I’m confused, then. The corporation is virtue signaling to whom? To its employees? And what is it signaling? That HR officially supports the legitimacy of trans employees?
Again, that seems… better than not doing so.
Will it solve every problem trans employees might have? Of course not. It’s still a start. It puts employees on notice that this is the officially stance of their employer. That seems like a decent step for an employer to take.
Those with expressed pronouns are more likely to be trustworthy to trans employees, yes.
I mean, the guy who wrote “he, as God intended” is much less likely to be trustworthy, but that’s still useful info.
Encouraging employees to list their ethnicity and religion in a directory where every employee can view it just seems insane to me. I can just picture someone being turned down for a promotion or another job opportunity and a few months later finding the EEOC knocking on company’s door asking why an employee’s religion is visible to everyone in the company. Someone at your company has screwed up big time here.
I think it could be argued that encouraging employees to put their preferred pronoun is indicative of a more inclusive work environment. Personally, I think the company is better off giving employee’s the opportunity to list their preferred pronoun and encouraging them decide for themselves. That way nobody feels pressured either way.
Do you think the act of stating preferred pronouns or not is revealing of some sort of political, ethical or moral viewpoint?
I think it’s likely to be revealing of wanting to support one’s trans coworkers. If you consider that to be a political, ethical, or moral statement, then i guess that’s what I’m saying.
That’s a hell of an assumption to make. I don’t see how that follows. People can say anything. Surely the support of any of your colleagues is better illustrated by the way you actually treat them.
And you don’t see any problems with that? A political, ethical or moral position assumed and unverified based on the absence of a preferred pronoun?
What other political, ethical or moral positions should be assumed by observing what people don’t do.
If I note that someone doesn’t wear a poppy on 11th Nov. What does that say about them? Not adding pink ribbons to signatures and posts during breast cancer awareness campaigns, what does that say about a person?
I am absolutely in favor of a company creating some kind of mechanism by which employees can make it known how they like to be addressed.
That said, HR departments virtue signaling? Shocking.
That’s what HR departments do. That’s their function. Their sole purpose is to insulate a business entity from its employees, and mostly to safeguard that entity from lawsuits.
And if putting up a lot of verbiage and platitudes and whatever about diversity and inclusiveness and all that furthers that goal, I guarantee you HR departments will sign on. They’ll even have a few workshops, and invite a few highly-compensated speakers.
Meanwhile business as usual. Because all that stuff is way cheaper than even one lawsuit.
And don’t ever bring a problem to HR, if you’re the employee being discriminated against, or denied promotion, or being harassed in the workplace. Because if you bring a problem to them, you’re the problem.
But yeah, they’ll let you indicate your pronouns in your email sig.
It is the employee profile in the HR directory rather than something that is visible to everyone (I hope!) but no matter, none of that information is any of the company’s business and I simply reply “none” to anything that I think is irrelevant or intrusive.
That remembrance day isn’t one of their priorities.
Is this something people do at work? Is this in any way comparable to including pronouns in an email sig? Is there any concern among employees who have had breast cancer that their coworkers might be dismissive of them? Is it important to breast cancer survivors that other employees know that about them? (And if so, does it muddy the waters if others are adding pink ribbons?)
It’s actually important to many trans employees to be addressed by the correct pronouns. But it’s awkward for them to announce, “hey, everyone! I’m trans.” It’s less awkward for them if it’s normal to list pronouns. Doing so is helping them to quietly fit in while also not being annoyed by being routinely misgendered. What comparable signaling might a pink ribbon perform?
And yet we see assumptions being made off the back of that when it may be precisely as mundane as that.
And of course someone may not declare pronouns because it isn’t a priority to them, correct? It may be that simple.
Sure, if it is important to them they should be free to say so.
It is even less awkward for them and all colleagues if people treat them with kindness and dignity and respect their wishes with the same courtesy extended to those who do not wish to list pronouns.
Sure, I’ve seen it done. As for comparable? barely a week passes without one or another corporate awareness week for one cause or another, there is pressure to join in. These pressures are subtle and not so subtle with an unspoken implication that failure to do so is an indication of a lack of support for issues that very much touch upon someone’s private ethical, moral and political views. I don’t think a mandated implicit airing of those views in a workplace setting is a good thing.
And that seems to be what you are suggesting with the stating of pronouns. You implied that people not wishing to do so were somehow less trustworthy. That something can be inferred by the fact of them not doing so. If I’ve misunderstood you then I’d be interested to hear your clarification.
Yes, of course they would like to be treated with kindness and dignity. One of the ways of doing that is showing support for them by listing your pronouns.
Nowhere am I saying that it should be mandatory. I’m saying that listing your pronouns, if you’re comfortable doing that, is a way of showing support for people who sort of have to list theirs, because theirs may not be obvious. If you’re not comfortable listing your pronouns, that’s fine (genuine question – why would that make you uncomfortable?), but if you’re comfortable listing them, why not do it?
Why is listing gender in the form of pronouns any different? Sex is also a frequent cause of discrimination, and ethnicity and even religion can frequently be inferred from someone’s name, too. I’d feel equally uncomfortable about being required or ‘encouraged’ to list any of the three.
ETA: How many people would be happy to put their ethnicity and/or religion in their email signature if asked to by HR?
There’s a big, difference, I think.
