16 ms·

It definitely seems as though specifying your preferred gender pronouns is no longer optional. This is required "in solidarity". Being an otherwise progressive

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.

newacct583 5y ago
Can you elaborate? Pronouns have never been "optional" for casual conversation. You're saying you now feel, I guess, compelled to declare them or something? Or are you mad that people expect you to use pronouns they want you to use? What's the beef here? This kinda sounds like knee-jerk conservatism. It's different and new and forces you to learn new habits (true), and therefore it's bad and an erosion of civil society (false). This kind of skew has happened REPEATEDLY in society in the past, you just didn't notice. To be glib: how many times have you used the word "negro" in the past year?
- babyshake 5y ago
  Specifically I meant specifying your own preferred gender pronouns in certain contexts. When enough of your peers do it, it feels downright strange to not do it even if you don't imagine anyone would have any problem deducing your gender and you wouldn't feel offended if they did happen to use the wrong gender for you. Of course it is completely fine for people to share preferred prounouns. But as pg has said the problem is with the things you not allowed to say, or alternately the things you are required to say and/or do. Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. One is about allowing people to co-exist with you, the other is about complying with a strongly encouraged communal display of ideology. There are obvious comparisons to make but you can use your imagination about what those are.
  - newacct583 5y ago
    > Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. Indeed. And I didn't. I said "negro". Generations of people genuinely thought that was a neutral term. They were pissed as all fuck when all of a sudden it became a symbol of centuries of oppression. And they used language exactly like yours to express their exasperation. But the words changed anyway. And we all got over it, and civil society didn't dissolve. And at the end of the process, most of us look back and think of it as largely a good thing that we went and, well, cancelled that old word as a symbol. The new one is better, simply because it was born out of the self-determinism of the oppressed. Which is to say: get over yourself and declare your pronouns. (I'm a he/him, FWIW). Your grandkids will be ashamed that you fought it.
    - _Nat_ 5y ago
      Sounds like you're describing the word "Negro" as a [scapegoat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat): it was cast as a symbol of evil so that it could be canceled as such. I guess that's a way to see the basic tension there: some folks might argue that using scapegoats can help society move on, while others might object on the basis that the goat wasn't actually evil. Alternatively, we can see switching away from the word "Negro" as a rebranding effort, to retire prior literature and reduce historical associations. Either way.. I guess that what can seem weird about such social-engineering maneuvers is that they don't make any sense if we assume that people are ideal logical-thinkers; mechanically, they're more like side-channel attacks or emotional manipulation. And.. I guess folks might vary in how agreeable they might find well-intentioned emotional-manipulation.
      - newacct583 5y ago
        > some folks might argue that using scapegoats can help society move on, while others might object [...] Right, but in this particular instance what actually happened is that we just moved on by building consensus around a new paradigm. No one uses the word anymore, and nothing awful happened. Therefore I argue that similar hand wringing about gender pronouns is going to turn out equally bland. It's fine. Just relax. Society isn't falling apart, you're just being socially awkward. And in fifty years everyone will think the antiwoke conservatives were just being ridiculous.
        _Nat_ 5y ago
        Eh.. do you have your astrological-signs on your profiles? If not, why not add them in solidarity with those who are deeply emotionally invested in seeing the world through that lens? Not only would it help them feel validated, knowing your astrological-sign would help them better understand you and know how to interact with you. At the same time.. not everyone wants to have to play along. A lot of new identity-trends emerge (and reemerge over time and in different places), giving adherents ways to self-conceptualize who they are as well as rules for how to interact with others. Some trends get really popular and can get a lot of true-believers, while others don't really get into them. Can you understand how both sides feel? This is, can you understand both what it'd feel like to be someone deeply invested in the latest trend in spirituality, and can you likewise understand what it'd feel like to want to give the latest trend in spirituality a pass? If this is the first trend you've seen, then it may seem like this big, huge thing that everyone should adopt. But you ask about 50-years from now? ..that's a long time for a trend to remain relevant, even if you're currently in a sub-culture that's super into it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - feurio 5y ago
    > When enough of your peers do it, it feels downright strange to not do it Really? Plenty of my friends on social media and a few work colleagues state their pronouns, but I've never even remotely felt that I need to. Is it perhaps that you are quite suggestible?
soared 5y ago
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.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> 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. > 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.
  - netrus 5y ago
    I would love to have more pronouns in signatures. I cannot count the times I used Google picture search to figure out the gender of students from cultures I am not well educated about (Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese ...). Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems. Yikes!
    - yodsanklai 5y ago
      Never found this to be an issue. When in doubt, simply don't use the pronoun and use their first name to refer to them. > Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems It has more to do with pronunciation.
    - Glide 5y ago
      The western name thing is all about pronunciation. It also helps when you realize all other personal information on a candidate might be redacted, except for a name. It predates the current cultural climate by decades.
  - 5y ago
postingawayonhn 5y ago
The only place I have really seen this take off is on US headquartered social media sites (I live in Australia) that have added pronouns as an optional field.
nineteen999 5y ago
It's definitely optional. I have yet to have anyone in real life try and pull me up over it, except for my 11 year old daughter. If a virtue signaller tried to give me a hard time about it, they can "talk to the hand".
UncleMeat 5y ago
My wife is a history professor at a major university. Literally in the belly of the beast as far the reactionaries are concerned. Specifying gender pronouns there remains optional, for both students and faculty. Many people do it willingly but it is not universal.
mkr-hn 5y ago
This is not something I or anyone I know wants enforced by policy or "if you know what's good for you." It's nice and helps normalize the practice for people who need that acceptance, and it stands out in a good way, but the lack of stated preference isn't a negative indicator. 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.
yodsanklai 5y ago
In my US company, we've been strongly encouraged to use pronouns on our very first day of work (actually, even before that). 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.
gavinray 5y ago
If a company asked this I would put "gavinray [I don't give a flying fuck what you call me]". 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.
- 93po 5y ago
  I think you're missing the point a bit, but I understand why one would. The point of asking everyone to label their pronouns isn't some sense of hollow solidarity for trans people, it's so that trans people can be given the decency and space to label their pronouns in a way that isn't ostracizing and isolating. 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".
- gruez 5y ago
  >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. I thought "guys" (plural) was already considered gender neutral?
  - skissane 5y ago
    To some people it is and to others it isn't. 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
colinmhayes 5y ago
Legitimately who cares? It's not like you have to sacrifice anything by just saying you'd like to be called he or whatever. It's an incredibly easy thing to do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FabHK 5y ago
I'm Fab (he/him/his, or in German er/seiner/ihm/ihn/ sein/seine/seines/seiner/seinem/seinen/seins/sich/ der/dessen/dem/den/ dieser/dieses/diesem/diesen/ jener/jenes/jenem/jenen/derjenige/etc.)
tchaffee 5y ago
Where does it feel like it's no longer optional? I don't see your preferred pronouns here just for example. In all of my social circles the overwhelming opinion expressed by progressives is that not specifying your pronouns is as valid a preference as any other. I've even seen that specifically stated in diversity and inclusion training. Making people feel like they have to specify pronouns is the opposite of being inclusive and progressive so I'm glad I've never come across this.
unmole 5y ago
Would their majesty be an acceptable pronoun?
mbrodersen 5y ago
I want everybody to address me as “Your Lordship”. People who don’t are clearly violent oppressors. Obviously!

