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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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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)

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