Employees at multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News.

Signature /= footer

Resist

  • w3dd1e@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Sorry to all the Blakes, Dylans, Ashleys, Francises, Shannons, Frankies, Charlies, Rorys, Blairs, Leslies, Angels, Billies, Sams, Kellys, Danas, Harleys, Adins, Caseys, and all the other non-binary/gender neutral names that I can’t think of right now.

    -signed a person with a non-binary name

      • Fedizen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Even for gender cishet people a Dylan, Casey or Sam might be a “he/him” or “she/her” and its just not obvious from the name.

        • ynazuma@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          So?

          Does that mean we all have to waste our time with pronouns?

          I can think of only one time I thought a female was a male from their name. It was not a problem. The name was Noel

          Seems like the name argument is no argument at all

          • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            So?

            Does that mean all have to waste time with pronouns?

            Can think of only one time thought a female was a male from name. Was not a problem. The name was Noel

            Seems like the name argument is no argument at all

            Sounds good ma’am. Have a great one

          • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            we, our, and I are all pronouns. Yes, we pretty much need to use pronouns.

  • Tower@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Legal disclaimers often have pronouns, right?

    “The information contained in this email message is intended only for the personal use of the recipient(s) named above. If you are not an intended recipient of this email, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you received this email in error, please immediately notify me by replying to this message and then delete this email from your system.”

    Malicious compliance it and replace all of the pronouns: “The information contained in this email message is intended only for the personal use of the recipient(s) named above. If the recipient is not an intended recipient of this email, the recipient is hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If the recipient received this email in error, please immediately notify John Doe by replying to this message and then delete this email from the recipient’s system.”

    Fuck 'em. I’m sure with a bit of work they could come up with some stuff that renders it nearly unreadable.

    • Malgas@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Um, I didn’t see where it said to replace pronouns with anything, only to remove them. So the correct verbiage would clearly be:

      The information contained in this email message is intended only for the personal use of the recipient(s) named above. If are not an intended recipient of this email, are hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If received this email in error, please immediately notify by replying to this message and then delete this email from system.

  • MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    For the life of me, I can’t understand why they care about someone’s sexual orientation or their pronoun.

    I ran the numbers on sex changes and it’s like .001 of the population. It’s a non-issue.

    The real issues are homelessness, inequality, Internet privacy, poisons in our food and workers’ rights…

    Not fucking pronouns.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      For the life of me, I can’t understand why they care about someone’s sexual orientation or their pronoun.

      They don’t. It’s classic divide and conquer tactics to package up the general population into nice bite-sized chunks that they can destroy individually with minimal resistance from the others. Exact same shit is how the Nazis rose to power.

    • Fluid@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Got to distract from the real issues somehow. Gotta keep that wealth extraction and concentrating system of exploitation alive. Can’t have the slave rising up to overthrow their masters again…

    • Rozaŭtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      They don’t care. The tactic is to have a minority that you can blame for all the bad things.

      100 years ago it was the jews secretly running the world, today it’s the evil trans people and immigrants conspiring to destroy The West™.

    • ynazuma@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      The same can be said for all those years wasted shaming people into using gender neutral language and adding pronouns to communications

      Maybe we should not waste any time on this

    • Tja@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Well, eggs are back to $1 a dozen and everyone has housing and excellent healtcare coverage, so you can focus on renaming gulfs and prosecuting minorities…

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      They need an ‘enemy’ to rally people against and all the usual suspects are no longer politically expedient

  • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    This is so stupid. I know plenty of cishet people who include their pronouns in their sig because they have a gender neutral name.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Of course it’s daft to mandate what people can and can’t put in their email footers but I don’t get why people put pronouns in footers.

        I’m cis male and he/him. Others can call refer to me as it/them or she/her if they wish.

        I dislike bananas but I don’t put that in my email footer.

        I haven’t seen it in a while anyway. I thought it was a fad from the late 10s

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            I think that’s kind of reductive honestly.

            Like most people I try not to be an ass, and generally try to get through the day without offending anyone.

            If I know someone well enough to care about their gender obviously I’d do my best not to misgender them.

            OTOH if I’m emailing customer support to ask where my order is I just couldn’t care less what the person’s gender is.

            • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.orgEnglish
              0·
              5 months ago

              A persons right to identity is not dependant on how much you care about the interaction, or any other factor. Say you have to escalate the customer support ticket, and you want to say “your colleague X was helping me. He said X was not possible blah blah” this is easier if those pronouns have been visible to you, you don’t have to make an assumption or default to gender neutral pronouns which may not be appropriate depending on the individual.

              • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                0·
                5 months ago

                I’m not imposing of anyones right to identity and frankly to suggest otherwise in any professional context would just be silly.

                Like a great many people I send and receive emails all day, corresponding with people from all sorts of organisations.

                An infinitesimal portion of people include pronouns in footers, and I suspect the people who do are cisgender with vanilla pronouns.

                I get that I’m the only one here being blunt about it, and I’m happy to take the downvotes, but honestly how does anyone navigate the day to day without imposing on people’s “right to identity” if no one is announcing their pronouns in their email footers?

                The obvious answer is, very few people care very much about this.

                • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.orgEnglish
                  0·
                  5 months ago

                  Why would you assume that the people who have their pronouns on display are cisgender? That’s baffling

                  Trans people, like myself, put their pronouns on display so that they can avoid being misgendered in the exact way I’ve described to you.

                  The only cis people, I’d imagine, who bother to do the same are people who are doing it in allyship with trans folk.

                  Very few people care very much about this

                  Sure, okay, yeah. And the people who do care, put their pronouns there for you to respect.

                  Quite frankly, if an infinitesimal set of your emails even include pronouns in the footer to begin with, why is it such a bugbear for you?

            • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              0·
              5 months ago

              Is your dislike of bananas an important part of your identity, both personally and how you are treated by society at large? Does making it known that you dislike bananas either verbally or through your appearance lead to a realistic possibility of facing abuse and opression, not limited to potential loss of livelihood or life?

              If not, perhaps, you can see how the two things aren’t very comparable.

              • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                0·
                5 months ago

                No, but how people refer to me in the third person is also not an important part of my identity.

                Someone’s choice of the pronoun to assign to me says more about them and the nature of our relationship than it says about my identity.

        • Fedizen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I know a guy who saw skin tone bandages at a school and lost his mind. He ranted about it for days. People I know still refer to him as the “skin tone bandage guy”

          Believe it or not, there are a number people who are “upset at pronouns in email guys” who lose their minds over this and its actually a public service to identify people with anger issues before they do real harm

          This is why those policies exist. If everyone has their pronouns in their bio/email, the people with uncontrolled anger issues don’t have clear targets.

  • MiDaBa@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    MAGA voters couldn’t identify a pronoun in high school. How are they supposed to figure it out now?

  • oleorun@real.lemmy.fanOPMEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    What about the people who often have DDoD, OCIS, NCIS, CCNA, CCNP, A+, Ph.D, MA, MBA, BA, BS, K12, SCRUMDIDDLYUMPTIOUS after their names? Can we get rid of title abuse then never focus on pronouns?

    • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Man, I spent a lot of money and time for my post-nominals, I don’t care if they’re 100% irrelevant to what I do, they’re getting used in every god damn email.

      (Helps that I only have one, though. And to be clear, I am happy to vehemently argue this point for months/years to steal focus from pronouns).

    • threshold_dweller@lemmy.todayEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      I, too, dislike being employed.

      But seriously most people will not risk their livelihood for it. It is almost guaranteed to end up in court like so many other of their bullshit policies.

          • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            …Trump offered all federal employees 7 months salary to quit. He signed two executive orders today to unilaterally dissolve some federal agencies.

            You logically cannot believe hes not in his night of long knives period. Someone with the care to put pronouns in their work communication isn’t loyal to Trump, and thus logically wouldn’t survive the firing and agency shutdowns Trump is currently actively doing.

            I get you disliked China and Chinese people but are you really letting that poison your logic to the point you’re ignoring reality. Is your insistence that Chinese people are wrong in all things worth not paying attention to the half dozen executive orders a day which is actively getting the US government?

  • Hirom@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Small government regulating pronouns in worker’s email signatures.

    Regulations For Thee but Not for Me

  • mercano@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Sucks for anyone named Jamie or Alex. Trump is acting like he won in a landslide, even though he wasn’t even able to scrape together a majority of votes; more people voted against him than for him.

    • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      even though he wasn’t even able to scrape together a majority of votes; more people voted against him than for him.

      What makes you think he cares, or that it makes any difference? He’s steamrolling ahead regardless and most of people in his way seem much happier to bend their knee than to resist in any meaningful way.

      There’s good reason we say you can’t vote fascism away.