I assume your HR experience does not involve remote SDMB memes.
No - I think of them as someone whom I know has filed (IMO) dubious HR complaints against other cow-orkers in the past, so my perception of them ass a potential hazard to my income far exceeds any interest in them as a person.
I do not think so highly of myself to believe they are seriously disadvantaged by being deprive of my wonderfully stimulating company.
At work, though at this point most people have just put pronouns into email signature or other profiles so it’s easy to check and the “introduce yourself with pronouns” verbal step doesn’t always get done since the information is available. I work remotely, so I might add it when I introduce myself if working with a new team.
Absolutely common when meeting people at shows and other cultural events that I attend. There’s a judgment call on whether I’m chatting with someone where I think I might interact with them again (no need for any gendered introductions with “hey nice t-shirt I love that band!” but after a few shows chatting with the same person I’ll probably add it when giving my name).
So, yeah, normalized in my life.
There are plenty of “obviously one of the binaries” which I probably gender accordingly without really thinking about it, but I do try to verify when given an opportunity, and when in doubt, I just use they/them. I think it’s nice and facilitates conversation to have those opportunities.
I think it comes down to, in a situation where the large majority of x is in one configuration, it is okay to assume x as the default position. In this case, it is people who think that because cis people are the large majority of the population it is okay to assume that as the default unless counterindicated, and those who do not.
Consider this example: around 10 percent of people are left-handed. Would it annoy you if a left-handed movement that strongly identifies on their left-handedness began to expect everybody to announce their handedness? Would it make you think you are being forced into someone else’s circus with someone else’s monkey?
If the English language were extremely specific when referring to lefties vs. righties, we would already have those declarations. That is, if instead of him and her, it was theyl and theyr (for left and right handed), of course you’d have to tell people what you were in order to be properly referred to.
The problem with these sorts of analogies is that they’re always happening in a vacuum. There are actual, articulated problems that led to the practice of sharing pronouns as part of a formal introduction, that don’t exist for your hypothetical comparison. What would be the justification offered by the Left Hand Rights activists for having people include their handedness when introducing themselves? What problem is it meant to correct, and how does it correct that problem?
Actually, it’s too bad it’s not part of the lexicon – there are people who are strongly lefty or righty, weakly, ambidextrous. There are people who were left-handed at birth but were forced to write right-handed. It’s a whole spectrum that we’re already used to, and people even used to be forced into being right-handed historically.
Having that be an important part of someone’s identity, the way gender is, may have made trans-acceptance that much easier.
A few years ago one of my co-workers at a convention mentioned in an email that her child who was going to be working with us at the con was now non-binary and used the pronouns them/they. I thanked her for letting me know, and then gave her (the co-worker) an advance apology if I slip and use the wrong pronoun when speaking to or of them. She knows that I’m a CEF (Certified Old Fart) and that I’m a bit set in my ways of speaking.
And then last year I found out that one of my nieces (I guess that’s still the correct term) was now non-binary and used them/they. Fortunately (at least for my old brain) I only see me brother and his family at Christmas, so I’m not as likely to goof that up.
I think historical proximity/tenure can make it difficult, and it’s understandable. One of my son’s friends (and also a long-running friend of the whole family) is transitioning; she comes over to play board games, and I have to keep reminding myself just because I’m so used to reflexively saying ‘he’…whereas we had a transitioning employee at work join the team, and it took no effort/memory space at all because I never knew otherwise, she was always she.
That said, it’s certainly important/worth the effort to work at. ETA and she’s understanding of the occasional slip; it’s my son who quickly jumps in with a correction.
As long as people are patient with me getting their names and pronouns wrong, I’m good. One of my kid’s classmates changed name and pronouns a few years back and I had the whole discussion with my kids (at the time it was the first experience my children had had of this kind of thing) of how we call people what they want to be called, and then my kids had no trouble with the changed name/pronouns and I… had a lot of trouble. The name took a while and the pronouns took literally years and I still get it wrong once in a while. (My kids gleefully correct me and think it’s hilarious that I am so slow. Hey, I didn’t learn how to do this when I was little like you did, kids!)
