Woman uneasy with focus on gender in email
QI am a woman, and I'm starting work at a firm that adds pronouns to their signatures. I'm a registered architect with 15 years' experience. It's taken a long time for me to be taken seriously in my very male-dominated profession. I feel uncomfortable adding my pronouns (she/her) to my signature. I've spent my entire career trying not to remind my mostly male bosses and the construction teams I work with of my gender. To be clear, my gender is very obvious in person, but I'd like to have some gender anonymity when it comes to emails.
I have long felt discriminated against and treated differently than my male colleagues in some cases, so the focus on my gender makes me uncomfortable. In addition, my name is very difficult to pronounce, so I often add the phonetic spelling of my first name in my email signature, right where the pronouns would now reside. I understand that adding pronouns even when you've never been misgendered helps normalize this practice. But I don't want to remind all the men I work with of my gender status every time I send an email. Am I the only one who doesn't like the focus on this?
— Anonymous, Seattle
AThere are generally no character limits on email signatures. You can share pronunciation and pronouns. You are treating your gender as a problem when the real problem is how other people seem to regard your gender. Working in a male-dominated field can be incredibly difficult. I understand your inclination to exclude your pronouns, but you aren't hiding your gender when you do so. Your colleagues and peers are well aware that you are a woman. Excluding your pronouns won't prevent further bias or discrimination. It's not a solution. It's a coping mechanism. That is well within your rights. I absolutely understand where you're coming from. After 15 years in your industry, you have clearly had enough, but this is not only about you.
We share our pronouns to create an environment of inclusivity. We do so to communicate that we embrace all gender identities, that we don't assume everyone we encounter is cisgendered, and to make it safer for people to share their gender. You have to decide what you want to prioritize more: your desire to minimize your gender so you maybe face less gender bias at work or your desire to contribute to a more inclusive workplace culture. In the long term, doing the latter will also make it easier for you to do your job without the burden of gender bias. Q
I work in a large university on a team of administrators, most of whom are women. A few times a year, there are social gatherings that always involve eating copious amounts of sweets. I am a fat woman who is also very ambitious and careeroriented.
These events are brutal and fill me with anxiety. Eating together unleashes a torrent of self-hate from my colleagues and sparks everyone to talk about whatever diet they are currently on. I always feel super self-conscious because a) I am the fattest person in the room, and it's hard not to draw the logical conclusion that my body is my colleagues' worst nightmare; and b) it's alienating (and triggering) to be in these conversations.
While I can sometimes take personal days or schedule medical appointments to avoid these events, I do have to attend some. How can I endure an hour's barrage of body negativity without losing myself completely?
— Elizabeth, Toronto
A
You are not the problem here. The real question is, how can your colleagues develop healthier relationships to food and their bodies and stop espousing the fat-phobic, performative rhetoric women often engage in when eating food around one another? They may be judging your body, but they are also judging themselves. They are doing what they think they must so they aren't seen as “bad” — which is to say, so they aren't seen as human. And who cares if you're the fattest person in the room? You have every right to take up space and to be comfortable and confident in your body.
I know this is easier said than done. I've been where you are, and it is lonely and induces a whole lot of anxiety and self-loathing. It makes you hate yourself, and it's unproductive.
I want to recommend a book called “The Body Is Not an Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It's a primer on learning to accept yourself as you are and to love and respect yourself without apology. It is radical to imagine such a thing because there are so many cultural messages about why, as fat people, we should apologize and be ashamed and treat our bodies as a problem to solved.
Your body is not a problem. Your body is not your co-workers' problem. If your body is their worst nightmare, they have lived charmed lives. Don't make their fat phobia yours. It is not your burden to carry.