Why I Won’t Put My Pronouns In My Bio (Or Anything Else)

These questions have been at the forefront of the gender identity discourse in recent years. Where previously people would have laughed at the idea of wearing a name tag displaying your pronouns, now it’s so commonplace that most of the people you come across on Twitter or Instagram have them prominently displayed in their bios. However, I think gender pronoun discourse has become less about the utility of referring to people properly and more about signaling allyship with trans people. 

Viral Video Sparks Debate About Self-Advertising Gender Pronouns

A recent video posted by a woman went viral as she tore into the idea of publicizing your self-identified pronouns to the world, especially in a job-seeking context. This woman argues she can make several inferences about such a person from the perspective of a hiring manager:

1. They are likely very far left politically.

2. They’re likely low in conscientiousness.

3. They will expect their work environment to coddle them and cater to their every need, requiring everyone around them to walk on eggshells.

4. They’re likely to be the laziest worker, most entitled, and most likely to sue.

Altogether, she describes a person who is a clear liability to any company, so why would anyone want to hire them, right? I don’t disagree that you can make a generalization about an archetypal person based on correlations. However, I knew about 10 seconds in that this was definitely a millennial ranting (as a zoomer, I’ve had more opportunities to recognize the changing professional and educational landscapes). While her venting clearly resonated with many people, and I sympathize with her point, I think it is, unfortunately, profoundly wrong. 

These people aren’t a liability to the company – they’re often running the company. I couldn’t tell you how many hiring managers and other professionals I’ve exchanged work emails with only to find that their email signatures bore their pronouns. I understand this woman is probably more settled in her career, so she may be unaware that job applications nowadays ask you for your pronouns (even for cisgender people). Many employers explicitly request or require their employees to list their pronouns in various scenarios. In my final semester of college, which took place over Zoom, several students would list their pronouns (which always aligned with their birth sex anyway) in their usernames. The point is – the act of advertising your pronouns is no longer the behavior of a fringe group with little to no power. Make no mistake, they have all of the power in the world. If you think it’s only 20-year-old self-identified communists on Twitter, you are mistaken.

The Real Reason Companies Want You To Partake in These Humiliation Rituals

In recent years, the far-left ideology of “wokeism” has spread like a cancer into every imaginable sector, including tech. It’s often the hiring managers and upper levels of the companies themselves enforcing these sorts of socially woke humiliation rituals. Higher-ups in these companies use these so-called insignificant signifiers as ideological purity tests. It’s an easy and efficient way for woke management to screen for ideological coherence within companies. It stealthily tells them a lot about you: whether you will toe the line, what sort of political leanings you have, and how easy you will be to manipulate. 

Higher-ups in these companies use these so-called insignificant signifiers as ideological purity tests.

As time goes on, I think company policies will only become more ridiculous. We’ll be dealing with situations where coworkers may sue you for refusing to refer to them by their preferred pronouns, even when these pronouns aren’t obvious, are literally made up (neo-pronouns), or are changing grammatical rules (they/them in reference to a singular person). These are, by the way, occurrences that are already taking place. In 2016, a law was introduced in New York City that would fine businesses for violating someone’s human rights for refusing to use their preferred gender pronouns, including pronouns such as “ze” and “hir.”

Why I Don’t Advertise My Pronouns

It would be of little cost to me to add my pronouns to my social media bios, my email signature, or even to online usernames. However, doing so would be of little use, considering everyone can already infer what my pronouns are based on how I present myself to the world. I present as a female because that’s what I am. It doesn’t take any guesswork to figure it out – it goes without saying. No one would ever mistakenly call me “he” or “him.” If I were to demand that others call me “he” while presenting as a highly feminine woman, well, I could try, but it would likely stoke a lot of confusion. There’s no reason for a cis-gendered person to walk around announcing their pronouns as if there’s any utility in doing so. They know this, though. 

I think the real goal is the destruction of gender norms or, more specifically, gendered assumptions. I may look like a woman, but that doesn’t mean I identify as one, they would argue. That’s why we need to normalize not assuming anyone’s gender. However, if you ask genuine transgender people how they feel about this, many of them find it frustrating. After all, the point of “transitioning” is to present yourself as the gender that you identify with by altering your secondary sex characteristics. These are external features we interpret to deduce someone’s gender – things like facial hair, fat deposits, hips, breasts, and voice pitch. They don’t really want people asking them what their pronouns are. In an ideal world, it would be self-evident. The ultimate goal is to “pass” as that gender, not to have to announce it to the world. If you do have to announce it, it implies you aren’t passing very well. 

I present as a female because that’s what I am. It doesn’t take any guesswork to figure it out.

That being said, I acknowledge there are people with ambiguous features or who may be in the process of transitioning, and it’s unclear what gender they are attempting to present as. In this situation, you may be genuinely confused about how you should refer to them. It also might be awkward to ask this person directly. This is where advertising your pronouns may have more utility, and I’m not going to claim I don’t understand that. It does at least serve a purpose and aims to eliminate confusion and awkward situations. But announcing your gender as a woman born a woman and using “she” and “her” pronouns? That’s just performative virtue signaling. The entire charade is a farcical performance. You aren’t helping anyone – your pronouns are as apparent as your gender presentation, and you aren’t helping trans people by doing so. Instead, you’re taking a cultural issue and finding a way to somehow make it about you.

Closing Thoughts

I won’t be adding my pronouns to my email signature or social media bio any time soon. It’s performative and pointless and does nothing to help transgender people. We can see that you’re a woman, Cheryl. The more performative self-serving acts we promote, pretending that it’s real activism that is genuinely helping people, the more frivolous policies we’ll be inundated with. Considering most people are not transgender, there’s zero reason the majority of the population should acquiesce to announcing their self-evident pronouns to appease a very small portion of the population.

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