You have to understand I can’t even get my own kids’ original names right. We joke that their names are actually in practice “[Younger Child’s Name][Older Child’s Name]” and “[Older Child’s Name][Younger Child’s Name]” because that’s what I actually call them. (They are of different genders, too.) I told them that if they ever change their name, I’ll try my best but the only way I’ll actually get it right consistently is if they change their name to their sibling’s name.
I read a YA novel a couple of years ago where the protagonist’s father deadnames the protagonist in a moment of intense emotion (one of their relatives has just died, iirc?) and the kid is SO upset and goes around angsting and whining that he can’t believe his dad just did that!! (The dad, as it turns out, didn’t mean it, he just made a mistake! But he still had to apologize profusely to the kid and iirc the kid never did apologize in the book for being super bratty about it.) This is the kind of thing that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for, which maybe just means I’m now old enough to be on the side of the enemy. Kid-in-the-book, be glad you don’t have siblings, and definitely be glad I’m not your parent, because I call my kids by the wrong gendered name every day and they have never changed their names!
Whoa, this never occurred to me. How do you refer to your sibling’s child who is non-binary?
I’ve seen nibling used, typically in the plural niblings to mean nieces and nephews, but I suppose the singular could be applied to a nonbinary person.
The daughter of my best friends has long considered me to be her “bonus uncle” (as her actual aunts and uncles all live in Europe, and she barely knows them). When she was in high school, and identified as non-binary for several years, I struggled to figure out the right word to use instead of “niece.”
Apparently, the word “nibling” has been coined and suggested, as a non-gender-specific term for “niece or nephew,” but I don’t think it’s gotten much traction yet.
I never thought of it either, until it happened to me. What’s even more confusing, they have a (non-identical) twin sister. So do I now still have two nieces (not counting all the nieces and nephews from my other siblings)?
I have only
Somehow, we need to come up with new pronouns for nonbinary people as well. On a few occasions I’ve been momentarily perplexed when encountering the “they” pronouns in an article, where they obviously refer to a single, known individual. Momentarily I have to wonder who the additional people are that are being referred to.
I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but there’s still the difficulty that we already use the “they” pronouns to refer to an unknown individual who is most likely binary, but whose gender is unknown or irrelevant.
I must admit to a certain amount of confusion, too - I think it’s a combination of age, wanting to be respectful but not entirely knowing how and mostly having never been in the extremely challenging position of having to question my gender identity. In other words, having no frame of reference - I very much take identification with my gender for granted. I’ve never had to deny it or push it into a corner and try to ignore it. My gender is comfortable, it sits easily on my shoulders.
I don’t appreciate it when anyone becomes “evangelical” about anything - weight loss, veganism, even sexuality. But I imagine that it takes a lot of settling in, even if you’ve always known you’re misgendered. From birth you’re taught that there are only two genders, but you maybe gaslight yourself into feeling like you’re the one who’s wrong.
The only time I’ve had any sort of issue with the use of accurate pronouns is when it’s children on social media. I will use whatever pronouns anyone - regardless of age - prefers. However, my husband’s cousin has been posting about her kids’ gender and sexuality on facebook and instagram from the time the youngest was 8, when they began questioning their own identity. My husband’s cousin is very much into promoting LGBTQ+ communities, which I love. She’s an activist for the homeless and underserved and I really like her. I really appreciate that her kids have her for a mom, and that she accepts them for who they are.
However, I’m also of the opinion that kids have a hard enough time on social media when they’re young - posting their gender identity and sexuality on facebook (whether you have their consent or not) feels like leveraging your kids’ identities to promote yourself as an ally. That always made me uncomfortable. Kids look at their parents’ facebook and instagram accounts. Sometimes they use that as an opportunity for bullying even before they have an account of their own.
