A new South Dakota Board of Regents policy keeps employees from including their gender pronouns in school email signatures and other correspondence.
Sounds like a government agency restricting free speech.
Free speech does not supersede school conduct policy.
Get fucked. Love to see the first amendment case on this one.
Time to legally update your name to include it, just like Bob Wehadababyitsaboy.
Silently protest by exclusively using they/them for all employees and students in email body content.
Honestly, do this anyway. Default to they/them until someone requests otherwise. It’s the best way to normalize it for people who don’t present in an assumable way, without exposing yourself to the same level of potential retaliation that asking leads to.
True, it’s a good practice for those you don’t know. I think using it exclusively for the people they’ve known and worked with for years would send a clear message of disagreement with the policy. It’s also not something they can forbid, because it’s rightfully inclusive.
Please don’t do this. This is just misgendering by default. The vast majority of people are exactly the gender they appear to be on the surface, and if they aren’t, they’ll let you know. I’ve only known one person who wasn’t the gender they appeared (a very masculine-presenting enby), and they weren’t offended at all when I misgendered them at first; they corrected me, I apologized, and that was the end of it.
However, if you call the wrong clearly-masculine “alpha male” or clearly-feminine “queen bitch” they/them, you’re likely to get a violent reaction.
Gross. You care more about preserving the delicate feelings of bigoted snowflakes than actual vulnerable people.
It’s not misgendering if you use non-gendered language. Non-gendered language is not gendered. Grammatical gender is idiotic and we’d be better off without it.
I completely agree. Gendered pronouns are not helpful and at this point only confuse things. I’m just glad English doesn’t have gendered nouns, too, like Latin-based languages.
Anyway, the fact is that they/them has become “gendered” in the sense that it’s now a preferred pronoun for a lot of people, mostly androgynous enbies, so its implicit meaning has changed. Sure, it’s still used as a non-gendered pronoun for hypothetical people, but when used for a real, known person, it has the same implication as he/him or she/her - that they appear to be a certain gender, enby in this case.
I’m a clearly masculine person - I’ve got a beard and I wear masculine clothes. I personally wouldn’t be offended, but I would think it very odd if someone saw me and thought they/them was an appropriate pronoun for me. If masculinity was as important to me as it is to most men, I could see myself getting offended at someone implying that I appear androgynous. Same as if an enby was referred to as he/him or she/her. Cisfolk’s emotions are just as valid as valid as enbies’.
“They” as a neutral singular pronoun has been in the English language for hundreds of years.
Enbys also use it as a personal pronoun, sure - but no one gets to dictate that it can no longer be used as a neutral pronoun for everyone of any gender.
deleted by creator
Just in case anyone is wondering what all the pronouns are. Here is a list of the standard, non standard, informal, and archaic pronouns in the English language
And it at least implied that you couldn’t use any of these words at all in an email. So simple phrases like; can you do this or I am able to do that. Would be out.
Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.
Mark isn’t going to be able to make the meeting today but Mark wanted to say Mark conferenced with Mark and Sheryl yesterday and Mark and Sheryl are onboard with the new policy and think it’s a great idea. It’s going to take a fair amount of collaboration from the infrastructure team but the infrastructure team (mainly Bob, Greg, and Kelly) are very motivated and the infrastructure team is about finished with the infrastructure teams annual security assessment. Cathy can’t wait to get started.
- Cathy Newton
Yeah, wow! Totally seamless!
Ohh, this is why people are mad at Kristi Noem.
Yeah fuck that bitch.
