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Way to make me feel so nervous about what you're going to ask me!
I was getting tea this morning, and one of the faculty members was getting coffee and said he'd noticed in my email signature that it says "please refer me to using the pronouns she and hers" and asked, "as opposed to what?"
In fairness, I felt way more nervous while actually answering the question than I did in the lead-up but still, I do not recommend, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way" as, well, as something to say probably ever really. (Certainly I've said things like, "This is going to sound meaner than I intended, but I can't think of a better phrasing," so I'm not saying you shouldn't acknowledge when you think something will be taken more negatively than you intend, but...)
I started with saying that people's genders aren't always clear from their names, that some people have gender-neutral names & warmed up to saying that not everyone uses binary pronouns and so sometimes people will volunteer that in their email signature, asking people to refer to them as "they" or "ze" or whatever and that it feels important to me to normalize that practice of volunteering one's pronouns rather than leaving it as something that's only done by people with unexpected pronouns -- "Does that make sense?" He said yes and seemed placated.
Hi, I'm your resident radical queer, I'll be here all forever.
(At coffee on Monday, some folks were talking about the Stanford prison experiment and whether it would replicate today and I literally chimed in with, "police brutality -- people are given power, in a system that dehumanizes certain people, and they abuse that power," and I had never felt so out-of-place far-left at work -- not that anyone pushed back, I don't even remember what got said next, but I just had this sense of total non-engagement.)
I was getting tea this morning, and one of the faculty members was getting coffee and said he'd noticed in my email signature that it says "please refer me to using the pronouns she and hers" and asked, "as opposed to what?"
In fairness, I felt way more nervous while actually answering the question than I did in the lead-up but still, I do not recommend, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way" as, well, as something to say probably ever really. (Certainly I've said things like, "This is going to sound meaner than I intended, but I can't think of a better phrasing," so I'm not saying you shouldn't acknowledge when you think something will be taken more negatively than you intend, but...)
I started with saying that people's genders aren't always clear from their names, that some people have gender-neutral names & warmed up to saying that not everyone uses binary pronouns and so sometimes people will volunteer that in their email signature, asking people to refer to them as "they" or "ze" or whatever and that it feels important to me to normalize that practice of volunteering one's pronouns rather than leaving it as something that's only done by people with unexpected pronouns -- "Does that make sense?" He said yes and seemed placated.
Hi, I'm your resident radical queer, I'll be here all forever.
(At coffee on Monday, some folks were talking about the Stanford prison experiment and whether it would replicate today and I literally chimed in with, "police brutality -- people are given power, in a system that dehumanizes certain people, and they abuse that power," and I had never felt so out-of-place far-left at work -- not that anyone pushed back, I don't even remember what got said next, but I just had this sense of total non-engagement.)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 04:36 am (UTC)That surprises me. I would think Harvard would be left-central.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 07:51 pm (UTC)