Is virtue signaling an actual thing that people are capable of doing

when it doesn't, or when it stops working, it's bullshit

Left and harbl otm

Like, this collective community center I've recently gotten involved in has meetings where at the beginning of the meeting we go around and state our preferred pronouns and say if we have accessibility needs. And sometimes it seems like ... hey, there are only 5 of us here, and we all know each other, and it feels kinda absurd, but you know, it's a good practice to have. Same with thanking everyone and expressing appreciation for emotional labor ... it's nice to feel thanked and appreciated.

are the preferred pronouns optional? I feel like asking people to commit to those can put people in a position where they have to decide on them and in a public setting when they may not be ready and comfortable.

there are a lot of she/they or he/they pronouns stated ...in addition to people who are solely "they" and trans people who are "she" (no they)

tbh I think pronoun declarations make a substantial minority of trans ppl feel uncomfortable, but most of that subset (myself among them) have come to the conclusion that it’s the best of the universally imperfect options presented by the realities of language and society.

being questioning/in early transition is deeply awkward, period, and neither being asked about yr pronouns nor having them assumed are a lot of fun, but erring on the side of self-determination is the best we can do. I will say I prefer a pile of pins/badges to the “go around the room” ritual; feels more casual, and getting to be at all casual about gender is such a rare luxury when yr in that headspace.

incredibly relatable

"Virtue signaling" is much like calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat" party. Wingnuts do this thinking that their ability to call the left names constitutes proof that they're smarter than 'em.

when your lawn sign comes with caveats

They covered up “no human is illegal” pic.twitter.com/LKtKEoIFOE

— fourth and 5.5 inches (@moleburps) September 19, 2021

Reading the "preferred pronouns" discussion upthread, this is something I'm thinking about a lot as I'm teaching French to middle schoolers, quite a few of whom use nonbinary pronouns. My classes usually involve a lot of talking to and about each other - like, ask each other these questions and then report on what you found out! So I'm now trying to figure out the best way to bring French nonbinary pronouns (which are still very new and not officially recognized but do exist) into the classroom, and also the best way to make sure we all state our pronouns when we're doing an activity like that so the nonbinary kids don't have to deal with being misgendered all the time. But every time I talk about nonbinary pronouns - and you do kind of have to talk about it because gender-neutral language in French is way harder than it is in English - I feel like I'm probably making those kids feel uncomfortable. I wish there were a better way but I don't think there is.

I have an enby kid in high school; they asked their Spanish teacher about how to do nonbinary pronouns.

The teacher wasn't a jerk about it - she understood the question and took it seriously. But ultimately all she could do was shrug and point back to the textbook.

Like when I learned French one would say la porte but le stylo, and if you didn't yet know what you were referring to, it would end up as il / ils because masculine is generic.

yeah, I may be putting more emphasis on it than I need to, but my feeling is who cares if it's not textbook French yet, people who want to use it are using it, and we're not actually in France, we're in a school where a bunch of kids use nonbinary pronouns and are used to getting a fair amount of support for that from the school. So it would feel very weird and wrong to me to go "sorry, you can have nonbinary pronouns everywhere but in French class, plz choose a gender now," especially when there are plenty of French-speakers out there who are pushing for more gender-neutral language.

But it is extra complicated. The pronouns themselves are easy - iel and ielle are the main ones - but you also have to say what adjective agreements you're using, and those have to be either masculine or feminine. Which is annoying, and adds a step, but it's not as much of a deal-breaker as it sounds like. For one thing, as you said, masculine is generic. And for another, when even inanimate objects like the table and the door have gendered adjective endings, gender agreement isn't quite as imbued with the idea of personal identity as an English-speaker might assume. Or at least that's how I understand it.