619
submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes.

Two University of South Dakota faculty members, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw and her husband, John Little, have long included their gender pronouns and tribal affiliations in their work email signature blocks. But both received written warnings from the university in March that doing so violated a policy adopted in December by the South Dakota Board of Regents.

“I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’ If my tribal affiliation and pronouns were not removed after the 5 days, then administrators would meet and make a decision whether I would be suspended (with or without pay) and/or immediately terminated.”

The policy is billed by the board as a simple branding and communications policy. It came only months after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem sent a letter to the regents that railed against “liberal ideologies” on college campuses and called for the board to ban drag shows on campus and “remove all references to preferred pronouns in school materials,” among other things.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 74 points 7 months ago

Just in case anyone is wondering what all the pronouns are. Here is a list of the standard, non standard, informal, and archaic pronouns in the English language

And it at least implied that you couldn't use any of these words at all in an email. So simple phrases like; can you do this or I am able to do that. Would be out.

Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago

Personally I think we should just start using the archaic forms just to confuse people.

If I get to compose emails like I'm Frog from Chrono Trigger, I am all about it.

[-] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 13 points 7 months ago

Thou shouldst do as thou pleases.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago
  • Hop around
  • Call everybody "thou"
  • Wield a cool sword
  • Probably nail Queen Leene

Yeah, methinkest I art down.

[-] lemmydripzdotz456@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

This is usually a good point. However, from my reading of just the snippet and some quotes others posted (and without reading the article myself because I am lazy), it may be that they are prohobiting the inclusion of preferred pronouns. If that's accurate, then it means they are refining their bigotry to be more precise.

[-] Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

Oh that is absolutely the intention, but who doesn't like logical extreme

I actually looked up the standard and it is worded in a way that doesn't explicitly prohibit any specific thing. It just gives a list of things that can be included and says anything else is prohibited. That way they are not discriminating. They are just creating a formatting standard.

[-] PapaStevesy@midwest.social 8 points 7 months ago

But any pronoun could be your preferred pronoun or the preferred pronoun of someone receiving the e-mail, so it really is safest to avoid them entirely.

[-] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

If I worked there it would br so tempting to just start writing all my emails in scots gaelic. Can't say I'm using pronouns if you can't read it!
Plus I'd get to see what form their xenophobia would take. Would they ban foreign languages from email too? How many things are they willing to ban before they simply oust email entirely?

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago

This opens the door for malicious compilance, one can report Bible quotes with pronouns and similar as bad.

[-] pythonoob@programming.dev 7 points 7 months ago

Don't forget about demonstrative pronouns such as this, that, these, those, neither, none, such.

[-] Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Wikipedia has failed me 😞

[-] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

It's missing thon

this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
619 points (98.4% liked)

News

23659 readers
3597 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS