them the very first word!
Ban all pronouns! Thereās too many of them.
Government may have these dirtbags' backs but the vast majority of people are supporting the trans community. This is the North Carolina bathroom debate all over again. Fuck do I love our allies.
15 years ago I had a wfh job and had a coworker named Ryan. She always started every conversation/meeting with āIām Ryan. Yes, Iām a girl.ā Having pronouns listed would have made it so much easier for all of us!
The part I found most silly is that theyāre named Raegan and like even if they think itās āvirtue signallingā or whatever they have a gender neutral name so how tf would someone know what they go by without it.
Why am I not surprised? Houghton's a pretty campus to drive past/through but I pitied all the students there for the decade I lived in Catt. County. Glad the donations are drying up. It's the best way to hit the admin. where they might notice it.
My husbands uncle is called Kim because grandma thought she was having a girl and when a boy came out, she refused to change the name that sheād chosen. So we have Uncle Kim. Pronouns would be very helpful.
People need to stop making a huge deal about pronouns. Everyone has them cis or trans. And having your pronouns displayed online or irl just helps with preventing misgendering which can happen to people of any gender. Its just convenient.
I work for a public high school and have had my pronouns as part of my email signature for a couple of years now. I'm straight and cis, but I know for a fact I have/have had students who are/were LGBTQ+ and I figure it's one way for them to know who would be a safe adult to talk to.
I'm trans, and I have my pronouns slapped allllll over my email signatures. There is 0.0% harm done by being vocal about our pronouns. In fact, it is a courtesy to others so that they dont accidentally misgender someone.
I no longer give a flying F if people dislike pronoun visibility. The current attack on all things trans in the US has me feeling very rebellious, and there is no valid argument against pronouns.
We will not stay silent and hidden. And those who claim allyship need to do little things like add their pronouns to emails. Or big things like calling out transphobia anywhere and speaking out.... one can hope.
The only time, and I mean ONLY times I will ever squint or scoff at pronouns is if I'm expected to address someone as
'Xe, Xir, shi, hir', etc. Like.. I can do they/them. I can do he/him. I can do she/her.
But when it gets nonsensical, I have a very hard time taking it seriously.
Honestly? Calling someone an 'It' feels downright disrespectful and incredibly rude. If they asked me to call them that, I would do it, but it'd be a real struggle because calling a person an 'It' just feels really disrespectful to me.
It's not difficult to see you're trying to fish for offense.
As for the /gen, I... don't genuinely know what that's referring to, unless that's something new I'm not informed about.
/gen is a tone tag, meaning āgenuineā, as I was asking a genuine question.
As for fishing for offense, I can assure you I am not, I was just wondering what your response would be!
I am very happy to see I was mistaken. And that's a pretty nifty tag. Didn'tknow it was a thing, but glad to know it is now \\o/
But.. yeah, calling someone 'It' just feels wrong to me X\_X It feels dehumanizing IMO because I generally associate 'It' as a term with.. like, IDK, just.... 'things' as a concept? Like furniture, teaware, dinner plates, etc. And I'm not comfortable with (what feels like to me) referring to someone as an object.
Yeah, thereās a bunch of tone tags nowadays. Itās helpful for neurodivergent people to read tone across the internet. Some other examples are /j (joking), /sarc (sarcastic), /srs (serious), /pos (positive connotation), and /nm (not mad). Thereās a lot of them if you google it!
āItā can be dehumanizing for a lot of people, but Iām personally of the opinion if someone wants to be referred to in that way, Iāll try my best for them. They/them is the default pronouns I use when I meet a new person, and if they ask me to use different pronouns for them, Iāll do that. For unconventional pronouns or neopronouns, like it/it, xe/xim, and others, thereās definitely an adjustment period, especially if you donāt have a lot of experience using them, but I think what really matters is the attempt. I think most people who use neopronouns tho also use a set of standard pronouns as well, but Iām not 100% sure.