newacct583 5y ago

Can you elaborate? Pronouns have never been "optional" for casual conversation. You're saying you now feel, I guess, compelled to declare them or something? Or are you mad that people expect you to use pronouns they want you to use? What's the beef here? This kinda sounds like knee-jerk conservatism. It's different and new and forces you to learn new habits (true), and therefore it's bad and an erosion of civil society (false). This kind of skew has happened REPEATEDLY in society in the past, you just didn't notice. To be glib: how many times have you used the word "negro" in the past year?

babyshake 5y ago
Specifically I meant specifying your own preferred gender pronouns in certain contexts. When enough of your peers do it, it feels downright strange to not do it even if you don't imagine anyone would have any problem deducing your gender and you wouldn't feel offended if they did happen to use the wrong gender for you. Of course it is completely fine for people to share preferred prounouns. But as pg has said the problem is with the things you not allowed to say, or alternately the things you are required to say and/or do. Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. One is about allowing people to co-exist with you, the other is about complying with a strongly encouraged communal display of ideology. There are obvious comparisons to make but you can use your imagination about what those are.
- newacct583 5y ago
  > Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. Indeed. And I didn't. I said "negro". Generations of people genuinely thought that was a neutral term. They were pissed as all fuck when all of a sudden it became a symbol of centuries of oppression. And they used language exactly like yours to express their exasperation. But the words changed anyway. And we all got over it, and civil society didn't dissolve. And at the end of the process, most of us look back and think of it as largely a good thing that we went and, well, cancelled that old word as a symbol. The new one is better, simply because it was born out of the self-determinism of the oppressed. Which is to say: get over yourself and declare your pronouns. (I'm a he/him, FWIW). Your grandkids will be ashamed that you fought it.
  - _Nat_ 5y ago
    Sounds like you're describing the word "Negro" as a [scapegoat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat): it was cast as a symbol of evil so that it could be canceled as such. I guess that's a way to see the basic tension there: some folks might argue that using scapegoats can help society move on, while others might object on the basis that the goat wasn't actually evil. Alternatively, we can see switching away from the word "Negro" as a rebranding effort, to retire prior literature and reduce historical associations. Either way.. I guess that what can seem weird about such social-engineering maneuvers is that they don't make any sense if we assume that people are ideal logical-thinkers; mechanically, they're more like side-channel attacks or emotional manipulation. And.. I guess folks might vary in how agreeable they might find well-intentioned emotional-manipulation.
    - newacct583 5y ago
      > some folks might argue that using scapegoats can help society move on, while others might object [...] Right, but in this particular instance what actually happened is that we just moved on by building consensus around a new paradigm. No one uses the word anymore, and nothing awful happened. Therefore I argue that similar hand wringing about gender pronouns is going to turn out equally bland. It's fine. Just relax. Society isn't falling apart, you're just being socially awkward. And in fifty years everyone will think the antiwoke conservatives were just being ridiculous.
      - _Nat_ 5y ago
        Eh.. do you have your astrological-signs on your profiles? If not, why not add them in solidarity with those who are deeply emotionally invested in seeing the world through that lens? Not only would it help them feel validated, knowing your astrological-sign would help them better understand you and know how to interact with you. At the same time.. not everyone wants to have to play along. A lot of new identity-trends emerge (and reemerge over time and in different places), giving adherents ways to self-conceptualize who they are as well as rules for how to interact with others. Some trends get really popular and can get a lot of true-believers, while others don't really get into them. Can you understand how both sides feel? This is, can you understand both what it'd feel like to be someone deeply invested in the latest trend in spirituality, and can you likewise understand what it'd feel like to want to give the latest trend in spirituality a pass? If this is the first trend you've seen, then it may seem like this big, huge thing that everyone should adopt. But you ask about 50-years from now? ..that's a long time for a trend to remain relevant, even if you're currently in a sub-culture that's super into it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- feurio 5y ago
  > When enough of your peers do it, it feels downright strange to not do it Really? Plenty of my friends on social media and a few work colleagues state their pronouns, but I've never even remotely felt that I need to. Is it perhaps that you are quite suggestible?

