A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes.
Two University of South Dakota faculty members, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw and her husband, John Little, have long included their gender pronouns and tribal affiliations in their work email signature blocks. But both received written warnings from the university in March that doing so violated a policy adopted in December by the South Dakota Board of Regents.
“I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’ If my tribal affiliation and pronouns were not removed after the 5 days, then administrators would meet and make a decision whether I would be suspended (with or without pay) and/or immediately terminated.”
The policy is billed by the board as a simple branding and communications policy. It came only months after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem sent a letter to the regents that railed against “liberal ideologies” on college campuses and called for the board to ban drag shows on campus and “remove all references to preferred pronouns in school materials,” among other things.
The party of small government is now regulating your email signatures.
Noem says shut up and work or she’ll shoot your dog
🐕🔫👩👧
If you keep your dog on a reserve she can’t get to it.
That sounds like a clear first amendment violation to me. It’s not like a political affiliation either, gender and ethnic background are core to identity
On the one hand, I see what you’re saying. It sounds much like something my savior Jesus would say.
On the other hand, something something fuck them queers and Injuns.
The first amendment doesnt apply to governmental communications.
Its the reason that things are able to be censored in public schools.
The reason things can be censored in schools is because of the “bong hits 4 Jesus” case that went to the Supreme Court who said the school taking it down didn’t violate their freedom of speeech because “it could reasonably seen as promoting drug use at a school event”.
Fucking stupid case because if I recall it was at a parade for the Olympic torch coming through their town (doesn’t sound like a school event to me) and was not on school property.
Just a kid who happened to go to school being harassed, outside of school, by a principal at a public parade in their town, for holding a silly sign.
So what is there a caveat to 1A that says, “Congress can make no law […] unless that speech or expression may reasonably be seen as promoting drug use”?
What a bullshit country run by octogenarian Christians who just won’t leave people the fuck alone.
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They’re not even pretending it’s “just” about pronouns anymore. Now it’s just overt racism. Not surprised they went for the indigenous first.
Incidentally, there are over 70,000 indigenous Americans living in South Dakota. Considering the state has less than a million people, that’s not insignificant, so this is going to fuck over more than one or two people.
I mean, if those Indians would just go back to their own county, we wouldn’t have this problem.
- This comment was made possible by the Sequoia District School Board, and the Fighting Chiefs Football Team.
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“Hey we have some pretty serious and urgent problems that need sorting out, shall we get to work?”
“Nah, let’s fuck around with pronouns in emails.”
“We’re here to create problems, not solve them!”
Land of the free
Whoever told you that is your enemy
Francis Scott Key is your enemy?
Yes, he’s actually a lich, has a lair in the USS Constitution, that’s why they call it a “museum,” to lure unwary tourists for his unholy hungers.
Government small enough to fit in your mailbox
Just in case anyone is wondering what all the pronouns are. Here is a list of the standard, non standard, informal, and archaic pronouns in the English language
And it at least implied that you couldn’t use any of these words at all in an email. So simple phrases like; can you do this or I am able to do that. Would be out.
Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.
Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.
If I get to compose emails like I’m Frog from Chrono Trigger, I am all about it.
Thou shouldst do as thou pleases.
- Hop around
- Call everybody “thou”
- Wield a cool sword
- Probably nail Queen Leene
Yeah, methinkest I art down.
This is usually a good point. However, from my reading of just the snippet and some quotes others posted (and without reading the article myself because I am lazy), it may be that they are prohobiting the inclusion of preferred pronouns. If that’s accurate, then it means they are refining their bigotry to be more precise.
Oh that is absolutely the intention, but who doesn’t like logical extreme
I actually looked up the standard and it is worded in a way that doesn’t explicitly prohibit any specific thing. It just gives a list of things that can be included and says anything else is prohibited. That way they are not discriminating. They are just creating a formatting standard.
But any pronoun could be your preferred pronoun or the preferred pronoun of someone receiving the e-mail, so it really is safest to avoid them entirely.
If I worked there it would br so tempting to just start writing all my emails in scots gaelic. Can’t say I’m using pronouns if you can’t read it!
Plus I’d get to see what form their xenophobia would take. Would they ban foreign languages from email too? How many things are they willing to ban before they simply oust email entirely?
