Guest post: Demonstrates serious professionalism
Originally a comment by KBPlayer on No No No.
My corporate lawyers employers really value getting inclusive awards and they sent us 10 commandments for Happy Pronoun Day.
Only about 4-5% of employees put pronouns in their signatures. The pronouns are in fact what you would expect – he for the blokes, she for the women, and nothing like they or zi. Annoyingly, this does include some colleagues that I like. No-one ever talks about it though, not in my hearing anyway.
The 10 commandments:-
1. Normalise pronoun sharing – this is to make an inclusive atmosphere, where everyone is comfortable expressing their gender identity. [And those who don’t believe in this feeling pretty damned uncomfortable. Everyone should genuflect so the Catholics feel comfy.]
2. Respect how others choose to identify. [I’d like to see a trainee identify as an Associate or a Partner, and what respect they would get.]
3. Avoid assumptions. Unintentional misgendering can be hurtful and alienating. [Well I wasn’t much hurt when the woman at the laundrette called me Sir when I phoned to ask how much to clean a duvet. That’s my baritone voice for you. I was more hurt by the cost of cleaning a down duvet, not to mention heaving it to the laundrette.]
4. Demonstrates serious professionalism – shows that you are aware and sensitive to the needs of a diverse workforce and our clients. [See point 1.]
5. Foster trust and relationships [See point 1]
6. Encourages open communication [See point 1]
7. Saves time and reduces awkwardness [See point 1]
8. Promotes learning and awareness. Seeing pronouns in email signatures can prompt others to learn more about gender diversity and pronoun usage. It encourages education and fosters greater awareness about the experiences of transgender and non-binary individuals. [Hmmm I’d be a bit careful there. “Gender awareness” can have the opposite effect, that the aware become highly hostile to this enforced bullshit.]
9. Reflects personal values: Seeing pronouns in email signatures can prompt others to learn more about gender diversity and pronoun usage. [See point 8]
10. Affirms support for the LGBTQ+ community: Displaying your pronouns shows solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. It sends a clear message that you are an ally and advocate for inclusivity and acceptance. [I choose my own allies and advocacy thanks].
To expand a bit on my point in the other thread:
Only 1, 2, 3, and 5 are written as “commandments”; the others are desired effects that following those commandments supposedly will have.
Do they not teach parallelism in law school?
9. Reflects personal values.
Look how easy it is to be virtuous.
@WhataMaroon – They didn’t call it the 10 Commandments, that is my gloss.
Regarding #4, what is the difference between professionalism and “serious” professionalism exactly?
@KBPlayer,
Fair enough, but the lack of parallelism still rankles.
Point #8 — that greater “learning and awareness” will naturally help foster respect for trans people— is based on the Civil Rights model of transgender identities. This framework shoves out all the controversy regarding alternative conceptions of what it means to identify as transgender by assuming the preferred narrative in the premise and then proceeding as if we’re dealing with the typical scenario of oppressed, marginalized group gaining acceptance through good will and education. And here’s a company with heart, leading the charge.
But really — how much education and warm, friendly encounters should it take to learn that sometimes males can be women — or even female? That’s not a Civil Rights problem.
Regarding #1, Exulansic once had a nice line in response to encouraging for everyone to share pronouns: “No, that’s how diseases get spread. You should always use clean pronouns.”
“Affirms support for the LGBTQ+ community.” Not a community. Not LGB; only T, and possibly the Q+ goes along with it. Not support, only acquiescence.
To be fair to my employers, we serfs do get good salaries and treatment generally, and they support some good charities eg food banks and helping young ones from poorer backgrounds get a break. However the gesture politics is infuriating. Today was wear red for anti-racism day. I wear red a lot – it’s one of my favourite colours – but if I hadn’t been working from home today I would have refrained out of annoyance. I should say that Scotland is a very white country, Scottish law a very white profession – much more so than English law – and we only have about two black/coloured employees in our offices.