soared 5y ago

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.

tablespoon 5y ago
>> 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. > 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.
- netrus 5y ago
  I would love to have more pronouns in signatures. I cannot count the times I used Google picture search to figure out the gender of students from cultures I am not well educated about (Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese ...). Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems. Yikes!
  - yodsanklai 5y ago
    Never found this to be an issue. When in doubt, simply don't use the pronoun and use their first name to refer to them. > Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems It has more to do with pronunciation.
  - Glide 5y ago
    The western name thing is all about pronunciation. It also helps when you realize all other personal information on a candidate might be redacted, except for a name. It predates the current cultural climate by decades.
- 5y ago

postingawayonhn 5y ago

The only place I have really seen this take off is on US headquartered social media sites (I live in Australia) that have added pronouns as an optional field.

nineteen999 5y ago

It's definitely optional. I have yet to have anyone in real life try and pull me up over it, except for my 11 year old daughter. If a virtue signaller tried to give me a hard time about it, they can "talk to the hand".

UncleMeat 5y ago

My wife is a history professor at a major university. Literally in the belly of the beast as far the reactionaries are concerned. Specifying gender pronouns there remains optional, for both students and faculty. Many people do it willingly but it is not universal.

mkr-hn 5y ago

This is not something I or anyone I know wants enforced by policy or "if you know what's good for you." It's nice and helps normalize the practice for people who need that acceptance, and it stands out in a good way, but the lack of stated preference isn't a negative indicator. 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.

yodsanklai 5y ago

In my US company, we've been strongly encouraged to use pronouns on our very first day of work (actually, even before that). 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.

gavinray 5y ago

If a company asked this I would put "gavinray [I don't give a flying fuck what you call me]". 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.

93po 5y ago
I think you're missing the point a bit, but I understand why one would. The point of asking everyone to label their pronouns isn't some sense of hollow solidarity for trans people, it's so that trans people can be given the decency and space to label their pronouns in a way that isn't ostracizing and isolating. 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".
gruez 5y ago
>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. I thought "guys" (plural) was already considered gender neutral?
- skissane 5y ago
  To some people it is and to others it isn't. 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

colinmhayes 5y ago

Legitimately who cares? It's not like you have to sacrifice anything by just saying you'd like to be called he or whatever. It's an incredibly easy thing to do.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

FabHK 5y ago

I'm Fab (he/him/his, or in German er/seiner/ihm/ihn/ sein/seine/seines/seiner/seinem/seinen/seins/sich/ der/dessen/dem/den/ dieser/dieses/diesem/diesen/ jener/jenes/jenem/jenen/derjenige/etc.)

tchaffee 5y ago

Where does it feel like it's no longer optional? I don't see your preferred pronouns here just for example. In all of my social circles the overwhelming opinion expressed by progressives is that not specifying your pronouns is as valid a preference as any other. I've even seen that specifically stated in diversity and inclusion training. Making people feel like they have to specify pronouns is the opposite of being inclusive and progressive so I'm glad I've never come across this.

unmole 5y ago

Would their majesty be an acceptable pronoun?

mbrodersen 5y ago

I want everybody to address me as “Your Lordship”. People who don’t are clearly violent oppressors. Obviously!