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Comment by clearcarbon | Hacker News Reader

I am a white cis male. Normalising the statement of preferred pronouns is very important for people who's gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. I state my pronouns on both my social media and work emails.

Your statement of being "LGBT / neutral" seems strange to me, being neutral on whether other human beings should have the same rights I enjoy does not seem to be something I can be neutral on. I accept that myself and others with privilege must help create a more equal society for everyone, even in the relatively small changes such as stating our pronouns.

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I would never want to be an "ally" (don't like the term, implicates antagonism without reflection). And this criticism seems also true for these suggested changes. Is that really good or helpful? Before enacting such changes, you should ask people if you have their support or you might get the opposite reaction, which at least partially happend on the topic of gender overall.

You group people by privilege, which is a judgement you cannot accurately make if you don't know a person very well. Some people judge others by large demographic group affiliation, but that doesn't sound like progress to me at all, on the contrary.

Being occupied by pronouns displays privilege far more accurately than skin color for example. I think that is a reasonable position.

Especially in a corporate environment, norms are created by employers and employees and they are in a constant flux. Traditionally we worked for gender becoming less relevant in a corporate setting.

If you want to change others, change yourself and be an example. Maybe people will follow, maybe they will not. While there might be sympathy for the cause, speech codes will hit limits rather quickly.

> Your statement of being "LGBT / neutral" seems strange to me

I think the / in that sentence is supposed to be read as "and", so:

> I am LGBT and neutral regarding the the use of pronouns.

I read it as:

> I am lesbian, gay, bi-, trans-, and neutral regarding the the use of pronouns.

which doesn't make any sense.

LGBT means any of the above. Like STEM.

I, perhaps, should not answer for someone else, but I read that as:

I am LGBT and I am neutral regarding the the use of pronouns.

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