Pronouns F.A.Q.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I have a recurring experience on Twitter that goes something like this:

1. I say something vaguely political, or reflective of my politics (which are progressive, and I’m a Democrat).
2. Someone with right wing politics — overwhelmingly these people are men — respond with some variation of a dismissal predicated upon the fact that I’m a woke lib, a category five feminazi, or whatever.
3. Some right wing hanger on responds to the first respondent with some variation of “pronouns in her bio, of course she’s an idiot.”

Needless to say, these are never productive conversations. (A productive conversation would require the right wingers who disagree to make an intelligent counterargument, and apparently that’s just too much brain work for some people.)

But I’m going to suspend disbelief for a second and pretend that the people — ahem, men — hyperventilating in my timeline about the fact I have my pronouns in my bio actually just don’t understand why they’re there. So I’m going to answer some frequently asked questions:

You’re obviously just virtue signaling, why else would you include pronouns in your bio?

I always find it telling when people think any display of consideration for others is just signaling. It tells me that the person using the phrase “virtue signaling” cannot…