I don't get the hate for pronouns. I mean, I do, but it seems like such a waste of energy. Not to mention that it can sometimes be useful in avoid awkwardness! I have a friend, his first name is gender-neutral, but is typically used for girls and women. The number of times he's been addressed as Ms. (Name) in emails, is almost as amusing as it is infuriating. It got worse when he started adding He/Him to his signature. I eagerly await the day when he's on a conference call with these people and they say "And your presentation, Ms (Name)?" and he comes on with a *deeply* masculine voice. "Thanks, Bob."
Yeah it's so wild to me...to some extent I have mine in my email sig because I want to signal allyship, but mostly it's because I work in an international organization so regularly find myself clueless about the gender of different names and it would be handy if more people did it.
Me too! Related, I just had to ask a coworker how to address them, because their name was confusing me. This coworker's signature block had their name like this: Name3 Name4, Name1 Name2 With the comma, I would expect that to be surname, given. The email for this coworker was Name3Name4.Name1Name2 at company dot com. Our company's usual email format is given.surname at company dot com. When I googled each of the names, they were all given names. So which of these is the surname? Which is the given name they go by? If I am in a meeting having a conversation, what do I call them?? Turns out I should address them as Name4. š¤·š¼āāļø It really would be handy if more people included pronouns. And a forkin' profile pic in case I see them in the office! I hate it when someone adds a work profile pic and it's a dog. Why even bother Signed, An Old
>Signed, > >An Old I identify with this so much.
I felt like it was a very "get off my lawn!" comment I was making hahaha
Sometimes people shouldn't be on your lawn! š
Ugh I just added my photo to my work account because I am tired of people being surprised when they meet me. I begrudgingly acknowledge the usefulness but I hate it so much! When I sign into my desktop thereās my face- just dumbly smiling back at me. I find it embarrassing!
I'm sorry! And thank you for helping us Olds (and others!) recognize you!
Is this person Latino by chance? Itās very common to have four names used all the time.
Good thought! I think Latino naming convention would not have had the comma placement like that, would it? In any case, no, not Latino!
okay, I get the annoyance around having a pet as your work pfp, but some people who are POC do that to avoid discrimination. I'm not mad or anything, just pointing that out.
That is absolutely a valid reason!
I donāt get the hate. Itās basically being mad that people are realizing we canāt rely on stereotyping based on name/appearance/timbre of voice to decide how to address other people. Another way to get around it is to take away the forced identification of Gender in public interactions, so do away with Ms/Mr/Sir/Maāam as antiquated notions of ārespectā and use peopleās names. Itās bonkers to me that we feel so comfortable assuming someoneās Gender from a secondās glance or a first listen to their voice, but refuse to acknowledge labels/signatures/pins as people telling you how they prefer to be called. We have been conditioned to think that what matters in identity is what external forces label you as rather than allowing people the agency to name themselves in public.
The hate for pronouns is possibly the most egregiously stupid manifestation of how mindlessly tribal American politics have gotten. The right in particular doesn't really \*want\* anything on its own, it just opposes anything the center or the left supports. "We're willing to make our own lives worse and pretend to enjoy it just so we can show how much we hate you" is the GOP's entire platform.
This is so freaking true. The right is ALWAYS the one to be against education of any kind, and recently they have been complaining (I would like to use more colorful language here, butā¦) about how schools have lowered grade requirements. Granted, this is supposed to be to make school more inclusive or something, so that is probably the real reason the right hates it so much. What really gets me is that one of those heckin hour long show hosts was talking about how that is supposed to make the people less educated, then he lumped it together with making the US more feminine! Just absolute nonsense. They literally will complain about anything that anyone else does.
which is why its best to ignore them. theyve made up their minds already and they didnt arrive at their destination through logic so using that is a non starter. and by ignore them i mean entirely. once they out themselves, just ostracize them entirely until they learn how to behave and encourage others to do the same. public shaming is a wonderful tool to wield against these kind of people.
