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  • Writing Magazine

    LETTERS

    Oct 07, 2021 5 minutes

    STAR LETTER

    Pronouns matter

    In the October Writing Magazine, Piers Blofeld argues that including one’s gender identification along with one’s signature is irrelevant, a form of virtue signalling, a form of ageism, and exclusionary.

    As a trans-woman, I don’t have the privilege of not caring about gender. I often have to tell people what my preferred pronouns are, to avoid being misgendered. (Sometimes I get misgendered anyway, but that’s another story.) When cisgendered people include their own preferred pronouns, they doubtless each have their own reasons for doing so. I will not presume to speak for them all. But some, at least, do so in order to normalise the practice, so that people like me won’t feel weird when we have to do it. They’re not doing it to exclude people like Piers Blofeld. They’re doing it to include people like me.

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