Yes, in my industry it is entirely normalized and routine now. And it will only become moreso as young people - large numbers of whom routinely include their pronouns in communications - age into the workforce.
Within 10 years I think including pronouns in emails sigs will be standard practice in most workplaces and will be uncontroversial.
I’m not suggesting that they do so strictly for attention either. LHoD pointed that out.
A legitimate question still remains about whether that is a lasting state of uncertainty as kids become adults.
This is the key point on which we disagree. I’m not seeing the uncertainty that you mention. Are you interpreting they/them as being uncertain about gender? I may not understand the point you were trying to make. Could you expand on this?
I think the comment was meant to refer to putting pronouns in email signatures and the like as “trendy.” Not being trans or non-binary. That’s how I took it anyway.
And even then, I would guess the trend will pick up over the next 5 to 10 years.
I’m guessing that the % of my friends and family who are LGBTQ is probably higher than the % they represent in the GenPop.
And each and every one of them who I’ve known for most, or all, of my life always was exactly who they are now.
Meaning: an elementary school friend who is transgender was that person at a very early age.
While I doubt that any of us school kids knew what was different about any of these other kids, there is unanimity … that there was no doubt … that something was different.
We were fortunate that we hadn’t yet ‘been carefully taught to hate’ (apologies to “South Pacific”).
JMHO.
I’m not doubting that some proportion of kids and teens experience uncertainty about their gender identity, never mind sexual identity. I’m not arguing that they ought not be given time and space to explore that, including the use of pronouns of their choice.
I’m simply not convinced this is a phase that last for all, or even most of them as they grow older and more mature. And also what @Procrustus said about the trend to self-tag with preferred pronouns.
Like @DavidNRockies I don’t believe that kids have the uncertainty that you are referring to. I don’t see their gender identity as a phase.
Is this a business environment? (Also genuinely curious under what circumstances people need to be addressed by “titles”.) [ETA, ah, legal practice, I see.]
In any case, there are plenty of stock phrases for addressing random strangers, like “to whom it may concern,” “dear sir or madam”, and that ilk.
Fair enough. I defer to those with more personal experience on the matter.
I present as unambiguously male- beard, square jaw, deep voice. I don’t think even when I had long hair (it was halfway down my back), I was ever misgendered. I support listing pronouns. If only trans folks, or non binary folks list their prronouns, it marks them as other. By listing my pronouns too (he, him, his) I help make things a little less awkward for them.
Re Gender Expectations
I am a straight man. I would still MUCH rather spend an hour holding a baby or playing with a toddler than drinking beer and watching football. Maybe all these non binary teens will go back to a binary identity. Maybe they won’t. Personally, I could do with less confining gender roles.
A calm baby, I assume…
ETA: meant not a crying baby, I assume…
~Max
I can usually calm kids. I suck at very many things. I am good with kids.
When the Patriots lose, you can often do both at the same time 
This is where my favorite nephew comes in. His gender presentation is generally male (and his fondness for participating in nude bicycle rides shows him as unequivocally male bodied) but he’s enby and sometimes goes through phases where he adopts a more female presentation so he uses he/them to cover the bases. He’s not trans though, but has changed his definitely male style name for a very gender neutral one that makes it really difficult to decide, on his girly days, if he’s a man or an early transitioning transwoman so to make it easy on everyone (aside from the poor bastard who has to write his absolutely weird chosen name on his coffee cup) to feel confident in how to address him. Basically, we in the family just explain it as “Well, y’know, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t!” and anyone who doesn’t like it is welcome to kiss the back of me hand. I love him so much, he’s such a goof.
Is your nephew okay with people using ‘he’ all the time regardless of which presentation is current on that day? With something like pronouns in a signature or bio, typically coworkers would just remember one set and use it all the time. They would remember that Soandso=he and then use that exclusively rather than use ‘he’ on certain days and ‘they’ on other days.
Yeah, he’s a really easygoing person who knows who he is and is comfortable in his skin and has a family who loves and accepts him so it’s no big deal. It IS a big deal to a whole lot of his friends though, who’ve been deadnamed and misgendered and hazed and hurt and taken beatings because of their identity and presentation so he’s just doing his flamboyant part to make life a little easier for those who don’t have his advantages.
Honestly, his biggest struggle is that his father comes from a set of brothers and they ALL had nothing but girls and my nephew has one sister and that’s it so that part of the family is real bummed that he is childless by choice and refuses to “pass on the family name.” So weird, the things people get hung up on!
They might be, I’m not sure. My own experience with queer folk has been with a fair number who have changed over the years. My high school sweetheart left me for an older woman, and was clearly lesbian, but eventually married a man. A co-worker involved in an ACLU lawsuit for the right to marry her wife now identifies as straight (I think). The first guy I knew who had watched his partner die of AIDS was really freaked out when he fell for a woman. My union partner who married a man in 2019 just came out as lesbian last month and is divorcing her husband. And on and on.
Plenty of adults find their sexuality shifting. And that’s okay. If teenagers find their gender identity shifting? That’s cool too. It doesn’t need to be lifelong for it to be real.
I’m really leery of using words like “trendy” to describe this. Sure, non-binary is a relatively new social phenomenon: in the eighties, I don’t think many people had heard of it, whereas it seems like now as many as 2% of teens may identify in this way. But “trendy” implies people are adopting the label in the same way that they’d shop at Hot Topic or dye their hair. I don’t think that’s accurate. I think kids are, as always, navigating an extremely tricky stage of life; and for some small number of kids, maybe 2%, the nonbinary identity is proving to be a really useful tool for this process.
It feels weird, but I added pronouns to my faculty bio. It was not required, just pointed out as an option. I don’t see other folks doing it much. Do you think we’ll still be doing it in 5 years or will it go the way of double knit pants and leisure suits?
I hang out in trans/non-binary circles. Several of my friends are gender non-conforming, including some of my closer friends. I’ve had numerous discussions with trans and non-binary people about pronouns.
Yes, they appreciate it if you include your pronouns on your email sig, and yes, they consider that supportive.
All the discord servers i run or help run have an option to select your preferred pronouns.
Yup. If you have a strong preference for what pronouns people use for you, it’s nice if you publish them. That makes it a lot less awkward for people who might otherwise worry about looking weird, or about whether they “pass” enough to need to.
But, please don’t insist that people announce their pronouns.
Because there are people who aren’t comfortable asserting a pronoun. There are people who are struggling with their own gender identity and don’t want to either announce a gender they aren’t comfortable with or to come out as trans.
In an ideal world, perhaps 50-70% of everyone would include their pronouns routinely. Since we are well below that, if you have a clear pronoun preference, it’s helpful and polite to share it.
My ex-boyfriend used to be a lesbian.
Now, “lesbian” is obviously an entirely valid identity. But for him, it was a phase on his path to figuring out he was a trans man. He was born in Texas in the '70s and grew up in Virginia and Syria, so queer role models were pretty thin on the ground. He knew from an early age that “straight cis female” wasn’t the right box for him, but it took him a long time to unpack exactly why that didn’t fit.