this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
621 points (98.7% liked)

News

23014 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes.

Two University of South Dakota faculty members, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw and her husband, John Little, have long included their gender pronouns and tribal affiliations in their work email signature blocks. But both received written warnings from the university in March that doing so violated a policy adopted in December by the South Dakota Board of Regents.

“I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’ If my tribal affiliation and pronouns were not removed after the 5 days, then administrators would meet and make a decision whether I would be suspended (with or without pay) and/or immediately terminated.”

The policy is billed by the board as a simple branding and communications policy. It came only months after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem sent a letter to the regents that railed against “liberal ideologies” on college campuses and called for the board to ban drag shows on campus and “remove all references to preferred pronouns in school materials,” among other things.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I originally thought it was a bit silly, but then I realized that there are a lot of cisgendered people who just have names that people can't tell whether they are male or female, either because it's gender-neutral or it's unusual, so it kind of makes sense for a lot of people who aren't queer as well and are just tired of people misgendering them via email.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It is important for cis people to do so for one important reason on top of what you said, if only trans people need to put their pronouns in their profiles is just another way to identify them.

If everyone does it, nobody feels awkward about doing it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

And this is probably exactly why they are trying to ban it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have a consistently male name, which is fine as I'm a man, but I still put Mr. in front of my name in my email signature. It just cuts down on ambiguity, confusion, and even looks more formal.

I'll never understand people's obsession with disallowing gendered or nongenered pronouns. The whole controversy is asinine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I still put Mr. in front of my name in my email signature. It just cuts down on ambiguity, confusion, and even looks more formal.

This seems to satisfy the problem. If you don't want people confusing what pronouns to use... sign things Mr, Ms or Mrs.

When you have other custom pronouns or don't want one used... don't mention one... and that should imply to a sender to simply use they/them.

No matter what you choose to do people are going to reply however they want to anyway.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm one of these, my name is definitely male but when you read it it's really easy to confuse with the female version. It doesn't help that it's really rare in my generation while the female version is much more popular. All this resulted in me getting misgendered on a regular basis. A few examples:

  • as a teenager, I won a prize with a monetary award. The check was for the female version of my name.
  • when I got my first house, I signed up ONLINE for the electric utility. The invoice ended up being addressed to the female version of my name. I sure as heck didn't make a mistake in my own name when signing up, so someone over there must have "corrected" my name
  • I once went to a week-long course, where we each were assigned an individual room, but bathrooms and showers were shared across all rooms on that floor. I was assigned a room on the ladies' floor, which took me a while to realize as I thought it was just mixed-gendered.
  • and that's without counting the hundreds of times teachers took attendance. I'd say at least half of them got it wrong.

Anyway, I thought pronouns were a bit of a weird thing for trans and non-binary people, but as a very cis man who's had issues with people reading my name wrong, I put my pronouns in my signature now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

What made me think of it was a guy I want to college with named Olu. It's apparently a traditional name in the part of Africa where his parents were from (it's been way too long ago to remember where), but he was an American, not African, so basically no one in America would be able to tell if he was male or female just by reading his name.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It’s also solidarity with non-cis folks to normalize identifying preferred pronouns so that they can be addressed as they would like.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Understood, but I was trying to frame it in a way that even people who are not allies might understand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Totally. If someone just thinks it’s “dumb,” they might not be realizing it isn’t necessarily about them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I use gender they/them in that case! If I know the person's gender I will use it, but if it's ambiguous I'll stick to they/them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Plenty of people aren't that courteous, which is part of the issue.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)