this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think the "everyone anyone your pronouns" thing in email, slack, whatever is dumb. But if I lived in SD, I'd start doing it right about now.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago (7 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 5 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 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 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] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 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 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 months ago

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