We Don't Assume Pronouns in Customer Support
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Because of the recent US-centric fad of custom pronouns based on sexual orientation or arbitrary preferences, which even in the US if someone was told about it in as close as 2000 would think as batshit-crazy?
You are not "englightened" you're just conformists that go with the flow of what's fashionable for companies to do. If your business was in the 1950s South you'd have a similar note "Why we don't accept black folks here"...
It's not a "fad". People who don't identify as male or female also have a long history. They just weren't public about it. But it's no longer the 1950s and they're allowed to be out now.
Haven't you ever been called "she" by accident? Isn't it annoying? There are plenty of ways to misgender people, because some clue (hair length, a first name used by both men and women, the pitch of voice, etc) misleads them. You can either ask, or listen when they tell you, or use the generic "they" until they've told you one way or the other. It's really not difficult.
And get used to it. It's not a "fad" because it's not going away. These people exist; they're real and they're sincere about it. They're a minority, but that's no reason to pretend you're still living in the 1950s. You will meet more and more of them.
The idea that people should "identify" as something else aside from male and female which were always about their biological sex, not their sexual affiliation, is the fad.
People were ok calling themselves male and gay, woman and lesbian, male and bisexual, and either male trans or trans woman, queer male/female, etc. One was about their natural sex, the other was about what kind of sex they were (biologically or culturally) into. The exception was the quite rare actual hermaphoditism.
>Haven't you ever been called "she" by accident? Isn't it annoying?
I could really not care less.
>And get used to it. It's not a "fad" because it's not going away.
I doubt it. In a decade or so the whole issue would seem as quaint and silly as flower power, hippies, millitary chic and militant "down with the man" antics and such were considered after the 80s (and yet, for a short time in 60s-70s almost everybody was into that). The whole facade has already started to crack.
>You will meet more and more of them.
I know tons. Nobody over 30 yo cares for those things, and most actively consider the whole thing silly millenialism. And those are people that had stood up for their rights as gay, trans, lesbians, etc. in really troubled times, not now when even Disney pretends it cares about them, but when they'd openly fire them if they found out an employee was not straight...
Maybe that will change. We'll see. But they act sincere about it to me.
Indeed. Gender isn't just about pronouns, and about half of the world's population uses more than one language, so it doesn't in general make sense to talk about "the pronouns of this person".
(Can anyone think of a language that has compulsory expression of whether humans are male or female but doesn't express it through pronouns? ... Attempt to answer my own question: Kurmanjî Kurdish perhaps?)