The listing of pronouns would be to aid people at the company to address each other properly, without awkwardness and fear of getting it wrong. It seems actually useful to have that information available.
Whereas there’s no need to know a person’s ethnicity or religion to address them correctly in the workplace.
Sure, right now there is no reason to list those things, but if in the future there was some small group of people it would benefit then you’d do it, right?
I think of a directory as something anyone in the company can access. For most directories that will be your name, job title, contact information, and maybe your immediate supervisor. And HR often asks for information about race/ethnicity in order to make sure the company isn’t hiring, terminating, or promoting in a discriminatory manner. I’m not quite sure why they’d want to know your religion though.
That’s not true. We also handle benefits and recruiting.
There are a lot of bad HR department out there. I would hate to work for a company that just issued platitudes and a wall of words without actually doing anything. But the truth of the matter is that no matter what company you’re looking at it isn’t HR calling the shots. If platitudes are being made it’s because that’s the way the executives are running the show.
You are just wrong about this, I’m sorry to say. It absolutely is a trans issue and people are largely proceeding with this practice to support trans and non-binary folks. Trans and non-binary people are asking for it, and many people of all genders are responding to that ask. No one is offensively “trying to frame” it as trans inclusive, it is trans and non-binary inclusive.
That said, as many others have pointed out already, it is an ask and not a demand. If you have reason not to include your pronouns, then don’t.
Statistically, most people don’t have any trans coworkers though, which is part of my objection (objection may be too strong a word, more “rolling my eyes and just not doing it”) to the whole listing pronouns thing.
And as others have noted, all of the transgender people I’ve interacted with have had gender-conforming names - so they might be MtF and calling themselves “Laura”. No issues there at all, and also no need to be listing pronouns because they’re obvious. And if Laura wants to decide the ‘rules’ of English don’t apply to her and she’s actually going to use Ze/Zey, then it might make sense to put that in her sig/bio.
The thing all these people worried about people being “othered” by listing pronouns when it’s not a majority thing to do seem to forget that listing “weird” pronouns is going to have exactly the same effect anyway. If everyone else has “He/Him” or “She/Her” and Laura has “Ze/Zey”, then that’s telling everyone that there’s something different about Laura - which, from what I gather, is exactly what transgender people (understandably) don’t want.
Without exception, every non-mandated example of pronoun sharing I have encountered has been from progressive people virtue signalling out of some desire to be seen as ‘woke’ or as some sort of attention-getting thing as part of a “Look how odd and quirky and different I am” thing. In real life have never encountered someone with an unambiguously male or female name saying they wanted to use the pronouns for the other gender, except in humour.
This is exactly it. There’s a never-ending stream of “Awareness days” and “Morning Teas for [Cause]” at the office and it most certainly can be ‘noted’ that so-and-so didn’t take part.
Not that so-and-so said “This is a gigantic feel-good crock of shit that Stacey and Becky are using to cover up for the fact they never seem to do anything else except organise never-ending morning teas and luncheons for random events”, just that so-and-so didn’t participate in the latest Luncheon For Homeless Guinea Pigs and is therefore ‘not a team player’ etc.
We live in an era now where opinions and views people dislike are immediately decried as ‘hate speech’ or ‘bigotry’ regardless of how mild they are, and there’s already people out there openly saying “silence is violence” about issues - in other words, not caring makes (generic) you as bad as the people who actively look for ways to cause actual, physical harm to Group X. The same thing is happening with the pronouns thing - don’t want to list your pronouns? You must be a transphobic bigot, there’s no other explanation at all.
That feels like an attempt at a gotcha question. You’d have to tell me what circumstances, and what group, you have in mind before I could give you a real answer.
I can’t imagine why I’d need to know someone’s ethnicity to address them properly in an office environment. Or their religion.
Whereas I really might need to know someone’s pronouns to be courteous.
You don’t see any value in them not having to worry about whether they pass before sharing that? You don’t see any value in a corporation signaling that it supports trans and non-binary employees?
In the seventies most people assumed they had no gay coworkers. They were wrong. Trans people are coming out now in much the way gay people came out in the eighties.
Anyway, i work for a large multinational corporation. The odds that i have trans coworkers is 100%.
Yes. I hang out with a lot of trans, non-binary, and gender-non-conforming people. This is a trans issue. It’s one that matters to a lot of them.
They are NOT asking that employers mandate it. Only that it be encouraged and normalized.
It’s not just an issue for corporations and HR. My square dance club bought “pronoun dangles” that attach to our name tags. We did that because a gender non-conforming man wanted to do it. I helped pay for them, so we could give them away to anyone who wants one. They are extremely popular with our trans members, and several have told me that they appreciate the cis members who also wear the badges. My husband and daughter, with very gender-typical names, wear them. So do many of the other cis dancers.
I don’t.
I don’t wear one because i am not completely comfortable with my gender. I identify as a cis women, and i certainly don’t have the sort of gender dysphoria that drives some people to feel uncomfortable in their skins. But i feel wrong announcing “I’m a woman”, too. And I’m also too old and too set in the grammar of my childhood to adopt “they”. So i don’t publish my pronouns. And, while i routinely correct people who mispronounce my IRL name, i accept whatever pronouns, ma’ams, and sirs come my way.
But i encourage anyone who DOES feel comfortable with their gender to include it in their email sig, and add it to their name tag. A lot of my friends will appreciate it if you do.