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