Cilantro? Soap? Broccoli! And Pronouns!

The other night the icebreaker question at a meeting RantWoman attends regularly was about cilantro. There is a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap to between 4 and 14 % of the population. The ice breaker question along with general "who are you and where are your from?"  introduction requests was does cilantro taste like soap to anyone in the room?  In the meeting the answer was Yes for 3 out of 30 or about 10%

When it was RantWoman's turn, the answer came out "Yes to cilantro, yes to broccoli (meaning RantWoman likes and enthusiastically eats both) and pronouns are an essay question.

RantWoman has past experience with journalists sticking mics in her face for various occasions so sometimes RantWoman has this funky journalist voice in her head: "RantWoman, they only asked about cilantro. Why you gotta bring up broccoli and especially pronouns?"

The broccoli is kind of a throwaway, a nostalgic harkening back to the days of yore during the reign of  Pres. George HW Bush. Back then, in contrast to the dumpster fire currently inhabiting the White House, the leader of the free world's most outrageous personal quirk was to declare that he does not like broccoli and is not having it anymore at the White House. As for the pronouns, it's Seattle and someone should always speak of pronouns, if only as moral support for people for whom pronouns are a particular life issue or for people far away who also boldly speak of pronouns and in terms RantWoman notes interesting generational variation about.

Digression avoided out loud.

Essay question? Say more.

Take your pick:

--dissertations about masculine, neuter. feminine nouns and pronouns in various languages.

--singular they as one option for not assuming male or female or something else

--historical striving to voice something other than the assumed generic masculine
Example essay Spivak pronouns according to Wikipedia

----Solidarity with people learning English whose native languages have no gender and / or no pronouns

--Tangled history of singular / plural and formal / informal second person

--Workplace culture and people whose request pronoun changes or show other changes in usually gendered characteristics. (RantWoman suddenly finds herself wondering about substituting any disability for the subject of pronouns and whether or not people have a choice about disclosure, whether and how to ask with good manners.)

No one else brought up pronouns though later in the meeting someone mentioned issues with
some flavor of color blindness, a trait, thanks to outspoken mostly male color-blind techies, that tends to help people focus at least some attention on accessibility.

We will now resume our regular programming about staff development in a rapidly changing IT environment and key indicator dashboards.