Gender pronouns in the workplace

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Joe_5859 said:
But the big question I have is, why is it necessary to include this in an email signature? Even if you want to use some unexpected and/or non-traditional pronouns, is this something that needs to be attached to every email you send? When I respond to someone in an email, I don’t use pronouns to refer to that person because the email is going to him or her. So why do I need to know this?
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Have you not learned there is zero place for this sort of logic in today’s workplace?

😆😆😆
 
I’d be so fed up working around people who want other people to talk in unnatural ways. You could say, “Hi Pam, how are you?”. And she could say, “my name’s not Pam, it’s Dan”. Say “my mistake”, and walk away!
 
Tbh, the only time I really need to use pronouns to describe someone is when I’m talking about them and they aren’t there, surely? Face to face, you use a name or a you, don’t you?
So a) don’t talk about people unnecessarily when they aren’t present, and b) how would they know if you get it wrong or right anyway??!😜
 
It’s a two-way street. This group you referred to has to also respect the beliefs of us who don’t conform to them.
 
Oh, well I’ll just be super old school and go by “Mrs. [Husband’s name].” Should bring the confusion full circle.
 
Just say “that man…”. Your average person doesn’t even care.
 
“Alex337 said:
AlbertDerGrosse said:
They/them is usually accepted by gender nonconforming folks.
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The problem is that ‘they’ or ‘them’, being plural, are grammatically incorrect when referring to one person, whom should rightly be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’(or ‘it’, as the case may be). Must we really bastardise the English tongue in order to satisfy the querulous demands of a woefully confused sub-segment of the population?
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margaret42 said:
It’s a two-way street. This group you referred to has to also respect the beliefs of us who don’t conform to them.
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THIS!! This is where I lose my mind because there’s no give and take.

I am supposed to conform to everyone else, but to heck with what I think. I’m so done with that. And whenever you bring that up, you get this blank look like, well, dang, I didn’t think of that.

Of course you didn’t.
 
And traditional beliefs about the roles of men and women were established long before any of these controversial movements came along. So there’s nothing to be ashamed of
 
This hasn’t always been true, mainly because the English language doesn’t have a singular pronoun for an unknown gender. They/them has been used for a couple of centuries now.
 
It is simply a matter of culture. Ma’am clearly marks someone as “not being from here.” It just isn’t and never has been a title of respect in these parts.
I kinda like Madame myself, although that would be a problem as well 🙂
 
Is such nonsense like adding gender pronouns to signatures happening in Britain, too?
 
Yup. If a student replies to the teacher with, “Yes, ma’am,” it’s possible they’ll get sent to the principal’s office, because it sounds like sarcasm. Even though I grew in in a one of the northern states, I don’t read it that way since I spent my formative years adjacent to the “South” specifically in a place in which every branch of the military was represented. “Ma’am” doesn’t bother me, I find it rather charming actually.
 
It is true it does sound like sarcasm up here. I wonder where that came from. Occasionally I’ll have a student call me ma’am (because they are “not from around here”) and although I know they do it innocently I feel myself bristle inside like I’ve been insulted.
 
Probably because it’s been used sarcastically too often. Or maybe the question is why ma’am/sir or yes, ma’am/sir didn’t take hold up North.
 
That’s what “ma’am” is - it’s a contracted form of madame.

It doesn’t necessarily mark someone as not from there. It’s also used on a daily basis in the military as well. I can always tell when someone’s military and saying “ma’am” or “sir” with a Yankee accent (said the half-Yankee, LOL). That or they had a parent from the south.

It’s not an insult in the least, so it’s helpful to remember that culture goes both ways. Respect the other for doing what they find acceptable and polite. Not saying you don’t, but it should be pretty obvious when someone opens their mouth and our distinctive vowels come out. 🙂
 
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kill051 said:
The problem is that ‘they’ or ‘them’, being plural, are grammatically incorrect when referring to one person, whom should rightly be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’(or ‘it’, as the case may be).
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‘Who’, not ‘whom’. Talk about using the grammatically incorrect pronoun! 😉 Joking aside, ‘They’ has been used as a gender neutral pronoun for hundreds of years and much like the nonexistent rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, the derision against its use is modern and anachronistic. Consider this sentence: “Somebody left their jacket and if they don’t pick it up from the lost-and-found after 30 days I’ll get to keep it.” Swapping ‘it’ for ‘they’ is inappropriate because we’re talking about a human being, and using the even more modern “he or she” is onerous. We could always revert to the practice of using the third person singular masculine pronoun when gender is doubtful, unknown, or neutral, but given social trends I highly doubt that will ever happen. If anything the feminine ‘she’ is on track to take that place. Which I’m frankly OK with, though it will take some practice getting used to. In popular writing it’s still pretty new, but it’s already everywhere in academic literature.
Must we really bastardise the English tongue in order to satisfy the querulous demands of a woefully confused sub-segment of the population?
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That horse left the barn when the Normans came strutting in, I’m afraid. There’d be no English if it weren’t for bastardization.
 
I cannot even begin to highlight how much this narcissism has affected the UK. It’s a tremendously important issue over here, and I actually think it’s a very big stick to beat women with particularly. It’s an issue with which I have common cause with Feminists on, because this insidious manipulation of language is tremendously dangerous.
Right now, a UK based website I read is in uproar because women are being told they cannot call themselves women, and they cannot call biological men, men. It is the latest, trendy, right on cause, and it will consume traditional Christian believers and women alike, largely because Christians and women are conditioned or believe that we should be kind and nice.
So people with abusive, misogynistic intent use that admirable trait in women and Christians, to force through legislation and cultural change that puts women and girls in particular in danger, and rely on the fact that we will be too nice to object.

Preferred pronouns on emails is the tip of a really, really unpleasant iceberg.
 
You know I only very recently learned of this (oblivious man that I am), and I gotta say it feels so strange to be “rooting”, as it were, for radical feminists. The Progressive paradigm of tolerating all identities at all costs is actually consuming itself because blind tolerance has no mechanism in place to decide which identity should be tolerated at the expense of another mutually exclusive identity.

I remember seeing these conflicts first begin to arise 10 years ago during the Prop 8 fiasco here in California when liberal gays suddenly found racism appealing because religious Blacks overwhelmingly voted in favor of traditional marriage, while the straight WASPy “allies” were left scratching their heads not knowing which group to direct their savior complex toward. Are the Blacks being homophobic? Are the gays being racist?

It’ll be interesting to continue watching this conflict between the Trans-exclusionary Feminists and the Trans-inclusionary Feminists (did I use those terms correctly?)
 
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