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.
Devils advocate, because it is my nature… I work in government. My department has a policy with the formatting of my email signature sent from my work email. My email states my name, rank/position, department, and contact information with the department logo. Nowhere in there does it state my sex or race. And it shouldn’t, it is irrelevant. It serves no purpose in a professional capacity.
However, this situation apparently has prior issues. It was apparently fine to do until they made discriminatory statements then shortly after cracked down on it.
Unfortunately I don’t think the 1st amendment defense would apply when you are acting in an official capacity. You don’t get to say whatever you want while you get paid by the government. On your personal time that is a different story.
Pronouns are extremely relevant in formal communication. People do their best to infer them from names but that’s not always easy or even possible.
And sometimes people have a name commonly associated with a different gender. A guy named Hilary, or a woman named Max or Justin are likely to get misgendered in written communications without including pronouns. Or anybody named Alex stands a chance of it.
Or an enby named literally anything other than Sock
Bad take… truely advocating for the devil here…
And what about tribal affiliation? How do you make that part ok?
What if you have a gender-neutral name and you’re tired of being misgendered in emails?
I also work in government, and nobody would bat an eye if people started doing it. But then again I work in a sane place with generally sane people.
But that is just describing the current government format of your office. That is not a static thing, it’s subject to change for any internal reason for any time. It’s a specific policy not applicable outside of your specific government and essentially your workplace.
Even inside your government office if you have groups which are routinely not served by that model then essentially you create additional emotional or mental work burdens for some of your employees but not others. You being fine with that is simply your opinion. Your position in believing that these things are irrelevant are because to you that policy holds no barriers. But imagine if multiple people in your department brought forward that they were legitimately struggling with that policy and it was impacting how much mental fortitude it took to get through their work day. Would you join them in changing the policy? It’s a similar question to if your co-worker in a wheel chair needed to take an additional 8 minutes partially outdoors to travel to the bathroom in your building because a set of tiny stairs. To you those stairs do not impact your work experience at all but to the person in the chair they might need to grab weather appropriate clothing for outside and regularly be in uncomfortable temperatures, or get wet in the rain or if they need to rush be forced to painfully hold their innards for the additional time simply because of a set of four stairs. Their experience of life at work requires additional personal fortitude because it’s impacted in an outsized fashion because a ramp most people wouldn’t even notice isn’t there is not seen as needed. How much of your assertion of not requiring a ramp simply because you don’t personally need one?
Critically Universities are not your government body and a level of personal comfort in their communications has been largely normalized. Pronouns in emails was common in a number of Acedemic circles and governing bodies long before they were known elsewhere. Universities are where the practice originates from and it’s became increasingly normal. Why is it being cracked down on now?
Universities tend to be very much forward in general regarding accommodation policies because they tend to be where the discussions of ethical practice and theory are debated and new culture emerges. Consider that disability advocacy is a legacy of University based protests. Also that pronouns in emails have been a thing in some university campuses emails for almost a decade now. Whenever Universities communicate with each other the practice spread.
There’s also a gap in the understanding you put forward about tribal affiliations. In the case of tribal affiliates a lot of them veiw themselves as essentially occupied nations under a foreign government. They aren’t simply telling you their race or bloodline they are telling you what nation they actually belong to because the assumption of them as “Americans” (or innour case “Canadians”) is incorrect. That visibility is vitality important to the cause of the people’s of those nations who literally have faced erassure for centuries.
Alls I can say is, I wear a uniform at work for the sake of a uniform, consistent representation of my department. Official communications and the signature line of my email is the same thing. I am at a fire department, it is very paramilitary and your individualism is beat out of you, you are just a cog in a machine, that is all. Anything else is viewed as a waste of taxpayers $$. Any individual freedom gets people hurt, or in this case just angers some rednecks that view it as a political statement… Either way, those rednecks are taxpayers too, so just remain neutral and use the predetermined signature line. If it is a true problem and not someone… trying to make a political statement, and it’s really important that the building owner of the bar you just inspected and are sending the inspection report to REALLY needs to know that you are they/them, and it is really messing up your mental health if they just assume you are another employee at the fire department, then that is a discussion for someone more important than me.
My personal view is in that and most situations, it doesn’t make sense that it weighs on someone that much. It’s not on par with someone that needs extra time to use the bathroom because of a handicap. Honestly, that comparison is absurd and offensive in itself. There is no reason everyone needs to know your pronouns. Just like they don’t need to know if I am a man or a woman. I am just a person, doing my job.
Either way, my situation is irrelevant. These people work at a school, a very different culture, and these changes were made immediately after they made some stupid comments in the stupidest way.
What about people named Ashley. Or Courtney. Or Kelly. Or Sam. Etc.
Plenty of other commenters here who are similarly ambivalent to pronouns have provided reasons that they can understand their practicality if nothing else.
Sure, for a lot of people being misgendered is nothing but a minor inconvenience. For someone who is used to being intentionally misgendered out of spite, such a small change makes a big difference.
