{"id":14501,"date":"2019-10-16T11:12:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T16:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cat.xula.edu\/food\/?p=14501"},"modified":"2019-10-16T11:12:57","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T16:12:57","slug":"happy-ipd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cat.xula.edu\/food\/happy-ipd\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy IPD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me be the first to wish you a happy IPD. That's right, it's International Pronouns Day!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s become a custom, recently, to let other people know your pronouns by way of introduction. You might see them in an email signature, for example. Sometimes people label them as \u201cgender pronouns\u201d or \u201cpreferred pronouns\u201d or simply \u201cpronouns.\u201d Or they might just be sitting there next to the person\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

This might seem odd or unnecessary the first time you see it, but in practice it\u2019s actually very helpful. If you\u2019ve ever experienced confusion over what pronoun to use with a new acquaintance, well, it can be embarrassing for all parties involved.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0<\/span>Calling somebody by the wrong pronoun can be downright harmful. It can even be a form of disrespect, harassment and abuse.<\/p>\n

For some of us, this has never been an issue. Some of us are more or less unambiguously located in one gender or another \u2014\u00a0whether we want to be or not \u2014\u00a0and we rarely give it a second thought. No one ever questions our pronouns, not even ourselves. This has been my personal experience.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a great big world out there, and a great spectrum of humanity. There are plenty of people for whom gender is more nuanced, or complicated, or subtle. These folks may experience discrimination or persecution in a society that has codified every aspect of life into rigid binary codes.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, that is changing, but we all need to do our part to make that change real.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing, then, to let people know your pronouns. It\u2019s a good new norm to establish as we work to build a more just and humane society. It\u2019s in this spirit that I\u2019m opting to add my pronouns to my email signature. It\u2019s a little thing, but in some ways it represents something big: the erosion of certain forms of gender privilege, which run deep.<\/p>\n

So: He, him, his. These are my pronouns.<\/p>\n

What are yours?<\/p>\n