I am actively looking for a new job and disqualifying companies where people have pronouns in the signature. I’ve seen it go full woke crazy, not trying to deal with that again

When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.

I'd politely push back a bit. It makes sense that trans people don't want someone else assuming their pronouns - I wouldn't like it if someone called me something besides "he" - so the question in good faith is reasonable, unless someone is offended to be treated in a trans-friendly way.

This weird hatred of not sharing pronouns is harmful - it's.. a few characters next to your name to help people talk to you and to help people who use different pronouns to what society has given them. Please stop acting all high-and-mighty over them - it's always with good intent.

I am a man. My pronouns on my LinkedIn profile do nothing other than to appease a fringe part of society who thinks being incorrectly referred to by a different pronoun is an attack on their character. I don't feel the need to give in to these people. Someone who would repeatedly refer to you by the wrong pronouns doesn't care that your pronouns are on your profile. It is a solution looking for a problem.

Well sometimes it can be tough to know. Is that a trans man showing a bit an effeminate side sometimes or a woman? Is that person trying to look androgynous or masculine or is it just what they like to wear?

Well, if it really bothers someone when someone else uses the wrong pronoun, they could always just politely ask. Just like people with hard-to-pronounce foreign names. And if someone else refuses, you know, just don't be friends with that guy - be professional, to-the-point and spend your free time with the people that share your values.

If you actually have a great home, friends, hobbies, and are generally happy about your life, someone using the wrong pronoun or giving you a weird look shouldn't bother you more than an unexpected rainy day. The problem is that most people that are vocal about pronouns are actually deeply unhappy, and the HR has sold them the bullshit pill that devoting your life to correcting others will somehow make you happier.

Or you could agree to disagree on pronouns, and agree to agree on pursuit of financial independence like in the good old times. Easy common goal. After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock, as long as they can reliably answer questions that would otherwise take you days to research.

>Just like people with hard-to-pronounce foreign names. And if someone else refuses, you know, just don't be friends with that guy - be professional, to-the-point and spend your free time with the people that share your values.

I'd argue it's the person refusing to refer to someone how they'd prefer to be referred to as being unprofessional. It's odd you use foreign names as an analogy, when refusing to pronounce someone's name correctly would probably get you a call from HR.

> After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock

Blasphemy! Madness!

Heavy metal all the way, duh!

Perhaps you would like me to publicly declare my other protected characteristics in all my correspondence? My religion perhaps? Ethnicity, race, that I have a disability? It is not always with good intent, instead it is a demand to publicise a characteristic by which others will often judge you. If you want to announce that you are he/him she/her, they/them go ahead. But don't demand other people do it, because I have a right to privacy.

Oh, it's not hatred. It's calling out the employers' bullshit. People have an inherent need to have "wins". Getting something you could envision. Used to be simple things like money, property, vacations, you know. Then the corporate psychologists figured out that instead of giving you a raise out of the corporate budget, they can let people have non-monetary "wins". "Thank you" letters, "parking for employee of the month", "product owner" titles, etc.

Pronouns are just another step in this sequence, but it's more divisive, since it comes with a tiny little power over other employees - occupying a slightly larger slot in their attention by having them remember them. All while the wage/home price ratio keeps plummeting, and retirement at any reasonable age has gone completely off the radar.

These problems affect ALL of us, regardless of our race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. They are not divisive at all, but they are harmful to the corporate profits. So the HR and the media are doing their best to bump made-up divisive issues to the top of our priorities, so we won't notice how we are being screwed.

I actually don't mind using/learning pronouns. But I'm a male, I identify as male, and I present as male well enough that no one has misgendered me in 32 years. Something about listing my pronouns feels not only silly, but distinctly wrong in light of that.

Always with good intent?

While I understand the sentiment, I think to some degree putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.

In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.

But that’s a problem for like 1% of people who’re free to do so. Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”. Seems unnecessary to require this as a matter of policy.

> Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”.

I was confused once when a doctor gave me the direction "follow him" and there was no male around. A definitely female nurse had just walked out, and that's who I was supposed to follow.

Nothing strange was going on; this happened in China. Chinese doesn't have gender distinctions in pronouns (except in the spelling...), and Chinese speakers aren't able to make the distinction consistently in extemporaneous speech.

The default is 'he', though, so I guess you're still safe from being called 'she'.

I mean, not everyone interacts with people in person at work. I would go so far as to say that most these profile settings are used for textual communication, where it's not always obvious, but where some people still get upset over the wrong pronoun being used (possibly because for then it's such a contentious topic in their lives it's hard to disambiguate honest mistakes from passive agressive purposeful behavior).

Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.

Someone else commented about how this is basically coming back full circle to the formalities of Sir/Madam or Mr/Ms in writing, maybe there’s something to it.

> putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.

The type of people concerned with being addressed by the "correct" pronouns will list them without being asked, believe me. And for the other 99.9% of people, it's pretty obvious what to use.

Maybe for you, but I don't know what pronoun to use to refer to someone named Xie that I have never met, and it's not exactly unusual for it to come up in email discussions.

If people feel that it is important to them they will make sure you know it. Otherwise if unsure maybe ask?

I don't feel the need to put the pronouns as I don't care about it and find it toxic that it is being peer pressured uppon me.

I also support anyone who wants to put their pronouns in the signature or whatever. If it is something important to them then I'll respect their choice, even if they go with something silly like Xor/Xir.

I dont understand. You do the thing we have been doing a hundred years. "They"

I was addressing the parent comment that said it's pretty obvious what to use, which I interpreted as being able to identify whether someone should be referred to as he or she. I agree that 'they' is the solution when you don't know, but I don't think that's what the parent comment was trying to say.

Hum, do you actually agree with the idea that people care about how others perceive them? Are you saying that the only way we should get to communicate that is through crude things like the way we dress or our bone structure? I don't know, sometimes stating pronouns and the like can seem a bit much I'll admit, but I'm not sure what the good alternatives even all

I literally dont give a shit what you call me.

People who hem and haw about getting pronouns wrong blow my mind of how weird this has all become

They hem and haw because some people care a lot and make a big deal if you get it wrong and it can have social consequences depending on where you live/work, etc, and if you repeatedly ignore what other people want to be called it can be seen as an act of aggression.

In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they're afraid of being called out, or some combination thereof.

If you actually don't care, the easiest thing to do is just advertise that you don't care so people don't have to wonder. If you actually do care, but about how you shouldn't have to care and are trying to make a point about that, well that's something different, isn't it?

So if you are "she" and someone calls you "he" out of ignorance and you correct the person, and he says "Oh, I'm sorry for my mistake" can that not be the end of it? Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?

I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.

One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.

> Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?

For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.

I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.

> I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.

I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.

> So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.

They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.

> if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO

I agree (but honestly, if the preference is for something like "zhe" I will be rolling my eyes a bit).

> They/them went out of favor a while back

I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong, and now it's a mental speedbump whenever I see it in writing.

> I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong,

Yeah, that's the sad thing. At some point we decided that gender neutral pronouns were less favorable, and then taught generations of people not to use them, a couple hundred years before a big cultural mixup where it would have been very useful to have. I was lucky enough to always feel it was appropriate and that the recommendations to not use it were shortsighted. This came about when there was a shift towards people saying we should use "she" instead of "he" for generically referring to a person, but that just seemed silly to me, why would we shift from incorrectly addressing roughtly 50% of the population in writing to incorrectly addressing the other roughly 50% of people, when we could just use "they" and do away with that specific pronoun problem in an accurate and even handed way?

Singular “they” isn’t wrong if the subject is indefinite in either gender or number.

However, it’s absolutely wrong when used as a definite personal pronoun, as it introduces new, irresolvable ambiguity where none existed before; e.g.

I just heard Tom and Harry are getting a new puppy; I just ran into them while they were walking their dog.

If you do not allow for singular definitive “they”, the meaning is clear.

If you do allow for singular definitive “they”, whose dog is it, and who did you run into — Tom, Harry, or both Tom and Harry?

The problem with “personal pronouns” is that they aren’t personal in the first place — pronouns exist exist solely for the benefit of the speaker and the listener, not the subject.

They allow for two people in a conversation to refer back to an antecedent succinctly and unambiguously. That’s all. If they can’t do that anymore, they’re just extra noise.

What else about myself do i have to actively advertise so that people are not afraid of talking to me.

You seem really obsessed about this, much more so than most people who might be in favor of supplying pronouns. I think that most people do it as a common courtesy. I generally don't, but it doesn't bother me if people do, and it doesn't hurt me in the slightest if someone asks me to supply my pronouns. My pronouns are "he/him". Not difficult at all.

That is just one of three reasons I listed. I'm not sure why you'd focus on that exclusively, it seems a bit silly to me.

What's being asked of you is a common courtesy. Anyone that refuses this courtesy that takes so little when specifically asked for it is taking actions that speak for themselves.

