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Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

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Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#131

Post by p2detar »

pseudalopex wrote: post #129
p2detar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right. I use they/them. My question remains, though. True, it might be rare now, but it doesn't necessarily going to be rare in the future.

People accept they because it was an English pronoun already. They'll stop using he and she before they accept custom pronouns.

Well, my point was not about accepting or not accepting it. I have no issue with that.

My issues is that it would be hard for me personally to write an Email to several different people with different gender pronouns. I was asking if there are alternatives or maybe even similar situations in other cultures/languages that might hint to a more general solution.

It seems I was not clear enough, hence the downvotes above.

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#132

Post by justaman »

TameAntelope wrote: post #127
justaman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a problem today when people put their sexuality as a cornerstone of their personality. I think its an important aspect of who you are but far from most important. This over emphasis on self identification can create negative feelings about the self if one were to not conform to whats expected.

Aren't you worried that your judgement of other people's personalities and what they think is important to them could be needlessly harmful? Not to put too fine a point on it, but what gives you the right to tell other people what's important to them, given the vastly different set of life experiences everyone has? Maybe if someone was throwing their life away to addiction, but an otherwise functioning and happy pers…

Don't misunderstand. I have no problem using someone's preferred pronouns.

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#133

Post by burnthrow »

eplanit wrote: post #62

Companies are tripping over each other to satisfy the woke mob, and it's ridiculous. This is part of that, and my advice is to not participate -- don't give air to unwanted things, and don't legitimize them. Or, if anyone has a sense of humor (very hard to find amongst the woke) encourage a large number of people to choose whimsical pronouns -- makes the silliness of it apparent.

Thee/thou/thy

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#134

Post by ceejayoz »

raxxorrax wrote: post #124
ceejayoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tech isn't political" is itself a political stance. (And a hard to support one, IMO.)

There are sensible reasons why discussion of politics was looked down on in a professional setting. Didn't like that much because it can be interesting. But lately I see the benefit pretty clearly.

"No politics" is both a political stance, and what counts as politics is itself political. For example, some count "please call me 'they'" as political; others just common courtesy.

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#135

Post by dang »

ecmascript wrote: post #5

Wow that is amazing. > How widespread this is across industry? Not very widespread. > Do you think this is a good/bad initiative? Extremely bad initiative. It would seriously make me question whether or not I would want to stay at that employer. Of course I wouldn't set any pronouns and refuse it if they required it. I am eagerly waiting for the ultra left-leaning HN crowd to downvote me to oblivion!

Please stop using HN for ideological flamewar. It's tedious, endlessly repetitive, not in the least bit interesting, and does endless damage to this place. You've done it a lot in the past and we ban accounts that keep doing it, regardless of which ideology they are battling for.

Also, please don't break the site guidelines with downvote-baiting and cheap swipes like "the ultra left-leaning HN crowd", which is trivially false—people just make these generalizations up based on what they dislike, and there are plenty of people making up exactly the opposite generalization.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#136

Post by raxxorrax »

ceejayoz wrote: post #134
raxxorrax wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are sensible reasons why discussion of politics was looked down on in a professional setting. Didn't like that much because it can be interesting. But lately I see the benefit pretty clearly.

"No politics" is both a political stance, and what counts as politics is itself political. For example, some count "please call me 'they'" as political; others just common courtesy.

I always grant courtesy.

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#137

Post by SeanKilleen »

Personal stance: I've heard direct feedback from others that it makes them feel more welcome and normalizes an idea that is important to them, so I tend to include them in various places.

Previous employer: A group dedicated to inclusion & belonging recommended to HR, who clarified that including pronouns was certainly welcome but not required. Several people changed it.

Current employer: I just decided to include them in my signature as part of the "name" line. I did agree with another comment's hesitation because it's a sort of expression of a company's brand, but I know enough about my current employer and their stance on D&I that I'm not worried I'll upset anyone.

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#138

Post by [deleted] »

alpaca128 wrote: post #102
gruez wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are not required to do this by business, however there is now state legislature that requires that any job posting must include explicit naming of genders male/female/diverse. That is männlich/weiblich/divers in German (m/w/d abbreviated, you will find it on every job posting or you face serious fines). I don't get, why would job postings (as in, the ad for the job, not the candidate's application for the job) r…

The short answer: German is not English. The German language allows for both male and female forms of most job descriptions(like with actor and actress). It doesn't help that we have a male, female and neutral form of "the" which are seemingly randomly used for certain words, and often also differently when used in a plural form. This mixed with gender debates has lead to a lot of controversy and many more or less wi…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Does your employer want you to state pronouns in email signature?

#140

Post by pseudalopex »

p2detar wrote: post #131
pseudalopex wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People accept they because it was an English pronoun already. They'll stop using he and she before they accept custom pronouns.

Well, my point was not about accepting or not accepting it. I have no issue with that. My issues is that it would be hard for me personally to write an Email to several different people with different gender pronouns. I was asking if there are alternatives or maybe even similar situations in other cultures/languages that might hint to a more general solution. It seems I was not clear enough, hence the downvotes above…

The general solution in most if not all cultures is not allowing what you're worried about. Some languages don't have pronouns. Some just have gender neutral pronouns. Some have gendered and neutral pronouns.

Some cultures have 4 or 5 genders. But their systems wouldn't work in English speaking cultures where trans men and women identify as just men and women.

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