I don’t appreciate pronouns being as wide spread in a working environment. For people who have had to fight for their gender identity I will of course respect that choice - but gender is a rather irrelevant quality in the workplace and I feel like the wide proliferation of pronouns on profiles in Slack/Teams/etc… improperly emphasizes the importance of gender in the workplace. I’d much rather use they/them as blanket pronouns and try and demphasize gender in our language. There are numerous more important factors of people’s personalities that are more interesting than gender like interests (imagine if there was a common pronoun for someone interested in D&D as example) and I’d rather use those factors for identity than gender.
I admit this is likely to be fairly controversial but I do think the world would be a much more pleasant place if gender wasn’t constantly reinforced in language.
“I’m not racist, I just treat everyone like their white.”
You’re trying to hide our differences without understanding our experinces, needs and challenges are different. Obscuring our differences isn’t equality, it’s another form of oppression. People are different, men and women are different, each deserves the same opportunities as the other but eliminating acknowledging those differences only makes the lopsided treatment easier to overlook.
Ah, as someone who doesn’t hide differences do you walk into the office like…
“Hey Nigerian Dan, did you get the memo from Polish John about half-irish half-welsh Sarah’s presentation later today?”
In no way am I trying to erase people’s identities, I just want to highlight that language places an immense emphasis on gender that erases non-binary people and cements it psychologically as an important trait for social interaction.
People are fucking complex, there’s no reason to constantly bucket them into groups by gender identity.
Yes, it is to me. English (and most languages tbh) has constructs that constantly reinforce a concept of binary genders and highlight that as an important factor.
When you learned about Mr., Miss, and Mrs. did you find that awkward? To know how to title a woman (absent the more modern Ms.) you’d need to know their marital status - but for dudes it’s whatever? That fucking pissed me off as a kid - how are you supposed to know if someone is married when writing them and who fucking cares…
To me, at least, gendered pronouns are the same way - I’m writing to a person, about a thing, as them as an individual. Gender is generally irrelevant to this interaction so why the fuck is it necessary for it.
Imagine if it was astrology sign instead: I just finished writing up a response to OsrsNeedsF2P. I hope Virgo appreciates the care I put into it because I enjoy the question Virgo asked.
Imagine needing to know someone’s birth sign to talk about them and imagine that English constantly reinforced that birth sign was the way to identify others and that there were twelve and only twelve proper birth signs.
Gender expression is an important part of our identities - I have a complex expression as a non-conforming man - but it’s not the important part of our identity. It’s a factor of our identity and, I’d argue, only really rarely a top five factor. People are philosophers, crafters, writers, artists, hikers, gamers, cooks, painters, etc… those activities we enjoy are much more core to most of our identities. Our gender expression is important but should usually only impact a very narrow portion of our identity.
I don’t appreciate pronouns being as wide spread in a working environment. For people who have had to fight for their gender identity I will of course respect that choice - but gender is a rather irrelevant quality in the workplace and I feel like the wide proliferation of pronouns on profiles in Slack/Teams/etc… improperly emphasizes the importance of gender in the workplace. I’d much rather use they/them as blanket pronouns and try and demphasize gender in our language. There are numerous more important factors of people’s personalities that are more interesting than gender like interests (imagine if there was a common pronoun for someone interested in D&D as example) and I’d rather use those factors for identity than gender.
I admit this is likely to be fairly controversial but I do think the world would be a much more pleasant place if gender wasn’t constantly reinforced in language.
“I’m not racist, I just treat everyone like their white.”
You’re trying to hide our differences without understanding our experinces, needs and challenges are different. Obscuring our differences isn’t equality, it’s another form of oppression. People are different, men and women are different, each deserves the same opportunities as the other but eliminating acknowledging those differences only makes the lopsided treatment easier to overlook.
Ah, as someone who doesn’t hide differences do you walk into the office like…
“Hey Nigerian Dan, did you get the memo from Polish John about half-irish half-welsh Sarah’s presentation later today?”
In no way am I trying to erase people’s identities, I just want to highlight that language places an immense emphasis on gender that erases non-binary people and cements it psychologically as an important trait for social interaction.
People are fucking complex, there’s no reason to constantly bucket them into groups by gender identity.
Is this a real issue in your opinion?
Yes, it is to me. English (and most languages tbh) has constructs that constantly reinforce a concept of binary genders and highlight that as an important factor.
When you learned about Mr., Miss, and Mrs. did you find that awkward? To know how to title a woman (absent the more modern Ms.) you’d need to know their marital status - but for dudes it’s whatever? That fucking pissed me off as a kid - how are you supposed to know if someone is married when writing them and who fucking cares…
To me, at least, gendered pronouns are the same way - I’m writing to a person, about a thing, as them as an individual. Gender is generally irrelevant to this interaction so why the fuck is it necessary for it.
Imagine if it was astrology sign instead: I just finished writing up a response to OsrsNeedsF2P. I hope Virgo appreciates the care I put into it because I enjoy the question Virgo asked.
Imagine needing to know someone’s birth sign to talk about them and imagine that English constantly reinforced that birth sign was the way to identify others and that there were twelve and only twelve proper birth signs.
Gender expression is an important part of our identities - I have a complex expression as a non-conforming man - but it’s not the important part of our identity. It’s a factor of our identity and, I’d argue, only really rarely a top five factor. People are philosophers, crafters, writers, artists, hikers, gamers, cooks, painters, etc… those activities we enjoy are much more core to most of our identities. Our gender expression is important but should usually only impact a very narrow portion of our identity.
So to me, yea, it’s a real issue.
You will be called “the new hire” until I eventually learn what your name is in a year or two.