Me not liking posting about children’s identity has nothing to do with not believing that gender is a spectrum. I just think that posting about your kids’ identity that way seems rife with the potential to out your kids before they’re really ready and understand what that means.
Also, as a last thought, I really don’t think the English language has sufficient ways to describe people who don’t fall into a binary “category” for gender. I wish there were more nuanced terms that everyone felt comfortable using.
At work, so I haven’t had time to read every entry in this thread, so apologies if I’m rehashing…
I’m tempted to just say “ignore the militants.” There are always going to be that small subsection of every group that demands 100% purity of thought and speech, ready to ostracize anyone who doesn’t live up to their standards of correct behaviour while awake or asleep. Most people aren’t that. Personally, I’m no fan of the language police, but at the same time, I do understand where they’re coming from. I’m sure they, like everyone else, have been deadnamed (or called by an antiquated term for their ethnicity, or had assumptions made in some other way about them), and there’s an understandable part of their psyche that doesn’t want it to happen again, and it triggers a fight or fight harder response.
On a political sidebar, when I hear the Bill Mahers of the world complaining that the left just plays Identity Politics, and turns off persuadable people on the right by demanding things like proper pronoun use, all I reminds me of are conservatives of yesteryear fighting against civil rights for African Americans because “the whites aren’t ready” and counselling patience. When it comes to human dignity and rights, there’s no waiting, AFAIC.
Short story time. Several years ago, a good friend of mine, who is trans male (AFAB), and I were chatting online and the TV show Sherlock came up. He said “Ugh, I can’t watch that any more. Benedict Cumberbatch is totally homophobic.” I’m sure I made a sound much akin to the Tim Allen grunt at that one. This was right around the time that Cumberbatch was being talked up for an Oscar for his sensitive portrayal of Alan Turing, a role which didn’t strike me as something a homophobe was likely to take on. I did some google searching for anything my friend could be referring to, and not only did I find nothing, but I learned that Cumberbatch had recently officiated at a same-sex weding.
So I messaged my friend again, told him what I’d found, and he hemmed and hawed a bit, then said, “Well, he’s said some transphobic things about Chelsea Manning.” Okay, back to google I went. And what I found was, that when he was promoting The Fifth Estate, the movie in which he played Julian Assange, he’d accidentally deadnamed Chelsea Manning in a couple of interviews. Bear in mind, that in the time covered by the movie, Manning had not come out as trans yet, and is referred to by her deadname throughout because that’s what she was known by at the time.
I love my friend, and I know his transition hasn’t been the easiest process in the world and I get it that he may have a low tolerance for this kind of thing. But I could only roll my eyes a bit and say to myself “Can we at least figure out who our allies are? Because apparently Benedict Cumberbatch is one.” I’d never brush aside my friend’s concerns or tell anyone else to ignore his nomenclature requests, but I recognize that he’s by nature closer to the fire as it were.
So since you refused to say what name you preferred to be called, you would have had no objection to anyone calling you “Bob” or “Eugene”, right?
Seriously, this is elementary school stuff, when the teacher calling roll on the first day asks what name you prefer. Since maybe you go by your middle name, or a hypocoristic version, or initials. My personal name is an extremely common two-syllable, that has an equally common short form that I loathe. So I make a point of asking people to use the full version (or my surname). Your Zoom call wasn’t a “little virtue-signalling exercise”, it was simple courtesy. And wokeness gone wild is not why you were written up.
It’s fairly common where I work but whether a worker has their pronouns or not doesn’t really raise eyebrows. Because of my position, I live in employee personnel files and I rarely take any notice of their email signature.
And for me it’s not. Even when I attend HR conferences, this just isn’t something I’ve ever seen done. Maybe someday it’ll be the norm, but I kind of doubt it.
It’s been addressed upthread somewhere, but that post is sarcastic, and is trying to illustrate exactly the point you just made.
Color me whooshed.