This opens the door for malicious compilance, one can report Bible quotes with pronouns and similar as bad.
Don’t forget about demonstrative pronouns such as this, that, these, those, neither, none, such.
Wikipedia has failed me 😞
It’s missing thon
I’d comply and remove that info from the signature. I’d just start every email with:
Hello,
Thanks for reading my email. In case we’re not already familiar, my pronouns are he/him and I’m affiliated with…
nah just remove all pronouns
Smith,
Name Emma Jones and sophomore Thursday General Physics Class. Writing because in class yesterday mentioned having open positions research lab. found summary of project very interesting, would like learn and talk joining lab. Time in weeks could meet?
Thank time and look forward hearing soon
Best regards,
Emma
I love this. It screams “Why use lot word when few word do trick.”
Yeah no pronouns in emails ever again. That’s way more fun lol
Just replace the pronouns.
“Hi. Steve was wondering if Steve could go ahead and start Steve’s next project since Steve’s current project is now in review? Steve would be working with Kevin on Steve’s next project and Steve knows that Kevin is wrapping up Kevin’s project this week so Steve and Kevin could start next week”
Doesn’t that sound so much more professional? 🙄
Perfectly readable, I’d bet there are some languages where “I’m” is implied
I don’t know any were the “I’m” is implied, but the “I” is, for example Spanish, because the verb has that info. For example, the present form of “to eat”, “comer” I/yo *como You(singular)/tú *comes he/she/they(singular)él/ella/Ud. *come we/nosotros *comemos you(plural) vosotros *coméis they(plural) ellos/ellas/Uds. *comen
As with the verb alone you know the subject, you can safely ignore it and say, for instance “como” (eat) and have the same meaning as “yo como” (I eat).
Not perfectly readable because you can’t tell who they’re referring to. Someone mentioned something in class, that’s all we know.
Like English.
This is the way.
I think I would go with something like this:
I am female but university policy forbids me to tell you my pronouns. I have a Native American ancestry but university policy forbids me to tell you if I have a tribal affiliation.
Probably in extra-large bold text.
Hello,
Thanks for reading my email. As a large language model….
Haha
Nazis love erasing peoples identity
I wonder if that would be considered discrimination based on race and sex.
No, because it doesn’t impact the old, white cis-males. They’re just mad because their pronouns are “fucking” and “awful.”
Seriously. I am fucking awful? What did I do to you?
I’m a (kinda) old cis white male, and I know that they’re not talking about me, because I’m not a bigot or racist.
Yeah isn’t it funny how that works? Lol… I didn’t even register that comment as something that could ever offend or upset me. Despite fitting the descriptors… It’s almost like I know they weren’t referring to me.
My grandfather always told me, “if you think they’re talking about you, they are”, which is ominous, but true. We know when people are referring to groups that we consider ourselves members of. We are meticulous social creatures and pay attention to what people around us think of us.
Nobody reacts like that if they aren’t certain they’re being talked about.
I think it’s a good heuristic, but it’s not always true. It butts heads with the law of unintended consequences, and the law of big numbers, especially when you’re in a more global community.
I think you’re absolutely right to trust your gut, but it’s also important to verify those feelings with introspection and logic.
That’s not what was posted. They said you are also fucking awful.
But if you are scared to even question being called that, it is your right.
We’re on social media. Sometimes people are a little carless with how they write, and are maybe a little more terse than they ought to be. Taking every post completely literally and not giving people the benefit of the doubt seems a bit silly. I take no umbrage with the statement, because I know who they’re talking about, and it’s not me. I have nothing to be scared of.
Do you not know how generalizations work or are you just that fucken brain damaged? If I say “Saxons are piss bathing dipshits” that doesnt mean I hate literally everyone from southern England at worst I just hate most of them. Learn what a generalization means or jump off a cliff I dont care what you do just stop being stupid.
To be fair, we as a society have been moving away from generalizations when it comes to things people can’t control. It’s a fine line to walk.
Sure but this is the internet if ya let generalizations bother you, well youll be real bothered for a real long time.
I’ll take the bear in case you were wondering too.
Care to explain what an awful choice that is?
Are you mad about people putting pronouns and tribal affiliations in their email signatures? Because, yeah, that’s fucking awful.
