A workplace pressuring employees to include pronouns in their email signatures is a 21st century form of loyalty oath.
Loyalty oaths are used to control a population, and to expose dissenters. They are not honorable, regardless of what the oath is about. (Thread: 1/8)
Loyalty oaths are used to control a population, and to expose dissenters. They are not honorable, regardless of what the oath is about. (Thread: 1/8)
At his 1871 inauguration as president of the University of Michigan, James B. Angell, widely credited with transforming UofM into an elite public institution, said this:
An institution should “never insist on [the faculty] pronouncing the shibboleths of sect or party.” 2/
An institution should “never insist on [the faculty] pronouncing the shibboleths of sect or party.” 2/
And yet insisting that people pronounce the shibboleths of the new orthodoxy is exactly what is happening, both on-campus and off. The presence or absence of pronouns in email signatures, and in twitter bios, has become an easy tell: woke or not? 3/
I referred, in #DarkHorseLive9, in reference to the political divides being revealed by SARS-CoV2 and governmental responses to it, to a “Seussian landscape of star-bellied Sneetches, and Sneetches without.” 4/
Mask-wearing Sneetches, and Sneetches without.
Pronoun-touting Sneetches, and Sneetches without.
Consider us demarcated, labeled, categorized in tidy little boxes. 5/
Pronoun-touting Sneetches, and Sneetches without.
Consider us demarcated, labeled, categorized in tidy little boxes. 5/
We watch each other with ever greater suspicion, perfectly willing to jump to conclusions:
You avoiding a mask implies that you aren’t following the science, are skeptical of the government, maybe own a MAGA hat.
You with the mask implies you’re gullible, and weak. 6/
You avoiding a mask implies that you aren’t following the science, are skeptical of the government, maybe own a MAGA hat.
You with the mask implies you’re gullible, and weak. 6/
You with the pronouns in your bio implies you’re a follower, or an activist; you lack courage, or wisdom. You without the pronouns must be a bigot, maybe worse. 7/
We are ungenerous with one another, imagining the worst motives for others’ actions, ready with an explanation for our own bad behaviors.
Seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes—he thinks I’m gullible? She thinks I’m a bigot?—opens the door for understanding. /end
Seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes—he thinks I’m gullible? She thinks I’m a bigot?—opens the door for understanding. /end