This kind of HR bullshit, even in general, has always annoyed me. I don’t like a good many of my coworkers; I don’t plan to attend their kids’ birthday parties, or to have barbeques with them, or to go camping with them on long weekends. We have no interests in common that I can discern. That doesn’t matter, though. We work together perfectly fine because we are professionals who are paid to do a job. I don’t expect my plumber to want to “foster a relationship” with me just because I pay his firm to have him come out and fix a leak once in a while, and I have no interest in getting chummy with coworkers. I DEFINITELY am not interested in the sexual orientation of any of my coworkers or any details thereof and I see no reason why we should be interested in “affirming support for the LGBTQ+ community” when we’re supposed to be spending our time building and simulating stochastic models of computer networks. When we make small talk in the morning about what we did last weekend nobody thinks it’s an opportunity to make a political statement, and nor should they. It’s _small talk_. We keep it superficial; it’s a signal that the lines of communication are open, nothing more. I have very little doubt that a good many of my colleagues, if not the majority, are gay/lesbians, but I don’t care. I don’t need to know. We get our jobs done, and then we go home to our separate lives. If my lab assistant Dan says that he and his husband went skiing, then good, I hope you had a lot of fun Dan, now let’s run that simulation with a heavy-tailed distribution on input this time and see if it can duplicate that glitch that we saw last week.
Now, I know that kind of situation is not the norm in many jobs, especially very small firms/companies where people like to brag about everyone being “family”. Well, that’s not my style; I’m a grouchy old dude and I just don’t care about it. So if we’ve got to break our back “accommodating” everyone, then how about we start accommodating those of us who are not interested, O Human Resources departments of the world?
James @10 “We work together perfectly fine because we are professionals who are paid to do a job.”
But are you Serious Professionals? ;)
This depends heavily on the individual. For my part, pronouns in signatures, zoom names and similar instead demonstrate a lack of critical thinking and/or tribalism.
James, I’m the same. I don’t want to hear about other people’s babies, grandbabies, great-grandbabies, and I certainly don’t want to know about their sex life or “their” pronouns. I am willing to discuss best practices, and work together as a team to get a job done, but as for sharing sexual orientation or other personal information, not so much.
That that that times a billion. How about accommodating people who like to keep a respectful distance and like others to do the same?
There was this one time at the Zoo, a hundred years ago, when there was this new hire, a keeper from St Louis or somewhere like that, and she was cloyingly intrusively stubbornly and downright offensively “friendly” and “warm” and in everyone’s face. She was extremely “nice” but I’m afraid I hated her like poison. It’s not enough to be intrusively “nice”; it’s at least as important to be aware that not everyone wants intrusive niceness, and to back the fuck off if your exaggerated warmth is not welcome.
Adults just don’t want to be treated that way, even friendly adults. She was like a hyper kindergarten teacher, drawing all the children out, when none of us were children. Also of course it was odd for her to be trying to draw everyone out when she was a newbie. It was as if she were a missionary, or someone who’d been recruited to do some Team Building. She was neither of those things. I was always longing to ask her why she thought we all needed to be treated like shy toddlers. Ugh it was a nightmare.
I actually like our department socialising – the annual outing, the occasional lunches, the Christmas meal – because my colleagues are pleasant, intelligent people, who have some interesting or at least amusing things to say. The big office do’s like barbecues and balls aren’t for me.
Offices are the modern village, now that most of us live scattered in cities. It’s where many people do make friends and meet partners. A couple of my former young colleagues have just got engaged, and that’s all quite reasonable, along with calling for volunteers for good works. We are a gregarious species. It’s the whole pious inclusive and diversity preaching that I find annoying.
For a novel about office life I would recommend Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise. It’s a wretchedly bad detective story, but gives a picture of office life in the 1930s with the gossip and feuds. Women had not been working in offices for very long, and they have begun to feminise the office with cakes and organising sweepstakes, though the men play at the cricket match outing. Incidentally there is the same preaching and intrusiveness from the management – but this is them taking a dim view of the typists having gentlemen friends. autre temps.
@GW#7
Someone should bring out a bag of sweeties called “Pronouns” – like jelly babies. When you’re asked to share your pronouns, you produce the bag and offer them one. The lime flavoured are my favourites.
The one my mind keeps going back to is # 9. Reflects personal values.
What if pronoun play isn’t a personal value of yours? They don’t care about your personal values, they want you to express values in line with their decisions. Keep your personal values to yourself unless they are approved by corporate.
This kind of frivolous selfishness is not allowed when trans people are dying. Your role is to foreground, center, uplift, celebrate and valourize trans people; you have no legitimate, independent needs that supercede that obligatory, supportive mission. Insufficient enthusiasm, or worse still, a sullen silence, will be interpreted as nothing less than anti-trans hostility. Your needs and so-called :boundaries” don’t matter. Your assigment is to be both an audience and a background in front of which trans lives are to be displayed and magnified. If you’re not cheering or applauding, you are suspect.