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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37978 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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I've heard this a lot, sometimes phrased as something like "well, 'birthing person' or 'menstruator' are more precise and accurate terms than 'mother' or 'woman', because #notallwomen menstruate, and some people who menstruate don't self-identify as women".

On the one hand, yes, strictly speaking I suppose the term "menstruator" is more "precise" than "woman". On the other hand, don't bullshit me - you're not promoting the use of this term because it's more precise or accurate than the previous standard. There are plenty of factually accurate assertions which have been known to drive trans activists into violent rages and/or floods of tears. A trans woman can't complain that it's extremely dysphoria-inducing to be described as "male", or for it to be pointed out that trans women are just as likely to be violent as cis men - and then turn around and say "we're just trying to use more accurate and precise language!"

It's also not even clear that this sort of precision is worth chasing. Just consider how many more people there are who speak English as a second language than are trans (this has already potentially caused questions about the UK census)

Put aside that. It is just ugly brutalizing language.

In my last job, the head of marketing was trying to get us to put our preferred pronouns in our email signatures (something which is very much not common practice in this country). I was very opposed and told her so, pointing out that there were (to my knowledge) no trans or non-binary people on staff, but plenty of first-generation Polish, Romanian and Brazilian migrants, for the majority of whom the concept of "preferred pronouns" is alien, and who would most likely feel confused and excluded by such a policy. I argued that it seemed like very skewed priorities indeed, to roll out a policy with the goal of making hypothetical future employees feel more included - at the cost of making current staff members feel more excluded.

You know, the traditional answer to this is probably putting the appropriate honorific with your name in the signature. It (in most cases) answers what pronouns you prefer, and although English is my native tongue, in the foreign languages I've studied, honorifics generally show up pretty quickly, for uses like how to refer your teacher.

Sincerely,

Mr. Vexillologist

So we're right back to Chesterton's fence/jugaad, as usual.

If the only options on the table were he/him and she/her (Incidentally, why isn't possesive specified? A sufficiently gender dysphoric person could feel she/them/his is the only accurate way to refer to them. His feelings would be hard argue against, in a society in which primacy is placed upon self-ID. She would have an easy way to articulate his desires.), but it would just be a longer way of saying man or woman.

Once he/them, she/them, they/them, he/her, they/her, she/him, they/him enter the mix, depending on how much declension the native language of the foreigner has, the ESL-er get comfused and make more mistakes.

Never mind the ESL-er, I can’t make hide nor hair of mixed pronouns, and I’ve spoken English all my life. What does “she/them” even actually do for anyone, other than get her them outsized attention? Neopronouns I at least sort of understand, even if I find them ridiculous and annoying. But mixing and matching? That’s just obnoxious.

At least one explanation I've seen that it tries to convey that it's ok to use both she/her and they/them. Presumably there's a bunch of potential ways it's used.

My brother's girlfriend was using she/them for awhile, and I asked exactly this question. Her response was something to the effect that she was trying to convey that, while she was certainly a woman, she wasn't like a woman-woman. (Perform your own diagnosis of notlikeothergirls.jpeg/pickme/internalised misogyny here.) More specifically, she hoped that if she was in a foreign country with more rigid gender roles, that introducing herself with mixed pronouns would help to convey the idea that she doesn't fully adhere to certain expectations of how women are supposed to behave.

I pointed out that the people in said countries aren't going to give a shit about how she "identifies", and will simply clock her as female and treat her accordingly. Progressive Anglophone nations are literally the only parts of the world in which "I identify as X" is even understood by a meaningful proportion of the population, never mind respected. She seemed to sort of recognise that I had a point, if begrudgingly.

This conversation was probably two years ago. My brother said she isn't really insistent on the mixed pronouns and never demands that people refer to her as such in conversation. It literally only comes up when prompted for her pronouns on a social media or professional network.

notlikeothergirls.jpeg/pickme

Still don't understand these two memes. I see them everywhere and I still just don't get it.

Even worse, pronouns are for when you talk about someone, not to them, so they really make no sense. They're for identification of a third party between you and someone else, the third party's feelings about what you call them are largely irrelevant because they're generally not even present when pronouns are used.

This seems completely backwards to me. Preferred pronouns are if anything more useful when interacting between cultures because I often don't know what the implied gender of foreign names is. Sure it's also useful if gender-non-conforming people prefer "they" or not, but that's certainly not what I'm learning from the gender labels in my work directory info.

If I'm a native English speaker who is familiar with the "preferred pronouns" convention and what it entails, if I receive an email from someone from a foreign culture and I'm uncertain of whether they're a man or a woman, their choice to include their preferred pronouns in their email signature will absolutely be helpful. Even if I'm a native English speaker who was never formally trained about preferred pronouns and what they entail, I'll probably be able to infer from context.

