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Federal employees told to remove pronouns from email signatures by end of day
- metadat 2y agoWhy expend all the effort to prevent people from expressing themselves? What a waste of time and resources. I really want less divisiveness. The world has plenty enough already. At present we're all stuck on this rock together.
- darth_avocado 2y agoNot my opinion but the rationale behind this, as argued, is that removing pronouns will cause less divisiveness because fewer people care about pronouns than politics.
- marcod 2y agoDEI is just their latest obsession, since the old ones don't poll as well anymore (gay marriage, woke, CRT, SJW, ..). I don't think there is a bigger rationale behind this than 'we need a wedge issue to rile up the masses'.
- SmirkingRevenge 2y agoExactly. Minorities are their scapegoats, it's not any more complex than that.
- t-writescode 2y agoEvery single employee should change their name to Alex and Sam.
- keybored 2y agoThey scream about fringe issues that few people care about and then claim that it is for the benefit of the majority. Like all the brouhaha they manufactured about trans people, a vanishingly small part of any population.
- Reasoning 2y agoThis post perfectly describes progressives and conservatives.
- happytoexplain 2y agoEven more accurately, it perfectly describes people - specifically, the worst in people. But the devil is in the details.
- keybored 2y ago> But the devil is in the details. Said the person who started his comment by erasing all distinctions.
- Thrymr 2y agoAnd does it reduce divisiveness by forcing this to happen in a few hours across the federal workforce of a couple million people? If this was a serious rationale, the agencies would have some time to make a plan and implement it (say 30 days). This is exactly to sow division and chaos, to find out who the enemies of this administration are, and who will comply without complaining to ridiculous wasteful demands.
- frob 2y agoSadly, with this administration, the divisiveness, like the cruelty, is the point.
- reagan83 2y ago[flagged]
- skulk 2y agoThis comment covers it pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42892253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42892253 Also, don't complain about downvotes.
- reagan83 2y ago.
- happytoexplain 2y agoYou asked a very subjective, opinion-based question, and called the answer offered "objectively horrible" and "speculative". That doesn't seem to make sense, besides being unnecessarily antagonistic. Re: Downvotes - You said, "I asked a perfectly reasonable question and was downvoted", then went on to say something about downvoters having their blinders on. That's sarcastic complaining. In general, commenting on your own downvotes like that looks bad (underdog syndrome), is distracting, and also self-fulfilling (complaining about downvotes is something that invites downvotes).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- slater 2y ago"cruelty is the point" is a (seemingly increasingly true) adage about conservatives and whichever their latest boogieman is
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoI don't think I understand "pronouns" if what you say is true. "Pronouns" are not about expressing yourself, but how other people express about yourself. As federal employees, it's probably unconstitutional for them to censor or suppress other people's expressions (certainly to do that without a court order). But maybe I've just never understood what people mean about "pronouns".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- butter999 2y agoThat's like saying, "you can't tell me what your name is, or whether you'd like to be called Mr., Ms. or Mrs. That's not self expression, that's controlling my speech, and so that's censorship." The same logic is employed in both cases. The difference is that telling someone your name has no political charge to it. You can dislike the practice of listing your pronouns, but it's perfectly ordinary to tell people how you'd like them to refer to you.
- llamaimperative 2y agoAnd to be explicit: if someone wants to call you by a different name or pronoun, they're absolutely within their First Amendment rights to do so, ergo someone just listing their preferred pronouns doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago>they're absolutely within their First Amendment rights to do so, Unless someone can rile up a mob into trying to embarass a large corporation or a small business into canceling you. You have a right to free speech, but you don't have a right to be sane when there's a low-intensity riot of unhinged individuals threatening you with destitution and terror.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
- DanielHB 2y agoProbably an excuse to fire people who refuse.
- Sharlin 2y agoBecause Americans voted to power the most narcissistic person imaginable – again — who now has a personal vendetta against everything left-leaning because he was "robbed" an election — for whom everything is now about using his power to punish and retaliate against his perceived enemies as well as securing for himself some sort of a "great man" legacy — who, having learned from the last time when there were some adults in the White House, has now been careful to surround himself by spineless yes men — who is nevertheless easy to manipulate by politically savvy people who know how to pander to his massive, yet incredibly fragile, ego.
- alistairSH 2y agoWhy expend all the effort to prevent people from expressing themselves? Because being mean is a feature, not a bug, of this administration. This has everything to do with "othering" anybody who doesn't conform to the Republican notion of a normal person (ie, passes for white, heterosexual, and male; with exceptions for attractive women and Uncle Toms).