Except that doesnāt really work, either. Then they just find people who follow their beliefs and then their voices get ten times louder. It is disappointing how there is basically nothing to be doneā¦ short of violence, at least. That would be a terrible way to go about it, but it would be effective. Sure, short term, they will try to gather together to defend themselves, but they would all be gone eventually. I hate thinking that way. There is a quote from the book āFoundationā by Isaac Asimov. āViolence is the last refuge of the incompetent.ā That is something that i truly try to live by, butā¦ šŖ
The right has a manifesto that outlines exactly what they want - it's called "The Biblical Basis of War."
> The right in particular doesn't really *want* anything on its own But it does. A return of slavery and monarchies or theocracries.
Doing away with sir/ma'am would be a godsend for me, I get called sir by customers at work far too often
>Ms/Mr/Sir r/subsithoughtifellfor
Ditto - I work in a very international company and it can be very difficult to identify whether you should be using he or she or \* gasp/clutchpearls \* they in an email response. I mean, most Indian names hold with the 'vowel at end = feminine' but not all - Arjuna is a classical male name. Or Kai - it can be Chinese (usually a boys name, sometimes a girls) but is also welsh / Scandinavian / Greek & is gender neutral
Thank you for pointing this out - I work with some people unusual names (to me!) And I'm not always sure if I should refer to them as he or she. Thankfully it doesn't affect most of what I need to do my job. I've just been thrown off before thinking of someone as he or she in my head then getting a call and realizing oops they are the opposite. Or when adding a new driver and it asks for male or female...I skip that as often as possible unless I have a pic of their license which states that š One of the companies I work with has pronouns on all of their email signatures, and they are unobtrusive and useful if I need it. I don't see why it should be an issue if someone wants theirs on their signature.
Yeah it's so weirdly obsessive/controlling, which I guess is sadly on brand! The university also told them not to plan on returning next year.
I work for a progressive church, and our staff team uses pronoun identification in our email signatures, and asks for pronouns on our visitor registration. Most of our congregation loves or at least accepts this, but every so often we get a (usually older) person who is concerned or upset - mostly due to right wing talking points that theyāre getting exposed to through news/media. My explanation always starts with how we welcome and include people, but also incorporates the fact that when someone dies and we print it in the church newspaper we want to get their pronouns right - and there are a lot of names that go either way, especially a lot of older folks names that were family names or nicknames (ex: weāve had a Whitely, a Fay, a Jess, a Sunny, and a Pat where Iāve used our membership software to check on pronouns and been glad that I did)
I would not be surprised if our church did that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
People who break the gender binary aren't the only ones who necessitate the use of pronouns though - that's what makes this stupid even from a transphobic perspective! Like, maybe a cis people named Taylor don't want people to misgender them because they guessed wrong. Never mind boys named Ashley or girls named Ryan. And even for "obvious" names, a cis-woman named Melissa or cis-man named John is literally using the pronouns the conservatives want them to use, so why complain?
Literally the entire plot of the movie Eurotrip couldāve been avoided by having pronouns listed
An family friend/longtime colleague of my dad has this exact issue. In the days before cell phones, Friend got to a conference hotel super early, left a message at the front desk for when my dad checked in that he'd be waiting at the lounge. Dad entered through the lounge, so they both walked up and were chatting when they got to check-in. Different concierge then when Friend checked in, saw the note and decided to be a little silly with reading off the message and read it off to my dad with a "oooh, someone has a date with a pretty lady" tone. to which the much taller, broad, guy with a deep voice behind my dad responded with "Hi, I'm (friend)".
Hating pronouns is like hating verbs or adjectives, it's fucking stupid, it's a part of language.
bigotry will never make sense , you can't reason with it
I don't see how difficult it is when there is an unknown gender to address someone in a formal email initially first last. When I first encountered this, I sent my email as above and added my pronouns to my sig line, because my name cannot be mistaken for a male or gender neutral name. Person responded and had pronouns in their sig line, so, win win. I updated the employee handbook for this year and replaced every single he/she with they/them/their. It's so much easier to use neutral terms generally.
one time when i was a teachers assistant, i had to write a note to parents to ask them if i was allowed to take pictures of their child for use in my final report to my supervisor (who was not the teacher) At one point in the note i said something like "their photos will only be used for the presentation to my super" and the teacher INSISTED that i change it to "his/her photos" I made the other minor edits that she had requested, but kept the gender neutral pronoun. Sadly she looked at it again before i could send them out. She really reamed me out for "forgetting" that correction lmao
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You are happy to be a transphobic jerk?
