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

I am LGBT and not in favor of it being pressured or de-facto compulsory. I would hope it was popular enough that people understood what it meant so that trans people can have more acceptance and understanding. I don't have it in my email signature, but if my company released a policy saying it was acceptable, I might add it. I would probably not add it without management permission since it is their choice how they want to present their brand to their clients. I think strongly pushing it on straight people is more likely to create a backlash and create a counter-movement.

Diversity questions aside, some given names are ambiguous. Some names are not, but may have different (assumed) genders depending on the language. In those cases it may be helpful to add a "Mrs"/"Mr" or similar, just to save people the embarrassment of addressing a woman as a man or vice versa. And isn't a "Mr"/"Mrs" a sort of pronoun spec as well? You're saying "use the usual pronouns for females/males".

I work for a large Valley software company, and they don't require pronouns or even recommend them, but I do see a few people put them in their signature, mostly in HR/recruiting.

I have two reasons why I don't like the idea of this becoming widespread, at least for now:

- I get that many people are sincere in believing this will help those with non-traditional identities, but I think there are also people who see this as an opportunity to get everyone to enact a drama which reinforces a political view of society as having widespread oppression, victimhood and injustice, and I don't agree with that view.

- Medical opinion seems genuinely divided on whether much of the huge increase in the last few years in trans / non-binary identities among teenagers is real or part of the confusion that everyone goes through as hormones kick in and we form our identities. We may simply be moving too fast on this. We need time to let society figure out if this is something substantial, beneficial and sustained, or something that'll decline and mostly disappear in a decade or two.

I work at a very left-leaning SV unicorn. Most people don’t advertise their pronouns, but quite a few do. I’m mildly peeved by this. To me the practice feels like taking off one’s lower body half garment to expose the genitalia. “See? This is my gender.” What difference does this make in a professional context? Our culture has put so much emphasis on treating all genders (or no gender) exactly the same: that was the right thing to do. Then why should we be wallowing in who has what and how they use it? It’s an irrelevant distraction. Do the job, go home, and be whatever you want.

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).

Most people call it männlich/weiß/deutsch already, which translates to male/white/German.

I don't think it is a good initiative. Acceptance cannot be enforced and this is something that gets on peoples nerves. The gender activists constantly try to create new spellings and words and I have never seen it adopted naturally aside from places where it is enforced.

Maybe it will come with time, but people only started to not give gender a second thought.

I also think this kind of legislation is created by people that are behind the general population on topics like gender, where everyone has their own opinions, which is completely fine.

My current view is that I do not give pronouns as I assume an interlocutor will use a good-faith assumption, and I react appropriately if they are wrong. It helps that I have a traditionally-male forename. I do not conflate others' pronouns with their sexual orientations or preferences as they are rarely any of my business.

If I'm asked I am not uncomfortable to state my pronouns and I consider such a question to be perfectly cromulent.

If someone proffers pronouns I take great care in using them correctly, as I do the spelling of their name and how they express any title they may have. What's in a name? Respect is part of the answer.

My small employer has made no mention of the subject, and since my coworkers are ideologically diverse it would cause conflict if they did.

I think it's worth stating pronouns if a significant fraction of the people you work with have nontraditional ones. If it's just a tiny fraction, or none, it isn't worth the trouble. Like, if you're the only kosher person in a workplace it shouldn't make it necessary to partition food according to kosher law in the office kitchen, but it may be if the majority are keeping kosher.

A "significant fraction" is of course in the eye of the beholder. But maybe we can agree that it's somewhere between 1% and 50%.

I am from Georgia, (the country not state). My coworkers are generally LGBT neutral or friendly, never heard anything bad from anyone. I personally attend most pro-LGBT rallies. In our language, the Georgian language, there is just one pronoun for all genders, so we don't care. I personally consider enforcing others' choice of specific words in their speech a generally questionable practice.

Some have put theirs in. I would if they asked or made mandatory. It's not something I personally care for or otherwise want to spend time and energy being bothered by it. I will however, if it means showing a small sign of support for those that do. As is, my signature is just my name. I don't understand the rebellious approach for something so trivial imo.

No and I wouldn't if they asked.

I don't think gender has any bearing on how one performs their job and to promote such a thing could do more harm than good.

When I see someone with their pronouns on twitter I usually don't engage with them. People who do this more often than not tend to make everything about gender politics where it would otherwise be irrelevant.

My company encourages everyone to create an "operating manual" that includes things like preferred pronouns. Not required at all, but helpful to avoid missteps.

