Pronoun Pushers: Ruder Than I Thought

At Ask a Manager, a middle-aged man expresses alarm (Item 3) that some people might take his choice not to include he/him in his email signature as a red flag.

Alison Green responds in part:

Lots of people don't use pronouns in their email signatures. It's not a red flag. It would be hugely problematic if it were, because of what it would mean for people grappling with their gender identity or who don't want to out themselves at work. [bold added]

Thanks to combative wokeskolds -- who put people on the defensive much more than they actually help those they claim to help -- I had never thought about that aspect of their relentless pressuring.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Like many modern debates, which usually consist of two inconsistent sides who hate each other (and that have some things right and some things wrong), the transgenderism debate alienates me. But that doesn't mean there isn't a real issue there, or that there can't be an even-handed way to approach it.

I am thus grateful to Green for helping me see the right way to think about this kind of pressure: Many kinds of pressure to conform to proposed norms aren't just disrespectful in general, they can also trivialize or worsen the problems of those the norms are supposed to be helping, even if the norms can be a decent thing to do. (The email signature thing can be, I think, so long as it's optional.)

-- CAV