It definitely seems as though specifying your preferred gender pronouns is no longer optional. This is required "in solidarity". Being an otherwise progressive person, I don't feel great about this and how quickly it happened.
Edit: I didn’t see the last bit. Why did it factor into leaving? Were they aggressive about it or something?
Sometimes I wonder if people who have the biggest issue with displaying pronouns don’t meet a lot of new people, especially new trans people. Displaying pronouns makes the process so much easier and less awkward!
That's your fault, not the fault of the concept of pronouns. In the thread above, teachers and people working in international companies both explained benefits to having pronouns listed that have nothing to do with gender expression. So, your assumption is flawed.
Secondly, let's consider your terminology: "Basic reality"; "force others to play along"; "pronoun game". Consider this scenario:
You: "Hi, are you Matthew?"
Matthew: "Yes, but actually I prefer Matt, could you call me Matt?"
Do you:
A: "Sure, no problem. Hey Matt, Joe said we should discuss Project Foobar, etc"
B: "No. Your name is Matthew, this is basic reality. Why are you forcing me to play along with your PREFERRED NAME GAME?"
I think we all know the answer to this question.
How is this different from: A new coworker starts on your team named Chris. They seem to have some masculine features but they also have long hair, are wearing makeup and a dress. But you are pretty sure they were born male.
You: "Hey, let's organize Chris's Welcome Lunch. Does anyone know his food preference?"
Your coworker: "Actually their pronouns are she/her."
Do you
A: "Sure, does anyone know her food preference?"
B: See B above.
If you think the situations are completely different, here's a third scenario. Chris is a butch woman with short hair, not a transgender person.
You: "Hey, let's organize Chris's Welcome Lunch. Does anyone know his food preference?"
Your coworker: "Actually, Chris is a woman."
What's the difference? Why is your opinion on gender expression, transgender "ideology", chromosomes, or anything else of the sort matter at all?
This is just basic human socialization 101. Treat people like they ask you to be treated in situations where there is no extra cost to you. That's it. It requires no more difference or effort to remember than in any other social circumstance separate from pronouns.
Appendix:
Yes, I am aware of the extreme exceptions. I'm sure you can find me some angry tweets from trans people who overreacted to some situation or another. But let's remember the context. People are angry because the basic human decency I described above is NOT offered to them. So yes, there are misunderstandings and chips on shoulders. But we don't need to base policy or perspective of opinions based on extreme outliers on twitter.
There are people who believe they are God (There are people who believe htey are Attack Helicopters, I'm sure). But they are very few and far between. We ignore them, we marginalize them. Or, best case, we treat them.
Now, I'm not trying to open the pandora's box on the medical community's perspective on transgenderism. We can have this conversation after, but I am deliberately focusing on pronouns for a start.
Because when it comes to pronouns, in English-language society, we DO treat people based on gendered pronouns - male and female ones. Basically 100% of our time, 50% one, 50% the other.
So a person who is asking to be addressed as "My saviour" is asking for unique preferential treatment that you are likely not offering anyone else in life.
A person who is asking to be addressed as the gender pronouns of the other gender is asking to be treated the same way that you already treat 50% of the people you encounter, just to be re-categorized. And that's not a big ask because in the VAST Majority of cases you encounter, that person will already be presenting MOSTLY as the gender that they are asking to be treated as.
Now, you might say that being asked to be treated as a different gender than you are born is just as unusual as being asked to be treated as a God. But we don't even need to get into the statistics of prevalence to recognize that the numbers are not relevant. You already have to go through life learning 1) people's names, 2) people's nicknames, 3) people's gender when they are ambiguous or deliberately provocative. This is common metadata you remember about people.
Part of existing in society is learning other human's social characteristics, and incorporating them into how you interact with them. Pronouns are not meaningfully different.
Sadly it's not a surprising experience for me anymore dealing with people that argue against progress.
This is a legitimate issue, and I'm not even the political/social-justice type.
(I don't mean the company forcing putting pronouns in your username, but for trans/non-binary people to put it in their profile name)
Had an instance at a job once where someone joined, I spoke with them and they were really nice + helpful. Maybe 2 months later, I went looking for them and they didn't seem to be at the company anymore.
Turns out they had changed their username to another gender along with profile pic, now used a different pronoun.
I felt like an ass when I read back to intros and learned that they didn't prefer the pronouns their name/pic implied when they joined. Quite literally "assumed their gender" and they never corrected me about it. Hope it didn't bug them, but it probably did.
Many people, including those who are not transgendered, are also uncomfortable with being forced to hyper-identify with their gender. For many their gender is just a small aspect of them, and especially in a professional context where their gender has no role being forced to put on a gender-show feels sexually invasive.
I'm just saying that the general concept of it if you're trans/non-binary (and WANT a particular pronoun used) is helpful for people who otherwise wouldn't know.
I think it's become commonplace enough that people don't jump to the conclusion you're trans/non-binary if you put a pronoun next to your username.
> Many people, including those who are not transgendered, are also uncomfortable with being forced to hyper-identify with their gender.