Since the pronoun movement I've found myself avoiding pronouns altogether. For example instead of "team, welcome Jane. She is our new lead designer. She previously worked at acme corp" I would say "team, welcome our new lead designer Jane who previously worked at acme corp"

I am like your colleagues.

As humans we have been hardwired to recognize biological males from biological females for million of years. So when I speak to someone wether in person or online, I will use the pronouns associated with their biological gender, or masculine if I really don't know. That is the way I have always done so that I can focus as much as possible on what I have to say rather than how I say it. Content > From.

I really do not care about the sexual orientation, food preference or political opinion of the people I interact with in a professional environment, and I don't expect people to really care about mine.

I am a white cis male. Normalising the statement of preferred pronouns is very important for people who's gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. I state my pronouns on both my social media and work emails.

Your statement of being "LGBT / neutral" seems strange to me, being neutral on whether other human beings should have the same rights I enjoy does not seem to be something I can be neutral on. I accept that myself and others with privilege must help create a more equal society for everyone, even in the relatively small changes such as stating our pronouns.

When I was a kid, there was a period when my voice was changing that was very awkward. I would answer the phone, and people would hear my weird teenage voice and assume that I was my mom. After a while I got really self-conscious about it and started deliberately deepening my voice until it fully changed.

If somebody's appearance or voice doesn't match their pronouns, I think they're justified in wanting to put that information up front. If somebody's gender identity is not obvious, wouldn't you rather they just told you up front instead of making you guess and then correcting you?

By the same token, if only people with not obvious pronouns practice this, it singles them out. It doesn't hurt anybody. I don't think it should be mandatory, but I do think it should be celebrated and encouraged.

Fairly uncommon in conservative US business. I'm torn on the matter between viewing it as corporate virtue signaling--which it absolutely is--while also considering the benefit of leveling the field for people who wish to avoid being misaddressed or awkwardly correcting others.

We barely use email here so no one thinks about signatures but many people have their pronouns in their Slack profiles.

Seems pretty helpful to me. We're a very multicultural work place so working out preferred pronouns just from peoples names can be tricky.

At a startup in TX we have been encouraged at various times to place them in email signatures and other communications. I’ve never felt particularly pressured to, it’s presented as a suggestion for being actively inclusive. It sends a signal, which perhaps is the point(that could be perceived positively as being welcoming or negatively as empty virtue signaling), but I wonder if it’s actually all that helpful. I can’t recall a situation where it wasn’t obvious what someone’s preference would be and were there a question in the moment I’d probably temporarily fall back to gender neutral they/their rather than interrupt the flow of conversation to look up their preference in an email signature. I’m not among those this is intended to help though and only have a few people in my extended friend group that are, so I’m open to hearing if this is actually important/helpful to those people.

I work with two small non-tech consultancies. For one, some of us are doing this (informally) with support from management. In emails signature, zoom calls, mural/miro screennames etc.

For another, we do this internally but not externally. We work with a tremendously, broad spectrum of people to generate social good. Some of these stakeholders would not receive this well, but at the same time actively invest time and money on key common areas (be it women's health to child mental health).

So in this organization, I think we would have to think throughly about the potential to alienate some stakeholders that sets us back on other social good activities.

I will never do this and I think it's incredibly unacceptable that companies are getting so personal and clawing into their employees in this way. My company encourages this and I will never do it.

Some application forms give a “Decline to state” option, and as far as I know that does not imply any latent bigotry. Now that I think of it, that’s going to be my literal answer if it ever becomes compulsory, as a Decline-To-Stater. Much of the Clojure community on Twitter does pronouns and I proceed with caution.

People can use the limited space to make whatever impression they like, is my thought... I maintain a one page resume after 20 years and know the value of space, and that’s strictly how I’d approach it.

Seems fine to me. As this has been encouraged but not mandated by your organisation it seems pretty benign. From what I understand about this sort of initiative it's about creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their preferred pronouns and helping, (e.g.) non cisgender people to feel like an outlier for doing so.

One datapoint: this recently changed, but I worked for years in a very multinational context, where people/names from my home country/language (America/English) were in the minority of people I emailed, called, interacted with, talked about, etc., and no one cultural/language group was very dominant in my work.

I found the trend to state pronouns (for those who opted-in) super helpful. It made explicit for me (and other colleagues) knowledge that is typically implicit. Of course, this is a different use-case for stating pronouns, but one that made them sticker (I think) in my work context than they otherwise would have been.

