A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes.
Two University of South Dakota faculty members, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw and her husband, John Little, have long included their gender pronouns and tribal affiliations in their work email signature blocks. But both received written warnings from the university in March that doing so violated a policy adopted in December by the South Dakota Board of Regents.
“I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’ If my tribal affiliation and pronouns were not removed after the 5 days, then administrators would meet and make a decision whether I would be suspended (with or without pay) and/or immediately terminated.”
The policy is billed by the board as a simple branding and communications policy. It came only months after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem sent a letter to the regents that railed against “liberal ideologies” on college campuses and called for the board to ban drag shows on campus and “remove all references to preferred pronouns in school materials,” among other things.
I think the “everyone anyone your pronouns” thing in email, slack, whatever is dumb. But if I lived in SD, I’d start doing it right about now.
I originally thought it was a bit silly, but then I realized that there are a lot of cisgendered people who just have names that people can’t tell whether they are male or female, either because it’s gender-neutral or it’s unusual, so it kind of makes sense for a lot of people who aren’t queer as well and are just tired of people misgendering them via email.
It is important for cis people to do so for one important reason on top of what you said, if only trans people need to put their pronouns in their profiles is just another way to identify them.
If everyone does it, nobody feels awkward about doing it.
And this is probably exactly why they are trying to ban it.
I have a consistently male name, which is fine as I’m a man, but I still put Mr. in front of my name in my email signature. It just cuts down on ambiguity, confusion, and even looks more formal.
I’ll never understand people’s obsession with disallowing gendered or nongenered pronouns. The whole controversy is asinine
This seems to satisfy the problem. If you don’t want people confusing what pronouns to use… sign things Mr, Ms or Mrs.
When you have other custom pronouns or don’t want one used… don’t mention one… and that should imply to a sender to simply use they/them.
No matter what you choose to do people are going to reply however they want to anyway.
I’m one of these, my name is definitely male but when you read it it’s really easy to confuse with the female version. It doesn’t help that it’s really rare in my generation while the female version is much more popular. All this resulted in me getting misgendered on a regular basis. A few examples:
Anyway, I thought pronouns were a bit of a weird thing for trans and non-binary people, but as a very cis man who’s had issues with people reading my name wrong, I put my pronouns in my signature now.
What made me think of it was a guy I want to college with named Olu. It’s apparently a traditional name in the part of Africa where his parents were from (it’s been way too long ago to remember where), but he was an American, not African, so basically no one in America would be able to tell if he was male or female just by reading his name.
It’s also solidarity with non-cis folks to normalize identifying preferred pronouns so that they can be addressed as they would like.
Understood, but I was trying to frame it in a way that even people who are not allies might understand.
Totally. If someone just thinks it’s “dumb,” they might not be realizing it isn’t necessarily about them.
My father is named Courtney. He was a teacher and really could have used pronouns as he was misgendered in nearly every written communication. He’s also as straight cis and boring as people can get.
Doesn’t that just work?
When correspondence arrives to him it is usually to Mrs Courtney Cybermonk.
But seriously who signs their their name “Mr Anything”? How is that ANY DIFFERENT than using gendered pronouns?
Spoiler, it’s literally the same thing.
Mr/Mrs
He/She
It’s not gendered pronouns that you people don’t like it’s any kind of change at all.
Don’t lump me in with those assholes. I support LGBTQI, I just don’t agree with the pronoun block. Why change English to accommodate something that already exists?
I think making the pronoun block front and center of communications and daily life has triggered the conservatives and caused a backlash that will cause way more harm than the pronoun block would ever have done good. If you want a social change to stick you need to align it to things that everybody believes in. A call to use more formal language in communications is traditional and something that the majority could get behind, pronouns are just a progressive idea that will be used for slurs, hate and vitrol.
When you do something for a group that is already facing a ton of hate and then you try and change the habits of the nazis, they’re going to do everything in their power to resist your demands. The current wave of extremist politics is a reaction from the past few decades of extreme swing towards PC culture. Change is gradual. The current conservative bullshit will pass because people really aren’t like that. There are a lot of people that grew up before the culture shift seen in the 90s, 00s, and 10s. When younger generations start saying “you need to do this” the older ones get upset. They don’t understand or don’t agree, or generally don’t want to change. Forcing this down people’s throats and making everything more every day in the open is going to prime people for more extreme hate thoughts, even if they by default would be neutral or even leaning progressive.
The republican party and conservatives have latched on to this shared unease of change and have used it to target LGBTQI in majority conservative states. States that before never were regressive are turning so… because politics and news are talking about it constantly and making the impression that somehow they (older people) are being targeted, even when they are not. It’s another public policy push that distracts us from real issues like healthcare, social security, tax reforms and loop holes that the rich and wealthy abuse, and other major policies that are harming us every single day to prop up some wealthy interest group who benefits from the status quo.
I know this is a long post, but to sum it up: “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
I use gender they/them in that case! If I know the person’s gender I will use it, but if it’s ambiguous I’ll stick to they/them.
Plenty of people aren’t that courteous, which is part of the issue.
cisgender
I don’t fuss about it, and I totally get that it can be helpful in ambiguous situations. I see it used a lot in virtue signaling, and that annoys me a lot.
I can see the solidarity angle, but I guess I’m old school and feel like the best acceptance of others is just to live and let live.
What does this even mean? Are you the arbiter of when someone is being genuine and when they’re “virtue signalling”? You get to be the one to determine if it’s performative or some shit? Get the fuck out of here…
Do you consider cis-gendered people (oh no I said it, will I be ruled as a virtue signaller?) stating their pronouns in solidarity as “virtue signalling”?
And follow-up: would you say the same about the white allies that sat hand in hand with black people at sit-in being spat on, physically assaulted, sprayed with fire hoses and had dogs sicced on them?
Or would you also tell them that they should have “just live and let live”?
Our trans citizens are fucking dying and motherfuckers call you virtue signalling for doing anything but keeping your mouth shut.
I’d bet my next paycheck you’re a NIMBY too. “Just keep this unpleasantness somewhere I can’t see it.” People like you actively make the world a worse place.
I mean it, just like it is defined.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
I have been shamed for not providing my pronouns in Slack. I think it’s not important for me to do because it’s easy to tell my pronouns by our language. If it was ambiguous in any way, I would feel comfortable providing them.
I do not shame or care if others use them regardless of their reason (support, clarity, etc) up until that reason is to passively or actively shame others.