I notice with ever increasing frequency the need for people to express themselves fully and include pronouns in their email signature block
just why someone feels the need to put “Him/His/He or whatever after their name is actually beyond me. I have never really understood why some people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object - I’ll call them by their name.
As an old SQMS once announced during a particularly long and cold exercise whilst dishing out bacon sandwiches and hot soup “Right, any Vegetarians, Vegans or any other F##king Wierdos?”
OK, here goes.
Gender seems to be really important to most people. Small children have a strong sense of whether they are boys or girls, and many insults and other parts of language are strongly gendered, “Come one, don’t be a
girl, finish your pint” etc. This does not seem to be specifically about anatomical differences – people do seem to have an internal / mental sense of their gender. The very gammons who are saying, “It is obvious, I just know I am a man” are actually being accidentally woke and saying, “Gender is not just anatomy, but a mental construct.”
If you are a trans person, where your anatomical appearance is different from your mental gender, this is very challenging, given the strength of this feeling we all have about gender, and the power of gender definitions in society. The very gammons who are saying, “We must fight to maintain that there are just two genders, men and women!” are actually being accidentally woke and saying, “Gosh, given the weight we put on gender, it must be really hard if you find you are trans!”
English, like many languages, has gendered pronouns (although not adjectives – apart from blond and blonde, for some reason). So calling a man ‘she/her’ or a woman ‘he/him’ is both grammatically incorrect but also quite insulting for most people.
If you are a trans person, where (for example) your anatomical appearance is superficially male but your mental gender is strongly female, you are likely to be referred to as ‘him’, but find this difficult to accept, as it is just as uncomfortable as misgendering anyone else. This is especially troubling if it is done deliberately, so not due to someone’s appearance but as a deliberate rejection of their gender identity.
So trans people, where their appearance does not match their internal gender, really do need to tell (English-speaking) people their preferred pronouns (and other forms of address) in the hope of being addressed in a manner they are comfortable with.
Non-trans people frequently also express what their preferred pronouns as well, which is a bit unnecessary if their visual appearance is unambiguous, but they do it in ‘solidarity’ with trans people so they are not having to stand out as exceptional, if everyone does it.
This is, obviously, nothing to do with some nonsense like,
‘people want to identify as a toaster or other inanimate object’, which is just an insulting ‘straw man’ attack.
Also, yes, vegetarians and vegans are forking wierdos, but the mystery is why people feel they need to insult or attack them, just because they don't want one of your delicious bacon rolls.