So, thumbs up for stating pronouns. If you don't state them, people who can will infer pronouns (and may be wrong), and people who can't (because of a lack of context) will feel awkward, have to ask someone else (time/energy), or get it wrong, which is shitty all around.

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.

I wouldn't add pronouns by myself because it's not needed in my case. Haven't heard of an employer here who even mentions anything like this, but I wouldn't mind doing it when requested. For some people(even "binary" ones) this would be helpful because of names usually associated with the opposite sex. Especially in emails, where the name is often the only identifying information.

> they genuinely did not know that stating pronouns was a thing

That is...impressive. I don't think I've used an online community in recent years where this wasn't brought up as topic here and there.

What does this mean in practice? Add what?

Disclaimer: Not from US, not English speaking natively...

I'm cis male. I recently decided to add pronouns to my slack and twitter bio.

I would prefer a world where pronouns are not gendered. I can't change that, but I can take the simple step of adding my pronouns. It costs me nothing, but may provide some comfort to others maligned by society.

I think your employer recommending it is fine. Wider adoption makes it more comfortable for trans/non-binary individuals to state their preferences. I'd object to an employer mandating it. My employer has a field in slack, but there is no pressure to fill it out.

Only if we have specific pronouns we want others to use. The biggest value it provides is saving that uncomfortable conversation where you correct/are corrected when first meeting someone.

No. I'm on th East coast in a solidly liberal area, and the only time I've ever seen pronouns listed outside of twitter was the staff name tags at a college graduation.

Im an employee at a company (400 employees US) has an article in internal homepage suggesting all employees do, executives do it, most employees dont though

I’ve seen this forced at larger companies and Universities. I’m neutral on the topic of stating pronouns — could somebody with more knowledge explain the difference between including pronouns and age/sex/race/religion/ethnicity?

From my understanding, usage of pronouns is about not making any assumptions and being inclusive. So I’m just not sure what or where the line is.

It's viewed by some as a political matter, but in reality, the intent is to ensure that everyone feels comfortable sharing their pronouns without making people feel awkward. So by mentioning my own (he/him), I'm enabling a non-cis person to share theirs without them feeling odd about it, which boosts inclusivity.

That's the intent. I haven't done it yet (I probably should), but while I don't see neutrality towards stating pronouns in the following manner, I do see resistance from people around stating pronouns as being potentially motivated by bias. Inclusiveness boosts work output from everyone, and assuming peoples' pronouns is a rapid way to alienate a measurable population of workers to a degree that could impact their success.

Of the three east coast firms I've worked in the last six years, I've seen it recommended at two. I've seen it dissuaded at zero.

Edit: made the change on HN. I did it on Twitter some time ago apparently. It's also interesting watching the points swing on this. I suspect it's equivalent to corona masking in a way: common usage of pronouns reduces exposure to hatred by non-cis folk much the way usage of masks reduces exposure to covid-19 and complications by vulnerable folk.

I don't think it's widespread. I think it's a good initiative because it includes everyone.

It's not compulsory, but it's encouraged and the tools have been updated to make it easy to opt-in.

It's a good thing for Allies to do, as it normalizes the use of preferred pronouns in society and supports those who may need it more than others.

at this point i find it helpful. i’ve started to see people as having two ways to refer to them, their name and their gender. i generally ask people, but that can force someone to “out” themselves.

i use they/them and have had the conversation with a lot of the more conservative people i love about use of gender and they mostly rebuke it with some semblance of the the “give a mouse a cookie” reasoning basically stating they don’t want to be bothered with learning about it.

i think including the information is a good idea, it makes it harder for someone to act like they don’t know your pronouns. it really is an identity issue and participation in it is harmless.

It’s not required but our internal profile system supports listing your pronouns and people are encouraged to list them. I think most people have set their pronouns too. This is at a well known financial services firm.

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.

I work in tech, not politics

An extravagant display of corporate house slave privilege. Most people, even those among the "golden billion," have much bigger problems than gender pronouns.

Think about waitresses or cashiers. Most could care less if you call them Pete or Sue, as long as they can get enough hours for the week, and the direct deposit is on-time.

We do that. Takes five seconds, helps everyone feel more included, so it's an easy win.

Never encountered this on the East coast, but if I did I'd have some fun with it.

If they didn't give a list of choices I'd say my pronouns were Who and Whom.

If they did provide a list of approved pronouns I'd complain that my preferred pronouns aren't on the list or pick whichever ones which would make people uncomfortable.