At a previous job HR directly contacted me and told me to put my pronouns on my profile. I said sure and proceeded to ignore it.
Fuck that shit
Fuck that shit
Pronouns are just another step in this sequence, but it's more divisive, since it comes with a tiny little power over other employees - occupying a slightly larger slot in their attention by having them remember them. All while the wage/home price ratio keeps plummeting, and retirement at any reasonable age has gone completely off the radar.
These problems affect ALL of us, regardless of our race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. They are not divisive at all, but they are harmful to the corporate profits. So the HR and the media are doing their best to bump made-up divisive issues to the top of our priorities, so we won't notice how we are being screwed.
If you actually have a great home, friends, hobbies, and are generally happy about your life, someone using the wrong pronoun or giving you a weird look shouldn't bother you more than an unexpected rainy day. The problem is that most people that are vocal about pronouns are actually deeply unhappy, and the HR has sold them the bullshit pill that devoting your life to correcting others will somehow make you happier.
Or you could agree to disagree on pronouns, and agree to agree on pursuit of financial independence like in the good old times. Easy common goal. After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock, as long as they can reliably answer questions that would otherwise take you days to research.
I'd argue it's the person refusing to refer to someone how they'd prefer to be referred to as being unprofessional. It's odd you use foreign names as an analogy, when refusing to pronounce someone's name correctly would probably get you a call from HR.
Blasphemy! Madness!
Heavy metal all the way, duh!
In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.
People who hem and haw about getting pronouns wrong blow my mind of how weird this has all become
In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they're afraid of being called out, or some combination thereof.
If you actually don't care, the easiest thing to do is just advertise that you don't care so people don't have to wonder. If you actually do care, but about how you shouldn't have to care and are trying to make a point about that, well that's something different, isn't it?
What's being asked of you is a common courtesy. Anyone that refuses this courtesy that takes so little when specifically asked for it is taking actions that speak for themselves.
You're being asked something as simple as "how do you prefer to be addressed" and you've scoured the area for all the loose dust and detritus you can find to make yourself a mountain to die on. Is it really worth it? Perhaps there are other aspects to recent culture shift that are slightly less defensible that are better targets?
I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.
I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.
> I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.
> So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.
I agree (but honestly, if the preference is for something like "zhe" I will be rolling my eyes a bit).
> They/them went out of favor a while back
I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong, and now it's a mental speedbump whenever I see it in writing.
Yeah, that's the sad thing. At some point we decided that gender neutral pronouns were less favorable, and then taught generations of people not to use them, a couple hundred years before a big cultural mixup where it would have been very useful to have. I was lucky enough to always feel it was appropriate and that the recommendations to not use it were shortsighted. This came about when there was a shift towards people saying we should use "she" instead of "he" for generically referring to a person, but that just seemed silly to me, why would we shift from incorrectly addressing roughtly 50% of the population in writing to incorrectly addressing the other roughly 50% of people, when we could just use "they" and do away with that specific pronoun problem in an accurate and even handed way?
However, it’s absolutely wrong when used as a definite personal pronoun, as it introduces new, irresolvable ambiguity where none existed before; e.g.
I just heard Tom and Harry are getting a new puppy; I just ran into them while they were walking their dog.
If you do not allow for singular definitive “they”, the meaning is clear.
If you do allow for singular definitive “they”, whose dog is it, and who did you run into — Tom, Harry, or both Tom and Harry?
The problem with “personal pronouns” is that they aren’t personal in the first place — pronouns exist exist solely for the benefit of the speaker and the listener, not the subject.
They allow for two people in a conversation to refer back to an antecedent succinctly and unambiguously. That’s all. If they can’t do that anymore, they’re just extra noise.
The type of people concerned with being addressed by the "correct" pronouns will list them without being asked, believe me. And for the other 99.9% of people, it's pretty obvious what to use.
I don't feel the need to put the pronouns as I don't care about it and find it toxic that it is being peer pressured uppon me.
I also support anyone who wants to put their pronouns in the signature or whatever. If it is something important to them then I'll respect their choice, even if they go with something silly like Xor/Xir.
No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get them wrong I'll happily correct you.
If you're an ass to me I'll report you to HR, but putting my pronouns at the bottom of my email isn't going to make you any less of an ass.
Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.
I was confused once when a doctor gave me the direction "follow him" and there was no male around. A definitely female nurse had just walked out, and that's who I was supposed to follow.
Nothing strange was going on; this happened in China. Chinese doesn't have gender distinctions in pronouns (except in the spelling...), and Chinese speakers aren't able to make the distinction consistently in extemporaneous speech.
The default is 'he', though, so I guess you're still safe from being called 'she'.
When conversing with you, your gendered pronouns aren't used. There is no gendered version of "you".
Even here in America, if you get an email from "Taylor Something" and their intranet picture is a houseplant how do you respond?
It’s only if you’re referring to them to a third person that you’ll need them.
You should still be able to refer to them with without explicitly using any pronouns even then.
If they can have custom pronouns, why can’t we?
(The answer is because it would immediately undermine the “cause” by shedding light on just how silly but also how 1984-esque the concept is.)
I would rather not give out pronouns and don’t really care how people refer to me though “they” in forums when my username is my real name does come off as a bit strange… though again, this is a trivial annoyance.
It all adds up. You can attempt to minimize it all you want but it’s like the person who nitpicks everything: “can I have 3 ice cubes? Oh when you make my sandwich can you go light on the salt? Hey I know this is your house but could you turn that music down a bit? Boy it’s cold in here… you should turn up the heat! Wow you take these vitamins? You should be taking these instead! Oh hey I know I’m obviously a girl but can you refer to me as they? I want you to have to think hard before you use my pronouns and make sure you remember each person’s custom pronouns. Wait, why are these little trivial comments bothering you? It’s not some massive festering grievance. Just deal with it it’s no big deal, it’s common decency to adhere to all of my requests. :)”
Pronoun-memers tend to claim they are more sensitive to feelings. Therefore they should be sensitive to most of the world’s feelings of general annoyance around the current pronoun meme.
"Virtue" means " Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness."
"Signaling" means "An indicator, such as a gesture or colored light, that serves as a means of communication."
So, basically if I'm morally excellent and I communicate that to you, that's a bad thing? Why is that? Is it because it makes you feel bad?
Same question about "woke". Like, "not asleep"? How is that bad?
I just feel like these terms are thoughtlessly bandied about. They're never really defined. They actually don't sound bad, but they're used in a pejorative context. It's just really strange.