We’re making (slow) strides…
For probably over a year – okay, about as soon as I got my own identity – I’ve been a freelancer on Upwork (upwork.com). But only recently has this branched into me joining a client’s work team. They don’t use Upwork, but Asana, so I had to create a new account.
Easy enough. Fill in the usual information: name, DOB, email… Nothing weird, like “What gender were you assigned at birth?” (I’ve got an upcoming post on THAT one.) But then, as I went to edit my profile to upload a photo, I found something different. Good different. This is what I saw:
Notice anything that you don’t normally see? That’s right. Right next to the box for my name – and obvious too, not hidden away on a second page somewhere – there was a box for my pronouns.
It’s the first time I’ve seen this box. And, to be honest, it’s the first time I’d even considered it, the first time I’d even taken a moment to reflect that this box SHOULD be there. Now, the lack of such boxes on 99.9% of websites (even the GMP I think!) strikes me as entrenched in the stone age.
So what did I do with the “Pronouns” box? It’s optional, clearly. But I put them in!
And why? Because, even though people normally get my pronouns correct from my name and my face, that’s not the point. The point is that we can’t just assume somebody’s gender. Even though I have a woman’s name and look like a woman, who’s to say I’m not gender non-binary, or even a man in a female body who decided (for whatever reason) not to “transition”.
We need more options like this on websites, and big ones, like Google or Apple. And we need more gender-binary people to start filling them in. We need, as a society, to start recognising that “What are your pronouns?” is as basic a question as “What is your name?”
Sure, the presence of that little box surprised me. But it shouldn’t. And I hope that it won’t, the next time that I see it. I hope that it will become so ubiquitous that I’ll be surprised to find a website NOT asking it.
Our society has a long way to go. But we’re getting there, slowly!
—
.