Bugger Off

I’m being approached for a training job – I’ve declined it twice in the past twenty four hours. I’m not going back to commuting or staying away for extended periods again, which is why I gave up rail training nearly two years ago.

However, the email came with a link at the bottom where one of the correspondents had put their pronouns…

I really shouldn’t. It isn’t good for my blood pressure, but…

Why I Put Pronouns on my Email Signature (and LinkedIn profile) and You Should Too

No, I shouldn’t and won’t.

As a cisgender person, it costs you nothing
For a cisgender person (a person whose gender is in alignment with the sex they were assigned at birth- more on that another time!) there is little to no risk in sharing your pronouns. When you’ve never questioned what pronouns people use for you, or even thought about the idea of pronouns after you learned about them in 2nd grade, sharing your pronouns on digital profiles is easy and costs you nothing.

Where to start with this risible claptrap? I am not a cis person. There is no such thing as a cis person. CIS is a term used in chemistry, not biology. I object to activists labelling me as if I fall into their ideology and go along with it. Some people feel that they are the wrong sex and I do know how that feels, but biology is biology and facts are facts. No one has ever been assigned anything at birth. In the two million years that mankind has walked the Earth, no one ever assigned a gender at birth – they will have noted the infant’s sex. That’s it.

As for it costing me nothing, well there’s my dignity and self respect to start with. The vast majority of trans people do not buy into this absurd ideological nonsense and simply want to be left alone. And it’s interesting that the most vociferous activism seems to come from people who are not trans themselves – a bit like all those white BLM activists.

How to add your pronouns on Linkedin
It can be tricky to add your pronouns on Linkedin because for now, Linkedin doesn’t support a specific field for pronouns. (We know this is a problem, and we talked with LinkedIn to encourage them to add a specific pronoun field.) In the meantime, You can add “They-Them, She-Her, or He-Him (or whatever other pronouns you use!) after your last name.

Not going to happen because I am not prepared to enable this lunacy.

Try adding your pronouns to your email signature! It’s another easy way to not only inform people you communicate with of your pronouns but normalizes this process for everyone.

See above.  I sign off with my name. It is fairly obvious what sex I am from that. I am not – absolutely not – going to go down this insane rabbit hole. This process absolutely should not be normalised because it is pure bullshit. If people feel that this lack of pronouns makes them unsafe, then perhaps they should stay at home wrapped up in cotton wool rather than out here in the real world. You don’t make people stronger by enabling their weaknesses.

Normalizing the usage of pronouns is a concrete, impactful way to show your advocacy for LGBTQIA+ individuals. It takes some practice to transform the unfamiliar into the familiar. At first, it might be awkward to share pronouns when you meet someone, but after a while, you probably won’t even hear it.

If I ever walk up to you and share my pronouns with you, please shoot me.

22 Comments

  1. “…and You Should Too”

    “You”? That’s a bit presumptive, isn’t it? And my conjunctive adverb is “also”, you bigot.

  2. I would have thought that the word ‘it’ would get the job done in the majority of cases. This kind of stuff seems to be the preserve of attention seekers who think that the universe revolves around them.

      • When I was an infant my parents referred to me as ‘His Majesty’, my younger brother was ‘His Royal Highness’

      • Kindly use my preferred pronouns in full which are:

        Supreme Imperial Galactic Overlord in charge of paperclip production, holder of the stationery cupboard key, Lord High Controller of the tea fund, walker of the dog (and stick and ball chucker for him), advisor to ‘er indoors, chief bottle washer and cook, taker out of the papers and the trash (or I get no spending cash) and all round good guy.

        Remember, IN FULL, EVERY time. Or else, something or another will happen.

        If they want to be ridiculous, then return the compliment in full with bells on.

  3. Sadly, in my company, this lunacy is growing. Previously personally normal and reasonable seeming colleagues have been adding pronouns to their email signatures… ?

  4. Whenever someone puts this pronoun related stuff in a recruitment email, that should be a pretty good signal not to bother with that particular vacancy. Such a job wouldn’t be worth the money no matter how much the recruiters are offering.

    Straight to spam hell with ’em.

  5. Why can’t we all just use a neutral pronoun that encompasses all the she/he/it/they sentiments?

    We could call everyone shit. Job done.

  6. Is there such a thing as an “antinoun”?
    Or even an “amnoun”?
    I like hmmm.
    If asked I shall answer “Hmmmm”.
    It is strange that Ms originated because wimmin did not want to be categorised as Miss, a spinster, or Mrs, some mans property.
    Now some want to be particularly categorised.
    A form of Dewey Decimal system.
    Maybe a QR symbol representation of one’s DNA.
    Am I even allowed to say “one’s”? A bit anti plural? Wot about the schizophrenics.
    I ramble.

    • The really bizarre part is that both “Miss” and “Mrs” are abbreviations of the same word: “mistress”. And, presumably “Ms” derives from the same root. (I would imagine, given the context, that this wasn’t a conscious choice, but what else can it derive from? If its originators had known anything about anything, they might have chosen a different word entirely; “madam”, perhaps.)

      So in that instance, the argument wasn’t about words, but spelling. Which is all rather odd. It reminds me of those among my compatriots who’ve become inexplicably opposed to the word “Scotch”.

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