You're being asked something as simple as "how do you prefer to be addressed" and you've scoured the area for all the loose dust and detritus you can find to make yourself a mountain to die on. Is it really worth it? Perhaps there are other aspects to recent culture shift that are slightly less defensible that are better targets?

Do you actually not give a shit or do people just tend to properly guess what you'd want to be called? Pronouns are part of how we communicate gender and many people do get bothered when others perceive them differently than how they perceive themselves

I dont give a shit. It is useless information.

>conversing with you

When conversing with you, your gendered pronouns aren't used. There is no gendered version of "you".

I'm transgender and this business of putting pronouns everywhere bothers me too. If I'm in a group that usually doesn't do pronouns but does when I'm in the room it's like they're pointing a finger at me saying "you're different and we're afraid of offending you, so we're going to act differently around you".

No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get them wrong I'll happily correct you.

If you're an ass to me I'll report you to HR, but putting my pronouns at the bottom of my email isn't going to make you any less of an ass.

Hopefully it all settles down a lot more in the future. Around societal and cultural change there's always friction, and there's always people that take more offense to new norms (or what people want to be new norms) not being followed, whether to pump up their self importance or because they're honestly exasperated. I like to treat each thing as it comes, and whether I think it makes sense or is sully, if someone asks something of me with regard to dealing with them that doesn't require much as is accepting of people making mistakes, then I don't see a problem with humoring them, as long as they also accept neutral terms, such as you/they/them (which are the English language accepted neutral terms). There's only so many genders and pronouns I can wrap my head around, but as long as people are accepting that others can just use a generic term, I think we're all at a place that's workable.

I don't hate the idea of explicitly stating pronouns, especially online, because I had to interact with people with particularly ambiguous names (happens often in very international environments).

Even here in America, if you get an email from "Taylor Something" and their intranet picture is a houseplant how do you respond?

If you get an email directly from “Taylor” and you want to reply you won’t have use their pronouns anyway.

It’s only if you’re referring to them to a third person that you’ll need them.

You should still be able to refer to them with without explicitly using any pronouns even then.

Good. This pronoun virtue signaling meme has gotta go. Or at least don’t censor us by limiting us to the ones Officially Approved by the Pronoun Establishment like Instagram and most other places do.

If they can have custom pronouns, why can’t we?

(The answer is because it would immediately undermine the “cause” by shedding light on just how silly but also how 1984-esque the concept is.)

If someone wants to tell me pronouns they want to be referred to, sure, I’ll try to remember as long as they’re not asking for something extreme, but honestly I’m not that good with even names so… best effort.

I would rather not give out pronouns and don’t really care how people refer to me though “they” in forums when my username is my real name does come off as a bit strange… though again, this is a trivial annoyance.

Yes, it's a trivial annoyance. That's the human, normal way of looking at this, not like it's some massive festering grievance as some people seem to feel.

Because it’s just another tip of the iceberg. In reality it’s a concerted effort amongst a certain group of people to add more and more trivial annoyances to normal peoples’ lives to satiate their own desire to control others who they feel don’t deserve to be able to live their lives in peace. Because misery loves company.

It all adds up. You can attempt to minimize it all you want but it’s like the person who nitpicks everything: “can I have 3 ice cubes? Oh when you make my sandwich can you go light on the salt? Hey I know this is your house but could you turn that music down a bit? Boy it’s cold in here… you should turn up the heat! Wow you take these vitamins? You should be taking these instead! Oh hey I know I’m obviously a girl but can you refer to me as they? I want you to have to think hard before you use my pronouns and make sure you remember each person’s custom pronouns. Wait, why are these little trivial comments bothering you? It’s not some massive festering grievance. Just deal with it it’s no big deal, it’s common decency to adhere to all of my requests. :)”

Pronoun-memers tend to claim they are more sensitive to feelings. Therefore they should be sensitive to most of the world’s feelings of general annoyance around the current pronoun meme.

I would think that virtue signaling is good. It sure sounds good.

"Virtue" means " Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness."

"Signaling" means "An indicator, such as a gesture or colored light, that serves as a means of communication."

So, basically if I'm morally excellent and I communicate that to you, that's a bad thing? Why is that? Is it because it makes you feel bad?

Same question about "woke". Like, "not asleep"? How is that bad?

I just feel like these terms are thoughtlessly bandied about. They're never really defined. They actually don't sound bad, but they're used in a pejorative context. It's just really strange.

Virtue signalling does not mean you have virtue. Just that you are attempting to signal to others that you do have virtue.

Which profile.. some internal org chart or a public platform like linkedin?

Internal