I am sure you are fine, and have never supported bad legislation like this. I think that the biggest complaint I’ve seen for old cis white males is their ability to claim victimhood when they are at the top of the pyramid, and to make everything about themselves if you can believe it
This was gold, but I feel like he had no idea what you were doing. Probably went, “yah! This guy gets it!”
Many cis white males can legitimately complain, but not as cis white males.
I’d the glove fits…
Well, you were nice enough to pick an appropriate username. I like it when I block obvious wastes of oxygen.
“I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’
“Correct the behavior” just means setting the style to bold and increasing the font size, though.
We call it doin’ a John Hancock!
A “Little, John Hancock”, if you will.
Surely it should be a choice.
Republicans really aren’t fans of letting people make their own choices. You could even say that they aren’t pro-choice.
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I think the “everyone anyone your pronouns” thing in email, slack, whatever is dumb. But if I lived in SD, I’d start doing it right about now.
I originally thought it was a bit silly, but then I realized that there are a lot of cisgendered people who just have names that people can’t tell whether they are male or female, either because it’s gender-neutral or it’s unusual, so it kind of makes sense for a lot of people who aren’t queer as well and are just tired of people misgendering them via email.
It is important for cis people to do so for one important reason on top of what you said, if only trans people need to put their pronouns in their profiles is just another way to identify them.
If everyone does it, nobody feels awkward about doing it.
And this is probably exactly why they are trying to ban it.
I have a consistently male name, which is fine as I’m a man, but I still put Mr. in front of my name in my email signature. It just cuts down on ambiguity, confusion, and even looks more formal.
I’ll never understand people’s obsession with disallowing gendered or nongenered pronouns. The whole controversy is asinine
I still put Mr. in front of my name in my email signature. It just cuts down on ambiguity, confusion, and even looks more formal.
This seems to satisfy the problem. If you don’t want people confusing what pronouns to use… sign things Mr, Ms or Mrs.
When you have other custom pronouns or don’t want one used… don’t mention one… and that should imply to a sender to simply use they/them.
No matter what you choose to do people are going to reply however they want to anyway.
I’m one of these, my name is definitely male but when you read it it’s really easy to confuse with the female version. It doesn’t help that it’s really rare in my generation while the female version is much more popular. All this resulted in me getting misgendered on a regular basis. A few examples:
- as a teenager, I won a prize with a monetary award. The check was for the female version of my name.
- when I got my first house, I signed up ONLINE for the electric utility. The invoice ended up being addressed to the female version of my name. I sure as heck didn’t make a mistake in my own name when signing up, so someone over there must have “corrected” my name
- I once went to a week-long course, where we each were assigned an individual room, but bathrooms and showers were shared across all rooms on that floor. I was assigned a room on the ladies’ floor, which took me a while to realize as I thought it was just mixed-gendered.
- and that’s without counting the hundreds of times teachers took attendance. I’d say at least half of them got it wrong.
Anyway, I thought pronouns were a bit of a weird thing for trans and non-binary people, but as a very cis man who’s had issues with people reading my name wrong, I put my pronouns in my signature now.
What made me think of it was a guy I want to college with named Olu. It’s apparently a traditional name in the part of Africa where his parents were from (it’s been way too long ago to remember where), but he was an American, not African, so basically no one in America would be able to tell if he was male or female just by reading his name.
It’s also solidarity with non-cis folks to normalize identifying preferred pronouns so that they can be addressed as they would like.
Understood, but I was trying to frame it in a way that even people who are not allies might understand.
Totally. If someone just thinks it’s “dumb,” they might not be realizing it isn’t necessarily about them.
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Hey Class,
Please show up to learn and get off your damn phones.
Thanks,
Mr. Courtney Cybermonk
Doesn’t that just work?
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Don’t lump me in with those assholes. I support LGBTQI, I just don’t agree with the pronoun block. Why change English to accommodate something that already exists?
I think making the pronoun block front and center of communications and daily life has triggered the conservatives and caused a backlash that will cause way more harm than the pronoun block would ever have done good. If you want a social change to stick you need to align it to things that everybody believes in. A call to use more formal language in communications is traditional and something that the majority could get behind, pronouns are just a progressive idea that will be used for slurs, hate and vitrol.