- relyks 2y agoThis is actually dumb. I go by he/him pronouns and I put them in my signature, because my first name is gender-neutral. I find it annoying when people assume I'm female over email correspondence. Not considering people with different genders or who have a desire to use different pronouns, I'm sure there are other people like me in the federal government. What's next? They'll tell people they need to change their name to match their assigned birth gender?
- dyingkneepad 2y ago"Relyks is an employee of ACME corp. He works in the Hell, MI office." Something like that?
- anon291 2y agoJust use the typical way and put 'Mr.' in front of your name in your signature.
- redwoolf 2y agoWhat is the salutation for they/them pronouns?
- evolve2k 2y agoMx “The x is intended to stand as a wildcard character“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_(title) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_(title) Meaning not exactly the same, but closest relevant title.
- redwoolf 2y agoI did not know that. Thanks! But it's so rare that people even use honorifics at all these days.
- ebiester 2y agoMx. is the most common.
- 2y ago
- Insanity 2y agoThis is so stupid lol.. why should it be mandated, just have it optionally present.
- zb3 2y ago[flagged]
- redwoolf 2y agoRepublicans are the party of personal liberty until they don't like what you're doing.
- TMWNN 2y ago[flagged]
- kyjrteqw 2y agoin twenty years of working for universities, federal agencies, state agencies, startups, and enterprises, I have never had a mandated signature style.
- TheChaplain 2y agoHuh? It's fairly common in larger enterprises, everyone I've been working at gave you a template where to fill in the name and then save it in your outlook. To be used with all correspondence, especially external. Logo, text with address and the usual boring email disclaimer that is half the body that no one reads...
- happytoexplain 2y agoWhy "Huh?"? It's about as surprising that many companies don't have explicit email signature policies as it is that some companies do. That is: Not very.
- stebalien 2y agoPrivate companies != federal government. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny, there's no way the federal government will be able to argue that it has a legitimate interest in banning pronouns in signatures.
- redwoolf 2y agoI'm not talking about the 1st amendment. I'm talking about the rhetoric of those on the right in America. They are constantly congratulating themselves on being the champions of freedom. But if someone wants to read a book they don't like, or if someone wants to use a pronoun they disagree with, or if someone wants access to certain medical procedures then they pass laws to restrict those freedoms. It's incredibly hypocritical.
- INTPenis 2y agoI'm not even part of that country but I honestly expected them to take a higher road. Considering they claim to value personal freedom so much. I guess they didn't stay classy
- alistairSH 2y ago"Rules for thee, none for me" - Republican motto since time immemorial
- t-writescode 2y agoThe way it was explained to me is more complicated. It’s about hierarchy. The higher you are in the imagined hierarchy, the more things don’t apply to you. The president is at the top, so he can do anything. The WASP housewife is in the middle, so she can get an abortion because her case is special. The minority commits all crimes and is killing babies. So, it’s not contradictory in their mind, they literally think they’re better, and it’s why there’s value in having people lower than them in their mental system.
- redwoolf 2y agoSo I'm going to be that guy. It wasn't until Nixon and his southern strategy that the modern Republican Party became the Party we know today. The coalitions that formed the political parties before then were based more on tradition and geography than on ideology. The Republican Party has been moving ever more rightward (and pulling the Democratic Party along with it) since Reagan. America doesn't even have a Center-Left party anymore as result of this.
- sebazzz 2y agoVoting districts and the resulting gerrymandering also doesn't help. Smaller or alternative parties never stand a chance. Still interesting though that there are a handful of people still voting on those.
- llamaimperative 2y ago> they claim to value personal freedom so much It's hilarious how many born-and-bred blue staters I know actually fall for this. As someone who grew up around the GOP base: I've met literally zero who had actual commitment to personal liberties.
- stebalien 2y agoI have to wonder, is this (and all the rest) just an attempt to DoS civil rights groups?
- zb3 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoThose made nearly everyone uncomfortable in my experience and were the height of performative advocacy policy. But my experience comes from my time at a company that had a (soft) requirement to add those to our signature. I just don’t think a company needs to give much guidance at all on what goes in an email signature. I’m totally okay with anyone that includes pronouns on their own volition.
- alistairSH 2y agoYes, for most people it was performative, but seriously, if being asked to call somebody by the gender they prefer makes you uncomfortable that's a you problem, not a them problem.