By contrast, if I'm a Romanian or Pole who only very recently migrated to an Anglophone country, who has a very weak grasp of the English language, is wholly unfamiliar with woke shibboleths, and who has just received an email from someone whose gender he is uncertain of - I struggle to imagine that that person including their preferred pronouns in their email signature would be terribly enlightening. In that person's position, I would likely assume that "Preferred pronouns: they/them" is just a component of that person's job title, or one of their professional qualifications, or a means by which to contact them (you know, the only stuff that we thought was appropriate to include in a professional email signature before ~10 years ago, and which is still the case outside of the Anglosphere).

Your argument, about the implied gender of foreign names, builds the case for traditional pronouns, not preferred pronouns.

I think it depends on if you're operating in a mostly text or a mostly in person environment.

In person, "traditional pronouns" are probably best. Over text and when people from many cultures are interacting, preferred pronouns probably work best.

What exactly is the difference between stating your "traditional" and "preferred" pronouns in your email signature? A traditional pronoun set matches your original name just as well as your preferred pronoun set matches your original or newly chosen name.

Is it just the slash mark between nominative and accusative?

Traditional pronouns align with biological sex. Preferred pronouns may not, leading to a surprise when "she" turns out to be a man in a dress.

You said token_progressive's argument about gendered names was building the case for traditional pronouns, when it does not. A gendered name does not have to correspond to biological sex. It does, however, most often correspond to gender presentation, so if you see a dress, you won't be confused on whether Masha is a male or female name. Not so if you only encounter the person online. That's the context where pronouns in bio are useful.

This seems completely backwards to me. Preferred pronouns are if anything more useful when interacting between cultures because I often don't know what the implied gender of foreign names is.

This would only be useful for someone for whom getting a 3rd party's gender correct when referring to them with pronouns is a meaningful priority. For many non-native English or other similar language speakers, that's just not all that important, in part because their own native language lacks gender for those pronouns. E.g. my Korean-born parents, to this day, 30+ years after immigrating to the USA, freely use female pronouns to refer to straightforward run-of-the-mill cis males and vice versa, only caring to correct themselves if it's pointed out, and considering it mainly as a trivial verbal typo that they can't be arsed to discriminate between the gendered pronouns.

So if you already have a team that's full of people who have bought into the notion that getting someone's pronouns correct ("correct" can refer either to their self-ID or to what the speaker perceives as their gender or any other criterion by which we can determine that the pronoun's gender is consistent with the person's gender) is a priority worth pursuing, then having a standard of everyone sharing their pronouns first certainly could be more useful to first-generation foreign employees; however, it seems that first-generation foreign employees often tend not to prioritize such things as much as native-born employees.

So you use 'they' until the person you're interacting with reveals themselves. Teams texts, a Skype call, or a company headshot usually takes care of this.

I work with a lot of fellow, foreign employees, and I swear that there has never been any enduring confusion over somebody's gender or sex. Yes, an odd-to-my-ears name occasionally stumps me, and this is often rectified within 24-48 hours just by inference, without anybody prompting for pronouns or confirming genitals. Furthermore, most of the people I'm interacting with do not have not have these models for novel gender theory born from the West. They work for a US company, so on some level they 'get' why it's being asked (because despite DEI and inclusions practices, everybody is bowing down to American corporate culture), but I have a hard time imagining them getting utility from this on a more fundamental level.

On paper, I get the argument you're making. In my reality, 99% of the company folk I see with pronouns in their signatures or profiles visibly match their birth sex. There is no confusion or ambiguity regarding who or what they are. And this generalizes across all the Americans, Indians, Koreans, Serbians, and more that I see listed in my recent Teams history.

The one time I have ever experienced a 'pronoun snag' was with a goateed male with a generic dude name like 'Doug', and even he preferred the ambiguous 'they'. I believe that this entire concotion of modern gender theory fused with HR nannying is for his benefit, not poor people across the pond struggling with language barriers.

The only context I can imagine not knowing the sex of one of your colleagues being a problem is if you've been emailing someone back and forth and you agree to meet in person: "I'll meet you just outside the conference room at 3pm", and you don't know who to look for. But this can easily be rectified by:

  • A blanket policy of including the person's staff photo in their email signature, which many companies already have
  • A staff directory which includes staff photos, which many companies already have
  • The person telling you who to look for: "I'll meet you just outside the conference room at 3pm, I'll be wearing a red scarf." (which they would probably do anyway even if their name was unambiguously gendered and their staff photo was in their email signature)

It’s sad that “Progressive Policies R the Real Exclusionary Ones” is the only card to play in such situations, unless one wants to risk getting /r/byebyejob’d.

And your standing would had been so much weaker without the presence of your Brazilian migrant colleagues for the usual ipdol reasons.

When we spoke, it wasn't the only argument I made, but I did suspect that the "fifty Stalins" one would have the greatest impact.

Push this hard enough and sometimes you can get to the true justification (before your ignominious exit): it's the trans/NB people they care about, not anyone else.

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