I want to talk about me. Specifically, I want to talk about how you should refer to me and I don’t mean how you should refer to me in the comments section of The Herald. Rude. I mean which pronouns you should use about me. Him? They? You may have noticed it’s becoming more common to raise the issue, especially in emails or online. But some people don’t like it. Some people are getting upset.

Take the latest example, involving the Scottish Government. As you know, Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers have run into controversy with their proposals to allow trans people to self-identity their gender. And now the Government is apparently supporting a plan to ask its civil servants to add pronouns to their email sign-offs. In other words, to make it clear which pronouns they prefer.

According to the original report about the plans, in The Telegraph, the Government is calling its proposals the Pronoun Pledge – cos you gotta have a slogan – but it seems to have gone down badly with some of its employees. An internal survey concluded nearly 60 per cent of staff did not want to add pronouns to their emails. Feminist campaigners on the issue of gender have also called the plans stupid and authoritarian.

But is it really? I may be wrong here (because the Scottish Government does have authoritarian tendencies) but I don’t think Nicola Sturgeon – she/her – and her permanent secretary Leslie Evans – she/her – are proposing to make the plan compulsory. Indeed, the Government has specifically confirmed that it is an individual’s choice what they include in their email signatures. What ministers apparently what to do is encourage more staff to use the sign-offs so as to “normalise the inclusion of pronouns”.

I have to say: I totally understand where they’re coming from. I’ve spoken to trans people about their experiences and they often feel, as many LGBT people do, excluded, or awkward, or different, or unable to talk about who they are. Heterosexual people on the other hand do not – generally – face the same kind of problem because heterosexuality is “normal”. They never have to assert who they are because it’s assumed who they are.

Including pronouns on emails, or Twitter or whatever, is really just a way of trying to fix this problem and make trans people, or non-binary people, feel less uncomfortable. Really, it’s a form of politeness and empathy. I hate the phrase hetero-normative but it does at least describe a real situation, and telling people which pronouns you prefer may help to normalise other situations too.

Obviously, it all depends on how the Government handles it. Officially, they say it’s up to employees. But we all know how offices can work and how pressure can build to behave in a certain way and how the people who resist can be sidelined or marked down as troublemakers.

Forcing people to adopt the policy would also run counter to how the public feels. The campaigning group More in Common has done some research on this and what they found is that the public, in the vast majority of cases, are happy to call people by the pronouns they want to be known by. Where they’re less comfortable is with the idea that the use of pronouns might come as a diktat from above.

It’s here, perhaps, that Sturgeon and the Scottish Government have to be careful. I have no doubt they’re on the right side of history – young people take gender fluidity for granted – but the assessment of Luke Tryl, UK director of More in Common, is that the Scottish Government appears to have launched the Pronoun Pledge out of the blue without any decent prep work. Yes, there was an intranet survey but you have to talk to staff properly, otherwise all you do is breed resentment.

This is probably, more or less, what has happened in Sturgeon’s government and the test will be in how the civil servants respond. Keep a look out for emails from people who work for the Scottish Government. If there’s a pronoun pledge at the end of it, it’s either a sign that the person is trying to be sympathetic. Or it’s a sign that they’re worried about doing anything else.

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