Employees at multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News.
You’re right that its odd to assume that people specifying pronouns are cisgender. I guess there are two reasons for that assumption.
Firstly, 100% of the people specifying pronouns very obviously identify as the prescribed gender. For example, Robert looks and sounds like a guy and specifies he/him. Ain’t no one gonna misgender him. Ok it’s an assumption to say that he’s cisgender but one with an extraordinarily high probability of being correct.
The second reason is just my own attitude I guess. It’s impossible for me to know what I would do if I were trans or had gender dysphoria, but I suspect that while I would be proud of being uniquely me, and happy to share that with close colleagues, I wouldn’t broadcast it because it’s just not relevant. I honestly genuinely believe that if I suffered gender dysphoria, I would just kinda swallow that rather than inserting it into the complex and delicate matters that I email people about. If someone at the revenue service misgenders me while deciding whether to waive $100k in penalties and interest for a client, I just wouldn’t care because that person doesn’t know me and what they think of me says more about them and their relationship to me than it says about me.
In this context, I assume people with gender dysphoria don’t publish it, and that most people who do include pronouns in email footers have vanilla pronouns and include them to normalise the practice.
It’s also not really a bug bear per se. I’m a grumpy jaded old man and I’m fairly critical of most things. Yesterday I got a bit ranty about names of things on google maps. Because I spend so much time reading and writing emails, I’m naturally critical of all authors, and footers in particular. Maybe I’m weird but I could talk about disclaimers included in email footers for hours.
I can at least provide you 1 data point that I, as a trans person who experiences gender dysphoria, include my pronouns in my footer and many other places to avoid being misgendered. And I can tell you from my lived experience that its not something you just “swallow”.
You might be able to bottle it up in an incredibly unhealthy way like a lot of men do with their emotions in general, and end up with life long issues. But if I experience particularly bad dysphoria, which can come about from being misgendered, giving my focus to the same incredibly important emails you’re talking about would be impossible. Thus, it is of business importance that my pronouns are visible, so that nobody misgenders me and risks impairing my ability to do the thing I need to do.
Again, I know its really hard to relate to when you don’t experience it. But its a real experience, and the cisgender people who are putting their pronouns there are doing so in solidarity with trans folk. It makes trans folk less “other”. If everyone puts their pronouns there, or at least if a lot of people who aren’t trans do it, then you can’t identify a trans person by whether or not they share pronouns.
Anyway, I think we’ve both said what can be said without rehashing old points. It is my sincere hope that you can better understand and empathise with the trans experience here, if nothing else :) have a nice day.
You’re right that its odd to assume that people specifying pronouns are cisgender. I guess there are two reasons for that assumption.
Firstly, 100% of the people specifying pronouns very obviously identify as the prescribed gender. For example, Robert looks and sounds like a guy and specifies he/him. Ain’t no one gonna misgender him. Ok it’s an assumption to say that he’s cisgender but one with an extraordinarily high probability of being correct.
The second reason is just my own attitude I guess. It’s impossible for me to know what I would do if I were trans or had gender dysphoria, but I suspect that while I would be proud of being uniquely me, and happy to share that with close colleagues, I wouldn’t broadcast it because it’s just not relevant. I honestly genuinely believe that if I suffered gender dysphoria, I would just kinda swallow that rather than inserting it into the complex and delicate matters that I email people about. If someone at the revenue service misgenders me while deciding whether to waive $100k in penalties and interest for a client, I just wouldn’t care because that person doesn’t know me and what they think of me says more about them and their relationship to me than it says about me.
In this context, I assume people with gender dysphoria don’t publish it, and that most people who do include pronouns in email footers have vanilla pronouns and include them to normalise the practice.
It’s also not really a bug bear per se. I’m a grumpy jaded old man and I’m fairly critical of most things. Yesterday I got a bit ranty about names of things on google maps. Because I spend so much time reading and writing emails, I’m naturally critical of all authors, and footers in particular. Maybe I’m weird but I could talk about disclaimers included in email footers for hours.
I can at least provide you 1 data point that I, as a trans person who experiences gender dysphoria, include my pronouns in my footer and many other places to avoid being misgendered. And I can tell you from my lived experience that its not something you just “swallow”.
You might be able to bottle it up in an incredibly unhealthy way like a lot of men do with their emotions in general, and end up with life long issues. But if I experience particularly bad dysphoria, which can come about from being misgendered, giving my focus to the same incredibly important emails you’re talking about would be impossible. Thus, it is of business importance that my pronouns are visible, so that nobody misgenders me and risks impairing my ability to do the thing I need to do.
Again, I know its really hard to relate to when you don’t experience it. But its a real experience, and the cisgender people who are putting their pronouns there are doing so in solidarity with trans folk. It makes trans folk less “other”. If everyone puts their pronouns there, or at least if a lot of people who aren’t trans do it, then you can’t identify a trans person by whether or not they share pronouns.
Anyway, I think we’ve both said what can be said without rehashing old points. It is my sincere hope that you can better understand and empathise with the trans experience here, if nothing else :) have a nice day.