When you do something for a group that is already facing a ton of hate and then you try and change the habits of the nazis, they’re going to do everything in their power to resist your demands. The current wave of extremist politics is a reaction from the past few decades of extreme swing towards PC culture. Change is gradual. The current conservative bullshit will pass because people really aren’t like that. There are a lot of people that grew up before the culture shift seen in the 90s, 00s, and 10s. When younger generations start saying “you need to do this” the older ones get upset. They don’t understand or don’t agree, or generally don’t want to change. Forcing this down people’s throats and making everything more every day in the open is going to prime people for more extreme hate thoughts, even if they by default would be neutral or even leaning progressive.
The republican party and conservatives have latched on to this shared unease of change and have used it to target LGBTQI in majority conservative states. States that before never were regressive are turning so… because politics and news are talking about it constantly and making the impression that somehow they (older people) are being targeted, even when they are not. It’s another public policy push that distracts us from real issues like healthcare, social security, tax reforms and loop holes that the rich and wealthy abuse, and other major policies that are harming us every single day to prop up some wealthy interest group who benefits from the status quo.
I know this is a long post, but to sum it up: “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
I use gender they/them in that case! If I know the person’s gender I will use it, but if it’s ambiguous I’ll stick to they/them.
Plenty of people aren’t that courteous, which is part of the issue.
I don’t fuss about it, and I totally get that it can be helpful in ambiguous situations. I see it used a lot in virtue signaling, and that annoys me a lot.
I can see the solidarity angle, but I guess I’m old school and feel like the best acceptance of others is just to live and let live.
I see it used a lot in virtue signaling,
What does this even mean? Are you the arbiter of when someone is being genuine and when they’re “virtue signalling”? You get to be the one to determine if it’s performative or some shit? Get the fuck out of here…
Do you consider cis-gendered people (oh no I said it, will I be ruled as a virtue signaller?) stating their pronouns in solidarity as “virtue signalling”?
And follow-up: would you say the same about the white allies that sat hand in hand with black people at sit-in being spat on, physically assaulted, sprayed with fire hoses and had dogs sicced on them?
Or would you also tell them that they should have “just live and let live”?
Our trans citizens are fucking dying and motherfuckers call you virtue signalling for doing anything but keeping your mouth shut.
I’d bet my next paycheck you’re a NIMBY too. “Just keep this unpleasantness somewhere I can’t see it.” People like you actively make the world a worse place.
I mean it, just like it is defined.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
I have been shamed for not providing my pronouns in Slack. I think it’s not important for me to do because it’s easy to tell my pronouns by our language. If it was ambiguous in any way, I would feel comfortable providing them.
I do not shame or care if others use them regardless of their reason (support, clarity, etc) up until that reason is to passively or actively shame others.
So what do people call each other now? Fuckwit/fuckedwit?
Those are gender pronouns with extra steps. \s
The tittle butchers the fact. They are not forbidden the use of pronouns, but to list their preferred ones (i.e, Dr Fuckwit (she/her).
When something is this stupid (university banning the preferred pronoums) , why not display it in all it’s stupid glory?
What’s really stupid is that I know a few women with traditionally male sounding names (Ryan, Alex, etc) who add their pronouns because they are sick of people assuming they’re male, but fuck them right?
They can only call each other their names.
Jim said Jim and Larry were gonna go to the store. So Jim says to Larry, “Hey Larry, what’s on your mind?” and Larry says “Nothing, Jim. Just wondering what time Larry and Jim’d get there at this pace”. Jim checks Jim’s watch and says “Jim and Larry’ve been walking about - what - ten minutes?”.
Jim stops a second, deep in thought. Jim scratches Jim’s chin as Jim thinks. “About two I’d say”
“Alright” says Larry “Let Larry and Jim get moving then”
“Yes let Larry and Jim”
(no first person plural pronouns either)
That would turn those effectively into pronouns. I guess you are supposed to just hum through the pronouns or leave a marked silence?
Their names
Molave’s pronouns are inbred/colonizer.
Republicans sure love small government /s
I’m failing and firing everyone on campus who doesn’t immediately start reporting EVERY use of EVERY pronoun in EVERY email.
Swamp those mother fuckers .
