Shocking: employers skeptical of alternative pronouns

(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

A new survey–one that I think was ridiculously biased, but that still probably hit the mark–claims that employers are less likely to hire applicants who identify as nonbinary. Or, more specifically, demand to use an alternative, self-chosen pronoun.

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All the commentary on the survey conveys exactly what you would expect: shock, disappointment, calls to do better, and suggestions that something needs to be done about this hideous injustice.

Inclusivity shouldn’t just be present in the workplace — it should be practiced during the hiring process as well. But unfortunately, nonbinary job seekers are facing clear biases during their job search.

According to a new report from Business.com, a business resource platform, over 80% of nonbinary people believe that identifying as nonbinary would hurt their job search. Similarly, 51% believe their gender identity has affected their workplace experience “very or somewhat negatively.”

Ryan McGonagill, director of industry research at Business.com and author of the report, says these statistics show just how much work there is to do around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace.

“We clearly have more work to do on several fronts. Over the past 10 years, DEIB efforts have been prioritized by many companies; however, the results of this study and past research show that teams in most industries aren’t proportionately representative of the U.S. population,” McGonagill tells CNBC Make It. “And worse, many people (like the nonbinary individuals we spoke with in our research) feel like they don’t belong.”

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Yeah, whatever. I can assure you that the average employer doesn’t care about your pronouns. He or she cares about how big a pain in the ass you are going to be to work with.

Pronouned people are always a significant pain in the ass. Always. Every single instance.

How do I know that? It’s not the innumerable examples you can find of people whining incessantly about being misgendered, deadnamed, and all the other offenses that have been invented over the past few years. Examples are obviously chosen to emphasize the ridiculousness of the differently pronouned, and hence should be viewed with skepticism.

These people are easy to make fun of and often deserve it. However, on the whole, they are mentally ill and in need of some good counseling and well-chosen pharmaceuticals. So while I indulge myself in watching these videos, mainly to see what is tolerated and even celebrated these days in our culture, I won’t jump to the conclusion that all nonbinary people are useless in the workforce.

So how do I know that the alternatively-pronouned people are always a pain in the ass? Simple: they demand the right to specify how people refer to them in the third person. We aren’t talking about asking people to address us directly by a certain name. That isn’t much to ask, and people even extend me the courtesy to ask whether I prefer “Dave” or “David.”

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If some dude wants to be called “Melanie” almost everybody would do that. I would. Why fight it. And there are boys named Sue, right?

But demanding that one be referred to by a pronoun that is grammatically incorrect is something else entirely: it is policing speech not directed at oneself, and a revision of the entire English language to meet one’s personal and often fleeting desires.

This is ridiculous. It’s like demanding an employer rename a tool to suit one’s own fancy. Anybody who expects that should never be hired.

When a nonbinary person wears pronoun pins they aren’t declaring how they want to be addressed–which is acceptable and normal–but how they want others to refer to them when speaking to others. They are demanding that we depart from how the English language is taught, how we learned it, and how it is to be spoken.

That is narcissism, and narcissists shouldn’t be high on the list of people to be hired.

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That’s pretty simple. And it’s why all those videos of whiny nonbinary folks could very well be more representative of the average nonbinary person that I am forced to assume out of fairness.

Employers toying with the idea of hiring narcissists are playing with fire, and why put yourself through that? And given the inclusion of transgendered folks into protected classes, it makes sense to stay as far away from anything that could get one sued.

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