Frank Zamora, a man who lives in Texas, was recently fired from the Texas Real Estate Commission for refusing to remove his pronouns from his email signature.
Imagine, retribution for… pronouns. I’ve already used several in this post. They are a simple part of our everyday lives. But of course, because they are associated with markers of identity for trans people, who many in our government and in our country are willing to discriminate against and harm at any turn, pronouns have been politicized.
When Frank Zamora — a cisgender man — was required to remove them from his email signature, he stood his ground, choosing not to do it, even if it risked job loss. That risk then became reality. In the Austin American-Statesman he said he “could not, in good conscience, contribute” to “a broader effort to make LGBT+ people feel unwelcome in the state of Texas.”
In his letter to his employers, sharing that he would not comply with the new pronoun mandate, he shared, “While many may consider an email signature block to be a strange place to draw the line, I consider it the front line of protest before actual discriminatory policies are put into place and I could not in good conscience let the first domino fall without a strong, formal declination. I will not contribute to any action, however small, that could lead to the discrimination, judgment, or harm to any minority group of fellow employees whose only crime is existing as the people they are.”
It’s so important to take risks where we can.
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 