from @NotBruceZ (can’t quote or it loses the formatting)
I have a feeling that a bunch of anti-woke buttmunches got triggered today. And by feeling, I mean it gave me an erection.
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I consider myself to be like the median asshole. You know right at the top of the asshole bell curve but I will admit the he/him stuff does make me roll my eyes a bit. I get why it’s important to use a person’s preferred pronouns and I’m happy to do so but the above seems kinda performative to me. It also makes the one person using they kind of stand out as odd no? Which I doubt is the intention.
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My work requires that we do so and I just think it’s polite really as why should it only be non-binary or trans people who have to do it. In a way not doing so is putting them in an other category which isn’t at all inclusive.
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Its standard in workplace email signatures now (at least at large organizations). Putting it on a poster like this is definitely unusual but since the cast includes a nonbinary person that may be why they’re going beyond normal practice.
I dont have a problem with it in a vacuum, my only concern about this stuff is that people think they’re “doing their part” by putting their preferred pronouns in their email signature while the actual lives of actual trans and non-binary people continue to be horrendous. An analogy is the acknowledgement of our presence on indigenous lands. In a vacuum, good. In the reality where indigenous people live in third world conditions, not so good. Its a pretty big leap of faith that these gestures ultimately lead to meaningful policy.
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No way IMO, I just looked and we have one person at my “fortune 100” who puts her pronouns in her signature, all of the director+ people do not (spoiler: they’re all white men).
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I don’t even know what this is asking?
You’ve never seen someone put their pronouns in their signature?
-cassette (he/him)
I haven’t, I work in a pretty deplorable industry though.
I’d feel like I was being performatively woke if I added pronouns. If lots of other people used them where I work I’d go along with the flow.
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I had that slight worry when I started using them, but then I remembered that I’m a tall white cis male in the United States of America in 2021. If using some of that privilege to normalize inclusion causes a few people to roll their eyes at my signature then I’ll survive, and they can bite me.
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I’m mostly worried about what actual LGBT people would think, if it’s seen as a nice gesture or just some straight white lib patting himself on the back while not actually doing anything to help anyone.
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Maybe its a financial services thing? My current and last employer were big boosters of this.
It may also be the kinds of people I works with. I mainly work with people in corporate functions who are likely to comply with corporate directives. Salespeople may not do the pronouns lest they offend a deplorable client.
Something that I have learned from the trans people in my life is that within the LGBTQ community there’s a ton of disagreement around this stuff. There’s often no universally correct path.
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would it help if cis allies identified as “he/them” or “she/them” ?
Maybe I’m just doing mental gymnastics here, but I don’t think it’s as simple as those quotes about email signatures imply. Foregrounding gender in situations that are typically gender-neutral can have negative consequences, so it isn’t a free roll.
For example, teachers are often encouraged to grade student work anonymously to help mitigate implicit bias. Might something similar be said about email interactions? Obviously we aren’t going to want to talk to coworkers anonymously, but I wonder what the effect is of switching from, “Hey cassette, can you get me that progress report by noon?” and “Hey, cassette, can you get me that progress report by noon? (I am a woman)”.
In some situations it seems foregrounding pronouns is relevant and good (to avoid misgendering someone, for instance), sometimes it’s irrelevant (similar to including your breakfast that morning in your email would be neither good nor bad, just irrelevant), and sometimes it’s relevant but harmful (like when assessing a stranger’s performance, for instance).
I dunno. It seems to me the email situation is sometimes irrelevant info and sometimes harmful info.
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This is a reasonable discussion that probably doesn’t belong in the TV thread, but:
I don’t have pronouns in my email signature because I don’t have an email signature and don’t really get the point of them in most cases.
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But that’s what I’m trying to say, it’s workplace independent. Teachers grade anonymously because everyone in the world has implicit bias and even people with the best of intentions are affected. In fact, social science research has shown that being aware of your bias while grading and trying to avoid its impact increases the bias! We can’t use our brains to avoid the problem.
I think the pronoun thing is silly and putting it on the poster is almost certainly a publicity stunt. Big financial services firms might be ok with it because it covers up the fact that their job is to screw clients out of as much money possible, while they tell their employees they’re actually the good guys. They love this stuff because it’s almost all performative.
“We’re a diverse/inclusive workplace that only recruits sports fan bros from 90% white/asian private schools.”
Does anyone go with he/her? I’d probably do that and then report anyone who messed up my pronouns to HR. “Sure I fucked up the analysis, but you fucked up my pronouns!”
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I think we knocked that down to 89% so that we could advertise ourselves as an Employer Of Choice for BIPOC candidates.
Saying it’s performative isn’t a gotcha. Lots of things are both performative and good. These things almost always go together
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