Out of curiosity, would that make you bisexual?
I think when you want something you should ask for it, for sure!
Listing your pronouns isn't hyper-identifying with your gender, it is merely identifying your pronouns so that other people don't get them wrong. Gender is complex territory that goes much deeper than pronouns.
One reason for encouraging general pronoun labeling is to alleviate that exact concern.
> Id recommend getting outside of your social circle/geo a bit more. I’ve never once experienced this in Denver, and have only ever seen gender pronouns be a thing on linkedin.
I've started to see them in email signatures at work, but only in situations where such specification was entirely unnecessary. Though most cases have consistent enough formatting that there may be some corporate-standard signature template that has it now.
> Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems
It has more to do with pronunciation.
Doing it in situations where such specification is entirely unnecessary is precisely how you normalize it not being weird.
If the only people that had listed pronouns were ones that needed it, it would "other" them, and make pronoun preferences WEIRD and UNUSUAL.
If we recognize that even before the cultural mainstream of transness, EVERYONE already had preferred pronouns (just the ones that happen to match their gender), then we can normalize it.
I consider myself progressive as well. If this helps with inclusion, I'm glad to use them. But it brings a mccarthysm vibe that makes me uncomfortable and slightly worried.
Happy to use other people's pronouns if it makes them happy, it really makes no difference to me, and clearly it's a big deal to some people so I've no problem obliging.
But if you ask for something this stupid, company-wide, IMO you're due what you ask for.
Because there's my pronoun. Call me he/she/they, or a goddamn Attack Helicopter, I really don't care.
I have had to go out of my way to break the habitual "Hey guys" -> "Hey all/Hey folks" though, and I don't find that one unreasonable.
Yes, you don't care what pronouns people use for you. You're privileged in that you've never struggled with gender and gender identity in a society that shames and ridicules you for it. Giving people space to be themselves (in a very basic human-rights sort of way) shouldn't be narrowly dismissed as stupid and "a big deal to some people".
Here's what I mean: Let's assume you are male (gavin). That means that in professional settings when people refer to you they would say "he".
What happens if one person - just one coworker - kept referring to you as "she". "Yes, I'm working on her (Gavin's) pull request".
I simply don't believe that you wouldn't notice it or wonder what's going on.
Oh sure, maybe it wouldn't BOTHER you, but it would STAND OUT. It would come up.
And if there were no political agenda behind you saying you don't mind being an attack helicopter, you might ask "Why do you keep saying she/her? I'm a man"
Now let's raise this up a notch. What if you asked this person why they keep calling you she/her - when they are the only ones, and it stands out, and their answer was "Because fuck you, that's why. I don't care what your pronouns actually are. I'm deliberately trying to choose the opposite to bother you. Is it working?"
Hmmm...you could ignore that. You probably would. I believe that you have enough confidence and security to just ignore that. But it's fucking weird, and needlessly hostile, no? You would wonder what you did to earn this hostility and if the person is going to question your motivations/actions, sabotage you professionally, or generally be an enemy.
THIS IS WHAT TRANS PEOPLE FACE. If you are transgender, trying to transition, but you are making all the steps (hormones, surgery, makeup, social expression, clothing), but you are not quite passing, and ask your coworkers to use your PREFERRED pronouns, and MOST do (which they will), but one fucking asshole Bob deliberately doesn't and says "NO. You are born male. So I will use your male pronouns.", that is exactly the same level of hostility and unprofessionalism.
People (including myself, a cis hetero male) put pronouns in their public profiles to normalize it so that it's not just trans people that have to face the burden of having to ask for their preferred pronouns.
When you put "i don't give a flying fuck what you call me" as your pronoun, you are not just mocking their struggle, you are giving a strong signal that you are going to be Fucking Asshole Bob to any trans person that approaches you and asks you to use their preferred pronouns.
I thought "guys" (plural) was already considered gender neutral?
I think it depends to some extent on one's dialect of English–and that includes regional and subcultural dialects, as opposed to merely national variants. If one grows up in a region/subculture in which its use in a gender-neutral way is common, it is natural and automatic to view some uses of it as gender-neutral. If one grows up in a region/subculture in which gender-neutral use of the term is rare, viewing it as gender-neutral is much less natural and automatic.
It is also worth pointing out while sometimes its plural uses can be perceived and intended as gender-neutral (especially vocative plural uses), singular uses are almost always gender-specific, and even many plural uses are gender-specific too. A person who says "hey guys" is quite possibly intending it in a gender-neutral way; if the same person were to say "most guys are like that", that plural use is obviously talking about males only
The fact that the term is still gender-specific in many contexts, even among speakers and listeners who sometimes use and understand it in a gender-neutral way, leads some people to consciously choose to reject it as a gender-neutral term – sometimes even people who may have grown up with its gender-neutral use
Now, when someone flips out on me because I default to they/them in text when someone has no stated preference and there's no way to tell, that's a negative indicator. It's clear they have a preference and refuse to state it just to be difficult. But it's a rare occurrence.