Taken on its own, without any context:
This sounds like the kind of thing rude people say to justify their rudeness.
I think more of the people forced by their jobs to say and do humulating things, like for example Walmart making their employees cheer about their job, making you beg customers to get a credit card, or making your employees literally do a song and dance (fake example, but based on real practices). Anything that makes you present a fake personality or stance that you would never take irl.
The prior post said,
So when this post was a CDC document named “YRBS_Data-Summary-Trends_Report2023_508.pdf 5”, i made the connection to the prior post.
But i see from the comments that many didn’t make that connection. I guess that’s always a risk with acronyms.
We live in different social environments indeed. In my state, i believe it is legally required for the server to ask that in a sit-down restaurant. At any rate, I’ve been asked every time i eat at a restaurant for quite some time, now.
So you are saying you are in a tiny minority in your preferences for social interactions. I think you can safely treat gender like name, and just decline to offer either when other people do so.
Fwiw, best practice is not to ask people their pronouns. You may run into someone who is uncomfortable answering, for whatever reason. Best practice, when you want to learn someone else’s pronouns is to say, “hi, I’m Carol, i use she/her”, creating an opening for the other person to offer their pronouns, or to decline to do so.
Except you are fighting a straw man. My real life experience includes a lot of people offering pronouns. I routinely see pronouns on name tags, on zoom names, in email sigs. I’ve been to a meeting where everyone introduced themselves and most of them said something like, “I’m Jane Smith and i use she/her”. But i have only once in my life been asked my pronouns, and it was a request from a single person with no authority who was trying to be polite, it wasn’t a demand. I think your odds of never being forced to offer your pronouns are excellent.
You know, something that occurs to me is that Carol does not use she/her. When speaking or writing, Carol is going to use “I”. Also, she/her is not how you would address Carol, you are going to say “you”. So what Carol is really saying is “these are the words I want you to use to refer to me when you are talking about me to someone else”.
Yes, and there are questions about the best words to use when you offer pronouns verbally. And also, your comment is really not relevant to any of the issues this thread is discussing.
Mind.
Blown.
Likewise. Speaking as a white cishet male, I’ve never been asked, but I can certainly see myself offering in certain situations, like if I’m at a Pride event with other people whose identities are scattered along various points of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I also agree with folks further up this thread who basically say “It’s a couple of syllables. That puts you out?”
We get back into political reaction to what’s perceived as identity politics once again. The only time I ever really see an explicit “Pay attention to my pronouns! Or rather, their pronouns!” is from HR when they’re in a DEI campaign. I don’t object to these campaigns, but then I’m not who they need to convince that diversity and inclusion are positive concepts. Since pronouns began voluntarily appearing in email signatures, I’ve seen a fair bit of eyerolling by various managers and once again I’m like “Seriously? How does that affect you in any way that you’re bothered by it?”
This is what underpins social conservatism these days, and SC tendencies even amnong some folks who don’t see themselves as such. (They feel that) every time they turn around someone is telling them that their language is wrong, that they should feel like garbage if they misgender, and all these other things in the world they’ve seen/said/understood over the years are different now and they’re bad people for not being caught up. It’s impossible to go to the theatre, or many concerts or other public events, here in Toronto without it kicking off with someone solemnly intoning that they acknowledge that the event is taking place on unceded land and thanking the Mississaugas of the Credit on Turtle Island. I’m not sure that anybody doesn’t understand the concept, and it may be a bit heavy-handed, but hopefully this current generation will grow up with that understanding and it won’t be necessary at some point.
When we on the left are told that we have to try and understand where the angry right-wingers are coming from, often where they’re coming from is “Every time I see a commercial it’s got a mixed race couple in it and I can’t stand it.” To my privileged, hopefully progressive ears, this isn’t worlds away from “Every time I open an email there’s a ‘he/him’ in the footer and I can’t stand it.” and my sympathy is definitely somewhere else.
Like the word “Carol”.
You are correct about people living in different environments.
I eat out infrequently, but the only instance I can recall of waitstaff asking me about food allergies was at an uber-fancy/expensive restaurant with a multi-course fixed menu. Other than that, at most, there might be a small mention printed on the menu.
And it is exceedingly infrequent - almost never - that I have people specify their pronouns either in personal or business life. If anyone does, I do my best to use their preferred pronouns. But to specify one’s pronouns consistently sorta comes across as virtue signaling.
What state is that? I can’t remember ever being asked that in any restaurant in Los Angeles or NYC, two cities you may think would be the ones to do that.
Add me to the list of people who have never encountered this and are surprised that it would be the law somewhere.
I looked up the law, and it only requires a note on the menu to tell the server if you have an allergy. It has nonetheless become extremely common for the server to ask me.
(And also i prefer not to say exactly where i live. But yes, i live in very blue territory.)
This encapsulates one of the assumptions that bothers me.
Yes, they’re telling you your language is ‘wrong,’ in that it’s exclusive or offensive.
No, they’re not telling you how to feel. They’re telling you to learn. If that makes you feel bad, that’s on you.
It’s like people saying, “why should I apologize for what my ancestors did?” Um, nobody’s asking you to. But also, what they did was terrible, and it still has repercussions today: that’s what we want you to see. You don’t have to have feelings about it, but it would be nice if you saw it.
I work at a call center. Twice I’ve gotten a caller with an androgynous voice. When one caller gave me a male name, I used sir. She explained that she was a trans woman. I apologized. She said I had no way of knowing. I used female terms for the rest of the call. That’s all that happened.
I’m a cismale with a beard and I dress like a man and I never get misgendered. However, if I were a transman, or a fairly effeminate-looking straight or gay man, and I dressed more androgynously, but I identified as a man, I might not be annoyed the first few times I was called miss or ma’am, but after a while, I’m sure it would get old.
Not everyone is as muscular, tall, deep-voiced, and amazingly masculine as you and I are – some men look closer to women, wear long hair, and dress more frilly than you and I with our muscle shirts and hairy chests. The hundredth time someone called me “miss”, I might say, hey, look, just because I’m not stereotypically male doesn’t make me a woman, OK??
Or, this is really could be avoided if, when we met for the first time at an industry conference, my name tag said “Pat, he/him”.
I concur. In 2024, people feel free to offer their pronouns so if they don’t I presume they don’t want to provide them.
Thank you! This has been bothering me the whole thread. This whole discussion is a matter of “how I want to be referred to” rather than “how I want to be addressed” (as mis-stated up thread).
I may be unrealistic in my wishes, but my long-term hope is that we drop both “he” and “she” and insist on gender-neutral “they” for everyone. I mean, do we have pronouns to refer to specific races or national origins? No! So why should we for sex/gender? Only because of tradition? Not a good enough reason to propagate the insanity, in my opinion. Just look at all the social awkwardness (the several examples already mentioned) that comes from keeping this practice alive.
Really, the only people who need to care about my sex/gender are my doctor and my potential relationship partner. Everyone else should just look at me as a person, without trying to imagine what’s in my underwear!