- readthenotes1 2y agoBeing asked to accommodate anyone else's preferences is certainly a "me" problem. My preference is that people would understand that personal rights are social obligations and I think we would be better off to phrased it that way. And for goodness sake, stop using loudspeakers when you're walking the wilderness trails. I don't want to hear what you consider music
- kcplate 2y ago> Those made nearly everyone uncomfortable in my experience and were the height of performative advocacy policy. I won’t do it, but don’t care if others do in email signatures. I find it odd when it’s done in a meeting but I still won’t offer them up even if others are. I have been asked for mine a couple of times (and this irritates me…if you want me to respect that your pronouns are important to you, respect that “my” pronouns are unimportant to me). I respond with something akin to “your best guess will be fine with me”.
- Volundr 2y ago> respect that “my” pronouns are unimportant to me I can respect this if and only if it's actually true. If your going to be offended if someone uses a pronoun for the wrong gender, or uses "they" then I don't respect the performance, and in my experience most people who are resistant to giving their pronouns would indeed be offended by either of those. If you actually don't care, great, no problem. If you do I can't respect being unwilling to put in the miniscule effort to state your preference instead of being offended when someone doesn't default to it.
- mauvehaus 2y agoSeen online, goodness only knows where: "I identify as a threat. My pronouns are try/me." New email signature for a government employee who's uninterested in complying, perhaps?
- LanceJones 2y agoWhat's happening? I've been reading HN for 15 years, and I'm seeing more and more political BS disguised as something worth sharing HN... wtf?
- llamaimperative 2y ago> What's happening? An overhaul of perhaps the single most important institution on the planet, the US federal government?
- Reasoning 2y agoAn overhaul? It's literally just telling people to take pronouns out of their email signature.
- happytoexplain 2y agoThe GP is asking about the trend, not this article.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fzeroracer 2y agoTech companies decided to throw out any pretense of being neutral and go all in with the current administration. In turn, the current administration is trampling on peoples rights and causing downstream effects.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 1970-01-01 2y agoEven HN gets caught in political shitstorms, but you can quickly help filter them out by clicking the flag link and moving on to something else. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Off%2DTopic%3A%20Most%20stories%20about%20politics https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Off...
- sincerecook 2y agoBack to reality.
- ffhhj 2y ago“This idea that science cannot continue until there’s a political lens over it is unprecedented,” said Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director at the CDC. “I hope it’s going to be very short-lived, but if it’s not short-lived, it’s censorship.” What's going on with all the censorship, next we will now is people thrown to jail for their ideas. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/30/health/bird-flu-mmwr-pause-trump-kff-partner/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/30/health/bird-flu-mmwr-paus...
- grahamgooch 2y agoThese signatures have morphed into signaling one’s political leaning. It’s a good idea to keep such signals (whether intended or not) out of official communications. For example, the Swastika was/is a religious symbol to billions of people. But became a political symbol and is a trigger point today
- grepexdev 2y agoI think that's fair. It is akin to a business establishing email etiquette for it's employees. Now, if it were the government telling citizens to not use pronouns in their emails, that of course would be overreaching.
- cr125rider 2y agoAs someone who works with a lot of international people with names I’m not familiar with, it can be really helpful to have pronouns. At a minimum. But also I like freedom. Call people what they want to be called.
- Jensson 2y agoIf you want to signal what to be called you can write Mr or Ms instead in the signature.
- alistairSH 2y agoHow is that functionally any different than the pronouns?
- mrala 2y agoAre you seriously comparing the use of pronouns in emails to swastikas?
- jmclnx 2y agoAll pronouns ? So instead of saying "I thought she said" I need to say "I thought said" ? Nice, I almost wish I worked for the Fed Gov.
- mesk 2y agoLets do some dummy math: 2 milion federal employees, lets say half of them has email and each of them spends 1 minute on this. It costs then 1 milion man-minutes, thats 694 man-days or almost 2 man-years. So this will cost at least 60k dolars, presuming 30k a year is a minimum salary. It isn't. Money well spent ! Lets start THE cost cutting :) Oh, I forgot this is gov, so it will costs at least 10 times more then what I'm counting. And I was very optimistic, employee forced to do unnecessary things will easily spend half a day on this.
- nickthegreek 2y agoOh but you forgot all the future cost savings of new employees not having to spend time entering them!
- dgrin91 2y agoWait till you learn about coffee breaks.
- ydlr 2y agoOnce the war on pronouns is won, this one votes on eliminating adverbs next.