[masraum]

Originally Posted by cantdrv55

This might get parfd, I don’t know. Anyway, my wife wrote to my son’s school principal and that person wrote back. Below her signature are her preferred pronouns. Her name is Brianna. I have no doubt that her pronouns are she/her. Brianna copied her colleague who then wrote back to my wife and did not include his or her pronouns. I have no friggin idea if that person is a male or female because the name is foreign. I think that’s about the only time disclosing your pronouns make any sense.

What are your thoughts about this?

But if you tell foreign folks that you can't tell what they are by their name so you need to know, then you're not exhibiting "inclusive" behavior. And while that reads as if it should be green, my answer is based on policies in a large corporate environment.

I have traveled internationally, and have been working with all sorts of folks for years. When I see other types of people, I just see people, but I appreciate talking to and learning about folks with different backgrounds and cultures.

So I've found it interesting when I see things that say that telling someone they speak excellent English is apparently a bad thing that might make someone feel bad. I would never want to make someone feel bad in that way. I would NEVER in a million years have thought that complimenting someone would be a bad thing. I can see how "you're doing a great job for a woman" is bad, but I can't see how telling someone that is not a native English speaker that their English is great is a bad thing.

I work in IT in a HUGE company. We have LOTS of foreign folks from all over, but especially folks from India. It's almost impossible for me to determine the gender of Indian given names. I even asked someone how I could tell, and I was told that "if the name ends with an A, that's (often but not always) and indication of a feminine name." But not all feminine names end in A, and not all names that end in A are feminine.

I have adopted not using any pronouns in those cases.