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.
That sounds like a clear first amendment violation to me. It’s not like a political affiliation either, gender and ethnic background are core to identity
On the one hand, I see what you’re saying. It sounds much like something my savior Jesus would say.
On the other hand, something something fuck them queers and Injuns.
The first amendment doesnt apply to governmental communications.
Its the reason that things are able to be censored in public schools.
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They’re not even pretending it’s “just” about pronouns anymore. Now it’s just overt racism. Not surprised they went for the indigenous first.
Incidentally, there are over 70,000 indigenous Americans living in South Dakota. Considering the state has less than a million people, that’s not insignificant, so this is going to fuck over more than one or two people.
“Hey we have some pretty serious and urgent problems that need sorting out, shall we get to work?”
“Nah, let’s fuck around with pronouns in emails.”
I wonder if that would be considered discrimination based on race and sex.
No, because it doesn’t impact the old, white cis-males. They’re just mad because their pronouns are “fucking” and “awful.”
Seriously. I am fucking awful? What did I do to you?
Are you mad about people putting pronouns and tribal affiliations in their email signatures? Because, yeah, that’s fucking awful.
I am sure you are fine, and have never supported bad legislation like this. I think that the biggest complaint I’ve seen for old cis white males is their ability to claim victimhood when they are at the top of the pyramid, and to make everything about themselves if you can believe it
This was gold, but I feel like he had no idea what you were doing. Probably went, “yah! This guy gets it!”
Well, you were nice enough to pick an appropriate username. I like it when I block obvious wastes of oxygen.
Just in case anyone is wondering what all the pronouns are. Here is a list of the standard, non standard, informal, and archaic pronouns in the English language
And it at least implied that you couldn’t use any of these words at all in an email. So simple phrases like; can you do this or I am able to do that. Would be out.
Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.
This is usually a good point. However, from my reading of just the snippet and some quotes others posted (and without reading the article myself because I am lazy), it may be that they are prohobiting the inclusion of preferred pronouns. If that’s accurate, then it means they are refining their bigotry to be more precise.
Oh that is absolutely the intention, but who doesn’t like logical extreme
I actually looked up the standard and it is worded in a way that doesn’t explicitly prohibit any specific thing. It just gives a list of things that can be included and says anything else is prohibited. That way they are not discriminating. They are just creating a formatting standard.
This opens the door for malicious compilance, one can report Bible quotes with pronouns and similar as bad.
Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.
If I get to compose emails like I’m Frog from Chrono Trigger, I am all about it.
“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.’
“Correct the behavior” just means setting the style to bold and increasing the font size, though.
We call it doin’ a John Hancock!
Nazis love erasing peoples identity
I’d comply and remove that info from the signature. I’d just start every email with:
Hello,
Thanks for reading my email. In case we’re not already familiar, my pronouns are he/him and I’m affiliated with…
Hello,
Thanks for reading my email. As a large language model….
Haha
So what do people call each other now? Fuckwit/fuckedwit?
Those are gender pronouns with extra steps. \s
The tittle butchers the fact. They are not forbidden the use of pronouns, but to list their preferred ones (i.e, Dr Fuckwit (she/her).
When something is this stupid (university banning the preferred pronoums) , why not display it in all it’s stupid glory?
They can only call each other their names.
Jim said Jim and Larry were gonna go to the store. So Jim says to Larry, “Hey Larry, what’s on your mind?” and Larry says “Nothing, Jim. Just wondering what time Larry and Jim’d get there at this pace”. Jim checks Jim’s watch and says “Jim and Larry’ve been walking about - what - ten minutes?”.
Jim stops a second, deep in thought. Jim scratches Jim’s chin as Jim thinks. “About two I’d say”
“Alright” says Larry “Let Larry and Jim get moving then”
“Yes let Larry and Jim”
(no first person plural pronouns either)
That would turn those effectively into pronouns. I guess you are supposed to just hum through the pronouns or leave a marked silence?
Republicans sure love small government /s
Well that sounds legal as fuck (no it doesn’t)
pathetic I can’t believe this is a real group of real human beings
No pronouns how are they planning to continue communication this seems like a key element of language
No pronouns how are ____ planning to continue communication ____ seems like a key element of language
F_F_
Sounds like justification to not use gendered language. Might as well go full gender abolitionist on this shiznat.
Some folks just get way too pissy about simple words. They’re just words, sounds that are emitted from the large facial orifice, and written down or typed in symbols.
What words someone refers to another as change absolutely nothing about the person in question. Looking past the words that are clearly intended to be offensive, innocent pronouns such as he and she are simply meant to shorten and simplify writing and speech, rather than having to write, type or speak the person’s full name every time.
TL;DR - They’re just words, get over it.
I think “they’re just words, get over it” is a good argument in favour of pronoun declaration, no?
Basically, yeah. As long as they’re not deliberately and intentionally offensive anyways.
I’ve been called grandma before, by my good friend’s niece. I’m a grown dude, and ain’t even related to their family.
I just laughed it off, because I know it wasn’t intentional, plus everyone in their family seems to occasionally accidentally use the wrong names or pronouns.
It doesn’t upset me, unless they keep repeating the same mistake intentionally. They’re just words, and sometimes people make innocent mistakes.
