Pronouns, phronesis, and the perils of polite bureaucracy

Unfortunately, I’ve ingested far too much critical and post-structural theory to obediently adhere to bureaucratised conventions, regardless of how benevolent they may appear.

The decolonialisation agenda didn’t escape my ire, and the pronoun agenda won’t either. Sorry. Now in my 40s, I’m fast turning into my television hero Victor Meldrew.

I know I’m late to the debate. The “gender wars” have been live for some time – in the public realm, from Jordan Peterson (2016) to JK Rowling (2020), to Kathleen Stock (2021), to Graham Linehan (2025), and to the fallouts and reductive rules in learned HE societies of which I’m an active member. Debates rumble on.

This late contribution is probably not worth the trolling I’ll probably get, but as an academic philosopher it’s an occupational hazard. Sorry. This piece isn’t about the gender debate in broad terms, but the policing of pronouns in particular contexts in HE spaces.

Before I continue, let me state a few of my positions clearly. I will honour anyone’s preferred pronoun out of respect and basic courtesy – I’m not Jordan Peterson.

I studied modules on sex, gender, and diversity in the late 2000s and am well versed in cultural theory related to these issues – sex as biological fact, gender as sociological construct – and I know my Judith Butler and co. I have transgender and non-binary friends and colleagues, and am sympathetic to their ongoing struggles for dignity and recognition.

However, there were two recent tipping points which complete a circle for me going back to 2017, when I started to think about the cultural policing of language – not the actual criminalisation of language that Peterson opposed in Canada in 2016, a stance which I do agree with him on.

I was in the university gym huffing and puffing and taken aback when a TV presenter urged me to respect and admire Caitlyn Jenner for her gender transition. It was noted that if I didn’t express those sentiments – especially as a cisgender, heterosexual man – I was essentially a bigot and transphobe.

I strongly objected to the moral framing that demanded admiration for Jenner’s gender identity, all the while ignoring her – to me, abhorrent – political positions and crass consumerist lifestyle.

We contain multitudes

Much has happened publicly and personally in the gender wars since the Jenner moment. Since then, I’ve reviewed radical works such as Helen Hester’s Xenofeminism, debated with friends and colleagues, and read and shared different perspectives.

Earlier this year, I had an “aha” moment at a staff faculty event that provided real clarity on the issue after nine years of percolation – an icebreaker was hosted by a trans colleague, who provided us with a conversation menu, adapted from doctoral research, through which to engage in semi-structured discussions and get to know our team better.

During the activity, the first question after introducing one’s name was to share one’s pronouns. My newly acquainted colleague flippantly remarked “she, her”, quickly followed by “but that’s not important to me – more important right now is my non-visible hearing impairment.”

The norms of the scripted engagement demanded sharing pronouns, as well as me not speaking for two minutes, but I nodded along vigorously to demonstrate my solidarity with the point being made. The script lacked nuance, forcing my colleague to superficially foreground an identity marker that wasn’t as important as a different one in that context – namely, a non-visible hearing impairment.

Echoing Walt Whitman, we contain multitudes, and we’re each made up of numerous identity markers – gender, ethnicity, region, cultural heritage, class background, religion, sports team allegiance, and so on. To foreground the marker of gender over all others in email signatures, name badges, teaching sessions, and meetings creates a hierarchy of identity, and it’s a slippery slope.

Why not foreground other markers that are equally, if not more important, to someone’s sense of how they want to present themselves in a given context? I now finally really understand why I’ve refused to put pronouns in my email signature and on my name badge ever since first instructed by university hierarchy to do so in 2018.

Pronoun sharing is a recently established ritual, one that structures recognition and emphasises how and what we choose to value. I value multiplicity over foregrounding one aspect of my being across contexts.

It depends where you are

Pronouns are a grammatical necessity, and misgendering is thus often liable to occur in social interactions. The ritual of sharing them in accordance with a rule is an understandable response rooted in specific social and cultural contexts. Strategic essentialism – foregrounding one identity marker over others to make sociopolitical gains – is a proven strategy, but it’s also one that lessens the value of an intersectional approach to social cohesion.

Those who argue for foregrounding pronouns do recognise the importance of other identity markers, but owing to the harm felt through misgendering, they’re at pains to strategically essentialise gender in order to redress social norms. For some, others sharing pronouns is seen as a marker of safety and allyship.

However, context matters far more than any fixed rule. As a cisgender male, and man, of Punjabi heritage, living in rural Lincolnshire, my ethnicity matters far more to me than my sex or gender in my current hometown, while when in my original hometown of London, my cultural identity as a British Punjabi is probably more important to me in most contexts.

Drawing upon Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, or “prudence”, recognising nuance and context is more important than enforcing a ritual that foregrounds one identity marker over others. With phronesis, action is context-sensitive and nuanced – gender identity matters in a women’s refuge, but it arguably doesn’t matter in a library meeting about filing books according to the Dewey decimal system, or any other system for that matter.

A better question

So, the real issue isn’t pronouns per se, but the widespread adoption of a practice of apparent inclusivity that actually creates unintentional harm. Building upon the tips from Kat Smith, and employing phronesis, perhaps the centralising of pronouns could be replaced with something like – “share your name, and whatever else you’d like me or us to know about you right now to help us interact respectfully.”

This could obviously include gender pronouns, but also make room for access needs, cultural markers, or nothing at all. Crucially, it honours multiplicity without policing language norms.