On Pronouns, Policies and Mandates

Making it safe to disclose pronouns: good. Normalizing the practice: good. Mandating it: please don't do that.

Hi friends! We’re on week three of my 12-week practice in writing one bite-sized topic per week — scoping it down, writing straight through, trying real hard to avoid over-writing or editing down to a pulp.

Week 1 — “On Writing, Social Media, and Finding the Line of Embarrassment”
Week 2 — “On Dropouts and Bootstraps”

Three points in a row makes a line, and three posts in a row called “On [Something or Other]” is officially a pattern.

It was an accidental repeat last week (move fast and break things! 🙈), but I think I like it, so I’m sticking with it.

Next on the docket: pronouns and mandates

This week I would like to talk about pronouns (as in “my name is Charity, my pronouns are she/her or they/them”) and pronoun mandates, in the context of work.

Here’s where I stand, in brief:

• Making it safe to disclose the pronouns you use: ✨GOOD✨

• Normalizing the practice of sharing your pronouns: ✨GOOD✨

• Mandating that everyone share their pronouns: ✨BAD✨

This includes soft mandates, like when a manager or HR asks everyone at work to share their pronouns when introducing themselves, or making pronouns a required field in email signatures or display names.

I absolutely understand that people who do this are acting in good faith, trying to be good allies. But I do not like it. 😡 And I think it can massively backfire!

Here are my reasons.

I resent being forced to pick a side in public

I have my own gender issues, y’all. Am I supposed to claim “she/her” or “they/them”? Ugh, I don’t know. I’ve never felt any affinity with feminine pronouns or identity, but I don’t care enough to correct anyone or assert a preference for they/them. Ultimately, the strongest feeling I have about my gender is apathy/discomfort/irritation. Maybe that will change someday, maybe it won’t, but I resent being forced to pick a side and make some kind of public declaration when I’m just trying to do my goddamn job. My gender doesn’t need to be anyone else’s business.

I totally acknowledge that it is valuable for cis people to help normalize the practice by sharing their pronouns. (It never fails to warm the cockles of my cold black heart when I see a graying straight white dude lead with “My pronouns are he/him” in his bio. Charmed! 😍)

If I worked at a company where this was not commonly done, I would suck it up and take one for the team. But I don’t feel the need, because it is normalized here. We have loads of other queer folks, my cofounder shares her pronouns. I don’t feel like I’m hurting anyone by not doing it myself.

Priming people with gender cues can be…unwise

One of the engineering managers I work with, Hannah Henderson, once told me that she has always disliked pronoun mandates for a different reason. Research shows that priming someone to think of you as a woman first and foremost generally leads them to think of you as being less technical, less authoritative, even less competent.

Great, just what we need.

What about people who don’t know, or aren’t yet out?

Some people may be in a transitional phase, or may be in the process of coming out as trans or genderqueer or nonbinary, or maybe they don’t know yet. Gender is a deeply personal question, and it’s inappropriate to force people to take a stand or pick a side in public or at work.

If **I** feel this way about pronoun mandates (and keep in mind that I am queer, have lived in San Francisco for 20 years, and am married to a genderqueer trans person), I can’t imagine how offputting and irritating these mandates must be to someone who holds different values, or comes from a different cultural background.

You can’t force someone to be a good ally

As if that wasn’t enough, pronoun mandates also have a flattening effect, eliminating useful signal about who is willing to stand up and identify themselves as someone who is a queer ally, and/or is relatively informed about gender issues.

As a friend commented, when reviewing a draft of this post: “Mandating it means we can’t look around the room and determine who might be friendly or safe, while also escalating resentment that bigots hold towards us.”

A couple months back I wrote a long (LONG) essay detailing my mixed feelings about corporate DEI initiatives. One of the points I was trying to land is how much easier it is to make and enforce rules, if you’re in a position with the power to do so, than to win hearts and minds. Rules always have edge cases and unintended consequences, and the backlash effect is real. People don’t like being told what to do.

Pronoun mandates were at the top of my mind when I wrote that, and I’ve been meaning to follow up and unpack this ever since.

Til next week, when we’ll talk “On something or some other thing”,
~charity💕

(835 words! 🙌)