Oh, yeah, i think that’s where the practice comes from. One year we had a bunch of people who used novel pronouns join our club. Including sometime who used zi, zim and someone else who used ze, zer.
Much as i wish one of the novel pronouns had caught on, i think we are going too end up with just he/she/they, and a single word is plenty of information for each of those.
It’s kind of hard to believe you’re offering this argument in seriousness, but no, it’s not. You’re not sending out a signal that you’ll treat everyone equally; you’re not sending out any signal at all. A trans person who has to interact with you has no way of knowing if you’re going to be cool about them being trans or not. They shouldn’t assume that you’re not going to be cool, of course, but there’s always going to be that tension of, “How’s this guy going to react to me? Is he going to be all passive aggressive about me being trans? Is he going to skip the “passive” and go straight to “aggressive?” What if he gets my pronouns wrong? Would it be worth it to correct him? Is it risky to correct him?”
This is something that all queer people have to deal with. You never stop coming out. Every time I’m socializing with someone from work, and I start to tell a personal anecdote, there’s that flash of, “Should I mention that the other guy in this story was my boyfriend? Should I play it safe and just say ‘friend?’” Rittersport’s story about assuming his co-worker had been pregnant is more of the same. There’s a reason she didn’t just say, “Ha ha, no, it was my wife who gave birth,” and it’s because she was doing a familiar calculus of, “How safe is it for me to tell this guy I’m gay?”
Folks like Martini can sneer about “virtue signaling” and “tiny minorities,” but I can tell you from personal experience, it’s really nice to know up front that I don’t have to worry about that shit when I’m dealing with someone new.
Which is why I’m “they” at work.
If you didn’t want to listen to potential negatives from listing pronouns in workplace settings then perhaps you shouldn’t have raised it in the OP, listed two articles that talked about it as well and shouldn’t have specifcally said.
and in your second post you clearly stated
Which, to me at least, sounded like you did want people to respond to you on that very subject.
indeed many people already had responded on that very same subject long before I did.
Yeah, it’s not a bad idea. I’m certainly using ‘they’ a lot more within the last five years or so
In another year or two, maybe I’ll be comfortable enough with “they” to embrace it.
It sucks being old and inflexible. 
I can’t honestly see the point of identifying as non-binary. It means people use different pronouns for you, and… what else? It’s not going to stop everyone you meet making their own judgement of what sex you are and treating you accordingly. And if some people are willing and able to ignore gender when dealing with other people (something I very much doubt), why wouldn’t they just do that for everyone?
In nb-identifying people that I know (mid-teens) I detect a strong vein of not liking to be sexualised … this is basically my middle-teen’s friends, female-bodied. I think it does deflect sexual attention somewhat, even if the body doesn’t actually change
It is a way of expressing yourself publicly. Lots of people don’t especially identify with the gender they have been dealt by society, and saying you are non-binary is a way to articulate that, i believe.
I identify as female because i always have. There wasn’t really any other option when I was young. And I’ve never had so much gender dysphoria that i had to do anything about it. But i believe strongly in the gender continuum.
Biological sex is, while not binary, strongly clustered around two modes. I don’t think gender is, i think there’s a continuum and only a large minority of people are close to either end. Where should we draw the line between male and non-binary? Between female and non-binary? I suppose each person decides that on their own.
Is it socially useful to draw those lines? I dunno. I suppose we’ll find out eventually. But at this moment, many people feel it’s worth trying.
This is one reason I’m against corporate “encouraging” of putting it in the sig, because in the corporate world, that’s really a mandate. It’s something that managers start tracking because they feel the percentage of compliance indicates their percentage of people in their company cool with gender issues. But in a corporate environment, employees feel pressure to put pronouns in their sig so that they don’t get dinged on performance reviews and stuff, but then it doesn’t tell you anything about the person since everyone is “encouraged” to do it.
I feel that voluntary listing pronouns is an indication that the person is in the gender community or is a friend of that community. Something like “John he/him” is common in those circles, so when you see that, it shows that person is in sync with gender issues. It’s the same way that someone putting “John 3:16” is showing they’re a Christian or “Live long and prosper” to show they’re into Star Trek. The person is showing some aspect of themselves that they feel is important or they want other people to know. In almost all cases, someone named John will be using he/him and the default can be assumed even when there aren’t pronouns listed. So if John adds he/him, it’s to show that he is very familiar with gender issues rather than to clear up any misconceptions about what pronouns he uses.
