The fact that folks aren’t allowed to basically beat up trans people for fun is a huge step forward in civilization, unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
Deciding us broad minded people need to actively show solidarity with trans folks and hold self criticism sessions is how you maintain the GOP at 50% despite unpopularity on issues of actual consequence. In between bouts of gay sex, people like Roy Cohn knew they could always alienate liberals from voters by emphasizing fringe views. Hell, I’m all for people being able to get neck tattoos, but don’t try to enlist me in the cause of saying they’re neat.
Besides, trans isnt a political position. Afaik half of trans people are right wing Bruce Jenner types. You know what trans inclusive woke people wouldn’t support, stuff like the even distribution of property taxes to schools. I feel like we’re fighting a war and people want to argue about the color of the drapes.
Donald trump was elected and almost reelected as president. I’m more concerned about the viability of democracy generally than whether people are made to feel bad for choosing to present themselves in some way or other.
In my own experience the trans people I’ve known are unmistakable regarding the gender they live as. This makes me somewhat reluctant to outwardly state my pronouns in that it seems to draw unnecessary attention to what IME is only an issue among jackasses who aren’t going to be swayed by cis folks stating that they are cis.
I can understand the solidarity point and I recognize for non-binary individuals it may be normalizing, but I feel uncomfortable doing it. This is definitely something I hope I could be persuaded on if I’m misguided, though.
Let those communities decide. I have heard support from transgender and nonbinary populations for the publication of preferred pronouns, but not resistance. If they tell us to stop doing it then we can stop doing it. Just follow their lead.
But should it be a cultural norm? That isn’t obvious to me. We know such a norm would have associated harms (see the implicit bias discussion above), so we need to weigh those harms against the benefits.
I guess I don’t quite understand, but if you know someone’s name (surely in an email signature) I think the average person is extremely likely to assume gender in the vast majority of cases. So adding pro-nouns won’t make a material change to that bias, will it?
No, I said above that it would be silly to try to interact anonymously at work. I’m saying that different things trigger more and less implicit bias. Names are very useful in everyday life, so there is a lot of benefit to outweigh the harm.
It isn’t clear to me that foregrounding gender in my email signature has a similar benefit. Say I’m emailing my professor to ask for an extension on an essay. What is the benefit of appending (I am a man) to this request? Not sure. What is the harm? Probably none for me, because men have privilege. There likely is a harm for women.
I’m just suggesting that beginning every interaction over email by stating your gender is sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes neutral. The issue appears to me to contain nuance.
Because, as LFS states above, trans people are not a single entity. There is no univocal trans position on this or any other issue.
Until you have more info that seems fine? This is why I like Zoom. I see everyone’s name and can just use that.