Will you support if your organization asked all employees to add personal pronouns to email signatures?
Background: Understanding diversity in our work and social space is becoming increasingly important. Many people have different gender identities than what their physical appearances can reveal.
Respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns (e.g. Gulzar Shah (he, him, his, himself)) can be helpful in avoiding misunderstanding people's gender identity and offending them.
Personal pronouns may be used and will show psychological status of person , attitude and will differentiate from others
Satish Narula , I greatly appreciate your participation in the discussion. With all due respect, the intent of adding personal pronouns is to announce one’s gender identity so that we Do not disrespect each other by mistakenly misunderstanding gender identities. So it is more about promoting respect for diversity.
I personally prefer to use pronouns that signal the identity of people.
I agree with Gulzar Shah. This is good to specify identity. I am dealing with many export managers during business development communication. It took my lot of time to get / search details about identity (male or female) of person on other side because in business communication you cannot address wrongly a person on other side.
This is good Idea.
I really don't see anything bad in that. Sometimes I resulted into using open salutation whenever I mail editor to avoid embarrassing him/her. Though not necessary but is important.
Its a good idea to know rhe gender of the recipients as we may mistakenly call each other Mrs/Ms/ Mr. This would be common, if the name would be unisex.
Thanks Gulzar Shah bringing up this nice discussion.
Yes I support if my organization asked all employees to add personal pronouns to email signatures.
It depends on language we use these names. In names from flective languages there is no need to add pronouns because of gender ends.
Very good observation. To be on the safet side i think its just fine to use open salutations since it is sometimes difficult to judge the gender of a mail recepient. Further, at the work place, i think a complete orientation is necessary when new people join the office. The idea of adding pronouns or any identifier in emails or name cards will be very efficient im large scale companies.
I go with Dr Gulzar Shah , it would advantageous to know the gender of participant or recipient
On our campus, we have been encouraged to add our gendered/non-gendered pronoun preferences to our standard email signatures, and ask colleagues/students their pronoun preferences, and most faculty and staff have done that. It is not at all a burden, and it can be very helpful, especially, as Yu-Da LIn notes, when one is dealing with people from a wide variety of cultural traditions.
I think a simple Mr. or Ms. would suffice to identify the gender of that person. In fact in the signature line of an email that person uses could include Mr. or Ms. before their name. If they have a PhD, they can denote Dr (Mr.) or Dr (Ms.). I don't think there is any point in reinventing the wheel with more new jargon. There is not a need to beat political correctness (PC) to death. Just be practical and simple.
I agree with Dr Vasan. I would ask why is understanding diversity in our work and social space becoming increasingly important? Surely the sex of a person only matters if you wish to have intimate relations with them. Having said that, in a species that relies on binary reproduction, I believe it is impossible to not to do gender anyway.
i was a bit confused as how one adds personal pronouns to one's name/ signature; but if you are referring to mr., mrs., ms., miss, then, these are not personal pronouns but titles. is this what you refer to?
I can't really see why it is important, unless the institution wants to treat people of different genders/sexes differently.
I have encountered several situations where knowing gender identity would have been beneficial; due to a different cultural interpretation of the name or non universal reflexives cross culturally, and also when assumed gender may seem ambiguous or ill-fitting an individual's identity.
While Dr Vasan may be of either gender and have the privilege of title overshadowing gender role, it would still be most comfortable not assuming gender, but having one tell me. Mr., Mrs., or Ms. are more chosen titles, and sometimes ambiguous, androgynous, and changing.
I support idea to add personal pronouns to email signatures.
In many cases when I saw the name of a person from other countries, I was not sure of gender.
so with a personal pronoun, it would be: ME, Mary h .... or Mladen Bošnjaković, YOU-- that does not tell gender. Please stop calling titels, mr, mrs or ms perosnal pronouns, which are: I, you, he, she, it, we they, me, him, her, us, and them are all personal pronouns.
I would like to ask what are the possible side effects of one's cultural orientation on one's embodiment of pronouns between lived experience and factness?
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