A bigot is going to bigot no matter what you do to try to avoid it. I see no reason to think that pronouns on a profile or sig is going to make a meaningful difference. It’s also worth reminding people that we’re largely talking about a place of work. I realize people go to work with different expectations of what it means to be in a workplace, but many people don’t go to work to socialize and make friends. Many people don’t want to bring personal politics into the workplace. Many people don’t want to share their personal information and lives at work. But more and more a workplace has become a place for social activism of one sort or another. I can understand why. I’m just not convinced it’s something that needs to be actively encouraged.
I get that. I’ve sensed it in multiple social and workplace situations. I’m mindful about it and I don’t pry into people’s personal lives with probing questions or conversations that would make them uncomfortable, or force them to reveal more information than they want to share. I would appreciate similar courtesy in return.
Again, I understand. In a perfect world we’d all recognize our enemies by their limping. But aren’t we setting up a situation in which we’re forcing certain assumptions, i.e. People who share their pronouns are allies, people who don’t are not allies and quite possibly enemies.
I guess it depends on the corporation. My corporation encourages all sorts of things that truly are voluntary. That includes volunteering, joining “affinity groups” and I expect pronouns to be coming soon.
Years ago I was making a badge for a new employee and getting his new hire documents all squared away and we were chit chatting the whole time. He had recently gotten married and they went on a cruise but throughout the whole conversation he constantly referred to his spouse as his spouse and never mentioned their name. I came to the conclusion that he was likely gay and this was a behavior he picked up as a defense mechanism. What if I was a bigot who complained about him “flaunting” his lifestyle because he dared mention a husband? I felt bad for him because there he was simultaneously excited to talk about being a newlywed but worried about how I might react to finding out he was gay. I’ve never had to worry about that kind of baloney.
Thanks for explaining. Seeing it as something people do to express themselves makes sense, but I’m still not sold on the social usefulness aspect. I have more thoughts, but this thread isn’t really the place for them, so I’ll leave it there.
The company I work for enforces a standard format for email signatures. So if they do ever decide to support pronoun listing, including them would likely be mandatory.
To tie it back to the OP, aside from the main benefit of avoiding misgendering, and the secondary benefit of making transgender/gender non-conforming individuals stand out less, there is apparently a third benefit: listing pronouns indicates that one is comfortable around / accepting of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals.
If listing pronouns were to become common practice, specifically if people who are not accepting of transgender or gender non-conforming individuals commonly listed their own pronouns, this third benefit would be lost.
~Max
(Apologies for the verbosity, I don’t know a more concise way to label ‘transgender or gender non-conforming individuals’. A bit ironic I suppose…)
I never said that sharing pronouns would prevent anyone from being a bigot. Nor did I say anything about out-of-work socializing. I said that being willing to share your pronouns can help reduce your co-workers concerns that you’ll react inappropriately to being around a trans person. This is not a trivial or imaginary concern.
Very plainly, you do not. My point has nothing to do with not asking “probing questions,” or requiring anyone to divulge anything. I’m not arguing that you should be forced to share your pronouns, I’m arguing for why you should do this voluntarily, why taking this very small amount of effort on your part could potentially relieve a co-worker of a regular stressor in their lives.
And, again, you immediately demonstrate that you do not. For example, we aren’t “setting up a situation where … people who share their pronouns are allies, people who don’t are not allies and quite possibly enemies.” We are already living in with that situation. Or, at least, trans people are. You (and I) have the privilege of being able to ignore that, but we should at least be honest that we’re ignoring it because we don’t care enough to make an effort, and not smugly pretend that by doing nothing, we’re actually helping somehow.
Yes, but so what? We shouldn’t use this useful metric now, because if we do, it will eventually become less useful?
Hands down. Best post in this thread.
No, I believe the benefits outweigh the costs. But OP asked for any downsides, and here is one.
As a separate argument upthread I wrote that using Mr./Ms. in emails is a better way to reduce confusion than listing pronouns, even for individuals who are transgender, and I think I listed a few potential downsides of using pronouns in emails.
~Max
I haven’t seen anyone use Mr. or Ms. in a professional email in… decades? That would stand out and look really weird in my profession.
But as a result of this thread, and some related stuff that coincidentally happened today, I just updated my professional email sig to say
Puzzlegal, professional designations
any pronouns
Employer
Department
phone number
email
disclaimer
The “any pronouns” line is new. We’ll see if it generates any reaction at all. Hopefully it doesn’t.