> it is so intolerant of this behavior that the institution will not even hire such a person, let alone attempt to make them feel welcomed or accepted.
I'm probably speaking out of turn here because I went back and checked, and some faculty don't have this in their signature. So it's optional after all. Even still, leadership has asked us to put our pronouns in our signatures, so my perception was that it wasn't optional.
> Consider how asymmetric these affordances are.
I would soften both sides of your argument. On the one hand, it is considered a priority that to accommodate all students. Normalizing pronoun usage isn't a huge ask for anyone, dissenters are apparently accommodated, and trans customers (I'll refer to them as customers here to highlight that these accommodations are in fact made in the context of a transaction where large sums of money are exchanged) feel more visible and welcomed.
On the other hand, while the employer can apparently tolerate an employee who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name, it aspires not to hire people who outwardly express their political opinions about our paying customers during working hours, or in a way that would negatively impact revenues. This is the prerogative of all businesses. I'm using the employer/employee dichotomy to highlight the fact that this is in fact a job, where the expectation is that the employee will leave their politics aside.
So yes, the affordances are asymmetric, because the relationship between these groups and the institution is not the same. One is a paying customer, the other is an employee. Customer concerns are treated as a priority because education is a person-centric business. It's all about personal service to the customer. If a school gets known for a bad customer experience, that impacts enrollment which drives down revenues.
Conversely employee concerns are brought to HR and handled through internal channels. Otherwise employees abide by the institution's rules and procedures and are compensated with a salary and benefits.
I'm sorry if that offends your political sensibilities or strong and closely held beliefs, but they should be kept closely held in the context of your employment. The personhood of our customers is not debatable, because at the end of the day they are paying a large sum of money to attend our institution, and there's a lot of heavy competition out there. If that's picking winners and losers so be it. They're voting with their wallets so that's why they're winning.