In the last week or so I have seen LinkedIn posts from two different people, one male, one female self-identified as “John Doe (He/him)” and “Jane Doe (She/her)”, respectively.
Is this now a thing, or becoming a thing?
Sex genders are becoming more and more fluid. A girl would prefer to be calked with he instead of she.
A person can feel to belong to male and female gender at the same time, or to have no gender at all.
Instagram introduction is recently the place where I suggest to my followers which pronoun I prefer being addressed with
Preferred pronouns aren’t that new. The cable series“Billions” has a scene where one of the recurring characters introduces themselves and pronoun preference (“they/them”) back in 2017. I do see it used with more frequency, which makes sense, as it becomes more normalized.
Oh I’m familiar with the whole gender fluid thing with they/them or “hen” etc. I am asking specifically about spelling it out so explicitly as per my Linkedin examples.
I’ve seen it more frequently in the last couple of years. But I’d like to know why they always seem to specify the subjective and objective cases but omit the possessive. Are we supposed to assume that “he/him” implies “his”, and “she/her” implies “hers”? If so, why bother with the objective? Isn’t the subjective “he” or “she” or “they” sufficient to specify all three cases?
Yes, it’s catching on. I’m a member of a couple of groups that include pronouns as an optional piece of the name tag, or include them in the email closing.
I’ve wondered about “he/him”, too. It might be because some of the novel pronouns (which mostly haven’t gotten any traction) have varying second person pronouns. I was in a group with a bunch of non-binary people and some used “ze/zim” while others used “ze/zir”, for instance.
It’s a thing but I think it’s newer as far as people spelling it out when it’s less ambiguous. I have thoughts about that, but this isn’t the place.
It’s a thing in corporate diversity & inclusion, and many of us include it in our email sigs. I think one main purpose is to make pronoun specification something people don’t have to guess about, given that our society prioritizes gendered pronouns. An alternative when meeting somebody whose gender isn’t apparent is to ask them what pronouns they use, but this also implies that you don’t think you can gender them, possibly suggesting there’s something wrong with their presentation. If everybody introduces their own pronouns, that problem is solved.
As to which cases get included, “he/him/his” et cetera seemed more popular a few years ago, but it’s more wordy so the tendency is to minimize. But minimizing to just one case might leave it unclear what the single pronoun is doing there. The case/case format clues us into this being a pronoun identification.
i think what’s newer is people spelling it out when it’s not ambiguous. Ordinary cis women who dress in feminine ways and have female names are putting “she/her” in their info to normalize the practice and make it less awkward for people whose gender identity might be non-obvious.
That certainly makes sense when compared to the two Linkedin examples I saw. Both people appeared unambiguously male and female in appearance and by first name (and I actually know the male as well).
I saw an article in which the show creator mentioned that he decided to introduce a gender non-binary character (who is played by a gender non-binary actor) after his high-school and college-age children said their teachers/professors started classes by asking people to declare their pronouns.
This is where I’ve noticed it. All my fellow faculty add it to their email signature. This is pretty new, only becoming widespread in the past 18 months or so.
This is an example of using privilege to help normalize things for those who do not have that privilege. It’s a kindness and a courtesy, making life easier for those whose gender presentation might be more ambiguous.
Yes, this, I see it as the sign of a trans ally - a way of easing things for the trans community.
This. As my trans son in high school explained, if he is the only person in the entire school using “he/him/his” in the tagline, then it becomes a neon flag. If most folks use it, then it is not a self-outing.
Coincidentally, just today the company I work for (a big Silicon Valley chip company) sent out an email asking everyone to fill out their preferred pronouns on their phone directory entry. Among other things, they cited this article as an argument for doing so.
I probably will not. The argument “using my privilege to help those with less of it” is a good one, and would be compelling under other circumstances, but my company always ranks highly on various LGBT equality indices, and in general is very proactive about this stuff. So the value to normalizing pronoun identity is pretty small.
On the other hand, picking any fixed pronoun for myself is a statement I’d prefer not to make. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I were forced to, but all else being equal I’d rather not.
Given my background doing pronouns for business, Linkedin is exactly where I’d expect to see that kind of thing spelled out. Because the purpose of Linkedin is to make it easy for business to contact you and communicate with you, and the purpose of being on Linkedin is to make it easy for business to contact you and communicate with you.
Why should an agency or committee or referee have to figure out how to refer to you? I can easily see this becoming expected behavior on Linkedin. It might also become standard in the real world, or it might already be standard in the real world, but that doesn’t necessarily follow.
So, has anyone yet found someone who mixed their preferred gender? “Hi, I’m Chris. She/him”
No. And I know a lot of non-gender-normative people. I think it’s what I said above, that for some of the novel pronouns you need more info. It might be Xe/Xir or Xe/Xis.