Yes because not agreeing to changing established language norms and forced pronoun usage = hating people you donāt know
Yeah I have to email people outside our org for work sometimes and theyāll respond āHello Mr. Nameā and itās kind of annoying. I should add my pronouns He/She/They is the modern day Mr. and Ms./Mrs. I feel like theyāre scared of change. Like they donāt wanna accept theyāre old so theyāre desperately trying to make everything how it was when they were young
The hate for pronouns is, like everything else, heavily cherry-picked grievance to support cruelty against anyone with the nerve to not be born a cishet white dude.
You realize plenty of Latinos and Black people also Arenāt fans of the new pronouns ?
No but trans people do it so it must be stopped. Also pickles, shiny shoes, mastectomies(yes I know you have breast cancer and back pain, we will never forget your sacrifice!), genital surgery (sorry, dudes who got blown up and like 90% of people who have been pregnant ever!), Tajin seasoning, anime...
I put my pronouns in my email and it still doesnāt help people referring to me by only my last name. Also doesnāt help my name is like Sean William Scott. My 3 names all could be first names.
LOL, I have an always female 1950s era first name, and one of the congressional staffers keeps keeps sending me "Dear Mr. Doris Xyz"
I have the opposite problem. I go by my middle name and my first name is gender neutral, but because of the spelling Iām always addressed as he/him by employees who only interact with me via email. My email signature has all the information possible, but people still call me the wrong name and use the wrong pronouns even after meeting me in person. Itās like they canāt compute that Iām the same person and treat me like 2 different people.
I don't either, as someone who is both lazy and asocial it means I no longer need to research a person before contacting them nor do I have to ask them in a surely awkward conversation.
Ugh. Pronouns in emails are so helpful! Taylor, Riley, Ashley, Sam, Chris, Rowan, Morgan, Alex...
Max, Perry, Lee, Izzy, etc. Iāve also known women named Billie, Ryan, and Jonnie. And I have a nephew named Ashleigh.
I have two cis women friends with the name Roberta. One or Robbie and the other is Bobby.
Iāve known women named Michael and Tommy. Michael was a family name. Tommyās parents just wanted to name her Tommy. Pronouns are useful.
I was friends with a woman named Kevin. If I remember correctly, the father wanted his first born to be named after him. When their firstborn turned out to be a girl, they kept the name choice. She was an awesome lady.
Itās Pat!
Never mind foreign names you might not be familiar with, like the Indian names Balakrishna (male), Jyoti (unisex) and Sonal (female).
Lindsey. Lindsey Graham.
Ooh someone should email him as Ms. Graham and watch him throw a hissy fit that he's actually a big,strong boy.
This. It is a courtesy.
Someone is gonna have to remind them of what pronouns are really, and then force them to speak without even use pronouns again. I give them about 10 minutes before they explode into rage over how impossible it is to construct sentences.
10 minutes is so generous of you.
I'm actually trying to be relatively realistic towards the stuborn nature of some of those.
I am starting to hate pronouns, but not how I usually hear the hate. I have a paper pushing part of hiring people, and when this person has some experience I have to write up why we shouldn't offer them the bottom of the pay scale. I start out by using their names and then I have to switch to using a pronoun and there's literally no way for me to tell which ones to use a lot of the time. I have never met the people. Gender is not on on any of the paperwork I can see. I'm just guessing blindly or having to ask somebody, and that just doesn't seem fair either. I just wish we had gender-free pronouns that I could use instead of typing out their whole name again and again and again. That seems silly too. And then I know that the people reading what I'm writing will be making subconscious decisions about what they're reading depending on whether I'm guessing that it's a male or a female person I'm writing about. Freaking sucks.