If being misgendered in emails was the only problem trans and non-binary people faced in the world, then maybe saying people should get over it is fine. That isn’t the case. This is just one of a million things someone in that situation might experience each day that acts as a barrier to participating in society and it is such an easy one to change. In fact, the situation in question was already working fine. Effort was put in, in response to some misguided outrage, to actively prevent the simple solution.
I understand your position of apathy, and maybe if the cost of addressing this particular issue was high, it would make sense to weigh up the solution, but the cost of this is nil so why not facilitate an easier world for all people.
Ironically enough, I worked with an old, salty captain for the better part of a decade who’s name was Kelly. Never had his pronoun in his email signature that I recall. He is long retired now. And that is a stupid anecdotal argument, just surprisingly relevant and felt obligated to throw it out there.
I honestly agree, it is a simple thing to change if you can control how everyone thinks. Unfortunately, when you work in government, what people think is expensive. Weighing the chances of a successful or even unsuccessful lawsuit and poor employee morale vs pissing off constituents that vote on the next ballot measure to fund your department or for the council member that oversees your department is a decision that usually leads to left handed solutions like “In completely unrelated news, please use this signature line template for the sake of uniformity”
Given the fact that this was a hot topic already, I am sure lawyers or at least HR was involved in their decision and whatever backlash comes they probably already anticipated it.
Very relevant anecdote! There are definitely a lot of different attitudes to names and pronouns outside the context of gender identity. I personally don’t really mind when people get my name wrong, I’ve got a common name spelt a little differently. On the flip side I’ve worked with “Matt”'s that are very serious about not being called “Mat”, and others still who will refuse to respond if you shorten their full name.
That’s a good point. Honestly, given other headlines I’ve seen and also things I’ve experienced in my own working life it wouldn’t surprise me if HR or legal wasn’t involved (or were steam rolled by a signature happy leader surrounded by too many yes-men). In saying that, I’d think it’s more likely that they were.
This comment will serve as my springboard to go and find my favourite, gender neutral word for “yes-man”.
I am pretty sure sycophant is gender neutral.
There it is!
They’re not apathetic, they’re having drawn out arguments about it online. That ain’t apathy.
They just think if they couch it that way, people won’t immediately see them for what they really are.
Inside they are a deeply insecure person. To the point where they can’t even be completely honest with themselves about their own garbage beliefs. Sad.
I don’t know if you’re interpreting the situation the same as I am. From my perspective, the other commenter and I are having a pretty genuine discussion from two different points of view about the issue. Being ambivalent or apathetic about the inclusion of pronouns in the email signatures does not preclude someone from joining into the conversation, and it also doesn’t preclude someone from having a strong opinion about the surrounding context.
They aren’t debating whether or not people should be allowed to use any particular pronouns, just stating a pretty valid opinion that it shouldn’t be all that important and in their lived experience it hasn’t been. For what it’s worth, I actually agree with that stance in a certain sense. I don’t think we as a society should be placing any stock into gender or sex or sexuality as something that needs to be declared. However, while we do, and while we still have people ostracising and attacking others for being true to themselves, these are issues that need to be tackled. Maybe one day everyone will be on the same page and we can do away with the social construct of gender all together, and maybe we won’t.
I really don’t see anything in their comments that indicates they are secretly hateful. I especially don’t see enough to presume anything about them as an individual.
I certainly hope they’re talking to a lawyer about the school’s discriminatory conduct, about whether they might win, and if it’s worth fighting.
Whether the first amendment applies or not is a question worth asking them, I’m not sure it’s quite so simple. If a state told a Muslim employee they couldn’t pray while on the clock, I would very much expect a first amendment claim. I don’t think this is so clear, but a public university telling an employee they can’t include relevant information like their pronouns for discriminatory reasons seems plausible.
I guess, providing someone time to pray, and that person placing “I AM MUSLIM” On their official correspondence as a public servant/employee representing their department are two different things. I am not defending anyone here, just curious how it applies.
As for this situation, it seems if the memo said “you can’t put your pronouns or tribal affiliation on your signature” vs “Please use this official template for your email signature” would make all the difference in how a lawyer could defend it. And it sounds like they did the latter. But we all know the reason they did it.
Pronouns are a fundamental building block of the English language. You literally cannot write or speak coherently without them. Equating that to putting “I AM A MUSLIM” on official correspondence is idiotic at best, and disingenuous at worst (well, disingenuous, racist and probably transphobic, at worst).
Stating your religious beliefs isn’t a building block of the English language. Like you get how these are different things right? You could remove the name of every single religion ever from the English language, just poof, and guess what? We would still have no problem communicating.
Now try doing that with pronouns. An entire figure of speech.
It depends very much on timing. If this was brought up within the first few weeks? Sure. But if this has been in their signature for months and/or years without issue, and suddenly it’s a problem? Extremely suspicious.
Damn, with a username like that your garbage take makes it even easier to block your ass.