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Comment by webo | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen this forced at larger companies and Universities. I’m neutral on the topic of stating pronouns — could somebody with more knowledge explain the difference between including pronouns and age/sex/race/religion/ethnicity?

From my understanding, usage of pronouns is about not making any assumptions and being inclusive. So I’m just not sure what or where the line is.

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> I’m neutral on the topic of stating pronouns — could somebody with more knowledge explain the difference between including pronouns and age/sex/race/religion/ethnicity?

It's presumably quite a bit more common for someone to say "Oh, him? He's one of our developers" than it is to say "Oh, that Jew? That Jew is one of our developers." (If the latter is common, you've probably got more for HR to do than worry about pronouns.)

I guess that makes sense if it’s only for surface level addressing. I wasn’t sure if it’s supposed to be a deeper identity signal.

It's a simple "here's how I would like to be correctly addressed".

Being, say, stereotypically feminine in appearance with "he/him" pronouns or the use of "they/their" may offer clues to more unusual gender identities, but that's not intended to be the primary goal of listing the pronouns.

Unless they are specific to how we are likely to interact, sex, race, religion and ethnicity aren't relevant to how I address you, nor how you prefer to be addressed, I would assume.

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