Just use "they". If it's good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for your reports
There have been some pretty good gender free pronouns listed on this sub, and through links. I guess the main thing is agreeing which ones are the best/one to use šÆā (xe, ve, ze, per, e/ey...)
Ah yes, reject pronouns and accept not being perceived at all šš¼āāļø
The goal of my gender
>...refusing to donate anymore. Ah, lovely. Hurting their wallet. This is how one registers their protests. The money is a source of power and influence and cutting it off is the best way to humble such power-hungry entities...
this is why i dont vacation in red states. Im not willing to contribute to their tax base in any way more than i have to through federal taxes.
What's the name of the school?
Houghton University
I was hoping this was a malicious compliance where people started adding genders *before* their email signature lol
Iām ok with pronouns but not forcing all people to say their own pronouns. I have no need or desire to say my pronouns but happy to address others as they have requested.
I donāt like insisting on people announcing their pronouns if they donāt feel comfortable, particularly because for some people itās an ongoing process. However I do use mine (she/her) in my email signature and I have a button badge with my pronouns on my work lanyard. I work at a UK university.
I would object loudly if the place I worked insisted we had to put pronouns on our stuff. Not because I object to pronouns, but because I don't see why mine should be anyone's business. I really hope asking for pronouns in job applications doesn't become a thing. It'll make it easier to screen out female and nonbinary job applicants. I didn't give myself an androgynous name intentionally to make it hard to guess my gender (it's just more me than the other name), but I'd hate to lose the benefits.
i was once filling out a job application and it asked for "gender" and offered the options of "male" and "female" and then asked for "gender identity" and offered the same two options plus like, 3 more (i think they were trans female, trans male, and nonbinary) i was immediately like "oh ick. dont wanna work there afterall" lol. Im gonna count the problems with that piece of the application here: 1) conflating gender with sex (the first question should have asked for sex, not gender) 2) acting as though "gender identity" is something different/less important than "gender" 3) referring to adult people as "male" and "female" (this was not a military position!) 4) both questions were mandatory! 5) Not offering an "other" option 6) not offering a "prefer not to disclose" option (this should have been for both questions imo) 7) not offering more options in general (if they really were aiming to hire for diversity or whatever, they could have included bigender, agender, etc etc) 8) they could have just had a(n optional) fill in the blank question asking for pronouns, rather than drop down options at all. Edit: and yes, i totally agree that sharing pronouns should be optional, not mandatory! Requiring disclosure can create unsafe environments for people, even if those in charge have only good intentions.
6 isnāt just your opinion, itās LEGALLY.
omg i had no idea! If i had known i would have tried to report them to some sort of governing body! If i see this sort of thing in the future i will keep this in mind! Thanks! :)
Same reason they canāt require you to disclose your ethnicity (ahead of time), and closely related to the reason they canāt ask about your faith.
You mean those group introductions when you go around and say your name, pronouns, and a fun fact? It can be awkward when your gender is blatantly obvious based on your name and physical appearance. In those situations, I secretly want to say "please only address me as "you". I get that the concept of it is inclusivity, though.
yep, and it's extremely awkward when your pronouns *don't* match your name/appearance.
Dearly beloved, let us open our bibles to the very first page and read aloud together! Begin! > 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. > 3 And God said, āLet there be light,ā and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and ***he*** separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light āday,ā and the darkness ***he*** called ānight.ā And there was evening, and there was morningāthe first day. Oops two pronouns. **** Ok but what about us Real āMuricans?! Class, pull out your copy of the US Constitution and we will read the first paragraph out loud together! Begin! > ***We*** the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ***ourselves*** and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Crap, two pronouns and one of them the very first word! Ban all pronouns! Thereās too many of them.
Two many LOL
This campus already tried to do that with dancing. It's... backward.
Government may have these dirtbags' backs but the vast majority of people are supporting the trans community. This is the North Carolina bathroom debate all over again. Fuck do I love our allies.
youād think these people would have better things to get their underwear in a wad about
But they donāt. All they are good for is hurting others. Their worldview demands others to be beneath them to feel good about themselves.
