She/Her/Hers What do these mean?

The Philosophy Hiding in the Email Signature

Or, How ASU Professors Use Pronouns to Police Your Theology

Continuing my theme of ASU professor email signatures, I recently received an email from someone in a position of leadership within our college. The signature included not only pronouns but also a helpful link—one designed to educate the rest of us about what pronouns mean and why we must use them.

So, being a curious philosopher, I clicked.

The link takes you to a page explaining why you must use pronouns as dictated by the Kinsey/Money sex philosophy. The main reason? Feelings. If you don’t use the pronouns someone prefers, you might hurt someone’s feelings. And because of that risk, they are now in charge of how the rest of us use the English language and how we define gender itself.

It would be worthwhile to conduct a study about what happens to an institution when administrators try to manage “hurt feelings.” I suspect you will find that this is not the focus in successful institutions but rather a sign that the institution is turning inward and decaying. Such an institution has lost objective truth and is focused on changeable feelings.

Most of our greatest novels about the depth of suffering in human life have sections about being misgendered. It is one of the worst things that can happen to you and should occupy the attention and resources of our universities. I still remember the passages in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago about how the Soviet prison guards would misgender him by calling him a “her” and the many nights he spent crying over this in his cell. Powerful.

Which raises an obvious question: why should we care? There are many different philosophies in the world, and we don’t cater to each one in how we speak. Why is this particular theory granted the authority to police our language?

The answer is simple: this is how certain professors/administrators ensure that Christian beliefs are excluded from the university.

Here’s how the argument works:

1. Gender is disconnected from sex by claiming it is a socially constructed performance based on cultural norms.

2. Not everyone agrees with those cultural norms—so not everyone conforms to traditional gender roles.

3. Therefore, we must make room for alternative “gender performances” beyond male and female.

At first glance, it seems coherent (to some). But it’s built on a half-truth—like many faulty philosophies are.

Yes, it’s true that cultures have different ideas about what men and women should do. But those differences are groudned in competing beliefs about the nature of reality. The Biblical truth is that God created us male and female, equal in dignity as image-bearers of God, but distinct in design and purpose. Our understanding of gender is grounded in that creation truth—not in shifting cultural preferences.

So when people disagree with the Bible’s teaching, what follows? Do they simply say, “We disagree”? No. They demand that those who do believe the Bible must conform to their reimagined use of language. But that doesn’t follow. It would be just as legitimate to say that those who reject the Biblical view must conform to the majority usage of “he” and “she.”

But of course, the real goal isn’t clarity—it’s confusion. The deeper message is that we just can’t know. That gender is infinite. That identity is self-made. And that skepticism is safer than truth.

This is the same lie the serpent told in the Garden: “Did God really say?”
Did God really say there are two sexes? Did He really give meaning to those distinctions and instruction about how they should live?

The modern professor wants you to believe He did not—and that it’s up to you, guided by your feelings, to decide who you are today (with the right to change tomorrow). And they insist you must enforce their ever-shifting views with your language.

Let’s be clear: the Bible does clearly teach that God made us male and female. It clearly lays out what that means for “gender roles.” That teaching is true. And the skepticism like this asks us to doubt and set aside that truth to "be your own god." It demands that all the rest of us agree with and go along with this radical sex philosophy. Yet, it would refuse to go along with a philosophy it disagrees with. More hypocrisy.

No one can force you to speak according to their personal opinions, and if a leader in a government institution insists you do so, this is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

So don’t be fooled: email signatures are not neutral. They are not just a polite “goodbye” at the end of a message. They are ideological signals. They represent the misuse of public resources to advance personal and philosophical agendas. They tell you that this person rejects the Word of God—and wants the rest of us to participate in the charade.

Parents and students, you need to recognize this strategy. Be ready to refute it. And ask yourself: is this really the education you want to pay thousands of dollars for—an education that mocks and scoffs at the Word of God?