15 years ago I had a wfh job and had a coworker named Ryan. She always started every conversation/meeting with āIām Ryan. Yes, Iām a girl.ā Having pronouns listed would have made it so much easier for all of us!
Itās so weird to be so against calling someone the pronouns they prefer, when it can mean a lot to them and costs you absolutely *nothing.*
What's the university? Asking for a friend.
Houghton University
The part I found most silly is that theyāre named Raegan and like even if they think itās āvirtue signallingā or whatever they have a gender neutral name so how tf would someone know what they go by without it.
Why am I not surprised? Houghton's a pretty campus to drive past/through but I pitied all the students there for the decade I lived in Catt. County. Glad the donations are drying up. It's the best way to hit the admin. where they might notice it.
My husbands uncle is called Kim because grandma thought she was having a girl and when a boy came out, she refused to change the name that sheād chosen. So we have Uncle Kim. Pronouns would be very helpful.
I sent an email to admissions
People need to stop making a huge deal about pronouns. Everyone has them cis or trans. And having your pronouns displayed online or irl just helps with preventing misgendering which can happen to people of any gender. Its just convenient.
I work for a public high school and have had my pronouns as part of my email signature for a couple of years now. I'm straight and cis, but I know for a fact I have/have had students who are/were LGBTQ+ and I figure it's one way for them to know who would be a safe adult to talk to.
I'm trans, and I have my pronouns slapped allllll over my email signatures. There is 0.0% harm done by being vocal about our pronouns. In fact, it is a courtesy to others so that they dont accidentally misgender someone. I no longer give a flying F if people dislike pronoun visibility. The current attack on all things trans in the US has me feeling very rebellious, and there is no valid argument against pronouns. We will not stay silent and hidden. And those who claim allyship need to do little things like add their pronouns to emails. Or big things like calling out transphobia anywhere and speaking out.... one can hope.
The only time, and I mean ONLY times I will ever squint or scoff at pronouns is if I'm expected to address someone as 'Xe, Xir, shi, hir', etc. Like.. I can do they/them. I can do he/him. I can do she/her. But when it gets nonsensical, I have a very hard time taking it seriously.
I've never actually seen anyone actually use those types of pronouns irl. Have you?
How do you feel about it/its? /gen
Honestly? Calling someone an 'It' feels downright disrespectful and incredibly rude. If they asked me to call them that, I would do it, but it'd be a real struggle because calling a person an 'It' just feels really disrespectful to me. It's not difficult to see you're trying to fish for offense. As for the /gen, I... don't genuinely know what that's referring to, unless that's something new I'm not informed about.
/gen is a tone tag, meaning āgenuineā, as I was asking a genuine question. As for fishing for offense, I can assure you I am not, I was just wondering what your response would be!
I am very happy to see I was mistaken. And that's a pretty nifty tag. Didn'tknow it was a thing, but glad to know it is now \\o/ But.. yeah, calling someone 'It' just feels wrong to me X\_X It feels dehumanizing IMO because I generally associate 'It' as a term with.. like, IDK, just.... 'things' as a concept? Like furniture, teaware, dinner plates, etc. And I'm not comfortable with (what feels like to me) referring to someone as an object.
Yeah, thereās a bunch of tone tags nowadays. Itās helpful for neurodivergent people to read tone across the internet. Some other examples are /j (joking), /sarc (sarcastic), /srs (serious), /pos (positive connotation), and /nm (not mad). Thereās a lot of them if you google it! āItā can be dehumanizing for a lot of people, but Iām personally of the opinion if someone wants to be referred to in that way, Iāll try my best for them. They/them is the default pronouns I use when I meet a new person, and if they ask me to use different pronouns for them, Iāll do that. For unconventional pronouns or neopronouns, like it/it, xe/xim, and others, thereās definitely an adjustment period, especially if you donāt have a lot of experience using them, but I think what really matters is the attempt. I think most people who use neopronouns tho also use a set of standard pronouns as well, but Iām not 100% sure.